The key word is 'static' Maglev trains use Electro-magnetic fields (EMFs.) Due to the nature of EMFs it is quite easy to point them in one specific direction, and it is also easy to shield them. Since they pulse with variance in the current they are believed (by some) to cause lukemia and certain other forms of cancer, evidence of this is primarily from studies done on long term exposure to the very high dosage EMF in a power generation plant. There isn't even an iota of proof that power lines, or Monitors produce enough. Maglev trains only produce a strong enough field to effect anyone if they're riding underneath the train, which has a number of other nasty side effects, like contusions, abrasions and permanent hearing loss, should one survive.
Well no wonder I can never pass the phone-in interview then. I've been trying to answer like an honest psychologically balanced person, when they want sharks who'd steal from their own grandmas. Mainly I wanted to work there because when they have MIR on HDs you can get them at or below the cost of an OEM bare drive usually at least with an employee discount. It's nice having extra cables and mounting hardware for when you're trying to hack rounded cables or build something geeky.
You're forgetting one, Super Mario Brothers, The lost levels. While in the US this was on released for the SNES on a multi-game pack cart (with the other three SMB games, and Mario Bros, another NES game), it was released for the Famicom in japan.
Actually, since hydrogen and helium are mostly colorless the sun is 98.7% transparent. Sol's classified as a G2V type star, a yellow dwarf. The light coming from is is white, but it has a yellow temperature, as a blue star also produces white light, but at the higher blue temperature. So obviously the sun is clear, yet people on slashdot would call it white, yellow, or reddish-orange. This is much like the 'what color is the sky' question. The answer is the same, it's clear. Yet people will claim, blue, black, orange, red, purple any color they can ever remember seeing the sky.
A better test case would be to see how many people would agree that posts modded +5 funny were old jokes. I believe you could get a much higher percentage on a question like that.
I presently have around 185 gigs worth of files lying around, on my various systems. True, the largest capacity of any single system is 110 gigs, but I find that there will always be a way to fill up a hard drive. For instance I presently have 6 DVDs worth DeCSSed to HD for network playback, because I hate scratching optical media, and i hate the quality loss of an mpeg-4 conversion. Noone on the internet is trading.vob files, but then i'm not interested in pirating them, just in preserving my investment. so frankly if you could get a 10 terrabyte drive at an affordable price, I'd be in line to get one. Based on the evolution of drive technology, I shoudn't have to wait more than 6-7 years for a 100 fold increase in size either. By then, maaybe mpeg-21 will be standard, and have good quality/bitrates.
So how much money were they asking for and how much did you give them? That page reads like something a poor mind numbed star trek addict would write up. (note: I like star trek and all, but the explanations for how the technology works is mind numbing, in the lack of coherency.) They use all the buzz words, and they try so hard to convince you that unproven (yet not disproven) theories prove that thier product will even work. They claim to have lost funding as a 'result' of 9/11 too. They claim that they can get lasers through a ferroelectric dipolar substrate. Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't ferroelectrics oxidized, crystaline iron? Are they even transparent? They also seem highly prone to material defects, as all crystals are. Anyways, if the company is legit congrats to them for finally bringing holographic storage out of the research phase. However, I'd want to see the 'research team' before I gave them any of My money, If this is just one guy out of his house it is probably a scam. Especially if he's been at it for 14 years like the website seems to say (finally after 14 years etc..)
you mean 1/3rd the weight of a beer. 'three times lighter' is an obfuscated reference to division. Please clean up your code, and avoid obfuscative programming, at least in the open source communtity.
Apparently you haven't been reading the intel 'roadmap' for CPU performance/temperature. they've estimated that within ten years heat dissipation requirements on a CPU will be in the 1000 watt range. Already a modern CPU is almost double the heat displacment of an Easy bake oven. We've all laughed at the guy who cooked an egg on his Athlon, but you do have a good point. the case on a computer would provide more than adequate shielding, not to mention the heat sink. However, even if a 2400 mhz CPU was kicking out 100 watts of microwave energy it still would be barely enough to defrost a chicken. Most of the wasted wattage is converted to heat, not radio or microwave, so truly this is a non-issue.
