Universe is about 15 000 000 000 years old. If habitable planets are common then there has to be much older races than we are. Let's say that one of those races is capable of space traveling and it takes 1000 years for that race to spread from planet to another. If they were 1 000 000 years older than us then they would've spread around the universe to 2^1000 planets. Even if it took 10 000 years to populate a planet after reaching one, they would have populated 2^100 planets. Now think about a race that would've been around for a 1 000 000 000 years. They should've populated every habitable planet in the universe.
I can't remember the name of this theory, but please tell me if you do.
The article says "In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian population.."
Since when monitoring the civilian population has protected anyone from terrorism? Every hacker knows that you can become untraceable and undecryptable if you want to. Terrorists are not stupid, they are able and have the will to use every trick in the book. Real terrorists aren't sending uncrypted emails, or chatting about their next strike on public forums.
Big brother's monitoring system is targeted to civil liberties, not outside threat. The same thing has happened many times in the history. You think that you're saving your country by giving up your civil liberties, but you're not! And by the way, gaining back those liberties is ten times as hard as losing them. You might want to check from your history books how east germans, russians, finns, etc. won back their liberties.
Atleast "The One ring" was compatible with the other rings even though it ruled them. Why can't "The one program" be compatible with the other programs if it rules them?
Xbox can do most of those features with little modifications and opensource applications:
Control Live Television - can do with xbox Enjoy DVDs - can do with xbox Listen digital music - can do with xbox Burn music, photos and videos - not yet possible, but might be possible in future View your favorite photos - can do with xbox Edit digital videos - can do with xbox Incredible gaming performance - xbox games aren't that bad..
Do you have a calendar? How about a camera? And music, do you listen the latest albums? and so on.. tv, videocamera, vibrator, etc.
Why the hell should I carry around 10 different devices when technology allows to put them all in one package.
What is happening is not smartPHONES but technology integration. 70 years ago people didn't have radios in their cars and many thought just like you that 'I can listen to radio at home, why should there be one in my car'. Nowadays I really don't know anyone who still thinks that radios don't belong in cars - do you?
From the article: "Counterfeiting is also growing in size and sophistication. Another report published this week by Informa Media reckons pirated music sales rose in value by 2.4% in 2001 to a worldwide total of $4.3 billion. Taiwan remains the biggest culprit: it has the capacity to press 8 billion CDs a year but has a legitimate demand for only 200m, says the report. Around 90% of CDs sold in China each year are pirated. But the problem is growing in western countries too. The heads of European record companies, meeting recently in Rome, estimated that 27% of music sold in Italy is now pirated; in southern Italy, the proportion is nearer half."
This is something I don't understand. If the problem really is music sharing in the Internet, then how come counterfeiters are gaining more market? I would understand this if there was a recession and people didn't have money to buy CDs, but.. hey wait a minute, there is a recession. Now I'm on to something. Since people don't have the money and they still need their favorite music, do they have any other choice?
Atleast where I live the counterfeited CD costs about 5-8 euros. Blank CD-R costs 40 cents. If people just could download those albums for 5euros maybe they didn't buy pirated versions?
(Maybe this is my childish logic. We all know that everyone using the Internet is an evil pirate who steals from the poor artists and wants to destroy the world economics.)
I find this sentence especially amusing from the Bertelsmann's site: "World music sales for the year 2001 fell by 5% in value and by 6,5% in units."
Blaming that music downloaders where the reason for the fell. I wonder if they remember that there was a recession in 2001, IT bubble broke and almost all industries fell into downswing. It would've been a miracle if CD sales hadn't dropped at all and 5% is LITTLE compared to the bankruptcies that other industries had to deal with.
(It's amazing that restaurants don't blame home cooks for the recession, stealing the recipes that they use, and using them free at home! can you see the analogy?)
What are your opinions dear slashdotters, now that Tetris has proven itself in the eyes of mathematicians should we place it on the same line with Chess and Go or maybe rubik's cube?
Computer world has not yet produced any historical classics, but I think if there should be one the Tetris might be the best candidate. Tetris is a game that can't be produced without computers, but it holds the same gaming value as Chess or Go, it can be played infinitely which in my opinion is the most important feature of a classic game.
It's very easy to make an XML document that can't be processed with any common parser library. It will make programmers work extremely hard if they have to make different XML parser for M$-XML.
Now if the M$-XML isn't compatible with the standard XML what's the use? You still have to save it in M$-XML format to be able to use it with Word. If most coders want to use M$-XML it might even brake down XML standard since there are more Word documents in the world than XML documents put together!
Have you noticed that if you calculate the value of those movies or especially MP3s on the disc (~16$/album, ~20$/movie) the value of a disc is more than the same weight disc made out of gold.
Btw. if RIAA catches you walking around with pocket full of these discs, and those discs contain more albums than an average music store. Can they charge you similarly as if you had robbed all albums from one of their stores?
Director's cut doesn't really give more gredits to the original book. Few more minutes to the movies extends it to cover about 0.1% more of the book. Sure there are more great actions scenes and other unseen 'stuff', but what's the point?
