I'm not a gun person at all, but I do love Tales of the Gun on The History Channel. They did a great show on the AK-47 with a bunch of commentary from the guy who designed it (who was damn young in 47). They said that both the manufacturing tolerances and the operational tolerances of that gun are just ridiculous.
Check out
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=1415 1
Basically, it's a million processor giant that will hopefully crank out a petaflop. I'm sure they're doing reasearch somewhere, but the only thing I've seen is bad marketing crap. First, "Blue Gene", which is just an obvious, stupid joke. Then the article says it will use a new type of architecure called SMASH...simple, many, and self-healing. How long did them spend coming up with words that fit "SMASH"?
Anyway, it will probably be rad when the build it. But then again, any supercomputer built four years from now will be pretty amazing by today's standards.
A previous poster claims that the solidified pouring stuff is the containment vessel that melted and ran down its own cooling pipes. Can anyone back this up?
I remember reading that the main radioactive element released from burning coal is Uranium. It makes sense, Uranium is found deep in the ground just like coal. It's a metal so it would go right through the combustion process and out the smokestack. I don't have any source for this, but that's what I remember.
I was pretty young in the 2600 days but I did own one and played it quite a bit. I even remember the infamous ET game that has been cited a few times around here.
You draw a bunch of good comparisions but I have one question that nobody seems to have answered. How much money was the video game industry as a whole making in 84? You can get extra credit for adjusting for inflation. I'd be willing to bet that it's a fraction of today video game industry. I read articles last year saying that video games had passed the film industry in terms of income. That's a damn big industry. Sure, maybe a company or two will get shaken out of the market, maybe profits will decline a bit. But as long as there is a TON of money around, some company is going to be there to take it.
It is a cool thought but it won't happen. The problem is that big corporations need the protection of the US government more than the government needs large corporations (as much as the government forgets that sometimes). Enforcable contracts, patents, trademarks, copyrights...these are all things that big business NEEDS a government to handle for them.
My favorite part of Snow Crash is when those people buy a surplus aircraft carrier and cruise around the world completely independantly. With the current state of the broke Russian military and the number of dot com billionaires, I'm surprised that nobody's done it yet.
You've been watching too much sci fi. This type of 5 degrees K setup would use liquid helium. If you had a massive failure of your cooling unit two things would happen:
1) Your computer would stop working
2) You would start talking like a munchkin
Mucho mucho expensive, not dangerous.
It would be dangerous in my house because I would almost certainly get drunk and start freezing household objects with the intention of shattering them like Terminator 2. But that's just me.
I'm not marketing wonk, but I know why they do this stuff. The theory is that you have to balance "letting people know this is brand new stuff" along with "letting people who liked the old stuff know they'll probably like this".
The Grandaddy of stupid naming is the First Blood/Rambo trilogy. You start with First Blood. The sequel that that is Rambo: First Blood Part II. The rousing conclusion is named Rambo III.
Good question, I just have a couple things to add.
From what I have read, TLC signed one of the worst contracts in modern music history. You can't really blame the RIAA for TLCs terrible management.
I did love the Courney Love Salon article. There was a similar thing written by the producer of Nevermind that went into more detail with better numbers, but for a smaller, less popular band. Could someone dig up a link?
This is America we're talking about. Our hedonistic pleasures have always taken priority over common sense. Take a ride in a 1972 Olbmobile Cutlass Supreme with the 454 engine package. We have always made things bigger for the sake of making them bigger. That's our thing. On the way home from work today I think I'll pick up a Double Quarter Pounder meal, super sized with the 48 oz Coke.
No, I would be right.
Let's go to dictionary.com for FACTOR:
"A quantity by which a stated quantity is multiplied or divided, so as to indicate an increase or decrease in a measurement"
2 * 100 = 200 ~ 256 (sorta)
2megs increasing by a FACTOR of 100, gets us to 200megs, no exponents, no scientific notation. By 2010, I don't think 20 gigs of RAM in a home machine sounds unreasonable.
Thanks for the attempted correction. Next time you might want to know what you're talking about.
Good call. In 10 years, I'm sure that 256mb of RAM will be just enough for the average pocket calculator. The ammount of RAM in my home machine has gone up by about a factor of 100 in the last decade.
You should play the lotto, because you are aparently the luckiest person alive. I have between 400 and 600 songs off of Napster and I would guess that somewhere around 8% of my songs have incorrect titles. About half as many have incorrect artist names. The rule seems to be if the song is funny, it must be by the Blood Hound Gang. If it has a "jam" feel to it, it must be a Phish song. One of my favorite things I've found on Napster, The Gourds, a bluegrass band covering Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice" is labeled as Phish most of the time. I have no problem with that as long as it's free. If I'm paying money, I want decent quality songs that are complete and correctly labeled.
