toward that (and similar) planetary system so we can decode the alien version of I Love Lucy re-runs. Seti client might need a upgrade to do the video tranlsation.
"I have a kick ass machine, it did 42 Alien-Lucy-seti units in 24 hours"!
sadly (on a serious note), the place is so far that even if they have intelligent life right now, we are looking at their planet's past... sigh. no extraterrestrial sitcoms for us.
There are so many posts about how "i am going to get even by pirating the game"...
guys (or gals), please do not sink yourself to that level. While we agree on the fact that Blizzard sueing bnet.d is questionable (okay, dead wrong and full of malicious intent), we also all know that copyright infringement is wrong. not necessarily as wrong as MS and BSA make it appear to be, but still wrong non-the-less. copying their software will not make things any better. in the end they will just come back with the statistic and say -- look, of COURSE we need to take these legal actions.
the future rests in each of our hands (gosh that sounds lame), that may seem to be insignificant at first, but i really believe that it's an important responsibility.
think it through -- i mean, it IS just a game you know.
Unfortunately i posted late and this will likely not be modded up soon / high enough for everyone to see -- i think a poll would make much more sense than ancedotal evidence by given individual examples.
while that, true, the likelihood of the counter-offer being a good thing when taken depends heavily on the company, this will at least give some idea as to the chance of you being happy sticking w/ a counter-offer.
Counter offers * took one and love it * took one and hate it * was never offered any * offered and never took * counter-offered the cowboy o'neal choice
Please read the article before you guys get all "the story sucks" -- XM radio uses this frequency band as well;
WiFi i can't care less -- 802.11a is already making headways, by the time any kind of remotely user base of the light bulbs are established, i would have (as i assume a large portion of the rest of y'all) moved onto 5.8Ghz; or drop the speed down to 2Mbps; -- DSL is only 1.5 anyway -- and if i was really gonna move that much file -- i would just pull a cable temporarily or start the transfer and get some coffee -- either way i do not see it being a big problem for WiFi.
on the other hand, i don't see the feasibility of XM radios getting an upgrade... so if these bulbs do get popular, it means XM would work everywhere except the cities. ha!
so if they are really that troublesome, we will be seeing the company getting squashed in no time; there are too much $$ at stake for XM;
* True, profits can be hidden as you have pointed out; however, they have to answer to the stock holders for the horrible price to earning ratio for the next two years. (btw, it can be any number of years / percentage, this is just an example, after all) and with a P/E ratio 5 times as low, i would highly suspect some (large) stock price drops.
* a ruling similar to what i have mentioned would set a case-law for future anti-competitive behavior with defineable, universal reprimand that, i believe, should have an impact on any company regardless of their size or the nature of their business. furthermore, hopefully with a case law such as this, the trials will not take such a long time.
* dissolution of charter would be stupid, in fact i would not even vote for it. Like i said, it would be kind of severe -- and all the windows users out there would be royally screwed. It was a suggesting in spirit, not meant to be taken literally.
Lastly, I am not sure who you intend MS sell their stock to. make the stock public would be met with similar problems as we have right now -- individual investors and fund administrators will see the difference between "getting $$ from illegal activities" and "behaving morally". my bet is that they will be taking the money route. besides that, who would buy stock that you *KNOW* the price would be going down? If you sell to the government -- it would also run into problems -- first is that the government is horribly inefficient, and 2, you are GIVING THEM MONEY for breaking the law. (i am pretty sure the last one is not what you meant, though)
Sun has embraced VM with java and has had much experience with it -- in fact, even IBM and all the high-end server ppl have started with linux VMs.
True, MS has been sneaking.NET into everything -- but still if they lose the OS, sneaking.NET would be *much* harder; i mean, i go out and get a java VM for my redhat; i won't be going out to look for a.NET anytime soon.
at the same time, MS has been dissing on java about the speed and all that; but VB running in a VM that is non-natively windows won't have that much of an edge *anyway*. so, the competition is tougher than you have outlined, i believe.
It is all timing, i guess, how fast MS gets squeezed (haha) out of the OS business and if.NET has seen the critical penetration it needs to multiply. ((haha, critical penetration / multiply... sorry it's late)
A few more points: MS is not looking to get out of the OS market; i am sure many have already heard about their ideas of a SQL based file system in the next version of windows (whistler? forgot) -- so there is the $$ investment that will go poopie if they really gets a hit with a vital blow to their OS business.
$$ from OEMs will drop significantly as well, i might add.
so, being the core business of MS, if a really harsh penalty was forced onto MS, they could still be in a world of hurt; and their market position will not be good enough, and i do not believe they will have the resources to do all the crap they have been doing; contrary to your arguments.
counter-point to myself, to make this interesting -- MS does derive a significant portion of its income from pure investments because they have so much (oh, so much) cash, so -- i don't really know either. the above are just a psuedo fact-based gut feeling, after all, i am no economic analyst
Somebody explain to me why it takes 1187 pages to say "this case can go on" and why it takes this long to figure out a punishment.
