They don't seem to offer any torrent downloads, which I think most people would find somewhat odd in this day and age. In addition, they don't even seem to publish MD5 and SHA1 checksums of the discs, which I personally think is especially odd due to the security focus of the OS.
I agree, that makes very little sense (to my untrained mind) to use human stem cells in rats. I would like to know if rat stem cells would work the same way, or if they are even available, but I assume that rats have similar embryonic stages.
what you really want to do at an airport is top off your battery before the flight. Why? Well, even though some morons say "all airplanes now have DC power jacks", the truth is that almost none of them do.
This is true, and the "plane connector" is quite rare. However, many planes have headphone jacks, and apparently someone has made a device that leeches power from those! I saw this in a sky mall magazine (bleh) but if it works it would be cool. Not enough to power your laptop, but it might charge your phone or pda.
It should be pointed out that it's very easy to get in to a house (in general) so in that respect, locks are not especially helpful. However, since the presumed object is to depart with quantities of your stuff, it can be a good plan to use deadbolts (which means a key is required to exit the house via the doors). Let's see your burgular exit the kitchen window with your 40" flatscreen TV under his arm...
yes, and that means you need the key to get out of the house. Illegal in some areas, and just plain dumb anywhere. What if there is a fire and you don't have your keys?
In Cryptonomicon, the server was nuked by hackers across the street in a van, with a big EMP cannon. However, as others have pointed out (and was complained about by the owner of the computer in the story), an EMP will fry the electronics without deleting the data. In the story, after the computer was fried by EMP, magnetic loops in the door of the building wiped the drives as the computer was being removed. In reality, no external magnetic or electric field will really affect the data on the platters much, because it takes something like a magnet strong enough to twist the hard drive case before the bits will all be erased. Remember, magnetic fields decrease with the cube of distance, and read/write heads are *very* close to the platter. I think it takes about 12-15 Tesla (an EXTREMELEY powerful electromagnet) to wipe a drive at a distance.
Remember the IBM ads with the genius kid representing linux? Well, I could imagine some interesting interactions between that kid and the Mac/PC dudes.
So attach RFID tags with LEDs and little piezo speakers to the spine of every book as you record them in the computer. Then when you look up the book on the computer, it sends a signal, and the book's tag responds by blinking and beeping. The sound will lead you to the general location in the library and the flashing to the specific book. Maybe not for a public collection, but perfect for a personal one. Just a small adjustible clamp to put over the top spine corner.
Then not only do you not have to sort them on the shelf, you also don't need to shift your collection over all the shelves to make room for new books; just keep them on the shelf in rough acquisition order. (Sorting by book dimensions is the most practical method for a large collection anyway, making the most economical use of shelf space.)
This is actually a really good idea. It's the equivalent of keeping all your data in a table unsorted, but having an external index. If you could make the buzzer and be powered by the RFID's loop antenna, you wouldn't even need a battery! And like you said, when you get new books, just tag them, and put them on the shelf wherever there is room.
I basically considered it to be an existing technology, since the main pieces of the tech, nuclear bombs and graphite plates, have already been tested. You are correct that no rocket has ever been (intentionally) built, but if we needed to build one in a hurry I am pretty confident we could do it. Certainly there is a lot of engineering to be done, and obviously the political/environmental issues will are not going away either. As for that Niven quote, you're right, that's a great one:-)
Please describe one example of an existing, non-chemical method to get 100kg into LEO.
Project Orion would do the trick. While it has not been built, we have done enough nuclear bomb testing to know that it would work. I know having a bunch of nuclear explosions in the earth's atmo is scary, and a potential environmental disaster, but it would almost certainly get the cargo to orbit. Perhaps in an urgent situation that would be all that mattered.
A strange omission, though, is that you can't "mount" network paths in the filesystem. I can't make \\someserver\blah appear as c:\blah.
I don't know about Vista, but other versions of Windows have a command subst which will allow this, although it is considered (and is) a bit of a hack.
