We put our Earth microbes contaminated landing craft on Titan, and no one thought of the effect this would have on the Titans? Did no one ever read the "War of the Worlds"?
Did no one ever read The Puppet Masters? Titan is the enemy!
Will the files be DRM'ed, and if so, how obtrusively? Does your music vanish if you cancel some sort of subscription? Will it be a subscription model, with monthly fees, or will it be a flat fee per song like iTunes? What format will the files be in? What platform(s) will the peering software run on? Will the labels' entire catalogs be available, or just some lesser artists and/or selections?
Rats. I've been eagerly looking forward to the Big Damn Movie (Serenity) ever since my friends dragooned me into watching the DVD set, but I'd rather see it succeed -- and the franchise survive long enough for Fox's rights to expire and the show to get back on some other network or cable outlet -- than to have it sink into the swamp and be forgotten.
I'd love a cheap, mass produced 200 mile electric!
on
230mph Electric Car
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories.
Presumably, the Chinese could license and start building these themselves, without waiting for Japan's lead? 200 miles is the critical value that I've been waiting for for a range, assuming that the recharge time isn't any longer than overnight....
autonomous vehicles. . . will be the norm in two to three decades
Didn't they say that two to three decades ago? I'd love to see this happen, but I can see manufacturer liability and the American love of being independent on the open road (and damn the consequences for the environment) being significant barriers to adoption, at least in the US. Especially so if there's any sort of infrastructure investment requirement, such as modifications to the roads themselves....
What are you talking about? Thanksgiving was a month ago! [1]
[1] Here in Canada, at least.
Pay per "CPU hour"? Use a slow CPU!
on
Paid To Spam
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· Score: 1
(1 x 24) x 365 = $8760 per year.
So, the thing to do is to set up a lab full of old 386/20 boxen, all diligently churning away sending spam on the slowest processors you can find... and filter all of your outgoing port 25 traffic through a faster machine running SpamAssassin.
$1200 per year? Zow! I'm starting a job in Canada, and they're bringing me in as a contractor at first for immigration purposes, and I'm on the hook for a million loonies worth of liability, too. But in Canada, a million dollar liability policy runs about $150 CDN per year....
If I recall correctly, the naming convention for Kuiper Belt Objects is that of creation deities.
Sedna isn't actually a creator goddess -- she was born mortal, and became a goddess when the spirits of the air and the moon decided to reward her for her suffering in her mortal life, as she was drowning. Two accounts of the Sedna myth may be found here and here.
In any event, aren't you glad that they're naming it Sedna, and not Uinigumasuittuq?
A more powerful version of PieSpy would examine the text (and context) of who is connecting to whom.
It would also analyze more than one play at a time -- an analysis of the entire Falstaff series, for instance, would be neat. Or, expanding beyond Shakespeare, the Ring cycle....
Graphics are great, but the resolution on my imagination is awesome, and the refresh rate is much better than what you can get today.
From the author's perspective, my entry in this year's IF competition is going to be a Western that spends a lot of time as a character study of its main NPC, and whose overall theme centers on making difficult moral choices in an uncertain and multipolar world. In any other genre, it would be difficult or impossible to round up the large team that I'd need to implement such a thing, and who would play it? In IF, if I can execute it properly, I can really make the concept work.
I've always been puzzled at how games in the so called "adventure" genre were all about puzzles.
That's not the case, necessarily, any more -- look at Photopia or Galatea, for example. Contrived puzzles were always a pet peeve of mine, too, which is why A Mind Forever Voyaging was my favorite game of the classic Infocom era. But at their best, good IF games can combine a deep sense of immersion with a powerful story in which the author can be somewhat literary, for an experience that depressingly few big-budget modern games match.
I really think the companies that produced adventure games back in the day should re-release them on an archive CD of sorts. I'd pay fifty bucks for that!
Activision did precisely that, for $20, with its Lost Treasures of Infocom, back in the Nineties.
It's a personal goal, and 10 kg is just a handwaving upper limit, not some formally defined standard, and what drives the lower weight is that it's much more comfortable to carry, and not some externally-imposed regulation. 10 kg is my personal weight budget when loaded with a week's supplies in 3-season conditions; I achieve that target by carrying a frameless rucksack made of silicone-impregnated nylon (the GVP G5, which weighs 8 ounces), a one kilogram 32F / 0C down sleeping bag, a Hennessy Hammock in place of a tent, and so forth.
