I routinely fly in both jets and turboprop aircraft, and you wouldn't want a turboprop for a long flight. They're too damn noisy.
Depending on where you sit, a turboprop isn't necessarily that much noisier than a jet. Also, most turboprop planes are pretty small. With a bigger plane, you have more room for sound-deadening.
I don't think going just under the speed of sound is going to cut your travel time in half, although it will reduce it pretty significantly. How much good does that really do, though, when you spend two hours going through security?
I'd rather see more efficient planes than faster planes; given enough fuel savings, the cost of flight might actually come down a bit.
In an FCC filing, CBS parent Viacom warned that it could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues if its digital offerings are illegally copied and distributed in the growing world of broadband Internet.
How do they figure that? Their revenue comes from the fees cable companies pay to carry the premium channels and advertising. Channels that people can record get watched more (if you're not home for a show, you can only watch it if you can record it) and thus sell more cable subscriptions and reach more viewers for the advertisers.
A broadcast flag regime is needed now to protect the value of our important assets or we must withhold our quality HD digital content.
That would be a real threat, if they had any quality HD digital content. If they have to point to Star Drek: Yeastinfection as an example, I pity them.
No kidding. Think of the bandwidth available on that coax cable. If it weren't for the TV channels on it, it would be like having your own T3 (or better).
Our digital cable must be better than most. I get everything you get except the Sunday Ticket and Full Court. They're available, but I don't get them - I don't like basketball, and my NFL team (the Dolphins) are almost always on TV anyway. Last time I looked, DirecTV still didn't have some of the Discovery channels that we have. For a little extra money I could get HBO, Showtime, and Discovery's HD channels (by a little extra, I mean a *lot* cheaper than an HD-capable DirecTV receiver). Of course, with the news in this article, I think I'll hold off on getting the HD box.
Oh, and I also have cable internet (1.5mbps down, 128kpbs up, pings 100ms). All for about the same price you're paying. Now, I know folks on the other side of town who are stuck with AT&T cable, and their digital cable sucks eggs through a straw and costs more than ours....
Thanks for the clarification... but now I've got this weird mental image of the doctor removing the patient's liver and sticking it in a microwave, one with the rotating plate to make sure it's 'evenly done all the way around'.
Minutes later: Ding!
Now that you've said that, I'm having a flashback to South Park: BLU...
I've got some bad news. We accidentally replaced your liver with a baked potato. You have about ten seconds left to live.
Sony sucks. And not just because they're members of ??AA (their film subsidiary is an MPAA member, is it not?).
Sony makes overpriced, underperforming crap gear in every consumer electronics category. They are only able to sell their junk thanks to their marketing department. The last good, innovative product they had was the original Walkman.
They can support Linux all they want - I'm happy for Linux if it helps it get more mainstream acceptance (although, embedding it in a consumer product is NOT going to help Linux on the desktop, don't kid yourself). However, I will not buy anything that comes from Sony. I've been burned by their poor quality and lack of support one time too many.
Unfortunately, the power lines in my house aren't even capable of sending the signals X-10 devices* use from outlet to outlet in the same room. I can't imagine getting MP3 files through them.
* I have X-10 home automation stuff that was made long before the current wave of spy cameras and pop-up ads.
I used to have one at my last job and would drive people nuts racing it around the office while talking on the phone.
Is that why it was your last job and not your current job?
Hoonestly, what kind of company do you work for where you don't get fired for driving a remote-control car around the office? And is your old job still open?;)
Re:The reason why DSL beats Cable outside of the U
on
DSL Rising
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· Score: 2
I believe that majority of population in US lives in cities (>100000) cities, thus mountains, deserts and artic tundra won't make big difference.
That may be true, but the US idea of a "city" includes suburbs that sprawl for 50km in various directions. In some cases, there are as many residents 20km from the ciry as there are in the city limits. Sometimes more.
With cable modem you will get fluctuating 50-500ms ping in Online games with 10-60% packet loss. This is totally unplayble.
Not on my cable system, but of course resulta vary from place to place. I would say if you see 60% packet loss from any ISP, you need to be complaining to someone.
90% of Finland's land area (and >95% of population) was covered by GSM network by 1998.
I don't know if you really grok the difference in scale between the US and Finland. 90% of Finland's land mass (337,113 km^2) is equivalent to 3.2% of the US's land mass (9,363,130km^2).
Incidentally, we have fairly decent GSM coverage in the Southeastern US, as long as we're relatively close to an interstate highway.
