Obviously if the Universe is on the order of 13B years old, the "first extra-solar planet" had long since been absorbed by the expansion of its star, then likely collapsed with the star into a brown dwarf.
If you convert the fuel to electricity on the platform you have to convert the entire vehicle fleet to batteries,
My suggestion was only for sea-based oil platforms, obviously the idea gets less apealing when you apply it to land based rigs, especially those that are in the middle east since then you would need thousands of miles of cable, not hundreds, or say land-based Texas oil wells where production per well is low and transportation costs for the oil are considerably less. But as for North Sea oil rigs, often the rigs can't be accessed due to rough seas, this would be irrelevant to an undersea cable. Also, some of the co-generation could be used to harvest methane-hydrates from below the sea floor, or just to inject steam into the oil wells to increase output.
This is a very good point. I think the average human can't be more than 90% accurate for most things, yet God been replaced by the current SlashDot crowd, it appears we would have been sent back for further testing and likely never implemented.
1. 0.2% mistakes are already good enough to compete with commercial text recognition systems. To that I would add the digitization of just about all analog data: images, audio, temperature, viscosity, density, etc. Also, modeling any kind of system where key parts of the model depend on educated guesses of various parameters by human programmers. In other words we could build tremedously powerful computers for things like atmospheric modeling, or finding undergound oil deposits, applications that we currently build mulit-million dollar parralel processing arrays just to get 'acceptable' predictions.
The government is working towards providing 10% of Britain's electricity supplies from renewable sources by 2010; at present, they provide 2.8%.
Britain is Europe's windiest country but has only 880 operating wind turbines, based on 61 wind farms. They produce less than 1% of the country's needs. World leader Denmark gets 15% of its power that way.
So in nine more years they'll only be at two-thirds the level of where Denmark is today. Hardly sounds like a groundbreaking achievement.
I wish the article would talk about the technology used in the cable itself as that seems to be the big breakthough that will enable this project. Will it use superconducting technology such as is already being tested in the US and in Denmark? If we can produce 350 mile long undersea cables, then maybe we could harness heat from undersea thermal vents to generate electricity? or perhaps the thermal mass of the great sargassos sea? Or put Oil and Gas fired plants on current offshore drilling platforms so the energy is being transported not the oil and we won't have to worry about another Exxon Valdez disaster.
The reason it is worth mining ice is that it can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis and then you've got fuel and oxidizer for a Mars mission
I am not a astro-geologist but, it seems to me that lots of other minerals contain either oxygen and/or hydrogen. For example here on earth, the most abundant mineral is silicon dioxide, which is mostly oxygen. While it may be simpler to seperate out the hydrogen and oxygen from water, and it can be done with current technology powered only by sunlight, it seems that a lack of water does not imply a lack of resources when you get down to the base elements. Further, even if water were the most valuable resource, you would have to make containers out of something, and if you have a lot of rock lying around, why not mine the rock to make the containers out of if for no other reason. Silicon dioxide is the main component of glass, which can be a a quite useful storage medium.
Worse case senario, your printer starts prining one character per page, or little smiley faces, heart, cloves, and spades.
Cloves? MMM - Spicy, makes me think that tommorow Pumpkin Pie day!;^)
But in anycase, anytime you plan on testing random drivers with a printer, you should try to reduce the number of pages in the paperfeed bin to 2. Also should you wnat to try this you can get the drivers from the NEC Website.
If you want to the Adobe PrintGear route, you could maybe try the NT 4 drivers for that engine which you can get from here.
NOTE: the 860 also uses Adobe Print Gear, so 860 (also NT 4.0) driver directly from NEC would be my first bet, but this one is dated later - and who knows, it might work if the NEC860 driver doesn't.
The Xbox console is a dedicated video game console. Its sole purpose is to provide you with the best video game experience available on the market while connected to your television. You can also use Xbox as a DVD home theater system if you purchase the DVD Playback Kit.
Can the Xbox hook up to a computer monitor
The Xbox video game system is intended for use with television sets or television/VCR setups. This focus allows gamers to enjoy the superior visual and sound capacity of high-definition and high-resolution television sets.
But personally, it seems like it should be trivial to convert the 720p signal to be viewed on a standard PC monitor - IANAEE but primarily it just involves converting the YPrPb 720p signal to RGB 720p. (a product that roughly does the reverse is available here for $159) I would hope some EE geek here on SlashDot could look at specs and come up with the necessary wiring diagram and release as an open source solution.
