Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of those! All those new planets...
Perhaps you joke, but maybe it could be done.
There are a lot of small telescopes out there on computerised mounts. You just dial in an object and it will automatically go to and track that object.
Right, now manufacture a few hundred lightmeters with flash memory and USB connections. Advertise for amateur astronomers with GoTo telescopes to participate in this research programme. They go out each night and set their telescope to do the work. In the morning they detach the lightmeter and connect it to the PC to upload its data; the PC analyses it and sends its results home.
Then give a prize and a good deal of publicity to anyone whose home telescope discovers a new planet. Give them the naming privilege too. Hey, maybe it'll even encourage people to get telescopes who wouldn't ordinarily have been interested...
On this topic: any idea when iRiver are going to get their act together about this firmware update?
I don't mind the not-really-random shuffle mode, or the gap between tracks - I only notice that one between tracks 1 and 2 of Sgt Pepper. But I'm worrying about the 9999 track limit, which is slightly low for a 40G player. I will hit ten thousand files long before I fill that thing up, and I would rather like to be able to play them all:-)
Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be nice.
-- Linus Benedict Torvalds, July 3, 1991
What could this project have been, for which Linus wanted to know detailed information about the POSIX standard?
In Windows 98 setup it said,"You simply plug in a USB device and your system automatically configures itself. You don't even have to restart your computer"
As Bill Gates said when demonstrating this, 'Well, uh, you just plug it in and uh-oh....' (enormous round of laughter from audience) '...well, I guess that's why we're not releasing it quite yet!'
RIP act - nice! D-Notices to press - very handy! Fair Use - nonexistent! And I tell you what, these notes we've been taking on some of Blunkett's ideas, well Ashcroft's gonna love them!
And another thing that bugs me about daily use of the metric system is the insistance on measuring things in mL instead of cL or even dL.
In France, and I think across much of mainland Europe, they generally use cl. Since the pound's pretty strong at the moment, a lot of smaller shops in.uk are buying Coca-Cola from continental wholesalers rather than direct from the bottling plant, which is quite amusing: the single market trumps corporate price-fixing, so I for one welcome our new Brussels overlords! As a result we see a lot of drinks sold with German or French labelling, and quantity in cl instead of ml.
How many bits of Hiroshima, and Chernobyl, and Nagasaki you are inhaling each time you breathe in
I'm also inhaling some of Hitler's waste air. And the chances are good that there are thousands of molecules of Shakespeare's urine in the average bottle of Pepsi.
And every atom in my body heavier than hydrogen is fallout from a nuclear reaction gone horribly wrong. So what exactly is the point here?
Enlightenment - because you really need a pretext to buy that Opteron!
I kid, I kid... I use KDE, and on the first startup I moved the useless-crap slider all the way to the right:-) I mean, I've got an Athlon XP 2000 and half a gig of RAM and most of the time I'm only running a music player and LyX, so I might as well have some eye candy...
You should probably update that one. Mankind's equality is now guaranteed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. Just about everyone has an AK-47, and rogue states with imperialistic ambitions are finding things rather difficult as a direct result of this fact.
I loved that quote. Given that I like to win by technological totalitarianism (no I will not give you fusion power, you pathetic prole!) it appealed to my sense of cruelty;-)
Hacking in cheat buttons for pass-through-walls, free points, change speed, etc... Pass through walls was a mistake, though. People went off the map and it crashed. There were some interesting side-effects when the score overflowed, too;-)
There is a catch to this, if you set up, or take over a platform as in the case of Sealand, outside the jurisdiction of any state then you are also outside of the protection of any state. If you then you procede to violate international copyright rules, launder money, etc...Then do not be surprised when the navies of the countries that you have thumbed your nose at arrive and blow your ass out of the water.
Quite. The British government tolerates the Sealand people as a bunch of harmless kooks who aren't really worth the expense, the bad publicity and the legal hassle that would arise from rounding them up.
If Sealand ever starts being a significant nuisance... SBS, half an hour, end of problem. It's hard to imagine what sort of material they'd have to host in order to warrant a special-forces raid, though. More likely they'll just pull the plug; Sealand would then be free and independent and totally without significant internet connectivity.
