My Powerbook's got a DVD-R drive that apparently could be a 2X writer and support DVD-RW, but Apple's drivers only support 1X writing and no RW whatsoever. Now this. Why does Apple deliberately cripple its hardware?
Interference is like being at a party: There are a lot of people talking, and your ears hear in all directions, so you have to be near the person you're trying to talk to.
The amazing thing, though, is that if someone you weren't listening to, halfway across the room, says your name, you hear it immediately. You can usually hear the conversation, too, if your attention's been drawn to it.
This attention mechanism in the human brain is basically very good SDR (Squishyware-Defined Radio), and provides a good analogy for real SDR: with enough intelligence in the reciever, even in a room crowded with noise, you can pick out the conversation that's of interest to you.
Unless you are saying that because of techniques like WiFi, other data carriers should be given a huge compensation from the government? If so- you're nuts.
I'm not really talking about WiFi. There are a bunch of new technologies that are similar to WiFi, but which actually increase bandwidth when there are a lot of nodes in the mesh (I'm not explaining this very well). The point is, they're fundamentally incompatable with current spectrum usage. The high number of low-power transmitters will cause a level of noise and interference that would be unacceptable to an FM broadcaster. That means that if we want the FCC to open up the spectrum that is currently under restrictive licencing, all the incumbent broadcasters will have to ditch their current technology and upgrade. That's the sort of R&D that I think the governement should provide money for.
I think that this article ignores the fact that bandwidth is not an unlimited resource. While information wants to be free, and all that jazz, we always tend to forget that it does take actual money to transmit all this information. The Internet protocol is just an agreement, and I agree witht the articles' conclusion that it will lose value if we try to add value to it. But that protocol runs over a real network, that definitely gains value as value (e.g., more and fatter pipes) is added to it.
This especially applies to the airwaves. While new technologies (e.g. wireless mesh, ultrawideband, etc.) promise to deliver massively more bandwidth/MHz than the old analog broadcast methods, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have the right to summarily revoke the incumbant telco/broadcasters' rights to use their alloted spectrum without interference. These companies deserve to at least be compensated for the massive amounts of money they spend secureing their specturm licences, and for the infrastructure improvements they're going to have to make to take advantage of the new technologies.
I apologize to any Native Americans, and anyone else, that read this...
A Native American warrior was gaining status in his tribe, and the time came when he took a wife. He went out and killed a bison, and presented the skin to her for her bed. She bore him a son.
The warrior continued to gain status in his tribe, and soon he took a second wife. He went out with his bow and arrow and brought down a mountain lion, and gave the skin to his new wife for her bead. She bore him two sons.
Finally, the warrior became the chief of his tribe and took a thrid wife. For her wedding bed, he went out and killed a hippo, and presented its skin to her. She bore him three sons.
In conclusion, the sons of the squaw on the hippopatomous are equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.
...and I'm loving it. First Mac I've had in about 10 years (my first computer was a Mac Plus - 8" screen, 1M RAM, no HD). It's gorgeous, fast, and just plain well-designed.
About the only thing bad I can say about it is that the keyboard layout's kind of lame. Considering the amount of room made avaliable by the form factor of the LCD screen (which is beautiful), you would think they could manage to sqeeze in pgup, pgdn, and delete keys without having to do fn-key combos (fn-up, fn-down, and fn-backspace, respectively). Also, I hate using the one-button trackpad, but that's a beef with Macs in general, and easily fixed by plugging in my Logitech trackball. Haven't had a chance to burn DVDs yet, but it's nice to have the option there.
According to current theory, no information can be reliably transmitted faster than light. IIRC (and that's a big if), here's the argument: supposed you've got two quantum particles with entangled spin. You can then separate them, say, by sending one of them to Mars with the manned mission. The thing is, you can't actually transmit any information over these particles, because you can't find out what the spin of one is without observing it, and that ruins the entanglement.
I know that argument isn't really complete, and I know that the full thing is explained in the April 2000 issue of Scientific American, but I don't have the magazine handy and sciam.com won't let you view articles that far back without paying. I'm sure if you're curious, though, you could find it in the library.
I remember when I got a 100M (external) harddrive for my MacPlus. I wondered how I could ever use all that space. I mean, I transferred all my 720k floppies onto it, and that was only like 20M. What was all that space useful for?
Apply to college now. Definately. Do it. However, a lot of schools will allow you to defer your acceptance once you're in.
