Try to keep a sense of perspective when reading about "friendly fire".
How many troops in the field in the "coalition" forces? How many of those are American? How many British?
According to this link the U.S. has some 110,000 troops in Iraq, followed by Britain with 8,700. Overall there are only 22,000 soldiers of nationalities other than American total.
Now why were you surprised that most of the news of accidents and goof-ups seem to involve Americans?
It's actually kind of surprising that there are so many accidents involving soldiers of other nationalities than the U.S. in the news. And yes, quite a few of them involve the British.
Many of them without U.S. involvement, need I add.
Doo doo occurs. Accidents happen to the best of us and whining about "trigger-happy Americans" is insulting and shows a willful disregard of perspective in the matter, if not a lack of simple percentages. Regardless of your feelings of U.S. foreign policy remember that the soldiers whose performance you're so cavalierly insulting are not the ones making the decisions. They're just trying to serve their country and do a difficult job under some very nasty conditions.
UKL: I used to watch Star Trek, until they went off the rails with Voyager, and when we were in England about two centuries ago we got hooked on Dr Who - the guy with the long scarf and the great nose, not the one after him who looked like he needed some vitamins. There isn't much to watch on American TV now unless you are into violence and/or canned laughter. Did you know that most of the laugh tracks they use are so old that the people you hear laughing at the sitcom are mostly dead? It seems appropriate.
Appropriate indeed. I always wondered why "Friends" left me feeling "unclean". Now I know it was the living dead laugh-track.
Or it could be that there are no aliens in the universe because God didn't create them. In fact, if He had created them, it would have said so in the Bible. So SETI is nothing but a waste of time. Why grope around in the dark when we have the Truth right here in this Book?
*sigh*
No offense buddy, but it's Christians with attitudes like yours that give the rest of us a hard time.
From a Christian perspective, the Bible contains what *we* (human beings) need to know. No mention is given of alien life, but that does *not* mean that God has not created it. It means that their existence (or lack therefore) is inconsequential to the message that the Bible conveys. You are arguing from silence.
The first question that popped into my mind was, "How on earth do you test wether or not this vaccine has worked?" I mean, it's entirely man made - no DNA from the Ebola virus was used, just man made copies. So who's to say we got it right? The only true indicator would be to expose a test subject.
From the article:
"Because it would be unethical to expose humans to Ebola to test the vaccine's efficacy, scientists will simply compare their immune responses with those that proved effective in monkeys and other animals. Much larger human studies will eventually be conducted to provide final proof that the vaccine is safe for large populations."
The only real proof of whether or not this is effective or not will be when it's distributed to those running a daily risk of infection in the Congo. I understand that before that stage it must be proven safe, but imagine if it fails. That would be a big setback for what sounds like a innovative and creative technique (ie - man made DNA mimicing a pathogen).
Considering the potential and the amount of time and money invested, I'm hoping this meets with success. The benefit when applied to other rampant diseases is enormous.
Seriously. Even using a good codec like DivX or XVid you're still looking at ~1.5GB for a full length ripped DVD with 5.1 surround. A large DVD collection needs a lot of hard disk space.
The next round of tests in Texas could add weight to the growing consensus about the cause of the accident. Last week's tests used wing panels from the Enterprise, a test vehicle that never flew in space. That craft's leading edge panels were made from fiberglass because the Enterprise never had to face the heat of re-entry.
Foam testing will resume on Thursday with the first effort to fire a chunk of foam at the actual material used on the leading edge of the shuttle's wing. The material, reinforced carbon-carbon taken from the shuttle Discovery, is substantially weaker and less flexible than fiberglass.
A lesson in kinetics indeed. Perhaps it was a micro-meteorite or junk, but based on this data I'd say they've solved it.
Though I see your point and agree to it to some extent, places like the Petrified Forest are a special case. I for one think this "hand's off nature" attitude thats made it's way into popular thinking is foolish. In the long run it's actually self defeating, since insulating the public from experiencing it in a personal way leads to a lack of appreciation for it IMHO.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you were allowed off the trails in most parks. I have many fond memories of exploring, discovering and having the thrill of just maybe getting lost in the woods (hey, I was a kid;-] ). Those memories, along with teaching from my parents to be responsible and not destructive gave me a great love and respect for nature. Things have changed drastically now, and not for the better.
