I tried the official website and it seems that their News area is non-functional at the time of this posting and Google just brings up tons of people asking the same question.
I haven't heard so much as a peep regarding the new Mac version during the dev of the latest Windows client. Can anyone give us an ETA on 4.0 for OS X?
One thing I noticed about the Trek movies is that the ones that really made you feel as if there was this huge universe out there around the characters brought in the most money at the box office. The size of the canvas seemed to be proportional to the size of the returns.
The problem with movies like Insurrection and Nemesis - to name a few - was that in the end it was one ship vs one ship and the whole feeling of this bustling galaxy was gone. Sure, the Enterprise alone verses the Scimitar was pretty cool, but the whole movie never developed that sense of grand adventure that First Contact or The Undiscovered Country had. The scope of the universe seemed to be scaled-down to TNG-episode proportions. Insurrection was arguably the worst at this - the whole thing felt like a 2 part TNG from one of the latter seasons.
I'm not quite sure if I'm accurately conveying what I'm trying to say, hopefully it's coming across clearly.
"I remember a few years back, when Burton first started talking about doing the remake, that he wanted Marilyn Manson to be Willy Wonka.'
I somehow doubt that Manson's flat-as-a-board delivery and general lack of charisma would be well-suited to the role. Even when he is interviewed he seems to be barely-conscious.
The final decision ended up coming down to a choice between Johnny Depp or Christopher Walken. Either way, we won.
It can never be emphasized enough how utterly valuable a SAME equipped weather radio can be. They do not just allow you to get up to the minute weather reports, but they also act as your first warning of any kind of serious emergency in your area.
Warning sirens are only intended to notify people outdoors, and TVs and radios are only useful if you are awake, the unit is on and you are within earshot and paying attention at the time.
When NOAA or an emergency management agency (NOAA allows them to utilize the system without running the transmissions by them first) sends out a warning message, it is proceeded by what sounds like intermittent static. In fact, the system is sending out a burst of number sequences that are decoded by SAME equipped radios that compare the number sequence to that which the user has previously entered. If they do not match, the radio ignores the message, if they do match however, a generally ear-piercing alarm sounds while the radio interprets the alert code and displays the corresponding text message before the computer voice announcement (or real person if the situation warrants it) from the NOAA station begins to broadcast. The process takes about 10 seconds (this is to give you a chance to get closer to the radio before the voice warning begins).
They are not as cheap as a clock radio, but they are worth every penny. I'm still astonished when I come across people who live in tornado-prone areas who don't buy them despite their financial ability to do so and their fear of dangerous weather.
Of course, people always ask "Does this have any practical use?"
Absolutely not. But that it not the point. In The Real World imagination and creativity are the driving force. How do you foster that? By challenging yourself and inspiring others. There does not have to be any realistic application as much as there needs to be a thought process behind it that can be capitalized on in the future. Experiments such as this drive the imagination and the mind into new directions and those new paths we explore can lead to really, really utterly brilliant things that can have a profound effect on our lives.
In school, a teacher once told me "Answers don't really matter at all. The process you use to reach your conclusions is the most important thing in the world." It blew my little mind open to the true nature of creativity and for the first time I valued it in a way that was truly profound.
How long will Katie Tarbox continue to milk her experience for cash? There is no doubt in my mind that what happened to her was horrible, but there are moments when I find myself questioning if it is even about protecting others anymore.
She could just be an unfortunate woman who had a terrible childhood experience only to grow up and have publishers manipulate her recovery in the persuit of money, or she could just be someone who is desperately clinging to her celebrity as - by her own accounts - it is the only recognition and purpose she has ever known.
If the former is true, then she needs to be a bit more upfront about it, but if the latter is true, then she needs to make use of her family's wealth and do something with her life that will provide her with a sense of accomplishment.
There is a finite number of places one can obtain large amounts of cooking oil. While at the moment, it may be quite easy to talk a manager at a local KFC into letting you cart off for free what they would have to pay to dispose of, the problem arises that there will not be such widespread availability of waste oil as the popularity of home-brewed biodiesel takes off.
I can easily picture fierce competition over whom is allowed to get the oil from KFC this week, etc.
When it comes to growing crops to manufacture biodiesel, you have to ask how much energy will be expended planting, harvesting, commercially refining and transporting the finished product. Will it be viable?
If company A finds out that a particular gene determines your likelyhood of developing brain cancer, company B can be sued if they test a person for the presence of that gene.
however as much as I wish to see this girl survive and live a healthy, happy life you have to wonder if those organs might have been better used saving multiple children with one major organ failing instead of someone who seems to have a body that seems to be almost completely non-functional. Think about what this girl's long term prospects are - considering her body's frail state. Hardly anything inside of her works. Will she live a year and die, taking the truckload of transplanted organs with her, while others with one or two problematic organs and much better chances to survive long-term post-transplant are forced to wait and quite possibly die?