It's eBay because it's the 'electronic Bay area auction site.' It's really a SF thing, they like including 'Bay' in the name of things there, like the train system which is called Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART.)
Walmart is not best buy, though. Walmart has the fastest distrobution system of ANY retail chain, and they sell more goods per shelf unit than any other retail chain too. I would agree that given a choice I'd always build a PC myself. Still, there is a market for these PCs, or else walmart wouldn't be selling them. The way I see it these PCs are really for 'second time buyers' people who learned from the last PC they owned, and have a copy of OEM windows lying around. If they recyle the old box, or sell it with the drive wiped of all data, they're entitled to use that OEM copy of windows on the 'upgrade' PC they bought. Still, since it violates the EULA, that means they (should) get no tech support from redmond. I guess wal-mart just sees things the obvious way, you can sell without gasoline, as long as they know that they have to buy/bring thier own. but if you have an old car, that still has gas in it, legally you could siphon the gas into your new car. there isn't anything stopping you from doing that, after all. except of course the dealer charging double the going rate might frown on you bringing your own gas can, and insisting on being sold a car without being sold gasoline. Still, they can't legally force you to buy gasoline when you buy a car.
The winmodem issue was Worse than this. the latest OS-less PCs have a chipset that isn't 'auto detected' by XSetup, yet clearly does work, (for 2-d) if you pick the right driver manually. I have no quible with them using newer GPUs on the mobo, even if it causes hicups with Xfree. anyone actually installing linux on this has read a few sites, and will turn to those to figure it out. Microsoft has always tried to make the OEM versions of windows only run on the hardware the specific vendor supplied. They know that when the OS can be sold as a seperate component they'll loose aftermarket value. People will buy new PCs, then sell the legit copy to someone else, and maybe not delete the copy on the Pc they bought. And if they ever had problems with the system they'd call techsupport and demand a new CD because they 'lost' the old one. And remember, while reselling software you've installed is immoral, and illegal, it isn't a Criminal offense until you've traded $5,000 worth in goods over a 9 month period of time. That means they can't get any help from the government tracking you down. This is why they've got 1-800 anti piracy numbers, because anonymous tipsters is the only way they can go after 'every' software pirate. They then have to drag you through civil court without any means of gathering evedince against you, because as I've said, you haven't commited a criminal offence. Should they manage to come after you due to an anonymous tipster, and they 'lie' to the poliece to get warrents to search your house and computer, then you can take them to court in a counter suit, because they illegially inlisted the aid of the police to harrass you. you can even sue the police for wrongful search and seizure. Without evidence they just can't win in civil court, and without partcipiting in a criminal act, the police can't help them obtain the evidence they need to sue you. So one the cat is out of the bag there is nothing in the world microsoft can do to stop people from buying a Dell PC and then reslling that OEM windows copy, as a 'mail-in rebate' kinda deal. while still using it. Obviously you should be able to resell used copies of windows, afterall I've converted many PCs to linux or FreeBSD. But once you make it legal to do that everyone who lacks an ounce of scruples will be selling the oem copy of windows on e-bay. That would make the oem copy worth about $3, and kill the market for $399 'retail box full version' $199 'upgrade' version market... because the OEM version Is a full version. I guess I've gotten sidetracked enough for now. Micrsoft would loose some profitability if it became legal to resell OEM copies, and more OEMs would support linux if the licensing issues were finally resolved in a sane matter. EULAs are really the bane of the modern era, they've gone from being disclaimers of no warrenty (the original intent) to becoming a binding contractual agreement between the end user and the software company. Since that was not the spirit of the law the supreme court needs to come down hard on the EULA and make them completly non-binding, and that breaking them simply ends your relationship with the software company. EG: you break the EULA and they don't have to provide tech support. that's it... it's meant to be a non-binding agreement in the first place.