We have already established that although CDs cost as much as 18 bucks, you don't get any kind of ownership in exchange for your money. Technologies like My.mp3.com and Napster gave us a peek at what life could be like if we DID own the music on our CDs. Unfortunately, both services were swallowed by the maw of big business. We have only one outlet left. We need to steal more music. Not "borrow", not "share", not "trade"...steal. Go to Best Buy this weekend and steal three CDs. It's winter now in the Northern Hemisphere. Nobody will notice a guy in a big bulky coat browsing the new release isle. Call up two friends and get them to steal CDs as well. The time has come for a shoplifting revolution. Tech workers of the world, rise up and throw off the your chains.
Check out the Salon.com story about the decoding. I'm a big Poe fan and was excited to see that the cypher had been broken, but disappointed with the results.
"Mint" condition has been kind of bastardized in the Ebay world. It now usually means "The condition you would expect if you purchased this item when it was new and did no damage to it between then and now". I'm sure all the coin collectors are up in arms, but that's just what I've noticed. But honestly, most of this stuff hasn't been manufactured in a decade. What this guy appears to be offering is the best condition that you're going to find almost any of those games.
Personal firewalls are an obvious evolution from mainstream virus protection software. How much money has AV software made? I would guess somewhere in the hundreds of millions. How many viruses are really out there in the wild? A few dozen, tops. The only two that have caused real damage in the past few years have been email script viruses that AV packages didn't catch. So now everyone owns at least one AV package and those big companies need to make more money. So they make people think that evil "hackers" are out there trying to steal your financial records and the pictures of your nephew and that super 31337 Budweiser frogs screensaver you have. Sold. My defense to such things is to just have an uninteresting life and very little money. That will stop them every time.
Gotta agree with this one. People who post here
A) Are willing to pay 50 bucks to help out a small company doing something cool with Linux.
B) Have 50 extra bucks to spend.
A vast, vast majority of consumers do not fall into both of the above categories. Also throw into the mix the fact that by the time Indrema ships in "late spring", both the X-Box and the GameCube will be firmly sitting in the minds of all gamers.
I own a PS2 and love it. My next major purchase will almost certainly be a GameCube. I love Linux on my PC. On my console system, I love professionally designed games.
The phrase "morally superior position" made me laugh.
Both of them are pretty major scumbags and this whole deal has let America see that. And does anyone with more than 4 brain cells think that the SecState is unbiased and should be put in charge of this stuff? She's probably has her Abassador business cards already printed and her luggage packed.
"...my digital film effects company went to see Mission to Mars on a digital screen, sitting in the fourth row of a huge screen, and only two of us noticed that it was digital."
But everyone certainly noticed that the movie was horrible.
If I was in charge, every person in Hollywood would be forced to watch Clerks. I have seen a whole lot of movies and that is one of my favorites. That film was made for less than what most films spend on food for the crew in one day.
About two days after the "selected counties" recount offer, Gore offered to hand recount the whole state. Bush politely declined and went running to federal courts to stop any recounting. It was an odd move for someone who values state's rights so much.
Basically, this whole situation reminds me of a football (either kind) game where the last play is disputed. The winning team will run into the locker room as quickly as possible. The hope is that the officials will decide that it's too much of a hassle to get the other team back on the field and just call the game.
I disagree. The only reason I would want a computer that advanced is if the possiblity existed of it killing me. It just seems a lot more exciting that way. Let's say, for example, that I wanted the pod bay doors opened. A regular stupid computer would just blindly obey. I want a computer that may or may not open the pod bay doors for me. Maybe it's just me.
For the most part, I agree with you, but I need to add one thing. The P4 will not flop *if* they get the price of a P4 system down into the reasonable range. That means P4/mobo/RDRAM/power supply...the whole package needs to get a lot cheaper real quick. Intel has spent millions creating the "MHz war" with the intention of winning it. The fact that the P4 has a 20 stage pipeline is not an accident. But if the best system on the market is 50% more expensive than the second best system on the market, you aren't going to have a lot of takers on the big one. Of course this is new technology. Of course it always starts expensive and gets cheaper. I am old enough to remember when CD players were over $1000 and only for the lunatic fringe. I think that it's quite possible and even probable that the P4 will be a succesful product for Intel, but they need to get the price down pronto.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a gun person at all, but I do love Tales of the Gun on The History Channel. They did a great show on the AK-47 with a bunch of commentary from the guy who designed it (who was damn young in 47). They said that both the manufacturing tolerances and the operational tolerances of that gun are just ridiculous.
