Anyone see the Bugs Bunny cartoon (@6:40) where he was working on an assembly line during WW2? He had a little hammer that he would tap bombs with to see if they were good or not. Of course one after another was a dud, until finally...
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Isn't 50kbps really, really fast for 1969? I was expecting something more like 1200 baud at most. I remember how big a deal it was in the late 1980s that my 2400 baud modem supported MNP level 5 (compression and error correction), and then lusting after the 14.4 modems in 1990. I remember an engineer at Loral (defense aerospace contractor) in Akron in 1989 telling me that 56k modems were impossible, and that they couldn't even reliably sustain 56k on the LAN across campus. So I was rather surprised to see this sort of throughput in 1969. What also doesn't make sense is how could they begin to utilize 50kbps when their hardware couldn't even handle 3 bytes of data, or when computers only had 12k of memory? Just doesn't seem accurate.
"We will be able to answer quite rigorously with the new [Neanderthal genome] sequence."
"Due to the length of time that has elapsed since Neanderthals became extinct, any trace of their DNA in modern humans could have been diluted below detectable levels. Paabo hopes to overcome this by scanning the Neanderthal genome for the genes of modern humans."
Okay, he hopes he will be able to overcome this technical limitation. So in other words, the statement that they had sex is just his personal opinion?
A bus can drive anywhere. A trolley (as in a real trolley) draws its power continuously from wires. Thus it can only follow predefined routes that require extensive (and expensive and dangerous) infrastructure. This type of fast-charging capacitor system is sort of like a hybrid combining the best features of autonomous buses and externally powered trolleys.
Why is it named "chembot" when it uses purely mechanical processes for motion? I was expecting compounds exhibiting some sort of electrochemical or electromechanical properties. This robot appears to use an entirely hydraulic system.
We are reaching an era in computing where devices can push audio and video beyond human perception levels. For example, if display resolution were increased, a person would not be able to tell the difference visually from typical viewing distance. Or if color depth were increased to 64 bit over 32 bit could that even be perceived? I'm not saying we're there yet, but we are quickly approaching that point.
Once that happens then what will be the next generation anything? It will be a matter of small refinements, novelties and exclusiveness of titles.
Indeed, they see many things meant to be secret, like men having sex with sheep and goats in the deep of night. I first heard this from infantry soldiers and took it as rumor, but at Bagram I met a civilian contractor who works in UAV operations. "All the time," he said. "They just don't think we can see them."
Why would a single developer (aka $100 fee) submit dozens or hundreds of apps at one time? With a 2 week turnaround it would make sense to only allow a handful (5?) apps to be submitted and waiting for approval by a single developer at once.
The "problem" is that the current would not be variable. The amount of electrons produced would be consistent (or perhaps slowly reduce as the elements decay). The article says that it contains a "million times as much charge as standard batteries". True, but it might take 100 years of decay to produce those electrons. So this would be fine for something that draws a consistent amount of current, like a wristwatch (not counting the backlight), but for most applications this power source would have to be coupled with an actual battery or capacitor to store the continuously emitted electrons for use on demand, or to provide bursts of current, etc.
So this would be more like a trickle battery charger than an actual battery.
There's lots of useless things already, religion being the first one that comes to my mind.
I like how you just sort of slipped that in there. Can you explain what that hell that has to do with public schools? Are you saying that history should be completely rewritten to ignore religion? Like most slashdot readers, I spent a lot of time in public schools, and of all the massive amounts of time wasted, I can't recall a single minute devoted to religion.
This is silly. There would be so many other bottlenecks on a mobile device of this nature that the speed of the connectivity isn't an issue. I bet the iPod can't even consume (let alone serve) data at 802.11g speeds.
It is government sponsored. While the BBC is factual, trustworthy, and all that, other state sponsored media are not. Imagine being stuck with the Chinese, Iranian or North Korean state sponsored news organizations.