This should be all very, very simple. provisional punishments like "you will now allow people to take off IE" does not stop MS from behaving anti-competetively.
I mean, just fine them! in fact, fine the crap out of them. You are found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, you choke up 80% of your profits for the next two years (as from SEC filings) or 10% of the company net worth -- which ever is higher. if you do it again, 90%/15%; third time -- dissolution of charter. (third might be a little harsh, but again, we are following the "simple" route of spirit)
-- when the share holders suddenly realize that, wow, my $$ are going away because the corporate lawyer / managers are screwing up by doing illegal stuff, i don't think they will be happy about the anti-competitive behavior anymore -- i mean, $$ drives the company, so hit it where it hurts; not some bs settlement that they can just circumvent later.
... the VSTOL variant put together by Lockheed is exceptional. It is a daring - effective design.
wasn't there a lot of question as to the stability / feasability of lockeed's design?
2 things come to mind:
1) the shaft that goes to the vertical rotor carries a massive horsepower, on the order of a small cruiser (ship). so if the shaft ever blows... don't remember the #s but around 300k?
2) the opening for the rotor is very precisely engineered for radar detection (or the lack thereof) -- but if anything goes wrong and it, say, does not close properly, or chip an edge from whatever (you know, it IS a war plane), the entire stealth-ness is compromised.
here is the other one that does HP-49; gotta have the ROM though (though that can bo downloaded from the web too -- but not legally). I am less sure about this these days -- with DMCA and all -- would extracting ROM from your calculator be considered illegal?:-)
www.hpcalc.org has a lot more, look around. i also know for a fact there is a HP 49G emulator too for the CE -- i have it -- but can't find it at the moment. as for TI, i have never really liked them -- (read below) -- but i am sure they are abundant as well.
side note: HP calculators (with RPN (reverse polish notation)) kicks TI's butt in more ways than IE have security holes... use one and be amazed.
While not the final say, i thoroughly believe this is a move in the right direction, much, much more than the sharpie-breakable bs they tried. i think the important part of this, is that i no longer have to put up w/ all the filler songs, and for a reasonable amount of money (say, 200 bux), get a fairly decent library of music i like to listen to frequently (if i listened to popular stuff, that is - truth is i like classical -- which means they will be bargain-sold at 5 cents each:-) ). if i bought CDs and MP3'ed them, it would net me maybe 12 - 15 CDs, with total of perhaps 30 songs i actually like (i am being optimistic here)
so, will there be problems? you betcha -- what is to prevent ppl from burning and selling their nearly free copies of music? copy to friends? etc
but when you think about it, the burning / selling should not so much a problem -- again, $1 per song, you bet i am gonna make my custom "all fav" CDs, vs. somebody else's compilation. i think it's the casual exchange that makes life difficult.
it would be nice if there was a "my music library" -- kinda like the o'riley online book club deal -- you pay to have a certain # of songs every month, and then you can add or subtract the amount... i mean, with that i wouldn't mind going w/ something like that -- except casual copying is still a problem, of course.
we will see -- i hope this venture succeeds; again, it's a step in the right direction, as small and challenge laiden as it is, it's better than cactus shield what whatever other crap that came around the corner and scared / pissed the heck out of us.
haha i have an old orb too; should still work -- no idea where i am going to find drivers though...
some day (yeah, some day) i might figure out a use for it... maybe connect it w/ a lego mindstorm contraption and what not. supposedly it has 10-bit resolution on each of the 6 axis -- no too shabby -- maybe it will make a better real-world control than a game one? it's an RS-232 connector so should not be too hard to figure out...
i believe the design of the orb was not optimal -- a sphere, while seemingly intuitive for the 6-D thing, actually was very hard to hold onto, and much worse when your hand gets all sweaty from trying to get this group of bots that have homing missiles; i keep thinking that a "whole hand" -- i.e. glove type would be better for the 6-D thing, but i don't think there are any out there; well, for the game market, at least.
i never really thought keys+mouse on a free-space type game was approporiate because you are, in the end, throwing away all the benefits of the free-space-ness -- then again i never really got good at it, but i know there are many that has. so i stick to joysticks for those... speaking of which, joysticks sure are rare these days.
Sorry, but commuting on japanese trains is not fun, with laptop or otherwise. i would stand to argue that, in fact, laptop makes your life a lot worse, because, frankly, it tend to get shoved around and squashed when the train gets crowded -- and oh boy it gets crowded. cell phone w/ internet might be okay -- even though i did not have a cell phone while in japan so i do not know this. as for being crowded, i mean, they have "pushers" for crying out loud. (pushers are people that help push others onto the train, to ensure its sardine-like packed-ness.)
not as bad as the buses in china, though
(and yes, i speak from experience, not a "tourist" experienc either)... tokyo rush hour is nothing to get excited about.
secondly -- beside the "no fun", they are by all means not cheap. a commute from tokyo (shinjuku, anyway) to Kumagaya (one way) is over 20 dollars on JR, which, length wise, is similar to two trips on Metra in the chicago area from end-to-end; metra ticket, twice, would cost ~$12; less if you mingle in some CTA (chicago transit) $1.5 tickets; so, no, i would not say that the train is cheap either.
but they are convenient, similar to manhattan, but without the "maybe that man there is thinking of robbing me / pushing me into the tracks for sh*ts and giggles" sort of way. and yeah, they are exceptionally punctual. obsessively so, i might add.
