Quote:
Howard, great catching up today. Again, we're big fans of the sight and our intention was never to bring your entire sight down or to "censor the Internet" like we're being accused. The irony is that is quite the opposite type of company we are and as one of the leaders in new media, we couldn't be more supportive of the rights of sights like yours. Please know that our first priority is always to fix any security issues with our system and we're doing that. Additionally, we also have a responsibility to our content and carrier partners to reduce the impact of any breaches to the system once they occur and that was really the basis for the correspondence you had with our legal team.
I look forward to continuing to find interesting and vibrant insights from HowardForums.
Best regards,
Paul Scanlan
Cofounder, President
So I guess everything is okay now. Thank you all for your support!
Incorrect. The poor person in this case is obviously not working as hard. He obviously didn't work as hard at school, nor has he worked hard enough to acquire the extra education needed to get a better job. He has not worked hard enough to learn how to make more money. He has not learnt the most productive ways in which to direct his hard work.
Let's not confuse physically hard work with actual hard work. It's intellectually easy to perform grunt work for 80 hours a week for 40 years. It doesn't require any thought, any planning, any ambition or any risk-taking. In fact it is the path of least resistance, i.e. the easy route. I am absolutely disgusted that this could somehow be moderated Insightful. What's not hard about hard physical work?!? It's physically easy to perform intellectual work for 80 hours a week for 40 years too. It doesn't require any physical energy, any physical pain or any harsh conditions. In fact it is people who dream up such a fantasyland that keeps the gap growing.
Physical work can easily equate to a rich and rewarding life (NBA, NFL, MLB and now MLS) just as an intellectual life can equate to a dead-end meaningless job (15th century Eastern French History majors =) I do think that hard work, in whatever you do, does make a difference (though results can vary). As someone famous once said, "The harder I work, the luckier I seem to be"
That is the case, but why don't they do go one step further in the quasi-standardization of transformers and make the power plug (the one that goes to the device) all the same? I'm sure the vast majority of us don't have to charge ever little gadget we have, all at once. If they made all the charging plugs universal (say, mini-USB) and the same voltage, we could save a lot of power and socket space by unplugging all those wall-warts.
Just because a technique is patented doesn't mean it's legal. Technically, one could patent a new way to scam old ladies, but that wouldn't be benefitial because you could never recover any licensing fees (unless I guess you're dying to have a patent).
Fortune Magazine has 2 good writeups about this. They say "For tax-shelter touts, the patents are a potentially deceptive marketing tool: Just because a process is "patented" doesn't mean it's legal. "A patent carries with it no assurance whatsoever that the process will pass IRS muster," IRS commissioner Mark Everson told a congressional hearing in July. Giving patent protection to even legit tax strategies alarms many experts. "If you can patent an interpretation of the tax law, why not patent anyone's legal advice?" asks Carol Harrington, a lawyer with the firm McDermott Will & Emery in Chicago."
and
"'A patent carries with it no assurance whatsoever that the patented process, transaction or structure will pass IRS muster,' IRS Commissioner Mark Everson told a Congressional hearing in July. 'We are concerned, however, that taxpayers may be confused about this.'"
You can find the links to the articles here and here.
Not 12000 pounds, but more like 12000 tonnes
on
Halving Half Lives
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· Score: 1
I work at a CANDU reactor, where we use natural uranium bundles for fuel. Each bundle is about 50lb. We tend to refuel each reactor every day, with at least 4 fresh bundles. So, that's 200lb of waste produced every day, per unit. There are 16 CANDU reactors in Ontario alone, so the total waste there is already 1.16 million pounds a year (the plants run 24/7/365). And that's just Ontario, just counting fuel bundles. How about the activated materials on the fueling machines? How about some pipe that was cut out giving off 300 rem? How about the control rods that need to be replaced every one in a while? That's all waste too, and not a lot of it recoverable (in CANDU we add the uranium to a ceramic matrix, making it hard to reclaim).
If it was just 12000lb, we wouldn't have the Greens on our backs all the time. Too bad you're off by a factor of at least 10000x.
If you've actually watched a HDTV program, the tried out a DVD, you will know that DVD's are crap. There, I've said it. DVD's look like crap on HDTV's when compared to true HDTV programming. If you don't notice this, you need better glasses.
