I've only read half a dozen X-Men comics and had rabid fans rave about them to me. And of course I watched a number of episodes of the cartoon.
That said, I thought it was great. The X-Men francise has been going for so long now that to do proper character development on even one of the minor characters could easily be a 3 hour movie. I have no problem whatsoever that they assumed some foreknowledge of the characters or some acceptance that they got how they are somehow and it would take "Too Damned Long(tm)" to describe how. This movie would have had to have been a 40 hour epic to appease some of the rabid fans, but you just can't do that with a movie. All in all, I'm glad they did no background on most of the characters instead of doing a crappy 2 minute blip... if they'd done that, they would have had to change most of the backgrounds just to make them fit. As it is, this leaves the door wide open for the series. You can do prequels on any of the characters as well as a ton of sequels.
As for the complaints that there was no clear-cut, "EZ2Hate (tm)" villian... I'm disappointed, especially with Katz. I figured everyone would be happy that a movie broke the tired formula of absolute good -vs- absolute evil that's so common in action flicks (Hear that Katz? It's refreshing when people break out of the same tired formula!) Although it doesn't take the time to fully explore it (nor could it, even in 3 hours), it hints at a deeper, more meaningful conflict.
As for the cast, I was certainly a bit depressed that there was absolutely no development, and barely even a line for any of Magneto's henchmen. I think it was a mistake to do so little character development on the villians and their motivations. They should have sucked it up, made it a full 2 hours, and given us more of an explaination there. I thought Patrick Stewart was good, but I disagree that he and Ian McKellen outshone all the other stars. Heck, Prof. X was unconscious for the most important part of the movie. In fact, I was by far the most impressed with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Wolverine is supposed to be the coolest character, and I think he was well scripted, and not overdone... reasonably well balanced with the other heros. It actually seemed like a team effort (another rare phenomenon in action flicks).
All in all, I really enjoyed the movie. I hope to see more of them! There's TONS of potential in this series. And they'd better not screw it up like they did with Batman!!!
I admit that I'm playing fast and loose with the definition, but scarcity should apply because I'm not talking about availability of pirated music, I'm refering to the Napster community specifically. Of course there's always Gnutella, not to mention FTP servers. And even though the resource (Napster) isn't likely to run out of MP3s, I'm arguing that it can be spoiled by people who don't appreciate it, or serve enough crap, or disconnect quickly enough (dumping people trying to download) to increase the signal to noise ratio significantly.
In regard to the RIAA's manpower needs in order to affect it, I agree. For an entity to set out to ruin Napster would require a lot of effort. Enough effort to not be cost effective. But I suspect that enough people will fail to try to contribute (by running Napster behind a firewall, by not attempting to share any songs but still taking up a spot on Napster's clogged network) that it will eventually spoil Napster as a resource unless Napster plans for it.;)
Unmoderated public forums are highly susceptable to the tragedy of the commons.
The tragedy of the commons applies best to public lands with natural resources. If anyone is allowed to use them, someone will misuse them and destroy it. Since everybody KNOWS that SOMEONE will rape the land of it's resources, they don't feel so bad about doing it first. After all, as long as someone is going to clear-cut this stand of ancient redwoods and make a ton of money... it may as well be me. That's the tragedy of the commons.
How does it apply online? Napster is a great repository of free music! So tons of people are happy to log in and download the music. But Napster only works because a sizable (and I'd imagine rapidly shrinking as a percentage) portion of the users not only download, but also share music freely with the Napster "community". It's this community approach that allows it to work, but as it catches on, it becomes a huge venue and it seems there's always plenty of music... so why should I spend my bandwidth and my time configuring my firewall (for example) to share my music? Feeling that you can take without giving back is the piece of human nature that allows the tragedy of the commons. It's why we have government! To keep a few individuals from trampling the rights of everyone else simply because they can. It's why Slashdot has moderation!! Because without it (and sometimes even with it) a few trolls can pump out enough static to obscure the real discourse.
Eventually, people who don't care about sharing music, and only care about taking music will begin to erode quality unless the system is carefully designed.
Creating a workable system where the participating members of the community can ensure that quality remains high is a difficult task... the nature of which changes as the community grows. Napster will definitely need this in their community.