Think Descent -- I can't find a link to the original one -- but ever since the early 90's, when iD is still doing sprite graphics w/ doom/dII, descent has already made a FULL 3-D game with 6D freedom. remember this is a couple years (2-4? not sure) before anybody had 3D accelerators. It was so ahead of its time that it never really picked up as much steam as it should have, since people tend to get motion sick (wimps) -- Personally i liked it much better than the doom series (flame me all you want, but don't do it unless you have at least beaten both games).
there was even a special controller for it, SpaceOrb 360. I got one and it's terribly hard to use in real life -- so it was back to joystick w/ hat control. but the theory is good. i have heard of people getting really good on that thing. the company seem to be out of business now -- their "space orb" technology used to be marketed as a specialized input device for molecular visualization / CAD etc... but i guess that never picked up either; again, great theory, TOUGH (i mean it) learning curve.
you know... Stephen Hawkings never made a black hole and proved that it evaporates into nothing -- people still accepted his theory for the better part of the last 30 years...
i posted and suddenly realized that carrots inevitably led to correlation that would not necessarily seem... approporiate... so -- good for you if you did not make the connection, and shame on the rest of you.
while the disagreement may come from "simulating nuclear bombs", i would like to point out that the author is focusing on the "cool-ness" of ASCI WHITE, not the experimentation that it is used for.
You can marvel for ages at a sharp new kitchen knife in itself, while not necessarily endorse the slaughtering (of my poor, poor carrots).
Besides, when (maybe one day) the scientists will get bored with generalized simulation of thermonuclear reactions and possibly direct this result into, say, nuclear power plants, nuclear propulsion, mars terraforming, etc etc
Geeks can use this technology to know the location of every girl on campus! girls can use this technology to avoid geeks! but since (i am figuring) that most geeks will have 2 generation of technology ahead most of the time -- this means that the gene pool will finally be filling up (a bit) with our genes
j/k of course -- sigh, unfortunately they (girls) can still pick up the smell of skin came in contact with PCB material too many times / irradiated from CRT / solder fumes / etc and avoid avidly
follow the link here for more info and a nice map of what you expect to see
the eclipse time is ~6PM PST, which mean the sun is FAR from set -- at the bay area, anyway, the sun does not set till ~9
and don't stare at it!
2 good ways to look at the eclipse
1) bioculars / telescope reflected on paper
2) get a bucket of water, tint the water (ink, whatever) and look at the reflection (used to do this in low-tech China)
Tom Pabst stirred up a controversy -- but I do not think he was the only one; sorry to say it -- but nobody in the memory business liked RAMBUS -- and i think pretty much the idea is AMD caught on the idea, and Intel got stuck w/ a contract; this sentence pretty much sums up RAMBUS: who (mem. manufactures) wants to pay 2% royalty when DRAM is a business w/ a 1% margin?
Well... as for move fast / slow -- I agree that it's an opinion and nothing more -- but i still have faith that it is an opinion based on reason; yes the industry has called for the end of IA-32 since the beginning of, well, IA-32 -- but then, i think everyone pretty much hoped that the cut was done 10 years ago -- not in 2002-2004 time frame, when *everything* was already invested into it. i mean -- intel survived and choked on the golden handcuff of back-compatibility for so long, i don't really think anyone expected this sort of "cut it all off" strategy -- again, from a USER / IT point of view, hammer makes more sense because it gives the software more time to move away, instead of massive cold-turkey. the capital investment in the intel case (software) would be tremendous;
lastly -- between transmeta and AMD -- hey i cheer for transmeta -- in fact i really wish there were more of their handhelds around so i don't have to carry 10 lb of laptop that only lasts for... i dunno, 1.5 hours; but as for AMD -- 3 bil is a small piece of the market pie -- and they have near zero penetration in the "low end server" segment; their desktop share is growing, but still much less than intel -- i would say (again, opinion only) that this would qualify as an underdog; Flash memory side -- maybe not, i think intel and AMD is on par -- but then nobody really looks at flash memroy and cheer their technological advances. ha. =)
I think it is very honorable (can't find a better word) that you are supporting your company, and I am fully aware that yes, given the choice, AMD will over-charge for their processors too -- BUT:
1) Intel's tactics, previously *and* recently, has not been too wise. one of the most important of this in RAMBUS: Intel basically said that (back in the first days when RAMBUS came out) we are going forward w/ RAMBUS. everyone knows that it's a M$-like move, everyone knows that it's b/c intel is getting a huge chunck of $$ from RAMBUS, and nobody liked it. Did Intel care? no; in fact, Intel stopped licensing VIA for making SDRAM / DDR chipsets; People like me looked around -- who is supporting DDR? well, AMD is...