This isn't just a "Oh, I'll put this firmware on a disk and load it up and Bam!, insta-pirate!". This is a firmware for the DVD-ROM, which you first have to A) physically open up the XBox360 B) Then remove the DVD-ROM C) then desolder the firmware chip D) then read the firmware and figure out where to edit, because each DVD-ROM has a unique ID tag E) then you have to reprogram the chip using specialized equipment F) reinstall the chip and hope you didn't ruin a $400+ machine G) get a good copy of a game and hopefully it'll work.
Currently, this is *far* harder than the average modchip. Since each chip has to be custom-programmed, this isn't an easy hack, even if you did have the hacked firmware available.
Still, hopefully this is a taste of things to come. The 360 has been only out for 4 months, and this is much better progress than with the original XBox.
If I had to point a finger at anybody, it would be at the flag sellers in the middle east. Perhaps they had a surplus of Danish flags down there (because hey, everybody's already got one!), so they tried to figure out a way to create new demand. And what better way to create demand for a product than to make it disposable. In this case, it would be burning them!
Seriously though, you know something's fishy when all of a sudden thousands of danish flags are being burned in front of the media, in their "rallies" and so forth. Where the hell did all the flags come from? In the middle of winter, in Iran!?! The world cup isn't even on for another 4 months!
This is an organised political ruse, probably to turn the people that are rioting from overthrowing their own governement through malcontent of the government's incompetence. Hundreds died in Mecca due to a stampede. 1000 people died in a ferry accident in Egypt last week. Corruption is rampent. What better way to quell a brewing rebellion that to offer up a tasty target for all that is wrong in your life?
Too bad CES isn't open to the general public, and hotels around the area are all $$$ at that time (one of the bigger conventions). Free stuff is always good, but as usual, it ain't really free =)
This is an interesting article not because of the SUV vs car crashups, but an overall look at how techniques of making cars can create a disparity between 2 automobile classes.
The last 25+ years, there has been a huge push for increased gas efficiency for cars, due to public consciousness, laws, etc. The easiest way to do this is to move less mass, and thus, the unibody car design is pretty much standard across the board for cars. I believe the Ford Crown Vic was probably the last car to be built using body on frame. But before this period, a vast majority of cars were built using body-on-frame, as it was easy, robust and survived crashes well (think of the boats like a Buick Estate).
Trucks are govern by a different set of rules, and technically speaking, cannot transition to the unibody design that well for practical purposes. The loads they are designed to haul and tow (whether or not they do that in real life is irrelevant) demand that a body-on-frame design be used. There are exceptions like the Honda CRV, the 99-04 Nissan Pathfinder, the new Honda Ridgeline, but in the vast majority of cases, they use body-on-frame.
So, over the last 25 years we've created 2 classes of vehicles. Unibody and Body-on-frame. The article suggests that this class difference cannot be reconciled and needs to be eliminated. But we all know that this won't happen, at least not right away. It seems like Honda is the sole pioneer of this conversion, and it was limited in part by it's lack of experience with the body-on-frame design. We need to encourage more companies to try a different route, and use more of the neat materials that science has given us in the last 25 years to bridge that gap.
Think we're still getting light? Then look at motorcycles and how they've embraced technology far better than any car out there. Ever wonder why the spark plug is so big in the car? Ever wonder why car batteries use 19th century technology and a wimpy voltage? It was because of standards created long ago, where they didn't care about size and weight and didn't have the materials andn technology that we do now. The cost and weight savings are all within grasp. Someone just needs to take the lead.
High levels of radiation has a nack for breaking down many materials very quickly. Plastics and organic compounds seem to suffer the most, as the insulation on wiring turns brittle and flaky quite fast at about 1k rem. Working at a CANDU nuclear power plant, everything but the video cameras that monitor the reactor face uses special wires to prevent common short circuits. So you can tell from that that we replace the video cams quite often. Or worse (and usually the case), they stop working and we don't get a front seat view of a LOCA (loss of cooling accident) when it happens =)
So Nintendo is totally left out of the loop now. Gamecube was a distant 3rd in the console scene, and relying on the laurels of the Gameboy isn't going to work any more with the advent of the PSP.
Nintendo in-house games are great, but if they don't get 3rd-party support, it'll start making a lot of sense just to make games for the other 2 systems rather than try to juggle both hardware and software. Sega went that path and I don't see why that Metroid and Mario can't show up on XBox 720 or PS4 in the future.
