Why isn't there a group or organization for publishing scientific papers for free? It seems that this is exactly what the internet was designed for in the first place, so what happened? Would it be that difficult to create a central repository for research papers, where scientists can submit their research, have it peer-reviewed, and published online for everyone to see? Is it really necessary to have a commercial publisher touching any government-funded research? Or is someone forcing scientists to publish their papers through these publishing companies? This seems like exactly the kind of thing the open-source community should not only be discussing, but doing. Hell, take 1/10th the time and energy spent on M$ bashing on slashdot and you could probalby have something running in six months. It would probably not even be that difficult to get a sizeable amount of government funding for something like this. Is there any reason it wouldn't work? Has it already been done, and scientists are just using the old publishers out of ignorance? Any comments?
But I dare you not to play Halo on it (Game of the Year and a work of art).
Kind of off topic, but I didn't think Halo was any better than, say, Goldeneye on N64. What is it about this game that impressed people? The graphics aren't much better, and the gameplay isn't that different (at least in multiplayer, I haven't actually played single player so that might be the problem) I guess I'll just stick to playing games on my PC (and maybe some GT3 on my PS2, the only console game that I actually play much of).
You forget, Standard Oil was doing this to American companies. Microsoft is doing it to foreign companies, which makes it okay in the government's eyes. The U.S. goverenment generally isn't concerned with justice unless it is Americans that are being treated unjustly. If Sony tried this tactic, you can bet there would be huge import taxes slapped on every PS2, and probably every other Sony product as well. It generally seems to be the opinion of the U.S. government that it is their job to tilt the commercial playing field in favor of American companies at every oppurtunity; see what they did with steel (slap on huge import tariffs because american steel companies apparently don't invest in modern production methods to produce better steel at lower prices).
I'm not saying this is wrong per se, I guess it depends on your opinion of the purpose of government (apparently ours thinks it is to give American businesses unfair advantage because they are generally too lazy/stupid/backwards to compete on their own merits), but ours tends to be embarassingly protectionist when it is foreign companies using similar tactics (or even daring to sell their products for less than American companies when it costs them less to produce them) but turn a blind eye to it when American companies do so.
Okay, enough ranting and raving. I'm not even going to check this for errors, and it is ALL YOUR FAULT.
this will push down the price of the Muvo. Sorrry, but it only holds 128MB. I think I can pretty well remember what MP3's I put on a 128MB player, so the LCD is pretty pointless (and probably actually shortens battery life). The equalizer might be nice, though.
Thats nice, but what does it have to do with anything? Are you a lawyer?
How hard is it to understand: 1) Computers have so much speed now that only the most graphic intensive game or the most complex calculations are going to come close to pushing their limit. 2) Batteries have not kept up with chips, and thus have laughable capacities for the things you use. 3) Unless you carry spare fully charged batteries with you, you have to be a moron not to use the incredibally helpfull feature that you are complaining about.
You don't get it. This doesn't have to do with whether it is a helpful feature or not; it has to do with whether Dell accurately portrays in its marketing what you are buying. They claim that the laptop runs at 2.2 Ghz, making no mention of the fact that this only happens when it is plugged in to an outlet. This would be like a car company claiming that their car can accelerate from 0-100 mph in 5 seconds, but failing to mention you will only get this acceleration if youdrive off a cliff. To most drivers it doesn't actually matter how long it takes to get to 100mph, because it is illegal to do so, but it is reasonable for them to expect the car to be able to achieve the claimed performance under normal conditions (i.e., not a special circumstance).
Even if you are playing Doom, it is far better to play Doom for 2 hours with a slight jerkiness and speed reduction, than to lose power and have to kill the game 1 hour into your 2 hour train ride.
This is purely your own opinion, and has nothing to do with the validity of the manufacturer's claim. From what Dell says about the notebook, it is reasonable for a person to EXPECT to be able to play Doom at full speed for 1 hour rather than with jerkiness for 2 hours, whether or not this decision is "better" or "worse", which is purely subjective.
After the iMac came out. Every company did a nock off. They all failed.
Unfortunately the original didn't fail, probably mostly because a bunch of schools went "ooh, pretty" and bought the crappy little things. And not just grade schools, either. At my school we have an entire lab full of iMacs. THe funny thing is, someone had to go and build wood cases for each of them to sit on that hold the external zip drives and external floppy drives (among other external peripherals). On top of all that, they crash constantly. You can't even surf the web without the damn things crashing. It's like windows only worse. Who in the world actually LIKES the things?
While I'm sure advancements in noise damping tech will help significantly, it's hard to keep something producing several megawatts quiet.
