Wow. Napoleon complex, writ large! Never seen a whole COUNTRY get neurotic about its size. I mean, Luxembourg has got to be the only country in the world where a single/. poster constitutes a significant fraction of the populace...
Huh? Where exactly can I buy an open-source motherboard? Or processor? Or video card? Open source hardware is a pretty thing to think, but until I can get my hands on the silicon, it's not very practical...
Which wars are those? I'm curious for your viewpoint...all the wars I America has been involved in were a) in response to direct threats to national soverignty (and, yes, in the 50's and 60's the expansion of communism was percieved as such a threat) or b) treaty obligations.
Re:Another SIMNET/DoD Simulation alumnus
on
P2P Goes To War
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· Score: 1
Wow. I got so hung up on the acronyms, I spent several seconds trying to figure out what MUCH stood for.
The key difference between the Internet and traditional mass media is that the Internet is not of fixed size. I can find (or create!) a site that caters to a small set of people, and offers them information and resources that they won't find easily in other mass media.
A perfect example: my new favourite web site, Equipped to Survive is the personal page of a guy who's done a lot of research on wilderness survival, particularly for pilots in remote areas. He has detailed essays on what makes a good survival kit, general emergency preparedness topics, and reviews on everything from Leatherman-type multitools to large inflatable life-rafts. The site design isn't flashy and polished, but it's extremely well-organized and well-written.
So the mass media outlets still do what they do best: sell sizzle to the masses. That doesn't make it any harder for me to find the REAL gems of the Internet: people scratching their own personal informational itches, and sharing the fruits of their learning with others.
The clock speed DOESN'T have any direct bearing on the system's performance. What's dishonest about this? I mean, the Mustang 5.0 always had a 4.7 liter engine...what's the big deal?
Actually, you can make all your course corrections while under spin. The flight control software can simply be programmed to make a large number of low-impulse burns that net out to the required delta-V. The axis of revolution points in the direction of travel, so the path the spacecraft traces will be a helix. Just needs somebody who's good at polar coordinate systems to write the fly-by-wire algorithms. Non-trivial, but eminently do-able.
And it's NOTHING like a fan with one blade! It'll be asymmetrical, sure, but it will revolve around the system's center of mass, stable, until you fire your rockets to make it stop. Astrogation from a rotating platform might be tricky, but far less tricky than carrying enough fuel to stop and start your spin lots of times. Basically, you'd start the spin once you've done your burn to get into your transfer orbit, and not stop it until you get ready to enter orbit around Mars (or, if you're really brave and strapped for fuel, entering Mars' atmosphere for touchdown directly from your transfer orbit...but that's an awfully risky scenario!)
This dragon keeps coming up as one of the major reasons not to explore the solar system, and it's one of the easiest to put to bed. All you have to do is attach the spacecraft to its spent upper stage with a long tether, and spin the whole system like a baton. You can get modest gravities with reasonable (on the order of a hundred or so feet, depending on the mass of the upper stage and the spaceship) tether lengths and angular velocities. The nice thing is that even if the tether were to break, the only thing you'd be losing would be a useless hunk o' metal. The astronauts would of course be less comfortable, but the mission could be accomplished.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" (http://www.marssociety.org has a copy for you) details things like navigation and maneuvering on a rotating platform.
I don't know about you, but my long distance bill keeps ME up at night. It's more expensive for me to call Arlington, TX (where all my friends from school live) from my home in Plano, TX 40 miles away than it is for me to call my grandparents in California. Usurious long distance price schemes are the BEST example of why we need to find better ways of paying for bandwidth than $/megabyte.
Man, what ever happened to the Linux "roll your own" hacker ethic? Where's the killer advantage of Linux if it still needs the active involvement and development resources of big corporations? I mean, I'm the furthest thing in the world from a coder, but there are lots of people out there who could implement this in their sleep...
