They say governments involved will be invited to Redmond to meet w/ security engineers, and view testing procedures.
Microsoft is in cahoots with the CIA on this. The plan is to lure "problem" governments like those from Iraq and North Korea into new specially constructed facility on the Microsoft campus.
Once Saddam and his henchmen have sat down at the terminals and put on their eyeglasses in hopes of reading the Windows source code, the trap will be sprung. The doors will lock, the room will descend 300 feet underground, and special CIA forces will move in to subdue and neturalize the foreign government.
Last year's small-scale test on Russian hackers was just a tiny preview of what's in store for the Axis of Evil.
I wonder what the gain is on a Deep Space Network antenna...
NASA contracted with Proctor and Gamble to build the hugely scaled up Pringles cans that are used to track their distant probes via wireless. I believe the biggest one is in Puerto Rico. It's the size of a football field and was originally packed with almost 9 million tons of potato chips.
In fact, this article is about solid rocket fuel, which up to this point has been mostly dirty stuff (often a mixture of polyurethane binder, ammonium perchlorate oxidizer and powdered aluminum fuel). It's not jet fuel at all. (Jet fuel is basically just kerosene).
As for liquid fuel, the upper stages of the Saturn V and the main Space Shuttle engines burn H2 and O2, producing nothing but pure water. OTOH, most liquid fuel rockets on unmanned boosters burn nasty chemicals like N2O4 and UDMH (because they were often derived from ICBMs, which you want to keep fueled all the time, so no cryogenic fuels.)
At any rate, if it can burn, some rocket has used it as a fuel. Find out more here and here.
An important part of the scientific method is acknowledging, up front, the limits of your knowledge. We can look at the evidence and make some hypotheses, but we can never, ever know.
I see. You feel that the limits of knowledge are exactly zero. Whatever.
(Boing... sound of this message bouncing off of zero-sized buffer.)
The problem, of course, is that no one has the foggiest idea of what a normal rate of extinction is.
You may not, talk radio hosts may not, but there are plenty of people who have spent their entire lives studying the field who do. I know you probably think that they're full of B.S. because their conclusions clash with your extreme anthropocentric world view, but your filter doesn't change objective reality.
iI just always get somewhat bemused when people hold the opinion that "nature" is the world in the absence of humanity, that humanity is not part of the natural world. If the lions eat all the zebras, that's nature. If human beings kill all the lions, that's not nature. Seems like a rather foolish viewpoint to me.
I could use that line of reasoning to justify any action whatsoever, because anything that I'm capable of doing is, by definition, just "natural". "Oh, that bomb I threw into the crowd was made of elements. It was a part of nature. I threw it, but I'm part of nature. Things like that just happen in nature; death is natural, after all. Anyway, nobody has any idea whether those people would have spontaneouldy dropped dead even if I hadn't thrown that bomb. There's just no way you can prove it isn't impossible!"
Do you have any grasp of the concept of quantity? Extinction at a rate that is orders of magnitude beyond normal is not "an important part of nature".
If you killed someone by cramming 300 pounds of mashed potatoes down their throat, you wouldn't be excused by claiming "I was just helping him out. Eating is an important part of matabolism!"
These are also known informally as "make my day" laws.
Actually, these laws are less significant than it would seem on the surface. You are only allowed to try using deadly force under "make my day" if either A: you have reason to believe that you may have run out of bullets, or B: you know your gun is empty, but you're bluffing. Moreover, before acting, you must carefully explain this situation to your assailant and give him an opportunity to surrender.
You forgot to take into account the rate of speciation. About which we basically know nothing. Lots of theory and fossil evidence, but as to the rate of speciation occurring today, we know nothing.
That's right, there's need to worry about the possible extinction of tigers, elephants, orangutans or any other species. New species could be popping up to replace them even as we speak!
Just think of the menagerie of crazy, fantastic creatures that could wink into existence at any time. Maybe thinning out today's boring selection will accelerate the process. I was just thinking how cool it would be to have a purple pet flying unicorn; I might get one yet if one happens to materialize! Or maybe a dinosaur the size of a T. Rex, but with soft golden fur and a gentle disposition.
I'm being naive here, but my life hasn't changed a damn bit in the past four years.
That's the exact idea behind the DMCA: to maintain the status quo to support the business model of a handful of corporations.
In recent years, progress in technology has eliminated various technical limitations on what you could do with information. The DMCA was created to reinstate those limitations through legal means, turning back the clock to erase many of the benefits from recent developments. (As it happens, it was written so poorly, it creates new limitations you never even had in the past.)
