Tey ention that as well... seemed to survive being slapped etc as it was writing an image but had to be placed flat for initialising and finalising a disc
If you read the review, you'd see that it has a 'steady-shot' system that Sony have been putting in their camcorders for years (works very well in my Hi8).
You would also note the interesting discussion about finalising, what it takes and how to get around it - you can hook up a USB cable and take images off the unfinlaised disc for example.
I wish people would read the articles before posting (and the getting modded up?)
A significant problem with smaller circuit sizes is that voltages have to be reduced, the smaller things get. This is to aviod temperature build-up and also to reduce the potential for electrons to drift out of their tracks at corners (or indeed move tracks, similarly to the way rivers move and change when they bend)
As voltages are reduced, the signal to noise ratio is decreased and it becomes more dificult to distungish between them - this is then compounded by quantum effects that further reduce signal to noise ratios by (amongst other possibilities) reducing a signal (by tunnelling etc) or even boosting a 'zero' signal so high it gets picked up as a '1'
This can be avioded by clever circuit design but it is a fundamental limiting factor although hitting the eventual limit will be complicated by such things as voltage, heat dissipation (too much heat will affect smaller tracks more than larger ones) and feature size.
hohom
Troc
Re:Well there's only one solution to that..
on
EU Web Tax Proposed
·
· Score: 2
Slightly Informative:
There is no VAT on books in the UK, dunno aout the rest of Europe though. That's why importing DVDs from the States via Amazon is often the best way as customs often let Amazon stuff through thinking it'll be a book.
Not that I've personally had any problems importing goods that exceed the value of the 'personal import' allowance (touch wood).
There's also no VAT on second hand (used) stuff, so some companies open the box before sending it to make it no longer new.... I guess this is a bit dodgy:)
I played both extensively (and other cyber-type games) around the early nineties (gone back to AD&D, Runequest 3rd ed. and stuff now though) and I'd agree that 2020 was a better match to the global corp. ideas you find in Neuromancer, Bladerunner etc
I found Shadowrun to be a more enjoyable game however.
But it was a game. Not a metaphor for reality. A game. The overiding idea behind RPGs is that you warp and change them to your own vision. Katz seems to be using a guideline for a entertaining, roleplaying system as proof we are degenerating or something. It's hard to tell sometimes:)
Sci-Fi authors and writers have been 'predicting' the future for centuries, some more accurately than others. Does this make any particular sci-fi more valid than any other or is the entertainment the be all and end all of the story. Do authors like Gibson et al. think they are predicting the future, writing about a possible fuuture or simply writing to entertain?
If, in xxxx years time the world is populated by elved and dwarves etc, will Johannas Katzen be spouting on/.alike about the amazing predictions a certain Gary Gygax made in the late 20th Century?
It's been postulated that just within the 'event horizon' of a black hole (that point at which even light cannot normally escape the gravitational field), a complex particle could decay into constituent particles under the forces around it...... these constituent particles will then zoom away from each other due to the energy released and it's possible for one or many of these particles to leave the black hole before its gravity has slowed the particles sufficiently to suck them back down.
It's kinda like here on Earth - I can throw a ball up in the air and it'll fall down again and if I throw it nearly fast enough to leave the gravitational pull, it'll get hearly all the way our and then fall back again... so if I make a special ball that's designed to break in two at or near the top of it's flight and fire the two sections in opposite directions (one up and one down), then the top section now has enough velocity to escape.....
This is partially how/why multiple stage rockets are better then single stage ones in certain circumstances.....
I've always thought pornography to be illegal in any country - but that the definition of what constituted pornography changed.
Thus in England, we have strict rules that say an erect penis is phrongraphic and therefore banned wheras in Holland it's not pornographic and therefore not banned.
Mars is approximately the same diameter as the Earth's iron cores (i.e. take away the crust and the mantle) and is very iron-rich.
This has long fuelled speculation that mars used to be about Earth-sized but that a collision with something ripped the top off (and with it the atmosphere) a loooooong time ago.
X has been ported to MacOS X - not fully yet but there's no reason why it can't be made to run perfectly (or as well as in linux anyway:) so you can get your virtual desktops and Gnome IDE etc that way. Not sure whether the Quartz drawing engine in OS X allows for virtual desktops but it probably does - I know you can get them for OS 9 as a shareware package or something.