-B
I thought that Zone 1 DVDs were illegal to sell in the EU by definition of them being Zone 1 DVDs. Zone 1 is just North America, right?
-B
Check out5 1
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=141
Basically, it's a million processor giant that will hopefully crank out a petaflop. I'm sure they're doing reasearch somewhere, but the only thing I've seen is bad marketing crap. First, "Blue Gene", which is just an obvious, stupid joke. Then the article says it will use a new type of architecure called SMASH...simple, many, and self-healing. How long did them spend coming up with words that fit "SMASH"?
Anyway, it will probably be rad when the build it. But then again, any supercomputer built four years from now will be pretty amazing by today's standards.
-B
A previous poster claims that the solidified pouring stuff is the containment vessel that melted and ran down its own cooling pipes. Can anyone back this up?
-B
I remember reading that the main radioactive element released from burning coal is Uranium. It makes sense, Uranium is found deep in the ground just like coal. It's a metal so it would go right through the combustion process and out the smokestack. I don't have any source for this, but that's what I remember.
-B
I was pretty young in the 2600 days but I did own one and played it quite a bit. I even remember the infamous ET game that has been cited a few times around here.
You draw a bunch of good comparisions but I have one question that nobody seems to have answered. How much money was the video game industry as a whole making in 84? You can get extra credit for adjusting for inflation. I'd be willing to bet that it's a fraction of today video game industry. I read articles last year saying that video games had passed the film industry in terms of income. That's a damn big industry. Sure, maybe a company or two will get shaken out of the market, maybe profits will decline a bit. But as long as there is a TON of money around, some company is going to be there to take it.
-B
It is a cool thought but it won't happen. The problem is that big corporations need the protection of the US government more than the government needs large corporations (as much as the government forgets that sometimes). Enforcable contracts, patents, trademarks, copyrights...these are all things that big business NEEDS a government to handle for them.
My favorite part of Snow Crash is when those people buy a surplus aircraft carrier and cruise around the world completely independantly. With the current state of the broke Russian military and the number of dot com billionaires, I'm surprised that nobody's done it yet.
-B
You've been watching too much sci fi. This type of 5 degrees K setup would use liquid helium. If you had a massive failure of your cooling unit two things would happen:
1) Your computer would stop working
2) You would start talking like a munchkin
Mucho mucho expensive, not dangerous.
It would be dangerous in my house because I would almost certainly get drunk and start freezing household objects with the intention of shattering them like Terminator 2. But that's just me.
-B
-B
I'm not marketing wonk, but I know why they do this stuff. The theory is that you have to balance "letting people know this is brand new stuff" along with "letting people who liked the old stuff know they'll probably like this".
The Grandaddy of stupid naming is the First Blood/Rambo trilogy. You start with First Blood. The sequel that that is Rambo: First Blood Part II. The rousing conclusion is named Rambo III.
-B
Good question, I just have a couple things to add.
From what I have read, TLC signed one of the worst contracts in modern music history. You can't really blame the RIAA for TLCs terrible management.
I did love the Courney Love Salon article. There was a similar thing written by the producer of Nevermind that went into more detail with better numbers, but for a smaller, less popular band. Could someone dig up a link?
-B
This is America we're talking about. Our hedonistic pleasures have always taken priority over common sense. Take a ride in a 1972 Olbmobile Cutlass Supreme with the 454 engine package. We have always made things bigger for the sake of making them bigger. That's our thing. On the way home from work today I think I'll pick up a Double Quarter Pounder meal, super sized with the 48 oz Coke.
-B
No, I would be right.
Let's go to dictionary.com for FACTOR:
"A quantity by which a stated quantity is multiplied or divided, so as to indicate an increase or decrease in a measurement"
2 * 100 = 200 ~ 256 (sorta)
2megs increasing by a FACTOR of 100, gets us to 200megs, no exponents, no scientific notation. By 2010, I don't think 20 gigs of RAM in a home machine sounds unreasonable.
Thanks for the attempted correction. Next time you might want to know what you're talking about.
-B
Good call. In 10 years, I'm sure that 256mb of RAM will be just enough for the average pocket calculator. The ammount of RAM in my home machine has gone up by about a factor of 100 in the last decade.
-B
You should play the lotto, because you are aparently the luckiest person alive. I have between 400 and 600 songs off of Napster and I would guess that somewhere around 8% of my songs have incorrect titles. About half as many have incorrect artist names. The rule seems to be if the song is funny, it must be by the Blood Hound Gang. If it has a "jam" feel to it, it must be a Phish song. One of my favorite things I've found on Napster, The Gourds, a bluegrass band covering Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice" is labeled as Phish most of the time. I have no problem with that as long as it's free. If I'm paying money, I want decent quality songs that are complete and correctly labeled.
