could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?
It's been well known for a long time that parking a computer-equipped car (that is, one with at least electronic ignition and/or electronic fuel injection) under a high-voltage powerline can very well "crash" the computer or scramble the computer's memory to the point that it's impossible to start.
I first heard of that problem when I was a kid, and I'm not all that young;)
As for "software update", I've known rice-boys and other engine tuners program and replace the ROM chip containing the ignition timings in their cars to gain power, or remote the overrev safety, for the longuest time.
So, all in all, not exactly software, but still, cars without any kind of mecanical problem that won't start, or will stop because of buggy computers aren't new.
Ever wanted to see the black of space but just can't pay a cool 20 million to do so? Well, just build your own small-scale, high-altitude balloon like these guys out of styrofoam, duct tape, electrical kit
or alternatively, stick two pieces of aforementioned duct tape over your eyelids and experience the black of space right here at home.
They really need to try and sell this to the "average old lady", who has no use for games but needs a little browser/e-mail system...and just bought a "10.000 postcards" CD from CompUSA, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, only to discover they don't work on her you-bun-too laptop. Oh and also, she receives funny animated emails from her friends and/or colleagues, and a found Word document with the recipe for werewolf in dung sauce that she can't open...
Won't work for average old ladies. For average anybody in fact. It'll be a great buy for certain computer-savvy corporations tho, to save money buying in volume, knowing exactly what they want to do with the laptops and that Linux fits the bill.
Note: I'm a Linux enthusiast, I hate Windows as much as anybody here, but I'm just stating facts here, not trolling...
Re:definitely a tech-demo thrill
on
Pac-Man Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
it's a night and day difference in graphics, sound, and presentation [...] And don't get me started on having the intermission shows, the fantastic sound effects,
Let me help you have a quick trip down memory lane for a minute:
.A...e.A..
beep..beep..bipbipbip...beep
Seriously, I'm of the Pac Man generation, but I never but mildly enjoy the game: the "great graphics and sounds" were truly crap, and the ghosts had no personalities at all (unless you're talking about some evolution of Pac Man I'm not aware of). What it had going for it was the gameplay: simple, quick and efficient. But quite boring quite rapidly imho.
For me, the game that flipped my switches was Lode Runner: same shite graphics as Pac Man (well, perhaps a bit better), same so-so music and sounds, but it had something that looked like persons, not a yellow ball, and it had many many different levels. Now THAT was a lot more interesting.
But hey, I guess, to each his own:-)
Some people are WAY too much into Pac-Man
on
Pac-Man Turns 25
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Black holes are detectable. The accretion disk about the even horizon emits a lot of gamma rays, because matter falling into the hole are accelerated like crazy. Once matter has reach the even horizon of course, nothing escapes.
Think of it as a last cry of atoms being swallowed.
I almost put up a big "Happy Birthday you Big Black Hole" banner at work as a joke, but luckily I found out beforehand that one of my co-workers has a birthday today. I am guessing that banner wouldn't have gone over too well with him.
Especially if he also happens to be a large gay afro-american...
Er. And what does determine the right to vote, work, ect? A french (or other EU country) citizenship.
You're wrong.
Some people who are full citizens don't have the right to vote, for example in France, people who don't live where their ID card say they live, and those who have lost their civic rights (usually people convicted in court of something important enough).
In France, one has to apply for a voting card. Simply popping at the poll booth with your ID card won't do.
At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address
The data on the card can't be counterfeited, so here's how to beat the System: have the card made, then undergo a sex change operation, grow a beard (works only for women going for men though), eat out at McDonalds 5 times a day for 2 months, then move out of town. Ta-da! I guarantee you the data on your card won't match.
numbers soar? bullshit. the numbers will regulate themselves due to lack of resources / competition for the resources.
Yes they will, over time. After a major period of ecological unbalance where diseases will spread amongst animals, and other species will die.
If somebody decides to ban hunting for good, that's what'll happen. Nature will indeed manage and emerge with another, totally different ecological balance.
fox hunting was completly banned for a year in the uk while we had a foot and mouth outbreak among cattle, to prevent its spread. Was there any increase in fox population / attacks by foxes on livestock? no.
People have been hunting in England litterally for millenia. A 1 year hunting ban on one specie isn't representative. Give it 5 to 10 years and fox population may very become out of control.
