It could just cut to Riker and Troy watching the formal inaguration of the Federation via holodeck.
That would be my assumption anyways.
Another interesting thing is that by having a four year time gap between the last two episodes, you open up the possiblity for someone to "fill in the blank". Like Cartoon Network's mini Star Wars saga.
I've just picked up a laptop with and AMD64 processor. I'm thinking I'm going to install Ubuntu 5.04 (when it's official) in 32-bit mode for full compatability and set up a 64-bit chroot for computationally intensive stuff like BRL-CAD, Octave, z88, etc.
I've loaded both the 32-bit and 64-bit Hoary LiveCD's on it and both work pretty much without a hitch except that the 64-bit version gives a error message when looking for the hardware clock (a known bug I believe).
English does not have a third-person, gender-neutral pronoun for referring to a person (although "hir" has been proposed). So, as a matter of convention, when gender is ambiguous, the masculine is typically used by default.
I learned this from reading various military tech manuals that will, on occasion, put something to this effect in their preface.
Yea, biodiesel has me intrigued as well. It is also my understanding that diesel engines themselves have been undergoing considerable improvement in recent years.
The chemical-thermal energy density of gasoline is hard to beat. Plus, as you correctly alluded to, a battery does not generate energy, it stores energy. Therefore, it's only a clean and green as the energy producing plant that was utilized in charging you batteries. Then, of course, the batteries wear out and have to be disposed of. Point is, an electric car is not automatically environmentally clean.
A few years ago...ok, many years ago, those of the "Mother Earth News" ilk we're into converting cars to run on alcohol - the "clean and green" technology of the day. There were a few problems with that as well. First off, alchol wasn't pollution free after all, just a different set of pollutants. Second, while you'd get better "octane rating", your fuel efficiency would go down because you just don't have the same energy density as you do with gasoline. Finally, the alchohol tended to clean the crud off of old car cylinders causing them to loose compression. This made coverting that old beater a little more expensive than planned.
Anyway, I bring this up to point out that we've gone down this path before. Sadly, getting a clean burning vehicle is not just a matter of a different power source. You have to be able to change the entire underlying infrastructure, and even then there are legacy technical problems to work out.
Even the hybrids (back in the day, simpler versions were also popular tinkerer projects) are not immune. Overdrive them and they can pollute on the order of a typical car. You also have additional weight and battery disposal to contend with.
Like I said, it's a tough nut to crack. Still, Here's hopin' they crack that nut.
Granted, Kasparav does strike me as a bit arrogant, but he gave Deep Blue rematch after rematch after rematch until it finally won. At which point, IBM immediately retires the machine. Again, granted, Kasparov was a less than gracious loser. Still, in the name of good sportsmanship, I think they owed him one rematch. You can't tell me such a rematch would not have drawn publicity, I mean "Man Vs. Machine - and this time *we're* the underdog". Heck, Budweiser would even sponsor that one.
I don't know, Kasparov may have whined a little about losing, but IBM could have handled it better in my opinion.
Recently, I've been playing with Gnome on my computer (older version - 2.4). The rest of the family is set up with KDE and I used KDM to start it up. I think, comparing Gnome 2.4 to KDE 3.2, I'd have to give KDE the nod, but that's not to say that Gnome doesn't have it's strong points. Once of the things I do like better is Gnome's approach to menu editing. Instead of firing up a separate menu editor as with KDE, you just right-click on the menu and either edit the specific item via "properties" or add new items inline. I think that's a lot cleaner approach.
My main reason for trying Gnome was because I was fairly impressed with Evolution and I wanted to see it run in its favored desktop. I'm also considering installing Novell Linux on my next computer (which I will use for my "at home" work computer) so this is a way I can kinda get a feel for it.
Consider the MP3 (and Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, etc.). Defining and distributing a way of storing music changed the market. We are no longer as concerned about media formats becoming obsoleted or what's going to replace them in the future (mini-disk anyone?). Heck, now the required media has been reduced to memory (Ipod, etc.)
The thing is, when you buy a console, you're pretty sure that, in a couple of years, it's going to be obsolete. The manufacturers know it too so they sell the consoles at a loss hoping to "make money on the blades" as it were.
