"Apparently, there's enough plutonium on board (34 pounds!) that we'll be donating to the Jovian depths."
And you assume there's no plutonium down there already because...?
I mean, it's not like the plutonium has a chance in hell of hitting something solid (or even liquid) inside of Jupiter as one big chunk, what with Jupiter's vicious, constant winds...
"China would argue that they're not two countries..."
The Middle Kingdom might also argue that they're the center of the world, but that doesn't make them right (no matter how skewed their world maps look)
The best explaination I've heard of the One China Policy goes something like this: The US pretends that China and Taiwan are one country, and they both play along.
"If this goes bad for DirecTV, I may be forced to watch more of their damned commercials!"
If you paid attention to some of their commercials, you'd know that you could get a TiVo from them. I mean, if you don't want to see commercials, the answer is right there in front of you.
"eBay prohibits the listing of items or products to be delivered electronically through the Internet."
Does that mean it can be delivered electronically through a different medium? What if the seller dialed up the buyer's modem and set up a zmodem transfer? Or does nobody do that any more?
I'm not all that fond of them myself, but I don't see what laws (either French or New Zealand) they were breaking at the time. If they were, I'm sure New Zealand would have cooperated. But France couldn't even bother to ask permission to operate in New Zealand.
"On the note of France and nuclear weapons...anybody notice how France resumes nuclear testing, and everybody makes a big stink"
I can remember the stink made when France conducted the first underwater test in the South Pacific since... well, since the US and USSR signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. I can also remember what French special forces tried to do to Greenpeace who were trying to protest the tests. Say what you will about Ashcroft, but even he hasn't done something like that (yet).
Sure, France wasn't a signatory, but even the Indians and Pakistanis are focusing on underground testing.
"The US announces it is pulling out of nuclear treaties, and resuming testing, and nobody cares."
One, and only one: The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. And we did so according to the terms of said treaty (giving advance notice, etc.). And the only testing being done is with kinetic-kill weapons against dummy ballistic targets. Unless somebody can pull up some information that says otherwise, the last US nuclear test was more than a decade ago. All US nuclear tests since the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (c. 1960s) have been conducted underground according to the terms of said treaty. The US has also held up its end of the bargain spelled out in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ("We'll help you build nuclear power plants if you don't try to build bombs"). The US has not violated the terms of any nuclear treaty signed by it (cough Pyongyang cough) and it does maintain public disclosure of its nuclear arsenal and capabilities (cough Tehran cough).
My CD collection is now RIAA-free. If this happened a few years ago, a lower price might have sated my anger at the RIAA, but now I feel I'm beyond the point where I can be brought back into the fold with a mere price drop on CDs. After all, is even a 20% price cut worth it when the CDs you're buying are copy-protected?
Pay your lackeys to repeal the DMCA, then we'll talk.
My purchase of this device relies solely on one thing: the games. If the games are good, I'll get one. If not, I won't. I couldn't care less the kinds of whiz-bang features the put into it when I'm shoping for a handheld game system.
"Make no mistake, my aim will prove true. I should have this whole "spam" ordeal cleared up by late September."
And your name is Mao, hm?
Hey, if they're the first people up against the wall when your revolution comes, sign me up! I'll even carry around a copy of your little red cook book!
Laugh if you want, but necessity dictates that I can only get a 56k internet connection, and there's two computers in the house. I'm currently using XP's internet connection sharing thingie but I'd kill for a hardware-based solution right about now, at least one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I thought Stratitec's (discontinued) "Easy Internet Router," which had a serial port for connecting an external modem as well as ethernet ports, would be The Answer, except that the router seriously slowed down when routing a dial-up connection (tech support's excuse was "Well, we only intended it to be a back-up and the router really isn't designed to do that...")
Now I hear about this, which to me sounds like a Holy Grail, and I can't seem to find it anywhere. The only place I can find it is one of those shady dealers operating on Amazon. There has to be somebody slightly more reputable with some for sale, or at the very least something else to let me compare prices!
"If you dont need bells a whistles a 56k modem for more than 50+ bucks seems a bit pricey."
But $50 is about par for the course for external RS-232 modems, which will work on anything with a serial port (we don't need no steenkin' driver!). The cheap ones you're thinking about are the accursed winmodems that require an accompanying software kludge.
"All of which begs the question, why not buy a motorbike?"
No, it begs the question "What the heck is this doing on the front page?" I can see how the Segway was at one point an interesting piece of technology when it first came out, but that was a long time ago. It's less "technology" and more "silly fad." I would sooner expect an article about who is going to win such-and-such "reality TV" show than this on Slashdot. What next, world's larget pet rock collection?
Heck, if anything the Segway is a shining example on exactly why the bottom fell out of the 90's IT economy. And the fact that mention of it still makes headlines in Slashdot demonstrates that people in the 21st century are still just as gullible and short-sighted as they were ten years ago.