The question you should be asking is how could my life have changed if it weren't for the DMCA?
For me, part of the problem is that I haven't actually bought any new floppy disks in years. I keep recycling disks from a big box I have full of them in my basement; some of these are almost 20 years old. I usually use them only to make temporary boot disks, and I've been getting at least a 25% failure rate.
Another factor is that you can buy a brand new floppy drive for $8.00 on newegg.com. (I can remember when one floppy diskette cost almost that much.) I'll bet that they've cut a few too many cost corners on these drives.
When someone shows me that under the current WM9 price structure, that Microsoft cannot make money, then I will agree that the price is illegal.
Given that the only business units at Microsoft that currently report a profit are the OS and Office groups (i.e., the monopoly wielding groups), it's probably a fair bet that their codec operation is not making money right now.
Of course not. Nobody who doesn't have a $40 Billion war chest and a direct distribution back door hook (Tools->Windows Update) into 95% of the world's computers could possibly compete.
That's why we have laws that are theoretically supposed to prevent this kind of market abuse.
Except that XM Radio has a nice thing in their music that DirectTV lacks in theirs.....really good programming.
A couple of years ago when I got DirecTV, I tried using their audio channels to avoid listening to repetitive radio at work. I'd set my computer to record an 8-hour long MP3 of a DirecTV channel, then bring it in to work on a Jaz disk (just about the only use I ever found for a Jaz drive, BTW).
The problem was, even thought the DirecTV channels I listened to played more obscure music than the radio, they were still very repetitive. Each one seemed to have its own rather limited playlist. I got tired of that and gave up after a few weeks.
Moreover, the sound was muddy even before I recorded it. The spectral display on my MP3 software showed that they did a sharp cutoff at something like 16KHz or less, and I'm sure they made other shortcuts on compression quality to save bandwidth.
So do you think Microsoft didn't treat its employees very well early on?
I expect that they didn't their early employees significantly better or worse than other high-tech companies of the time.
How would it have survived (read: gotten to where it is now) if it hadn't treated its employees well early on?
They got where they are now mainly because their leaders' brilliant mastery of the "2nd mover advantage" principle. Once that ball got rolling, the stock options started moving up, and the employees got a very good deal indeed.
I am quite convinced you have cause and effect backwards here, actually.
Doubtful. A lot of.dot coms treated their employees very well early on, and they went broke. They had it backwards.
The key to success here is to first establish a market position that generates huge cash flows and stock valuations, then use the power of that money to cement your hold on the market. One competetive advantage you can buy with these resources is employee loyalty.
so you cannot use this method to send meaningful data from one place to another. Only random gibberish can be transmitted this way.
The good news: When we set forth accross interstellar space to colonize the stars, we'll have a technology for an instantaneous communications channel.
The bad news: Due to the laws of nature, the only thing gets through the channel is the Jerry Springer show.
I am a former Microsoft employee and I have _never_, _ever_, worked for another company that cared so much for its employees.
Due to their unique grip on the marketplace, Microsoft is able to extract more money out of their customers per employee than almost any other company in the world. Of course they can afford the luxury of treating their employees very well.
I believe the actual trace layout pattern is copyrightable, so you can't make a mask from a photo of the board and crank out your own. OTOH, you can reverse engineer the netlist and use it to create your own logically identical PCB with your own layout pattern.
I don't think the fundies are out to distor the teaching of 'science' I think they just want to make the assumptions of science based on the Bible.
I find that book too boring and obtuse to support an entire field of study. I am currently leading an effort to make the assumptions of science based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. This is a much more entertaining and accessible book that will be a better vehicle to deliver science to the masses.
Which formats have worked in other countries I wonder?"
Here in the U.S., most science shows have switched to the "MTV generation attention span format". This involves taking 10 minutes of content, then stretching it out to 45 minutes in length with attention-grabbing fillers.
These typically include things like cheesy, inaccurate and endlessly repetitive computer simulations of explosions, ancient pyramid tours or space probe flybys. Also popular are sad attempts at creating a "suspensful" plot, such as a melodramatic voicover accompanying the same tired scene: a computer monitor reflected in the eyeglasses of a scientist pecking at keyboards in a strangely lit office. Time-elapsed shots of radio telescopes at sunset are another sure-fire time filler.