-B
We have already established that although CDs cost as much as 18 bucks, you don't get any kind of ownership in exchange for your money. Technologies like My.mp3.com and Napster gave us a peek at what life could be like if we DID own the music on our CDs. Unfortunately, both services were swallowed by the maw of big business. We have only one outlet left. We need to steal more music. Not "borrow", not "share", not "trade"...steal. Go to Best Buy this weekend and steal three CDs. It's winter now in the Northern Hemisphere. Nobody will notice a guy in a big bulky coat browsing the new release isle. Call up two friends and get them to steal CDs as well. The time has come for a shoplifting revolution. Tech workers of the world, rise up and throw off the your chains.
-B
I just find it amusing that the person responsible for the shift to fed rights screams "State's rights" every three sentances.
-B
Check out the Salon.com story about the decoding. I'm a big Poe fan and was excited to see that the cypher had been broken, but disappointed with the results.
-B
"Mint" condition has been kind of bastardized in the Ebay world. It now usually means "The condition you would expect if you purchased this item when it was new and did no damage to it between then and now". I'm sure all the coin collectors are up in arms, but that's just what I've noticed. But honestly, most of this stuff hasn't been manufactured in a decade. What this guy appears to be offering is the best condition that you're going to find almost any of those games.
-B
Personal firewalls are an obvious evolution from mainstream virus protection software. How much money has AV software made? I would guess somewhere in the hundreds of millions. How many viruses are really out there in the wild? A few dozen, tops. The only two that have caused real damage in the past few years have been email script viruses that AV packages didn't catch. So now everyone owns at least one AV package and those big companies need to make more money. So they make people think that evil "hackers" are out there trying to steal your financial records and the pictures of your nephew and that super 31337 Budweiser frogs screensaver you have. Sold. My defense to such things is to just have an uninteresting life and very little money. That will stop them every time.
-B
Gotta agree with this one. People who post here
A) Are willing to pay 50 bucks to help out a small company doing something cool with Linux.
B) Have 50 extra bucks to spend.
A vast, vast majority of consumers do not fall into both of the above categories. Also throw into the mix the fact that by the time Indrema ships in "late spring", both the X-Box and the GameCube will be firmly sitting in the minds of all gamers.
I own a PS2 and love it. My next major purchase will almost certainly be a GameCube. I love Linux on my PC. On my console system, I love professionally designed games.
-B
The phrase "morally superior position" made me laugh.
Both of them are pretty major scumbags and this whole deal has let America see that. And does anyone with more than 4 brain cells think that the SecState is unbiased and should be put in charge of this stuff? She's probably has her Abassador business cards already printed and her luggage packed.
-B
"...my digital film effects company went to see Mission to Mars on a digital screen, sitting in the fourth row of a huge screen, and only two of us noticed that it was digital."
But everyone certainly noticed that the movie was horrible.
If I was in charge, every person in Hollywood would be forced to watch Clerks. I have seen a whole lot of movies and that is one of my favorites. That film was made for less than what most films spend on food for the crew in one day.
-B
About two days after the "selected counties" recount offer, Gore offered to hand recount the whole state. Bush politely declined and went running to federal courts to stop any recounting. It was an odd move for someone who values state's rights so much.
Basically, this whole situation reminds me of a football (either kind) game where the last play is disputed. The winning team will run into the locker room as quickly as possible. The hope is that the officials will decide that it's too much of a hassle to get the other team back on the field and just call the game.
-B
I disagree. The only reason I would want a computer that advanced is if the possiblity existed of it killing me. It just seems a lot more exciting that way. Let's say, for example, that I wanted the pod bay doors opened. A regular stupid computer would just blindly obey. I want a computer that may or may not open the pod bay doors for me. Maybe it's just me.
-B
For the most part, I agree with you, but I need to add one thing. The P4 will not flop *if* they get the price of a P4 system down into the reasonable range. That means P4/mobo/RDRAM/power supply...the whole package needs to get a lot cheaper real quick. Intel has spent millions creating the "MHz war" with the intention of winning it. The fact that the P4 has a 20 stage pipeline is not an accident. But if the best system on the market is 50% more expensive than the second best system on the market, you aren't going to have a lot of takers on the big one. Of course this is new technology. Of course it always starts expensive and gets cheaper. I am old enough to remember when CD players were over $1000 and only for the lunatic fringe. I think that it's quite possible and even probable that the P4 will be a succesful product for Intel, but they need to get the price down pronto.
-B