Also, I find it funny how so many people on Slashdot can cry fowl that all blank CD sales in Canada include a tax that goes to the recording industry (on the assumption that someone will illegally copy music onto the media), while it's okay for everyone that purchases a TV in Britain to have to support the BBC, whether they actually watch it or not.
Just because the BBC happens to be a decent news source does not mean that its funding or distribution is an ideal situation.
Man, I'm glad this specifically legislates texting, otherwise it could interfere with my playing Sudoku on my blackberry while driving. Or reading slashdot.org. Or watching YouTube videos. Or reading an ebook. Or any of the million other distracting things I can do on any mobile device that is not texting.
Re:TFA updated with response from Reverb
on
Gaming the App Store
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
3. 1 person=1 iTunes account=1 credit card. We do not have hundreds of accounts to âoetrawlâ through iTunes â" itâ(TM)s simply untrue. We have 10 staff members who choose to post on the games when and if they have played the game. We have to buy and play the game in order to have an opinion.
Yes, but this does not apply to free games. Anyone who knows jack about the AppStore knows that it is the free ("lite") versions of the games that really drive traffic and game popularity. That is what people can download and try without committing to a purchase. If they like the game then they will purchase the full version. Anyone note the cause/effect there? If they like the game they will purchase - thus they will likely give the full, not-free version of the game a good review anyway - they've already tried it, and they wouldn't have bought it if they didn't like it!
So the real value is to astroturf the free, lite versions, because that is where the most download traffic is at. That can be done without purchasing. So Reverb's argument is moot. They very well could have many hundreds of accounts that their 10 staff members use to astroturf the lite versions.
"a major one for some people will be Exchange support"
Maybe I look at things differently, but why should users have to upgrade their entire OS (from 10.5, which is an extremely modern OS already) to support something like Exchange?
That's because the parent is oversimplifying things. Voltage is how energetic the individual electrons are, and the amperage is how many electrons are flowing. That's why wattage, a measurement of power, is the product of the amperage and the voltage. Your electricity bill is based on wattage, or how much energy you consumed, regardless of whether it was comprised of 110 or 220 volts. You can't determine how much work the electricity can do based on only voltage or amperage. In this case, "work" is defined as the amount of electrical interference or damage to the heart to cause death. Thus there has to be a proper combination of both wattage and amperage.
Further, you can't go by just wattage alone. A single electron with 1,000,000 volts isn't going to kill you. Nor will an astronomical number of electrons at 1 volt. The static shock you get from shuffling your feet on carpet is very energetic - thousands of volts - however there simply isn't enough of those electrons (amperage) to do real damage. Here's a really poor analogy from a college Chem 2 class (originally having nothing to do with electricity). Say you want to break a glass window, so you throw a million cotton balls at it, one after the other, until you exceeded the amount of power required to break the glass. Of course it won't break, even though you exerted enough energy, because it wasn't concentrated. Similarly, you can have a lot of amperage with low voltage and it is not dangerous, because the electrons do not have the energy to overcome the resistance of the skin. So the individual electrons have to have a minimum amount of energy to be able to traverse within the body, then you need a certain amount of them to interfere with the body's natural electrical system, or to do enough raw tissue damage that muscles, etc, are damaged in bulk.
I don't know a lot about the intricacies of the legal system, but why is the client penalized for the behavior or mistakes of the attorney? Does the client dictate or approve every word that comes out of the attorneys mouth in court? If the attorney used misleading wording then shouldn't the attorney be censured or fined and not have that penalty included in the actual judgment?
Maybe this isn't applicable at all, but what if an attorney represented someone guilty of committing a crime, and the judge tacked a few extra years onto the sentence because he didn't like the attorney or what they said?
NASA does super cool work, but they have billions of dollars and an army of PhD's at their disposal. We like MacGyver because he solves problems with whatever he's given. iPhone developers are given a 412 MHz ARM processor, 128 MB of RAM, a 3-axis accelerometer, and a touch screen.
I think John Carmack and Co. are excited about developing for the iPhone because it's a fresh technical challenge for them.