Greebo is indeed a cat, but he belongs (if cats can be said to belong to anyone) to Gytha Ogg, a notorious witch from Lancre. Notorious not for dark works of evil magic, but for that song, the one about the hedgehogs...
Although the MP/RIAA would see that as a reason for preventing backup copies of your media. I mean, if the disk can't be damaged, why would you need a backup?
An indestructible CD? The *AAs would hate that, and would never use them. People buying replacements for scratched and broken discs are a big market for them!
Oh, and no, you're still not entitled to make a backup, peasant!
Great. You keep worrying about "philosophy" and I'll worry about paying my bills, paying attention to my girlfriend, and killing any home intruders who were forced to rob me because of their "predetermined chemistry".
Go right ahead. Since their actions are predetermined by their brain chemistry, any attempt at rehabilitation is futile... so you might as well blaze away;-)
The RIAA is a bunch of shitheels, but don't think that stealing the music (yes, that's exactly what you're doing: taking something of value which does not belong to you) is a noble way to fight back, any more than looting to protest the high cost of TVs would be.
Suppose that, given one TV, I could wave a magic wand and create a thousand identical TVs at zero cost.
Supposing that I then gave them out to all and sundry for free... would I be stealing TVs? Would anybody be stealing TVs?
I cant remember the last time a... German hijacked a plane.
Really? Look up 'Baader-Meinhof'.
Although the European communist revolutionary terror organisations have largely faded away, there are still large, well-organised and very dangerous terror groups in Spain and Ireland.
They cover a lot same ground with a few episodes being almost scarily similar (i.e. the "Talking to the Dead" episode of BS vs. the "John Edwards is the Biggest Douche in the Universe" episode of SP).
You'll notice, incidentally, that Penn actually refers to John Edwards as 'the biggest douche in the universe': it seems P&T were aware of the similarity here:-)
Speaking personally, that aspect was never emphasised in either my Primary, nor Secondary schools. We just learned that he tried to blow up Parliament and that we celebrated this.
Nintendo used to be a productive company that focused on satisfying its customers.
Nintendo were always a mean, litigious, predatory outfit, some of whose business practices would make Microsoft blush. They had a near-monopoly in the NES days and they used every trick in the book to maintain it as long as they possibly could.
They focused on world domination, and screwed over everyone and everything in their path. The only reason they're not still what they were is that they screwed over Sony on the SNES CD project and Sony screwed them right back.
Do not expect Nintendo to play nice with a patent like this one. They'll sue everything in sight to ensure online dominance for their next console.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you joke, but maybe it could be done.
There are a lot of small telescopes out there on computerised mounts. You just dial in an object and it will automatically go to and track that object.
Right, now manufacture a few hundred lightmeters with flash memory and USB connections. Advertise for amateur astronomers with GoTo telescopes to participate in this research programme. They go out each night and set their telescope to do the work. In the morning they detach the lightmeter and connect it to the PC to upload its data; the PC analyses it and sends its results home.
Then give a prize and a good deal of publicity to anyone whose home telescope discovers a new planet. Give them the naming privilege too. Hey, maybe it'll even encourage people to get telescopes who wouldn't ordinarily have been interested...
I don't mind the not-really-random shuffle mode, or the gap between tracks - I only notice that one between tracks 1 and 2 of Sgt Pepper. But I'm worrying about the 9999 track limit, which is slightly low for a 40G player. I will hit ten thousand files long before I fill that thing up, and I would rather like to be able to play them all :-)
Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be nice.
-- Linus Benedict Torvalds, July 3, 1991
What could this project have been, for which Linus wanted to know detailed information about the POSIX standard?
I'm fixing a hole where the worms get in...
Bah. I'm going to end up spendig the rest of today filking, aren't I?
As Bill Gates said when demonstrating this, 'Well, uh, you just plug it in and uh-oh....' (enormous round of laughter from audience) '...well, I guess that's why we're not releasing it quite yet!'
Best-timed BSOD ever ;-)
Ooh, you guys have some great ideas over there...