Now every park is like going to a theme park. Stand in line here. Walk here. You can touch this but not that. God forbid that you TOUCH that tree or plant, you may hurt it! Don't you DARE feed that squirrel or bird, you're disrupting nature!
Uh, pardon me, but 90% of the time this is utter bulls**t. Granted you'll have your small share of idiots ruining things for everyone else, but shutting down access for the common man/woman/child is NOT the way to solve it. Even with limited access the fools still find ways to litter, destroy and generally ruin a beautiful location.
So what is the answer? Well, IMHO the more people are connected to a place the more they will care about it. Give people the education and reason to care and much of the policing will be handled by the public itself.
Case in point: there is still one metro park in my area that allows people to go off trail to a long stretch of river. This is by *far* the most litter-free area of park I've seen. Since the river is wide and shallow you consistently see people fishing, parents with kids walking the shallows looking for crawdads, and people in general just enjoying actually EXPERIENCING nature - not just staring at it from behind a fence or barrier. You also consistently see people walking the bank and riverbed picking up any litter they see, since they know that THEY might be the next one to step on that piece of broken glass or bottle cap. I've even seen a fisherman take some teenage kids to task for throwing their litter on the ground. He talked to them in a friendly way and they actually listened to him and picked up their trash, joking around with him.
I'm not saying just open everything up and let people do whatever they please in our parks, I'm just saying that this "hands off" way of thinking is getting too strong. Nature is not some delicate construct that will fall over and shatter at the least little nudge from big bad mankind. It's been my experience that most people I've spoken to that think this way have an inate dislike of mankind to one degree or another, whether they realize it or not.
While that is true for some games, I strongly disagree about many, many others I played in my youth.
Take the aforementioned example: Elite 2. Have you played it recently? The gameplay is STILL rock solid after all this time. The graphics engine is dated, sure, but what other game gives you such an open-ended experience? You could do almost ANYTHING you wanted! The universe was open to you.
Actually, I'd submit that that is one of the main reasons that games like Grand Theft Auto do so well - the fact that they are so open-ended and leave the decisions up to the player. Scripting is great if it's well done, but how many of us have wished we could have done something different and see the game adapt?
Overall, it's very sad how many games today are released hoping that eye-candy alone with crap gameplay will sell copies. *cough*Unreal2*cough*
Brink back some of these ideas from classic gaming! Older games were often head-and-shoulders above modern titles in originality and gameplay because they HAD to be. The platforms at the time were primitive and couldn't rely on eye-candy as a selling point.
I remember a recent posting here on/. about universities beginning to offer game development majors. I truly hope that something like "gaming heritage 101" is taught to new students. There's a goldmine of great ideas that have been sadly tossed aside that could be salvaged by a savvy developer.
Every nVidia card I have had suffers exactly this problem. Geforce2 MX200/400, tnt2, Geforce4. With the open source driver they are an absolute dream; with nVidia's driver - crashes of varying degrees. I would imagine that since the linux and windows drivers are now from a unified code base that exactly the same problem occurs under windows but noone notices because windows crashes so much.
You assume incorrectly, at least as far as stability under Windows. As a matter of fact I'd hazard to say that nVidia's drivers are a HUGE selling point under Windows. At least they are to me and most other people I know who use their home PC for more than word processing. nVidia's cards have been solid 3D performers since the TNT, but I like many others want a graphic card in my PC that just works. What other graphic card (or any other component manufacturer for that matter) has managed to increase performance by 40% with the driver alone?
I will agree the Linux binaries need help. Up until recently I ran a dual boot Mandrake/Win98SE install as my main rig. After upgrading to XP I have yet to reinstall a distro, though I'll get around to it. The nVidia drivers under Mandrake seemed almost as if they had come from a different company, given my favorable experiences under Windows.
Now that ATI not only has a product with comparable performance ~$100 cheaper than nVidia's latest but ALSO has stable drivers things are really starting to get interesting.
Don't write nVidia off yet though - far too many people did the same to ATI a few years ago.
D'OH Sorry, but it's early and my caffeine requirements are still pending.