2) Technically, Hammer makes more sense: sorry but from a user point of view (user as in programmer, IT admin, etc) -- Hammer makes like easier than IA-64; i mean, if you are gonna make such a drastic move away from IA32 (which, i admit, sucks bad), then do it slowly! What is the difference between migrating from IA-32 to IA-64 vs. say, alpha / solaris / whatever? not a whole lot -- pretty much everything needs to be redone. i mean, i still get the Intel sticker, but what's the difference there?
3) sorry but people has an tendency to cheer the under-dog; fact of life... i remember back then everyone cheered for NVIDIA when 3dfx was "king", now-a-days people still respects NVDA, but does not cheer for them anymore because they are now a status-quo -- they are expected to be one top -- but any move of the underdogs: ATI radeon / matrox paphelia (sp? heck, where they come up w/ this anyway) / Kryo(?) gets recognition. it's like a fight - will the new comer defeat the champion? we are geeks -- not much soap opera in our life, so this is the subsitute.
So... yes given the opportunity, would AMD do the same as Intel (rambus, etc)? maybe -- but i actually think AMD CEO is wiser than that -- he is a cool guy, btw -- visit any AMD facility and you can see his indiana-jones parody poster -- it's pretty cool. but we never know; but one thing is for sure -- if AMD ever gets on top, there will be probabbly a lot of cheer for intel for making attempts at the "de-throning"
last point, AMD is not TEXAS based. they are in SAN JOSE, CA. addr is something like 1 AMD lane or something.... get it straight people.
again, I would like to see your counter-arguments, if there are any. it's not fun writing without knowledge that there would be some reply.
we can train UT / Counterstrike: future soilders of america, specializing in counter terrorism (ha) Star Craft / Panzer General: future leaders of america (hey, resourse mgmt will be so efficient in the government, we will have TONS of tax relief; and nobody can beat our military) Crimson Skies / Wing Commander: future pilots of america (maybe will get picked up for "the last starfighter) Sim City/Park/Earth/Zoo/Chicken farm: future pretty much everything of America Capitalism: future M$ of America Barbie's makeup party: future cosmopolitian of america Lesure Suit Larry: future... erm... Roger Wilco:...... Fallout / 2 / tactics: i am sure it's necessary for future survival too... just not sure how yet;)
I do NOT know what is the great deal about handwriting recognition... I mean, have anyone here ever used any implementation thereof (beside the funky palm "learn another alphabet" deal... so far, natural language recognitions i have used has been sketchy at best (and yes i am using "award winning" ones)... same is to be said about the chinese version, for those who are interested.
EVEN IF such a tablet is to be used as a browser -- still once in a while i need to type in addrs -- if you argue that i would have everything book-marked -- well, at least you need to type in search phrases! and instead of wasting 3 minutes to type (or say) "www.slashdot.org" (imagine how the voice recognition will totally botch this up -- thanks Taco), it would be much faster to just type it out; and i don't mean on-screen keyboard picking tiny buttons with a stylus deal -- With the current technology: slow and sketchy handwriting recognition, even more sketchy voice recognition, and not-so-precise touch screen, i do not see how such a product would fly and make my life easier -- especially if there is a grand worth of premium. i mean, browsing of the couch is nice, but i can do the same thing with a laptop right now ANYWAY... and as mentioned above, i do not see why i would waste all the extra time inputting addresses / whatever.
furthermore, usually i think people type faster than they write, even those who are not all THAT good at typing... I type ~60wpm (used to be 90, but speed hasn't picked up since switched to Dvorak) -- so i would have a 2-3x speed advantage if i wanted to work on a document on the couch using a laptop vs using a tablet (even it if had 100% accuracy and zero recognition delays)... so...
where is the advantage again? (besides being "neat?")
p.s. Vadem Clio (sharp tri-pad) can do all of this, by the way -- before any of you go spend a fortune on one of the HP/CPQ offerings, get a clio from ebay that does everything the new tablets offer, and see if it really means an easier life -- and the clio HAS a keyboard...
so... on the other hand -- keep america rolling by spending money on un-necessary stuff...
heh... i apologize i actually got some of the stats wrong: they are from highschool, which is a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
in either case, however, the spirit does not change: a google is still sufficiently big that the physical universe have trouble filling up into its large-ness.
below is slightly off-topic, but:
for ever bigger, interesting numbers (that puts the googleplex to shame, actually), try Grahams Number, Another link to Graham's Number. Please note that, interestingly (in a mathematically geeky fashion) the result Graham's Number tries to limit (it's an upper bound) is generally believed to be 6. there is also Moser's Number... i am not sure which one is bigger...