The 1020i signal (the 1900x1020 max resolution XBox is capable of) would likely pose a much greater challenge since you would need scan-converter circuitry, and thus a buffer.
Finally, don't forget you still need the HDTV adaptor add-on just to get the HDTV signal out of the XBox.
If you were a terrorist/drug kingpin/cracker, and you were using a specific encrypted PC and email account for this activity, wouldn't want to only exchange mail that is also encrypted with PGP? So you would probably just delete/filter out any email you receive from anyone that hasn't previously provided you with their key. The article mentions that the FBI might get a colleague of yours to send you the virus, but still, you have to be willing to accept attachments, and having heard of Magic Lantern, I doubt you would be doing this, and you certainly wouldn't be doing this with Outlook.
first of all,let me say that, in general, the New Scientist is, IMHO, much closer to pseudoscience than science. . . it's not a very serious publication.
Nor is it intended to be. New Scientist is a compendium of abstracts from serious scientific journals that have been edited to read by non-scientists. In this case the study was published in Nature Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1038/nn758). (See the last line of the article).
Now as to the article as a whole, I think the study was little pointless if at all it was attempting to prove is that intelligence has a significant genetic component. If it didn't then humans would have the same level of intelligence as our ape ancestors.
If the system eventually requires tax collection for towns and cities, the next internet tax ban will be one imposed by the courts in the form of a restraining order, because there would be a strong possibility that the court would rule that imposing / enforcing the tax collection would be an undue burden on the vendor.
That is the current situation. The US Supreme Court ruled that there are just too many taxing jurisdication for internet/mail order/catalog companies to keep track of, so the vendor doesn't have to collect the tax. Of course, that ruling didn't deter the states/localities from legislating that no such burden is applicable to the buyer t=since they only live in one place. So most of the taxing jurisdiction shifted the burden for paying the taces on such sales to them.
You also have to think to future generations as well. Say you had a child that wasn't breastfed, was exposed to lead paint and mercury vapors, fetal alcohol syndrome, etc. That child's DNA (likely) wasn't affected by their environment so should they then have children and breastfeed them, not drink/do crack during pregnancy, live in houses built after 1977 with no lead paint, etc. Their kids have every likelihood of achieiving the a much higher tested IQ level than the parents.
This is important news, since many consider African Americans to perfrom worse on IQ test than caucasians. But if you correct this data for the environmental factors attributable largely to poverty and a much loewer rate of breastfeeding among African Americans, you'll find that it's not genetics that causing these lowers scores for African Americans but primarily enviroment.
(to a lesser extent you may be able to find that asians have a higher tested IQ due to their much greater consumption of fish (rich in the same faty acid as found in breastmilk than improve brain growth) than other cultures.)
Well even that link is kind of vague, but here is ablurb om MS reasoning for this from FGNonline, they claim that they did it to make the box more affordable, partly blaiming the cost to license the DVD movie decoder (interesting to hear MS complaining about the MPAA's IP policies in this way).
But provided you are willing to pay the additional $30 for the remote/receiver package, you may find that it is harder to find than an Xbox console itself. (for example Amazon is currently out of stock). I guess MS guessed wrong when they thought only 10-15% of Xbox buyer would want the DVD playback capability. But of course, its no secret that one of MS's historic problems is trying guess what consumers want built-in, then making the decision for them whther they like it or not.
You can now get a DVD player for around a hundred dollars that will play DVDs, CDs, MP3s, VCDs, SVCDs, and mini-DVDs
I just saw an ad on TV from one of the Marts (K or Wal, not sure which and their websites weren't helpful) that said they will be having a one day only sale on an APEX DVD player for $69.99 on THANKSGIVING DAY ONLY.
My understanding of APEX, is that even their entry level model (which I think is AD3201) can play all the disc format you listed (not sure of Svcds though) including copies you have burned yourself on CD-R and CD-RW. For $70 bucks, even if you did decide to get XBox, I don't see how it would be wasted money to have extra box around that can play so many forms of media. Even if just becomes an audio only player for MP3s burned to CDR, it would probabably worth it. I'm tempted to get for father who already has a older, namebrand DVD player that only plays Studio DVD's just so I can send him home-burned copies of my home video of the grandkid.
(PS - if someone else catches this ad, please post here to which Mart it was.)
