one might be coming soon due to the band of material the Earth is soon to encounter
Any chance you have a URL with some more info on this? (You can imagine what a Google search on 'band of material' brings up:). Unless you're talking comet debris, and most of that is pretty tiny, I'd be curious as to just where this material is coming from, and how anyone detected it.
Reminds me of a really neat book from 1987, Exit Earth. The solar system is passing through some kind of matter that makes the sun go semi-nova, and to save humanity these big space-arks.. well, read it youself, it touches on some points that you normally don't see in sci-fi disaster novels.
'Upon reaching the theatre, I was shocked to discover that all but one 3 foot high side door was locked. When I went into the lobby, I was appalled at the $27 ticket price, when the newspaper ad clearly stated $10 per ticket. The worst was the show times: the first 15 minutes of the movie were to be played starting at 2:07am, followed by 5 minute segments every hour for the next 24 hours. A funny point though, is that the entire movie was filmed in Klingon, so I hope you didn't expect English here!'
A movie such as the above doesn't deserve a review, and neither does this game. Installing a video game simply should not be the ordeal that many seem to be. 'Move to another computer'??? A review is written so the consumer has an idea of what to expect, BEFORE shelling out $50. To most people, another computer is NOT an option.
Why do we accept such shoddy workmanship from software manufacturers, and when someone points this out, they get flamed: 'I wanna know the pixel depth and texture count, I don't give a damn if I have to re-install Windows 74 times first!'
How is doing a search in Google for X and compiling a report from that any better/worse then summarizing an encyclopedia?
Not to be too obvious a troll, but really now. Half the comments on this discussion seem to be 'computers discourage children from thinking, and instead they're just regurgitating what they've read'.
Hmm... most of my schooling was done WITHOUT computers being around, and yet for the most part, that's all the first 12 years of it was. Read a book (or maybe the Cliff's notes if you're lazy), change some words, get a B+. Listen to the teacher talk for a few weeks, and write down what s/he said on your exam paper.
The vast majority of grade school is like this. Having or not having a computer really won't change a thing, however what it will do is prepare today's youths for the Real World (tm). How many (white-collar, anyway) jobs today don't use a computer in some fashion?
Picked up an old mini-desktop case (about 14" on a side and 4" high, ie: size of a small stereo component), came with a p200, 64mb ram, small hard drive (easily upgraded), on-board tv-out (thank you ATI) and 10/100 ethernet. Beyond the fact that I now have a 25' cable running to my hub, I've got a tv-outputted, potentially 60GB mp3 player. And of course there's always wireless ethernet. All it needs is a wireless keypad/mouse/gamepad (winamp has the COOLEST plugins), and voila. The whole thing will end up costing less than $200cdn.
Maybe not the optimum solution for Uncle Pete in the retirement home, but this *is* 'news for nerds' isn't it? Now if only I wasn't so *nix-impaired, I might be able to keep it from rebooting every week or so:)
Every ISP that I know of uses the same root servers as the rest of us, or if they don't, they'll still be able to resolve.us,.ca and the like. Country-specific domains have been around since almost the beginnig, just that the people in charge never enforced the use of them..com,.net, and.org just became 'what people use'. When was the last time you've seen a.us domain?
In order for region-specific domains to PROPERLY work, ICANN/verisign/et al have to STOP allowing the use of.com/.net/.org (except maybe multinationals), forcing everyone to use their country specific domains. Unfortunately, the predominant mindset in the USA is 'the internet is American, and the rest of the world can use their country TLD's. This has nothing whatsoever to do with ISP's switching.
And since neither of these probes are all that massive themselves small 1-2 ton objects massing within 10,000 km of the probe would cause its course to alter slightly
Actually, the more massive the probe, the more gravitational attraction there would be between the 2 objects in question. Remember, WE attract the Earth too, just not at any detectable level. However, any additional mass in the probe would negate this.../me tried to pull out inertia equations from the brain graveyard...
A 60 cent tax in Denmark is probably one of the smaller taxes they've got, from what I've heard about their tax structure. Here in Canada, there's a marginal tax on blank recording media, supposedly to fund poor musicians and the like.
What I've never figured out:
1. Musicians (at least in Canada) pretty much fall into 2 categories - the very popular (and therefore not needing this money), or the almost unheard of (and therefore distributing a lot of their music on CD-R's themselves).
2. I use CD-R's for so many different purposes, why exactly does the music industry get money from them? Personally, I buy them by the 100-spindle, and if I've burned 4 music cds over the past year I'd say that's a high estimate.