Slashdot Mirror
toward that (and similar) planetary system so we can decode the alien version of I Love Lucy re-runs. Seti client might need a upgrade to do the video tranlsation.
"I have a kick ass machine, it did 42 Alien-Lucy-seti units in 24 hours"!
sadly (on a serious note), the place is so far that even if they have intelligent life right now, we are looking at their planet's past... sigh. no extraterrestrial sitcoms for us.
There are so many posts about how "i am going to get even by pirating the game"...
guys (or gals), please do not sink yourself to that level. While we agree on the fact that Blizzard sueing bnet.d is questionable (okay, dead wrong and full of malicious intent), we also all know that copyright infringement is wrong. not necessarily as wrong as MS and BSA make it appear to be, but still wrong non-the-less. copying their software will not make things any better. in the end they will just come back with the statistic and say -- look, of COURSE we need to take these legal actions.
the future rests in each of our hands (gosh that sounds lame), that may seem to be insignificant at first, but i really believe that it's an important responsibility.
think it through -- i mean, it IS just a game you know.
Unfortunately i posted late and this will likely not be modded up soon / high enough for everyone to see --
i think a poll would make much more sense than ancedotal evidence by given individual examples.
while that, true, the likelihood of the counter-offer being a good thing when taken depends heavily on the company, this will at least give some idea as to the chance of you being happy sticking w/ a counter-offer.
Counter offers
* took one and love it
* took one and hate it
* was never offered any
* offered and never took
* counter-offered the cowboy o'neal choice
Please read the article before you guys get all "the story sucks" -- XM radio uses this frequency band as well;
WiFi i can't care less -- 802.11a is already making headways, by the time any kind of remotely user base of the light bulbs are established, i would have (as i assume a large portion of the rest of y'all) moved onto 5.8Ghz; or drop the speed down to 2Mbps; -- DSL is only 1.5 anyway -- and if i was really gonna move that much file -- i would just pull a cable temporarily or start the transfer and get some coffee -- either way i do not see it being a big problem for WiFi.
on the other hand, i don't see the feasibility of XM radios getting an upgrade... so if these bulbs do get popular, it means XM would work everywhere except the cities. ha!
so if they are really that troublesome, we will be seeing the company getting squashed in no time; there are too much $$ at stake for XM;
* True, profits can be hidden as you have pointed out; however, they have to answer to the stock holders for the horrible price to earning ratio for the next two years. (btw, it can be any number of years / percentage, this is just an example, after all) and with a P/E ratio 5 times as low, i would highly suspect some (large) stock price drops.
* a ruling similar to what i have mentioned would set a case-law for future anti-competitive behavior with defineable, universal reprimand that, i believe, should have an impact on any company regardless of their size or the nature of their business. furthermore, hopefully with a case law such as this, the trials will not take such a long time.
* dissolution of charter would be stupid, in fact i would not even vote for it. Like i said, it would be kind of severe -- and all the windows users out there would be royally screwed. It was a suggesting in spirit, not meant to be taken literally.
Lastly, I am not sure who you intend MS sell their stock to. make the stock public would be met with similar problems as we have right now -- individual investors and fund administrators will see the difference between "getting $$ from illegal activities" and "behaving morally". my bet is that they will be taking the money route. besides that, who would buy stock that you *KNOW* the price would be going down? If you sell to the government -- it would also run into problems -- first is that the government is horribly inefficient, and 2, you are GIVING THEM MONEY for breaking the law. (i am pretty sure the last one is not what you meant, though)
Sun has embraced VM with java and has had much experience with it -- in fact, even IBM and all the high-end server ppl have started with linux VMs.
.NET into everything -- but still if they lose the OS, sneaking .NET would be *much* harder; i mean, i go out and get a java VM for my redhat; i won't be going out to look for a .NET anytime soon.
.NET has seen the critical penetration it needs to multiply. ((haha, critical penetration / multiply... sorry it's late)
True, MS has been sneaking
at the same time, MS has been dissing on java about the speed and all that; but VB running in a VM that is non-natively windows won't have that much of an edge *anyway*. so, the competition is tougher than you have outlined, i believe.
It is all timing, i guess, how fast MS gets squeezed (haha) out of the OS business and if
A few more points: MS is not looking to get out of the OS market; i am sure many have already heard about their ideas of a SQL based file system in the next version of windows (whistler? forgot) -- so there is the $$ investment that will go poopie if they really gets a hit with a vital blow to their OS business.
$$ from OEMs will drop significantly as well, i might add.
so, being the core business of MS, if a really harsh penalty was forced onto MS, they could still be in a world of hurt; and their market position will not be good enough, and i do not believe they will have the resources to do all the crap they have been doing; contrary to your arguments.
counter-point to myself, to make this interesting -- MS does derive a significant portion of its income from pure investments because they have so much (oh, so much) cash, so -- i don't really know either. the above are just a psuedo fact-based gut feeling, after all, i am no economic analyst
Somebody explain to me why it takes 1187 pages to say "this case can go on" and why it takes this long to figure out a punishment.