Really, though. How hard would it be? You know where the buyer is, and finding the sales tax rate where the customer is would be no big deal. They don't change anywhere close to as often as zip codes do,
Um, Wrong. It would be very hard. Since sales tax juridications don't map to zip codes (maybe they do to zip+4, though) you would have to keep a seperate database of every household in the US of which there are some 110,000,000 which you would have to bounce every transaction against to determine the amount of aplicable tax - and if any tax is applicable as not all jurisdictions tax the same things - clothes and junk food are good examples of things taxed in one state but not another. (You could maybe simplify the jurisdiction tracking if you mapped all the zip codes that were entirely within a single jurisdiction, then you would just have to check on the zips that fell in multiple jurisdictions.)
Then once you collected the taxes, you would have to withhold the taxes for each of any of the 10,000 different taxing jurisdictions, with many transactions requireing that x% be withheld for the state, y% withheld for the county/city, & z% be withheld for the school/water/fire district.
Then at some point (at least quarterly if you're a corporation) you would have to distribute to each of the jurisdictions the amount of taxes you have withheld on their behalf during that period. For really efficient companies they typically can get a check written, approved, signed, and mailed for about a $1 a piece - that's upto $40,000/year just to write the checks. Using electronic transfer might save them money, but likely not much. (you also have to remember that there is an expense at the receiving end, which might make it more expensive for jurisdiction to cash a check than the value of the check itself.)
Then at any time, any one of the taxing jurisdictions has the right to come in and audit your books to determine if you really have been accurately recording the transactions and remitting the taxes withheld. One has to assume that there would be an incredible incentive for many struggling e-commerce sites to just hold on to (i.e. embezzle) taxes owed to small and/or distant jurisdictions who they don't think will ever audit them. I mean it's not like the customer is going to check with their school district to ensure that the $1.25 in sales tax they had withheld on an e-purchase actually made its way to them.
So until the States and local juridictions can come up with a method of simplified nationwide tax collection, it will be up to the buyers not the sellers to pay any sales/use/excise taxes on their own purchases for any purchases made by mail/phone/internet (at least when the seller has no physical presence in the buyer's state).
As an "armchair anthropologist" my working hypothesis is that homo sapiens sapiens differentiated on the west coast of Africa (yeah I know that needs narrowing down)
Just curious, but don't you mean the East coast of Africa where Ethiopia and Kenya, and thus Lucy and all the various Leakey fossil finds were located? I mean I guess it's possible that man's ancestors from millions of years ago at some point migrated from the East coast of Africa to the West coast prior to evolving into hss but you should provide some additional basis for that theory if that is the case.
Actually there is conjecture that bicycle was not a DaVinci sketch, instead being the work of one of his students, or even potentially a hoax, though other scholars have dismissed those claims arguing that the drawing is almost certainly a pupil's sketch of a Leonardo original. (Note the first of these links has a great picture of both the sketch and of a re-creation of what the bike might have looked like.)
Nucleosynthesis in stars to form complex molecules
Wouldn't the part to take place in the stars be the formation of complex atoms (i.e. Hydrogen into Helium via fusion and then into heavier elements needed to create life, notably Nitrogen, Oxygen and Carbon)?
A very significant fraction of the Earth' s carbon came from extensive cometary bombardment on the primitive Earth
There is an awfully large amount of carbon on earth, (think of all the limestone, oil and coal that's still in the ground, let alone the carbon in every living thing and in the atmosphere). What kind of percentage are you thinking here, 1%? 2%? ???
Actually, there is no prohibition about using other browsers/OSs to fill out the FAFSA, the page you referred to is only a warning that the other browsers aren't supported, which means if you run into a problem you can't get tech support to help you figure out what is wrong. Given that they support Netscape running on both Windows or Mac, I I expect you won't have problems using Netscape on Linux to fill it out. As to the version of Netscape supported, blame Netscape for that, it took from v4.7x until 6.1 to get a relatively stable product. Since that was only recently completed, it will be a while before they certify 6.1 for technical support.
As to supported OS's, if you do a Netcraft check, you'll see that ED.gov uses a variety of OS's for the webservers - primarily Solaris and WinNT but with a mix of others like HP-UX (including the FAFSA site itself) thrown in as well. For desktops within the agency itself though, its strictly a Win95/2000 shop. You can run Red Hat if you like, but don't plan on using the helpdesk much if you do (then again, you much less likely to need to, right?)