the funny thing about words is that if you take five random people off the street and ask them what a particular word means, you'll get five different answers. The longer a word has been around the more stable the definition becomes, especially if no one uses it again. Part of the reason why latin is the language of science was the theory that as a dead language everyone learning it would learn the same meanings to the words, and avoid confusion when using latin to define something. Now I'd been to slashdot several times before I ever heard the word blog, but when I did hear it, it seemed to be primarily for personal diaries, like you said. Still, when I decided writing html was too much like work, and evaluated blog options for my server, it quickly became apparent that the entire blog phenomenon is built off of people either trying to be like slashdot, or trying to be as different from slashdot as possible.
Technically, this is one of many updates on this story. They're now finally providing DSL service to everyone, and thus they've 'succeded.' Also, they have nice graphs that show everytime the servers get slashdotted, which is nice. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had graphs like this so we could get an idea of how much bandwith is really needed to avoid a slashdotting? They've got a T-1 for the DSLAM/webserver. Which is obviously not enough.
nothing... a simple redirect page can force the gopher link to be opened without the user even being asked to click anything. Not to mention javascript. Anything that allows all those pop-up and pop-under ads can just as easily open a gopher link.
You are correct that the backpack isn't twitching, but rather being slightly stabalized by the gyroscopic forces. However, to an average college student, the slight stabilization effect of carrying a spinning HD inside a backpack would make it seem to twitch with every step. This is because the student is actually forcing the gyroscopically stablized backpack into an irregular path by walking. The iPod as mentioned features a PC-Card form Factor HD, instead of a laptop, or conventional drive used in most other HD based mp3 players, thus giving it an advantage over the others. It seems to twitch less because the platter is too small to generate enough gyroscopic forces to stablize the mass of a backpack. Clearly the only solution to this problem is to use a platter that lacks enough mass to cause any human-noticable gyroscopic forces.
Hobbyists can meet the quality of modern games easily, almost every modern commercial game I've played has crashed on me, outside of id software games. As far as 'well done' graphics goes, that too can be matched, however, to get that kind of artwork quality. However, that picture is basically only a hair better than Warcraft II. A quite old game, as anyone who's been waiting for 7 years for Warcraft III can tell you. However, I was as a hobyist working on graphics for an RPG that would have had better 2-d graphics than any commercial game, except the project fell apart. Of course, RPGs moved to 3-d real-time rendered polygons with pre-renedered backgrounds, so there wouldn't have been any parallel, until bladur's gate. And I was working on those level of graphics in 96, as a hobbyist. The problem is that hobbyists move on, and the ones that stick to it, don't really care that they aren't on the cutting edge.
I've been using MS Natural clone keyboards for a long time. Do they really help? Maybe, maybe not. I also switched from using a mouse to using touchpads. This helped me a lot too. To this date using a 'normal' mouse for more than 30 minutes leaves my wrist throbbing. I can barely type on a normal keyboard anymore, unless it's on a laptop. I also type less now, so it's likely that the keyboard has made no substantial difference. Changing my mouse has had very easy to determine results. Also, my wrists tend to hurt after many hours of any intense video gaming, so don't think video game players don't get RSI.
4,000,000 listeners off a single 100,000 watt antenna? where do you live anyways? I haven't heard of any single radio station that can claim 4 million listeners, the weekly top 40 which is run on thousands of stations is still in the tens of millions of listeners. Besides which, radio does have a saturation point. Every large object can reflect or absorb that radio signal, so that there are shadows, or possibly echos. Not to mention static that can interupt the signal.