This should be all very, very simple. provisional punishments like "you will now allow people to take off IE" does not stop MS from behaving anti-competetively.
I mean, just fine them! in fact, fine the crap out of them. You are found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, you choke up 80% of your profits for the next two years (as from SEC filings) or 10% of the company net worth -- which ever is higher. if you do it again, 90%/15%; third time -- dissolution of charter. (third might be a little harsh, but again, we are following the "simple" route of spirit)
-- when the share holders suddenly realize that, wow, my $$ are going away because the corporate lawyer / managers are screwing up by doing illegal stuff, i don't think they will be happy about the anti-competitive behavior anymore -- i mean, $$ drives the company, so hit it where it hurts; not some bs settlement that they can just circumvent later.
wasn't there a lot of question as to the stability / feasability of lockeed's design?
2 things come to mind:
1) the shaft that goes to the vertical rotor carries a massive horsepower, on the order of a small cruiser (ship). so if the shaft ever blows... don't remember the #s but around 300k?
2) the opening for the rotor is very precisely engineered for radar detection (or the lack thereof) -- but if anything goes wrong and it, say, does not close properly, or chip an edge from whatever (you know, it IS a war plane), the entire stealth-ness is compromised.
so... yes... daring indeed
here is the other one that does HP-49; :-)
gotta have the ROM though (though that can bo downloaded from the web too -- but not legally). I am less sure about this these days -- with DMCA and all -- would extracting ROM from your calculator be considered illegal?
http://www.hpcalc.org/details.php?id=3666
here
www.hpcalc.org has a lot more, look around. i also know for a fact there is a HP 49G emulator too for the CE -- i have it -- but can't find it at the moment. as for TI, i have never really liked them -- (read below) -- but i am sure they are abundant as well.
side note: HP calculators (with RPN (reverse polish notation)) kicks TI's butt in more ways than IE have security holes... use one and be amazed.
While not the final say, i thoroughly believe this is a move in the right direction, much, much more than the sharpie-breakable bs they tried. :-) ). if i bought CDs and MP3'ed them, it would net me maybe 12 - 15 CDs, with total of perhaps 30 songs i actually like (i am being optimistic here)
i think the important part of this, is that i no longer have to put up w/ all the filler songs, and for a reasonable amount of money (say, 200 bux), get a fairly decent library of music i like to listen to frequently (if i listened to popular stuff, that is - truth is i like classical -- which means they will be bargain-sold at 5 cents each
so, will there be problems? you betcha -- what is to prevent ppl from burning and selling their nearly free copies of music? copy to friends? etc
but when you think about it, the burning / selling should not so much a problem -- again, $1 per song, you bet i am gonna make my custom "all fav" CDs, vs. somebody else's compilation. i think it's the casual exchange that makes life difficult.
it would be nice if there was a "my music library" -- kinda like the o'riley online book club deal -- you pay to have a certain # of songs every month, and then you can add or subtract the amount... i mean, with that i wouldn't mind going w/ something like that -- except casual copying is still a problem, of course.
we will see -- i hope this venture succeeds; again, it's a step in the right direction, as small and challenge laiden as it is, it's better than cactus shield what whatever other crap that came around the corner and scared / pissed the heck out of us.
haha i have an old orb too; should still work -- no idea where i am going to find drivers though...
some day (yeah, some day) i might figure out a use for it... maybe connect it w/ a lego mindstorm contraption and what not. supposedly it has 10-bit resolution on each of the 6 axis -- no too shabby -- maybe it will make a better real-world control than a game one? it's an RS-232 connector so should not be too hard to figure out...
i believe the design of the orb was not optimal -- a sphere, while seemingly intuitive for the 6-D thing, actually was very hard to hold onto, and much worse when your hand gets all sweaty from trying to get this group of bots that have homing missiles; i keep thinking that a "whole hand" -- i.e. glove type would be better for the 6-D thing, but i don't think there are any out there; well, for the game market, at least.
i never really thought keys+mouse on a free-space type game was approporiate because you are, in the end, throwing away all the benefits of the free-space-ness -- then again i never really got good at it, but i know there are many that has. so i stick to joysticks for those... speaking of which, joysticks sure are rare these days.