Since it's illegal, of course I never have... but hypothetically, if I had, I would have found that there are so many useless links and sites with infinite loops of pop-up porn ads, that the whole thing is pretty much a pointless waste of time. In fact, I wonder if it's designed that way? Some of the sites were so devoid of content, buried under endless popup windows, that I began to suspect conspiracy by the software industry.
Flooding Napster with static, or setting up sites that disconnect users halfway through any download, or doing anything else that substantially lowers the average quality of Napster would drive away a number of quality users and perpetuate the cycle.
In fact, I suspect that over a short time, this will happen naturally anyway!
One of the main arguments for the national sales tax back when Dick Lugar (Republican Sen. from Indiana, ran for president 1996, Eagle Scout, generally highly respected fellow) proposed it when running for president (crackpot schemes generate publicity, and Dick was too boring and wholesome) was that it eliminates all the burocracy and paperwork associated with the income tax. Lugar suggested we could eliminate the IRS.
But the problem IS the regressiveness of it. And the only way to fix the regressiveness is to offer refunds based on income level (Do you see where this is going?). That means an agency to replace the IRS that refunds tax money based on income and numerous other factors that Congress would add on to alleviate tax burden. So the burocracy argument for national sales tax is short-sighted because in practice, the paperwork will end up being the same.
Refunding money to the poor at the end of the year is pointless of course because the poor need to buy food (pay rent, utilities, buy clothes, etc...) TODAY, not when they get their refund. The point that's missed by the great thinkers is that giving them the money up front won't help either! Why? The poor don't have any experience at all in saving money. They've never had the chance too! Some people will save the refund money because they have the vision to know that they'll need to spend it slowly for 12 months. It's likely that most won't. They'll spend it quickly, and probably to buy things that the middle class takes for granted, but nonetheless, they'll be hurting until refund time again.
Another great argument against it is that it will slow down consumption, which drives the economy. A fact touched on quite well in other posts.
And refunding to the poor still doesn't change the fact that the rich get off ridiculously easy. Progressive taxation IS a good idea. The government has long been in the business of protecting the interests (and therefore wealth) of the rich (including corporations) and I see absolutely no justification for the rich not paying far far more than the middle class folks who truly drive the economy. And don't give me that trickle-down crap either. Trickle-down is just that. A trickle. It doesn't work, it didn't work under Reagan, and human nature will prevent it from ever working.
George Carlin summed it up best: "The rich have all of the money, do none of the work, pay none of the taxes. The middle-class does all of the work, pays all of the taxes. The poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle-class".
If anything people will have more disposible income due to a) lowered tax rates for most people and b) lack of withholding from your paycheck will give you a great deal more "take home pay"
More disposable income, yes. But they'll be disposing of it a hell of a lot faster.
...that the NYT article may have it right that the "paper trail", and interaction with the world's finacial markets would make it difficult for criminals to get away with crime more easily by using this service.
However, it's the ultimate protection against lawsuits against the ISP for hosting supposedly offensive materials. Individuals will not suddenly be free of liability for their actions. They'll still be subject to the laws where they reside. BUT, they won't have to worry about some spineless ISP dropping their content without notice simply because they got a threatening letter from a corporate lawyer.
This seems to be particularly appropriate just off the coast of Great Britain...
Actually, both the Republicans and Democrats are fragmenting with their messages becoming increasingly unclear as they jockey for position on the sacred "middle ground".
The DLC and the their idea of "New Democrats" isn't that new really. It's just a relabelling of folks called "Moderate Republicans". The DLC helped forge Clinton's campaign. Clinton kept the political center by taking Republican issues and adding compassion. Bush is doing (or trying to do) the same thing right now from the other direction.
The Democratic Leadership Council is influential, but it is NOT the Democratic party, which I believe is still looking out for the disenfranchised and "the future"... instead of helping rich businesses make as much profit as possible NOW even if there's nothing left 10 years down the road.
There IS a silent majority that support Katz and generally ignore those few, loud people who LIKE to HATE him. I think people tend to assume Jon's an adult, writing stuff for the public, and he can take the criticism like a man (which he generally does).