You can -- and many have -- complete thru-hikes of long-distance hiking trails (AT, CDT, PCT) with ultralight gear, and in greater comfort than if you'd tried to lug traditional weight gear. The standard introduction to the concept is "Beyond Backpacking" by Ray Jardine, but there's a *ton* of information on the net about it. The "BackpackingLight" group on yahoogroups is a good source of information, or just Google for "ultralight backpacking."
While this research is for the military for use on the front lines, there's some definite non-military value to this, if it's at all feasible. I do a lot of "ultralight" backpacking, in which one strives to keep the weight that one carries below ten kilograms -- less, if it can be managed. Even when carrying "dense" high-energy foods, meals for one day on the trail take 1 1/2-2 pounds, and on very long and arduous trips such as thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, it becomes difficult or impossible to carry enough nutrition to replace what you're burning. Even if all that came out of this effort were higher-calorie rations for less weight, that would really help, assuming that the cost could be kept down enough.
Even more importantly, this could be useful in disaster relief situations, especially where the transportation infrastructure is damaged or there's still a dangerous condition that limits the number or type of vehicles that can get in to the affected area. A helicopter or a HMMWV or an armored vehicle could be used to carry emergency supplies to the victims of a disaster, or to beseiged civilians in a war zone.
And the thing about Prada that is most positive...
on
RFID Tags For The Rich
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· Score: 5, Funny
...are our changing rooms. These wonderful rooms do not have doors which automatically lock behind you, and the temperature inside does not increase whatsoever.
Just listen to this other real human being who have successfully shopped for an article of clothing at Prada:
"I enjoyed my experience at Prada, and especially the changing rooms. When I had completed my trying on of an article of clothing, I was free to leave, uncooked and totally alive. It is a good store."
So take it from me, Zalgon-23-Prada: our changing rooms are the best! In fact, you should go in them even if you have no intention of trying on any articles of human clothing. I should know, as I am a human being just like yourself.
Couldn't they just require every voter to encrypt and sign their vote with a unique PGP key? Or are they assuming voters are too stupid to do this?
I think they're assuming that voters -- particularly military voters vulnerable to pressure from the chain of command -- are interested in having a genuinely secret ballot. Signing a ballot in any way prevents that.
(Yes, they could be given anonymous keys. But would you trust them to actually be anonymous?)
Instead of this stupid data structures core all the colleges are going with.
A solid understanding of data structures and algorithms isn't stupid -- it's fundamental.
Then set up a bunch of in-depth language classes, ex. on Perl, or Lisp, or whatever to actually learn the languages.
Better yet, have one good course on programming languages that teaches how to go about learning programming languages, good properties thereof, and whatnot. A student who has mastered such a course can thereafter learn any desired language independently, or as a side effect of other coursework.
But yes, students should learn assembly, and block-structured imperative languages, and OO languages, and functional languages, among other things. Which is why a solid programming languages course is essential.
99% of CS grads aren't going to use assembly in their day to day jobs.
You're kidding, right? Leaving aside embedded work for the moment (which there's a lot of here in upstate New York), haven't you ever had to track down a weird and subtle C or C++ bug by looking at the disassembly window? (Or BCEL'ed into the bytecode that javac produced, for that matter?)
Slashdot Mirror
Did no one ever read The Puppet Masters? Titan is the enemy!
Does he have to think think think in Russian Russian Russian?
You left out the part about Gandalf dropping by for a chat at the end of RotK:SBTHK....
Will the files be DRM'ed, and if so, how obtrusively? Does your music vanish if you cancel some sort of subscription? Will it be a subscription model, with monthly fees, or will it be a flat fee per song like iTunes? What format will the files be in? What platform(s) will the peering software run on? Will the labels' entire catalogs be available, or just some lesser artists and/or selections?
Rats. I've been eagerly looking forward to the Big Damn Movie (Serenity) ever since my friends dragooned me into watching the DVD set, but I'd rather see it succeed -- and the franchise survive long enough for Fox's rights to expire and the show to get back on some other network or cable outlet -- than to have it sink into the swamp and be forgotten.
Presumably, the Chinese could license and start building these themselves, without waiting for Japan's lead? 200 miles is the critical value that I've been waiting for for a range, assuming that the recharge time isn't any longer than overnight....
Well, if I were EA, I'd develop for both by ordering my developers to work 120-hour weeks....
Didn't they say that two to three decades ago? I'd love to see this happen, but I can see manufacturer liability and the American love of being independent on the open road (and damn the consequences for the environment) being significant barriers to adoption, at least in the US. Especially so if there's any sort of infrastructure investment requirement, such as modifications to the roads themselves....
