Apparently this makes it much easier to create helicopter/plane hybrids - combining VTOL and efficient long range flight. I imagine the significance is that they don't have to retract the rotors.
I'm not sure if this means that if you walk the street slowly twirling a pen then you would be breaking the mu barrier too - but try it, you might get famous;)
35% of music consumers now download tracks legally via the Internet and the percentage will soon pass the 40% who have pirated music
What this means is 35% of people download music using iTunes or similar - this will certainly include many of the 40% of people have ever downloaded music illegally. The 65% of people use CDs. People who don't pay for music probably aren't counted in the questions - the question on piracy looks to have been "have you ever illegally downloaded music"
By the way - this survey was paid for by a *law firm* - not the RIAA. This means that the angle behind the survey is that lawyers want to show that prosecuting music pirates works, to increase their litigation fees.
I'm sorry that I don't have any real stats to hand, but as I recall in the 80s the breakdown of costs was something like - 2% to the artist, 40% to the shop you bought the record in, 30% to the distributor and 20% for manufacturing, recording, advertising etc. Doesn't the ability to download music reduce the cost of the retail and distribution to nothing? (rounding to the nearest penny)
This is about someone killing someone else *in China*. The only reason it's even reported in western media is because it raises questions about the definition of property - how many other Chinese murder cases have you read about this year?
It really seems that people are starting to live (i.e. work, rest, play etc.) in a virtual world. That's amazing - I read ideas like that in Greg Egan's "Diaspora" and thought that it was ridiculous.
Having dissed your point - You are right though... People's lives are more important than our definition of property...
I think I agree with your fundamental point though - the cause is less likely to be guns and more likely to be the lack of a stable monarchy in the States. If there was a queen, she could behead George W. Bush. Or at least give him a good spanking...
You're right - the power required to pump the water (27 gallons a minute 9000ft) up is 54MW according to my maths. As the article points out, a siphon can return a huge amount of that energy - however not all of it, as the water returning is less dense (as it is warmer). Effectively this is pumping warm water down and cold water up, which requires energy to be input, just like pushing an inflatable under the water...
I'm not sure if the part about Power Generation (page 3) was properly understood by the journalist - but it seems to be absolute balls... Turning the warm water into steam using a vacuum would result in low pressure steam, which couldn't be used to turn a turbine (except backwards). But the points about cooling and desalination seem very good.
Hmm. O2 is probably good because BT had to sell them, after burdening themselves with so much debt they nearly went bankrupt - the shareholders were also forced into a rights issue which effectively blackmailed them into paying an extra £5.9 billion ($11 bn) into the business.
I'm strongly against totalitarianism, and I hope I'd fight against it if it ever emerges in my country. However I don't really see why the "thin end of the wedge" argument is used again and again in YRO... I *do* think it's a good idea to check IDs at airports - this is because it makes it a little bit more difficult for terrorists to blow up aeroplanes. I don't think that if a common security check isn't legislated then this is "Stasi-like"...
I think the biggest danger that this thread brings up is the dangerous uniformity of opinion and fear that the state is out to get you...
Erm - I think maybe the register made a typo or got confused between Ghz and Mhz - as someone pointed out earlier 3.3 THz is so fast that the electrons can't cross the chip in one cycle. However 3.3 GHz is about the speed of a really fast processor.
If I were an American citizen I can imagine one of the things that would scare the shit out of me even more than a new Civil War would be an unelected "militia". Sounds a little to much like Mussolini's Fascists or Hitler's Munich Putsch.
The constitution was written 200 years ago. I don't think the idea of self appointed gangs toppling governments is a very good one in the Western world anymore, whatever the American constitution says.
Absolutely. Instead of storing each revision of a file as a whole new binary document, you simply store the changes. Result - it's now easy to see the changes in each doc. In any media or publishing firm they usually have large expensive systems to track changes...
On another topic - as a desktop developer (working with M$ Office - joy...) - it would be so much easier if docs were stored as text. Don't really care much about the XML side, it would just be fantastic to find out what formatting had been applied to the document when you've been asked to fix it. Just my two cents...
I think the problem with Windows is that MS ran away with the idea of adding features, without following up on the security. There are *so many* holes in Windows, Outlook, OE etc. that users (and IT departments...) don't have time to patch them all... Linux is "pre-hardened" by the fact it is designed with security in mind.
On a different track - as Linux gets bigger, I reckon you'll start to see more viruses written for it - I don't think virus writers care who they attack, provided they get to see their babies' names in print.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if this means that if you walk the street slowly twirling a pen then you would be breaking the mu barrier too - but try it, you might get famous ;)
35% of music consumers now download tracks legally via the Internet and the percentage will soon pass the 40% who have pirated music
What this means is 35% of people download music using iTunes or similar - this will certainly include many of the 40% of people have ever downloaded music illegally. The 65% of people use CDs. People who don't pay for music probably aren't counted in the questions - the question on piracy looks to have been "have you ever illegally downloaded music"
BTW - the Entertainment Media Research site is password protected so the original survey isn't available.
By the way - this survey was paid for by a *law firm* - not the RIAA. This means that the angle behind the survey is that lawyers want to show that prosecuting music pirates works, to increase their litigation fees.
And... shouldn't that mean that music companies should decrease prices by 70% rather than increase them in the long term?
It really seems that people are starting to live (i.e. work, rest, play etc.) in a virtual world. That's amazing - I read ideas like that in Greg Egan's "Diaspora" and thought that it was ridiculous.
Having dissed your point - You are right though... People's lives are more important than our definition of property...
I think I agree with your fundamental point though - the cause is less likely to be guns and more likely to be the lack of a stable monarchy in the States. If there was a queen, she could behead George W. Bush. Or at least give him a good spanking...
Never been made to work though...
I'm not sure if the part about Power Generation (page 3) was properly understood by the journalist - but it seems to be absolute balls... Turning the warm water into steam using a vacuum would result in low pressure steam, which couldn't be used to turn a turbine (except backwards). But the points about cooling and desalination seem very good.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1347025.stm
We have a saying in the UK which you may find appropriate - "They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery"
But maybe I'm just bitter having suffered their customer service too ...
I think the biggest danger that this thread brings up is the dangerous uniformity of opinion and fear that the state is out to get you...
Serves the gamers right for trying to set up an alternative economy. This sounds like another victory for good old free-market economics!
Hmm - how to /. your own website in one simple step?
Erm - I think maybe the register made a typo or got confused between Ghz and Mhz - as someone pointed out earlier 3.3 THz is so fast that the electrons can't cross the chip in one cycle. However 3.3 GHz is about the speed of a really fast processor.
The constitution was written 200 years ago. I don't think the idea of self appointed gangs toppling governments is a very good one in the Western world anymore, whatever the American constitution says.
On another topic - as a desktop developer (working with M$ Office - joy...) - it would be so much easier if docs were stored as text. Don't really care much about the XML side, it would just be fantastic to find out what formatting had been applied to the document when you've been asked to fix it. Just my two cents...
On a different track - as Linux gets bigger, I reckon you'll start to see more viruses written for it - I don't think virus writers care who they attack, provided they get to see their babies' names in print.