There seems to be a vocal contingent on Slashdot that assume that anybody using DeCSS, Napster, Mod Chips, etc... must be pirates and should be thrown in jail. Even if there are legitimate uses for a technology the potental for abuse exists and therefore everyone who uses it is therefore guilty.
Yeah, yeah, everyone throws around this argument. But let's face the facts, there for every 1 parent is concerned about making legitimate backups, there are 50 kids pirating games.
And another 10 parents who want to make legitimate backups, but wouldn't mind making just one copy of their friends games. Just one or two games, that's not piracy right? And it's not really piracy to borrow a friends CDR backup of a game, is it? You could have gone directly to the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend who has the original, but of course it's just easier to borrow the backup which everyone has. Or make a backup yourself, it's just one copy you made, that's not really piracy...
Face it, mod chip technology enables piracy and piracy of PS games is pretty rampant out there. It would have been even greater had it not required a bit of soldering knowledge. Yeah, I'm all for backing up software, but if you call the manufacturer they will often send you a replacement if you send back the original damaged disc. Those serious about playing import discs buy import consoles as well. Really, those numbers are small; how many US mod-chippers out there read Japanese? Enough to support the mod-chip for imports theory? No. So really, the huge mod-chip market is driven by one group and one group only, those who pirate games. No, not everyone who mods is a pirate, but the vast majority are.
However, within three days M$ would mysterically 'see' your difficulities and offered you a 5 years lock-in contract in order to waive your legal responsibility of using unlicense software. Great, you don't need to face that 2 years jailing and $5000 fine for each unlicensed software used.
How nice they are...but wait, how did M$ know my situation, where did they get our information?
What the hell do you think the BSA is??? It's the Business Software Alliance, made up of companies like Adobe and Microsoft. Of course whatever the BSA discovers will be forwarded on to the affected companies. Jeez, talk about needing a cluebat...
Secondly, it wouldn't apply on the grounds that a cd shooting gun isn't a "firearm" the projectile is propelled without gunpowder, so there isn't as much regulation governing it
Every state has it's own weapons laws. Note they are never called firearms laws, they are "weapon" laws, and are usually written ambiguiously enough to include most types of projectile weapons. Of course, it doesn't matter what the actual device is, if you use it to seriously injure or kill someone, it's considered a deadly weapon. A baseball bat is perfectly legal to own. You can even keep it in your back seat without much hassles from police. Yet as soon as you jump out of your car and pull that bat, it becomes a deadly weapon and you are much worse of for having it.
The CD gun is no different. If he kills the squirrel, he's can be charged with weapons violations (as well as cruelty to animals for not killing them with an approved method of hunting, maybe also hit with hunting out of season and poaching fines). Just as if he'd killed the squirrel by knocking it out of the tree with a paint pellet originally designed for the gun. As long as he doesn't use it illegally or recklessly, he should be ok, but no telling where a cop draws the line when it comes to "recklessly" and arrests him for endangerment.
Anybody who has scratch built model rockets can demonstrate for you how simple empirical tests can be used to insure aerodynamic stability. Any arrow can demonstrate such stability in practice.
An arrow does not have stable flight. If it did, there would be no archery competitions.
The art of fletching is a delicate one. I'm not sure how olympic class archers get their arrows, I suppose they have precisely machined arrows and fletches (feathers) that are cut to the nearest 1/1000th of an inch, and heads that are weighted to the nearest 1/100 of a gram to suit the draw length of an archer. For olympic class archer, the arrow is rocket science.
I'm a boyer and fletcher, making bows and arrows of primitive designs; bows hand carved from Osage and arrow shafts of Port Oxford Cedar. I cut my own fletchings from turkey feathers, but my heads are store bought since I'm not a smith. Unlike olympic class arrows, my arrows are more art than science.
When the arrow leaves the bow, the force is applied to the rear of the arrow. The heavy arrowhead has much more inertia than the rest of the shaft, and thus the shaft bows as it begins to move. As the arrow begins to move, it also has to bend around the side of the arrow (unlike compound hunting and olympic class bows, which are all "center-shot", there is an arrow rest cut into the center of the bow so the arrow is pushed straight through the center in line with the string). If the arrow spine (stiffness) is too high, the arrow pushes off the bow and heads in one direction. If it's too weak, it flexes too much and willows around the bow and heads in the other direction. This is known as "archer's paradox".
Because archer's paradox, the arrow "weaves" it's way to the target as the fletches attempt to straighten the flight of the path. With small fletches, it takes longer to stabilize, but the arrow flies further with less wind resistance. With larger fletches, the flight stabilizes quickly but there is much more drag and more noise (bad for a hunter). The angle you attch the fletches also makes a difference- the more angled, the faster the rotation and more stable the flight, but more drag and less distance.
They have different types of arrows- for pure distance, where accuracy doesn't matter, you see arrows with very small fletches- there's plenty of time for the arrow to correct its flight. For hunting, where shots are taken at less than 20 yards, the fletches are larger and the angle greater. If you try using a 100 yard target arrow with at 10 yards, you'll be off target because the arrow hasn't had time to correct it's flight.
