I can think of three companies that are offering, or have offered, major movies-on-demand. My university (Duke) had a distribution deal, no longer in effect, with a company called Cflix last year.
There was also a company that was forced out of business by the MPAA so they could push their own services. I forget its name.
Then there's Movielink, also being heavily promoted on college campuses right now. I believe it was started by one of the major companies.
Of course, I can remember Yahoo! Movies trying to do VOD four years ago, but they couldn't license anything big.
So, in conclusion, this is nothing new, except maybe this time the advertising will get to the people who care (geeks). Most people don't want to watch a movie on their computer and can't figure out TV-out video cards.
I was looking around the LDP and noticed that a lot of the more major, less specific HOWTOs are getting fairly out of date, with some not having been updated since Kernel 2.2. They need contributors who know their stuff.
Also, CSS is fine, so long as you can still get the docs in.txt format as well. And that is most important.
I've been using about:blank for years now, and really was too lazy to change from home.netscape.com before that.
I do it to decrease loading times. There are certainly about 10 websites I routinely look at each day, but I might not be popping up a window to look at any of those.
Also, back around when I switched to about:blank, I was having trouble with my Internet connection's reliability. I think I was using a free Internet provider on a 486 running Linux or something... no joke. Not automatically loading a page, with early-generation browsers, could save you a lot of time while it stopped being confused about the lack of any network to talk to.
Get yourself some thermal fax paper and put it in the microwave for a few seconds. The parts hit most strongly will turn brown. I am fairly certain the same thing is happening here, although one shoud just try it with a $20-bill shaped piece of paper to be sure. Microwaves are far from uniform in their energy output -- that's why the carousel has become so ubiquitous.
Now, you should go look at Alex Jones' apparent infiltration of Bohemian Grove, an annual meeting of powerful people -- now that's intriguing.
Why use code at all? When I was that age I was very excited by the release of Klik n Play, which used a graphical interface for its (admittedly limited) capabilities. Some people did amazing things with it though. Games Factory, Klik n Play's successor, is still available here:
So it seems that ESA is working on a next-gen cargo craft, and NASA is working on a next-gen human transporter. Could it be that Europe and the United States are actually splitting the design costs necessary to replace the Space Shuttle?
These two separate systems can do what the Shuttle could do by itself -- haul cargo and move people -- and I'm betting it's cheaper, too, to do things with two separate devices.
One missing... Space Elevator?
on
Dreams of the Moon
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Curious that none of these previous plans to reach the Moon mention utilizing a space elevator for most of the journey to orbit.
I suppose that this demonstrates one of the more fundamental problems with most proposals to go to the Moon: they clearly aren't sustainable, at least with today's prices for rocket propulsion. One of the earliest draws for moneymaking on the Moon will clearly be tourism, which cannot flourish at current launch costs.
On the other hand, a space elevator would make it not only very possible to go back to the Moon cheaply, but also just about anywhere else in the Solar System!
As many other comments have pointed out, there is little immediate financial impetus to go back to the Moon. If NASA were to permanently ground the Shuttle fleet, and suspend their manned spaceflight program, would the money they would save be enough to accelerate the development of space elevators to the point of useability?
I have an Atari 2600 that's several years older than me (1978 1st production run, I believe).
About a year ago, while it was sitting in my closet, something overflowed in my attic and flooded the case. Keep in mind that the bottom tray of a 2600 is essentially watertight; it sat there like that for about a week, the hardware immersed in water.
Emptied it out, opened it up. Some corrosion. Powered it up, works fine!
That is, 8 years ago, I had my own website. I taught myself basic HTML and wrote it up in Notepad. So did all my friends, as we had all just gotten our netconnections for the first time and were quite excited about it. I had a Star Wars page. This was long enough ago that Theforce.net didn't really exist yet, and it was still possible for me to get into the upper listings at Altavista.
Anyway, no reason that can't still be done. Best way to learn about such basics as HTML, UNIX, and FTP. Just give them a UNIX account with a few privileges -- that's what my ISP gave me back in the day.
I downloaded iTunes the day it was released, and it seems to me that it has serious restrictions on the length of filenames it can import. For instance:
"Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters - 01-Wasted Words.mp3" will not work, but
"Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters - 01-Wasted Wor.mp3" will.
Incidentally related... has anyone been having trouble reaching http://www.senator.com? I haven't been able to get there in weeks. Mozilla says that the site can't be found (DNS error), but every other site these days that does that goes to SiteFinder. This one doesn't.
Can someone post the IP address if they can get there?
Until I migrated to cable about 4 years ago, I used the dial-up service provided by my local library, Baltimore County Public Library. They are run as a non-profit, have incredibly good technical support, and come with all geek features. After I went to a cable modem, I asked them to forward any mail hitting my old POP address with them to my new account, and they did for several months!
You pay for one year at a time. I believe it was around $100. When I started in 1995, it was $70 / year!