Well the OS is about 99.9% POSIX compliant, so most *nix stuff will compile fairly easily without too much hassle, just the odd Makefile alterations we are all used to....!
Here's a website all about the UK Sci-Fi series Space: 1999.
Not sure it's been shown much outside the UK:)
Basic premise is a nuclear waste dump on the far side of the moon explodes taking the moon out of Earth orbit and off into deep space - carrying with it 'Moonbase Alpha' and crew.
Excellent wobbly BBC sets and some of the best space ships (Eagles) ever in a sc-fi ever at all ever.
I can't help but notice the article(s) above have been marked as flamebait......
But they look rather like discussion points to me, at worst they are simple statements of a personal viewpoint but not flamebait.
"All free software sucks" would be flamebait, as would "I hate macs because I hate them" or "John Katz writes like a crazed koala"
(the stuff above is presented purely as a series of examples - please don't take seriously!)
People should learn to moderate sensibly and not knee-jerkingly in an "ooh, I've got 5 points to spend, let's screw a thread up" kind of way. I guess this piece I've written will be modded to hell now as I've probably annoyed someone but it's just meant as my take on things:)
And as for my take on the sound forge thing - if it annoys you, just ignore it - there are better things to do in life than whinge about open source projects -if it really annoys you, go out and code something yourself or better yet try maintaining your own distribution - it's bloody complicated and takes a lot of time to do.
Then again... why exactly would we want to port this to linux?
I can understand porting the PC front-end to linux so we can use our machines to programme it but why the robot itself?
You only need an OS like linux (or whatever) in the robot itself if it's going to be really clever (or if you want it crunching SETI as it wanders around) And this will tend to require a bigger processor, more ancillary components, bigger batteries, heavier construction, beefier motors, bigger batteries etc etc....
Well of course there isn't anything secret to be seen....
The US will know the flight paths of the satellites and will therefore know when it's safe to wheel out their latest test 'planes or whatever. Most of the big governments monitor the flights of satellites by radar as a matter of course these days. They restrict 'planes because they can fly over at any time (although I'm sure the Area 51 radar would pick them up....:)
There are, of course, no little green men as there never were any UFO landings and if there had been, we've all seen the X-files.... they are little grey men:)
From what I remember, they built one of his simpler models, proving the concept but didn't have the technical expertise to produce the full difference engine (I think they byult the analytical engine or something). They couldn't manufacture enough parts consistently - there was also a problem with expense, the experts were very expensive, as were the raw materials.
Yep. I just think it's a shame that 19th century engineering wasn't up to the manufacture of these things - think what would have followed.
I fancy wasnering down to our micro (and nano) engineering dept. here at Birmingham Uni (UK) and seeing if they could make a nano-sized version. Portable difference engines:) Ok, I know it'd only run for a few seconds before siezing (lubricant molecules are of the same order as some component dinemsions) but it'd still be cool.
There's always that book "The Difference Engine" by Gibson and Sterling - very good and thought provoking account of how things could have turned out.
god I remember getting well annoyed with The Hobbit.
And buying books of computer games and typing them in......
and one line scrollig games in 255 characters
and citadel which took bloody hours to load off tape and wouldn't transfer to disc:(
that's it, where's my duster. I can feel the need to play with the old beastie again (and I mean the BBC B:)
On a weirder note, the British Science Museam has an Acorn Electron in the toechnology and communication section as "the shape of personal computing - soon we will have have computers like this at home" - slightly behind the times I feel.
Slashdot Mirror
They mention even. Too much coffee has been spilled over this keyboard........
Tey ention that as well... seemed to survive being slapped etc as it was writing an image but had to be placed flat for initialising and finalising a disc
troc
If you read the review, you'd see that it has a 'steady-shot' system that Sony have been putting in their camcorders for years (works very well in my Hi8).
You would also note the interesting discussion about finalising, what it takes and how to get around it - you can hook up a USB cable and take images off the unfinlaised disc for example.
I wish people would read the articles before posting (and the getting modded up?)
troc
I reckon we should bulk-buy all their spruce tree parts and re-forest the Amazon.
These could then be harvested to make cheap plastic products.
Like Lego.
Erm, Looping detected.