If you want to see a bit more action the director's cut is made for you, but if you want to know more about the orinigal story, then don't spend your money on the movie - JUST BUY THE BOOK:)
Farscape certainly is not good scifi series anymore. Especially the second and third season were great with a continuous plot, but the fourth season is nothing like previous ones. No continuous plot, no good story line, just separate episodes with totally pointless plots. IMHO.
Have you ever been in a quake clan? Most of the time members just hang around on the clan's IRC channel talking with each other. I personally play both, Quake based games and MUDs. In a MUD even though I might chat a lot with the other people I don't talk about things related to the real life. Conversations are about new things in the game, character abilities, items, etc. I mostly get to know only the character, not the person who plays it.
In a quake clan the talk on the idle time on a clan channel is mostly not about the quake itself (because it's very straight forward), but about the things my clan mates have been doing recently (in real life).
Even death has become too easy, you can sorrow online and forget it tomorrow.
You cannot see the grief of the relatives, you cannot see the pain or the sadness, it's all game. Do online gamers really understand that a real person died, not a character. Is the sorrow similar to one you feel when the main character in your favorite book dies?
My brother died few months ago, he was very active quake player, member of a succesfull clan etc. His clan mates had never met him in real life, but they were as close as someone can be virtually/online. Now six months later they barely remember he ever was in their clan. Instead his real life friends still grief him frequently.
In my opinion everything online is a shadow of the same thing in real life - even emotions.
It makes me wonder why music industry is the only industry where the product creators are made celebrities. I mean I bet Quake has sold more copies than Madonna's latest album but I don't see John Carmack's face in the news papers or not even in the Quake retail box.
The bigger the company is the more it gets patented - pure statistics. A small company with few patents is a needle in the haystack compared to a huge company (IBM, M$,..) with tens of thousands patents.
Slashdot Mirror
A theory I once heard:
Universe is about 15 000 000 000 years old. If habitable planets are common then there has to be much older races than we are. Let's say that one of those races is capable of space traveling and it takes 1000 years for that race to spread from planet to another. If they were 1 000 000 years older than us then they would've spread around the universe to 2^1000 planets. Even if it took 10 000 years to populate a planet after reaching one, they would have populated 2^100 planets. Now think about a race that would've been around for a 1 000 000 000 years. They should've populated every habitable planet in the universe.
I can't remember the name of this theory, but please tell me if you do.
The article says "In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian population.."
Since when monitoring the civilian population has protected anyone from terrorism? Every hacker knows that you can become untraceable and undecryptable if you want to. Terrorists are not stupid, they are able and have the will to use every trick in the book. Real terrorists aren't sending uncrypted emails, or chatting about their next strike on public forums.
Big brother's monitoring system is targeted to civil liberties, not outside threat. The same thing has happened many times in the history. You think that you're saving your country by giving up your civil liberties, but you're not! And by the way, gaining back those liberties is ten times as hard as losing them. You might want to check from your history books how east germans, russians, finns, etc. won back their liberties.
Atleast "The One ring" was compatible with the other rings even though it ruled them. Why can't "The one program" be compatible with the other programs if it rules them?
Xbox can do most of those features with little modifications and opensource applications:
Control Live Television - can do with xbox
Enjoy DVDs - can do with xbox
Listen digital music - can do with xbox
Burn music, photos and videos - not yet possible, but might be possible in future
View your favorite photos - can do with xbox
Edit digital videos - can do with xbox
Incredible gaming performance - xbox games aren't that bad..
Cost :
Xbox+modifications = $400
Navigator Mediacenter = $1699
Which one would you choose?
Do you have a calendar?
How about a camera?
And music, do you listen the latest albums?
and so on.. tv, videocamera, vibrator, etc.
Why the hell should I carry around 10 different devices when technology allows to put them all in one package.
What is happening is not smartPHONES but technology integration. 70 years ago people didn't have radios in their cars and many thought just like you that 'I can listen to radio at home, why should there be one in my car'. Nowadays I really don't know anyone who still thinks that radios don't belong in cars - do you?
From the article:
"Counterfeiting is also growing in size and sophistication. Another report published this week by Informa Media reckons pirated music sales rose in value by 2.4% in 2001 to a worldwide total of $4.3 billion. Taiwan remains the biggest culprit: it has the capacity to press 8 billion CDs a year but has a legitimate demand for only 200m, says the report. Around 90% of CDs sold in China each year are pirated. But the problem is growing in western countries too. The heads of European record companies, meeting recently in Rome, estimated that 27% of music sold in Italy is now pirated; in southern Italy, the proportion is nearer half."
This is something I don't understand. If the problem really is music sharing in the Internet, then how come counterfeiters are gaining more market? I would understand this if there was a recession and people didn't have money to buy CDs, but.. hey wait a minute, there is a recession. Now I'm on to something. Since people don't have the money and they still need their favorite music, do they have any other choice?