I'm being a cynic, but they aren't in this for the challenge. Three actual reasons: 1) Over 30 million iPhones / iPod Touches sold - a large customer base to purchase software 2) Tightly controlled, single point application sales and distribution system (iTunes app store) 3) Powerful mobile hardware with FPU and GPU (relative to other mobile gaming consoles - DS, PSP, etc)
I'm sorry, but you're gushing because Wolf3D doesn't suffer from "stuttering gameplay and sluggish controls" on a 400 Mhz device (with hardware FPU) and an OpenGL ES compliant GPU? Wolf3D was released in 1992, and designed to run on a 286! If it wasn't as smooth as silk then either Carmack or Apple would suck immensely. The iPhone can easily handle at least Quake 2 level engines, which is 3 generations more advanced than Wolf3D.
As someone who ported Wolf3D, Quake 1 and Quake 2 to Pocket PC over half a decade ago, I think Carmack is a bit late in entering the mobile arena with his engines. Back then everything was 100% software rendering with no FPU, requiring conversion to fixed point math to have a respectable framerate. I will say that first person shooters are right at home with devices with an actual D-Pad and touchscreen (classic PDA form factor, Nintendo DS). The D-Pad is used for motion (forward / backward and strafing), and the touchpad controls mouse-look. Firing can be an problem, but many of the Pocket PC devices allowed you to push straight in on the D-Pad for "Enter", this providing a perfect integrated fire button.
iPhone has some good capabilities, but it is also severely handicapped in certain areas, which is why Carmack produced light gun shooter, sans light gun, instead of an actual FPS.
Slashdot Mirror
"Any site that allows files to be uploaded could be vulnerable"
"Every user with Flash installed is vulnerable"
So who is vulnerable? The server or the client?
Anyone see the Bugs Bunny cartoon (@6:40) where he was working on an assembly line during WW2? He had a little hammer that he would tap bombs with to see if they were good or not. Of course one after another was a dud, until finally...
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Isn't 50kbps really, really fast for 1969? I was expecting something more like 1200 baud at most. I remember how big a deal it was in the late 1980s that my 2400 baud modem supported MNP level 5 (compression and error correction), and then lusting after the 14.4 modems in 1990. I remember an engineer at Loral (defense aerospace contractor) in Akron in 1989 telling me that 56k modems were impossible, and that they couldn't even reliably sustain 56k on the LAN across campus. So I was rather surprised to see this sort of throughput in 1969. What also doesn't make sense is how could they begin to utilize 50kbps when their hardware couldn't even handle 3 bytes of data, or when computers only had 12k of memory? Just doesn't seem accurate.
"I'm sure that they had sex"
What evidence? The article says:
"We will be able to answer quite rigorously with the new [Neanderthal genome] sequence."
"Due to the length of time that has elapsed since Neanderthals became extinct, any trace of their DNA in modern humans could have been diluted below detectable levels. Paabo hopes to overcome this by scanning the Neanderthal genome for the genes of modern humans."
Okay, he hopes he will be able to overcome this technical limitation. So in other words, the statement that they had sex is just his personal opinion?
A bus can drive anywhere. A trolley (as in a real trolley) draws its power continuously from wires. Thus it can only follow predefined routes that require extensive (and expensive and dangerous) infrastructure. This type of fast-charging capacitor system is sort of like a hybrid combining the best features of autonomous buses and externally powered trolleys.
Why is it named "chembot" when it uses purely mechanical processes for motion? I was expecting compounds exhibiting some sort of electrochemical or electromechanical properties. This robot appears to use an entirely hydraulic system.
We are reaching an era in computing where devices can push audio and video beyond human perception levels. For example, if display resolution were increased, a person would not be able to tell the difference visually from typical viewing distance. Or if color depth were increased to 64 bit over 32 bit could that even be perceived? I'm not saying we're there yet, but we are quickly approaching that point.
