It's not being a leech to buy something that you think is undervalued by the seller. Quite the opposite. It has the effect of smoothing out pricing in a market and making it more liquid.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to make it easier to sleep at night... I'm about to move and was considering moving to a nearby larger city (where a lot of my friends moved a few years ago), until I saw the housing prices. The prices have doubled in the past three years. I know that housing prices go up in fits and spurts, but there is no way those houses are really worth what they're listing for. But people buy them anyway--and I can see you saying it now, "But if the houses are being purchased at that price, then they were worth that price, by definition." Which is where I point out that most people expect a house to appreciate in value, but those houses will probably drop in value or at least not increase for the next several years.
Here's what happened in this market: the housing price started to go up a little faster than average (because people started realizing that this was a nice place to live). Then the flippers said, "Hey, prices are going up. I can buy a house now, sit on it for a few months, and then sell it at an even higher price." People that had to move into the area (or people that had to move into a larger house), paid through the nose and hoped for the best. But there are only so many people like that (and everyone else is avoiding buying real estate in that area). In fact, recently I've seen new listings go up for considerably lower prices than before. So it looks like the bubble is starting to burst, and these flippers will get stuck with selling houses at a loss.
To summarize, all flippers do is temporarily raise housing prices to whatever the flippers think is the "true value" before the market corrects itself.
From the parent: "Biometric fingerprint-controlled door locks will guard entry to the Olympics IT control room run by the International Olympic Committee's technology partner Atos Origin."
Where does it say this in the article? The article specifically mentions that biometrics will NOT be used.
I love Gentoo and use it, but I was wondering what other distros are there that are always "up to date." I've never used any other but Gentoo, Slackware, and Red Hat. I know you can upgrade packages with Red Hat, but after a while it's recommended you just wipe the slate clean and start over when a new release comes out.
You might want to check out the unstable branch of Debian (don't let the "unstable" scare you, it should be similar to Gentoo).
I almost modded you as a troll (because there is no moderation titled "misinformative"), but since you'd probably just think I was an ignorant moderator, I'll explain why you are wrong.
According to that wikipedia page (which agrees with every other account I've heard), the flag depicted is not the first flag raised on Iwo Jima. The colonel of the battalion that owned the first flag was afraid of it being stolen by someone else for a souvenir, so the colonel arranged for the battalion's flag to be replaced with a second flag.
All of the above information is in your link. The text in the link does not claim or suggest that the picture was staged. The rest of this post is what I've heard elsewhere.
A photographer for the Associated Press, Joe Rosenthal, heard that the first flag was to be replaced, and realized that he would get a second chance to photograph such a historic event. He made sure he was present when the second flag was being raised, and took the picture.
Thus the photograph is not of the initial flag raising, but it is not "staged".
Gladly... unfortunately I can't stand playing games on consoles. I tried playing GTA:VC on a friend's PS2 (I own GTA3 for the PC), and I just couldn't do it. I'm too used to aiming with the mouse, and the crappy resolution of a TV just doesn't cut it.
That said, I look forward to contributing to your paycheck when GTA:SA comes out for the PC. I'll probably have to buy a new computer (or at least a new video card), but I'm sure it'll be worth it.
If I remember correctly, citizens can not legally own a handgun in Japan. Likewise, getting a permit to own a rifle is more difficult in Japan than the U.S.
I can't believe the article (and none of the other 300+ comments here) didn't mention this. It seems to me that the almost complete absence of firearms in Japanese society would be a large cause of this.
IIRC, the Japanese police don't always carry firearms. If someone could find some info to support/refute this, I'd appreciate it (I have to get to class...).
Virginia Tech has not (and will not) call the computer "Big Mac". BBC used the name when it first started appearing in the news, and everyone else picked it up, IIRC.
The people in charge of the cluster don't want to call it "Big Mac" because (1) they don't want a lawsuit from McDonalds, and (2) who wants to be associated with nasty, greasy fast food?
They've worked out a solid candidate for a name (it's not official yet) that isn't quite as catchy as "Big Mac", but it also doesn't have any of the downsides.
"We can treat the internet like we treat roads. Let the gov and taxes pay to built the network and then use our wireless connections and software to use the free network."
Yeah, that's what I want... an Internet connection with all of the reliability of a public road...
Let me ask one simple question: Which has provided more reliable service for you: 1) Your telco 2) The local DOT
" Argh... do i wait for athlon64 or opteron, or do I get one of these bad boys?! Decisions, decisions..."