Whoever managed to put this tax into place, and convince people that it is a valid tax, is either a genius or a sociopath:)
As has been pointed out previously, Moore's 'law' could have been 1/2 the time, if only Intel didn't sit on their duffs collecting money off old technology. If someone does invent an incredible new technology that could be produced for, say $0.01/Ghz, do you really think the chip makers would sell it that cheap? Considering they've pretty much proven that people will pay at least $500(cdn) for an e-machine, I think not.
Remember, these were serious scientific predictions made by highly regarded scientists of a certain age. Seeing as it would take several million years just to travel to the other side of our galaxy (unless we reach a signifigant fraction of lightspeed), I think 10 million years is a tad optimistic. Establishing self-sustaining colonies, the kind that can re-create the massive ships needed for thousands of year long journeys, might take far longer than is feasible in the 'short' life of our galaxy. Just because Europeans colonized America in a few hundred years does not mean that space will be anywhere near as easy.
I've seen this argument repeated in various forms, and one thing always gets me: we tend to forget that we are an emerging civilization. We're moving ever closer to a cabled society, and yet, we still have thousands of satellites. As our technology progresses, our detection abilities are just that much more refined. And besides, how much longer until we start seeing public efforts to broadcast REALLY strong radio signals out, just to see if anyone is listening? It's not JUST 1940's tv that is out there, you know.
(Ok, so Contact affected me in more ways than one:)
On a more sci-fi note, how exactly do you think spaceships will communicate? I'd sure hope not by 5,000,000 miles of cat5:)
My Commodore PET (c1977) has a speaker hacked onto one of the serial ports (iirc). POKE and PEEK to your heart's delight! I'm not much of a hardware guru, but damn was this cool:)
but if China were that bad a place to live, I think all the people would move out. Perhaps they want censorship.
I'd suggest that perhaps the boat-loads of immigrants who arrive by the thousands each year in Canada and the USA, after putting up with horrendous conditions during their journey, and spending every last dime they had to do it, would point out the basic flaw in your thinking. Many of these people come from China.
And yes, that young gentleman in Tianneman(sp) square was ever so thrilled to meet the nice Army tank driver, because deep down he just KNEW that the pro-democracy movement was wrong.
Honestly though, the rest of your comments make sense to a degree, but never forget: you'll never know if a man disagrees with something unless he's allowed to tell you. And in China's case, that's often not possible.
And if you believe that, I've got several million 'happy citizens' who wanted to disappear, currently residing 6 feet under in Siberia. They were just so pleased to elect Mr. Stalin that they willingly gave their lives for the 'good of the state'.
Oh, but the USSR lasted ~70 years... sorry, bad analogy:)
In 1998 (read: 3 years ago, which is about 100 years in 'internet time' heh) I subscribed to @home cable service through my local cableco. It was the first consumer service. No options, no competiton. Then came DSL, thru the local telco, of which there is only one. So for the past several years, I've had *2* choices, and only *1* DSL provider.
The cable has been reliable 4mbit/1mbit service, which in my mind means that at any given time I've been able to atain and maintain those speeds, AND the connection is on pretty much all the time. (Side note: my speed has never gone down as more people sign up for cable internet.) The DSL service is a tad slower, along the lines of 1mb/128k, but still a reliable, well above
dial-up connection. Both services since day 1 have cost $40cdn ($30USD) a month, with either a low ($50) or no installation fee. And the respective modems are included, along with a NIC, all at no charge.
The point? Both services are offered by monopolies. Excellent service, reasonable price, and most importantly equal access. If you're in a city of over 10,000 in Canada and can't get broadband, I'd like to hear about it.
I think people in the USA should be a little more concerned with their awful infrastructure and overpopulation, and a bit less concerned about 'evil monopolies'. When done right, monopolies can be a lot better.
(As an added tidbit, the telco has made a promise of some newer, faster service (10mbit or higher, up AND down) by Q4 2003. Not sure if this is 100% legit or not, have to wait and see.)
Slashdot Mirror
Any chance you have a URL with some more info on this? (You can imagine what a Google search on 'band of material' brings up :). Unless you're talking comet debris, and most of that is pretty tiny, I'd be curious as to just where this material is coming from, and how anyone detected it.
Reminds me of a really neat book from 1987, Exit Earth. The solar system is passing through some kind of matter that makes the sun go semi-nova, and to save humanity these big space-arks.. well, read it youself, it touches on some points that you normally don't see in sci-fi disaster novels.
A movie such as the above doesn't deserve a review, and neither does this game. Installing a video game simply should not be the ordeal that many seem to be. 'Move to another computer'??? A review is written so the consumer has an idea of what to expect, BEFORE shelling out $50. To most people, another computer is NOT an option.
Why do we accept such shoddy workmanship from software manufacturers, and when someone points this out, they get flamed: 'I wanna know the pixel depth and texture count, I don't give a damn if I have to re-install Windows 74 times first!'