I often wish they'd bring back the "old guy standing in a field giving a half-hour monologue" format. Those guys usually knew a lot about what they were talking about, and they worked to cram it into the time available, not the other way around.
How long untill we see commercial airlines that are un-manned?
Actually, I have been thinking this is exactly what we need. Get rid of large airports and airplanes and replace them with small automatically piloted planes (< 5 passengers) flying to/from neighborhood airstrips.
To keep them cheap, you'd probably trade off speed. But even at 250mph, you'd come out way ahead on most trips if you get to use your own custom schedule, direct route and the ability to step directly from your parked car to the plane.
No more being treated like herded cattle. Fewer security worries. Plans change midflight? Punch in a new destination. What if the drones aren't quite as safe as large airliners? Equip them with ejection seats.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is in cahoots with the CIA on this. The plan is to lure "problem" governments like those from Iraq and North Korea into new specially constructed facility on the Microsoft campus.
Once Saddam and his henchmen have sat down at the terminals and put on their eyeglasses in hopes of reading the Windows source code, the trap will be sprung. The doors will lock, the room will descend 300 feet underground, and special CIA forces will move in to subdue and neturalize the foreign government.
Last year's small-scale test on Russian hackers was just a tiny preview of what's in store for the Axis of Evil.
NASA contracted with Proctor and Gamble to build the hugely scaled up Pringles cans that are used to track their distant probes via wireless. I believe the biggest one is in Puerto Rico. It's the size of a football field and was originally packed with almost 9 million tons of potato chips.
As for liquid fuel, the upper stages of the Saturn V and the main Space Shuttle engines burn H2 and O2, producing nothing but pure water. OTOH, most liquid fuel rockets on unmanned boosters burn nasty chemicals like N2O4 and UDMH (because they were often derived from ICBMs, which you want to keep fueled all the time, so no cryogenic fuels.)
At any rate, if it can burn, some rocket has used it as a fuel. Find out more here and here.
I see. You feel that the limits of knowledge are exactly zero. Whatever.
(Boing... sound of this message bouncing off of zero-sized buffer.)
You may not, talk radio hosts may not, but there are plenty of people who have spent their entire lives studying the field who do. I know you probably think that they're full of B.S. because their conclusions clash with your extreme anthropocentric world view, but your filter doesn't change objective reality.
iI just always get somewhat bemused when people hold the opinion that "nature" is the world in the absence of humanity, that humanity is not part of the natural world. If the lions eat all the zebras, that's nature. If human beings kill all the lions, that's not nature. Seems like a rather foolish viewpoint to me.
I could use that line of reasoning to justify any action whatsoever, because anything that I'm capable of doing is, by definition, just "natural". "Oh, that bomb I threw into the crowd was made of elements. It was a part of nature. I threw it, but I'm part of nature. Things like that just happen in nature; death is natural, after all. Anyway, nobody has any idea whether those people would have spontaneouldy dropped dead even if I hadn't thrown that bomb. There's just no way you can prove it isn't impossible!"
Do you have any grasp of the concept of quantity? Extinction at a rate that is orders of magnitude beyond normal is not "an important part of nature".
If you killed someone by cramming 300 pounds of mashed potatoes down their throat, you wouldn't be excused by claiming "I was just helping him out. Eating is an important part of matabolism!"
Actually, these laws are less significant than it would seem on the surface. You are only allowed to try using deadly force under "make my day" if either A: you have reason to believe that you may have run out of bullets, or B: you know your gun is empty, but you're bluffing. Moreover, before acting, you must carefully explain this situation to your assailant and give him an opportunity to surrender.
That's right, there's need to worry about the possible extinction of tigers, elephants, orangutans or any other species. New species could be popping up to replace them even as we speak!
Just think of the menagerie of crazy, fantastic creatures that could wink into existence at any time. Maybe thinning out today's boring selection will accelerate the process. I was just thinking how cool it would be to have a purple pet flying unicorn; I might get one yet if one happens to materialize! Or maybe a dinosaur the size of a T. Rex, but with soft golden fur and a gentle disposition.
That's the exact idea behind the DMCA: to maintain the status quo to support the business model of a handful of corporations.
In recent years, progress in technology has eliminated various technical limitations on what you could do with information. The DMCA was created to reinstate those limitations through legal means, turning back the clock to erase many of the benefits from recent developments. (As it happens, it was written so poorly, it creates new limitations you never even had in the past.)
The question you should be asking is how could my life have changed if it weren't for the DMCA?