No two arrows are the same. Each is going to have slightly different characteristics, and the challenge of a fletcher is to get the arrow to the same point on the target regardless of the different flight characteristics of the arrow. For "perfect" arrows, there is a good deal of fine tuning because you can't say "this arrow shoots a little high and left, this one shoots a little low". It's an work of art.
For center-shot bows, there is no archer's paradox so you can use much stiffer shafts. There is no weaving from archer's paradox, and the stiff shafts help counter the bending from inertia so you can use much smaller fletches. Still, arrows bought at Wal-Mart aren't going to be good enough for high level competition, you really need the experience of a master fletcher to tune the arrows.
Or for stealing. There isn't much use for the LED scrolling banner thingies at home, nor is stealing one of the jumbotron type things in Times Square an option. However, if they have these things everywhere, small poster-sized ones would work nice as a TV at home and wouldn't last too long on the streets.
I'd say that for a billboard, they will use smaller polymer displays which will be cheaper to make than one mondo 24'x32' display. Say 48 -4'x4' screens. Now, there's a tempting target- you might not have much use for a 24'x32' screen, but all those smaller screens, think what you could do with them?
I think whatever liquid they use, they should dye it red. And put in a chemical that reacts with oxygen so that it slowly coagulates. That way, when your laptop does spring a leak, it looks like it's bleeding...
Every call they make to me is money they waste. Every second I stay on the line and let them talk is money they waste. The more telemarketers that call me, the more money they are collectively wasting.
Bring it on! I'm sitting at the computer desk playing quake, no reason I can't take calls and say "uh-huh" and "can you explain that again?" a few times.
As for my privacy... well, I think I'll start wardialing telemarketers in the evenings. That should really screw up my calling profile, and entice more telemarketers to call and waste even more time and money on me. Ah, feel the power!
Technology can be a great thing, but it shouldn't be worshipped without skepticism.
There is no problem with technology. Technology is neither good nor bad, it is just the application of science. It is the application of the technology that can be good or bad, as you say in the first line. Why celebrate technology at all? We see it on/. all the time, new breakthroughs in science... we'll celebrate in 5 years when that new technology is applied and an actual product is on the shelf.
There was nothing bad about the Germans inventing the rocket during WW2. The problem was they used the rocket to boost warheads towards London. There was nothing bad about encryption, except the Germans used it to secretly communicate plans of war. There is nothing wrong with technology, there is no reason to be skeptical about technology.
It's also the argument driving human cloning. There is nothing good or bad about the technology itself, it's just science and science must go on. Should we be skeptical of the technology itself because it can eventually lead to "organ farms"? Or should we encourage the technology in hopes that good uses such as tissue regeneration becomes a reality and save our skepticism for when someone proposes to build a baby cloning facility?
Yes, there are some instances where we do want to be skeptical why a person/corporation/country is developing certain technologies- Iraq and bio-chemical research is one example. But is there any reason to be skpetical about IBM and their research? About new technologies they develop? I don't think so. As I said before, I wouldn't go cheering word they've developed mondo-capacity memory chips until they were on the market, but being skeptical of the technology itself, that's overkill. Be skeptical of the uses of technology, not the technology itself.
One TB on a single disc. Man, I hope the plastic coating is much more sturdy than on current CDs and DVDs, it's a lot of data to lose because you didn't set the disc properly and the drawer scratched the disc as it closed.
And titanium alloy jewel cases that aren't going to shatter and splinter when sent through the USPS or sat on by your kid/dog.
That's what they all say to their boyfriends. "No hon, this little thing is just to keep me content until you arrive home; it can't satisfy me the way you do!"
But when they're in the ol' self-pleasure isle with the other gals, they're checking out the gas powered air/oil cooled 2.5hp variable speed "Super-O(TM)" with multiple attachments, and free oil changes and tune-ups for one year.
That's what I'm afraid of, soon manufacturers will start producing pager, cell phones, and laptops with no way to turn them off.
Personally, I like, no I revel in being disconnected on weekends and after hours. I turn off my cell. I turn of my pager. I work on my laptop as it was meant to be used, on my lap in a lounge chair on the back deck with a big ol' glass of lemonade.
At this point, I can still tell my boss "no, I didn't get your email, I didn't have internet access at the cafe." After Project Rainbow, I'll have to resort to "No, my laptop was off/ran out of battery". When they start making laptops with 24hr batteries and no power button, I'll have to tell my boss the truth- I DON'T WANT TO CHECK EMAIL ON WEEKENDS. IT'S MY TIME, LEAVE ME ALONE!
I'll be buying all 12 edition that will eventually be released...