Hardly surprising, since everybody else in the industry has successfully mislead Apple into last place. It's called marketing, it's inherently dishonest, and EVERYBODY does it. In order for Apple to remain viable, they MUST do the same thing. I hate it, it's wrong, but it's necessary.
Re:Don't Like It That Way? Don't Buy It That Way?
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2
Of course. That's my point. But Microsoft makes deals that ensure that I have no freedom to choose PC operating systems from the factory. Why should I exert myself to defend THEIR freedoms when they exert themselves to DESTROY mine?
Re:Don't Like It That Way? Don't Buy It That Way?
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 2
Microsoft has no compunctions whatsoever about destroying my freedom, and they are infinitely more powerful than I am. Explain to me why I should care about THEIR freedom.
I STILL won't buy an xBox, under any circumstances. I can't figure out why everybody's so stoked about this thing: People, this is the thin end of the wedge. The xBox is the Microsoft controlled hardware platform of the future. It's not a game console, it's the thing that PCs will become in six years, and it's patented by MS. It is a bad thing.
Much more fun to vet every decision you make against a mistranslated book written 1500 years ago.
I can do experiments to verify accuracy and reproducibility of scientific theorems. I can not do experiments to verify the historicity and accuracy of the Bible. These are two separate (and I believe, complementary) schools of thought. Trying to use the Bible to do science, or trying to use Science to talk about the Bible, is like dancing about architecture. It doesn't compute.
I belive that God gave me the capacity to reason so that I could use it to attempt to unravel the secrets of the universe, and use those secrets to better the lives of the people around me. If you think that the pursuit of science and technology has not done that, well, you're welcome to your third-century society. Science and technology have done a hell of a lot more good in the world than dogmatic religions ever have. I'd even go so far as to say that less evil has been done with technology (positing that detonating atomic bombs on people and the like are evil...that's another discussion) than has been done in the name of God. The Crusades and the Inquisition were awfully nasty periods of history, and that's just us Christians.
Life is not a destination. It's a journey. Just because the place I go is "death", doesn't mean that the journey is meaningless. If I were to die tonight, the people around me would know that it's a different world without my presence. The value of my life is not in what may (or may not) happen after it is over...the value of my life is what I do with it while I have it.
I didn't say that God did not create the universe. (I happen to believe that He did.) I did say that trying to prove the historicity of the Bible using the scientific method is to pervert the purpose of both.
As Galileo very wisely spoke, "The Bible is not a book about how the heavens go, it is a book about how to go to Heaven."
The difference is this: Scientists pursue accurate, reproducible models of the way the universe functions. Creationists pursue Unchanging, Anointed by God Truth. You can't have both.
I'll fly in an airplane designed by people who are good at science, thank you very much.
Your comment is witty and all, but I'm a lot more concerned about the pollution that comes out of people's arseholes than the stuff that comes out of automobile's tailpipes. I GUARANTEE that bad sanitation will shorten your life a lot more than smog will.
The original poster's point was not well made, but there is something to it.
Ummm...you know why you can see the sidewalk when a streetlight shines on it? That's right, the sidewalk reflects light. Now, if you just decide that we can go ahead and pave the Earth with non-reflective concrete, your idea will have some merit. Until then, unfortunately, we're hosed.
It's not their job to not be stupid. It IS your job to help them. If you don't like this arrangement, get another job. Although, with an attitude like that, I'm not surprised that all you can get is tech support.
You are arguing that iMacs are not expandable. What you SHOULD be arguing is that iMacs are not expandable in a way that makes you feel all warm and cozy inside.
Who are you trying to fool? If it weren't the expansion, you'd have some other perfectly reasonable explanation for why you think Macs suck. OK, fine, here's your cookie, please don't ever buy a Macintosh. No skin off my nose.
Let me know when the GF3 a) has software that takes advantage of it and b) costs less than in iMac. I'll be eagerly awaiting THAT.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Napoleon complex, writ large! Never seen a whole COUNTRY get neurotic about its size. I mean, Luxembourg has got to be the only country in the world where a single /. poster constitutes a significant fraction of the populace...
