I think that any good scientist (astonomer or not) will admit that life could take on any number of forms. But of all those forms, which ones are we likely to be able to communicate with? That's really the ulitimate goal, isn't it?
I think that planets larger than a certain size can only be gas giant planets. The temperatures and pressures involved would not support life as we imagine it. Only small planets with an orbit very close to ours will have the ground/water/atmosphere setup that could create life that would look like us.
It's much lower tech than that. I was thinking of the weapons they used in 91 against Iraq that were basically strips of tin foil that shorted out exposed connections in power stations. Apparently, they started using a new version in Kosovo that uses graphite instead of foil to get better coverage of the electronics.
The source is here: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/9 90504-k osovo07.htm
The document also lists a very high tech counter-measure to these weapons...a roof.
I was thinking that too. I remember Barenaked Ladies releasing an.mp3 onto Naptster that was the beginning of their new single and a humorous plea to go out and purchase the whole CD. They knew their fans were the people downloading the.mp3 and tried to deal with the problem with a little humor. As opposed to Metallica, who decided that pissing off their fans was a good idea.
So if Moore's Law applies to things other than the transistor count of CPUs, then why don't 19" LCD screens cost 6 bucks? Or leaving electronics, why doesn't my car get 10^15 miles per gallon? They've been building the bastards for 100 years.
You could have written the exact same post in 1998. Why do we have to go to war now? Because approval ratings are down and without a war going on, people might notice that Bush's fiscal policy is a complete mess.
And why just attack Iraq? Iran and North Korea both have nuke programs. They're the Axis of Evil you know.
"Statisticians seem to think that conflicts occur randomly"
That middle east situation is sure one wacky accident.
It can't have anything to do with the fact that three different groups of people all believe that an invisible man that lives in the sky promised their ancestors exclusive rights to the same ten square blocks of land.
Carbon Nanotechnologies Incorporated is a company in Houston that is selling single walled nanotubes. I just found out that they even have an online store. For the low low price of $500/g, you too can own some nanotubes.
I would have to assume that intentionally misrouting a call for financial gain would fall under wire fraud no matter who owns the phone hardware.
The reason that this scam (assuming it is) works and your proposed pizza one would not, is that when someone looks up Dominos and calls Dominos, they notice when a Papa Johns guy comes to their door. When you're calling a bail bond agency or a hooker (let's call a hooker a hooker), you don't care who you get on the phone, as long as they provide the service you want. A vast majority of the people who were misrouted would have had no idea. And since at least half of the companies involved are quasi-legal at best, nobody complains to the cops.
-B
The truth is so boring...spice it up a bit
on
Disconnecting
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· Score: 2
My roommate signed up for AOL for one day because his usual ISP was down and the man needs his online poker.
He knew they were going to ask him why he was leaving and spent his 30 minutes of hold time thinking of a good response. His conversation went something like this:
AOL guy: Why are you cancelling your AOL service? Roommate: Did you see the movie Memento? AOL: Yes R: I have that same memory problem and I woke up this morning with a note pinned to my shirt that said "Cancel AOL". AOL: Were you having any problems with your service? R: I really can't remember. But I should probably do what the note says. AOL: OK. Your account has been canceled.
You don't owe them any explanation. You're a customer and you don't want to pay them anymore. That should be enough.
Yes, you can read a credit card number right off of the card. And in other news, your credit card is slightly more secure than leaving your money unattended on a sidewalk in Manhattan. We have just gotten used to a very convenient, amazingly insecure system that works well enough.
I was watching The Dark Crystal a while ago, for the first time as an adult (sorta). The film is just beautiful and amazing. It made me sad to think that no movie will be made like that ever again.
Good effects are never going to make a movie with poor storytelling good. And no matter what technique is used for the effects, if they're used properly to complement a good story, you'll probably end up with a good film.
Everyone steals from Kurosawa. That's just par for American film. It's like saying modern rock music steals from Led Zeppelin.
But the Resevior Dogs/City on Fire theft is just blatant. The plots are nearly identical and some shots are stolen completely intact.
The only thing cool about it is that watching City on Fire, you get to see what happens during the jewelry store robbery that you only hear about in Resevior Dogs.
-B
Re:star wars was ripped off a japanese film
on
Star Wars as Pulp Sci-Fi
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· Score: 3, Informative
You obviously haven't seen Hidden Fortress. I bought it a few months ago because I had heard the same thing you did. It's not true. If I hadn't been told of the Star Wars connection, I wouldn't have noticed it on my own. It's about a princess, protected by a general, fleeing a rival kingdom that has conquered her own. Two stupid peasants provide comic relief along the way. Not exactly a direct copy of SW.