Have you ever heard a modern gas turbine? The things make this high pitched whine that is annoying as hell. Personally, as far as noise goes, I much prefer the deep bass rumble of a 12-cylinder, 188-liter-displacement diesel redlining at 1200 rpm. I like being able to feel trains coming from several hundred yards away. But that is really neither here nor there - I'm sure you are right, modern turbines are much quieter than older experimental ones.
I know this isn't directly related to the article, but folks from California (and elsewhere) might be interested in this site, and, more specifically, this page about plans for high speed rail in California. They were considering MagLev for a while, but it looks like electrical traction is what they have decided on if funding is approved.
So, come November 2004 my fellow Californians, remember to vote for the cool trains powered not by diesels or turbines, but honest-to-god caternary action. I, uh, hear they are going to run on Linux. Yeah, that's it. The "Golden State Happy Penguin Express". Yessiree.
As in conventional light-emitting diodes, the benzene electrons are excited by an exterior voltage of 3 to 5 Volt. In returning to their original state they emit light in a colour specific to their material which is exceptionally brilliant and soft.
Wow, the OLEDs are brilliant AND soft! Or was that the scientists?
More crap I have to remove if I buy a Dell. Good thing I build my own computer, I probably save time in the long run as I don't have to spend all my time removing shitty programs taht they force on their customers. Like anyone is actually going to WANT to play FFXI.
nVidia released the TNT that offered similar performance, in one card (not 3!), did 32 bit colour and was significantly cheaper.
Uh, no. The original TNT offered performance similar to a single Voodoo2 (the voodoo2 had the edge framerate wise, but the TNT did offer 32-bit color). Two of them together were MUCH faster than a TNT card, albeit about 4 times as expensive when you factor in the dedicated 2d card. Nvidia didn't really take the performance lead until the TNT2 or even the Geforce. As for 32-bit vs. 16-bit, I still tend to use 16-bit because even with my Geforce2 I pretty much have a choice of running at 800x600x32 or 1024x768x16 to get decent frame rates (in a lot of games, anyway).
What do you mean we didn't get squat? We get to listen to endless replays of "One small step for a man..." What more could you want from a multi-billion dollar program?
For the Italian police to use someone else's identity? While the content may have been illegal in Italy, it was located in the U.S. The Italian police apparently took someone else's identity and used it to remove information they did not legally own or control from servers located in the United States. The FBI should go after them as hackers (crakcers? whatever they call them. Electronic terrorists?); essentially they did the exact same thing as many hackers have been arrested for. They stole someone's identity and used it to alter webistes that did not belong to them. The fact that they were Italian law officers is immaterial, as their jurisdiction does not extend to the United States where the material was hosted. I mean, it is fine if they remove all material from the guy's computer and destroy it, but once they change stuff on a server in the U.S, they are basically hacking that companies website.
On another note, blasphemy is a crime in Italy? Remind me not to go to that backwards, theocratic state. I'm surprised they even allow people to use the internet, what with all the anti-Madonna websites out there.
Roger Wilco? I hear he's free, hasn't been working in quite a while.
Re:Like that makes much of a difference.
on
NYTimes Looks at Warez
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· Score: 2, Interesting
How many car manufactureres buy, and reverse engineer their compeditors autos?
Actually, I believe this is perfectly legal, as long as they do not then turn around and put pateneted parts or technologies into their own automobiles. If you buy a car, you can do with it what you will, take it appart and put it back together again as many times as you want. You may not be allowed to dreive it on the highway if you change it, but you can tear it appart and learn all you can quite legally.
It takes large amounts of energy to go into space and the shuttles won't want to copy the X-Box strategy of taking losses because there is no software to sell.:-)
D00d, they could easily turn a profit from the t-shirt sales alone, never mind the coffee mugs and snow globes.
You think that's bad? In a town near me there is a street labeled in some areas "East West St".
The name of the street is West St., and in the Eastern part of town they add in the East part. Actually, it only appears on one or two signs, the others reading "E. West St". Strangely, in the western part of town, it is labeled simply "West St".
Re:US Highway Signs contain Military Tactical Mark
on
Hacking the Highways
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· Score: 1
On a similar note, many portions of the Interstate Highway system were designed with certain lengths of straight sections to accomodate emergency landings by military aircraft in the event of war (well, invasion really) with the assumption that airfields would be a primary target in any attack. I'm not sure about the veracity of this, but a one or two mile long concrete (or even asphalt) stretch would probably do nicely for a fighter to land on (anything bigger would probably destroy the road). In good weather in daylight, anyway.
Re:Didn't Best Buy do this once before?
on
Worst Buy
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· Score: 1
I think that was hard drives at Amzon or something. They were selling them for like $20 instead of $200. That time it was an obvious typo, but teh general reaction was pretty much the same. No $30 coupon from them, however.
ummm.... I think you are thinking of Native Americans. An Indian American would be someone from India, in which case it wasn't US that did all that, it was those stinking Brits...