You can already buy the XT directly from Palm. I don't know how I missed it before. It's going for $99.00 U.S., but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a model compatible with the iPaq yet.
Hopefully they have plans to release one in the near future. With a design that seems as good as this one I'd say it's pretty probable.
Well, you can pick up the older version of their keyboard for iPaq's at Targus' website for ~$70 U.S., but I would wait in your position.
The reason all of the vendors seem to be out of stock (I believe) is that they are clearing inventory in anticipation of the release of the new XT model. There are a number of advantages that would seem to make it worthwhile to wait.
One of the major complaints about the older Stowaway was that you had to have a smooth, level surface to type on, otherwise the keyboard would try to fold up again on you. You can see in the pics on this page that the back of the case now prevents that. Also, another major complaint was that the interface for your PDA on the old model was off center and had no real support. Again, on that page you can see that they've now centered it and added a nifty pull-out cradle to help keep your PDA stable.
Hopefully they'll bring them to market soon. In the meantime if I were in your place I'd try to make do for a while. Alternatively you could always snag one and sell it later on eBay. Hmmm...actually there may be one or two up for sale now. Might be worth it until the XT hits the market.
There are a few things that I think would become annoying very quickly about projection keyboards.
The first would be the lack of tactile response. After all, your desktop or any other hard surface would become uncomfortable after just a few minutes IMHO.
The second would be the lack of any position designators - i.e. the 'f' and 'j' keys. Most 10 fingered typers probably don't even think about it anymore, but it's very easy to lose your place without them. I suspect this would become very annoying if taking notes in class during a lecture or in a business meeting.
This is the first review I've seen of the new SATA drives that made mention of this.
Anyone know why this was implemented? The article (now/.'ed) doesn't explain the reasoning, just that it exists. Why get rid of the old MOLEX? Since an adapter is included with the drive it doesn't seem that there are any new voltages required. What's the deal?
I recall a few years back a friend of mine telling me a story about his experiences in the military. He did aircraft maintenance on a number of different craft.
Apparently, many of them make use of extremely high RPM gyroscopes in their on board guidance systems. While I don't recall the technical specs, I do remember him telling me that there were specific regulations for how long you had to wait after the aircraft was powered down before you were allowed to begin servicing the systems. Otherwise, there was a very real danger to both the mechanic and the machine. He related that on one occasion he and his team waited the regulated time period and then began to disassemble the planes systems. As they removed the housing with the gyroscope and began to lower it to the tarmack it suddenly flew from there hands and took off - thereby destroying itself. They were all a bit shaken and one of the long time crew chiefs remarked, "Guess that was a good one" because it still hadn't come to a stop.
Now the SegWay supposedly uses, "aircraft quality gyroscopes" for balance and control. If these are powerful enough to keep an adult human upright they must be spinning at a terrific RPM. What are the dangers involved in this? That is to say if someone on one of these were to be struck by a car, would one of these gyros take off and remove some unfortunate soul's head?
That's good to know Cato. But you know, that brings to mind a question I've been asking myself off and on for a few months now:
if they can easily monitor something like bandwidth usage on a per-customer basis, why the heck can't they also scan for other violations/problems like code red?
I live in the midwestern U.S. (Ohio) and have Time Warner's Road Runner service. To this day I'm still seeing a large number of code red attempts on my router logs - greatly reduced from when it first hit of course, but still quite a few. When I spoke to RR's customer service back when CR first hit (and brought the entire RR network to it's knees) I asked them why they didn't just monitor for the bug and either cutoff or contact anyone with an infected machine. They told me they didn't have that capability.
Now granted, this was just a customer service flunkie, but I still remember thinking, "What the heck?! You guys can't track this sort of thing on your own network?" Apparently he may have been correct, given the number of CR attempts I'm still seeing.
Well, I believe that what he's saying is that by connecting both his machines this way instead of using a hub/switch he got around the standard 128kbps upload cap.
At least I suppose that is what he's saying - he didn't actually say what his cable company's upload speed policy is.
Slashdot Mirror
Comon, a list of the top 20 geek stories and Lord of the Rings isn't on it?! This is a list made about nerds, not BY nerds!