I skipped a grade in elementary school, so I considered taking a year off before college; I figured I would be starting college with kids my age. I ended up going right to school, and I'm glad I did, but it's not for everyone. We I was still considering it, though, I talked to a bunch of people who told me that once a school has accepted you, you can call them up and ask them to let you take a year off before you come. As long as you have something interesting planned (work experience, travel, community service, something that will enrich your life), most schools will say OK, and you won't have to worry about applying again.
The bridge is marked out in Smoots. IIRC, a few drunk guys were walking around the bridge at night when one of them, named Smoot, passed out. The rest of them used him to measure the bridge, placing him down, marking one Smoot at his head, and moving his feet to the previous mark. I don't really remember quite how many Smoots long the bridge is, but I think it's around 120-something.
Alternative medicine is most certainly not all a placebo effect, and to say as much is to completely disregard the principles of science. While much homeopathy certainly bunk, there are a lot of treatments that may have real medical merit, which we simply do not realize yet, and have yet to be studied scientifically.
I saw an article a few years ago, I think it was in Scientific American, about a researcher who placed a number of volunteers in an fMRI and had an acupunturist stimulate what he held to be a "vision point" in the subjects' foot. Amazingly enough, there was a sigificant change in activity of the subjects' visual cortex. However, in some people, the amount of activity increased, while in others it decreased. When this was pointed out to the acupunturist, he said, "Of course. Yin and Yang." He then proceed to correctly identify with something like 90% accuracy which subjects' activity went up and which ones went down.
The moral of this story is don't discount what you don't understand; it's unscientifc.
I loved the books, and I thought the movie was great fun, but I do not think it was a good movie. The movie would not have made any sense had you not read the books first. The action was hurried from one scene to the next, and there was very little character development.
That said, the movie was a very good visual imagining of the books; it serves, more than anything, as an illustrated guide to Harry Potter. If you already know all the characters, and understand the action, then it's very entertaining to see it all acted out. All of the casting choices were excellent, and the visuals were wonderful (excepting maybe the Dark Forest; I've been in darker forests than that). The three things I missed most: "I'd like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you", Peeves the Poltergeist, and the logic puzzle with the potions that Hermione solved.
Slashdot Mirror
...hundreds of gamers move above the arctic circle to take advantage of the midnight sun.
The last update of the bills made them look like Monopoly money. Now, they're just plain ugly. Come on, I mean: peach !?
My Powerbook's got a DVD-R drive that apparently could be a 2X writer and support DVD-RW, but Apple's drivers only support 1X writing and no RW whatsoever. Now this. Why does Apple deliberately cripple its hardware?
Interference is like being at a party: There are a lot of people talking, and your ears hear in all directions, so you have to be near the person you're trying to talk to.
The amazing thing, though, is that if someone you weren't listening to, halfway across the room, says your name, you hear it immediately. You can usually hear the conversation, too, if your attention's been drawn to it.
This attention mechanism in the human brain is basically very good SDR (Squishyware-Defined Radio), and provides a good analogy for real SDR: with enough intelligence in the reciever, even in a room crowded with noise, you can pick out the conversation that's of interest to you.
Unless you are saying that because of techniques like WiFi, other data carriers should be given a huge compensation from the government? If so- you're nuts.
I'm not really talking about WiFi. There are a bunch of new technologies that are similar to WiFi, but which actually increase bandwidth when there are a lot of nodes in the mesh (I'm not explaining this very well). The point is, they're fundamentally incompatable with current spectrum usage. The high number of low-power transmitters will cause a level of noise and interference that would be unacceptable to an FM broadcaster. That means that if we want the FCC to open up the spectrum that is currently under restrictive licencing, all the incumbent broadcasters will have to ditch their current technology and upgrade. That's the sort of R&D that I think the governement should provide money for.
I think that this article ignores the fact that bandwidth is not an unlimited resource. While information wants to be free, and all that jazz, we always tend to forget that it does take actual money to transmit all this information. The Internet protocol is just an agreement, and I agree witht the articles' conclusion that it will lose value if we try to add value to it. But that protocol runs over a real network, that definitely gains value as value (e.g., more and fatter pipes) is added to it.
This especially applies to the airwaves. While new technologies (e.g. wireless mesh, ultrawideband, etc.) promise to deliver massively more bandwidth/MHz than the old analog broadcast methods, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have the right to summarily revoke the incumbant telco/broadcasters' rights to use their alloted spectrum without interference. These companies deserve to at least be compensated for the massive amounts of money they spend secureing their specturm licences, and for the infrastructure improvements they're going to have to make to take advantage of the new technologies.