Besides, what happens in England isn't necessarily representative of what happens elsewhere in the world. I remember France doing the same thing for several migratory birds years back when they had a green ministry of ecology, and some countries in North Africa reported an unusually high number of these birds ruining crops and emptying waterholes of fish as a result.
this arrogance among hunters and farmers that only they can manage the countryside / population of animals is completly moronic, the world has managed for millions of years just fine without you interfering deciding that creatures need culling.
Look, it's not my fault that hunters have forced themselves into the ecological balances of the areas them hunt in. But the fact is, right now, they're there and they play a role where they hunt. Their actions maintain (artificially, I agree) the state of nature as you know it. So the choice is either remove them from the picture and brace for major ecological disasters, for the time nature needs to adjust, or keep on hunting.
Besides, I'm not a hunter (but I'm a gunsmith, so I'm close enough to the subject), so you don't have to get all excited about it. I'm not "arrogant", I'm just stating facts, whether you like them or not.
The main reason everyone is so upset/scared over internet hunting are the safety concerns.
Not really. The internet hunting takes place on private grounds nowhere near populated areas, so it's safe. The concern is really the morality of it.
Also hunting on foot is a lot more noble and is a tradition that has been carried out for thousands of years.
Indeed.
And I might add this: most countries where hunting has been a tradition for centuries couldn't afford not having hunters. What I mean is, the hunter is part of the ecological balance of whatever area they hunt in. Take them out of the picture, and suddenly certain species of game, previously hunted, see their numbers soar, destabilizing the ecological niches of numerous other species, and introducing diseases and malformations in their numbers, due to overpopulation.
In many countries, hunters regularly conduct what they call "cynegetic management", or "sanitary shootings", which is essentially the removing of weak and diseased surplus animals. Those sanitary kills can also preserve endangered species, by lightening the burden on their food sources and the predatory pressure on them. This game management is healthy for the environment, which is what most green anti-hunting folks fail to understand.
Seems like one of the Unsolved Problems in Physics isn't exactly unsolved anymore.
Re-read TFA where it says "Boldizsar Janko and his colleagues believe they have found such a control technique" and "Although Janko and his colleagues have tested their approach so far only through computer simulations".
Not exactly a practical, demonstrated technology yet. Wikipedia is therefore current.
I heard of spintronics before. I have some idea of what electron spin is from university, but not much more. So when I saw the article, I thought "wow, great, a nice-looking/. blurb choke full of links to the subject"... only to discover that 4 out of the 5 links link back to/. itself, and the last one links to a half-page semi-general article in physorg.com.
I don't know, I guess I may as well Google spintronics at random...
This wasn't morse code against sms. This was the older generation (93 year old) against the younger generation (13 year old).
It's the comparison of a 93 year old who is of the generation that still had the patience to spend many years to learn and get perfect at something like Morse code, and a 13 year old who just happens to be good at thumb-thumbing a cell phone after several months of intensive and expensive messaging of her daft teenage friends.
Which means the article compares a hard-to-learn but efficient communication method, and a quick-to-use but inefficient text entry method for Joes and Janes who own a cellphone. That's comparing apples and oranges...
I hear many people complain about OpenOffice.org not opening their MS documents with correct formatting, but these people don't realize that this is not a limitation of OpenOffice, but a result of Microsofts closed and proprietary document formats.
I am one of these people who complain about exactly that. Well, not exactly complain, because what you say is true (it's not OOo's fault that the.DOC format was purposedly designed to be a minefield), but lamenting about it.
However, the result is the same: as long as OOo doesn't reach 99.999% compatibility with some version of the.DOC format, people won't ditch Word for OOo. Period.
My opinion is that the OOo guys should drop whatever they're doing for a while, choose one version of the.DOC format, and keep working on the import filter until it's near-perfect. Then OOo will really take over Word, and they can resume their normal development cicle...
Slashdot Mirror
could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?
;)
It's been well known for a long time that parking a computer-equipped car (that is, one with at least electronic ignition and/or electronic fuel injection) under a high-voltage powerline can very well "crash" the computer or scramble the computer's memory to the point that it's impossible to start.
I first heard of that problem when I was a kid, and I'm not all that young
As for "software update", I've known rice-boys and other engine tuners program and replace the ROM chip containing the ignition timings in their cars to gain power, or remote the overrev safety, for the longuest time.
So, all in all, not exactly software, but still, cars without any kind of mecanical problem that won't start, or will stop because of buggy computers aren't new.