Once that happens then what will be the next generation anything? It will be a matter of small refinements, novelties and exclusiveness of titles.
From page 4:
Indeed, they see many things meant to be secret, like men having sex with sheep and goats in the deep of night. I first heard this from infantry soldiers and took it as rumor, but at Bagram I met a civilian contractor who works in UAV operations. "All the time," he said. "They just don't think we can see them."
Why would a single developer (aka $100 fee) submit dozens or hundreds of apps at one time? With a 2 week turnaround it would make sense to only allow a handful (5?) apps to be submitted and waiting for approval by a single developer at once.
The "problem" is that the current would not be variable. The amount of electrons produced would be consistent (or perhaps slowly reduce as the elements decay). The article says that it contains a "million times as much charge as standard batteries". True, but it might take 100 years of decay to produce those electrons.
So this would be fine for something that draws a consistent amount of current, like a wristwatch (not counting the backlight), but for most applications this power source would have to be coupled with an actual battery or capacitor to store the continuously emitted electrons for use on demand, or to provide bursts of current, etc.
So this would be more like a trickle battery charger than an actual battery.
There's lots of useless things already, religion being the first one that comes to my mind.
I like how you just sort of slipped that in there. Can you explain what that hell that has to do with public schools? Are you saying that history should be completely rewritten to ignore religion? Like most slashdot readers, I spent a lot of time in public schools, and of all the massive amounts of time wasted, I can't recall a single minute devoted to religion.
This is silly. There would be so many other bottlenecks on a mobile device of this nature that the speed of the connectivity isn't an issue. I bet the iPod can't even consume (let alone serve) data at 802.11g speeds.
It is government sponsored. While the BBC is factual, trustworthy, and all that, other state sponsored media are not. Imagine being stuck with the Chinese, Iranian or North Korean state sponsored news organizations.
Also, I find it funny how so many people on Slashdot can cry fowl that all blank CD sales in Canada include a tax that goes to the recording industry (on the assumption that someone will illegally copy music onto the media), while it's okay for everyone that purchases a TV in Britain to have to support the BBC, whether they actually watch it or not.
Just because the BBC happens to be a decent news source does not mean that its funding or distribution is an ideal situation.
Man, I'm glad this specifically legislates texting, otherwise it could interfere with my playing Sudoku on my blackberry while driving. Or reading slashdot.org. Or watching YouTube videos. Or reading an ebook. Or any of the million other distracting things I can do on any mobile device that is not texting.
3. 1 person=1 iTunes account=1 credit card. We do not have hundreds of accounts to âoetrawlâ through iTunes â" itâ(TM)s simply untrue. We have 10 staff members who choose to post on the games when and if they have played the game. We have to buy and play the game in order to have an opinion.
Yes, but this does not apply to free games. Anyone who knows jack about the AppStore knows that it is the free ("lite") versions of the games that really drive traffic and game popularity. That is what people can download and try without committing to a purchase. If they like the game then they will purchase the full version. Anyone note the cause/effect there? If they like the game they will purchase - thus they will likely give the full, not-free version of the game a good review anyway - they've already tried it, and they wouldn't have bought it if they didn't like it!
So the real value is to astroturf the free, lite versions, because that is where the most download traffic is at. That can be done without purchasing. So Reverb's argument is moot. They very well could have many hundreds of accounts that their 10 staff members use to astroturf the lite versions.
"a major one for some people will be Exchange support"
Maybe I look at things differently, but why should users have to upgrade their entire OS (from 10.5, which is an extremely modern OS already) to support something like Exchange?
Y'all know that £20 isn't really half as much spending power as $40, right?
That's because the parent is oversimplifying things. Voltage is how energetic the individual electrons are, and the amperage is how many electrons are flowing. That's why wattage, a measurement of power, is the product of the amperage and the voltage. Your electricity bill is based on wattage, or how much energy you consumed, regardless of whether it was comprised of 110 or 220 volts. You can't determine how much work the electricity can do based on only voltage or amperage. In this case, "work" is defined as the amount of electrical interference or damage to the heart to cause death. Thus there has to be a proper combination of both wattage and amperage.