That's odd because I see things the opposite way: people (educated people, at least) were expected to be generalists 200 years ago in a way we are not now. Composers could write somewhat more complex music because the majority of the audience was expected to know at least the fundamentals of harmony (along with rhetoric, logic, basics of law, math up to the calculus, etc.). Today the mark of education is specializing in as narrow a field as possible. It's rare for a specialist to engage in research -- let alone significant publication -- in another field. I think Feynman was the last "great" to do it, and he was already an oddity back then.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
I'd like to use a voting machine that spits out 2 human readable records of how I votes. One goes in a box at the poll in case we need mass recounting. One goes home with me to do whatever I want with.
I think this is a very bad idea. If that piece of paper is in your posession, there is an association between you and your vote, which defeats the whole idea of a secret ballot. If someone were to try to rig the ellection the old fashioned way (with rubber hoses and banboo under the fingernails), they could easily get that reciept to see how you voted.
I saw an apparent Treo product placement in an unlikely place, Strong Bad Email #144. (not labeled, but Pom Pom is using a high-tech phone that looks like a Treo, even with the oval by the speaker area) This was pretty cool to me, as I have a Treo 650.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't seem to offer any torrent downloads, which I think most people would find somewhat odd in this day and age. In addition, they don't even seem to publish MD5 and SHA1 checksums of the discs, which I personally think is especially odd due to the security focus of the OS.
I agree, that makes very little sense (to my untrained mind) to use human stem cells in rats. I would like to know if rat stem cells would work the same way, or if they are even available, but I assume that rats have similar embryonic stages.
http://skymall.com/shopping/detail.htm?pid=102156
In Cryptonomicon, the server was nuked by hackers across the street in a van, with a big EMP cannon. However, as others have pointed out (and was complained about by the owner of the computer in the story), an EMP will fry the electronics without deleting the data. In the story, after the computer was fried by EMP, magnetic loops in the door of the building wiped the drives as the computer was being removed. In reality, no external magnetic or electric field will really affect the data on the platters much, because it takes something like a magnet strong enough to twist the hard drive case before the bits will all be erased. Remember, magnetic fields decrease with the cube of distance, and read/write heads are *very* close to the platter. I think it takes about 12-15 Tesla (an EXTREMELEY powerful electromagnet) to wipe a drive at a distance.
Where's the link to download a torrent of the CD? I downloaded the iso from their servers but I would rather download by torrent.
it's a venn diagram.
When using apt-src or apt-get source, do you get the same version that is available as a binary, or are newer versions generally available?
That's why I liked The Incredibles so much, they had some negative consequences. Also it was hilarious and the animation was beautiful.
Remember the IBM ads with the genius kid representing linux? Well, I could imagine some interesting interactions between that kid and the Mac/PC dudes.
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/g-titles.htm
This is actually a really good idea. It's the equivalent of keeping all your data in a table unsorted, but having an external index. If you could make the buzzer and be powered by the RFID's loop antenna, you wouldn't even need a battery! And like you said, when you get new books, just tag them, and put them on the shelf wherever there is room.
I basically considered it to be an existing technology, since the main pieces of the tech, nuclear bombs and graphite plates, have already been tested. You are correct that no rocket has ever been (intentionally) built, but if we needed to build one in a hurry I am pretty confident we could do it. Certainly there is a lot of engineering to be done, and obviously the political/environmental issues will are not going away either. As for that Niven quote, you're right, that's a great one :-)
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
Lazarus Long -
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
The headline should probably have read, The Evolution of Outsourcing
I saw an apparent Treo product placement in an unlikely place, Strong Bad Email #144. (not labeled, but Pom Pom is using a high-tech phone that looks like a Treo, even with the oval by the speaker area) This was pretty cool to me, as I have a Treo 650.
unfortunately, the GTK 1 theme I really like, IceGradient, has not been ported to gtk2.
An easier way than lightyears / year is to just use c
http://www.google.com/search?hs=BJs&hl=en&lr=&c2c
yep. I like the slashdot palm version.
one thing that works sometimes is to switch from optimized to wide screen mode. Actually, I have basically the same issue but with wikipedia.
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/nov99/9418367 17.Zo.r.html
I've got a Zaurus too, but it's a 5500 and I don't know if it's wired for SDIO. I didn't know that the SDIO spec was proprietary though.