If you want American movies that blatantly steal from Asian films, watch Resevoir Dogs and City on Fire back to back.
You can't open a bank account with no money in it. Then bored people could open accounts all over the place. The email says that funds of questionable legallity are being held in Africa. They need you to open a bank account in your name, give them access to it, and they'll put the XX millions into your new account. From there, you get to keep some cut of the newly liberated riches. So you get all excited, are in the middle of opening a bank account in a foreign country for dubious purposes, and they say "And we will need a minimum deposit of X thousand dollars to open that account". You think about the tons of money you stand to make in your dealings, and just drop that much money into your account. Then you give account access to your new email buddies. Then they withdrawl your seed money. (making *poof* gesture with mouth and hand) Then they're gone.
I think this scam is called The Spanish Prisoner. A good movie of the same name explains the age old scam (Ed Oneil's part). The dumb thing is that the scam presented in the movie doesn't seem to be a variation of the scam they describe.
For the first time I know of, the NSA is actually the good guys in a Slashdot post.
The NSA recommended changes to DES that made it a better, less crackable, scheme. Years later, when a new type of code breaking was publicly discovered, people looked back and noticed the changes the NSA had made were directly influenced by this "new" type of code breaking. The bottom line is that the NSA is, and always has been, leaps and bounds ahead of all non-classified "state of the art" cryptography.
Could the original poster give a link? I would love to read the story.
I certainly think The Market should be allowed to handle this one. It did such a good job handling Enron stock and the California energy situation, I'm sure it can deal with something as simple as digital media.
Seriously. Brilliant post. The though of The Industry telling the FCC to "shut the fuck up" made me smile.
The two I can think of off the top of my head are Back to the Future parts 2 and 3, and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's rare because although it does save production costs, if the first film bombs, the studio is then holding a worthless sequel.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that any good scientist (astonomer or not) will admit that life could take on any number of forms. But of all those forms, which ones are we likely to be able to communicate with? That's really the ulitimate goal, isn't it?
-B
I think that planets larger than a certain size can only be gas giant planets. The temperatures and pressures involved would not support life as we imagine it. Only small planets with an orbit very close to ours will have the ground/water/atmosphere setup that could create life that would look like us.
IANAAstronomer
-B
It's much lower tech than that. I was thinking of the weapons they used in 91 against Iraq that were basically strips of tin foil that shorted out exposed connections in power stations. Apparently, they started using a new version in Kosovo that uses graphite instead of foil to get better coverage of the electronics.
9 90504-k osovo07.htm
The source is here:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/
The document also lists a very high tech counter-measure to these weapons...a roof.
-B
Expanding that from music to movies, Memento was a huge hit with an advertising budget of about $9.
Quality stuff sells itself. Crap needs a lot of marketing.
-B
I was thinking that too. I remember Barenaked Ladies releasing an .mp3 onto Naptster that was the beginning of their new single and a humorous plea to go out and purchase the whole CD. They knew their fans were the people downloading the .mp3 and tried to deal with the problem with a little humor. As opposed to Metallica, who decided that pissing off their fans was a good idea.
-B
For more information on time dilation effects, visit your local Blockbuster and rent the documentary film "Flight of the Navigator".
So if Moore's Law applies to things other than the transistor count of CPUs, then why don't 19" LCD screens cost 6 bucks? Or leaving electronics, why doesn't my car get 10^15 miles per gallon? They've been building the bastards for 100 years.
-B
"Hear that admins? if your servers are not at the motherboard maximum for ram then YOU ARENT DOING YOUR JOB!"
So apparently your CFO has a giant jar of money on his desk next to the Jolly Ranchers.
-B
You could have written the exact same post in 1998. Why do we have to go to war now? Because approval ratings are down and without a war going on, people might notice that Bush's fiscal policy is a complete mess.
And why just attack Iraq? Iran and North Korea both have nuke programs. They're the Axis of Evil you know.
-B
"Statisticians seem to think that conflicts occur randomly"
That middle east situation is sure one wacky accident.
It can't have anything to do with the fact that three different groups of people all believe that an invisible man that lives in the sky promised their ancestors exclusive rights to the same ten square blocks of land.
-B
Carbon Nanotechnologies Incorporated is a company in Houston that is selling single walled nanotubes. I just found out that they even have an online store. For the low low price of $500/g, you too can own some nanotubes.
www.cnanotech.com
-B
I would have to assume that intentionally misrouting a call for financial gain would fall under wire fraud no matter who owns the phone hardware.