1. FotR standard issue (Aug 02) 2. FotR Deluxe issue (Dec 02) 3. FotR/TT standard issue (Aug 03) 4. FotR/TT Deluxe Box set (Dec 03) 5. 3DVD standard issue box set (Aug 04) 6. 6DVD Deluxe box set (Dec 04) 7. 8DVD Super Deluxe Box Anniversary edition with poster of Arwen in sexy pose (best seller). (Aug 05) 8. 10DVD Super Duper Deluxe Box Post Anniversary Christmas edition with plush Frodo and Sam as Santa and helper elf edition (other PC holiday editions available) (Dec 06) 9. The Hobbit DVD release (Aug 07) 10. The Whole Sebang (9&10) Platinum boxed edition with cloth map of Middle Earth. (Dec 07) 11. The Whole Sebang on the new Holographic Cellular media discs (they're right around the corner, right?) with special talking Gandalf christmas tree ornament (other PC friendly designs available)(Dec 08) 12. The Whole Shebang 20th Anniversary edition including new digitally created interview with Tolkien in holographic simulation and Arwen Poster reprint.(Aug 21)
The knee jerk reaction is right. When they throw "knowingly or recklessly" into the same phrase, its a tough one to beat.
Say you hack a website, that website feeds a stock ticker on another site, and because you've changed the page that stock ticker now shows a zero value for that company's stock. Some investor sees it, and thinking his investments are now down the toilet, jumps out the window to his death.
Now, your hack wasn't really malicious, you didn't think it would cause anyone's death. That's where the "recklessly" comes in; you didn't think of every possible outcome of your actions, thus they were reckless. That's what the prosecution is going to argue. Once the prosecution paints you as reckless, then the jury is swung to their side.
except that it crashes every 15min XP crashes every 30.
I have WinMe running some dynamic DNS software, Netscape and telnet once in a while. It does not crash. Again, it does not crash. It's been running for a few weeks, the last time it restarted was when my power went out and my UPS ran out.
By itself, Windows never crashes. It just can't handle running programs!
They'll post a question to "ask/." and we'll happily put list a few dozen mirrors and dozen posts will the full instructions listed "in case the mirrors are/.ed".
Heck, we'll also tell them what's wrong with the plans, wrong instructions on how to correct the mistakes, right instructions on how to correct the wrong corrections, and how to make a beowulf cluster out of them.
Newbies very often buy a computer with very modest intentions but quickly get comfortable with the machine and then want to start adding programs and doing the same things with it that they see their friends and relatives do.
Yeah, I remember hearing people say they just want the computer to do recipies and geneology, but two months later I look and find a million downloaded shareware programs (all saved to the desktop mind you). When they find that the programs their friends send them don't work, they'll start cursing Linux. It's what happened when Apple started selling their Performa machines in retail stores. Of course, with Apple, the only choice they had was to return the machines. Not with these though.
This is what's gonna happen. They'll be sitting at a barbeque talking about how unhappy they are with it, thinking of taking it back (well, send it back since they're only available online at the moment- if they ever sell retail, we'll see more of this). One guy will speak up, saying how Joe's son came over and installed Windows and Office on his system. Joe's son will become very popular as he goes from house to house charging $40 to install XP Pro (corporate version without activation he downloaded from Kazaa) along with Office XP. The systems "work" now, so everyone is happy.
I expect most people who do buy these machines will do so, some after they figure out they can't run Windows programs, while others will have purchased the machines with the intent to have Joe's son load XP on it.
Hmm, according to amazon [amazon.com] Good Omens [amazon.com] is a direct desendant of Hitchhikers guide...
IIRC, the paperback book says something to that effect right on the front cover. Since I'm at work I can't check it out, but I remember reading it on the book and then thinking "what does this have to do with HHG?"
in fact i believe it has the best mileage for any vehicle that still uses a fossil fuel of any sort.
My Suzuki motorcyle would get over 50MPG on the highway (as long as I kept it under 85mph). Even the Honda Goldwings with the 1.6L engines were rated at 50MPG on the highway. Many mopeds and scooters get even higher mileage, some in the 100MPG range. Of these, some don't qualify to be ridden on an interstate, but most are vehicles that require plates and license to operate.
eCycle (oops, is that a deep link?) is working on a hybrid motorcycle that gets 180MPG (using diesel by the way). Pretty cool machine, I'd love to try one out, but with a top speed of 80, it would barely keep up with traffic on NY/NJ highways...
I don't know about the energy side, but on the cooking side, it'd take about 12 hours to cook a turkey at 100C, and it would be extremely dry. Turkey cooks around 180C or 350F, a 10Kg turkey would probably take five hours to cook.
I suspect our turkey here would be an extremely blackened turkey still frozen inside. Mmm... fried turkey popsicles....
I was trying to make coffee and spent the entire day on the phone with MS tech support!
MS Support: Hello, what seems to be the problem? me: My "Microsoft(R) Wake!(TM) Coffee Maker" won't make coffee.
MS Support: OK, have you gone through the "Microsoft(R) Wake!(TM) Coffee Maker Assistant Wizard(TM)"? me: Yes.