Also check out the Library's SAILOR, which is 100% free statewide text-only Internet access. They've been around since Gopher and are still going strong.
This entire study apparently misses one crucial point -- there is no need for a huge hydrogen distribution infrastructure like we need for petroleum.
Assuming that this nation finally wakes up and retires its combustion-based power plants (coal, oil, gas, etc...) and replaces them with NUCLEAR POWER on a grand and properly planned scale, all each person needs is an electrolysis device in their house for all the portable power they need. Electric bills might go up, but gas bills will be nonexistent.
Or, if you are of more credulous tastes, what about Genesis World Energy? They're claiming to have broken the laws of thermodynamics -- then we won't even need the electricity distribution infrastructure!
I believe the Rocket Guy (http://www.rocketguy.com) is producing his own peroxide for his rocket. Might he be willing to double the output for some cash?
and apparently little has changed. Until the very end, when I saw the copyright, I thought the article had been written last week. While it predicts the end of the De Beers cartel, the evidence is clear that nothing of the sort as happened.
Well, I'm just about to graduate from a very nice private boy's school in an undisclosed part of the nation - I won't say where, because the rest of the description would probably give it away.
In any case, our publications department (newspaper and yearbook) got a major upgrade this year, ending up with 7 G4's with 17" flat screens to share between us. (Hey, I said it was a very nice school). The yearbook team are incredibly dedicated and really love their work. I was on the newspaper.
In any case, as seniors we got a lot of authority: the chief of yearbook even got root access to our whole net, which was separated from the rest of the school's (PC-centric) system. Plus we all had passcodes to get into the rooms after hours (Yearbook spent over 40 hours straight there once).
I introduced Unreal Tournament (demo) to these systems.
Yearbook soon had LANparties going most days as soon as the last class ended. As long as it wasn't obvious and after school, none of the faculty associated with the room really minded. Of course they weren't there.
We were TRUSTED. DON'T let anyone do this who you can't trust.
Oh, and Unreal doesn't have to be installed on the Mac, just unzipped. That probably helped us as well. We have had a lot of fun this last year.
This guy wrote some Python scripts to convert UPC's to ISBN's - it can be done - and then feed them into Amazon's search engine. Very interesting, and he's already done it, so he has some experience.
Slashdot Mirror
This might be an appropriate time to ask... how exactly do you pronounce Gentoo anyway? Is it a hard G? Or is it more like gen- as in generator?
I can think of three companies that are offering, or have offered, major movies-on-demand. My university (Duke) had a distribution deal, no longer in effect, with a company called Cflix last year.
There was also a company that was forced out of business by the MPAA so they could push their own services. I forget its name.
Then there's Movielink, also being heavily promoted on college campuses right now. I believe it was started by one of the major companies.
Of course, I can remember Yahoo! Movies trying to do VOD four years ago, but they couldn't license anything big.
So, in conclusion, this is nothing new, except maybe this time the advertising will get to the people who care (geeks). Most people don't want to watch a movie on their computer and can't figure out TV-out video cards.
I was looking around the LDP and noticed that a lot of the more major, less specific HOWTOs are getting fairly out of date, with some not having been updated since Kernel 2.2. They need contributors who know their stuff.
.txt format as well. And that is most important.
Also, CSS is fine, so long as you can still get the docs in
someone dies.
I've been using about:blank for years now, and really was too lazy to change from home.netscape.com before that.
I do it to decrease loading times. There are certainly about 10 websites I routinely look at each day, but I might not be popping up a window to look at any of those.
Also, back around when I switched to about:blank, I was having trouble with my Internet connection's reliability. I think I was using a free Internet provider on a 486 running Linux or something... no joke. Not automatically loading a page, with early-generation browsers, could save you a lot of time while it stopped being confused about the lack of any network to talk to.
Now, you should go look at Alex Jones' apparent infiltration of Bohemian Grove, an annual meeting of powerful people -- now that's intriguing.
http://www.clickteam.com/English/tgf.htm
So it seems that ESA is working on a next-gen cargo craft, and NASA is working on a next-gen human transporter. Could it be that Europe and the United States are actually splitting the design costs necessary to replace the Space Shuttle?
These two separate systems can do what the Shuttle could do by itself -- haul cargo and move people -- and I'm betting it's cheaper, too, to do things with two separate devices.
Curious that none of these previous plans to reach the Moon mention utilizing a space elevator for most of the journey to orbit.
I suppose that this demonstrates one of the more fundamental problems with most proposals to go to the Moon: they clearly aren't sustainable, at least with today's prices for rocket propulsion. One of the earliest draws for moneymaking on the Moon will clearly be tourism, which cannot flourish at current launch costs.
On the other hand, a space elevator would make it not only very possible to go back to the Moon cheaply, but also just about anywhere else in the Solar System!
As many other comments have pointed out, there is little immediate financial impetus to go back to the Moon. If NASA were to permanently ground the Shuttle fleet, and suspend their manned spaceflight program, would the money they would save be enough to accelerate the development of space elevators to the point of useability?