They have a government sponsored distro there called Red Flag linux. A web search didn't readily identify any stats as to how many copies were installed, though I found one article that indicated that 10% of new PCs in China are sold with Linux preinstalled and that in 2000 about 40,000 copies were sold in software stores. But as you noted, the number of copies sold =/= the number installed, especially in China.
There are some saprophytic, true (ie non-fungal) plants that don't rely on photosynthesis (and therefore light) to grow. It seems that GM technology could be used to modify existing food plants to grow without light, recycling the 'compost' created by the passengers into food. The same could be done with fungi without any GM, but I expect it result in a rather boring (and probably nutritionally poor) diet if this was their only food supply (wasn't there a some SciFi movie where they lived off mushrooms?).
A drawback is that the other major product of photosynthesis is the breaking down of CO2 to free up oxygen for the crew to breath. But current spacecraft and stations instead rely on CO2 'scrubbers' (ala Apollo 13 & duct tape fame) to do this. So for deep space exploration, where light is either not available, or requires too much energy, I think GM'd saprophytic plants would be a good alternative.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts: Akira Kadota, International PR, Tokyo
Tel: 03-3578-1237 Fax: 03-3437-2776
Yoshihiro Kitadeya, International PR, Osaka
Tel: 06-6908-0447 Fax: 06-6907-2013
Matsushita Electric (Panasonic) Introduces New DMR-HS1 DVD Video Recorder with built-in HDD -- Offers a maximum of 52 hours of recording with built-in HDD --
PIC OSAKA, Japan -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronic and digital communications products, today announced that it will introduce a new DVD video recorder with built-in hard disk drive (HDD), the DMR-HS1, to kick off its new lineup of DVD video recorders. By combining an HDD with a DVD recorder, the new unit enables a maximum of 52 hours of recording on the HDD and 12 hours on DVD-RAM discs to realize easy editing and storage of recorded TV broadcasts and images from digital video cameras. The DMR-HS1 will be launched in the Japanese market on December 1, 2001 at a price of 200,000 yen. In addition, the new DVD video recorder will be exhibited at the Panasonic booth at CEATEC JAPAN 2001, to be held from October 2 to 6 at Makuhari Messe (Nippon Convention Center) in Chiba, east of Tokyo.
Panasonic's DMR-HS1 DVD video recorder offers a wide range of recording versatility. The internal 40 GB HDD makes possible up to 52 hours of extended recording in EP mode to the HDD and 12 hours to a double-sided DVD-RAM disc. Timer recording can automatically reuse the recorded program settings every week for serial TV programs, freeing viewers from having to delete last week's episodes to retrieve space for new ones when disk space is limited.
In addition, a "Time Slip" function is offered that includes Chase Playback and Simultaneous Recording and Playback capabilities. This function enables playback from any point in a previously recorded or currently recording program while recording continues until the current program's end.
Employing an iLINK cable and incorporated DV input terminal, high quality digital images can be dubbed onto DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs through its easy-to-use "DV Automatic Recording" mode. The "Play List," a list of still images representing a sequence of scenes, can be made automatically to make editing easier. High-speed dubbing at 22 Mbps from the HDD to DVD-RAM can be done with the touch of a single button, enabling 12x speed in EP mode at its quickest (e.g., a one-hour program can be dubbed in just 5 minutes). Dubbing from DVD-RAM to the HDD is available as well.
The DVD video recording technology used in this new unit complies with the DVD-RAM recording formats standardized by the DVD Forum. DVD-RAM is not only compatible with both audio/video and PC applications, but its optical format also boasts superior rewritability, allowing approximately 100,000 rewrites per disc.
The global demand for DVD players in fiscal year 2001 (year ending March 2002) is forecast to reach 25 million units, with more than 11,000 DVD software titles. With its vast capacity, high-speed data transmission, high-speed random access, exceptional image quality, and high sound quality, DVD-RAM is the optimal choice in today's expanding digital media environment.
About Matsushita Electric Industrial Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic, National, Technics, and Quasar brand names, is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacture of electronics products for a wide range of consumer, business, and industrial needs. Based in Osaka, Japan, the company recorded consolidated sales of US$61.45 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2001. In addition to the Tokyo and other Japanese stock exchanges (6752), Matsushita's shares are also listed on the Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, New York, Pacific (NYSE/PCX: MC), and Paris stock exchanges. For more information, visit the Matsushita web site at http://www.panasonic.co.jp/global/top.html.