So, why not just sell a gaming OS along with a standardized gaming computer specification? That way, you draw in all the hard-core gaming computer cutomizers out there and there some assurance that you can keep your machine up to date. Not only that, but third party guys can "get into it" as well thus helping to insure that your game platform becomes ubiquitous.
What are we really talking about here? We need to access more than one gaming controller (4 seems to be the current standard) and the latest and greatest video/audio hardware, memory, processors, etc.
Seems to me that if you approach it this way you can make money on the "razors" as well as the "blades".
I know I'm posting way too late for this to be read but this is a claim that just begs to be tested.
When I thought about doing the test myself though, I immediately ran into a problem. I"m not sure I can build a truly "random" event generator. Maybe a mechanical coin flipper, but is that random? If the machine throws it the same way, won't a patten be established?
It is this issue that makes me skeptical, but only to the extent that I'd want to see the test set up and results myself.
Still, I"m not discounting it at this time. It's compelling enough to be worth a further look.
On the other hand, if these guys can generate truly random events, I'm sure the DOD would be very interested - imagine the implications to cryptography.
Three people have responded to the original poster's question so far. The two who had a nickname attempted to answer his question while the anonymous coward was content to just be a smart-a$$.
Anyway, the article was, of course, referring to the horizontal *component* of the descent.
Don't take it personally DemiKnute...a couple of days ago I got hammered by a lot of AC's just for asking how you could take a picture of something 20K light-years away.
This is probably why "The Sims Online" failed as well.
Fine....then I'll patent a process for using semi-voluntary human musculature for creating a partial vacuum sufficient to allow a positive flow of air into the lungs of a human being. . . now, if only someone could patent a way to get it back out again. I'd do it myself, but I'm still working on how to get just the O2 molecules into the bloodstream.
A lot of people in this thread I started were of the paradigm that you just point a fancy camera out in space and take the picture. So, when I questioned how that could work, a lot seemed to assume that I was suggesting a consipiricy. This left me a bit puzzled.
Your explanation pretty much covers it though. I. E. - it's really not just a matter of taking a picture with a giant floating camera. It has to be reconstructed from what the machine can gather and some of it is apparantly not even in the visible light spectrum.
So, in short, my questioning whether a photograph can be taken form 20K light years away wasn't all that un-reasonable and no "tin-foil" hat was required.
Thank you for clarifying this for me. I knew there had to be something to it.
Now you've got me wondering if some university somewhere has some GPL software that'll do this type of image processing. I've got a couple of little ones and this might be a neat thing to introduce them to.
I mean, I don't actually have thousands of dollars to spend just to see if it's something my kids might like, but it certainly worth looking into.
Thanks for the info, and my for actually taking the question seriously. Believe me, I don't even own a tin-foil hat...I just wanted to better understand what I was seeing.
Along with the rest of you that chose to take my question seriously.
To those of you who thought I was yanking their chains, sorry if I mis-communicated....a lot of communication is lost when it's crunched down to the written word (inflection, expression, etc.) so ya never know how it's going to be interpreted.
It is worth noting that this image is something like 14 light years across (if I recall correctly from the NASA site) and has been crunched down to fit on a computer screen. Maybe there is huge amounts of signal degradation but it's not showing up with the image reduced so much.
Still, colors, shapes, etc. I mean, don't we have radio-telescopes for reconstructing images that are vast distances away? What is the threshold?
Nobody is suggesting a conspiricy theory. I'm merely stating that I don't understand how such an image is still readable and recognizable under such conditions.
I'm not an astronomer, but that doesn't mean I'm not curious. So, given that Slashdot is "chock-full" of technical experts from a variety of fields, it seemed like a good group to throw this question out to.
I'm a little surprised that you seem to take this question as a personal affront. Then again, I'm not a writer either.
Slashdot Mirror
What a witty and not-to-obvious reply :)
Nuke it flatter than a....
oh wait....it already is...
nevermind
It could just cut to Riker and Troy watching the formal inaguration of the Federation via holodeck.
That would be my assumption anyways.
Another interesting thing is that by having a four year time gap between the last two episodes, you open up the possiblity for someone to "fill in the blank". Like Cartoon Network's mini Star Wars saga.