I'll take your $20. Too bad they've already announced that the XBox 360 will be out this holiday season, and the PS3 will be out 6 months later. What you're predicting is that the XBox 360 will be MORE than 1 year late.
I highly doubt that Microsoft would risk such a leathal blow as to slip the all-important holiday season. They'll need all the help they can get now that the PS3 has announced they're full backwards compatible, with some nifty features that the Xbox 360 doesn't have (Bluetooth, 1080i).
How about females?
on
Got Game
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If this actual book is accurate, we're really talking about males here. Males overwhelmingly comprise the gaming generation. Nintendo, Sega Genesis and all that were mostly played by boys. Even now, XBox, PS2 and such are still played mostly by boys. We're not talking a 55/45 split here. It's more like 85/15.
So where does that leave females? Did they "miss out"? Or are most of these observations "guy" oriented to begin with?
World of Warcraft has implimented this feature, though not across servers as you would like, like the fact they use in-game money and you can't do it across servers.
They have a great mail system in-game in where you can have COD for product you sell. You can mail the item to the person (for a small 30copper fee) and they only get it when they pay the agreed-upon price. This lets people sell items without being in-game to do so. Plus, they have an auction house where you can sell stuff to the highest bidder. You are ALWAYS allowed to examine the item before purchasing it, whether in the auction house, trade windows or the mail system.
The trade windows make it clear what each person is getting, so no cheating their either. It gets a bit trickier when you're selling services like enchantments, but Blizzard found a nice way to do that (a non-trade spot in the trade window where the other person can interact).
Real cash would mess up the game economy and create potential legal problems for Blizzard. I think they really thought stuff through (except for server load!) and really have made WoW one of the best games of 2004.
Somehow I think that sheep and pigs can do just fine without human parts. What I would be highly interested in is having animal parts in humans. It's a known fact that human organs are in short supply, and if we can "grow" them from animals, that would substantially increase the number available to people around the world.
Of course, then you would have to worry about cross-species dieases (AIDS is a known one) and the social stigma of such a transplant.
When the SUV's bumper just start at the top of the Smart's 14" wheels, I don't see how a solid axel or reinforced ties are going to help at all.
In fact, that would go for the car as a whole. In Europe it would seem safe, but in North America, where there's a lot more SUVs and semi's, I think it's a different story.
The Smart car isn't as dangerous as it might first look, but by no means is it "invincible" as you seem to make it out.
So where's the part about the tuner aspect of the device? I mean, this IS a TV tuner right? Instead, he reviews it as a video-input device.
He doesn't touch upon how good it grabs crappy signal from cable TV, nor how fast the channels change. He doesn't even review the TiVO-esque function.
I think this is a 1/2 ass review that totally misses the point of having this device, which is being able to use your computer like a normal TV, which includes flipping through the channels. Just lazy!
Soo.. you don't think a $150 console is a good deal vs a $2000 computer?
A good game is a good game, whatever platform it is (though honestly, FPS is better played on a computer, simply due to the control scheme).
And GTA3 has NOT been ported to the GameCube. In fact, all the great games you listed available to the GameCube are made (or published) by Nintendo itself. Nintendo is losing 3rd party developer support and in that process, games 6-12 months from now. Not to say that the games Nintendo aren't great, it's just that I would like variety too.
As good as DVD's are, they are not "high-res". DVD are only 480 res, which is FAR from HD resolutions.
HD is either 720 or 1080 horizontal lines of resolution, coupled with the 16:9 ratio makes it more than 4x the resolution of the current DVD's. A you do NOT need a "special" room for that. Just get a 51" HDTV display and play a DVD and watch an HDTV broadcast back-to-back. There is simply no comparison. HDTV is so crisp, so vibrant that it makes the DVD look like a VHS tape.
So, for any HDTV display right now, DVDs are *not* good enough. HDTV is just that good.
I work at a CANDU nuclear station, that uses deuterium as a moderator (far better than light water). In fact, OPG (the company I work for) is the world's biggest producer of deuterium. And to call it "cheap" is a massive understatement.
The way you word it, it can be construed that gold is cheap because the earth is full of it. That might be the case, but to get high-grade deuterium is not an easy or cheap task.