There was a poll a while back about whether or not to "Keep the gasbag". Maybe that should be run annually. I somehow doubt Katz stuffed the vote box on that one, partly because I doubt he's technically competent enough... no offense to him, because it's not his JOB to be a hacker...
I also think it's folly to separate Katz and Slashdot. It's been made abundantly clear by Taco and Co. that Katz is here for a reason... he's not just some gasbag that hacked his way in, posts when he feels like it, and Taco just hasn't found a way to keep him out. He posts as a member of the Slashdot editorial team.
Slashdot posts what they want when they want, miss some good stuff, filter out a whole lot of bad stuff... and leave the quality debate up to the unwashed masses (that's you and me)
Push -vs- Pull. You COME to Slashdot of your own free will. Spammers PUSH email to you unsolicited. This is an incredibly huge difference.
I agree that filtering and moderation are good. But I also tend to view Slashdot as a community forum for people to discuss primarily that with Taco and Co. feel are important, so if they want to talk about Hellmouth and post it on THEIR page, more fscking power to them. Don't like Slashdot's story choice? Try Wired.com... *shrug* or any one of the other places.
But for the record, I'd support a Katz category. No need to piss people off if you can let them avoid it either.
This is just silly. Use your mouse and your mind to block it. Don't read what you don't want to read! If it looks like Katz, and you can't stand to read anything related to Katz, don't click it.
People flaming Katz's right to speak in this forum add less value than any group but 1: People complaining that an article showhow related to Katz showed up on their screen in the first place.
I know... I know... disk space is cheap, but it still bugs me to just out and out waste it.
Example... regarding so-called gravity shielding experiments These investigations will probably take through the rest of 1997 before they have anything substantial to report one way or another
A friend of mine actually coded this. The point of the game was to press the Q key over and over until time ran out. The game would display the number of times you pressed Q and then tell you whether you won or lost.
The length of time the game lasted was random... somewhere between 5 and 60 seconds as I recall.
In addition, whether you won or lost was random, having nothing to do with either a) The number of times you pressed Q or b) The length of time you were allowed.
Good point, you've pretty well got me on that one.
The point really should have been that power (work per unit time) has no relevence in this context unless we look at it being applied for a length of time. Energy is the important consideration as it indicates the amount of work that can be done. Your assersion that I got the calculations backward because wattage is measured per second wasn't wrong because wattage isn't measured per second, but because the time units associated with wattage, a measure of power, wasn't really at issue because the calculations center around energy (watt*hours, watt*seconds, megawatt*picosecond, or whatever), and therefore arguing about the time units watts are measured in was not relevant.
Wattage is NOT measured per second. It's a measure of POWER as in P=IV where I is current in Amps and V is voltage in... volts.
In addition, Amperage is NOT measured per second. Both are time insensitive measures!!
Dell lists their battery life in Watt * Hours and therefore, dividing X Watt * Hours by Y Watts results in X/Y Hours.
In addition, I specifically stated in my assumtions that the notebook has the battery IN at all times. It would be crazy not to have the battery in, as you mentioned above, which is why I never suggested you take it out!
Take some physics, take some circuits, and re-read my post (noting the battery, and my comment at the end that the calculations are based on the 13.8 Watt figure from the company and the lower end of Dell's estimate on battery life!!)
I would say IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer) but oh wait, I do have a BSEE. Even if you discount the figures significantly for fluxuation in sunlight levels and optimism on Dell's part, your figure:
you might get, uhh.. 20 seconds of extra life per hour of use. With 30 flourescent lights shining on it.
It's not convenient to sit in direct sunlight to even read a book. A shady spot, under a tree is much better, and, well.. there goes the solar power idea.
Assists the internal battery of your portable computer adding many hours to your normal run time from a charged internal battery2 (runs many computers, not just extends).
Recharges the internal battery of your computer or device. Also capable of running an external charger for your batteries3.
Dell's Inspiron 7500 (top of the line notebook) runs 3.5-4 hours on a 79WHr battery, so it draws approximately (79 / 3.5 =) 22W. Not too bad. The solar charger as noted provides 13.8W which should be more than enough to justify their claims above. It should extend the life to about 9.5 hours, a significant increase.