Troc
A significant problem with smaller circuit sizes is that voltages have to be reduced, the smaller things get. This is to aviod temperature build-up and also to reduce the potential for electrons to drift out of their tracks at corners (or indeed move tracks, similarly to the way rivers move and change when they bend)
As voltages are reduced, the signal to noise ratio is decreased and it becomes more dificult to distungish between them - this is then compounded by quantum effects that further reduce signal to noise ratios by (amongst other possibilities) reducing a signal (by tunnelling etc) or even boosting a 'zero' signal so high it gets picked up as a '1'
This can be avioded by clever circuit design but it is a fundamental limiting factor although hitting the eventual limit will be complicated by such things as voltage, heat dissipation (too much heat will affect smaller tracks more than larger ones) and feature size.
hohom
Troc
Slightly Informative:
:)
There is no VAT on books in the UK, dunno aout the rest of Europe though. That's why importing DVDs from the States via Amazon is often the best way as customs often let Amazon stuff through thinking it'll be a book.
Not that I've personally had any problems importing goods that exceed the value of the 'personal import' allowance (touch wood).
There's also no VAT on second hand (used) stuff, so some companies open the box before sending it to make it no longer new.... I guess this is a bit dodgy
heh
troc
Slighty OT and a bit silly I know, sorry but I just wanted to say that Dark Future was a particularly pants game by Games Workshop ;)
Sorry
Troc
PS Erm, do USians and other non-brits use pants in the same way?
I played both extensively (and other cyber-type games) around the early nineties (gone back to AD&D, Runequest 3rd ed. and stuff now though) and I'd agree that 2020 was a better match to the global corp. ideas you find in Neuromancer, Bladerunner etc
:)
/.alike about the amazing predictions a certain Gary Gygax made in the late 20th Century?
I found Shadowrun to be a more enjoyable game however.
But it was a game. Not a metaphor for reality. A game. The overiding idea behind RPGs is that you warp and change them to your own vision. Katz seems to be using a guideline for a entertaining, roleplaying system as proof we are degenerating or something. It's hard to tell sometimes
Sci-Fi authors and writers have been 'predicting' the future for centuries, some more accurately than others. Does this make any particular sci-fi more valid than any other or is the entertainment the be all and end all of the story. Do authors like Gibson et al. think they are predicting the future, writing about a possible fuuture or simply writing to entertain?
If, in xxxx years time the world is populated by elved and dwarves etc, will Johannas Katzen be spouting on
I don't think so.
Shadowrun is a game and is fun.
Reality is not a game but is (usually!) fun.
Hohum
troc
Well yeah that's what I was meaning - I was just trying to say it in a more accessible way.
:)
And failing I guess. Explaining things was never one of my strong points.
Probably why I became and engineer
cheers
troc
The theory is something like this:
It's been postulated that just within the 'event horizon' of a black hole (that point at which even light cannot normally escape the gravitational field), a complex particle could decay into constituent particles under the forces around it...... these constituent particles will then zoom away from each other due to the energy released and it's possible for one or many of these particles to leave the black hole before its gravity has slowed the particles sufficiently to suck them back down.
It's kinda like here on Earth - I can throw a ball up in the air and it'll fall down again and if I throw it nearly fast enough to leave the gravitational pull, it'll get hearly all the way our and then fall back again... so if I make a special ball that's designed to break in two at or near the top of it's flight and fire the two sections in opposite directions (one up and one down), then the top section now has enough velocity to escape.....
This is partially how/why multiple stage rockets are better then single stage ones in certain circumstances.....
troc
I like the fact that unless you can prove you've forgotten the keys, or lost the keys or never had them, they can slap you in gaol for 2 years....
Maybe it'd be a suitable 'ask slashdot' question?
"How does one prove the forgetting of data?"
hohum
troc
I've always thought pornography to be illegal in any country - but that the definition of what constituted pornography changed.
:)
Thus in England, we have strict rules that say an erect penis is phrongraphic and therefore banned wheras in Holland it's not pornographic and therefore not banned.
Maybe I'm just being pedantic
Troc
Apple's USB macs happily support scroll wheels - thus you have the opportunity to go out abd buy your preferred one.
I've been using a M$ intellimouse for ages. No problem.
:)
Troc
Mars is approximately the same diameter as the Earth's iron cores (i.e. take away the crust and the mantle) and is very iron-rich.
This has long fuelled speculation that mars used to be about Earth-sized but that a collision with something ripped the top off (and with it the atmosphere) a loooooong time ago.