I think you just put your finger on why AMD sales are down. Opteron is so hyped up people are waiting for that. I'd feel sorry for them but I'm also waiting for the opteron before replacing my PC.
I'm facing the same dilemma, but the conclusion I reached is: When Opterons are first released they will be overpriced (like all new technologies) and possibly still have some kinks to work out; likewise with the motherboards. No matter how hard AMD and the mobo manufacturers work to get all the kinks out, nothing finds bugs like the first real-world release.
I figure I'll upgrade now and take advantage of the low prices caused by everyone holding out. By my next upgrade cycle the Opterons (and related hardware/software) should be very nicely matured.
Of course, that's the opinion of someone is trying to avoid the "bleeding" aspect of the bleeding edge.
The real fun with the full version was to play networked. In my high school programming class, we'd spend the first 45 minutes programming, and the last 45 minutes gaming (the teacher had too much other stuff to do, and we all did our work well, so he kinda ignored it). We played Duke3d a little, but GTA was definitely the all-time favorite.
There was nothing better than running down one of your classmates while he was standing in the middle of the road trying to steal a car. Ah, good times...
Point is, are the OEMs basically refusing to sell OS-less PC's because it's convenient, or through fear? I know Dell will for some business clients, because usually they have a win site-license (could be mistaken about the details). However, they won't do it for just anyone.
They sell a Linux PC for anyone. This page tells you that Red Hat 8.0 is available on their Dell Precision 350n, 450n, 650n, 530n and 340n models. To find those, go to www.dell.com, click Small Business and choose Workstations. "Customize" any of the models listed before (they won't have "n" at the end of the number), and on the sidebar you'll see the option for Linux.
And for those who are curious, I customized the Precision 350 and 350n, to be identical in hardware, and the 350n (which is the one w/Linux) is exactly $100 cheaper than the 350.
Unfortunately, copying the URL doesn't copy the configuration, so I can't post a link to the two computers.
Just wanted you to know that I almost choked from laughing to hard when I read your post. It was the only one in this thread that got even a smile out of me.
If only I had some mod points (I always get them when there's nothing worth modding...).
Anyways, much thanks.
Confusing Input devices with Output devices
on
Type With Your Eyes
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· Score: 1
Eyes are made for input. I thought about doing something like this, but then I realized that your eyes are made for giving info to your brain, not the other way around. Unless you have a physical handicap that rules out pretty much every other form of interaction, this would not be good for you. Of course, if you are that handicapped, I'm sure this would be a wonderful device.
For the rest of the population, this makes about as much sense as using braille instead of a monitor.
How about adding a small microphone and a clock so Spot is commanded to Not Bark At Night so you (and the neighbors!) can get some sleep?
They already have a much better version of this. It's something that you put on your dog's collar, and when he barks it emits a very high-pitched (out of the range of human ears) beep. Apparently it's high enough or loud enough that Spot decides that barking isn't so much fun anymore.
We had the same situation in my high school, so one of us found an interesting solution. If you opened a DOS window and typed: mkdir (hold down the ALT key and type 0255), it would make a directory that looked like it was just an underscore. In DOS shells, you could go into like any other directory. But in Windows Explorer, the directory would be listed but you couldn't do anything with it. You couldn't open it, delete it, or rename it.
Since our computer lab teacher didn't know that much about computers, it kept everything safe. Of course, you had to open up a DOS window and run stuff from the shell, but that seemed like a small price to pay.
Note: this worked on Windows 95, I haven't had a chance to check it on later versions of Windows.
You're right, in the real world cooperation is important, and code reuse is important. I don't want to have to work on a team with people who don't know how to do either.
But I also don't want to work on a team with someone who can't do anything by him/herself. I've known people like this, who have to lean on everyone around them to hold their head above water. In the end, the group would generally be more productive if they dropped that one person and split his/her responsibilities among themselves.
"Results are all that matters. Excessive effort is for masochists and bleeding hearts ("but boss, I worked all weekend!")."
In the real world, definitely. In the academic environment, not a chance. If what you said was true in school, then why don't all of the students in the class just have someone write the program once, and then everyone turn it in? Or how about they all use the results from last years class?
Because the fact of the matter is, when you're in the real world, there isn't always going to be someone else doing the same program as you, and you'd better know how to do it by yourself.
Flash itself is not to blame for usability problems on websites - check out http://www.homestarrunner.com [homestarrunner.com] and tell me that site isn't easy to navigate.:)
As others have pointed out, from the browsing that I did, it seemed like a lot of the Flash stuff could be removed without losing anything but download time. But that's not why I'm responding.