Sorry, but commuting on japanese trains is not fun, with laptop or otherwise. i would stand to argue that, in fact, laptop makes your life a lot worse, because, frankly, it tend to get shoved around and squashed when the train gets crowded -- and oh boy it gets crowded. cell phone w/ internet might be okay -- even though i did not have a cell phone while in japan so i do not know this. as for being crowded, i mean, they have "pushers" for crying out loud. (pushers are people that help push others onto the train, to ensure its sardine-like packed-ness.)
not as bad as the buses in china, though
(and yes, i speak from experience, not a "tourist" experienc either)... tokyo rush hour is nothing to get excited about.
secondly -- beside the "no fun", they are by all means not cheap. a commute from tokyo (shinjuku, anyway) to Kumagaya (one way) is over 20 dollars on JR, which, length wise, is similar to two trips on Metra in the chicago area from end-to-end; metra ticket, twice, would cost ~$12; less if you mingle in some CTA (chicago transit) $1.5 tickets; so, no, i would not say that the train is cheap either.
but they are convenient, similar to manhattan, but without the "maybe that man there is thinking of robbing me / pushing me into the tracks for sh*ts and giggles" sort of way. and yeah, they are exceptionally punctual. obsessively so, i might add.
there was even a special controller for it, SpaceOrb 360. I got one and it's terribly hard to use in real life -- so it was back to joystick w/ hat control. but the theory is good. i have heard of people getting really good on that thing. the company seem to be out of business now -- their "space orb" technology used to be marketed as a specialized input device for molecular visualization / CAD etc... but i guess that never picked up either; again, great theory, TOUGH (i mean it) learning curve.
waiting for direct mind contolled video games
you know...
Stephen Hawkings never made a black hole and proved that it evaporates into nothing -- people still accepted his theory for the better part of the last 30 years...
i posted and suddenly realized that carrots inevitably led to correlation that would not necessarily seem... approporiate... so -- good for you if you did not make the connection, and shame on the rest of you.
plug in "cabbages" in there, dirty minds
while the disagreement may come from "simulating nuclear bombs", i would like to point out that the author is focusing on the "cool-ness" of ASCI WHITE, not the experimentation that it is used for.
You can marvel for ages at a sharp new kitchen knife in itself, while not necessarily endorse the slaughtering (of my poor, poor carrots).
Besides, when (maybe one day) the scientists will get bored with generalized simulation of thermonuclear reactions and possibly direct this result into, say, nuclear power plants, nuclear propulsion, mars terraforming, etc etc
Geeks can use this technology to know the location of every girl on campus!
girls can use this technology to avoid geeks!
but since (i am figuring) that most geeks will have 2 generation of technology ahead most of the time -- this means that the gene pool will finally be filling up (a bit) with our genes
j/k of course -- sigh, unfortunately they (girls) can still pick up the smell of skin came in contact with PCB material too many times / irradiated from CRT / solder fumes / etc and avoid avidly
follow the link here for more info and a nice map of what you expect to see the eclipse time is ~6PM PST, which mean the sun is FAR from set -- at the bay area, anyway, the sun does not set till ~9 and don't stare at it! 2 good ways to look at the eclipse 1) bioculars / telescope reflected on paper 2) get a bucket of water, tint the water (ink, whatever) and look at the reflection (used to do this in low-tech China)
MD5 should be used whenever you download stuff from the internet that would be... well... anywhere remotely useful / has a chance of being used
patches
code
whatever.
cool; thanks for the reply:
Tom Pabst stirred up a controversy -- but I do not think he was the only one; sorry to say it -- but nobody in the memory business liked RAMBUS -- and i think pretty much the idea is AMD caught on the idea, and Intel got stuck w/ a contract; this sentence pretty much sums up RAMBUS:
who (mem. manufactures) wants to pay 2% royalty when DRAM is a business w/ a 1% margin?
Well... as for move fast / slow -- I agree that it's an opinion and nothing more -- but i still have faith that it is an opinion based on reason; yes the industry has called for the end of IA-32 since the beginning of, well, IA-32 -- but then, i think everyone pretty much hoped that the cut was done 10 years ago -- not in 2002-2004 time frame, when *everything* was already invested into it. i mean -- intel survived and choked on the golden handcuff of back-compatibility for so long, i don't really think anyone expected this sort of "cut it all off" strategy -- again, from a USER / IT point of view, hammer makes more sense because it gives the software more time to move away, instead of massive cold-turkey. the capital investment in the intel case (software) would be tremendous;
lastly -- between transmeta and AMD -- hey i cheer for transmeta -- in fact i really wish there were more of their handhelds around so i don't have to carry 10 lb of laptop that only lasts for... i dunno, 1.5 hours; but as for AMD -- 3 bil is a small piece of the market pie -- and they have near zero penetration in the "low end server" segment; their desktop share is growing, but still much less than intel -- i would say (again, opinion only) that this would qualify as an underdog; Flash memory side -- maybe not, i think intel and AMD is on par -- but then nobody really looks at flash memroy and cheer their technological advances. ha. =)
I think it is very honorable (can't find a better word) that you are supporting your company, and I am fully aware that yes, given the choice, AMD will over-charge for their processors too -- BUT:
1) Intel's tactics, previously *and* recently, has not been too wise. one of the most important of this in RAMBUS: Intel basically said that (back in the first days when RAMBUS came out) we are going forward w/ RAMBUS. everyone knows that it's a M$-like move, everyone knows that it's b/c intel is getting a huge chunck of $$ from RAMBUS, and nobody liked it. Did Intel care? no; in fact, Intel stopped licensing VIA for making SDRAM / DDR chipsets; People like me looked around -- who is supporting DDR? well, AMD is...