79 / (22 - 13.8) = 9.6
In addition, full recharge of the battery should take about (79 / 13.8 =) about 5.72 hours. That's a full recharge... Every hour of use (assisted with the solar panel) will take ((22-13.8) / 13.8 or 5.72 / 9.5) =.59 hours of charging with no use.
Assuming Dell's estimates aren't too low and theirs aren't too high, and the sun is shining... I'd say this is a good deal.
It hasn't been said yet, but it seems so obvious...
The reason this is version 6 and skips version 5 is because IE is at version 5 now and has been for quite a while. Netscape (read AOL (read AOL/Time-Warner)) is tired of MS staying one step ahead on the release numbers. They're trying to leapfrog the IE version. There's no way MS will pull together an IE 6 in 25 days. And maybe they can justify it with this XUL thing and claim that it's a huge leap past IE in functionality?
Whatever... version numbers are meaningless, and unless they've been holding back on us big time, the Mozilla technology will not be ready.
What I didn't like: - Physical wounds from virtual reality.
Dying from believing you've sustained wounds which were only virtual or receiving real wounds because your equipment (didn't have/had malfunctioning) fail-safe mechanisms; that's good sci-fi. But having your arms and head fall off from holographic projections? That's um... not.
- Matter disappearing into a virtual world running on non alien/secret-military hardware.
Ok, I'm fine with your consciousness being drained from you and running around free on the net (like the first Gibson episode... Anyone else wonder why they didn't just cut the T3). But come on! They showed this stuff running on PCs. Lone-gunmen using tweasers to move jumpers! They were going to roll this out is malls!
- Level 2
Ok. It's a chick with a gun sitting on a tank's cannon. Freudian implications aside, that's just boring. Let me summarize Level 2: Bad guys pop up. In the same place every time. You stand still and spray them with bullets. Wolfenstein 3D was more interesting. (That Goddess had LOUSY aim, BTW).
- No off-site backups.
Someone already mentioned this, but I think it's worth mentioning again... No software company would have a command that wipes out all their source and no backup tapes. As a programmer, I just can't suspend disbelief on that.
- StaticLimit
P.S. - My apologies if you see this twice. The first attempt threw an error and after checking my profile and the comment list I was unable to find it.
2) Turn off Cascading Style Sheets (Style Sheets) support in your preferences. It generally doesn't work well at all and really isn't all that necessary. And IME it makes NS crash. A lot.
3) Turn off Java. Turn off Java. Turn off Java.
4) Turn off Javascript if you don't use somewhat sophisticated sites.
5) Don't invoke mystery components like Messenger and Composer and all that crap unless you actually need to use them. They tend to suck a bit.
6) Feed it lots and lots and lots of disk/memory cache, or none at all.
My god man! What's the point? You've turned off everything that makes it worthwhile to install a 4.x generation browser in the first place, haven't you?
If none of the new features work... the solution is: Stick with the old version.
There was an excellent Wired article about this subject that talks about NEAR's mission director Bob Farquhar, his expertise at using unique orbits to slingshot objects, and his habit of scheduling mission events to coincide with interesting dates.
The rendevous was initially scheduled for a different date. "January 10, 1999, the day the spacecraft was due at Eros, was the fifth anniversary of his civil marriage to his second wife, Irina."
Slashdot Mirror
I've only read half a dozen X-Men comics and had rabid fans rave about them to me. And of course I watched a number of episodes of the cartoon.
That said, I thought it was great. The X-Men francise has been going for so long now that to do proper character development on even one of the minor characters could easily be a 3 hour movie. I have no problem whatsoever that they assumed some foreknowledge of the characters or some acceptance that they got how they are somehow and it would take "Too Damned Long(tm)" to describe how. This movie would have had to have been a 40 hour epic to appease some of the rabid fans, but you just can't do that with a movie. All in all, I'm glad they did no background on most of the characters instead of doing a crappy 2 minute blip... if they'd done that, they would have had to change most of the backgrounds just to make them fit. As it is, this leaves the door wide open for the series. You can do prequels on any of the characters as well as a ton of sequels.