The real problem occured for me while I was watching on of the animations and my girlfriend IMed me. Now what am I supposed to do? I'm not dumb enough to ignore my girlfriend for a stupid Flash animation, but there's no way to pause or rewind the animation without restarting it.
And that was when I closed the window and gave up on the site.
That's what is wrong with most uses of Flash. It expects to be the center of your attention (you can't play your own music in the background, and you can't do anything else while watching the animation or you'll miss something).
So when is Flash ok to use? I don't mind it in the e-cards that my girlfriend and I send to each other. There, I prefer it over anything else that the web has to offer. It's also very nice for things like online biology or chemistry examples that let students go step-by-step through an animated experiment, with explanations at each step.
But using it for site navigation, or to add a little glitter to an ordinary page is just plain wrong. Violators should be shot on sight.
Why dont the vim developers work on makeing a vim with an IDE rather than having other work on embeding vim in other apps?
You've just hit on the big difference between vim mentality and emacs mentality. Vim users want something small and can be used anywhere. Emacs users want something that can do anything. It's a subtle difference, but important.
So emacs people write other programs for emacs, while vim people write vim for other programs.
Both methods have their advantages. Choose whichever one suits your needs best, or if you can manage to remember how to use both, then use both as you see fit.
The cosr[sic] isn't that much higher [for SCSI over IDE]
Please tell me where you shop. I have a SCSI adapter in my computer (it came with the last prebuilt desktop that I bought), and I know SCSI is better, and I wanted more space, so I priced SCSI drives. I checked outpost.com, and here are the prices that I found:
Similarly priced SCSI drives don't get above 18GB (check here)
I realize that outpost.com probably doesn't have the cheapest prices. But wherever you find cheaper SCSI drives, you'll find cheaper IDE drives. If you can prove me wrong, please reply; I'd love to have more SCSI drives.
Monitors don't reflect computer prices
on
PC Prices to Rise?
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· Score: 1
Monitors have never followed the pricing drops that computers follow. I bought a monitor (KDS 19" 195T) two years ago, and then I bought a dual-head card with the intention of buying a second monitor. I love my current monitor, and want to get another like it. The trouble is, the price hasn't dropped. In fact, I bought my current monitor on sale, and I haven't seen the price come back to that level since then.
My point? CRT monitors aren't subject to the same pricing trends as computers, because the technology isn't changing. LCD's have been dropping price because they're new and the manufacturying technology keeps improving. That doesn't mean anything for CPU, memory, hard drive, or adapter cards. And those are what keep bringing the system price down.
"To treat the boys, the Great Ormond Street team took the stem cells that give rise to immune cells from the two boys' bone marrow." [emphasis added]
Please read the story. This would be perfectly fine with the current regulations in the US. This cure has nothing to do with embryonic stem cells; the stem cells came from the boys' bone marrow. Current US regulations only restrict embryonic (as in, "taken from an embryo") stem cells.
I'm not saying that this makes the current regulations right, I'm just saying that this particular cure has nothing to do with embryonic stem cells.
Actually, for-pay services have a chance (at least to get my money) for two reasons: 1) Guaranteed quality. I don't have time to check every mp3 I download to make sure that it was ripped by someone intelligent enough to do it correctly.
2) Easy browsing. I want to _really_ be able to search by artist, song title, year, etc. And when I search by song and find the song that I want, I want to be one click away from finding other songs that that band produced.
3) I just realized that I don't need to own the music. I'd be perfectly happy renting music, so long as I can rent as much as I want, and do so easily and affordably.
Because I can't get 1 or 2 with normal P2P filesharing, I don't use them anymore. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like any of the current offerings from the record labels are meeting my requirements for 3, so they won't work either.
By the way, anyone know where I can find any music downloading program (for Linux) that will meet all of these requirements? It doesn't have to be mainstream music.
The article makes it sound like they expect to the gravitational model to be preprogrammed (although the actual scientists may or may not believe this, you gotta love journalists).
I found this comment from the last time the story was posted (somebody else posted the link) by phr2 which seems rather insightful: "If someone throws you a spinning frisbee, it flies level at about constant speed--aerodynamic lift prevents it from accelerating downward. Yet you can catch it as accurately as a baseball.
I think a more valid conclusion from that experiment might be that free fall makes you clumsy."
If the article was worth repeating, I think that comment is worth reposting.