Ever seen them use a continuous beam to sweep across a group of in-coming attackers?
Now that you mention it, no. Perhaps Star Fleet frowns on that tactic because of the possible bad repercussions of using it in combat on a spacecraft. Or (more likely) it's harder to do the sfx with the beam sweeping around.
An AK-47 would be more effective.
Ahh, but this is Trek, where humans have higher moral standards. The disadvantage of the AK-47 is, it has no 'stun' setting.
As for the exploding panels, I figure that those are the charges for heavy-duty air-bags, but a sub-standard contractor left out the bags.
But the Enterprise was probably built by big contractors at the lowest bidder.
That can't be the case - as Picard points out in First Contact, money no longer exists. Now, you might argue that Enterprise E was built on a tight timetable, with fear of a Borg invasion causing corners to be cut. But that doesn't make much sense either - if it was built to be part of the defense against the board, Starfleet wouldn't have put Picard on it in the first place.
The fact of the matter is, no matter how well you build something, when people start blasting at it with phasers and photon torpedos, parts are going to break.
Write the movie number in Roman numerals. If there is an odd number of digits, the movie will suck. If even, the movie will be watchable.
This puts Insurrection (IX) in the 'good' list (which is fair, I thought it was on par with IV at least) and Nemesis (X) in the 'bad' list; with those two exceptions it is the same as the old rule.
I'll reserve judgement until after seeing Nemesis. If Nemesis is better than Insurrection, the old laws are upheld. If Nemesis is not as good as Insurrection, then my new law will have shown itself to be a more accurate predictor of Trek movie suck-ness. If Nemesis really, really sucks, I will add a disclaimer about single-digits.
...Zephram Cochrane (or whatever his name was-- you know, Farmer Hoggett)...
Actually, since I accidentally saw the credits for Revenge of the Nerds a few weeks ago, I've started referring to him as Mr. Skolnick. He was Louis's father. Boy, he's really been in some stinkers - it might not be a stretch to say First Contact is the highlight of his career.
The time line of "Enterprise" isn't the same as the time line of the original Star Trek, "The Next Generation," and so on.
And it continues to get more screwed up thanks to the retard from the 29th century and the Suliban.
Besides, why would you go to all the trouble of creating a clone army? It's much easier just to "condition" your existing soldiers to be fearless. You'd still have to do lots of conditioning with the fearless clones - you have to get them to follow orders unquestioningly and be willing to kill on command.
It's also worth noting that an army of clones could easily be wiped out by a carefully engineered bioweapon (or an accidental illness, for that matter). Genetic diversity in your troops is an asset.
When (if) HDTV happens, there will be boxes that take the HDTV signal and spit out standard NTSC in every form from good old coax to composite to s-video and component. You'll be able to hook it up to your old Tivo like every other cable box on the market.
Sorry, you're incorrect. HDTV is available on our cable system, but the box has only a component video output, and if I'm not mistaken it's 1080i only. Someone might make a downconverter that would output NTSC video to a Tivo (you'd also need a D-A converter for the digital audio out), but that's only useful if the HD channels are showing programming that's not available on another channel (otherwise you'd just hook the Tivo to the cable or an NTSC box).
Don't forget electric guitar amps, many of them still use tubes, because there's still no solid state component that really sounds like a tube when overdriven. There are also tube microphone pre-amps used in recording studios, and probably a few other miscellaneous uses in the music industry that I'm forgetting right now.
If you really want to be pedantic, you could point out that since a CRT is a vacuum tube, there are a LOT of tubes still being produced. Those won't help you repair a half-century old computer, though.
Actually, just looking at the monitor and reading the words off it probably takes far more than 300,000 calculations per second. Consider that OCR still doesn't work well with computers 1000 times faster than that.
Re:Forward compatibility?
on
Qt 3.1.1 Released
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· Score: 1, Redundant
I assume they mean apps compiled with 3.1.1 will run on a system with 3.1.0 and vice-versa. I see your point that the terminology is a bit confusing; they probably just should have said 3.1.1 is fully compatible with 3.1.0 and left it at that.
Slashdot Mirror
Or a TRS-80 Model I, from 25 years ago. Boy, Sharp is thinking really innovative stuff there.
I routinely fly in both jets and turboprop aircraft, and you wouldn't want a turboprop for a long flight. They're too damn noisy.
Depending on where you sit, a turboprop isn't necessarily that much noisier than a jet. Also, most turboprop planes are pretty small. With a bigger plane, you have more room for sound-deadening.