MS support: OK, let's walk through it again. {we go through the steps}
MS Support: Ok, there's your problem. me: What?
MS Support: The coffee you are trying to use is not on the BCL. me: BCL?
MS Support: The "Beans Compatability List". You should have checked the BCL before trying to use your coffee. You need to return the coffee to the place of purchase and get one that has been certified to operate with the Microsoft(R) Wake!(TM) Coffee Maker. Thank you and have a nice day.
Well, we drink the "dirty black water" in the mornings to keep us awake since we drank too much of the "pristine water" with "boiled horse feed mixed with fungus and allowed to rot for a week" the night before and didn't get enough sleep.
AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market. They were the pioneers; instant messages have been a part of AOL since the service was called AppleLink back in the late 1980s. NOS have long had the ability to instant "message" someone with pop up windows. However, it's not the same as today's IMs by a longshot. 1- the messages were instant, but not queued if you were offline. 2- there was no easy way too look up users. 3- it was intranetwork only, outside users couldn't IM you. 4- there was no live chat. ICQ was the first really successful IM client because it incorporated all of the above in a single program, and allowed anyone with a ppp account to connect to its servers.
AOL does not need any more users on its IM network. It does not want more users on the network. Everybody who is anybody has an AIM account. Hmm. You'd think if they didn't want any more users they'd remove links to download the client. I wonder why you think MS wants to take over the world but AOL doesn't. Anyway, everyone uses AIM because... everyone else uses AIM. Well, at least 54% of the IM public uses AIM. If there were a public IM protocol, what would happen to those 54% of users? Well, it depends entirely on how many of those 54% are actually AOL members. I haven't seen the numbers, but I'm sure it's pretty high. AOL would lose advertising to the non-AOL users, true. But what they are really concerned about is losing AOL members, that's their big concern.
Facilitating compatibility with other IM networks would cost AOL money unnecessarily. They would not be able to install their spyware and ads on your system. Yes, that's true. They'll have to do something sneaky like install itself with Netscape.
And they would not be able to use the competing services to try to get you to join AOL. The economics of the situation favor the current approach. People join AOL for more than IM. Those who only want IM download the AIM client only. Why don't they charge for the client? Would the masses leave AIM if they charged non-AOL users say $10 a year just to connect to the servers? I think a lot of people would pay. So it's more than just economics IMHO.
Microsoft would also lose out from giving up the right to blast ads and spyware at all of the users of its network. And how is this different from any other IM client?
Microsoft fully intends to leverage a monopoly in the instant messaging arena to further its desktop and server monopoly. Yawn. I'm sorry, isn't this the same thing we've been saying about EVERY part of Windows for the last decade?
At that point they will begin charging for service. This would be less effective if they opened their network. Keeping their network closed encourages more users to get Passport accounts, which Microsoft uses to harvest personal information and sell consumer dossiers and mailing lists. Of course, this applies to every IM service. AOL wants you to join. They all make you sign up with personal data to help find *new chat partners*. What's the point?
Jabber.org would benefit from an open IM standard. Unfortunately, Jabber.com would lose its only competitive advantage and would quickly go out of business. Jabber.com is in the business to sell IM servers to companies for internal IM use, companies that don't want internal IM traffic routed out to AOL servers and back. More companies would buy the Jabber.com's services if they servers talked to AOL and MS. Since they don't, most companies have installed Jabber strictly for internal use and grudgingly used AIM for external use, or just said "no" to IM. Interoperability would allow Jabber to open many companies that have said "no".
Let's face it, it's just a big pissing contest. As long as AOL has the margin, nothing will EVER come of this. Create a universal IM protocol and AOL will ignore it, there's no way to force them to use it. Yes, they have control of the majority of users, but it is *not* a monopoly after all.
If by some chance AOL begins to lose the market, due to declining AOL membership or loss of users to a newer program, then and only then will AOL relent and agree to a universal protocol. Of course, if they're lucky, MS and Yahoo will already have signed on. If not, and MSN messenger takes the lead, then all the MS preaching goes out the window and they now protect their own protcol.
My heart skipped a beat seeing that logo. I thought to myself "Whoa, what the heck is that? I wonder how Atari messed up the game?"
Really, my fond memory of Atari games took over, those chunky graphics, monotone sounds, and the endlessly repeating *fun*, and I got a bit nervous. Nostalgia is good for selling something old fashioned, but is not a good marketing idea for selling something new.
NWN will help build the Atari name, to help push the images of games like ET out of my mind. But does it really matter? I don't buy games just because it was produced by a well known company (not after FF8 that is). I will do what I've been doing for years (with the exception of the aforementioned FF games) which is try to get into the beta test, read the previews, beg my reviewer friends for a copy, download the demos. It doesn't matter to me who's logo is the outside of the box as long as it's a great game.
Slashdot Mirror
There seems to be a vocal contingent on Slashdot that assume that anybody using DeCSS, Napster, Mod Chips, etc... must be pirates and should be thrown in jail. Even if there are legitimate uses for a technology the potental for abuse exists and therefore everyone who uses it is therefore guilty.