On 9/11, the Emergency Alert System as it is now called should have been used to communicate instructions to those in the attacked areas. It could even been argued that a National Security Warning should have been issued to alert those in critical areas nationwide. During the blackout, a Civil Emergency warning should have been sent out as soon as information about what it was and was not became availible. Instead, people huddled understandably afraid in the dark wondering what was coming next and what could be happening around them.
Not IT-related, but a telling inidcator of the job market for those of us who simply cannot afford to go to college.
(1) Janitorial Work - "Must work minimum of 40 hours a week, must be on call 24/7/365 and have a minimum of 3 years of custodial work experience. $6.00 an hour."
(2) Fire Sprinkler Installer Apprentice - "Looking for entry-level beginners. Must be able to lift 80lbs and have absolutely no fear of heights. Minimum of 3 to 5 years of Fire Sprinkler Installation Experience required"
No one wants to train anyone in anything anymore. Even if the position exists to train a new employee (see above) and more and more employers require college degrees - and increasingly 4 year degrees at that for the most basic and entry-level jobs. Of course, even that is usually not good enough. You are now expected to have several years of experience and really good credit. A low FICO score alone is enough to prevent you from even some of the most menial jobs available. Because we all know those that are late on their credit card payments s are fucking theives and there couldn't possibly be any mitigating circumstances to explain the low score.
U.S Robotics will actually start making robots for once?:)
An interesting question to wrap your brain around
on
Death of the PDA?
·
· Score: 1
Are PDAs merging with phones or are phones merging with PDAs?
By the look of things, it seems as if you could proclaim that the traditional cell phone is on its last legs, and that in the next 5 or 10 years phones that provide nothing but voice and SMS capability will be few and far between. This does not mean that cellphones are dead as well as it does not mean that handheld computers are dead.
It could be said - and perhaps much more accurately - that this current transition will only be the death knell of widespread useage of single-purpose handheld portable communication and computation devices.
Did the article totally ignore the whole "the X-Prize contenders must repeat their success within 2 weeks by using the same vehicle?" aspect, which in my opinion isn't exactly a minor point.
A one-off launch is one thing, but to return the craft to service within 14 days is something else entirely.
How many problems with the shuttle can we really hope to fix?
When the shuttle launches again, the current problems will still remain:
- There is still no viable crew escape system. During launch you theoretically have a chance to abort as long as the emergency doesn't involve the SRBs. In reality though, there is not much you can do. A mid-launch abort is more of a fantasy concocted to make astronauts and the public feel better. Once you're in space, hope that you can either get to the ISS (assuming all your navigational and propulsion systems are working properly), or that there is another shuttle almost ready to go...and you manage to survive the shuttle-to-shuttle transfer.
- Repairing the shuttle is still pretty iffy. NASA developed a substance that can be injected into small breaches in many parts of the shuttle to ensure the craft survives re-entry. Note I said *some* parts. The repair does not work on leading edge of the wing and you couldn't really hope to fix it in orbit even if you happened to have just the right spare part with you. (which is unlikely in of itself)
Repairing the shuttle can actually inflict more harm on the craft. There is a good chance anyone going over the side to look at the heat tiles will actually damage more in the course of the repair.
- The launch systems....mainly the SRBs are still horribly broken technologies that are absolutely not fault-tolerant whatsoever. Hundreds of things usually go wrong with the shuttle during the course of a mission. Little things here and there. If something goes wrong with the SRBs, you will probably die.
As a Professional * Information Technology Location Analyst and Physical Security Specialist I need to use my professional abilities to make a professional analysis of the situation for my professional collegues so that we may put forth a professional solution to this problem.**
* - I really, really hate people who make gratutious use of the word "professional" as some sort of elitist mark of supremecy
** - I would like to run in there, see if the machines are locked down, and grab as many as I can hold.
(And yes, I'm just joking, I don't want to steal anything from them and I neither have the plans nor the means to do so, it's just a joke people)
When was the last time Apple Records did anything but repackage Beatles music? You never hear of anyone being signed to Apple Records, the last Apple Records artist I can remember releasing anything was Badfinger.
Slashdot Mirror
I tried the official website and it seems that their News area is non-functional at the time of this posting and Google just brings up tons of people asking the same question.
I haven't heard so much as a peep regarding the new Mac version during the dev of the latest Windows client. Can anyone give us an ETA on 4.0 for OS X?
Click here and then scroll down to "win evnova classic" and "win evnova override".
Just please register. You get 3 games for the price of one and Ambrosia really deserves all of the money they can get.
There is a PC port of Nova and the earlier games have been ported to the new engine. Happy (plasma) trails!