As for the complaints that there was no clear-cut, "EZ2Hate (tm)" villian... I'm disappointed, especially with Katz. I figured everyone would be happy that a movie broke the tired formula of absolute good -vs- absolute evil that's so common in action flicks (Hear that Katz? It's refreshing when people break out of the same tired formula!) Although it doesn't take the time to fully explore it (nor could it, even in 3 hours), it hints at a deeper, more meaningful conflict.
As for the cast, I was certainly a bit depressed that there was absolutely no development, and barely even a line for any of Magneto's henchmen. I think it was a mistake to do so little character development on the villians and their motivations. They should have sucked it up, made it a full 2 hours, and given us more of an explaination there. I thought Patrick Stewart was good, but I disagree that he and Ian McKellen outshone all the other stars. Heck, Prof. X was unconscious for the most important part of the movie. In fact, I was by far the most impressed with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Wolverine is supposed to be the coolest character, and I think he was well scripted, and not overdone... reasonably well balanced with the other heros. It actually seemed like a team effort (another rare phenomenon in action flicks).
All in all, I really enjoyed the movie. I hope to see more of them! There's TONS of potential in this series. And they'd better not screw it up like they did with Batman!!!
- StaticLimit
I admit that I'm playing fast and loose with the definition, but scarcity should apply because I'm not talking about availability of pirated music, I'm refering to the Napster community specifically. Of course there's always Gnutella, not to mention FTP servers. And even though the resource (Napster) isn't likely to run out of MP3s, I'm arguing that it can be spoiled by people who don't appreciate it, or serve enough crap, or disconnect quickly enough (dumping people trying to download) to increase the signal to noise ratio significantly.
;)
In regard to the RIAA's manpower needs in order to affect it, I agree. For an entity to set out to ruin Napster would require a lot of effort. Enough effort to not be cost effective. But I suspect that enough people will fail to try to contribute (by running Napster behind a firewall, by not attempting to share any songs but still taking up a spot on Napster's clogged network) that it will eventually spoil Napster as a resource unless Napster plans for it.
- StaticLimit
Unmoderated public forums are highly susceptable to the tragedy of the commons.
The tragedy of the commons applies best to public lands with natural resources. If anyone is allowed to use them, someone will misuse them and destroy it. Since everybody KNOWS that SOMEONE will rape the land of it's resources, they don't feel so bad about doing it first. After all, as long as someone is going to clear-cut this stand of ancient redwoods and make a ton of money... it may as well be me. That's the tragedy of the commons.
How does it apply online? Napster is a great repository of free music! So tons of people are happy to log in and download the music. But Napster only works because a sizable (and I'd imagine rapidly shrinking as a percentage) portion of the users not only download, but also share music freely with the Napster "community". It's this community approach that allows it to work, but as it catches on, it becomes a huge venue and it seems there's always plenty of music... so why should I spend my bandwidth and my time configuring my firewall (for example) to share my music? Feeling that you can take without giving back is the piece of human nature that allows the tragedy of the commons. It's why we have government! To keep a few individuals from trampling the rights of everyone else simply because they can. It's why Slashdot has moderation!! Because without it (and sometimes even with it) a few trolls can pump out enough static to obscure the real discourse.
Eventually, people who don't care about sharing music, and only care about taking music will begin to erode quality unless the system is carefully designed.
Creating a workable system where the participating members of the community can ensure that quality remains high is a difficult task... the nature of which changes as the community grows. Napster will definitely need this in their community.
- StaticLimit
Ever try to download warez?
Since it's illegal, of course I never have... but hypothetically, if I had, I would have found that there are so many useless links and sites with infinite loops of pop-up porn ads, that the whole thing is pretty much a pointless waste of time. In fact, I wonder if it's designed that way? Some of the sites were so devoid of content, buried under endless popup windows, that I began to suspect conspiracy by the software industry.
Flooding Napster with static, or setting up sites that disconnect users halfway through any download, or doing anything else that substantially lowers the average quality of Napster would drive away a number of quality users and perpetuate the cycle.
In fact, I suspect that over a short time, this will happen naturally anyway!
- StaticLimit
One of the main arguments for the national sales tax back when Dick Lugar (Republican Sen. from Indiana, ran for president 1996, Eagle Scout, generally highly respected fellow) proposed it when running for president (crackpot schemes generate publicity, and Dick was too boring and wholesome) was that it eliminates all the burocracy and paperwork associated with the income tax. Lugar suggested we could eliminate the IRS.