Yeah, yeah, everyone throws around this argument. But let's face the facts, there for every 1 parent is concerned about making legitimate backups, there are 50 kids pirating games.
And another 10 parents who want to make legitimate backups, but wouldn't mind making just one copy of their friends games. Just one or two games, that's not piracy right? And it's not really piracy to borrow a friends CDR backup of a game, is it? You could have gone directly to the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend who has the original, but of course it's just easier to borrow the backup which everyone has. Or make a backup yourself, it's just one copy you made, that's not really piracy...
Face it, mod chip technology enables piracy and piracy of PS games is pretty rampant out there. It would have been even greater had it not required a bit of soldering knowledge. Yeah, I'm all for backing up software, but if you call the manufacturer they will often send you a replacement if you send back the original damaged disc. Those serious about playing import discs buy import consoles as well. Really, those numbers are small; how many US mod-chippers out there read Japanese? Enough to support the mod-chip for imports theory? No. So really, the huge mod-chip market is driven by one group and one group only, those who pirate games. No, not everyone who mods is a pirate, but the vast majority are.
However, within three days M$ would mysterically 'see' your difficulities and offered you a 5 years lock-in contract in order to waive your legal responsibility of using unlicense software. Great, you don't need to face that 2 years jailing and $5000 fine for each unlicensed software used. How nice they are...but wait, how did M$ know my situation, where did they get our information?
What the hell do you think the BSA is??? It's the Business Software Alliance, made up of companies like Adobe and Microsoft. Of course whatever the BSA discovers will be forwarded on to the affected companies. Jeez, talk about needing a cluebat...
Secondly, it wouldn't apply on the grounds that a cd shooting gun isn't a "firearm" the projectile is propelled without gunpowder, so there isn't as much regulation governing it
Every state has it's own weapons laws. Note they are never called firearms laws, they are "weapon" laws, and are usually written ambiguiously enough to include most types of projectile weapons. Of course, it doesn't matter what the actual device is, if you use it to seriously injure or kill someone, it's considered a deadly weapon. A baseball bat is perfectly legal to own. You can even keep it in your back seat without much hassles from police. Yet as soon as you jump out of your car and pull that bat, it becomes a deadly weapon and you are much worse of for having it.
The CD gun is no different. If he kills the squirrel, he's can be charged with weapons violations (as well as cruelty to animals for not killing them with an approved method of hunting, maybe also hit with hunting out of season and poaching fines). Just as if he'd killed the squirrel by knocking it out of the tree with a paint pellet originally designed for the gun. As long as he doesn't use it illegally or recklessly, he should be ok, but no telling where a cop draws the line when it comes to "recklessly" and arrests him for endangerment.
Anybody who has scratch built model rockets can demonstrate for you how simple empirical tests can be used to insure aerodynamic stability. Any arrow can demonstrate such stability in practice.
An arrow does not have stable flight. If it did, there would be no archery competitions.
The art of fletching is a delicate one. I'm not sure how olympic class archers get their arrows, I suppose they have precisely machined arrows and fletches (feathers) that are cut to the nearest 1/1000th of an inch, and heads that are weighted to the nearest 1/100 of a gram to suit the draw length of an archer. For olympic class archer, the arrow is rocket science.
I'm a boyer and fletcher, making bows and arrows of primitive designs; bows hand carved from Osage and arrow shafts of Port Oxford Cedar. I cut my own fletchings from turkey feathers, but my heads are store bought since I'm not a smith. Unlike olympic class arrows, my arrows are more art than science.
When the arrow leaves the bow, the force is applied to the rear of the arrow. The heavy arrowhead has much more inertia than the rest of the shaft, and thus the shaft bows as it begins to move. As the arrow begins to move, it also has to bend around the side of the arrow (unlike compound hunting and olympic class bows, which are all "center-shot", there is an arrow rest cut into the center of the bow so the arrow is pushed straight through the center in line with the string). If the arrow spine (stiffness) is too high, the arrow pushes off the bow and heads in one direction. If it's too weak, it flexes too much and willows around the bow and heads in the other direction. This is known as "archer's paradox".
Because archer's paradox, the arrow "weaves" it's way to the target as the fletches attempt to straighten the flight of the path. With small fletches, it takes longer to stabilize, but the arrow flies further with less wind resistance. With larger fletches, the flight stabilizes quickly but there is much more drag and more noise (bad for a hunter). The angle you attch the fletches also makes a difference- the more angled, the faster the rotation and more stable the flight, but more drag and less distance.
They have different types of arrows- for pure distance, where accuracy doesn't matter, you see arrows with very small fletches- there's plenty of time for the arrow to correct its flight. For hunting, where shots are taken at less than 20 yards, the fletches are larger and the angle greater. If you try using a 100 yard target arrow with at 10 yards, you'll be off target because the arrow hasn't had time to correct it's flight.