2) Technically, Hammer makes more sense: sorry but from a user point of view (user as in programmer, IT admin, etc) -- Hammer makes like easier than IA-64; i mean, if you are gonna make such a drastic move away from IA32 (which, i admit, sucks bad), then do it slowly! What is the difference between migrating from IA-32 to IA-64 vs. say, alpha / solaris / whatever? not a whole lot -- pretty much everything needs to be redone. i mean, i still get the Intel sticker, but what's the difference there?
3) sorry but people has an tendency to cheer the under-dog; fact of life... i remember back then everyone cheered for NVIDIA when 3dfx was "king", now-a-days people still respects NVDA, but does not cheer for them anymore because they are now a status-quo -- they are expected to be one top -- but any move of the underdogs: ATI radeon / matrox paphelia (sp? heck, where they come up w/ this anyway) / Kryo(?) gets recognition. it's like a fight - will the new comer defeat the champion? we are geeks -- not much soap opera in our life, so this is the subsitute.
So... yes given the opportunity, would AMD do the same as Intel (rambus, etc)? maybe -- but i actually think AMD CEO is wiser than that -- he is a cool guy, btw -- visit any AMD facility and you can see his indiana-jones parody poster -- it's pretty cool. but we never know; but one thing is for sure -- if AMD ever gets on top, there will be probabbly a lot of cheer for intel for making attempts at the "de-throning"
last point, AMD is not TEXAS based. they are in SAN JOSE, CA. addr is something like 1 AMD lane or something.... get it straight people.
again, I would like to see your counter-arguments, if there are any. it's not fun writing without knowledge that there would be some reply.
-LQ
I think this should be implemented nation wide:
... ... ;)
we can train
UT / Counterstrike: future soilders of america, specializing in counter terrorism (ha)
Star Craft / Panzer General: future leaders of america (hey, resourse mgmt will be so efficient in the government, we will have TONS of tax relief; and nobody can beat our military)
Crimson Skies / Wing Commander: future pilots of america (maybe will get picked up for "the last starfighter)
Sim City/Park/Earth/Zoo/Chicken farm: future pretty much everything of America
Capitalism: future M$ of America
Barbie's makeup party: future cosmopolitian of america
Lesure Suit Larry: future... erm...
Roger Wilco:
Fallout / 2 / tactics: i am sure it's necessary for future survival too... just not sure how yet
I do NOT know what is the great deal about handwriting recognition... I mean, have anyone here ever used any implementation thereof (beside the funky palm "learn another alphabet" deal...
so far, natural language recognitions i have used has been sketchy at best (and yes i am using "award winning" ones)... same is to be said about the chinese version, for those who are interested.
EVEN IF such a tablet is to be used as a browser -- still once in a while i need to type in addrs -- if you argue that i would have everything book-marked -- well, at least you need to type in search phrases! and instead of wasting 3 minutes to type (or say) "www.slashdot.org" (imagine how the voice recognition will totally botch this up -- thanks Taco), it would be much faster to just type it out; and i don't mean on-screen keyboard picking tiny buttons with a stylus deal -- With the current technology: slow and sketchy handwriting recognition, even more sketchy voice recognition, and not-so-precise touch screen, i do not see how such a product would fly and make my life easier -- especially if there is a grand worth of premium. i mean, browsing of the couch is nice, but i can do the same thing with a laptop right now ANYWAY... and as mentioned above, i do not see why i would waste all the extra time inputting addresses / whatever.
furthermore, usually i think people type faster than they write, even those who are not all THAT good at typing... I type ~60wpm (used to be 90, but speed hasn't picked up since switched to Dvorak) -- so i would have a 2-3x speed advantage if i wanted to work on a document on the couch using a laptop vs using a tablet (even it if had 100% accuracy and zero recognition delays)... so...
where is the advantage again? (besides being "neat?")
p.s. Vadem Clio (sharp tri-pad) can do all of this, by the way -- before any of you go spend a fortune on one of the HP/CPQ offerings, get a clio from ebay that does everything the new tablets offer, and see if it really means an easier life -- and the clio HAS a keyboard...
so... on the other hand -- keep america rolling by spending money on un-necessary stuff...
in either case, however, the spirit does not change: a google is still sufficiently big that the physical universe have trouble filling up into its large-ness.
below is slightly off-topic, but:
for ever bigger, interesting numbers (that puts the googleplex to shame, actually), try Grahams Number, Another link to Graham's Number. Please note that, interestingly (in a mathematically geeky fashion) the result Graham's Number tries to limit (it's an upper bound) is generally believed to be 6. there is also Moser's Number... i am not sure which one is bigger...