Ever wanted to see the black of space but just can't pay a cool 20 million to do so? Well, just build your own small-scale, high-altitude balloon like these guys out of styrofoam, duct tape, electrical kit
or alternatively, stick two pieces of aforementioned duct tape over your eyelids and experience the black of space right here at home.
The remote exploit is why I use OS X.
My time is worth it.
Are you a lawyer?
Is there a way to tell HP we do want linux on a laptop?
Is there a way to tell HP we do want them to continue making great calculators?
HP is a silly company these days. They screw one thing after the other...
They really need to try and sell this to the "average old lady", who has no use for games but needs a little browser/e-mail system ...and just bought a "10.000 postcards" CD from CompUSA, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, only to discover they don't work on her you-bun-too laptop. Oh and also, she receives funny animated emails from her friends and/or colleagues, and a found Word document with the recipe for werewolf in dung sauce that she can't open...
Won't work for average old ladies. For average anybody in fact. It'll be a great buy for certain computer-savvy corporations tho, to save money buying in volume, knowing exactly what they want to do with the laptops and that Linux fits the bill.
Note: I'm a Linux enthusiast, I hate Windows as much as anybody here, but I'm just stating facts here, not trolling...
it's a night and day difference in graphics, sound, and presentation [...] And don't get me started on having the intermission shows, the fantastic sound effects,
.A...e.A..
:-)
Let me help you have a quick trip down memory lane for a minute:
beep..beep..bipbipbip...beep
Seriously, I'm of the Pac Man generation, but I never but mildly enjoy the game: the "great graphics and sounds" were truly crap, and the ghosts had no personalities at all (unless you're talking about some evolution of Pac Man I'm not aware of). What it had going for it was the gameplay: simple, quick and efficient. But quite boring quite rapidly imho.
For me, the game that flipped my switches was Lode Runner: same shite graphics as Pac Man (well, perhaps a bit better), same so-so music and sounds, but it had something that looked like persons, not a yellow ball, and it had many many different levels. Now THAT was a lot more interesting.
But hey, I guess, to each his own
Clikey...
Black holes are detectable. The accretion disk about the even horizon emits a lot of gamma rays, because matter falling into the hole are accelerated like crazy. Once matter has reach the even horizon of course, nothing escapes.
Think of it as a last cry of atoms being swallowed.
I almost put up a big "Happy Birthday you Big Black Hole" banner at work as a joke, but luckily I found out beforehand that one of my co-workers has a birthday today. I am guessing that banner wouldn't have gone over too well with him.
Especially if he also happens to be a large gay afro-american...
Er. And what does determine the right to vote, work, ect? A french (or other EU country) citizenship.
You're wrong.
Some people who are full citizens don't have the right to vote, for example in France, people who don't live where their ID card say they live, and those who have lost their civic rights (usually people convicted in court of something important enough).
In France, one has to apply for a voting card. Simply popping at the poll booth with your ID card won't do.
At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address
The data on the card can't be counterfeited, so here's how to beat the System: have the card made, then undergo a sex change operation, grow a beard (works only for women going for men though), eat out at McDonalds 5 times a day for 2 months, then move out of town. Ta-da! I guarantee you the data on your card won't match.
numbers soar? bullshit. the numbers will regulate themselves due to lack of resources / competition for the resources.
Yes they will, over time. After a major period of ecological unbalance where diseases will spread amongst animals, and other species will die.
If somebody decides to ban hunting for good, that's what'll happen. Nature will indeed manage and emerge with another, totally different ecological balance.
fox hunting was completly banned for a year in the uk while we had a foot and mouth outbreak among cattle, to prevent its spread. Was there any increase in fox population / attacks by foxes on livestock? no.
People have been hunting in England litterally for millenia. A 1 year hunting ban on one specie isn't representative. Give it 5 to 10 years and fox population may very become out of control.
Besides, what happens in England isn't necessarily representative of what happens elsewhere in the world. I remember France doing the same thing for several migratory birds years back when they had a green ministry of ecology, and some countries in North Africa reported an unusually high number of these birds ruining crops and emptying waterholes of fish as a result.
this arrogance among hunters and farmers that only they can manage the countryside / population of animals is completly moronic, the world has managed for millions of years just fine without you interfering deciding that creatures need culling.