Tritium is also a tricky substance, but our CANDU plants produce it as a byproduct of our fission (D2O when irradiated can turn into tritium), and OPG is one the world's largest suppier of that. Too bad Canada's federal government decided not to persuit the ITER reactor too hard.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that there need to be an energy-state conversion. Fusion is all nice and neat, but you still have to harness the heat via a heat-transport system of some kind, probably a water/steam system. Those currently top out at 30-40% efficiency, so keep that in mind when you start throwing out megawatt/h statistics.
Pseudo-science? Just because the Bible mentions it?
Ironically, people thought that Troy were just figments of the imagination 150 years ago, and now they have pretty good proof of where it is.
I don't think that everybody should be so closed-minded about such things, just because a religious text mentions it.
If they do find real proof, that's pretty cool. If not, no big deal. I mean, there was and are millions of hours of research that pretty much amount to nothing, yet I wouldn't call that all wasted time. Science should not be afraid to explore, period.
Ask a lot of people have been saying already, the InFocus X1 is pretty good. I would have got it, except that it's only native 4:3.
The biggest decision you should make about getting a projector is not the technology behind it (because honestly, at the consumer level, it's all about the same). What you do want to ask yourself is do you want a 16:9 (widescreen) or a 4:3 native.
Of course, you can display either one on any projector, but only one natively. If you pretty much only watch TV, 4:3 would be OK. But I would still ask you to consider 16:9 due to HDTV formats. If you only watch movies, or a mixture of the 2 (plus video games!), 16:9 is the way to go (so that leaves the X1 out of the picture).
16:9 also has some other benefits. You can get a larger maximum picture with a cheaper screen, since most screens are limited by the height (since cloth is width limited, which = height when put up on the wall). You also loose less resolution when watching normal 4:3 TV (which is somewhat a moot point since normal TV looks pretty crappy when it's 100" diagonal).
I myself have the Panasonic LT-300U. DVD's actually start looking crappy compared to HDTV on my projector. And XBox is pretty sweet when you play in HDTV mode.
One last word of advice: Make your own mount (if you're mounting from the ceiling). Don't bother to pay $200+ for a hunk of steel when you can make a better one for only $40. Just get a nylon cutting board, some ABS pipe, screws, springs and some nice black matte paint. Save yourself a bunch of cash for that HDTV convertor, and it'll be far more adjustable than the OEM one.
It's *really* amazing to see how things have gotten cheaper in the last 5 years. My home theater only cost $2000, and I don't bother going to the theaters anymore.
As someone pointed out, light water reactors use light water to moderate. CANDU uses heavy water (deuterium) to moderate. CANDU is only "safer" because it uses natural uranium, rather than enriched (though there has been a push for some slightly enriched CANDU reactors). Natural uranium contains less energy per gram than enriched (due to lower concentrations of U235, which is more fissile than U238).
So, because there's less energy per gram, CANDU system have online fueling, which means that the reactor is fueled/refueled while it's still producing power. This actually happens (ideally) everyday. A LWR runs for ~18 months, then shuts down as it gets defueled/refueled.
Contrary to popular belief, CANDU isn't any more "safer" due to this design. If you're purely talking from a physics point of view, CANDU does look safer because of the lower amount of fission that goes on (thus less heat), and the design is pretty good. BUT.. you run into problems when you're constantly opening up channels on on-power, due to wear and tear on machinery (high-doses of radiation isn't great for most metals, eletronics, etc) and the possibility that you might get fuel in air (even though it's spent) exists.
So, nothing is failproof (duh!), even with the newer designs. But what you can do is limit the likelihood of something bad happening, and be prepared for it if and when it does (defense in depth), and limit the damage.
That being said, I think the nuclear industry does have problems, but there have been some MASSIVE improvements over the last 15 years. No civilian has yet to die due to a nuclear accident in north america which is pretty amazing looking at any other industry out there (dams kill a surprising # of people every year). But you have be vigilant... it only takes seconds to mess things up all over agin.
Slashdot Mirror
okay guys. I just had a conversation with the president of MobiTV. He had this to say:
Quote: Howard, great catching up today. Again, we're big fans of the sight and our intention was never to bring your entire sight down or to "censor the Internet" like we're being accused. The irony is that is quite the opposite type of company we are and as one of the leaders in new media, we couldn't be more supportive of the rights of sights like yours. Please know that our first priority is always to fix any security issues with our system and we're doing that. Additionally, we also have a responsibility to our content and carrier partners to reduce the impact of any breaches to the system once they occur and that was really the basis for the correspondence you had with our legal team.