Not to be too obvious a troll, but really now. Half the comments on this discussion seem to be 'computers discourage children from thinking, and instead they're just regurgitating what they've read'.
Hmm... most of my schooling was done WITHOUT computers being around, and yet for the most part, that's all the first 12 years of it was. Read a book (or maybe the Cliff's notes if you're lazy), change some words, get a B+. Listen to the teacher talk for a few weeks, and write down what s/he said on your exam paper.
The vast majority of grade school is like this. Having or not having a computer really won't change a thing, however what it will do is prepare today's youths for the Real World (tm). How many (white-collar, anyway) jobs today don't use a computer in some fashion?
Maybe not the optimum solution for Uncle Pete in the retirement home, but this *is* 'news for nerds' isn't it? Now if only I wasn't so *nix-impaired, I might be able to keep it from rebooting every week or so :)
Ummm... you've just summed up what IS Slashdot... in its entirety...
Every ISP that I know of uses the same root servers as the rest of us, or if they don't, they'll still be able to resolve .us, .ca and the like. Country-specific domains have been around since almost the beginnig, just that the people in charge never enforced the use of them. .com, .net, and .org just became 'what people use'. When was the last time you've seen a .us domain?
In order for region-specific domains to PROPERLY work, ICANN/verisign/et al have to STOP allowing the use of .com/.net/.org (except maybe multinationals), forcing everyone to use their country specific domains. Unfortunately, the predominant mindset in the USA is 'the internet is American, and the rest of the world can use their country TLD's. This has nothing whatsoever to do with ISP's switching.
Actually, the more massive the probe, the more gravitational attraction there would be between the 2 objects in question. Remember, WE attract the Earth too, just not at any detectable level. However, any additional mass in the probe would negate this ... /me tried to pull out inertia equations from the brain graveyard...
Howabout making the punishment this: take a Word 2000 generated webpage, and turning it into reasonable, unbloated, browser-independant code?
I guarantee you this will stop the hacking :)
Catamarans are double hulled sailboats, small difference :)
What I've never figured out:
1. Musicians (at least in Canada) pretty much fall into 2 categories - the very popular (and therefore not needing this money), or the almost unheard of (and therefore distributing a lot of their music on CD-R's themselves).
2. I use CD-R's for so many different purposes, why exactly does the music industry get money from them? Personally, I buy them by the 100-spindle, and if I've burned 4 music cds over the past year I'd say that's a high estimate.
Whoever managed to put this tax into place, and convince people that it is a valid tax, is either a genius or a sociopath :)
News to me.
(Ok, so Contact affected me in more ways than one :)
On a more sci-fi note, how exactly do you think spaceships will communicate? I'd sure hope not by 5,000,000 miles of cat5 :)
Dunno how they do it, but RealPlayer manages to do this very thing...
Yeah, but what is the Loonies' brain cancer rate?
I'd suggest that perhaps the boat-loads of immigrants who arrive by the thousands each year in Canada and the USA, after putting up with horrendous conditions during their journey, and spending every last dime they had to do it, would point out the basic flaw in your thinking. Many of these people come from China.
And yes, that young gentleman in Tianneman(sp) square was ever so thrilled to meet the nice Army tank driver, because deep down he just KNEW that the pro-democracy movement was wrong.
Honestly though, the rest of your comments make sense to a degree, but never forget: you'll never know if a man disagrees with something unless he's allowed to tell you. And in China's case, that's often not possible.
Oh, but the USSR lasted ~70 years... sorry, bad analogy :)
Hmm... I always thought that this WAS the redeeming content of the internet that we so value.
You obviously haven't looked very hard for information :)
The cable has been reliable 4mbit/1mbit service, which in my mind means that at any given time I've been able to atain and maintain those speeds, AND the connection is on pretty much all the time. (Side note: my speed has never gone down as more people sign up for cable internet.) The DSL service is a tad slower, along the lines of 1mb/128k, but still a reliable, well above dial-up connection. Both services since day 1 have cost $40cdn ($30USD) a month, with either a low ($50) or no installation fee. And the respective modems are included, along with a NIC, all at no charge.
The point? Both services are offered by monopolies. Excellent service, reasonable price, and most importantly equal access. If you're in a city of over 10,000 in Canada and can't get broadband, I'd like to hear about it.
I think people in the USA should be a little more concerned with their awful infrastructure and overpopulation, and a bit less concerned about 'evil monopolies'. When done right, monopolies can be a lot better.
(As an added tidbit, the telco has made a promise of some newer, faster service (10mbit or higher, up AND down) by Q4 2003. Not sure if this is 100% legit or not, have to wait and see.)