Try to keep a sense of perspective when reading about "friendly fire".
How many troops in the field in the "coalition" forces? How many of those are American? How many British?
According to this link the U.S. has some 110,000 troops in Iraq, followed by Britain with 8,700. Overall there are only 22,000 soldiers of nationalities other than American total.
Now why were you surprised that most of the news of accidents and goof-ups seem to involve Americans?
It's actually kind of surprising that there are so many accidents involving soldiers of other nationalities than the U.S. in the news. And yes, quite a few of them involve the British.
Many of them without U.S. involvement, need I add.
Doo doo occurs. Accidents happen to the best of us and whining about "trigger-happy Americans" is insulting and shows a willful disregard of perspective in the matter, if not a lack of simple percentages. Regardless of your feelings of U.S. foreign policy remember that the soldiers whose performance you're so cavalierly insulting are not the ones making the decisions. They're just trying to serve their country and do a difficult job under some very nasty conditions.
Appropriate indeed. I always wondered why "Friends" left me feeling "unclean". Now I know it was the living dead laugh-track.
Or David Schwimmer's acting abilities....
*sigh*
No offense buddy, but it's Christians with attitudes like yours that give the rest of us a hard time.
From a Christian perspective, the Bible contains what *we* (human beings) need to know. No mention is given of alien life, but that does *not* mean that God has not created it. It means that their existence (or lack therefore) is inconsequential to the message that the Bible conveys. You are arguing from silence.
From the article:
The only real proof of whether or not this is effective or not will be when it's distributed to those running a daily risk of infection in the Congo. I understand that before that stage it must be proven safe, but imagine if it fails. That would be a big setback for what sounds like a innovative and creative technique (ie - man made DNA mimicing a pathogen).
Considering the potential and the amount of time and money invested, I'm hoping this meets with success. The benefit when applied to other rampant diseases is enormous.
Survey says......*DING!*
Home theater PC users!
Seriously. Even using a good codec like DivX or XVid you're still looking at ~1.5GB for a full length ripped DVD with 5.1 surround. A large DVD collection needs a lot of hard disk space.
...it's an anti-piracy circumvention device!
Seriously. According to the DMCA, couldn't use of that cable to rip one of these copy protected CDs be construed as such?
Just goes to show how convoluted and idiotic the logic behind these new laws has become.
...than Columbia's as well.
From the article:
The next round of tests in Texas could add weight to the growing consensus about the cause of the accident. Last week's tests used wing panels from the Enterprise, a test vehicle that never flew in space. That craft's leading edge panels were made from fiberglass because the Enterprise never had to face the heat of re-entry.
Foam testing will resume on Thursday with the first effort to fire a chunk of foam at the actual material used on the leading edge of the shuttle's wing. The material, reinforced carbon-carbon taken from the shuttle Discovery, is substantially weaker and less flexible than fiberglass.
A lesson in kinetics indeed. Perhaps it was a micro-meteorite or junk, but based on this data I'd say they've solved it.
Though I see your point and agree to it to some extent, places like the Petrified Forest are a special case. I for one think this "hand's off nature" attitude thats made it's way into popular thinking is foolish. In the long run it's actually self defeating, since insulating the public from experiencing it in a personal way leads to a lack of appreciation for it IMHO.
;-] ). Those memories, along with teaching from my parents to be responsible and not destructive gave me a great love and respect for nature. Things have changed drastically now, and not for the better.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you were allowed off the trails in most parks. I have many fond memories of exploring, discovering and having the thrill of just maybe getting lost in the woods (hey, I was a kid
Now every park is like going to a theme park. Stand in line here. Walk here. You can touch this but not that. God forbid that you TOUCH that tree or plant, you may hurt it! Don't you DARE feed that squirrel or bird, you're disrupting nature!
Uh, pardon me, but 90% of the time this is utter bulls**t. Granted you'll have your small share of idiots ruining things for everyone else, but shutting down access for the common man/woman/child is NOT the way to solve it. Even with limited access the fools still find ways to litter, destroy and generally ruin a beautiful location.
So what is the answer? Well, IMHO the more people are connected to a place the more they will care about it. Give people the education and reason to care and much of the policing will be handled by the public itself.