I've just picked up a laptop with and AMD64 processor. I'm thinking I'm going to install Ubuntu 5.04 (when it's official) in 32-bit mode for full compatability and set up a 64-bit chroot for computationally intensive stuff like BRL-CAD, Octave, z88, etc.
I've loaded both the 32-bit and 64-bit Hoary LiveCD's on it and both work pretty much without a hitch except that the 64-bit version gives a error message when looking for the hardware clock (a known bug I believe).
English does not have a third-person, gender-neutral pronoun for referring to a person (although "hir" has been proposed). So, as a matter of convention, when gender is ambiguous, the masculine is typically used by default.
I learned this from reading various military tech manuals that will, on occasion, put something to this effect in their preface.
(waits for laugh from the math geeks)
Yea, biodiesel has me intrigued as well. It is also my understanding that diesel engines themselves have been undergoing considerable improvement in recent years.
The chemical-thermal energy density of gasoline is hard to beat. Plus, as you correctly alluded to, a battery does not generate energy, it stores energy. Therefore, it's only a clean and green as the energy producing plant that was utilized in charging you batteries. Then, of course, the batteries wear out and have to be disposed of. Point is, an electric car is not automatically environmentally clean.
A few years ago...ok, many years ago, those of the "Mother Earth News" ilk we're into converting cars to run on alcohol - the "clean and green" technology of the day. There were a few problems with that as well. First off, alchol wasn't pollution free after all, just a different set of pollutants. Second, while you'd get better "octane rating", your fuel efficiency would go down because you just don't have the same energy density as you do with gasoline. Finally, the alchohol tended to clean the crud off of old car cylinders causing them to loose compression. This made coverting that old beater a little more expensive than planned.
Anyway, I bring this up to point out that we've gone down this path before. Sadly, getting a clean burning vehicle is not just a matter of a different power source. You have to be able to change the entire underlying infrastructure, and even then there are legacy technical problems to work out.
Even the hybrids (back in the day, simpler versions were also popular tinkerer projects) are not immune. Overdrive them and they can pollute on the order of a typical car. You also have additional weight and battery disposal to contend with.
Like I said, it's a tough nut to crack. Still, Here's hopin' they crack that nut.
Granted, Kasparav does strike me as a bit arrogant, but he gave Deep Blue rematch after rematch after rematch until it finally won. At which point, IBM immediately retires the machine. Again, granted, Kasparov was a less than gracious loser. Still, in the name of good sportsmanship, I think they owed him one rematch. You can't tell me such a rematch would not have drawn publicity, I mean "Man Vs. Machine - and this time *we're* the underdog". Heck, Budweiser would even sponsor that one.
I don't know, Kasparov may have whined a little about losing, but IBM could have handled it better in my opinion.
Recently, I've been playing with Gnome on my computer (older version - 2.4). The rest of the family is set up with KDE and I used KDM to start it up. I think, comparing Gnome 2.4 to KDE 3.2, I'd have to give KDE the nod, but that's not to say that Gnome doesn't have it's strong points. Once of the things I do like better is Gnome's approach to menu editing. Instead of firing up a separate menu editor as with KDE, you just right-click on the menu and either edit the specific item via "properties" or add new items inline. I think that's a lot cleaner approach.
My main reason for trying Gnome was because I was fairly impressed with Evolution and I wanted to see it run in its favored desktop. I'm also considering installing Novell Linux on my next computer (which I will use for my "at home" work computer) so this is a way I can kinda get a feel for it.
I'll probably grab the liveCD and check it out.
I'm getting ready to take on a better position that will require me and my family to move about 7 hours to the south.
So, in a manner of speaking, I'm forfiting my home for a raise.
I thought I really *was* funny and insightful...
{sniff...}
Will Mark Hamill reprise his role as an older Luke Skywalker?
[I suddenly feel a strange disturbance in the force, as if millions of sci-fi fans all shuddered at once]
Cartridge expires YOU!
...I'm truly sorry for that
.
Consider the MP3 (and Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, etc.). Defining and distributing a way of storing music changed the market. We are no longer as concerned about media formats becoming obsoleted or what's going to replace them in the future (mini-disk anyone?). Heck, now the required media has been reduced to memory (Ipod, etc.)