But the problem IS the regressiveness of it. And the only way to fix the regressiveness is to offer refunds based on income level (Do you see where this is going?). That means an agency to replace the IRS that refunds tax money based on income and numerous other factors that Congress would add on to alleviate tax burden. So the burocracy argument for national sales tax is short-sighted because in practice, the paperwork will end up being the same.
Refunding money to the poor at the end of the year is pointless of course because the poor need to buy food (pay rent, utilities, buy clothes, etc...) TODAY, not when they get their refund. The point that's missed by the great thinkers is that giving them the money up front won't help either! Why? The poor don't have any experience at all in saving money. They've never had the chance too! Some people will save the refund money because they have the vision to know that they'll need to spend it slowly for 12 months. It's likely that most won't. They'll spend it quickly, and probably to buy things that the middle class takes for granted, but nonetheless, they'll be hurting until refund time again.
Another great argument against it is that it will slow down consumption, which drives the economy. A fact touched on quite well in other posts.
And refunding to the poor still doesn't change the fact that the rich get off ridiculously easy. Progressive taxation IS a good idea. The government has long been in the business of protecting the interests (and therefore wealth) of the rich (including corporations) and I see absolutely no justification for the rich not paying far far more than the middle class folks who truly drive the economy. And don't give me that trickle-down crap either. Trickle-down is just that. A trickle. It doesn't work, it didn't work under Reagan, and human nature will prevent it from ever working.
George Carlin summed it up best: "The rich have all of the money, do none of the work, pay none of the taxes. The middle-class does all of the work, pays all of the taxes. The poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle-class".
- StaticLimit
If anything people will have more disposible income due to a) lowered tax rates for most people and b) lack of withholding from your paycheck will give you a great deal more "take home pay"
More disposable income, yes. But they'll be disposing of it a hell of a lot faster.
- StaticLimit
Wow... so it does...
:) Oh cruel fate.
One day I'm a clever cynic, the next I'm an illiterate fool.
Thanks
-StaticLimit
Doesn't that normally refer to horizontal pixels by vertical pixels?
Isn't that necessarily wider than it is tall?
Don't all their pictures show a screen notably taller than it is wide?
Or is it just me?
- StaticLimit
...that the NYT article may have it right that the "paper trail", and interaction with the world's finacial markets would make it difficult for criminals to get away with crime more easily by using this service.
However, it's the ultimate protection against lawsuits against the ISP for hosting supposedly offensive materials. Individuals will not suddenly be free of liability for their actions. They'll still be subject to the laws where they reside. BUT, they won't have to worry about some spineless ISP dropping their content without notice simply because they got a threatening letter from a corporate lawyer.
This seems to be particularly appropriate just off the coast of Great Britain...
- StaticLimit
I guess I'm just not a shrewd enough business man to see the potential
- StaticLimit
Actually, both the Republicans and Democrats are fragmenting with their messages becoming increasingly unclear as they jockey for position on the sacred "middle ground".
The DLC and the their idea of "New Democrats" isn't that new really. It's just a relabelling of folks called "Moderate Republicans". The DLC helped forge Clinton's campaign. Clinton kept the political center by taking Republican issues and adding compassion. Bush is doing (or trying to do) the same thing right now from the other direction.
The Democratic Leadership Council is influential, but it is NOT the Democratic party, which I believe is still looking out for the disenfranchised and "the future"... instead of helping rich businesses make as much profit as possible NOW even if there's nothing left 10 years down the road.
- StaticLimit
There IS a silent majority that support Katz and generally ignore those few, loud people who LIKE to HATE him. I think people tend to assume Jon's an adult, writing stuff for the public, and he can take the criticism like a man (which he generally does).
There was a poll a while back about whether or not to "Keep the gasbag". Maybe that should be run annually. I somehow doubt Katz stuffed the vote box on that one, partly because I doubt he's technically competent enough... no offense to him, because it's not his JOB to be a hacker...