I apologize to any Native Americans, and anyone else, that read this...
A Native American warrior was gaining status in his tribe, and the time came when he took a wife. He went out and killed a bison, and presented the skin to her for her bed. She bore him a son.
The warrior continued to gain status in his tribe, and soon he took a second wife. He went out with his bow and arrow and brought down a mountain lion, and gave the skin to his new wife for her bead. She bore him two sons.
Finally, the warrior became the chief of his tribe and took a thrid wife. For her wedding bed, he went out and killed a hippo, and presented its skin to her. She bore him three sons.
In conclusion, the sons of the squaw on the hippopatomous are equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.
...and I'm loving it. First Mac I've had in about 10 years (my first computer was a Mac Plus - 8" screen, 1M RAM, no HD). It's gorgeous, fast, and just plain well-designed.
About the only thing bad I can say about it is that the keyboard layout's kind of lame. Considering the amount of room made avaliable by the form factor of the LCD screen (which is beautiful), you would think they could manage to sqeeze in pgup, pgdn, and delete keys without having to do fn-key combos (fn-up, fn-down, and fn-backspace, respectively). Also, I hate using the one-button trackpad, but that's a beef with Macs in general, and easily fixed by plugging in my Logitech trackball. Haven't had a chance to burn DVDs yet, but it's nice to have the option there.
According to current theory, no information can be reliably transmitted faster than light. IIRC (and that's a big if), here's the argument: supposed you've got two quantum particles with entangled spin. You can then separate them, say, by sending one of them to Mars with the manned mission. The thing is, you can't actually transmit any information over these particles, because you can't find out what the spin of one is without observing it, and that ruins the entanglement.
I know that argument isn't really complete, and I know that the full thing is explained in the April 2000 issue of Scientific American, but I don't have the magazine handy and sciam.com won't let you view articles that far back without paying. I'm sure if you're curious, though, you could find it in the library.
I remember when I got a 100M (external) harddrive for my MacPlus. I wondered how I could ever use all that space. I mean, I transferred all my 720k floppies onto it, and that was only like 20M. What was all that space useful for?
Apply to college now. Definately. Do it. However, a lot of schools will allow you to defer your acceptance once you're in.
I skipped a grade in elementary school, so I considered taking a year off before college; I figured I would be starting college with kids my age. I ended up going right to school, and I'm glad I did, but it's not for everyone. We I was still considering it, though, I talked to a bunch of people who told me that once a school has accepted you, you can call them up and ask them to let you take a year off before you come. As long as you have something interesting planned (work experience, travel, community service, something that will enrich your life), most schools will say OK, and you won't have to worry about applying again.
It's apparently suffering from the todhsals effect.
Wardriving,
Warwalking
Warchalking...
Warhopscotch
Warsitting
Wardrinking (If there's a glass with a coaster on top of it on the bar, there's an open WLAN)
WarSegwaying
Wargeocaching
The bridge is marked out in Smoots. IIRC, a few drunk guys were walking around the bridge at night when one of them, named Smoot, passed out. The rest of them used him to measure the bridge, placing him down, marking one Smoot at his head, and moving his feet to the previous mark. I don't really remember quite how many Smoots long the bridge is, but I think it's around 120-something.
I saw an article a few years ago, I think it was in Scientific American, about a researcher who placed a number of volunteers in an fMRI and had an acupunturist stimulate what he held to be a "vision point" in the subjects' foot. Amazingly enough, there was a sigificant change in activity of the subjects' visual cortex. However, in some people, the amount of activity increased, while in others it decreased. When this was pointed out to the acupunturist, he said, "Of course. Yin and Yang." He then proceed to correctly identify with something like 90% accuracy which subjects' activity went up and which ones went down.
The moral of this story is don't discount what you don't understand; it's unscientifc.
That said, the movie was a very good visual imagining of the books; it serves, more than anything, as an illustrated guide to Harry Potter. If you already know all the characters, and understand the action, then it's very entertaining to see it all acted out. All of the casting choices were excellent, and the visuals were wonderful (excepting maybe the Dark Forest; I've been in darker forests than that). The three things I missed most: "I'd like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you", Peeves the Poltergeist, and the logic puzzle with the potions that Hermione solved.