I don't think going just under the speed of sound is going to cut your travel time in half, although it will reduce it pretty significantly. How much good does that really do, though, when you spend two hours going through security?
I'd rather see more efficient planes than faster planes; given enough fuel savings, the cost of flight might actually come down a bit.
In an FCC filing, CBS parent Viacom warned that it could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues if its digital offerings are illegally copied and distributed in the growing world of broadband Internet.
How do they figure that? Their revenue comes from the fees cable companies pay to carry the premium channels and advertising. Channels that people can record get watched more (if you're not home for a show, you can only watch it if you can record it) and thus sell more cable subscriptions and reach more viewers for the advertisers.
A broadcast flag regime is needed now to protect the value of our important assets or we must withhold our quality HD digital content.
That would be a real threat, if they had any quality HD digital content. If they have to point to Star Drek: Yeastinfection as an example, I pity them.
No kidding. Think of the bandwidth available on that coax cable. If it weren't for the TV channels on it, it would be like having your own T3 (or better).
Our digital cable must be better than most. I get everything you get except the Sunday Ticket and Full Court. They're available, but I don't get them - I don't like basketball, and my NFL team (the Dolphins) are almost always on TV anyway. Last time I looked, DirecTV still didn't have some of the Discovery channels that we have. For a little extra money I could get HBO, Showtime, and Discovery's HD channels (by a little extra, I mean a *lot* cheaper than an HD-capable DirecTV receiver). Of course, with the news in this article, I think I'll hold off on getting the HD box.
Oh, and I also have cable internet (1.5mbps down, 128kpbs up, pings 100ms). All for about the same price you're paying. Now, I know folks on the other side of town who are stuck with AT&T cable, and their digital cable sucks eggs through a straw and costs more than ours....
Thanks for the clarification... but now I've got this weird mental image of the doctor removing the patient's liver and sticking it in a microwave, one with the rotating plate to make sure it's 'evenly done all the way around'.
Minutes later: Ding!
Now that you've said that, I'm having a flashback to South Park: BLU...
I've got some bad news. We accidentally replaced your liver with a baked potato. You have about ten seconds left to live.
Sony sucks. And not just because they're members of ??AA (their film subsidiary is an MPAA member, is it not?).
Sony makes overpriced, underperforming crap gear in every consumer electronics category. They are only able to sell their junk thanks to their marketing department. The last good, innovative product they had was the original Walkman.
They can support Linux all they want - I'm happy for Linux if it helps it get more mainstream acceptance (although, embedding it in a consumer product is NOT going to help Linux on the desktop, don't kid yourself). However, I will not buy anything that comes from Sony. I've been burned by their poor quality and lack of support one time too many.
That all sounds great and wonderful.
Unfortunately, the power lines in my house aren't even capable of sending the signals X-10 devices* use from outlet to outlet in the same room. I can't imagine getting MP3 files through them.
* I have X-10 home automation stuff that was made long before the current wave of spy cameras and pop-up ads.
I used to have one at my last job and would drive people nuts racing it around the office while talking on the phone.
;)
Is that why it was your last job and not your current job?
Hoonestly, what kind of company do you work for where you don't get fired for driving a remote-control car around the office? And is your old job still open?
I believe that majority of population in US lives in cities (>100000) cities, thus mountains, deserts and artic tundra won't make big difference.
That may be true, but the US idea of a "city" includes suburbs that sprawl for 50km in various directions. In some cases, there are as many residents 20km from the ciry as there are in the city limits. Sometimes more.
With cable modem you will get fluctuating 50-500ms ping in Online games with 10-60% packet loss. This is totally unplayble.
Not on my cable system, but of course resulta vary from place to place. I would say if you see 60% packet loss from any ISP, you need to be complaining to someone.
90% of Finland's land area (and >95% of population) was covered by GSM network by 1998.
I don't know if you really grok the difference in scale between the US and Finland. 90% of Finland's land mass (337,113 km^2) is equivalent to 3.2% of the US's land mass (9,363,130km^2).
Incidentally, we have fairly decent GSM coverage in the Southeastern US, as long as we're relatively close to an interstate highway.
Ever seen them use a continuous beam to sweep across a group of in-coming attackers?
.sig!
Now that you mention it, no. Perhaps Star Fleet frowns on that tactic because of the possible bad repercussions of using it in combat on a spacecraft. Or (more likely) it's harder to do the sfx with the beam sweeping around.