I look forward to continuing to find interesting and vibrant insights from HowardForums.
Best regards, Paul Scanlan Cofounder, President
So I guess everything is okay now. Thank you all for your support!
Physical work can easily equate to a rich and rewarding life (NBA, NFL, MLB and now MLS) just as an intellectual life can equate to a dead-end meaningless job (15th century Eastern French History majors =) I do think that hard work, in whatever you do, does make a difference (though results can vary). As someone famous once said, "The harder I work, the luckier I seem to be"
That is the case, but why don't they do go one step further in the quasi-standardization of transformers and make the power plug (the one that goes to the device) all the same? I'm sure the vast majority of us don't have to charge ever little gadget we have, all at once. If they made all the charging plugs universal (say, mini-USB) and the same voltage, we could save a lot of power and socket space by unplugging all those wall-warts.
Fortune Magazine has 2 good writeups about this. They say "For tax-shelter touts, the patents are a potentially deceptive marketing tool: Just because a process is "patented" doesn't mean it's legal. "A patent carries with it no assurance whatsoever that the process will pass IRS muster," IRS commissioner Mark Everson told a congressional hearing in July. Giving patent protection to even legit tax strategies alarms many experts. "If you can patent an interpretation of the tax law, why not patent anyone's legal advice?" asks Carol Harrington, a lawyer with the firm McDermott Will & Emery in Chicago."
and
"'A patent carries with it no assurance whatsoever that the patented process, transaction or structure will pass IRS muster,' IRS Commissioner Mark Everson told a Congressional hearing in July. 'We are concerned, however, that taxpayers may be confused about this.'"
You can find the links to the articles here and here.
I work at a CANDU reactor, where we use natural uranium bundles for fuel. Each bundle is about 50lb. We tend to refuel each reactor every day, with at least 4 fresh bundles. So, that's 200lb of waste produced every day, per unit. There are 16 CANDU reactors in Ontario alone, so the total waste there is already 1.16 million pounds a year (the plants run 24/7/365). And that's just Ontario, just counting fuel bundles. How about the activated materials on the fueling machines? How about some pipe that was cut out giving off 300 rem? How about the control rods that need to be replaced every one in a while? That's all waste too, and not a lot of it recoverable (in CANDU we add the uranium to a ceramic matrix, making it hard to reclaim).
If it was just 12000lb, we wouldn't have the Greens on our backs all the time. Too bad you're off by a factor of at least 10000x.
If you've actually watched a HDTV program, the tried out a DVD, you will know that DVD's are crap. There, I've said it. DVD's look like crap on HDTV's when compared to true HDTV programming. If you don't notice this, you need better glasses.
This isn't just a "Oh, I'll put this firmware on a disk and load it up and Bam!, insta-pirate!". This is a firmware for the DVD-ROM, which you first have to A) physically open up the XBox360 B) Then remove the DVD-ROM C) then desolder the firmware chip D) then read the firmware and figure out where to edit, because each DVD-ROM has a unique ID tag E) then you have to reprogram the chip using specialized equipment F) reinstall the chip and hope you didn't ruin a $400+ machine G) get a good copy of a game and hopefully it'll work.
Currently, this is *far* harder than the average modchip. Since each chip has to be custom-programmed, this isn't an easy hack, even if you did have the hacked firmware available.
Still, hopefully this is a taste of things to come. The 360 has been only out for 4 months, and this is much better progress than with the original XBox.
Seriously though, you know something's fishy when all of a sudden thousands of danish flags are being burned in front of the media, in their "rallies" and so forth. Where the hell did all the flags come from? In the middle of winter, in Iran!?! The world cup isn't even on for another 4 months!
This is an organised political ruse, probably to turn the people that are rioting from overthrowing their own governement through malcontent of the government's incompetence. Hundreds died in Mecca due to a stampede. 1000 people died in a ferry accident in Egypt last week. Corruption is rampent. What better way to quell a brewing rebellion that to offer up a tasty target for all that is wrong in your life?