[1] Here in Canada, at least.
So, the thing to do is to set up a lab full of old 386/20 boxen, all diligently churning away sending spam on the slowest processors you can find... and filter all of your outgoing port 25 traffic through a faster machine running SpamAssassin.
$1200 per year? Zow! I'm starting a job in Canada, and they're bringing me in as a contractor at first for immigration purposes, and I'm on the hook for a million loonies worth of liability, too. But in Canada, a million dollar liability policy runs about $150 CDN per year....
Sedna isn't actually a creator goddess -- she was born mortal, and became a goddess when the spirits of the air and the moon decided to reward her for her suffering in her mortal life, as she was drowning. Two accounts of the Sedna myth may be found here and here.
In any event, aren't you glad that they're naming it Sedna, and not Uinigumasuittuq?
It would also analyze more than one play at a time -- an analysis of the entire Falstaff series, for instance, would be neat. Or, expanding beyond Shakespeare, the Ring cycle....
They were all out on strike (and apparently, firing striking workers isn't illegal there), so there was no way to tell them in person.
From the author's perspective, my entry in this year's IF competition is going to be a Western that spends a lot of time as a character study of its main NPC, and whose overall theme centers on making difficult moral choices in an uncertain and multipolar world. In any other genre, it would be difficult or impossible to round up the large team that I'd need to implement such a thing, and who would play it? In IF, if I can execute it properly, I can really make the concept work.
That's not the case, necessarily, any more -- look at Photopia or Galatea, for example. Contrived puzzles were always a pet peeve of mine, too, which is why A Mind Forever Voyaging was my favorite game of the classic Infocom era. But at their best, good IF games can combine a deep sense of immersion with a powerful story in which the author can be somewhat literary, for an experience that depressingly few big-budget modern games match.
I really think the companies that produced adventure games back in the day should re-release them on an archive CD of sorts. I'd pay fifty bucks for that! Activision did precisely that, for $20, with its Lost Treasures of Infocom, back in the Nineties.
You can -- and many have -- complete thru-hikes of long-distance hiking trails (AT, CDT, PCT) with ultralight gear, and in greater comfort than if you'd tried to lug traditional weight gear. The standard introduction to the concept is "Beyond Backpacking" by Ray Jardine, but there's a *ton* of information on the net about it. The "BackpackingLight" group on yahoogroups is a good source of information, or just Google for "ultralight backpacking."
Even more importantly, this could be useful in disaster relief situations, especially where the transportation infrastructure is damaged or there's still a dangerous condition that limits the number or type of vehicles that can get in to the affected area. A helicopter or a HMMWV or an armored vehicle could be used to carry emergency supplies to the victims of a disaster, or to beseiged civilians in a war zone.
Just listen to this other real human being who have successfully shopped for an article of clothing at Prada:
"I enjoyed my experience at Prada, and especially the changing rooms. When I had completed my trying on of an article of clothing, I was free to leave, uncooked and totally alive. It is a good store."
So take it from me, Zalgon-23-Prada: our changing rooms are the best! In fact, you should go in them even if you have no intention of trying on any articles of human clothing. I should know, as I am a human being just like yourself.
More importantly, do you have to thinkthinkthink in Russianrussianrussian to use the browser?
...what about insecure electronic voting here at home? (i.e. Diebold)
I think they're assuming that voters -- particularly military voters vulnerable to pressure from the chain of command -- are interested in having a genuinely secret ballot. Signing a ballot in any way prevents that.
(Yes, they could be given anonymous keys. But would you trust them to actually be anonymous?)
A solid understanding of data structures and algorithms isn't stupid -- it's fundamental.
Then set up a bunch of in-depth language classes, ex. on Perl, or Lisp, or whatever to actually learn the languages.Better yet, have one good course on programming languages that teaches how to go about learning programming languages, good properties thereof, and whatnot. A student who has mastered such a course can thereafter learn any desired language independently, or as a side effect of other coursework.
But yes, students should learn assembly, and block-structured imperative languages, and OO languages, and functional languages, among other things. Which is why a solid programming languages course is essential.
You're kidding, right? Leaving aside embedded work for the moment (which there's a lot of here in upstate New York), haven't you ever had to track down a weird and subtle C or C++ bug by looking at the disassembly window? (Or BCEL'ed into the bytecode that javac produced, for that matter?)