No two arrows are the same. Each is going to have slightly different characteristics, and the challenge of a fletcher is to get the arrow to the same point on the target regardless of the different flight characteristics of the arrow. For "perfect" arrows, there is a good deal of fine tuning because you can't say "this arrow shoots a little high and left, this one shoots a little low". It's an work of art.
For center-shot bows, there is no archer's paradox so you can use much stiffer shafts. There is no weaving from archer's paradox, and the stiff shafts help counter the bending from inertia so you can use much smaller fletches. Still, arrows bought at Wal-Mart aren't going to be good enough for high level competition, you really need the experience of a master fletcher to tune the arrows.
What a cracker target that would be for defacing.
Or for stealing. There isn't much use for the LED scrolling banner thingies at home, nor is stealing one of the jumbotron type things in Times Square an option. However, if they have these things everywhere, small poster-sized ones would work nice as a TV at home and wouldn't last too long on the streets.
I'd say that for a billboard, they will use smaller polymer displays which will be cheaper to make than one mondo 24'x32' display. Say 48 -4'x4' screens. Now, there's a tempting target- you might not have much use for a 24'x32' screen, but all those smaller screens, think what you could do with them?
I think whatever liquid they use, they should dye it red. And put in a chemical that reacts with oxygen so that it slowly coagulates. That way, when your laptop does spring a leak, it looks like it's bleeding...
Every call they make to me is money they waste. Every second I stay on the line and let them talk is money they waste. The more telemarketers that call me, the more money they are collectively wasting.
Bring it on! I'm sitting at the computer desk playing quake, no reason I can't take calls and say "uh-huh" and "can you explain that again?" a few times.
As for my privacy... well, I think I'll start wardialing telemarketers in the evenings. That should really screw up my calling profile, and entice more telemarketers to call and waste even more time and money on me. Ah, feel the power!
Technology can be a great thing, but it shouldn't be worshipped without skepticism.
/. all the time, new breakthroughs in science... we'll celebrate in 5 years when that new technology is applied and an actual product is on the shelf.
There is no problem with technology. Technology is neither good nor bad, it is just the application of science. It is the application of the technology that can be good or bad, as you say in the first line. Why celebrate technology at all? We see it on
There was nothing bad about the Germans inventing the rocket during WW2. The problem was they used the rocket to boost warheads towards London. There was nothing bad about encryption, except the Germans used it to secretly communicate plans of war. There is nothing wrong with technology, there is no reason to be skeptical about technology.
It's also the argument driving human cloning. There is nothing good or bad about the technology itself, it's just science and science must go on. Should we be skeptical of the technology itself because it can eventually lead to "organ farms"? Or should we encourage the technology in hopes that good uses such as tissue regeneration becomes a reality and save our skepticism for when someone proposes to build a baby cloning facility?
Yes, there are some instances where we do want to be skeptical why a person/corporation/country is developing certain technologies- Iraq and bio-chemical research is one example. But is there any reason to be skpetical about IBM and their research? About new technologies they develop? I don't think so. As I said before, I wouldn't go cheering word they've developed mondo-capacity memory chips until they were on the market, but being skeptical of the technology itself, that's overkill. Be skeptical of the uses of technology, not the technology itself.
One TB on a single disc. Man, I hope the plastic coating is much more sturdy than on current CDs and DVDs, it's a lot of data to lose because you didn't set the disc properly and the drawer scratched the disc as it closed.
And titanium alloy jewel cases that aren't going to shatter and splinter when sent through the USPS or sat on by your kid/dog.
Small, quiet, discreet, and energy-efficient.
That's what they all say to their boyfriends. "No hon, this little thing is just to keep me content until you arrive home; it can't satisfy me the way you do!"
But when they're in the ol' self-pleasure isle with the other gals, they're checking out the gas powered air/oil cooled 2.5hp variable speed "Super-O(TM)" with multiple attachments, and free oil changes and tune-ups for one year.
That's what I'm afraid of, soon manufacturers will start producing pager, cell phones, and laptops with no way to turn them off.
Personally, I like, no I revel in being disconnected on weekends and after hours. I turn off my cell. I turn of my pager. I work on my laptop as it was meant to be used, on my lap in a lounge chair on the back deck with a big ol' glass of lemonade.
At this point, I can still tell my boss "no, I didn't get your email, I didn't have internet access at the cafe." After Project Rainbow, I'll have to resort to "No, my laptop was off/ran out of battery". When they start making laptops with 24hr batteries and no power button, I'll have to tell my boss the truth- I DON'T WANT TO CHECK EMAIL ON WEEKENDS. IT'S MY TIME, LEAVE ME ALONE!
I'll be buying all 12 edition that will eventually be released...