That timeline is clearly violated when they launch the Enterprise and play a 30 year old tape of a now elderly Cochran (played by James Cromwell of First Contact) made at the inauguration of the Warp4 facility.
In fact just about any inconsistencies with previously established timelines can be written off as due to the influence of the TNG crew & the Borg when they went back in time in First Contact.
Slashdot Mirror
the case in question is Adobe vs Softman, . . . The full ruling is available in PDF format here.
This ruling seems to phrased as to only apply to "purchased" software. Any word/opinions on how it effects either downloaded, or OS s/w?
Also any ideas how we can get a change a venue for Skylarov's case to this judge's court?
s/b: First Photo of Extra-Solar Planet?
Obviously if the Universe is on the order of 13B years old, the "first extra-solar planet" had long since been absorbed by the expansion of its star, then likely collapsed with the star into a brown dwarf.
My suggestion was only for sea-based oil platforms, obviously the idea gets less apealing when you apply it to land based rigs, especially those that are in the middle east since then you would need thousands of miles of cable, not hundreds, or say land-based Texas oil wells where production per well is low and transportation costs for the oil are considerably less. But as for North Sea oil rigs, often the rigs can't be accessed due to rough seas, this would be irrelevant to an undersea cable. Also, some of the co-generation could be used to harvest methane-hydrates from below the sea floor, or just to inject steam into the oil wells to increase output.
BTW, love your sig. I'm a big Trout Fishing In America fan as well.
3. How accurate is your brain?
This is a very good point. I think the average human can't be more than 90% accurate for most things, yet God been replaced by the current SlashDot crowd, it appears we would have been sent back for further testing and likely never implemented.
1. 0.2% mistakes are already good enough to compete with commercial text recognition systems.
To that I would add the digitization of just about all analog data: images, audio, temperature, viscosity, density, etc. Also, modeling any kind of system where key parts of the model depend on educated guesses of various parameters by human programmers. In other words we could build tremedously powerful computers for things like atmospheric modeling, or finding undergound oil deposits, applications that we currently build mulit-million dollar parralel processing arrays just to get 'acceptable' predictions.
I wish the article would talk about the technology used in the cable itself as that seems to be the big breakthough that will enable this project. Will it use superconducting technology such as is already being tested in the US and in Denmark? If we can produce 350 mile long undersea cables, then maybe we could harness heat from undersea thermal vents to generate electricity? or perhaps the thermal mass of the great sargassos sea? Or put Oil and Gas fired plants on current offshore drilling platforms so the energy is being transported not the oil and we won't have to worry about another Exxon Valdez disaster.
The reason it is worth mining ice is that it can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis and then you've got fuel and oxidizer for a Mars mission
I am not a astro-geologist but, it seems to me that lots of other minerals contain either oxygen and/or hydrogen. For example here on earth, the most abundant mineral is silicon dioxide, which is mostly oxygen. While it may be simpler to seperate out the hydrogen and oxygen from water, and it can be done with current technology powered only by sunlight, it seems that a lack of water does not imply a lack of resources when you get down to the base elements. Further, even if water were the most valuable resource, you would have to make containers out of something, and if you have a lot of rock lying around, why not mine the rock to make the containers out of if for no other reason. Silicon dioxide is the main component of glass, which can be a a quite useful storage medium.
- SilentWriter LC 860
- SilentWriter LC 860 Plus
- SuperScript 860
- Minolta PageWorks Pro 8e
So I guees it would be easiest to try those first.Worse case senario, your printer starts prining one character per page, or little smiley faces, heart, cloves, and spades.
;^)
Cloves ? MMM - Spicy, makes me think that tommorow Pumpkin Pie day!
But in anycase, anytime you plan on testing random drivers with a printer, you should try to reduce the number of pages in the paperfeed bin to 2. Also should you wnat to try this you can get the drivers from the NEC Website.
If you want to the Adobe PrintGear route, you could maybe try the NT 4 drivers for that engine which you can get from here.
NOTE: the 860 also uses Adobe Print Gear, so 860 (also NT 4.0) driver directly from NEC would be my first bet, but this one is dated later - and who knows, it might work if the NEC860 driver doesn't.
The 1020i signal (the 1900x1020 max resolution XBox is capable of) would likely pose a much greater challenge since you would need scan-converter circuitry, and thus a buffer.
Finally, don't forget you still need the HDTV adaptor add-on just to get the HDTV signal out of the XBox.