Atleast where I live the counterfeited CD costs about 5-8 euros. Blank CD-R costs 40 cents. If people just could download those albums for 5euros maybe they didn't buy pirated versions?
(Maybe this is my childish logic. We all know that everyone using the Internet is an evil pirate who steals from the poor artists and wants to destroy the world economics.)
I find this sentence especially amusing from the Bertelsmann's site :
"World music sales for the year 2001 fell by 5% in value and by 6,5% in units."
Blaming that music downloaders where the reason for the fell. I wonder if they remember that there was a recession in 2001, IT bubble broke and almost all industries fell into downswing. It would've been a miracle if CD sales hadn't dropped at all and 5% is LITTLE compared to the bankruptcies that other industries had to deal with.
(It's amazing that restaurants don't blame home cooks for the recession, stealing the recipes that they use, and using them free at home! can you see the analogy?)
Unreal alpha also leaked before it was released. It also required twice as much memory and processor power than the final version.
I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the 3D-engine efficiency before the final version is released.
What are your opinions dear slashdotters, now that Tetris has proven itself in the eyes of mathematicians should we place it on the same line with Chess and Go or maybe rubik's cube?
Computer world has not yet produced any historical classics, but I think if there should be one the Tetris might be the best candidate. Tetris is a game that can't be produced without computers, but it holds the same gaming value as Chess or Go, it can be played infinitely which in my opinion is the most important feature of a classic game.
Please share your thoughts?
It's very easy to make an XML document that can't be processed with any common parser library. It will make programmers work extremely hard if they have to make different XML parser for M$-XML.
Now if the M$-XML isn't compatible with the standard XML what's the use? You still have to save it in M$-XML format to be able to use it with Word. If most coders want to use M$-XML it might even brake down XML standard since there are more Word documents in the world than XML documents put together!
Have you noticed that if you calculate the value of those movies or especially MP3s on the disc (~16$/album, ~20$/movie) the value of a disc is more than the same weight disc made out of gold.
Btw. if RIAA catches you walking around with pocket full of these discs, and those discs contain more albums than an average music store. Can they charge you similarly as if you had robbed all albums from one of their stores?
Director's cut doesn't really give more gredits to the original book. Few more minutes to the movies extends it to cover about 0.1% more of the book. Sure there are more great actions scenes and other unseen 'stuff', but what's the point?
:)
If you want to see a bit more action the director's cut is made for you, but if you want to know more about the orinigal story, then don't spend your money on the movie - JUST BUY THE BOOK
...there might be 1,5 billion Linux users in china running red flag linux on dragon chips.
OK, realistic figure would more like 2/3 of the whole population, just one billion users.
Since when have Windows 3.1 and the earlier versions qualifed as an OSes? They are just windowing applications running on DOS.
This must be from those AD&D novels where commoners thought that all magic users were evil regardless whether they used white, red or black robe .
Here are the preliminary prices of the new Nokia models including 3650 (625).
http://www.idesan.pp.fi/nokia.html
Do you mean banners like in the Opera?
I personally don't mind about them, but atleast among my friends I'm the only one who doesn't mind..
Farscape certainly is not good scifi series anymore. Especially the second and third season were great with a continuous plot, but the fourth season is nothing like previous ones. No continuous plot, no good story line, just separate episodes with totally pointless plots. IMHO.
Have you ever been in a quake clan?
Most of the time members just hang around on the clan's IRC channel talking with each other.
I personally play both, Quake based games and MUDs. In a MUD even though I might chat a lot with the other people I don't talk about things related to the real life. Conversations are about new things in the game, character abilities, items, etc. I mostly get to know only the character, not the person who plays it.
In a quake clan the talk on the idle time on a clan channel is mostly not about the quake itself (because it's very straight forward), but about the things my clan mates have been doing recently (in real life).
Even death has become too easy, you can sorrow online and forget it tomorrow.
You cannot see the grief of the relatives, you cannot see the pain or the sadness, it's all game. Do online gamers really understand that a real person died, not a character. Is the sorrow similar to one you feel when the main character in your favorite book dies?
My brother died few months ago, he was very active quake player, member of a succesfull clan etc. His clan mates had never met him in real life, but they were as close as someone can be virtually/online. Now six months later they barely remember he ever was in their clan. Instead his real life friends still grief him frequently.
In my opinion everything online is a shadow of the same thing in real life - even emotions.
New technologies have always scared people at first. When electricity came in the households old people feared that it would leak out of the plugs.
Your fear measures your fear of change.
It makes me wonder why music industry is the only industry where the product creators are made celebrities. I mean I bet Quake has sold more copies than Madonna's latest album but I don't see John Carmack's face in the news papers or not even in the Quake retail box.
The bigger the company is the more it gets patented - pure statistics. A small company with few patents is a needle in the haystack compared to a huge company (IBM, M$, ..) with tens of thousands patents.
GPL exists to protect invidual coder's IPs.
Software patents exist to protect massive companies to become even bigger.
If you can't see the difference..
I think the real news is that companies are finally starting to consider Linux as a gaming platform also.