RIP act - nice! D-Notices to press - very handy! Fair Use - nonexistent! And I tell you what, these notes we've been taking on some of Blunkett's ideas, well Ashcroft's gonna love them!
Are you kidding? SCO will never forgive you for that download! They'll sue you into the dirt, they never lose!
Actually, Linux is more expensive. Most distros take up three or four CD-Rs these days.
In France, and I think across much of mainland Europe, they generally use cl. Since the pound's pretty strong at the moment, a lot of smaller shops in .uk are buying Coca-Cola from continental wholesalers rather than direct from the bottling plant, which is quite amusing: the single market trumps corporate price-fixing, so I for one welcome our new Brussels overlords! As a result we see a lot of drinks sold with German or French labelling, and quantity in cl instead of ml.
I'm also inhaling some of Hitler's waste air. And the chances are good that there are thousands of molecules of Shakespeare's urine in the average bottle of Pepsi.
And every atom in my body heavier than hydrogen is fallout from a nuclear reaction gone horribly wrong. So what exactly is the point here?
Enlightenment - because you really need a pretext to buy that Opteron!
I kid, I kid... I use KDE, and on the first startup I moved the useless-crap slider all the way to the right :-) I mean, I've got an Athlon XP 2000 and half a gig of RAM and most of the time I'm only running a music player and LyX, so I might as well have some eye candy...
You should probably update that one. Mankind's equality is now guaranteed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. Just about everyone has an AK-47, and rogue states with imperialistic ambitions are finding things rather difficult as a direct result of this fact.
I loved that quote. Given that I like to win by technological totalitarianism (no I will not give you fusion power, you pathetic prole!) it appealed to my sense of cruelty ;-)
Hacking in cheat buttons for pass-through-walls, free points, change speed, etc... Pass through walls was a mistake, though. People went off the map and it crashed. There were some interesting side-effects when the score overflowed, too ;-)
Quite. The British government tolerates the Sealand people as a bunch of harmless kooks who aren't really worth the expense, the bad publicity and the legal hassle that would arise from rounding them up.
If Sealand ever starts being a significant nuisance... SBS, half an hour, end of problem. It's hard to imagine what sort of material they'd have to host in order to warrant a special-forces raid, though. More likely they'll just pull the plug; Sealand would then be free and independent and totally without significant internet connectivity.
Greebo is indeed a cat, but he belongs (if cats can be said to belong to anyone) to Gytha Ogg, a notorious witch from Lancre. Notorious not for dark works of evil magic, but for that song, the one about the hedgehogs...
An indestructible CD? The *AAs would hate that, and would never use them. People buying replacements for scratched and broken discs are a big market for them!
Oh, and no, you're still not entitled to make a backup, peasant!
Go right ahead. Since their actions are predetermined by their brain chemistry, any attempt at rehabilitation is futile... so you might as well blaze away ;-)
Suppose that, given one TV, I could wave a magic wand and create a thousand identical TVs at zero cost.
Supposing that I then gave them out to all and sundry for free... would I be stealing TVs? Would anybody be stealing TVs?
Really? Look up 'Baader-Meinhof'.
Although the European communist revolutionary terror organisations have largely faded away, there are still large, well-organised and very dangerous terror groups in Spain and Ireland.
You'll notice, incidentally, that Penn actually refers to John Edwards as 'the biggest douche in the universe': it seems P&T were aware of the similarity here :-)
Let me guess: Catholic school.
The bizarre thing is that I've never, ever seen anyone mis-spell Gesundheit.
Nintendo were always a mean, litigious, predatory outfit, some of whose business practices would make Microsoft blush. They had a near-monopoly in the NES days and they used every trick in the book to maintain it as long as they possibly could.
They focused on world domination, and screwed over everyone and everything in their path. The only reason they're not still what they were is that they screwed over Sony on the SNES CD project and Sony screwed them right back.
Do not expect Nintendo to play nice with a patent like this one. They'll sue everything in sight to ensure online dominance for their next console.
We have a similar problem in UK English. We use the phrase 'New Labour' when we really mean 'Tory'.