I would like to fix your qoutes... "Give me OS Liberty, or give me Blue Screen Of Death" and "I rerget that I have but one CPU with which to run my OS" and one of my own... "zero if by CD, one if by network"
That would be an urban legend. While some companies (sega's DreamCast, Microsoft X-box) have been sold below-cost, in general, most consoles sell for a profit, over production cost. The confusion in this is that there is development costs, including chip design, which in the case of the PS2 can run into astronomical amounts. However, over the cost of production, sony has been making money from day one on the sale of PS2. Nintendo has done the same with all it's consoles too. True, it often takes years and millions of console sales to recoup the intitial development cost. Often the game license fees end up being the major source of profit, however, extremely popular systems like the PSX and GBA can and do eventually recoup the entire development cost. I can't remember what the average stats are, but most people who buy a video game console likely only end up buying 10 or fewer games over the lifespan of that console, so if the fee is $10 per game, they're only making $100 profit average above the profit they make on the console, so it's a loosing proposition to depend on game sales to make enough revenue to cover development costs.
With a 24-month commitment to MSN dial-up access. Although you have to pay taxes, and be stuck with a crappy MSN dialup for 24-months. At least they've got $200 off deals with major retailers like BestBuy. (I just got an offer in the mail last week, BTW)
you forgot my favorite resource gamefaqs. the top ten message boards almost always has at least three of the 'must have' games for any console. to save people some time though: 1. Resident Evil 2. Super Smash Bros. Melee 3. WWE Wrestlemania X8 4. Star Wars: Rogue Leader- Rogue Squadron 2 5. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle 6. Legend of Zelda 7. Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II 8. Mario Sunshine 9. Spider-Man: The Movie 10. Bloody Roar: Primal Fury
GameCube has some good titles, and unlike the dreamcast there isn't a chance in hell that the Big N will drop development, anytime soon. Although if the PS2 is $199 as the article implies, it's better short term, as many good GC games won't be hitting shelves until christmas. Besides, they've finally got a good modchip (daughter-card) for the PS2 v5 or v6 boards here
Keep in mind that the planet earth has an awful lot holding it in place, while us fragile humans don't suffer that same benefit. Therfore when a stranglet hits a person it's not like hitting a tightly held sheet of paper. However, we're mostly water, and to a strangelet we're interchangable for water in terms of how easily it can pass through us. Unlike water though we can't just fill in the hole it bores through us, and bone might be sufficently dense enough to cause an exchange of energy. I'm thinking that a stranglet would transfer enough force to shatter any bone it passed through, as well as make a microscopic hole through any organs it passes through. Based on this article I'd say it's safe to assume that any damage caused by a strangelet would entirely depend on how much force it could transfer into the body while making any holes, especially while hitting any bones. Since obviously the two recorded strangelets transfered a sizemic force the size of several thousand tons of TNT. If that much force was transfered into a human all at once the only image that comes to mind is that of a paintball grenade exploding. Hopefully though since the earth's crust is miles thicker and much more dense than a human that the amount of force applied at any given moment would only be slightly more than the amount needed to make a hole.
BTW, does anyone else here wonder if the person who named this was chewing a pack of chicklets when trying to think up a name?
This company has been working with 3M and a few others since at least the mid-nineties to make a microwave powered commercial lighting solution. They're finally about ready to deploy a finished product and in the meantime the spectrum they've got every legal right to use has been crowded with the Wireless craze. Fortunately though the 5 GHz spectrum still has some free spectrum for wireless devices. Also, the article takes a sort of doomsday approach. Basically all the lights will do is generate a lot of static on the 2.4 GHz range, so your 2.4GHz phone will drop calls a lot, and have terrible fits of static, not stop working completely. Wi-fi will run into the same problem, you'll get fewer packets through, and less bandwith (and range) as a result. Also, the 1 mile radius was exagerated. the only places that the static will be strong enough to cause a blackout is probally 100 meters. However, a busy street with lots of gas stations could cause 2.4Ghz free zones within a city, where not even a blutooth device would work without lead shielding. I'm sure this will lead to zoning laws about where this light can be placed, at least in tech friendly cities.