Huh? Where exactly can I buy an open-source motherboard? Or processor? Or video card? Open source hardware is a pretty thing to think, but until I can get my hands on the silicon, it's not very practical...
Which wars are those? I'm curious for your viewpoint...all the wars I America has been involved in were a) in response to direct threats to national soverignty (and, yes, in the 50's and 60's the expansion of communism was percieved as such a threat) or b) treaty obligations.
Wow. I got so hung up on the acronyms, I spent several seconds trying to figure out what MUCH stood for.
The key difference between the Internet and traditional mass media is that the Internet is not of fixed size. I can find (or create!) a site that caters to a small set of people, and offers them information and resources that they won't find easily in other mass media.
A perfect example: my new favourite web site, Equipped to Survive is the personal page of a guy who's done a lot of research on wilderness survival, particularly for pilots in remote areas. He has detailed essays on what makes a good survival kit, general emergency preparedness topics, and reviews on everything from Leatherman-type multitools to large inflatable life-rafts. The site design isn't flashy and polished, but it's extremely well-organized and well-written.
So the mass media outlets still do what they do best: sell sizzle to the masses. That doesn't make it any harder for me to find the REAL gems of the Internet: people scratching their own personal informational itches, and sharing the fruits of their learning with others.
The clock speed DOESN'T have any direct bearing on the system's performance. What's dishonest about this? I mean, the Mustang 5.0 always had a 4.7 liter engine...what's the big deal?
Well, if you resent it so much, don't go watch the free movie. Jesus, give a mouse a cookie, and he bitches about no glass of milk....
Actually, you can make all your course corrections while under spin. The flight control software can simply be programmed to make a large number of low-impulse burns that net out to the required delta-V. The axis of revolution points in the direction of travel, so the path the spacecraft traces will be a helix. Just needs somebody who's good at polar coordinate systems to write the fly-by-wire algorithms. Non-trivial, but eminently do-able.
And it's NOTHING like a fan with one blade! It'll be asymmetrical, sure, but it will revolve around the system's center of mass, stable, until you fire your rockets to make it stop. Astrogation from a rotating platform might be tricky, but far less tricky than carrying enough fuel to stop and start your spin lots of times. Basically, you'd start the spin once you've done your burn to get into your transfer orbit, and not stop it until you get ready to enter orbit around Mars (or, if you're really brave and strapped for fuel, entering Mars' atmosphere for touchdown directly from your transfer orbit...but that's an awfully risky scenario!)
This dragon keeps coming up as one of the major reasons not to explore the solar system, and it's one of the easiest to put to bed. All you have to do is attach the spacecraft to its spent upper stage with a long tether, and spin the whole system like a baton. You can get modest gravities with reasonable (on the order of a hundred or so feet, depending on the mass of the upper stage and the spaceship) tether lengths and angular velocities. The nice thing is that even if the tether were to break, the only thing you'd be losing would be a useless hunk o' metal. The astronauts would of course be less comfortable, but the mission could be accomplished.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" (http://www.marssociety.org has a copy for you) details things like navigation and maneuvering on a rotating platform.
Wow. Way to catch the point.
I don't know about you, but my long distance bill keeps ME up at night. It's more expensive for me to call Arlington, TX (where all my friends from school live) from my home in Plano, TX 40 miles away than it is for me to call my grandparents in California. Usurious long distance price schemes are the BEST example of why we need to find better ways of paying for bandwidth than $/megabyte.
Man, what ever happened to the Linux "roll your own" hacker ethic? Where's the killer advantage of Linux if it still needs the active involvement and development resources of big corporations? I mean, I'm the furthest thing in the world from a coder, but there are lots of people out there who could implement this in their sleep...
You've obviously not been shopping lately for high-quality analog cables for A/V equipment. $50 for a cable is peanuts.