If you were a terrorist/drug kingpin/cracker, and you were using a specific encrypted PC and email account for this activity, wouldn't want to only exchange mail that is also encrypted with PGP? So you would probably just delete/filter out any email you receive from anyone that hasn't previously provided you with their key. The article mentions that the FBI might get a colleague of yours to send you the virus, but still, you have to be willing to accept attachments, and having heard of Magic Lantern, I doubt you would be doing this, and you certainly wouldn't be doing this with Outlook.
first of all,let me say that, in general, the New Scientist is, IMHO, much closer to pseudoscience than science. . . it's not a very serious publication.
Nor is it intended to be. New Scientist is a compendium of abstracts from serious scientific journals that have been edited to read by non-scientists. In this case the study was published in Nature Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1038/nn758). (See the last line of the article).
Now as to the article as a whole, I think the study was little pointless if at all it was attempting to prove is that intelligence has a significant genetic component. If it didn't then humans would have the same level of intelligence as our ape ancestors.
If the system eventually requires tax collection for towns and cities, the next internet tax ban will be one imposed by the courts in the form of a restraining order, because there would be a strong possibility that the court would rule that imposing / enforcing the tax collection would be an undue burden on the vendor.
That is the current situation. The US Supreme Court ruled that there are just too many taxing jurisdication for internet/mail order/catalog companies to keep track of, so the vendor doesn't have to collect the tax. Of course, that ruling didn't deter the states/localities from legislating that no such burden is applicable to the buyer t=since they only live in one place. So most of the taxing jurisdiction shifted the burden for paying the taces on such sales to them.
First you need a seperate adapter to get HDTV output from your XBox.
what about the built-in DVD player?
it is for gameplay only, you only get NTSC (analog) output from DVD movies.
Is it a progressive scan?
The output from the adapter can be set to 480p, 720p, and 1080i. (but as noted before, it's forfor gameplay only, NOT DVD movies!)
You also have to think to future generations as well. Say you had a child that wasn't breastfed, was exposed to lead paint and mercury vapors, fetal alcohol syndrome, etc. That child's DNA (likely) wasn't affected by their environment so should they then have children and breastfeed them, not drink/do crack during pregnancy, live in houses built after 1977 with no lead paint, etc. Their kids have every likelihood of achieiving the a much higher tested IQ level than the parents.
This is important news, since many consider African Americans to perfrom worse on IQ test than caucasians. But if you correct this data for the environmental factors attributable largely to poverty and a much loewer rate of breastfeeding among African Americans, you'll find that it's not genetics that causing these lowers scores for African Americans but primarily enviroment.
(to a lesser extent you may be able to find that asians have a higher tested IQ due to their much greater consumption of fish (rich in the same faty acid as found in breastmilk than improve brain growth) than other cultures.)
Well even that link is kind of vague, but here is ablurb om MS reasoning for this from FGNonline, they claim that they did it to make the box more affordable, partly blaiming the cost to license the DVD movie decoder (interesting to hear MS complaining about the MPAA's IP policies in this way).
But provided you are willing to pay the additional $30 for the remote/receiver package, you may find that it is harder to find than an Xbox console itself. (for example Amazon is currently out of stock). I guess MS guessed wrong when they thought only 10-15% of Xbox buyer would want the DVD playback capability. But of course, its no secret that one of MS's historic problems is trying guess what consumers want built-in, then making the decision for them whther they like it or not.
You can now get a DVD player for around a hundred dollars that will play DVDs, CDs, MP3s, VCDs, SVCDs, and mini-DVDs
I just saw an ad on TV from one of the Marts (K or Wal, not sure which and their websites weren't helpful) that said they will be having a one day only sale on an APEX DVD player for $69.99 on THANKSGIVING DAY ONLY.
My understanding of APEX, is that even their entry level model (which I think is AD3201) can play all the disc format you listed (not sure of Svcds though) including copies you have burned yourself on CD-R and CD-RW. For $70 bucks, even if you did decide to get XBox, I don't see how it would be wasted money to have extra box around that can play so many forms of media. Even if just becomes an audio only player for MP3s burned to CDR, it would probabably worth it. I'm tempted to get for father who already has a older, namebrand DVD player that only plays Studio DVD's just so I can send him home-burned copies of my home video of the grandkid.
(PS - if someone else catches this ad, please post here to which Mart it was.)