Slashdot Mirror
The key word is 'static' Maglev trains use Electro-magnetic fields (EMFs.) Due to the nature of EMFs it is quite easy to point them in one specific direction, and it is also easy to shield them. Since they pulse with variance in the current they are believed (by some) to cause lukemia and certain other forms of cancer, evidence of this is primarily from studies done on long term exposure to the very high dosage EMF in a power generation plant. There isn't even an iota of proof that power lines, or Monitors produce enough. Maglev trains only produce a strong enough field to effect anyone if they're riding underneath the train, which has a number of other nasty side effects, like contusions, abrasions and permanent hearing loss, should one survive.
Well no wonder I can never pass the phone-in interview then. I've been trying to answer like an honest psychologically balanced person, when they want sharks who'd steal from their own grandmas.
Mainly I wanted to work there because when they have MIR on HDs you can get them at or below the cost of an OEM bare drive usually at least with an employee discount. It's nice having extra cables and mounting hardware for when you're trying to hack rounded cables or build something geeky.
You're forgetting one, Super Mario Brothers, The lost levels. While in the US this was on released for the SNES on a multi-game pack cart (with the other three SMB games, and Mario Bros, another NES game), it was released for the Famicom in japan.
Actually, since hydrogen and helium are mostly colorless the sun is 98.7% transparent. Sol's classified as a G2V type star, a yellow dwarf. The light coming from is is white, but it has a yellow temperature, as a blue star also produces white light, but at the higher blue temperature.
So obviously the sun is clear, yet people on slashdot would call it white, yellow, or reddish-orange. This is much like the 'what color is the sky' question. The answer is the same, it's clear. Yet people will claim, blue, black, orange, red, purple any color they can ever remember seeing the sky.
A better test case would be to see how many people would agree that posts modded +5 funny were old jokes. I believe you could get a much higher percentage on a question like that.
I presently have around 185 gigs worth of files lying around, on my various systems. True, the largest capacity of any single system is 110 gigs, but I find that there will always be a way to fill up a hard drive. For instance I presently have 6 DVDs worth DeCSSed to HD for network playback, because I hate scratching optical media, and i hate the quality loss of an mpeg-4 conversion. Noone on the internet is trading .vob files, but then i'm not interested in pirating them, just in preserving my investment. so frankly if you could get a 10 terrabyte drive at an affordable price, I'd be in line to get one. Based on the evolution of drive technology, I shoudn't have to wait more than 6-7 years for a 100 fold increase in size either. By then, maaybe mpeg-21 will be standard, and have good quality/bitrates.
So how much money were they asking for and how much did you give them? That page reads like something a poor mind numbed star trek addict would write up. (note: I like star trek and all, but the explanations for how the technology works is mind numbing, in the lack of coherency.)
They use all the buzz words, and they try so hard to convince you that unproven (yet not disproven) theories prove that thier product will even work. They claim to have lost funding as a 'result' of 9/11 too. They claim that they can get lasers through a ferroelectric dipolar substrate. Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't ferroelectrics oxidized, crystaline iron? Are they even transparent? They also seem highly prone to material defects, as all crystals are.
Anyways, if the company is legit congrats to them for finally bringing holographic storage out of the research phase. However, I'd want to see the 'research team' before I gave them any of My money, If this is just one guy out of his house it is probably a scam. Especially if he's been at it for 14 years like the website seems to say (finally after 14 years etc..)
you mean 1/3rd the weight of a beer. 'three times lighter' is an obfuscated reference to division. Please clean up your code, and avoid obfuscative programming, at least in the open source communtity.
Apparently you haven't been reading the intel 'roadmap' for CPU performance/temperature. they've estimated that within ten years heat dissipation requirements on a CPU will be in the 1000 watt range. Already a modern CPU is almost double the heat displacment of an Easy bake oven. We've all laughed at the guy who cooked an egg on his Athlon, but you do have a good point. the case on a computer would provide more than adequate shielding, not to mention the heat sink. However, even if a 2400 mhz CPU was kicking out 100 watts of microwave energy it still would be barely enough to defrost a chicken. Most of the wasted wattage is converted to heat, not radio or microwave, so truly this is a non-issue.