Further, you can't go by just wattage alone.
A single electron with 1,000,000 volts isn't going to kill you. Nor will an astronomical number of electrons at 1 volt. The static shock you get from shuffling your feet on carpet is very energetic - thousands of volts - however there simply isn't enough of those electrons (amperage) to do real damage. Here's a really poor analogy from a college Chem 2 class (originally having nothing to do with electricity). Say you want to break a glass window, so you throw a million cotton balls at it, one after the other, until you exceeded the amount of power required to break the glass. Of course it won't break, even though you exerted enough energy, because it wasn't concentrated. Similarly, you can have a lot of amperage with low voltage and it is not dangerous, because the electrons do not have the energy to overcome the resistance of the skin. So the individual electrons have to have a minimum amount of energy to be able to traverse within the body, then you need a certain amount of them to interfere with the body's natural electrical system, or to do enough raw tissue damage that muscles, etc, are damaged in bulk.
Name them after Star Trek ships, races, planets and character names. You are obviously not a true CIS geek.
I don't know a lot about the intricacies of the legal system, but why is the client penalized for the behavior or mistakes of the attorney? Does the client dictate or approve every word that comes out of the attorneys mouth in court? If the attorney used misleading wording then shouldn't the attorney be censured or fined and not have that penalty included in the actual judgment?
Maybe this isn't applicable at all, but what if an attorney represented someone guilty of committing a crime, and the judge tacked a few extra years onto the sentence because he didn't like the attorney or what they said?
Embarq does the same thing with their DSL:
http://search.embarq.com/index.php?origURL=http://lkwkerwer.com/
Some EA marketing guy has figured out how to manipulate Slashdot's Firehose.
NASA does super cool work, but they have billions of dollars and an army of PhD's at their disposal. We like MacGyver because he solves problems with whatever he's given. iPhone developers are given a 412 MHz ARM processor, 128 MB of RAM, a 3-axis accelerometer, and a touch screen.
I think John Carmack and Co. are excited about developing for the iPhone because it's a fresh technical challenge for them.
I'm being a cynic, but they aren't in this for the challenge. Three actual reasons:
1) Over 30 million iPhones / iPod Touches sold - a large customer base to purchase software
2) Tightly controlled, single point application sales and distribution system (iTunes app store)
3) Powerful mobile hardware with FPU and GPU (relative to other mobile gaming consoles - DS, PSP, etc)
Nearly a decade ago this type of thing was a challenge , but now it's quite ordinary.
I'm sorry, but you're gushing because Wolf3D doesn't suffer from "stuttering gameplay and sluggish controls" on a 400 Mhz device (with hardware FPU) and an OpenGL ES compliant GPU? Wolf3D was released in 1992, and designed to run on a 286! If it wasn't as smooth as silk then either Carmack or Apple would suck immensely. The iPhone can easily handle at least Quake 2 level engines, which is 3 generations more advanced than Wolf3D.
As someone who ported Wolf3D, Quake 1 and Quake 2 to Pocket PC over half a decade ago, I think Carmack is a bit late in entering the mobile arena with his engines. Back then everything was 100% software rendering with no FPU, requiring conversion to fixed point math to have a respectable framerate. I will say that first person shooters are right at home with devices with an actual D-Pad and touchscreen (classic PDA form factor, Nintendo DS). The D-Pad is used for motion (forward / backward and strafing), and the touchpad controls mouse-look. Firing can be an problem, but many of the Pocket PC devices allowed you to push straight in on the D-Pad for "Enter", this providing a perfect integrated fire button.
iPhone has some good capabilities, but it is also severely handicapped in certain areas, which is why Carmack produced light gun shooter, sans light gun, instead of an actual FPS.
Truly amazing. Now are we going to see Slashdot stories for the other 1,000 iPhone apps that are just as useful?