I also think it's folly to separate Katz and Slashdot. It's been made abundantly clear by Taco and Co. that Katz is here for a reason... he's not just some gasbag that hacked his way in, posts when he feels like it, and Taco just hasn't found a way to keep him out. He posts as a member of the Slashdot editorial team.
Slashdot posts what they want when they want, miss some good stuff, filter out a whole lot of bad stuff... and leave the quality debate up to the unwashed masses (that's you and me)
- StaticLimit
Push -vs- Pull. You COME to Slashdot of your own free will. Spammers PUSH email to you unsolicited. This is an incredibly huge difference.
I agree that filtering and moderation are good. But I also tend to view Slashdot as a community forum for people to discuss primarily that with Taco and Co. feel are important, so if they want to talk about Hellmouth and post it on THEIR page, more fscking power to them. Don't like Slashdot's story choice? Try Wired.com... *shrug* or any one of the other places.
But for the record, I'd support a Katz category. No need to piss people off if you can let them avoid it either.
- StaticLimit
This is just silly. Use your mouse and your mind to block it. Don't read what you don't want to read! If it looks like Katz, and you can't stand to read anything related to Katz, don't click it.
People flaming Katz's right to speak in this forum add less value than any group but 1: People complaining that an article showhow related to Katz showed up on their screen in the first place.
I know... I know... disk space is cheap, but it still bugs me to just out and out waste it.
- StaticLimit
Doesn't appear to be the most up to date FAQ.
Example... regarding so-called gravity shielding experiments
These investigations will probably take through the rest of 1997 before they have anything substantial to report one way or another
Welcome to 2000...
- StaticLimit
That's a good question. That seems like the kind of news that would get reported here. I wonder how many story submissions there are that read
Wired reports that popular tech news site Slashdot was hit with a DDOS attack...
Here's the quote from Wired (don't worry, I didn't circumvent any EULA to get it)
"About 400 readers weighed in over the first 30 minutes. Then we got hit by a DDOS," wrote Slashdot founder Rob Malda in email to Wired News.
There's news for ya! Wired scoops Slashdot... with Rob's help...
Hopefully we'll here more about this when Andover's had time to investigate and give us a full story.
- StaticLimit
A friend of mine actually coded this.
The point of the game was to press the Q key over and over until time ran out.
The game would display the number of times you pressed Q and then tell you whether you won or lost.
The length of time the game lasted was random... somewhere between 5 and 60 seconds as I recall.
In addition, whether you won or lost was random, having nothing to do with either
a) The number of times you pressed Q or
b) The length of time you were allowed.
Man that was a great game...
- StaticLimit
Good point, you've pretty well got me on that one.
;)
The point really should have been that power (work per unit time) has no relevence in this context unless we look at it being applied for a length of time. Energy is the important consideration as it indicates the amount of work that can be done. Your assersion that I got the calculations backward because wattage is measured per second wasn't wrong because wattage isn't measured per second, but because the time units associated with wattage, a measure of power, wasn't really at issue because the calculations center around energy (watt*hours, watt*seconds, megawatt*picosecond, or whatever), and therefore arguing about the time units watts are measured in was not relevant.
Good thing I got a BSCSE too, eh?
Thanks for the review lesson...
- StaticLimit
Wattage is NOT measured per second. It's a measure of POWER as in P=IV where I is current in Amps and V is voltage in... volts.
In addition, Amperage is NOT measured per second. Both are time insensitive measures!!
Dell lists their battery life in Watt * Hours and therefore, dividing X Watt * Hours by Y Watts results in X/Y Hours.
In addition, I specifically stated in my assumtions that the notebook has the battery IN at all times. It would be crazy not to have the battery in, as you mentioned above, which is why I never suggested you take it out!
Take some physics, take some circuits, and re-read my post (noting the battery, and my comment at the end that the calculations are based on the 13.8 Watt figure from the company and the lower end of Dell's estimate on battery life!!)
I would say IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer) but oh wait, I do have a BSEE. Even if you discount the figures significantly for fluxuation in sunlight levels and optimism on Dell's part, your figure:
you might get, uhh.. 20 seconds of extra life per hour of use. With 30 flourescent lights shining on it.
is patently ridiculous.