It's eBay because it's the 'electronic Bay area auction site.' It's really a SF thing, they like including 'Bay' in the name of things there, like the train system which is called Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART.)
Walmart is not best buy, though. Walmart has the fastest distrobution system of ANY retail chain, and they sell more goods per shelf unit than any other retail chain too. I would agree that given a choice I'd always build a PC myself. Still, there is a market for these PCs, or else walmart wouldn't be selling them.
The way I see it these PCs are really for 'second time buyers' people who learned from the last PC they owned, and have a copy of OEM windows lying around. If they recyle the old box, or sell it with the drive wiped of all data, they're entitled to use that OEM copy of windows on the 'upgrade' PC they bought. Still, since it violates the EULA, that means they (should) get no tech support from redmond.
I guess wal-mart just sees things the obvious way, you can sell without gasoline, as long as they know that they have to buy/bring thier own. but if you have an old car, that still has gas in it, legally you could siphon the gas into your new car. there isn't anything stopping you from doing that, after all. except of course the dealer charging double the going rate might frown on you bringing your own gas can, and insisting on being sold a car without being sold gasoline. Still, they can't legally force you to buy gasoline when you buy a car.
The winmodem issue was Worse than this. the latest OS-less PCs have a chipset that isn't 'auto detected' by XSetup, yet clearly does work, (for 2-d) if you pick the right driver manually. I have no quible with them using newer GPUs on the mobo, even if it causes hicups with Xfree. anyone actually installing linux on this has read a few sites, and will turn to those to figure it out.
Microsoft has always tried to make the OEM versions of windows only run on the hardware the specific vendor supplied. They know that when the OS can be sold as a seperate component they'll loose aftermarket value. People will buy new PCs, then sell the legit copy to someone else, and maybe not delete the copy on the Pc they bought. And if they ever had problems with the system they'd call techsupport and demand a new CD because they 'lost' the old one. And remember, while reselling software you've installed is immoral, and illegal, it isn't a Criminal offense until you've traded $5,000 worth in goods over a 9 month period of time. That means they can't get any help from the government tracking you down. This is why they've got 1-800 anti piracy numbers, because anonymous tipsters is the only way they can go after 'every' software pirate. They then have to drag you through civil court without any means of gathering evedince against you, because as I've said, you haven't commited a criminal offence. Should they manage to come after you due to an anonymous tipster, and they 'lie' to the poliece to get warrents to search your house and computer, then you can take them to court in a counter suit, because they illegially inlisted the aid of the police to harrass you. you can even sue the police for wrongful search and seizure.
Without evidence they just can't win in civil court, and without partcipiting in a criminal act, the police can't help them obtain the evidence they need to sue you. So one the cat is out of the bag there is nothing in the world microsoft can do to stop people from buying a Dell PC and then reslling that OEM windows copy, as a 'mail-in rebate' kinda deal. while still using it. Obviously you should be able to resell used copies of windows, afterall I've converted many PCs to linux or FreeBSD. But once you make it legal to do that everyone who lacks an ounce of scruples will be selling the oem copy of windows on e-bay. That would make the oem copy worth about $3, and kill the market for $399 'retail box full version' $199 'upgrade' version market... because the OEM version Is a full version.
I guess I've gotten sidetracked enough for now. Micrsoft would loose some profitability if it became legal to resell OEM copies, and more OEMs would support linux if the licensing issues were finally resolved in a sane matter.
EULAs are really the bane of the modern era, they've gone from being disclaimers of no warrenty (the original intent) to becoming a binding contractual agreement between the end user and the software company. Since that was not the spirit of the law the supreme court needs to come down hard on the EULA and make them completly non-binding, and that breaking them simply ends your relationship with the software company. EG: you break the EULA and they don't have to provide tech support. that's it... it's meant to be a non-binding agreement in the first place.
the funny thing about words is that if you take five random people off the street and ask them what a particular word means, you'll get five different answers. The longer a word has been around the more stable the definition becomes, especially if no one uses it again. Part of the reason why latin is the language of science was the theory that as a dead language everyone learning it would learn the same meanings to the words, and avoid confusion when using latin to define something.