"Rockets, my man, rockets. Shoot Hubble II into orbit with a rocket, and if a EVA is necessary to "assemble" it, then put the space plane on station and get it done."
Except that the shuttle cargo bay isn't just to haul cargo but also functions as a drydock. Working on something within the bay gives the astronauts numerous convenient tie-down points to reach all the important parts of the satellite. If you can no longer assume that all your manned missions are going to bring along their own enclosed structure to work in, you'll need to seriously reconsider your design philosophy and hope you've covered all the bases.
"There are two different definitions of "calorie"."
And there are a bajillion definitions for the word "work." Just as the word "calorie" means differen things to physicists and nutritionists, the word "work" means very different things to economists than it does in the world of physics. If your ego hadn't gotten in the way, you might have realized that the author wasn't talking about energy (or m-dot, which is a completely different concept altogether) but the process of creating wealth. It's the difference between Michelangelo and a rock crusher.
First you kill numbers 1 through 500, but then suddenly numbers 501 through 1000 are now "the 500 wealthiest," and they have to be killed, and it just keeps on going down the line until you kill the last 500 (who used to be the poorest, but then there woudln't be anybody left to be poorer than).
You're assuming that the amount of money in the world is finite. We're not talking about a natural resource like oil, we're talking about a medium where people exchange the fruits of their labor. The only way there could be a finite limit to the amount of money in the world is if population growth stopped overnight, resulting in a finite number of man-hours available on the planet. But even then, technology increases the base value of the individual man-hours (ie. fewer people can do more work, creating more wealth).
We'll have to worry about the heat-death of the universe long before we worry about running out of "money."
Slashdot Mirror
"Apparently, there's enough plutonium on board (34 pounds!) that we'll be donating to the Jovian depths."
And you assume there's no plutonium down there already because...?
I mean, it's not like the plutonium has a chance in hell of hitting something solid (or even liquid) inside of Jupiter as one big chunk, what with Jupiter's vicious, constant winds...
"someday, when we start harvesting diamonds from the erstwhile core of Jupiter"
Wouldn't it just be cheaper to make our own?
I would hope ground-based web servers at least have better latency than Galileo...
"plus you get a tuner in the menu so you don't have to stop watching TV in order to change the channel."
Exactly how old is their equipment? I'm guessing about a decade, because I haven't seen a DirecTV tuner like that in a long time.
"China would argue that they're not two countries..."
The Middle Kingdom might also argue that they're the center of the world, but that doesn't make them right (no matter how skewed their world maps look)
The best explaination I've heard of the One China Policy goes something like this: The US pretends that China and Taiwan are one country, and they both play along.
"If this goes bad for DirecTV, I may be forced to watch more of their damned commercials!"
If you paid attention to some of their commercials, you'd know that you could get a TiVo from them. I mean, if you don't want to see commercials, the answer is right there in front of you.
"eBay prohibits the listing of items or products to be delivered electronically through the Internet."
Does that mean it can be delivered electronically through a different medium? What if the seller dialed up the buyer's modem and set up a zmodem transfer? Or does nobody do that any more?
I'm not all that fond of them myself, but I don't see what laws (either French or New Zealand) they were breaking at the time. If they were, I'm sure New Zealand would have cooperated. But France couldn't even bother to ask permission to operate in New Zealand.
"A lot of water is heavy."
Does that mean clouds can be useful in fission reactors?
"Mr Oppenheim also said the RIAA was immume from rules on unreasonable searches on the internet,"
The Fourth Amendment simply says that people will be secure in their affects from unreasonable searches and seizures. It does not specifiy from whom.
And in the end, it doesn't matter what Mr. Oppenheim thinks the amendment says. He's not a federal judge.
"On the note of France and nuclear weapons...anybody notice how France resumes nuclear testing, and everybody makes a big stink"
I can remember the stink made when France conducted the first underwater test in the South Pacific since... well, since the US and USSR signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. I can also remember what French special forces tried to do to Greenpeace who were trying to protest the tests. Say what you will about Ashcroft, but even he hasn't done something like that (yet).
Sure, France wasn't a signatory, but even the Indians and Pakistanis are focusing on underground testing.
"The US announces it is pulling out of nuclear treaties, and resuming testing, and nobody cares."
One, and only one: The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. And we did so according to the terms of said treaty (giving advance notice, etc.). And the only testing being done is with kinetic-kill weapons against dummy ballistic targets. Unless somebody can pull up some information that says otherwise, the last US nuclear test was more than a decade ago. All US nuclear tests since the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (c. 1960s) have been conducted underground according to the terms of said treaty. The US has also held up its end of the bargain spelled out in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ("We'll help you build nuclear power plants if you don't try to build bombs"). The US has not violated the terms of any nuclear treaty signed by it (cough Pyongyang cough) and it does maintain public disclosure of its nuclear arsenal and capabilities (cough Tehran cough).