Hardly surprising, since everybody else in the industry has successfully mislead Apple into last place. It's called marketing, it's inherently dishonest, and EVERYBODY does it. In order for Apple to remain viable, they MUST do the same thing. I hate it, it's wrong, but it's necessary.
Of course. That's my point. But Microsoft makes deals that ensure that I have no freedom to choose PC operating systems from the factory. Why should I exert myself to defend THEIR freedoms when they exert themselves to DESTROY mine?
Microsoft has no compunctions whatsoever about destroying my freedom, and they are infinitely more powerful than I am. Explain to me why I should care about THEIR freedom.
I STILL won't buy an xBox, under any circumstances. I can't figure out why everybody's so stoked about this thing: People, this is the thin end of the wedge. The xBox is the Microsoft controlled hardware platform of the future. It's not a game console, it's the thing that PCs will become in six years, and it's patented by MS. It is a bad thing.
Much more fun to vet every decision you make against a mistranslated book written 1500 years ago.
I can do experiments to verify accuracy and reproducibility of scientific theorems. I can not do experiments to verify the historicity and accuracy of the Bible. These are two separate (and I believe, complementary) schools of thought. Trying to use the Bible to do science, or trying to use Science to talk about the Bible, is like dancing about architecture. It doesn't compute.
I belive that God gave me the capacity to reason so that I could use it to attempt to unravel the secrets of the universe, and use those secrets to better the lives of the people around me. If you think that the pursuit of science and technology has not done that, well, you're welcome to your third-century society. Science and technology have done a hell of a lot more good in the world than dogmatic religions ever have. I'd even go so far as to say that less evil has been done with technology (positing that detonating atomic bombs on people and the like are evil...that's another discussion) than has been done in the name of God. The Crusades and the Inquisition were awfully nasty periods of history, and that's just us Christians.
Life is not a destination. It's a journey. Just because the place I go is "death", doesn't mean that the journey is meaningless. If I were to die tonight, the people around me would know that it's a different world without my presence. The value of my life is not in what may (or may not) happen after it is over...the value of my life is what I do with it while I have it.
I didn't say that God did not create the universe. (I happen to believe that He did.) I did say that trying to prove the historicity of the Bible using the scientific method is to pervert the purpose of both.
As Galileo very wisely spoke, "The Bible is not a book about how the heavens go, it is a book about how to go to Heaven."
The difference is this: Scientists pursue accurate, reproducible models of the way the universe functions. Creationists pursue Unchanging, Anointed by God Truth. You can't have both.
I'll fly in an airplane designed by people who are good at science, thank you very much.
Your comment is witty and all, but I'm a lot more concerned about the pollution that comes out of people's arseholes than the stuff that comes out of automobile's tailpipes. I GUARANTEE that bad sanitation will shorten your life a lot more than smog will.
The original poster's point was not well made, but there is something to it.
Ummm...you know why you can see the sidewalk when a streetlight shines on it? That's right, the sidewalk reflects light. Now, if you just decide that we can go ahead and pave the Earth with non-reflective concrete, your idea will have some merit. Until then, unfortunately, we're hosed.
It's not their job to not be stupid. It IS your job to help them. If you don't like this arrangement, get another job. Although, with an attitude like that, I'm not surprised that all you can get is tech support.
You are arguing that iMacs are not expandable. What you SHOULD be arguing is that iMacs are not expandable in a way that makes you feel all warm and cozy inside.
Who are you trying to fool? If it weren't the expansion, you'd have some other perfectly reasonable explanation for why you think Macs suck. OK, fine, here's your cookie, please don't ever buy a Macintosh. No skin off my nose.
Let me know when the GF3 a) has software that takes advantage of it and b) costs less than in iMac. I'll be eagerly awaiting THAT.
You keep saying that, and it keeps not being true. Where are you finding all this non-Mac compatible hardware?
USB.
Firewire.
PCI (on the G4 and Cube).
You're done. That's all you need.