I wasn't saying the Japanese only buy Japanese products, I was saying that given a choice, they probably prefer to spend their money on a Japanese product over a foreign one. Just like many Americans, given the choice, choose American goods. After all, look at all those people buying American cars when they could be buying Japanese, or better yet, German cars. My point was that I don't think the Xbox being a lttle more or less expensive than the PS2 is going to make much of a difference in that market.
Slashdot Mirror
Why isn't there a group or organization for publishing scientific papers for free? It seems that this is exactly what the internet was designed for in the first place, so what happened? Would it be that difficult to create a central repository for research papers, where scientists can submit their research, have it peer-reviewed, and published online for everyone to see? Is it really necessary to have a commercial publisher touching any government-funded research? Or is someone forcing scientists to publish their papers through these publishing companies? This seems like exactly the kind of thing the open-source community should not only be discussing, but doing. Hell, take 1/10th the time and energy spent on M$ bashing on slashdot and you could probalby have something running in six months. It would probably not even be that difficult to get a sizeable amount of government funding for something like this. Is there any reason it wouldn't work? Has it already been done, and scientists are just using the old publishers out of ignorance? Any comments?
Weren't the gnomes stealing Cartman's underpants? Obviously you don't understand the joke.
Kind of off topic, but I didn't think Halo was any better than, say, Goldeneye on N64. What is it about this game that impressed people? The graphics aren't much better, and the gameplay isn't that different (at least in multiplayer, I haven't actually played single player so that might be the problem) I guess I'll just stick to playing games on my PC (and maybe some GT3 on my PS2, the only console game that I actually play much of).
You forget, Standard Oil was doing this to American companies. Microsoft is doing it to foreign companies, which makes it okay in the government's eyes. The U.S. goverenment generally isn't concerned with justice unless it is Americans that are being treated unjustly. If Sony tried this tactic, you can bet there would be huge import taxes slapped on every PS2, and probably every other Sony product as well. It generally seems to be the opinion of the U.S. government that it is their job to tilt the commercial playing field in favor of American companies at every oppurtunity; see what they did with steel (slap on huge import tariffs because american steel companies apparently don't invest in modern production methods to produce better steel at lower prices).
I'm not saying this is wrong per se, I guess it depends on your opinion of the purpose of government (apparently ours thinks it is to give American businesses unfair advantage because they are generally too lazy/stupid/backwards to compete on their own merits), but ours tends to be embarassingly protectionist when it is foreign companies using similar tactics (or even daring to sell their products for less than American companies when it costs them less to produce them) but turn a blind eye to it when American companies do so.
Okay, enough ranting and raving. I'm not even going to check this for errors, and it is ALL YOUR FAULT.
at Krusty's. He dropped my burger in the fryer, then kept trying to fish it out with his bare hand.
this will push down the price of the Muvo. Sorrry, but it only holds 128MB. I think I can pretty well remember what MP3's I put on a 128MB player, so the LCD is pretty pointless (and probably actually shortens battery life). The equalizer might be nice, though.
Thats nice, but what does it have to do with anything? Are you a lawyer?
How hard is it to understand: 1) Computers have so much speed now that only the most graphic intensive game or the most complex calculations are going to come close to pushing their limit. 2) Batteries have not kept up with chips, and thus have laughable capacities for the things you use. 3) Unless you carry spare fully charged batteries with you, you have to be a moron not to use the incredibally helpfull feature that you are complaining about.
You don't get it. This doesn't have to do with whether it is a helpful feature or not; it has to do with whether Dell accurately portrays in its marketing what you are buying. They claim that the laptop runs at 2.2 Ghz, making no mention of the fact that this only happens when it is plugged in to an outlet. This would be like a car company claiming that their car can accelerate from 0-100 mph in 5 seconds, but failing to mention you will only get this acceleration if youdrive off a cliff. To most drivers it doesn't actually matter how long it takes to get to 100mph, because it is illegal to do so, but it is reasonable for them to expect the car to be able to achieve the claimed performance under normal conditions (i.e., not a special circumstance).
Even if you are playing Doom, it is far better to play Doom for 2 hours with a slight jerkiness and speed reduction, than to lose power and have to kill the game 1 hour into your 2 hour train ride.
This is purely your own opinion, and has nothing to do with the validity of the manufacturer's claim. From what Dell says about the notebook, it is reasonable for a person to EXPECT to be able to play Doom at full speed for 1 hour rather than with jerkiness for 2 hours, whether or not this decision is "better" or "worse", which is purely subjective.
Same with the Quake alpha, if anyone else can remember that far back.