Now I'd been to slashdot several times before I ever heard the word blog, but when I did hear it, it seemed to be primarily for personal diaries, like you said. Still, when I decided writing html was too much like work, and evaluated blog options for my server, it quickly became apparent that the entire blog phenomenon is built off of people either trying to be like slashdot, or trying to be as different from slashdot as possible.
Technically, this is one of many updates on this story. They're now finally providing DSL service to everyone, and thus they've 'succeded.'
Also, they have nice graphs that show everytime the servers get slashdotted, which is nice.
Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had graphs like this so we could get an idea of how much bandwith is really needed to avoid a slashdotting? They've got a T-1 for the DSLAM/webserver. Which is obviously not enough.
If this proves anything, It proves that you can't trust gophers. It's just like caddyshack all over again... those mangy critters, rooting IE.
nothing... a simple redirect page can force the gopher link to be opened without the user even being asked to click anything. Not to mention javascript. Anything that allows all those pop-up and pop-under ads can just as easily open a gopher link.
You are correct that the backpack isn't twitching, but rather being slightly stabalized by the gyroscopic forces. However, to an average college student, the slight stabilization effect of carrying a spinning HD inside a backpack would make it seem to twitch with every step. This is because the student is actually forcing the gyroscopically stablized backpack into an irregular path by walking. The iPod as mentioned features a PC-Card form Factor HD, instead of a laptop, or conventional drive used in most other HD based mp3 players, thus giving it an advantage over the others. It seems to twitch less because the platter is too small to generate enough gyroscopic forces to stablize the mass of a backpack.
Clearly the only solution to this problem is to use a platter that lacks enough mass to cause any human-noticable gyroscopic forces.
Hobbyists can meet the quality of modern games easily, almost every modern commercial game I've played has crashed on me, outside of id software games.
As far as 'well done' graphics goes, that too can be matched, however, to get that kind of artwork quality. However, that picture is basically only a hair better than Warcraft II. A quite old game, as anyone who's been waiting for 7 years for Warcraft III can tell you. However, I was as a hobyist working on graphics for an RPG that would have had better 2-d graphics than any commercial game, except the project fell apart.
Of course, RPGs moved to 3-d real-time rendered polygons with pre-renedered backgrounds, so there wouldn't have been any parallel, until bladur's gate. And I was working on those level of graphics in 96, as a hobbyist.
The problem is that hobbyists move on, and the ones that stick to it, don't really care that they aren't on the cutting edge.
I've been using MS Natural clone keyboards for a long time. Do they really help? Maybe, maybe not. I also switched from using a mouse to using touchpads. This helped me a lot too. To this date using a 'normal' mouse for more than 30 minutes leaves my wrist throbbing.
I can barely type on a normal keyboard anymore, unless it's on a laptop. I also type less now, so it's likely that the keyboard has made no substantial difference. Changing my mouse has had very easy to determine results.
Also, my wrists tend to hurt after many hours of any intense video gaming, so don't think video game players don't get RSI.
4,000,000 listeners off a single 100,000 watt antenna? where do you live anyways? I haven't heard of any single radio station that can claim 4 million listeners, the weekly top 40 which is run on thousands of stations is still in the tens of millions of listeners.
Besides which, radio does have a saturation point. Every large object can reflect or absorb that radio signal, so that there are shadows, or possibly echos. Not to mention static that can interupt the signal.
I would like to fix your qoutes...
"Give me OS Liberty, or give me Blue Screen Of Death" and
"I rerget that I have but one CPU with which to run my OS"
and one of my own...