The thing is, when you buy a console, you're pretty sure that, in a couple of years, it's going to be obsolete. The manufacturers know it too so they sell the consoles at a loss hoping to "make money on the blades" as it were.
So, why not just sell a gaming OS along with a standardized gaming computer specification? That way, you draw in all the hard-core gaming computer cutomizers out there and there some assurance that you can keep your machine up to date. Not only that, but third party guys can "get into it" as well thus helping to insure that your game platform becomes ubiquitous.
What are we really talking about here? We need to access more than one gaming controller (4 seems to be the current standard) and the latest and greatest video/audio hardware, memory, processors, etc.
Seems to me that if you approach it this way you can make money on the "razors" as well as the "blades".
Just my thoughts anyways....
I know I'm posting way too late for this to be read but this is a claim that just begs to be tested.
When I thought about doing the test myself though, I immediately ran into a problem. I"m not sure I can build a truly "random" event generator. Maybe a mechanical coin flipper, but is that random? If the machine throws it the same way, won't a patten be established?
It is this issue that makes me skeptical, but only to the extent that I'd want to see the test set up and results myself.
Still, I"m not discounting it at this time. It's compelling enough to be worth a further look.
On the other hand, if these guys can generate truly random events, I'm sure the DOD would be very interested - imagine the implications to cryptography.
I learned it under the axiom, "chance has no memory". Legions of would be lottery millionares are stung by this every day.
There a good chance that you may run into a sub-space warp field disturbance.
I'd just use micrometer....
Three people have responded to the original poster's question so far. The two who had a nickname attempted to answer his question while the anonymous coward was content to just be a smart-a$$.
Anyway, the article was, of course, referring to the horizontal *component* of the descent.
Don't take it personally DemiKnute...a couple of days ago I got hammered by a lot of AC's just for asking how you could take a picture of something 20K light-years away.
This is probably why "The Sims Online" failed as well.
Fine....then I'll patent a process for using semi-voluntary human musculature for creating a partial vacuum sufficient to allow a positive flow of air into the lungs of a human being.
.
.
now, if only someone could patent a way to get it back out again. I'd do it myself, but I'm still working on how to get just the O2 molecules into the bloodstream.
A lot of people in this thread I started were of the paradigm that you just point a fancy camera out in space and take the picture. So, when I questioned how that could work, a lot seemed to assume that I was suggesting a consipiricy. This left me a bit puzzled.
Your explanation pretty much covers it though. I. E. - it's really not just a matter of taking a picture with a giant floating camera. It has to be reconstructed from what the machine can gather and some of it is apparantly not even in the visible light spectrum.
So, in short, my questioning whether a photograph can be taken form 20K light years away wasn't all that un-reasonable and no "tin-foil" hat was required.
Thank you for clarifying this for me. I knew there had to be something to it.
Now you've got me wondering if some university somewhere has some GPL software that'll do this type of image processing. I've got a couple of little ones and this might be a neat thing to introduce them to.
I mean, I don't actually have thousands of dollars to spend just to see if it's something my kids might like, but it certainly worth looking into.
Thanks for the info, and my for actually taking the question seriously. Believe me, I don't even own a tin-foil hat...I just wanted to better understand what I was seeing.
Along with the rest of you that chose to take my question seriously.
...a lot of communication is lost when it's crunched down to the written word (inflection, expression, etc.) so ya never know how it's going to be interpreted.
To those of you who thought I was yanking their chains, sorry if I mis-communicated.
It is worth noting that this image is something like 14 light years across (if I recall correctly from the NASA site) and has been crunched down to fit on a computer screen. Maybe there is huge amounts of signal degradation but it's not showing up with the image reduced so much.
Still, colors, shapes, etc. I mean, don't we have radio-telescopes for reconstructing images that are vast distances away? What is the threshold?
I really be curious to know.
Nobody is suggesting a conspiricy theory. I'm merely stating that I don't understand how such an image is still readable and recognizable under such conditions.
I'm not an astronomer, but that doesn't mean I'm not curious. So, given that Slashdot is "chock-full" of technical experts from a variety of fields, it seemed like a good group to throw this question out to.
I'm a little surprised that you seem to take this question as a personal affront. Then again, I'm not a writer either.