Look, it's not my fault that hunters have forced themselves into the ecological balances of the areas them hunt in. But the fact is, right now, they're there and they play a role where they hunt. Their actions maintain (artificially, I agree) the state of nature as you know it. So the choice is either remove them from the picture and brace for major ecological disasters, for the time nature needs to adjust, or keep on hunting.
Besides, I'm not a hunter (but I'm a gunsmith, so I'm close enough to the subject), so you don't have to get all excited about it. I'm not "arrogant", I'm just stating facts, whether you like them or not.
Sure it does...
Windows crashing always makes me see red
So presumably, when you see a BSOD, it's all black, right?
The main reason everyone is so upset/scared over internet hunting are the safety concerns.
Not really. The internet hunting takes place on private grounds nowhere near populated areas, so it's safe. The concern is really the morality of it.
Also hunting on foot is a lot more noble and is a tradition that has been carried out for thousands of years.
Indeed.
And I might add this: most countries where hunting has been a tradition for centuries couldn't afford not having hunters. What I mean is, the hunter is part of the ecological balance of whatever area they hunt in. Take them out of the picture, and suddenly certain species of game, previously hunted, see their numbers soar, destabilizing the ecological niches of numerous other species, and introducing diseases and malformations in their numbers, due to overpopulation.
In many countries, hunters regularly conduct what they call "cynegetic management", or "sanitary shootings", which is essentially the removing of weak and diseased surplus animals. Those sanitary kills can also preserve endangered species, by lightening the burden on their food sources and the predatory pressure on them. This game management is healthy for the environment, which is what most green anti-hunting folks fail to understand.
I no longer own guns or hunt. I do hike wilderness areas with a camera and nothing but a K-bar for defense and utillity.
That won't help you when you pass by my cave...
-- Ted Bear (Son of Huggy Bear, whose head you have on display above your fireplace)
Seems like one of the Unsolved Problems in Physics isn't exactly unsolved anymore.
Re-read TFA where it says "Boldizsar Janko and his colleagues believe they have found such a control technique" and "Although Janko and his colleagues have tested their approach so far only through computer simulations".
Not exactly a practical, demonstrated technology yet. Wikipedia is therefore current.
What's the cheapest device that I, a layman, can buy to set the spin of large amounts of electrons
A fridge magnet.
(several coulombs per second) to a certain value?
A very big, precisely calibrated fridge magnet.
I heard of spintronics before. I have some idea of what electron spin is from university, but not much more. So when I saw the article, I thought "wow, great, a nice-looking /. blurb choke full of links to the subject"... only to discover that 4 out of the 5 links link back to /. itself, and the last one links to a half-page semi-general article in physorg.com.
I don't know, I guess I may as well Google spintronics at random...
the FBI has been hanging out in #nanogenarians
What's that? extremely small older folks?
Or do you mean nonagenarians?
This wasn't morse code against sms. This was the older generation (93 year old) against the younger generation (13 year old).
It's the comparison of a 93 year old who is of the generation that still had the patience to spend many years to learn and get perfect at something like Morse code, and a 13 year old who just happens to be good at thumb-thumbing a cell phone after several months of intensive and expensive messaging of her daft teenage friends.
Which means the article compares a hard-to-learn but efficient communication method, and a quick-to-use but inefficient text entry method for Joes and Janes who own a cellphone. That's comparing apples and oranges...
93 year old Gordon Hill transmitted a message faster than 13 year old Brittany
Parkinson's disease helps...
I hear many people complain about OpenOffice.org not opening their MS documents with correct formatting, but these people don't realize that this is not a limitation of OpenOffice, but a result of Microsofts closed and proprietary document formats.
.DOC format was purposedly designed to be a minefield), but lamenting about it.
.DOC format, people won't ditch Word for OOo. Period.
.DOC format, and keep working on the import filter until it's near-perfect. Then OOo will really take over Word, and they can resume their normal development cicle...
I am one of these people who complain about exactly that. Well, not exactly complain, because what you say is true (it's not OOo's fault that the
However, the result is the same: as long as OOo doesn't reach 99.999% compatibility with some version of the
My opinion is that the OOo guys should drop whatever they're doing for a while, choose one version of the
Hell, if they're desiging Cloneware, why not bring in some of the bugs/annoyances as well?
Easy: take out some of your RAM, down to, say, 128M, and welcome back to a world of annoyances with OOo.
Imagine the BSDM^H applications!
So it's a dead concrete?