Really, though. How hard would it be? You know where the buyer is, and finding the sales tax rate where the customer is would be no big deal. They don't change anywhere close to as often as zip codes do,
Um, Wrong. It would be very hard. Since sales tax juridications don't map to zip codes (maybe they do to zip+4, though) you would have to keep a seperate database of every household in the US of which there are some 110,000,000 which you would have to bounce every transaction against to determine the amount of aplicable tax - and if any tax is applicable as not all jurisdictions tax the same things - clothes and junk food are good examples of things taxed in one state but not another. (You could maybe simplify the jurisdiction tracking if you mapped all the zip codes that were entirely within a single jurisdiction, then you would just have to check on the zips that fell in multiple jurisdictions.)
Then once you collected the taxes, you would have to withhold the taxes for each of any of the 10,000 different taxing jurisdictions, with many transactions requireing that x% be withheld for the state, y% withheld for the county/city, & z% be withheld for the school/water/fire district.
Then at some point (at least quarterly if you're a corporation) you would have to distribute to each of the jurisdictions the amount of taxes you have withheld on their behalf during that period. For really efficient companies they typically can get a check written, approved, signed, and mailed for about a $1 a piece - that's upto $40,000/year just to write the checks. Using electronic transfer might save them money, but likely not much. (you also have to remember that there is an expense at the receiving end, which might make it more expensive for jurisdiction to cash a check than the value of the check itself.)
Then at any time, any one of the taxing jurisdictions has the right to come in and audit your books to determine if you really have been accurately recording the transactions and remitting the taxes withheld. One has to assume that there would be an incredible incentive for many struggling e-commerce sites to just hold on to (i.e. embezzle) taxes owed to small and/or distant jurisdictions who they don't think will ever audit them. I mean it's not like the customer is going to check with their school district to ensure that the $1.25 in sales tax they had withheld on an e-purchase actually made its way to them.
So until the States and local juridictions can come up with a method of simplified nationwide tax collection, it will be up to the buyers not the sellers to pay any sales/use/excise taxes on their own purchases for any purchases made by mail/phone/internet (at least when the seller has no physical presence in the buyer's state).
As an "armchair anthropologist" my working hypothesis is that homo sapiens sapiens differentiated on the west coast of Africa (yeah I know that needs narrowing down)
Just curious, but don't you mean the East coast of Africa where Ethiopia and Kenya, and thus Lucy and all the various Leakey fossil finds were located? I mean I guess it's possible that man's ancestors from millions of years ago at some point migrated from the East coast of Africa to the West coast prior to evolving into hss but you should provide some additional basis for that theory if that is the case.
Actually there is conjecture that bicycle was not a DaVinci sketch, instead being the work of one of his students, or even potentially a hoax, though other scholars have dismissed those claims arguing that the drawing is almost certainly a pupil's sketch of a Leonardo original. (Note the first of these links has a great picture of both the sketch and of a re-creation of what the bike might have looked like.)
Nucleosynthesis in stars to form complex molecules
Wouldn't the part to take place in the stars be the formation of complex atoms (i.e. Hydrogen into Helium via fusion and then into heavier elements needed to create life, notably Nitrogen, Oxygen and Carbon)?
A very significant fraction of the Earth' s carbon came from extensive cometary bombardment on the primitive Earth
There is an awfully large amount of carbon on earth, (think of all the limestone, oil and coal that's still in the ground, let alone the carbon in every living thing and in the atmosphere). What kind of percentage are you thinking here, 1%? 2%? ???
Actually, there is no prohibition about using other browsers/OSs to fill out the FAFSA, the page you referred to is only a warning that the other browsers aren't supported, which means if you run into a problem you can't get tech support to help you figure out what is wrong. Given that they support Netscape running on both Windows or Mac, I I expect you won't have problems using Netscape on Linux to fill it out. As to the version of Netscape supported, blame Netscape for that, it took from v4.7x until 6.1 to get a relatively stable product. Since that was only recently completed, it will be a while before they certify 6.1 for technical support.
As to supported OS's, if you do a Netcraft check, you'll see that ED.gov uses a variety of OS's for the webservers - primarily Solaris and WinNT but with a mix of others like HP-UX (including the FAFSA site itself) thrown in as well. For desktops within the agency itself though, its strictly a Win95/2000 shop. You can run Red Hat if you like, but don't plan on using the helpdesk much if you do (then again, you much less likely to need to, right?)