An AK-47 would be more effective.
Ahh, but this is Trek, where humans have higher moral standards. The disadvantage of the AK-47 is, it has no 'stun' setting.
As for the exploding panels, I figure that those are the charges for heavy-duty air-bags, but a sub-standard contractor left out the bags.
That would make a great
My biggest quibble about the Trek universe is that no one has any grenade launchers or automatic weapons.
First, how does this relate to the original post?
Second, how would an automatic weapon be more useful than a phaser which can fire a continuous beam?
But the Enterprise was probably built by big contractors at the lowest bidder.
That can't be the case - as Picard points out in First Contact, money no longer exists. Now, you might argue that Enterprise E was built on a tight timetable, with fear of a Borg invasion causing corners to be cut. But that doesn't make much sense either - if it was built to be part of the defense against the board, Starfleet wouldn't have put Picard on it in the first place.
The fact of the matter is, no matter how well you build something, when people start blasting at it with phasers and photon torpedos, parts are going to break.
You may be on to something. Here's my proposal:
Write the movie number in Roman numerals. If there is an odd number of digits, the movie will suck. If even, the movie will be watchable.
This puts Insurrection (IX) in the 'good' list (which is fair, I thought it was on par with IV at least) and Nemesis (X) in the 'bad' list; with those two exceptions it is the same as the old rule.
I'll reserve judgement until after seeing Nemesis. If Nemesis is better than Insurrection, the old laws are upheld. If Nemesis is not as good as Insurrection, then my new law will have shown itself to be a more accurate predictor of Trek movie suck-ness. If Nemesis really, really sucks, I will add a disclaimer about single-digits.
...Zephram Cochrane (or whatever his name was-- you know, Farmer Hoggett)...
Actually, since I accidentally saw the credits for Revenge of the Nerds a few weeks ago, I've started referring to him as Mr. Skolnick. He was Louis's father. Boy, he's really been in some stinkers - it might not be a stretch to say First Contact is the highlight of his career.
The time line of "Enterprise" isn't the same as the time line of the original Star Trek, "The Next Generation," and so on.
And it continues to get more screwed up thanks to the retard from the 29th century and the Suliban.
Easier for me to remember a good one: Star Trek II, Wrath of Kahn.
Easier and more pleasant. Must... forget... Search For God....
Besides, why would you go to all the trouble of creating a clone army? It's much easier just to "condition" your existing soldiers to be fearless. You'd still have to do lots of conditioning with the fearless clones - you have to get them to follow orders unquestioningly and be willing to kill on command.
It's also worth noting that an army of clones could easily be wiped out by a carefully engineered bioweapon (or an accidental illness, for that matter). Genetic diversity in your troops is an asset.
When (if) HDTV happens, there will be boxes that take the HDTV signal and spit out standard NTSC in every form from good old coax to composite to s-video and component. You'll be able to hook it up to your old Tivo like every other cable box on the market.
Sorry, you're incorrect. HDTV is available on our cable system, but the box has only a component video output, and if I'm not mistaken it's 1080i only. Someone might make a downconverter that would output NTSC video to a Tivo (you'd also need a D-A converter for the digital audio out), but that's only useful if the HD channels are showing programming that's not available on another channel (otherwise you'd just hook the Tivo to the cable or an NTSC box).
On the bright side, Santa Claus probably has prior art....
Don't forget electric guitar amps, many of them still use tubes, because there's still no solid state component that really sounds like a tube when overdriven. There are also tube microphone pre-amps used in recording studios, and probably a few other miscellaneous uses in the music industry that I'm forgetting right now.
If you really want to be pedantic, you could point out that since a CRT is a vacuum tube, there are a LOT of tubes still being produced. Those won't help you repair a half-century old computer, though.
Actually, just looking at the monitor and reading the words off it probably takes far more than 300,000 calculations per second. Consider that OCR still doesn't work well with computers 1000 times faster than that.
I assume they mean apps compiled with 3.1.1 will run on a system with 3.1.0 and vice-versa. I see your point that the terminology is a bit confusing; they probably just should have said 3.1.1 is fully compatible with 3.1.0 and left it at that.
Intel is planning to have every device that uses an Intel chip Wi-Fi enabled...
Will this be before or after they release the Octium 4 with its built-in modem?
How about I come over, chop off your legs, gouge out your eyes and destroy your eardrums, then we can talk?
Umm, how can you talk if you've destroyed his eardrums?