One thing I noticed about the Trek movies is that the ones that really made you feel as if there was this huge universe out there around the characters brought in the most money at the box office. The size of the canvas seemed to be proportional to the size of the returns.
The problem with movies like Insurrection and Nemesis - to name a few - was that in the end it was one ship vs one ship and the whole feeling of this bustling galaxy was gone. Sure, the Enterprise alone verses the Scimitar was pretty cool, but the whole movie never developed that sense of grand adventure that First Contact or The Undiscovered Country had. The scope of the universe seemed to be scaled-down to TNG-episode proportions. Insurrection was arguably the worst at this - the whole thing felt like a 2 part TNG from one of the latter seasons.
I'm not quite sure if I'm accurately conveying what I'm trying to say, hopefully it's coming across clearly.
...by the 24 century, it will still be turning a profit "Next quarter"
"I remember a few years back, when Burton first started talking about doing the remake, that he wanted Marilyn Manson to be Willy Wonka.'
I somehow doubt that Manson's flat-as-a-board delivery and general lack of charisma would be well-suited to the role. Even when he is interviewed he seems to be barely-conscious.
The final decision ended up coming down to a choice between Johnny Depp or Christopher Walken. Either way, we won.
"By the by, anybody else find Zathras to be the funniest time-travelling alien ever?"
:(
Yes, sadly Tim Choate who brought the character to life on screen passed away 2 and a half months ago.
He will be missed.
It can never be emphasized enough how utterly valuable a SAME equipped weather radio can be. They do not just allow you to get up to the minute weather reports, but they also act as your first warning of any kind of serious emergency in your area.
Warning sirens are only intended to notify people outdoors, and TVs and radios are only useful if you are awake, the unit is on and you are within earshot and paying attention at the time.
When NOAA or an emergency management agency (NOAA allows them to utilize the system without running the transmissions by them first) sends out a warning message, it is proceeded by what sounds like intermittent static. In fact, the system is sending out a burst of number sequences that are decoded by SAME equipped radios that compare the number sequence to that which the user has previously entered. If they do not match, the radio ignores the message, if they do match however, a generally ear-piercing alarm sounds while the radio interprets the alert code and displays the corresponding text message before the computer voice announcement (or real person if the situation warrants it) from the NOAA station begins to broadcast. The process takes about 10 seconds (this is to give you a chance to get closer to the radio before the voice warning begins).
Here is a complete list of all of the emergency codes
They are not as cheap as a clock radio, but they are worth every penny. I'm still astonished when I come across people who live in tornado-prone areas who don't buy them despite their financial ability to do so and their fear of dangerous weather.
Of course, people always ask "Does this have any practical use?"
Absolutely not. But that it not the point. In The Real World imagination and creativity are the driving force. How do you foster that? By challenging yourself and inspiring others. There does not have to be any realistic application as much as there needs to be a thought process behind it that can be capitalized on in the future. Experiments such as this drive the imagination and the mind into new directions and those new paths we explore can lead to really, really utterly brilliant things that can have a profound effect on our lives.
In school, a teacher once told me "Answers don't really matter at all. The process you use to reach your conclusions is the most important thing in the world." It blew my little mind open to the true nature of creativity and for the first time I valued it in a way that was truly profound.
It seems Sun is attempting to patent multiplication.
:)
u * p = c
U = # of users
P = Price per user
C = Cost
It should be noted that a variation on this formula can also break any form of encryption on the net.
How long will Katie Tarbox continue to milk her experience for cash? There is no doubt in my mind that what happened to her was horrible, but there are moments when I find myself questioning if it is even about protecting others anymore.
She could just be an unfortunate woman who had a terrible childhood experience only to grow up and have publishers manipulate her recovery in the persuit of money, or she could just be someone who is desperately clinging to her celebrity as - by her own accounts - it is the only recognition and purpose she has ever known.
If the former is true, then she needs to be a bit more upfront about it, but if the latter is true, then she needs to make use of her family's wealth and do something with her life that will provide her with a sense of accomplishment.
There is a finite number of places one can obtain large amounts of cooking oil. While at the moment, it may be quite easy to talk a manager at a local KFC into letting you cart off for free what they would have to pay to dispose of, the problem arises that there will not be such widespread availability of waste oil as the popularity of home-brewed biodiesel takes off.
I can easily picture fierce competition over whom is allowed to get the oil from KFC this week, etc.
When it comes to growing crops to manufacture biodiesel, you have to ask how much energy will be expended planting, harvesting, commercially refining and transporting the finished product. Will it be viable?
"What a great idea, people would never take something for free when they can just buy it someplace else!"
One word: iTunes
If company A finds out that a particular gene determines your likelyhood of developing brain cancer, company B can be sued if they test a person for the presence of that gene.