Check out rubberhose (www.rubberhose.org). It allows you to take a partition, and encrypt different data (and the corresponding parts of the filesystem) on the partition with different passphrases. You can only read the segment(s) that you have the passphrase(s) for. When a file is deleted, it is replaced with random noise. So when someone asks you to hand over the password, you gladly hand them one. They get to see whatever that password encoded, but not the other stuff. And they can never prove (and you can never prove) that you did or didn't hand over all of the passwords.
The disadvantage: because there is no way to tell whether there might be other data on the drive, if you don't have all of the passwords and write to the drive, you may overwrite data encrypted with another password (when data is written, it is scattered on the drive). But it's still a lot better than trying to hide data in the extra room of a block.
According to their website, this is used by civil rights activists who are in hostile nations (where "subpoena" is spelled t-o-r-t-u-r-e).
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever you need to tell yourself to make it easier to sleep at night... I'm about to move and was considering moving to a nearby larger city (where a lot of my friends moved a few years ago), until I saw the housing prices. The prices have doubled in the past three years. I know that housing prices go up in fits and spurts, but there is no way those houses are really worth what they're listing for. But people buy them anyway--and I can see you saying it now, "But if the houses are being purchased at that price, then they were worth that price, by definition." Which is where I point out that most people expect a house to appreciate in value, but those houses will probably drop in value or at least not increase for the next several years.
Here's what happened in this market: the housing price started to go up a little faster than average (because people started realizing that this was a nice place to live). Then the flippers said, "Hey, prices are going up. I can buy a house now, sit on it for a few months, and then sell it at an even higher price." People that had to move into the area (or people that had to move into a larger house), paid through the nose and hoped for the best. But there are only so many people like that (and everyone else is avoiding buying real estate in that area). In fact, recently I've seen new listings go up for considerably lower prices than before. So it looks like the bubble is starting to burst, and these flippers will get stuck with selling houses at a loss.
To summarize, all flippers do is temporarily raise housing prices to whatever the flippers think is the "true value" before the market corrects itself.
From the parent:
"Biometric fingerprint-controlled door locks will guard entry to the Olympics IT control room run by the International Olympic Committee's technology partner Atos Origin."
Where does it say this in the article? The article specifically mentions that biometrics will NOT be used.
so this is not "current state of the art". The original poster was probably right about this being 10 years in the future.
You might want to check out the unstable branch of Debian (don't let the "unstable" scare you, it should be similar to Gentoo).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_I wo_Jima
I almost modded you as a troll (because there is no moderation titled "misinformative"), but since you'd probably just think I was an ignorant moderator, I'll explain why you are wrong.
According to that wikipedia page (which agrees with every other account I've heard), the flag depicted is not the first flag raised on Iwo Jima. The colonel of the battalion that owned the first flag was afraid of it being stolen by someone else for a souvenir, so the colonel arranged for the battalion's flag to be replaced with a second flag.
All of the above information is in your link. The text in the link does not claim or suggest that the picture was staged. The rest of this post is what I've heard elsewhere.
A photographer for the Associated Press, Joe Rosenthal, heard that the first flag was to be replaced, and realized that he would get a second chance to photograph such a historic event. He made sure he was present when the second flag was being raised, and took the picture.
Thus the photograph is not of the initial flag raising, but it is not "staged".
Gladly... unfortunately I can't stand playing games on consoles. I tried playing GTA:VC on a friend's PS2 (I own GTA3 for the PC), and I just couldn't do it. I'm too used to aiming with the mouse, and the crappy resolution of a TV just doesn't cut it.
That said, I look forward to contributing to your paycheck when GTA:SA comes out for the PC. I'll probably have to buy a new computer (or at least a new video card), but I'm sure it'll be worth it.
If I remember correctly, citizens can not legally own a handgun in Japan. Likewise, getting a permit to own a rifle is more difficult in Japan than the U.S.
I can't believe the article (and none of the other 300+ comments here) didn't mention this. It seems to me that the almost complete absence of firearms in Japanese society would be a large cause of this.
IIRC, the Japanese police don't always carry firearms. If someone could find some info to support/refute this, I'd appreciate it (I have to get to class...).
Virginia Tech has not (and will not) call the computer "Big Mac". BBC used the name when it first started appearing in the news, and everyone else picked it up, IIRC.
The people in charge of the cluster don't want to call it "Big Mac" because (1) they don't want a lawsuit from McDonalds, and (2) who wants to be associated with nasty, greasy fast food?
They've worked out a solid candidate for a name (it's not official yet) that isn't quite as catchy as "Big Mac", but it also doesn't have any of the downsides.