- StaticLimit
It's not convenient to sit in direct sunlight to even read a book. A shady spot, under a tree is much better, and, well.. there goes the solar power idea.
;).
So sit under a tree... and get a long cord
You don't have to glue the cells to the laptop.
- StaticLimit
Let's note the sales lit. on their site first:
.59 hours of charging with no use.
Assists the internal battery of your portable computer adding many hours to your normal run time from a charged internal battery2 (runs many computers, not just extends).
Recharges the internal battery of your computer or device. Also capable of running an external charger for your batteries3.
Dell's Inspiron 7500 (top of the line notebook) runs 3.5-4 hours on a 79WHr battery, so it draws approximately (79 / 3.5 =) 22W. Not too bad. The solar charger as noted provides 13.8W which should be more than enough to justify their claims above. It should extend the life to about 9.5 hours, a significant increase.
79 / (22 - 13.8) = 9.6
In addition, full recharge of the battery should take about (79 / 13.8 =) about 5.72 hours. That's a full recharge... Every hour of use (assisted with the solar panel) will take ((22-13.8) / 13.8 or 5.72 / 9.5) =
Assuming Dell's estimates aren't too low and theirs aren't too high, and the sun is shining... I'd say this is a good deal.
- StaticLimit
It hasn't been said yet, but it seems so obvious...
The reason this is version 6 and skips version 5 is because IE is at version 5 now and has been for quite a while. Netscape (read AOL (read AOL/Time-Warner)) is tired of MS staying one step ahead on the release numbers. They're trying to leapfrog the IE version. There's no way MS will pull together an IE 6 in 25 days. And maybe they can justify it with this XUL thing and claim that it's a huge leap past IE in functionality?
Whatever... version numbers are meaningless, and unless they've been holding back on us big time, the Mozilla technology will not be ready.
- StaticLimit
The first William Gibson one was far far better.
What I didn't like:
- Physical wounds from virtual reality.
Dying from believing you've sustained wounds which were only virtual or receiving real wounds because your equipment (didn't have/had malfunctioning) fail-safe mechanisms; that's good sci-fi. But having your arms and head fall off from holographic projections? That's um... not.
- Matter disappearing into a virtual world running on non alien/secret-military hardware.
Ok, I'm fine with your consciousness being drained from you and running around free on the net (like the first Gibson episode... Anyone else wonder why they didn't just cut the T3). But come on! They showed this stuff running on PCs. Lone-gunmen using tweasers to move jumpers! They were going to roll this out is malls!
- Level 2
Ok. It's a chick with a gun sitting on a tank's cannon. Freudian implications aside, that's just boring. Let me summarize Level 2: Bad guys pop up. In the same place every time. You stand still and spray them with bullets. Wolfenstein 3D was more interesting. (That Goddess had LOUSY aim, BTW).
- No off-site backups.
Someone already mentioned this, but I think it's worth mentioning again... No software company would have a command that wipes out all their source and no backup tapes. As a programmer, I just can't suspend disbelief on that.
- StaticLimit
P.S. - My apologies if you see this twice. The first attempt threw an error and after checking my profile and the comment list I was unable to find it.
2) Turn off Cascading Style Sheets (Style Sheets) support in your preferences. It generally doesn't work well at all and really isn't all that necessary. And IME it makes NS crash. A lot.
3) Turn off Java. Turn off Java. Turn off Java.
4) Turn off Javascript if you don't use somewhat sophisticated sites.
5) Don't invoke mystery components like Messenger and Composer and all that crap unless you actually need to use them. They tend to suck a bit.
6) Feed it lots and lots and lots of disk/memory cache, or none at all.
My god man! What's the point? You've turned off everything that makes it worthwhile to install a 4.x generation browser in the first place, haven't you?
If none of the new features work... the solution is: Stick with the old version.
- StaticLimit
There was an excellent Wired article about this subject that talks about NEAR's mission director Bob Farquhar, his expertise at using unique orbits to slingshot objects, and his habit of scheduling mission events to coincide with interesting dates.
The rendevous was initially scheduled for a different date. "January 10, 1999, the day the spacecraft was due at Eros, was the fifth anniversary of his civil marriage to his second wife, Irina."
It's a very interesting read!
- StaticLimit