We are already fucked.
however as much as I wish to see this girl survive and live a healthy, happy life you have to wonder if those organs might have been better used saving multiple children with one major organ failing instead of someone who seems to have a body that seems to be almost completely non-functional. Think about what this girl's long term prospects are - considering her body's frail state. Hardly anything inside of her works. Will she live a year and die, taking the truckload of transplanted organs with her, while others with one or two problematic organs and much better chances to survive long-term post-transplant are forced to wait and quite possibly die?
This honestly surprises me.
On 9/11, the Emergency Alert System as it is now called should have been used to communicate instructions to those in the attacked areas. It could even been argued that a National Security Warning should have been issued to alert those in critical areas nationwide. During the blackout, a Civil Emergency warning should have been sent out as soon as information about what it was and was not became availible. Instead, people huddled understandably afraid in the dark wondering what was coming next and what could be happening around them.
I certainly hope they have a fat wall....er....nevermind.
Not IT-related, but a telling inidcator of the job market for those of us who simply cannot afford to go to college.
(1) Janitorial Work - "Must work minimum of 40 hours a week, must be on call 24/7/365 and have a minimum of 3 years of custodial work experience. $6.00 an hour."
(2) Fire Sprinkler Installer Apprentice - "Looking for entry-level beginners. Must be able to lift 80lbs and have absolutely no fear of heights. Minimum of 3 to 5 years of Fire Sprinkler Installation Experience required"
No one wants to train anyone in anything anymore. Even if the position exists to train a new employee (see above) and more and more employers require college degrees - and increasingly 4 year degrees at that for the most basic and entry-level jobs. Of course, even that is usually not good enough. You are now expected to have several years of experience and really good credit. A low FICO score alone is enough to prevent you from even some of the most menial jobs available. Because we all know those that are late on their credit card payments s are fucking theives and there couldn't possibly be any mitigating circumstances to explain the low score.
U.S Robotics will actually start making robots for once? :)
Are PDAs merging with phones or are phones merging with PDAs?
By the look of things, it seems as if you could proclaim that the traditional cell phone is on its last legs, and that in the next 5 or 10 years phones that provide nothing but voice and SMS capability will be few and far between. This does not mean that cellphones are dead as well as it does not mean that handheld computers are dead.
It could be said - and perhaps much more accurately - that this current transition will only be the death knell of widespread useage of single-purpose handheld portable communication and computation devices.
But that's not a very good headline, now is it?
Somehow I don't think they would go and replace a major part of the shuttle's design and just expect it to work.
Why not? "Uhhh......fuck it...that'll work" been NASA management's SOP for the past 20 years.
Did the article totally ignore the whole "the X-Prize contenders must repeat their success within 2 weeks by using the same vehicle?" aspect, which in my opinion isn't exactly a minor point.
A one-off launch is one thing, but to return the craft to service within 14 days is something else entirely.
How many problems with the shuttle can we really hope to fix?
When the shuttle launches again, the current problems will still remain:
- There is still no viable crew escape system. During launch you theoretically have a chance to abort as long as the emergency doesn't involve the SRBs. In reality though, there is not much you can do. A mid-launch abort is more of a fantasy concocted to make astronauts and the public feel better. Once you're in space, hope that you can either get to the ISS (assuming all your navigational and propulsion systems are working properly), or that there is another shuttle almost ready to go...and you manage to survive the shuttle-to-shuttle transfer.
- Repairing the shuttle is still pretty iffy. NASA developed a substance that can be injected into small breaches in many parts of the shuttle to ensure the craft survives re-entry. Note I said *some* parts. The repair does not work on leading edge of the wing and you couldn't really hope to fix it in orbit even if you happened to have just the right spare part with you. (which is unlikely in of itself)
Repairing the shuttle can actually inflict more harm on the craft. There is a good chance anyone going over the side to look at the heat tiles will actually damage more in the course of the repair.
- The launch systems....mainly the SRBs are still horribly broken technologies that are absolutely not fault-tolerant whatsoever. Hundreds of things usually go wrong with the shuttle during the course of a mission. Little things here and there. If something goes wrong with the SRBs, you will probably die.
As a Professional * Information Technology Location Analyst and Physical Security Specialist I need to use my professional abilities to make a professional analysis of the situation for my professional collegues so that we may put forth a professional solution to this problem.**
* - I really, really hate people who make gratutious use of the word "professional" as some sort of elitist mark of supremecy
** - I would like to run in there, see if the machines are locked down, and grab as many as I can hold.
(And yes, I'm just joking, I don't want to steal anything from them and I neither have the plans nor the means to do so, it's just a joke people)
When was the last time Apple Records did anything but repackage Beatles music? You never hear of anyone being signed to Apple Records, the last Apple Records artist I can remember releasing anything was Badfinger.