Anyone have a bittorrent link to the Gates Matrix video?
I have an Atari 2600 that's several years older than me (1978 1st production run, I believe).
About a year ago, while it was sitting in my closet, something overflowed in my attic and flooded the case. Keep in mind that the bottom tray of a 2600 is essentially watertight; it sat there like that for about a week, the hardware immersed in water.
Emptied it out, opened it up. Some corrosion. Powered it up, works fine!
That is, 8 years ago, I had my own website. I taught myself basic HTML and wrote it up in Notepad. So did all my friends, as we had all just gotten our netconnections for the first time and were quite excited about it. I had a Star Wars page. This was long enough ago that Theforce.net didn't really exist yet, and it was still possible for me to get into the upper listings at Altavista.
Anyway, no reason that can't still be done. Best way to learn about such basics as HTML, UNIX, and FTP. Just give them a UNIX account with a few privileges -- that's what my ISP gave me back in the day.
At the top-10 American university I go to, there's a big plasma screen behind the main information desk that shows a slideshow of school events.
Imagine my surprise when, one day, the screen informs me that I can get a
U.N.I.V.E.R.S.I.T.Y D.I.P.L.O.M.A
from home, courtesy of Windows Messenger!
I downloaded iTunes the day it was released, and it seems to me that it has serious restrictions on the length of filenames it can import. For instance:
"Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters - 01-Wasted Words.mp3" will not work, but
"Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters - 01-Wasted Wor.mp3" will.
Why is this?
I remember back in Netscape's glory days, asking someone who their ISP was, and him, thinking for a second, then saying "Netscape."
"Oh," I said, "I didn't know they sold Internet service," and left it at that.
As if people who think they have to open Internet Explorer to "get on the Internet" weren't enough of a problem already...
Incidentally related... has anyone been having trouble reaching http://www.senator.com? I haven't been able to get there in weeks. Mozilla says that the site can't be found (DNS error), but every other site these days that does that goes to SiteFinder. This one doesn't.
Can someone post the IP address if they can get there?
Thanks.
... and that is if we replace all of our power plants with nuclear power. Otherwise, we will still be polluting the air.
Until I migrated to cable about 4 years ago, I used the dial-up service provided by my local library, Baltimore County Public Library. They are run as a non-profit, have incredibly good technical support, and come with all geek features. After I went to a cable modem, I asked them to forward any mail hitting my old POP address with them to my new account, and they did for several months!
You pay for one year at a time. I believe it was around $100. When I started in 1995, it was $70 / year!
Their website is
http://www.bcpl.net
Also check out the Library's SAILOR, which is 100% free statewide text-only Internet access. They've been around since Gopher and are still going strong.
http://sailor.lib.md.us
Slashdot is discussing proper English usage.
Assuming that this nation finally wakes up and retires its combustion-based power plants (coal, oil, gas, etc...) and replaces them with NUCLEAR POWER on a grand and properly planned scale, all each person needs is an electrolysis device in their house for all the portable power they need. Electric bills might go up, but gas bills will be nonexistent.
Or, if you are of more credulous tastes, what about Genesis World Energy? They're claiming to have broken the laws of thermodynamics -- then we won't even need the electricity distribution infrastructure!
I believe the Rocket Guy (http://www.rocketguy.com) is producing his own peroxide for his rocket. Might he be willing to double the output for some cash?
and apparently little has changed. Until the very end, when I saw the copyright, I thought the article had been written last week. While it predicts the end of the De Beers cartel, the evidence is clear that nothing of the sort as happened.
What a moral conundrum.
Why hasn't the Lunar Embassy been contacted about this?
Well, I'm just about to graduate from a very nice private boy's school in an undisclosed part of the nation - I won't say where, because the rest of the description would probably give it away.
In any case, our publications department (newspaper and yearbook) got a major upgrade this year, ending up with 7 G4's with 17" flat screens to share between us. (Hey, I said it was a very nice school). The yearbook team are incredibly dedicated and really love their work. I was on the newspaper.
In any case, as seniors we got a lot of authority: the chief of yearbook even got root access to our whole net, which was separated from the rest of the school's (PC-centric) system. Plus we all had passcodes to get into the rooms after hours (Yearbook spent over 40 hours straight there once).
I introduced Unreal Tournament (demo) to these systems.
Yearbook soon had LANparties going most days as soon as the last class ended. As long as it wasn't obvious and after school, none of the faculty associated with the room really minded. Of course they weren't there.
We were TRUSTED. DON'T let anyone do this who you can't trust.
Oh, and Unreal doesn't have to be installed on the Mac, just unzipped. That probably helped us as well. We have had a lot of fun this last year.
You can add entries here for ANYTHING with a standard UPC, so some books are in here. Very useful.
The Book-Scanning Project
This guy wrote some Python scripts to convert UPC's to ISBN's - it can be done - and then feed them into Amazon's search engine. Very interesting, and he's already done it, so he has some experience.