1. FotR standard issue (Aug 02)
2. FotR Deluxe issue (Dec 02)
3. FotR/TT standard issue (Aug 03)
4. FotR/TT Deluxe Box set (Dec 03)
5. 3DVD standard issue box set (Aug 04)
6. 6DVD Deluxe box set (Dec 04)
7. 8DVD Super Deluxe Box Anniversary edition with poster of Arwen in sexy pose (best seller). (Aug 05)
8. 10DVD Super Duper Deluxe Box Post Anniversary Christmas edition with plush Frodo and Sam as Santa and helper elf edition (other PC holiday editions available) (Dec 06)
9. The Hobbit DVD release (Aug 07)
10. The Whole Sebang (9&10) Platinum boxed edition with cloth map of Middle Earth. (Dec 07)
11. The Whole Sebang on the new Holographic Cellular media discs (they're right around the corner, right?) with special talking Gandalf christmas tree ornament (other PC friendly designs available)(Dec 08)
12. The Whole Shebang 20th Anniversary edition including new digitally created interview with Tolkien in holographic simulation and Arwen Poster reprint.(Aug 21)
The knee jerk reaction is right. When they throw "knowingly or recklessly" into the same phrase, its a tough one to beat.
Say you hack a website, that website feeds a stock ticker on another site, and because you've changed the page that stock ticker now shows a zero value for that company's stock. Some investor sees it, and thinking his investments are now down the toilet, jumps out the window to his death.
Now, your hack wasn't really malicious, you didn't think it would cause anyone's death. That's where the "recklessly" comes in; you didn't think of every possible outcome of your actions, thus they were reckless. That's what the prosecution is going to argue. Once the prosecution paints you as reckless, then the jury is swung to their side.
except that it crashes every 15min XP crashes every 30.
I have WinMe running some dynamic DNS software, Netscape and telnet once in a while. It does not crash. Again, it does not crash. It's been running for a few weeks, the last time it restarted was when my power went out and my UPS ran out.
By itself, Windows never crashes. It just can't handle running programs!
They'll post a question to "ask /." and we'll happily put list a few dozen mirrors and dozen posts will the full instructions listed "in case the mirrors are /.ed".
Heck, we'll also tell them what's wrong with the plans, wrong instructions on how to correct the mistakes, right instructions on how to correct the wrong corrections, and how to make a beowulf cluster out of them.
Newbies very often buy a computer with very modest intentions but quickly get comfortable with the machine and then want to start adding programs and doing the same things with it that they see their friends and relatives do.
Yeah, I remember hearing people say they just want the computer to do recipies and geneology, but two months later I look and find a million downloaded shareware programs (all saved to the desktop mind you). When they find that the programs their friends send them don't work, they'll start cursing Linux. It's what happened when Apple started selling their Performa machines in retail stores. Of course, with Apple, the only choice they had was to return the machines. Not with these though.
This is what's gonna happen. They'll be sitting at a barbeque talking about how unhappy they are with it, thinking of taking it back (well, send it back since they're only available online at the moment- if they ever sell retail, we'll see more of this). One guy will speak up, saying how Joe's son came over and installed Windows and Office on his system. Joe's son will become very popular as he goes from house to house charging $40 to install XP Pro (corporate version without activation he downloaded from Kazaa) along with Office XP. The systems "work" now, so everyone is happy.
I expect most people who do buy these machines will do so, some after they figure out they can't run Windows programs, while others will have purchased the machines with the intent to have Joe's son load XP on it.
Hmm, according to amazon [amazon.com] Good Omens [amazon.com] is a direct desendant of Hitchhikers guide...
IIRC, the paperback book says something to that effect right on the front cover. Since I'm at work I can't check it out, but I remember reading it on the book and then thinking "what does this have to do with HHG?"
That'd never work. Afterall, how many lawyers do you know who would admit to being a lawyer?
When you work at a law firm, every single one! They never let you forget where you are on the org chart!
in fact i believe it has the best mileage for any vehicle that still uses a fossil fuel of any sort.
My Suzuki motorcyle would get over 50MPG on the highway (as long as I kept it under 85mph). Even the Honda Goldwings with the 1.6L engines were rated at 50MPG on the highway. Many mopeds and scooters get even higher mileage, some in the 100MPG range. Of these, some don't qualify to be ridden on an interstate, but most are vehicles that require plates and license to operate.
eCycle (oops, is that a deep link?) is working on a hybrid motorcycle that gets 180MPG (using diesel by the way). Pretty cool machine, I'd love to try one out, but with a top speed of 80, it would barely keep up with traffic on NY/NJ highways...
OMG, Kiss broke up???
I don't know about the energy side, but on the cooking side, it'd take about 12 hours to cook a turkey at 100C, and it would be extremely dry. Turkey cooks around 180C or 350F, a 10Kg turkey would probably take five hours to cook.
I suspect our turkey here would be an extremely blackened turkey still frozen inside. Mmm... fried turkey popsicles....
I was trying to make coffee and spent the entire day on the phone with MS tech support!
MS Support: Hello, what seems to be the problem?
me: My "Microsoft(R) Wake!(TM) Coffee Maker" won't make coffee.