Venus is closer to the Earth in mass and size.
Hohum
troc
X has been ported to MacOS X - not fully yet but there's no reason why it can't be made to run perfectly (or as well as in linux anyway :) so you can get your virtual desktops and Gnome IDE etc that way. Not sure whether the Quartz drawing engine in OS X allows for virtual desktops but it probably does - I know you can get them for OS 9 as a shareware package or something.
troc
Well the OS is about 99.9% POSIX compliant, so most *nix stuff will compile fairly easily without too much hassle, just the odd Makefile alterations we are all used to....!
Troc
Not sure it's been shown much outside the UK
Basic premise is a nuclear waste dump on the far side of the moon explodes taking the moon out of Earth orbit and off into deep space - carrying with it 'Moonbase Alpha' and crew.
Excellent wobbly BBC sets and some of the best space ships (Eagles) ever in a sc-fi ever at all ever.
Did I say the space ships were cool?
troc
I honestly thought I had.....
:)
I blame it on the box being so close to the submit button - I've hot the button a few times when I meant to hit the box first.
I'm also worried about all this submitting we have to do.
Not sure I want to submit
heh
Troc
I can't help but notice the article(s) above have been marked as flamebait......
:)
But they look rather like discussion points to me, at worst they are simple statements of a personal viewpoint but not flamebait.
"All free software sucks" would be flamebait, as would "I hate macs because I hate them" or "John Katz writes like a crazed koala"
(the stuff above is presented purely as a series of examples - please don't take seriously!)
People should learn to moderate sensibly and not knee-jerkingly in an "ooh, I've got 5 points to spend, let's screw a thread up" kind of way. I guess this piece I've written will be modded to hell now as I've probably annoyed someone but it's just meant as my take on things
And as for my take on the sound forge thing - if it annoys you, just ignore it - there are better things to do in life than whinge about open source projects -if it really annoys you, go out and code something yourself or better yet try maintaining your own distribution - it's bloody complicated and takes a lot of time to do.
Hohum
troc
Ooooooh I hope the internet oracle isn't reading that one or we'll all be ZOTted.......
Troc
Then again... why exactly would we want to port this to linux?
I can understand porting the PC front-end to linux so we can use our machines to programme it but why the robot itself?
You only need an OS like linux (or whatever) in the robot itself if it's going to be really clever (or if you want it crunching SETI as it wanders around) And this will tend to require a bigger processor, more ancillary components, bigger batteries, heavier construction, beefier motors, bigger batteries etc etc....
A totally different type of robot altogether
Hohum
troc
Well of course there isn't anything secret to be seen....
:)
:)
The US will know the flight paths of the satellites and will therefore know when it's safe to wheel out their latest test 'planes or whatever. Most of the big governments monitor the flights of satellites by radar as a matter of course these days. They restrict 'planes because they can fly over at any time (although I'm sure the Area 51 radar would pick them up....
There are, of course, no little green men as there never were any UFO landings and if there had been, we've all seen the X-files.... they are little grey men
heh
Troc
From what I remember, they built one of his simpler models, proving the concept but didn't have the technical expertise to produce the full difference engine (I think they byult the analytical engine or something). They couldn't manufacture enough parts consistently - there was also a problem with expense, the experts were very expensive, as were the raw materials.
Troc
Yep. I just think it's a shame that 19th century engineering wasn't up to the manufacture of these things - think what would have followed.
:) Ok, I know it'd only run for a few seconds before siezing (lubricant molecules are of the same order as some component dinemsions) but it'd still be cool.
I fancy wasnering down to our micro (and nano) engineering dept. here at Birmingham Uni (UK) and seeing if they could make a nano-sized version. Portable difference engines
There's always that book "The Difference Engine" by Gibson and Sterling - very good and thought provoking account of how things could have turned out.
Troc
Text adventures......
:(
:)
god I remember getting well annoyed with The Hobbit.
And buying books of computer games and typing them in......
and one line scrollig games in 255 characters
and citadel which took bloody hours to load off tape and wouldn't transfer to disc
that's it, where's my duster. I can feel the need to play with the old beastie again (and I mean the BBC B
On a weirder note, the British Science Museam has an Acorn Electron in the toechnology and communication section as "the shape of personal computing - soon we will have have computers like this at home" - slightly behind the times I feel.
Troc