Unfortunately the original didn't fail, probably mostly because a bunch of schools went "ooh, pretty" and bought the crappy little things. And not just grade schools, either. At my school we have an entire lab full of iMacs. THe funny thing is, someone had to go and build wood cases for each of them to sit on that hold the external zip drives and external floppy drives (among other external peripherals). On top of all that, they crash constantly. You can't even surf the web without the damn things crashing. It's like windows only worse. Who in the world actually LIKES the things?
Have you ever heard a modern gas turbine? The things make this high pitched whine that is annoying as hell. Personally, as far as noise goes, I much prefer the deep bass rumble of a 12-cylinder, 188-liter-displacement diesel redlining at 1200 rpm. I like being able to feel trains coming from several hundred yards away. But that is really neither here nor there - I'm sure you are right, modern turbines are much quieter than older experimental ones.
actually, I think the M1 weighs closer to sixty tons, but same difference...
this site, and, more specifically, this page about plans for high speed rail in California. They were considering MagLev for a while, but it looks like electrical traction is what they have decided on if funding is approved.
So, come November 2004 my fellow Californians, remember to vote for the cool trains powered not by diesels or turbines, but honest-to-god caternary action. I, uh, hear they are going to run on Linux. Yeah, that's it. The "Golden State Happy Penguin Express". Yessiree.
Wow, the OLEDs are brilliant AND soft! Or was that the scientists?
More crap I have to remove if I buy a Dell. Good thing I build my own computer, I probably save time in the long run as I don't have to spend all my time removing shitty programs taht they force on their customers. Like anyone is actually going to WANT to play FFXI.
Uh, no. The original TNT offered performance similar to a single Voodoo2 (the voodoo2 had the edge framerate wise, but the TNT did offer 32-bit color). Two of them together were MUCH faster than a TNT card, albeit about 4 times as expensive when you factor in the dedicated 2d card. Nvidia didn't really take the performance lead until the TNT2 or even the Geforce.
As for 32-bit vs. 16-bit, I still tend to use 16-bit because even with my Geforce2 I pretty much have a choice of running at 800x600x32 or 1024x768x16 to get decent frame rates (in a lot of games, anyway).
What do you mean we didn't get squat? We get to listen to endless replays of "One small step for a man..." What more could you want from a multi-billion dollar program?
For the Italian police to use someone else's identity? While the content may have been illegal in Italy, it was located in the U.S. The Italian police apparently took someone else's identity and used it to remove information they did not legally own or control from servers located in the United States. The FBI should go after them as hackers (crakcers? whatever they call them. Electronic terrorists?); essentially they did the exact same thing as many hackers have been arrested for. They stole someone's identity and used it to alter webistes that did not belong to them. The fact that they were Italian law officers is immaterial, as their jurisdiction does not extend to the United States where the material was hosted. I mean, it is fine if they remove all material from the guy's computer and destroy it, but once they change stuff on a server in the U.S, they are basically hacking that companies website.
On another note, blasphemy is a crime in Italy? Remind me not to go to that backwards, theocratic state. I'm surprised they even allow people to use the internet, what with all the anti-Madonna websites out there.
Roger Wilco? I hear he's free, hasn't been working in quite a while.
Actually, I believe this is perfectly legal, as long as they do not then turn around and put pateneted parts or technologies into their own automobiles. If you buy a car, you can do with it what you will, take it appart and put it back together again as many times as you want. You may not be allowed to dreive it on the highway if you change it, but you can tear it appart and learn all you can quite legally.
D00d, they could easily turn a profit from the t-shirt sales alone, never mind the coffee mugs and snow globes.
You think that's bad? In a town near me there is a street labeled in some areas "East West St".
The name of the street is West St., and in the Eastern part of town they add in the East part. Actually, it only appears on one or two signs, the others reading "E. West St". Strangely, in the western part of town, it is labeled simply "West St".
On a similar note, many portions of the Interstate Highway system were designed with certain lengths of straight sections to accomodate emergency landings by military aircraft in the event of war (well, invasion really) with the assumption that airfields would be a primary target in any attack. I'm not sure about the veracity of this, but a one or two mile long concrete (or even asphalt) stretch would probably do nicely for a fighter to land on (anything bigger would probably destroy the road). In good weather in daylight, anyway.
I think that was hard drives at Amzon or something. They were selling them for like $20 instead of $200. That time it was an obvious typo, but teh general reaction was pretty much the same. No $30 coupon from them, however.
ummm.... I think you are thinking of Native Americans. An Indian American would be someone from India, in which case it wasn't US that did all that, it was those stinking Brits...
I wasn't saying the Japanese only buy Japanese products, I was saying that given a choice, they probably prefer to spend their money on a Japanese product over a foreign one. Just like many Americans, given the choice, choose American goods. After all, look at all those people buying American cars when they could be buying Japanese, or better yet, German cars. My point was that I don't think the Xbox being a lttle more or less expensive than the PS2 is going to make much of a difference in that market.