"We can treat the internet like we treat roads. Let the gov and taxes pay to built the network and then use our wireless connections and software to use the free network."
Yeah, that's what I want... an Internet connection with all of the reliability of a public road...
Let me ask one simple question: Which has provided more reliable service for you:
1) Your telco
2) The local DOT
I think you just put your finger on why AMD sales are down. Opteron is so hyped up people are waiting for that. I'd feel sorry for them but I'm also waiting for the opteron before replacing my PC.
I'm facing the same dilemma, but the conclusion I reached is: When Opterons are first released they will be overpriced (like all new technologies) and possibly still have some kinks to work out; likewise with the motherboards. No matter how hard AMD and the mobo manufacturers work to get all the kinks out, nothing finds bugs like the first real-world release.
I figure I'll upgrade now and take advantage of the low prices caused by everyone holding out. By my next upgrade cycle the Opterons (and related hardware/software) should be very nicely matured.
Of course, that's the opinion of someone is trying to avoid the "bleeding" aspect of the bleeding edge.
The real fun with the full version was to play networked. In my high school programming class, we'd spend the first 45 minutes programming, and the last 45 minutes gaming (the teacher had too much other stuff to do, and we all did our work well, so he kinda ignored it). We played Duke3d a little, but GTA was definitely the all-time favorite.
There was nothing better than running down one of your classmates while he was standing in the middle of the road trying to steal a car. Ah, good times...
They sell a Linux PC for anyone. This page tells you that Red Hat 8.0 is available on their Dell Precision 350n, 450n, 650n, 530n and 340n models. To find those, go to www.dell.com, click Small Business and choose Workstations. "Customize" any of the models listed before (they won't have "n" at the end of the number), and on the sidebar you'll see the option for Linux.
And for those who are curious, I customized the Precision 350 and 350n, to be identical in hardware, and the 350n (which is the one w/Linux) is exactly $100 cheaper than the 350.
Unfortunately, copying the URL doesn't copy the configuration, so I can't post a link to the two computers.
Just wanted you to know that I almost choked from laughing to hard when I read your post. It was the only one in this thread that got even a smile out of me.
If only I had some mod points (I always get them when there's nothing worth modding...).
Anyways, much thanks.
Eyes are made for input. I thought about doing something like this, but then I realized that your eyes are made for giving info to your brain, not the other way around. Unless you have a physical handicap that rules out pretty much every other form of interaction, this would not be good for you. Of course, if you are that handicapped, I'm sure this would be a wonderful device.
For the rest of the population, this makes about as much sense as using braille instead of a monitor.
They already have a much better version of this. It's something that you put on your dog's collar, and when he barks it emits a very high-pitched (out of the range of human ears) beep. Apparently it's high enough or loud enough that Spot decides that barking isn't so much fun anymore.
We had the same situation in my high school, so one of us found an interesting solution. If you opened a DOS window and typed:
mkdir
(hold down the ALT key and type 0255), it would make a directory that looked like it was just an underscore. In DOS shells, you could go into like any other directory. But in Windows Explorer, the directory would be listed but you couldn't do anything with it. You couldn't open it, delete it, or rename it.
Since our computer lab teacher didn't know that much about computers, it kept everything safe. Of course, you had to open up a DOS window and run stuff from the shell, but that seemed like a small price to pay.
Note: this worked on Windows 95, I haven't had a chance to check it on later versions of Windows.
But I also don't want to work on a team with someone who can't do anything by him/herself. I've known people like this, who have to lean on everyone around them to hold their head above water. In the end, the group would generally be more productive if they dropped that one person and split his/her responsibilities among themselves.
"Results are all that matters. Excessive effort is for masochists and bleeding hearts ("but boss, I worked all weekend!")."
In the real world, definitely. In the academic environment, not a chance. If what you said was true in school, then why don't all of the students in the class just have someone write the program once, and then everyone turn it in? Or how about they all use the results from last years class?
Because the fact of the matter is, when you're in the real world, there isn't always going to be someone else doing the same program as you, and you'd better know how to do it by yourself.
As others have pointed out, from the browsing that I did, it seemed like a lot of the Flash stuff could be removed without losing anything but download time. But that's not why I'm responding.
The real problem occured for me while I was watching on of the animations and my girlfriend IMed me. Now what am I supposed to do? I'm not dumb enough to ignore my girlfriend for a stupid Flash animation, but there's no way to pause or rewind the animation without restarting it.
And that was when I closed the window and gave up on the site.
That's what is wrong with most uses of Flash. It expects to be the center of your attention (you can't play your own music in the background, and you can't do anything else while watching the animation or you'll miss something).