They have a government sponsored distro there called Red Flag linux. A web search didn't readily identify any stats as to how many copies were installed, though I found one article that indicated that 10% of new PCs in China are sold with Linux preinstalled and that in 2000 about 40,000 copies were sold in software stores. But as you noted, the number of copies sold =/= the number installed, especially in China.
There are some saprophytic, true (ie non-fungal) plants that don't rely on photosynthesis (and therefore light) to grow. It seems that GM technology could be used to modify existing food plants to grow without light, recycling the 'compost' created by the passengers into food. The same could be done with fungi without any GM, but I expect it result in a rather boring (and probably nutritionally poor) diet if this was their only food supply (wasn't there a some SciFi movie where they lived off mushrooms?).
A drawback is that the other major product of photosynthesis is the breaking down of CO2 to free up oxygen for the crew to breath. But current spacecraft and stations instead rely on CO2 'scrubbers' (ala Apollo 13 & duct tape fame) to do this. So for deep space exploration, where light is either not available, or requires too much energy, I think GM'd saprophytic plants would be a good alternative.
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Matsushita Electric (Panasonic) Introduces New DMR-HS1 DVD Video Recorder with built-in HDD
-- Offers a maximum of 52 hours of recording with built-in HDD --
PIC
OSAKA, Japan -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronic and digital communications products, today announced that it will introduce a new DVD video recorder with built-in hard disk drive (HDD), the DMR-HS1, to kick off its new lineup of DVD video recorders. By combining an HDD with a DVD recorder, the new unit enables a maximum of 52 hours of recording on the HDD and 12 hours on DVD-RAM discs to realize easy editing and storage of recorded TV broadcasts and images from digital video cameras. The DMR-HS1 will be launched in the Japanese market on December 1, 2001 at a price of 200,000 yen. In addition, the new DVD video recorder will be exhibited at the Panasonic booth at CEATEC JAPAN 2001, to be held from October 2 to 6 at Makuhari Messe (Nippon Convention Center) in Chiba, east of Tokyo.
Panasonic's DMR-HS1 DVD video recorder offers a wide range of recording versatility. The internal 40 GB HDD makes possible up to 52 hours of extended recording in EP mode to the HDD and 12 hours to a double-sided DVD-RAM disc. Timer recording can automatically reuse the recorded program settings every week for serial TV programs, freeing viewers from having to delete last week's episodes to retrieve space for new ones when disk space is limited.
In addition, a "Time Slip" function is offered that includes Chase Playback and Simultaneous Recording and Playback capabilities. This function enables playback from any point in a previously recorded or currently recording program while recording continues until the current program's end.
Employing an iLINK cable and incorporated DV input terminal, high quality digital images can be dubbed onto DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs through its easy-to-use "DV Automatic Recording" mode. The "Play List," a list of still images representing a sequence of scenes, can be made automatically to make editing easier. High-speed dubbing at 22 Mbps from the HDD to DVD-RAM can be done with the touch of a single button, enabling 12x speed in EP mode at its quickest (e.g., a one-hour program can be dubbed in just 5 minutes). Dubbing from DVD-RAM to the HDD is available as well.
The DVD video recording technology used in this new unit complies with the DVD-RAM recording formats standardized by the DVD Forum. DVD-RAM is not only compatible with both audio/video and PC applications, but its optical format also boasts superior rewritability, allowing approximately 100,000 rewrites per disc.
The global demand for DVD players in fiscal year 2001 (year ending March 2002) is forecast to reach 25 million units, with more than 11,000 DVD software titles. With its vast capacity, high-speed data transmission, high-speed random access, exceptional image quality, and high sound quality, DVD-RAM is the optimal choice in today's expanding digital media environment.
About Matsushita Electric Industrial
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic, National, Technics, and Quasar brand names, is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacture of electronics products for a wide range of consumer, business, and industrial needs. Based in Osaka, Japan, the company recorded consolidated sales of US$61.45 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2001. In addition to the Tokyo and other Japanese stock exchanges (6752), Matsushita's shares are also listed on the Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, New York, Pacific (NYSE/PCX: MC), and Paris stock exchanges. For more information, visit the Matsushita web site at http://www.panasonic.co.jp/global/top.html.
That timeline is clearly violated when they launch the Enterprise and play a 30 year old tape of a now elderly Cochran (played by James Cromwell of First Contact) made at the inauguration of the Warp4 facility.
In fact just about any inconsistencies with previously established timelines can be written off as due to the influence of the TNG crew & the Borg when they went back in time in First Contact.