3. Canada's population is more concentrated than the US.
And as for the rural Canadian in the example, I propose that it's easier to wire one household 10 km away than 10 households 1 km away.
Do they show non-MPAA movies, though?
My CD collection is now RIAA-free. If this happened a few years ago, a lower price might have sated my anger at the RIAA, but now I feel I'm beyond the point where I can be brought back into the fold with a mere price drop on CDs. After all, is even a 20% price cut worth it when the CDs you're buying are copy-protected?
Pay your lackeys to repeal the DMCA, then we'll talk.
My purchase of this device relies solely on one thing: the games. If the games are good, I'll get one. If not, I won't. I couldn't care less the kinds of whiz-bang features the put into it when I'm shoping for a handheld game system.
"Make no mistake, my aim will prove true. I should have this whole "spam" ordeal cleared up by late September."
And your name is Mao, hm?
Hey, if they're the first people up against the wall when your revolution comes, sign me up! I'll even carry around a copy of your little red cook book!
But a baby AT case won't sit comfortably on top of my tower. Deskspace is at a premium.
Besides, if I'm going to be using a PC as a router, why not just continue using one of the PCs I already have on my network?
Laugh if you want, but necessity dictates that I can only get a 56k internet connection, and there's two computers in the house. I'm currently using XP's internet connection sharing thingie but I'd kill for a hardware-based solution right about now, at least one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I thought Stratitec's (discontinued) "Easy Internet Router," which had a serial port for connecting an external modem as well as ethernet ports, would be The Answer, except that the router seriously slowed down when routing a dial-up connection (tech support's excuse was "Well, we only intended it to be a back-up and the router really isn't designed to do that...")
Now I hear about this, which to me sounds like a Holy Grail, and I can't seem to find it anywhere. The only place I can find it is one of those shady dealers operating on Amazon. There has to be somebody slightly more reputable with some for sale, or at the very least something else to let me compare prices!
"If you dont need bells a whistles a 56k modem for more than 50+ bucks seems a bit pricey."
But $50 is about par for the course for external RS-232 modems, which will work on anything with a serial port (we don't need no steenkin' driver!). The cheap ones you're thinking about are the accursed winmodems that require an accompanying software kludge.
"All of which begs the question, why not buy a motorbike?"
No, it begs the question "What the heck is this doing on the front page?" I can see how the Segway was at one point an interesting piece of technology when it first came out, but that was a long time ago. It's less "technology" and more "silly fad." I would sooner expect an article about who is going to win such-and-such "reality TV" show than this on Slashdot. What next, world's larget pet rock collection?
Heck, if anything the Segway is a shining example on exactly why the bottom fell out of the 90's IT economy. And the fact that mention of it still makes headlines in Slashdot demonstrates that people in the 21st century are still just as gullible and short-sighted as they were ten years ago.
"Rockets, my man, rockets. Shoot Hubble II into orbit with a rocket, and if a EVA is necessary to "assemble" it, then put the space plane on station and get it done."
Except that the shuttle cargo bay isn't just to haul cargo but also functions as a drydock. Working on something within the bay gives the astronauts numerous convenient tie-down points to reach all the important parts of the satellite. If you can no longer assume that all your manned missions are going to bring along their own enclosed structure to work in, you'll need to seriously reconsider your design philosophy and hope you've covered all the bases.
Curse my desire for subtlety
"There are two different definitions of "calorie"."
And there are a bajillion definitions for the word "work." Just as the word "calorie" means differen things to physicists and nutritionists, the word "work" means very different things to economists than it does in the world of physics. If your ego hadn't gotten in the way, you might have realized that the author wasn't talking about energy (or m-dot, which is a completely different concept altogether) but the process of creating wealth. It's the difference between Michelangelo and a rock crusher.
"It already is! Recall that work is measured in joules (distance of mass per time)."
You're one of those people who doesn't understand why the Beer and Ice Cream Diet isn't working for them, aren't you?
Who's the more foolish; the fool or the fools that mod him up?
"to be one of the 500 wealthiest people."
Then everybody dies.
First you kill numbers 1 through 500, but then suddenly numbers 501 through 1000 are now "the 500 wealthiest," and they have to be killed, and it just keeps on going down the line until you kill the last 500 (who used to be the poorest, but then there woudln't be anybody left to be poorer than).
You're assuming that the amount of money in the world is finite. We're not talking about a natural resource like oil, we're talking about a medium where people exchange the fruits of their labor. The only way there could be a finite limit to the amount of money in the world is if population growth stopped overnight, resulting in a finite number of man-hours available on the planet. But even then, technology increases the base value of the individual man-hours (ie. fewer people can do more work, creating more wealth).
We'll have to worry about the heat-death of the universe long before we worry about running out of "money."