Another factor is that you can buy a brand new floppy drive for $8.00 on newegg.com. (I can remember when one floppy diskette cost almost that much.) I'll bet that they've cut a few too many cost corners on these drives.
Given that the only business units at Microsoft that currently report a profit are the OS and Office groups (i.e., the monopoly wielding groups), it's probably a fair bet that their codec operation is not making money right now.
Of course not. Nobody who doesn't have a $40 Billion war chest and a direct distribution back door hook (Tools->Windows Update) into 95% of the world's computers could possibly compete.
That's why we have laws that are theoretically supposed to prevent this kind of market abuse.
A couple of years ago when I got DirecTV, I tried using their audio channels to avoid listening to repetitive radio at work. I'd set my computer to record an 8-hour long MP3 of a DirecTV channel, then bring it in to work on a Jaz disk (just about the only use I ever found for a Jaz drive, BTW).
The problem was, even thought the DirecTV channels I listened to played more obscure music than the radio, they were still very repetitive. Each one seemed to have its own rather limited playlist. I got tired of that and gave up after a few weeks.
Moreover, the sound was muddy even before I recorded it. The spectral display on my MP3 software showed that they did a sharp cutoff at something like 16KHz or less, and I'm sure they made other shortcuts on compression quality to save bandwidth.
I expect that they didn't their early employees significantly better or worse than other high-tech companies of the time.
How would it have survived (read: gotten to where it is now) if it hadn't treated its employees well early on?
They got where they are now mainly because their leaders' brilliant mastery of the "2nd mover advantage" principle. Once that ball got rolling, the stock options started moving up, and the employees got a very good deal indeed.
Doubtful. A lot of .dot coms treated their employees very well early on, and they went broke. They had it backwards.
The key to success here is to first establish a market position that generates huge cash flows and stock valuations, then use the power of that money to cement your hold on the market. One competetive advantage you can buy with these resources is employee loyalty.
The good news: When we set forth accross interstellar space to colonize the stars, we'll have a technology for an instantaneous communications channel.
The bad news: Due to the laws of nature, the only thing gets through the channel is the Jerry Springer show.
Due to their unique grip on the marketplace, Microsoft is able to extract more money out of their customers per employee than almost any other company in the world. Of course they can afford the luxury of treating their employees very well.
I believe the actual trace layout pattern is copyrightable, so you can't make a mask from a photo of the board and crank out your own. OTOH, you can reverse engineer the netlist and use it to create your own logically identical PCB with your own layout pattern.
I find that book too boring and obtuse to support an entire field of study. I am currently leading an effort to make the assumptions of science based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. This is a much more entertaining and accessible book that will be a better vehicle to deliver science to the masses.
Here in the U.S., most science shows have switched to the "MTV generation attention span format". This involves taking 10 minutes of content, then stretching it out to 45 minutes in length with attention-grabbing fillers.
These typically include things like cheesy, inaccurate and endlessly repetitive computer simulations of explosions, ancient pyramid tours or space probe flybys. Also popular are sad attempts at creating a "suspensful" plot, such as a melodramatic voicover accompanying the same tired scene: a computer monitor reflected in the eyeglasses of a scientist pecking at keyboards in a strangely lit office. Time-elapsed shots of radio telescopes at sunset are another sure-fire time filler.
I often wish they'd bring back the "old guy standing in a field giving a half-hour monologue" format. Those guys usually knew a lot about what they were talking about, and they worked to cram it into the time available, not the other way around.
Typical data point:
Which language do you use most at work?
( ) C/C++
( ) Java
( ) Perl ( ) Would you like to supersize that for only 39 cents extra?
(X) CowboyNeal
Nobody's saying they are exactly like us. In fact, on average they have larger breasts, greener skin, heavier mascera, and wear shorter miniskirts.
Actually, I have been thinking this is exactly what we need. Get rid of large airports and airplanes and replace them with small automatically piloted planes (< 5 passengers) flying to/from neighborhood airstrips.
To keep them cheap, you'd probably trade off speed. But even at 250mph, you'd come out way ahead on most trips if you get to use your own custom schedule, direct route and the ability to step directly from your parked car to the plane.
No more being treated like herded cattle. Fewer security worries. Plans change midflight? Punch in a new destination. What if the drones aren't quite as safe as large airliners? Equip them with ejection seats.
If I was above the law, I wouldn't use wee puny weapons like lawsuits either.
If there's one thing your typical Linux distro CD is not lacking for, it's card games.