"zero if by CD, one if by network"
That would be an urban legend. While some companies (sega's DreamCast, Microsoft X-box) have been sold below-cost, in general, most consoles sell for a profit, over production cost. The confusion in this is that there is development costs, including chip design, which in the case of the PS2 can run into astronomical amounts. However, over the cost of production, sony has been making money from day one on the sale of PS2. Nintendo has done the same with all it's consoles too. True, it often takes years and millions of console sales to recoup the intitial development cost. Often the game license fees end up being the major source of profit, however, extremely popular systems like the PSX and GBA can and do eventually recoup the entire development cost.
I can't remember what the average stats are, but most people who buy a video game console likely only end up buying 10 or fewer games over the lifespan of that console, so if the fee is $10 per game, they're only making $100 profit average above the profit they make on the console, so it's a loosing proposition to depend on game sales to make enough revenue to cover development costs.
With a 24-month commitment to MSN dial-up access. Although you have to pay taxes, and be stuck with a crappy MSN dialup for 24-months.
At least they've got $200 off deals with major retailers like BestBuy. (I just got an offer in the mail last week, BTW)
you forgot my favorite resource gamefaqs. the top ten message boards almost always has at least three of the 'must have' games for any console.
to save people some time though:
1. Resident Evil
2. Super Smash Bros. Melee
3. WWE Wrestlemania X8
4. Star Wars: Rogue Leader- Rogue Squadron 2
5. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
6. Legend of Zelda
7. Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II
8. Mario Sunshine
9. Spider-Man: The Movie
10. Bloody Roar: Primal Fury
GameCube has some good titles, and unlike the dreamcast there isn't a chance in hell that the Big N will drop development, anytime soon.
Although if the PS2 is $199 as the article implies, it's better short term, as many good GC games won't be hitting shelves until christmas.
Besides, they've finally got a good modchip (daughter-card) for the PS2 v5 or v6 boards here
Keep in mind that the planet earth has an awful lot holding it in place, while us fragile humans don't suffer that same benefit. Therfore when a stranglet hits a person it's not like hitting a tightly held sheet of paper. However, we're mostly water, and to a strangelet we're interchangable for water in terms of how easily it can pass through us. Unlike water though we can't just fill in the hole it bores through us, and bone might be sufficently dense enough to cause an exchange of energy.
I'm thinking that a stranglet would transfer enough force to shatter any bone it passed through, as well as make a microscopic hole through any organs it passes through.
Based on this article I'd say it's safe to assume that any damage caused by a strangelet would entirely depend on how much force it could transfer into the body while making any holes, especially while hitting any bones. Since obviously the two recorded strangelets transfered a sizemic force the size of several thousand tons of TNT. If that much force was transfered into a human all at once the only image that comes to mind is that of a paintball grenade exploding.
Hopefully though since the earth's crust is miles thicker and much more dense than a human that the amount of force applied at any given moment would only be slightly more than the amount needed to make a hole.
BTW, does anyone else here wonder if the person who named this was chewing a pack of chicklets when trying to think up a name?
This company has been working with 3M and a few others since at least the mid-nineties to make a microwave powered commercial lighting solution.
They're finally about ready to deploy a finished product and in the meantime the spectrum they've got every legal right to use has been crowded with the Wireless craze. Fortunately though the 5 GHz spectrum still has some free spectrum for wireless devices.
Also, the article takes a sort of doomsday approach. Basically all the lights will do is generate a lot of static on the 2.4 GHz range, so your 2.4GHz phone will drop calls a lot, and have terrible fits of static, not stop working completely. Wi-fi will run into the same problem, you'll get fewer packets through, and less bandwith (and range) as a result.
Also, the 1 mile radius was exagerated. the only places that the static will be strong enough to cause a blackout is probally 100 meters. However, a busy street with lots of gas stations could cause 2.4Ghz free zones within a city, where not even a blutooth device would work without lead shielding.
I'm sure this will lead to zoning laws about where this light can be placed, at least in tech friendly cities.