MS Support: OK, have you gone through the "Microsoft(R) Wake!(TM) Coffee Maker Assistant Wizard(TM)"?
me: Yes.
MS support: OK, let's walk through it again.
{we go through the steps}
MS Support: Ok, there's your problem.
me: What?
MS Support: The coffee you are trying to use is not on the BCL.
me: BCL?
MS Support: The "Beans Compatability List". You should have checked the BCL before trying to use your coffee. You need to return the coffee to the place of purchase and get one that has been certified to operate with the Microsoft(R) Wake!(TM) Coffee Maker. Thank you and have a nice day.
Well, we drink the "dirty black water" in the mornings to keep us awake since we drank too much of the "pristine water" with "boiled horse feed mixed with fungus and allowed to rot for a week" the night before and didn't get enough sleep.
AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market. They were the pioneers; instant messages have been a part of AOL since the service was called AppleLink back in the late 1980s.
NOS have long had the ability to instant "message" someone with pop up windows. However, it's not the same as today's IMs by a longshot. 1- the messages were instant, but not queued if you were offline. 2- there was no easy way too look up users. 3- it was intranetwork only, outside users couldn't IM you. 4- there was no live chat. ICQ was the first really successful IM client because it incorporated all of the above in a single program, and allowed anyone with a ppp account to connect to its servers.
AOL does not need any more users on its IM network. It does not want more users on the network. Everybody who is anybody has an AIM account.
Hmm. You'd think if they didn't want any more users they'd remove links to download the client. I wonder why you think MS wants to take over the world but AOL doesn't. Anyway, everyone uses AIM because... everyone else uses AIM. Well, at least 54% of the IM public uses AIM. If there were a public IM protocol, what would happen to those 54% of users? Well, it depends entirely on how many of those 54% are actually AOL members. I haven't seen the numbers, but I'm sure it's pretty high. AOL would lose advertising to the non-AOL users, true. But what they are really concerned about is losing AOL members, that's their big concern.
Facilitating compatibility with other IM networks would cost AOL money unnecessarily. They would not be able to install their spyware and ads on your system.
Yes, that's true. They'll have to do something sneaky like install itself with Netscape.
And they would not be able to use the competing services to try to get you to join AOL. The economics of the situation favor the current approach.
People join AOL for more than IM. Those who only want IM download the AIM client only. Why don't they charge for the client? Would the masses leave AIM if they charged non-AOL users say $10 a year just to connect to the servers? I think a lot of people would pay. So it's more than just economics IMHO.
Microsoft would also lose out from giving up the right to blast ads and spyware at all of the users of its network.
And how is this different from any other IM client?
Microsoft fully intends to leverage a monopoly in the instant messaging arena to further its desktop and server monopoly.
Yawn. I'm sorry, isn't this the same thing we've been saying about EVERY part of Windows for the last decade?
At that point they will begin charging for service. This would be less effective if they opened their network. Keeping their network closed encourages more users to get Passport accounts, which Microsoft uses to harvest personal information and sell consumer dossiers and mailing lists.
Of course, this applies to every IM service. AOL wants you to join. They all make you sign up with personal data to help find *new chat partners*. What's the point?
Jabber.org would benefit from an open IM standard. Unfortunately, Jabber.com would lose its only competitive advantage and would quickly go out of business.
Jabber.com is in the business to sell IM servers to companies for internal IM use, companies that don't want internal IM traffic routed out to AOL servers and back. More companies would buy the Jabber.com's services if they servers talked to AOL and MS. Since they don't, most companies have installed Jabber strictly for internal use and grudgingly used AIM for external use, or just said "no" to IM. Interoperability would allow Jabber to open many companies that have said "no".
Let's face it, it's just a big pissing contest. As long as AOL has the margin, nothing will EVER come of this. Create a universal IM protocol and AOL will ignore it, there's no way to force them to use it. Yes, they have control of the majority of users, but it is *not* a monopoly after all.
If by some chance AOL begins to lose the market, due to declining AOL membership or loss of users to a newer program, then and only then will AOL relent and agree to a universal protocol. Of course, if they're lucky, MS and Yahoo will already have signed on. If not, and MSN messenger takes the lead, then all the MS preaching goes out the window and they now protect their own protcol.
My heart skipped a beat seeing that logo. I thought to myself "Whoa, what the heck is that? I wonder how Atari messed up the game?"
Really, my fond memory of Atari games took over, those chunky graphics, monotone sounds, and the endlessly repeating *fun*, and I got a bit nervous. Nostalgia is good for selling something old fashioned, but is not a good marketing idea for selling something new.
NWN will help build the Atari name, to help push the images of games like ET out of my mind. But does it really matter? I don't buy games just because it was produced by a well known company (not after FF8 that is). I will do what I've been doing for years (with the exception of the aforementioned FF games) which is try to get into the beta test, read the previews, beg my reviewer friends for a copy, download the demos. It doesn't matter to me who's logo is the outside of the box as long as it's a great game.