Too bad CES isn't open to the general public, and hotels around the area are all $$$ at that time (one of the bigger conventions). Free stuff is always good, but as usual, it ain't really free =)
The last 25+ years, there has been a huge push for increased gas efficiency for cars, due to public consciousness, laws, etc. The easiest way to do this is to move less mass, and thus, the unibody car design is pretty much standard across the board for cars. I believe the Ford Crown Vic was probably the last car to be built using body on frame. But before this period, a vast majority of cars were built using body-on-frame, as it was easy, robust and survived crashes well (think of the boats like a Buick Estate).
Trucks are govern by a different set of rules, and technically speaking, cannot transition to the unibody design that well for practical purposes. The loads they are designed to haul and tow (whether or not they do that in real life is irrelevant) demand that a body-on-frame design be used. There are exceptions like the Honda CRV, the 99-04 Nissan Pathfinder, the new Honda Ridgeline, but in the vast majority of cases, they use body-on-frame.
So, over the last 25 years we've created 2 classes of vehicles. Unibody and Body-on-frame. The article suggests that this class difference cannot be reconciled and needs to be eliminated. But we all know that this won't happen, at least not right away. It seems like Honda is the sole pioneer of this conversion, and it was limited in part by it's lack of experience with the body-on-frame design. We need to encourage more companies to try a different route, and use more of the neat materials that science has given us in the last 25 years to bridge that gap.
Think we're still getting light? Then look at motorcycles and how they've embraced technology far better than any car out there. Ever wonder why the spark plug is so big in the car? Ever wonder why car batteries use 19th century technology and a wimpy voltage? It was because of standards created long ago, where they didn't care about size and weight and didn't have the materials andn technology that we do now. The cost and weight savings are all within grasp. Someone just needs to take the lead.
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
High levels of radiation has a nack for breaking down many materials very quickly. Plastics and organic compounds seem to suffer the most, as the insulation on wiring turns brittle and flaky quite fast at about 1k rem. Working at a CANDU nuclear power plant, everything but the video cameras that monitor the reactor face uses special wires to prevent common short circuits. So you can tell from that that we replace the video cams quite often. Or worse (and usually the case), they stop working and we don't get a front seat view of a LOCA (loss of cooling accident) when it happens =)
Nintendo in-house games are great, but if they don't get 3rd-party support, it'll start making a lot of sense just to make games for the other 2 systems rather than try to juggle both hardware and software. Sega went that path and I don't see why that Metroid and Mario can't show up on XBox 720 or PS4 in the future.
I highly doubt that Microsoft would risk such a leathal blow as to slip the all-important holiday season. They'll need all the help they can get now that the PS3 has announced they're full backwards compatible, with some nifty features that the Xbox 360 doesn't have (Bluetooth, 1080i).
So where does that leave females? Did they "miss out"? Or are most of these observations "guy" oriented to begin with?
They have a great mail system in-game in where you can have COD for product you sell. You can mail the item to the person (for a small 30copper fee) and they only get it when they pay the agreed-upon price. This lets people sell items without being in-game to do so. Plus, they have an auction house where you can sell stuff to the highest bidder. You are ALWAYS allowed to examine the item before purchasing it, whether in the auction house, trade windows or the mail system.
The trade windows make it clear what each person is getting, so no cheating their either. It gets a bit trickier when you're selling services like enchantments, but Blizzard found a nice way to do that (a non-trade spot in the trade window where the other person can interact).
Real cash would mess up the game economy and create potential legal problems for Blizzard. I think they really thought stuff through (except for server load!) and really have made WoW one of the best games of 2004.
Of course, then you would have to worry about cross-species dieases (AIDS is a known one) and the social stigma of such a transplant.
When the SUV's bumper just start at the top of the Smart's 14" wheels, I don't see how a solid axel or reinforced ties are going to help at all. In fact, that would go for the car as a whole. In Europe it would seem safe, but in North America, where there's a lot more SUVs and semi's, I think it's a different story. The Smart car isn't as dangerous as it might first look, but by no means is it "invincible" as you seem to make it out.
He doesn't touch upon how good it grabs crappy signal from cable TV, nor how fast the channels change. He doesn't even review the TiVO-esque function.
I think this is a 1/2 ass review that totally misses the point of having this device, which is being able to use your computer like a normal TV, which includes flipping through the channels. Just lazy!
A good game is a good game, whatever platform it is (though honestly, FPS is better played on a computer, simply due to the control scheme).