So when is Flash ok to use? I don't mind it in the e-cards that my girlfriend and I send to each other. There, I prefer it over anything else that the web has to offer. It's also very nice for things like online biology or chemistry examples that let students go step-by-step through an animated experiment, with explanations at each step.
But using it for site navigation, or to add a little glitter to an ordinary page is just plain wrong. Violators should be shot on sight.
You've just hit on the big difference between vim mentality and emacs mentality. Vim users want something small and can be used anywhere. Emacs users want something that can do anything. It's a subtle difference, but important.
So emacs people write other programs for emacs, while vim people write vim for other programs.
Both methods have their advantages. Choose whichever one suits your needs best, or if you can manage to remember how to use both, then use both as you see fit.
Please tell me where you shop. I have a SCSI adapter in my computer (it came with the last prebuilt desktop that I bought), and I know SCSI is better, and I wanted more space, so I priced SCSI drives. I checked outpost.com, and here are the prices that I found:
The most expensive IDE hard drive: Caviar 100GB EIDE Ultra/ATA100 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive - Retail
Similarly priced SCSI drives don't get above 18GB (check here)
I realize that outpost.com probably doesn't have the cheapest prices. But wherever you find cheaper SCSI drives, you'll find cheaper IDE drives. If you can prove me wrong, please reply; I'd love to have more SCSI drives.
Monitors have never followed the pricing drops that computers follow. I bought a monitor (KDS 19" 195T) two years ago, and then I bought a dual-head card with the intention of buying a second monitor. I love my current monitor, and want to get another like it. The trouble is, the price hasn't dropped. In fact, I bought my current monitor on sale, and I haven't seen the price come back to that level since then.
My point? CRT monitors aren't subject to the same pricing trends as computers, because the technology isn't changing. LCD's have been dropping price because they're new and the manufacturying technology keeps improving. That doesn't mean anything for CPU, memory, hard drive, or adapter cards. And those are what keep bringing the system price down.
Please read the story. This would be perfectly fine with the current regulations in the US. This cure has nothing to do with embryonic stem cells; the stem cells came from the boys' bone marrow. Current US regulations only restrict embryonic (as in, "taken from an embryo") stem cells.
I'm not saying that this makes the current regulations right, I'm just saying that this particular cure has nothing to do with embryonic stem cells.
Actually, for-pay services have a chance (at least to get my money) for two reasons:
1) Guaranteed quality. I don't have time to check every mp3 I download to make sure that it was ripped by someone intelligent enough to do it correctly.
2) Easy browsing. I want to _really_ be able to search by artist, song title, year, etc. And when I search by song and find the song that I want, I want to be one click away from finding other songs that that band produced.
3) I just realized that I don't need to own the music. I'd be perfectly happy renting music, so long as I can rent as much as I want, and do so easily and affordably.
Because I can't get 1 or 2 with normal P2P filesharing, I don't use them anymore. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like any of the current offerings from the record labels are meeting my requirements for 3, so they won't work either.
By the way, anyone know where I can find any music downloading program (for Linux) that will meet all of these requirements? It doesn't have to be mainstream music.
The article makes it sound like they expect to the gravitational model to be preprogrammed (although the actual scientists may or may not believe this, you gotta love journalists).
I found this comment from the last time the story was posted (somebody else posted the link) by phr2 which seems rather insightful:
"If someone throws you a spinning frisbee, it flies level at about constant speed--aerodynamic lift prevents it from accelerating downward. Yet you can catch it as accurately as a baseball.
I think a more valid conclusion from that experiment might be that free fall makes you clumsy."
If the article was worth repeating, I think that comment is worth reposting.
Check out rubberhose (www.rubberhose.org). It allows you to take a partition, and encrypt different data (and the corresponding parts of the filesystem) on the partition with different passphrases. You can only read the segment(s) that you have the passphrase(s) for. When a file is deleted, it is replaced with random noise. So when someone asks you to hand over the password, you gladly hand them one. They get to see whatever that password encoded, but not the other stuff. And they can never prove (and you can never prove) that you did or didn't hand over all of the passwords.
The disadvantage: because there is no way to tell whether there might be other data on the drive, if you don't have all of the passwords and write to the drive, you may overwrite data encrypted with another password (when data is written, it is scattered on the drive). But it's still a lot better than trying to hide data in the extra room of a block.
According to their website, this is used by civil rights activists who are in hostile nations (where "subpoena" is spelled t-o-r-t-u-r-e).