The reason that this scam (assuming it is) works and your proposed pizza one would not, is that when someone looks up Dominos and calls Dominos, they notice when a Papa Johns guy comes to their door. When you're calling a bail bond agency or a hooker (let's call a hooker a hooker), you don't care who you get on the phone, as long as they provide the service you want. A vast majority of the people who were misrouted would have had no idea. And since at least half of the companies involved are quasi-legal at best, nobody complains to the cops.
-B
My roommate signed up for AOL for one day because his usual ISP was down and the man needs his online poker.
He knew they were going to ask him why he was leaving and spent his 30 minutes of hold time thinking of a good response. His conversation went something like this:
AOL guy: Why are you cancelling your AOL service?
Roommate: Did you see the movie Memento?
AOL: Yes
R: I have that same memory problem and I woke up this morning with a note pinned to my shirt that said "Cancel AOL".
AOL: Were you having any problems with your service?
R: I really can't remember. But I should probably do what the note says.
AOL: OK. Your account has been canceled.
You don't owe them any explanation. You're a customer and you don't want to pay them anymore.
That should be enough.
-B
Yes, you can read a credit card number right off of the card. And in other news, your credit card is slightly more secure than leaving your money unattended on a sidewalk in Manhattan. We have just gotten used to a very convenient, amazingly insecure system that works well enough.
Maybe out next attempt should be better.
-B
The tone of the trial seemed to change around the time that we elected a Texas oilman as our president.
-B
I was watching The Dark Crystal a while ago, for the first time as an adult (sorta). The film is just beautiful and amazing. It made me sad to think that no movie will be made like that ever again.
Good effects are never going to make a movie with poor storytelling good. And no matter what technique is used for the effects, if they're used properly to complement a good story, you'll probably end up with a good film.
-B
Everyone steals from Kurosawa. That's just par for American film. It's like saying modern rock music steals from Led Zeppelin.
But the Resevior Dogs/City on Fire theft is just blatant. The plots are nearly identical and some shots are stolen completely intact.
The only thing cool about it is that watching City on Fire, you get to see what happens during the jewelry store robbery that you only hear about in Resevior Dogs.
-B
You obviously haven't seen Hidden Fortress. I bought it a few months ago because I had heard the same thing you did. It's not true. If I hadn't been told of the Star Wars connection, I wouldn't have noticed it on my own. It's about a princess, protected by a general, fleeing a rival kingdom that has conquered her own. Two stupid peasants provide comic relief along the way. Not exactly a direct copy of SW.
If you want American movies that blatantly steal from Asian films, watch Resevoir Dogs and City on Fire back to back.
-B
You can't open a bank account with no money in it. Then bored people could open accounts all over the place. The email says that funds of questionable legallity are being held in Africa. They need you to open a bank account in your name, give them access to it, and they'll put the XX millions into your new account. From there, you get to keep some cut of the newly liberated riches. So you get all excited, are in the middle of opening a bank account in a foreign country for dubious purposes, and they say "And we will need a minimum deposit of X thousand dollars to open that account". You think about the tons of money you stand to make in your dealings, and just drop that much money into your account. Then you give account access to your new email buddies. Then they withdrawl your seed money. (making *poof* gesture with mouth and hand) Then they're gone.
I think this scam is called The Spanish Prisoner. A good movie of the same name explains the age old scam (Ed Oneil's part). The dumb thing is that the scam presented in the movie doesn't seem to be a variation of the scam they describe.
-B
For the first time I know of, the NSA is actually the good guys in a Slashdot post.
The NSA recommended changes to DES that made it a better, less crackable, scheme. Years later, when a new type of code breaking was publicly discovered, people looked back and noticed the changes the NSA had made were directly influenced by this "new" type of code breaking. The bottom line is that the NSA is, and always has been, leaps and bounds ahead of all non-classified "state of the art" cryptography.
Could the original poster give a link? I would love to read the story.
-B
Those Industry guys sure do have dirty mouths.
I certainly think The Market should be allowed to handle this one. It did such a good job handling Enron stock and the California energy situation, I'm sure it can deal with something as simple as digital media.
Seriously. Brilliant post. The though of The Industry telling the FCC to "shut the fuck up" made me smile.
-Barry
This is like watching your two least favorite football teams play in the Superbowl. You know a lot is at stake, but you can't bring yourself to care.
I liked this quote: AOL executive John Buckley noted the court ruling and said, "This action is an attempt to get justice in this matter."
And by "justice", he means "money".
-B
I think somebody watched Robot Jox on TNT last weekend.
-B
It's called a "punch line". It's the part that makes jokes funny.
-B
The two I can think of off the top of my head are Back to the Future parts 2 and 3, and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's rare because although it does save production costs, if the first film bombs, the studio is then holding a worthless sequel.
-B