And GTA3 has NOT been ported to the GameCube. In fact, all the great games you listed available to the GameCube are made (or published) by Nintendo itself. Nintendo is losing 3rd party developer support and in that process, games 6-12 months from now. Not to say that the games Nintendo aren't great, it's just that I would like variety too.
And now that Microsoft has bought RARE.....
HD is either 720 or 1080 horizontal lines of resolution, coupled with the 16:9 ratio makes it more than 4x the resolution of the current DVD's. A you do NOT need a "special" room for that. Just get a 51" HDTV display and play a DVD and watch an HDTV broadcast back-to-back. There is simply no comparison. HDTV is so crisp, so vibrant that it makes the DVD look like a VHS tape.
So, for any HDTV display right now, DVDs are *not* good enough. HDTV is just that good.
The way you word it, it can be construed that gold is cheap because the earth is full of it. That might be the case, but to get high-grade deuterium is not an easy or cheap task.
Tritium is also a tricky substance, but our CANDU plants produce it as a byproduct of our fission (D2O when irradiated can turn into tritium), and OPG is one the world's largest suppier of that. Too bad Canada's federal government decided not to persuit the ITER reactor too hard.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that there need to be an energy-state conversion. Fusion is all nice and neat, but you still have to harness the heat via a heat-transport system of some kind, probably a water/steam system. Those currently top out at 30-40% efficiency, so keep that in mind when you start throwing out megawatt/h statistics.
Ironically, people thought that Troy were just figments of the imagination 150 years ago, and now they have pretty good proof of where it is.
I don't think that everybody should be so closed-minded about such things, just because a religious text mentions it.
If they do find real proof, that's pretty cool. If not, no big deal. I mean, there was and are millions of hours of research that pretty much amount to nothing, yet I wouldn't call that all wasted time. Science should not be afraid to explore, period.
The biggest decision you should make about getting a projector is not the technology behind it (because honestly, at the consumer level, it's all about the same). What you do want to ask yourself is do you want a 16:9 (widescreen) or a 4:3 native.
Of course, you can display either one on any projector, but only one natively. If you pretty much only watch TV, 4:3 would be OK. But I would still ask you to consider 16:9 due to HDTV formats. If you only watch movies, or a mixture of the 2 (plus video games!), 16:9 is the way to go (so that leaves the X1 out of the picture).
16:9 also has some other benefits. You can get a larger maximum picture with a cheaper screen, since most screens are limited by the height (since cloth is width limited, which = height when put up on the wall). You also loose less resolution when watching normal 4:3 TV (which is somewhat a moot point since normal TV looks pretty crappy when it's 100" diagonal).
I myself have the Panasonic LT-300U. DVD's actually start looking crappy compared to HDTV on my projector. And XBox is pretty sweet when you play in HDTV mode.
One last word of advice: Make your own mount (if you're mounting from the ceiling). Don't bother to pay $200+ for a hunk of steel when you can make a better one for only $40. Just get a nylon cutting board, some ABS pipe, screws, springs and some nice black matte paint. Save yourself a bunch of cash for that HDTV convertor, and it'll be far more adjustable than the OEM one.
It's *really* amazing to see how things have gotten cheaper in the last 5 years. My home theater only cost $2000, and I don't bother going to the theaters anymore.
So, because there's less energy per gram, CANDU system have online fueling, which means that the reactor is fueled/refueled while it's still producing power. This actually happens (ideally) everyday. A LWR runs for ~18 months, then shuts down as it gets defueled/refueled.
Contrary to popular belief, CANDU isn't any more "safer" due to this design. If you're purely talking from a physics point of view, CANDU does look safer because of the lower amount of fission that goes on (thus less heat), and the design is pretty good. BUT.. you run into problems when you're constantly opening up channels on on-power, due to wear and tear on machinery (high-doses of radiation isn't great for most metals, eletronics, etc) and the possibility that you might get fuel in air (even though it's spent) exists.
So, nothing is failproof (duh!), even with the newer designs. But what you can do is limit the likelihood of something bad happening, and be prepared for it if and when it does (defense in depth), and limit the damage.
That being said, I think the nuclear industry does have problems, but there have been some MASSIVE improvements over the last 15 years. No civilian has yet to die due to a nuclear accident in north america which is pretty amazing looking at any other industry out there (dams kill a surprising # of people every year). But you have be vigilant... it only takes seconds to mess things up all over agin.