Case in point: there is still one metro park in my area that allows people to go off trail to a long stretch of river. This is by *far* the most litter-free area of park I've seen. Since the river is wide and shallow you consistently see people fishing, parents with kids walking the shallows looking for crawdads, and people in general just enjoying actually EXPERIENCING nature - not just staring at it from behind a fence or barrier. You also consistently see people walking the bank and riverbed picking up any litter they see, since they know that THEY might be the next one to step on that piece of broken glass or bottle cap. I've even seen a fisherman take some teenage kids to task for throwing their litter on the ground. He talked to them in a friendly way and they actually listened to him and picked up their trash, joking around with him.
I'm not saying just open everything up and let people do whatever they please in our parks, I'm just saying that this "hands off" way of thinking is getting too strong. Nature is not some delicate construct that will fall over and shatter at the least little nudge from big bad mankind. It's been my experience that most people I've spoken to that think this way have an inate dislike of mankind to one degree or another, whether they realize it or not.
While that is true for some games, I strongly disagree about many, many others I played in my youth.
/. about universities beginning to offer game development majors. I truly hope that something like "gaming heritage 101" is taught to new students. There's a goldmine of great ideas that have been sadly tossed aside that could be salvaged by a savvy developer.
Take the aforementioned example: Elite 2. Have you played it recently? The gameplay is STILL rock solid after all this time. The graphics engine is dated, sure, but what other game gives you such an open-ended experience? You could do almost ANYTHING you wanted! The universe was open to you.
Actually, I'd submit that that is one of the main reasons that games like Grand Theft Auto do so well - the fact that they are so open-ended and leave the decisions up to the player. Scripting is great if it's well done, but how many of us have wished we could have done something different and see the game adapt?
Overall, it's very sad how many games today are released hoping that eye-candy alone with crap gameplay will sell copies. *cough*Unreal2*cough*
Brink back some of these ideas from classic gaming! Older games were often head-and-shoulders above modern titles in originality and gameplay because they HAD to be. The platforms at the time were primitive and couldn't rely on eye-candy as a selling point.
I remember a recent posting here on
Kudos to these guys. My first thoughts after, "No freakin' way!" were, "How the heck did they get ethernet and a C64 together?"
/. that had some sort of odd C64 hybrid that streamed audio?
I figured it was some sort of butt-slow serial hack, but instead they designed their own C64 ethernet cartridge! Nicely done.
Come to think of it, weren't these the same guys we saw a while back here on
You assume incorrectly, at least as far as stability under Windows. As a matter of fact I'd hazard to say that nVidia's drivers are a HUGE selling point under Windows. At least they are to me and most other people I know who use their home PC for more than word processing. nVidia's cards have been solid 3D performers since the TNT, but I like many others want a graphic card in my PC that just works. What other graphic card (or any other component manufacturer for that matter) has managed to increase performance by 40% with the driver alone?
I will agree the Linux binaries need help. Up until recently I ran a dual boot Mandrake/Win98SE install as my main rig. After upgrading to XP I have yet to reinstall a distro, though I'll get around to it. The nVidia drivers under Mandrake seemed almost as if they had come from a different company, given my favorable experiences under Windows.
Now that ATI not only has a product with comparable performance ~$100 cheaper than nVidia's latest but ALSO has stable drivers things are really starting to get interesting.
Don't write nVidia off yet though - far too many people did the same to ATI a few years ago.
You can already buy the XT directly from Palm. I don't know how I missed it before. It's going for $99.00 U.S., but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a model compatible with the iPaq yet.
Hopefully they have plans to release one in the near future. With a design that seems as good as this one I'd say it's pretty probable.
The reason all of the vendors seem to be out of stock (I believe) is that they are clearing inventory in anticipation of the release of the new XT model. There are a number of advantages that would seem to make it worthwhile to wait.
One of the major complaints about the older Stowaway was that you had to have a smooth, level surface to type on, otherwise the keyboard would try to fold up again on you. You can see in the pics on this page that the back of the case now prevents that. Also, another major complaint was that the interface for your PDA on the old model was off center and had no real support. Again, on that page you can see that they've now centered it and added a nifty pull-out cradle to help keep your PDA stable.
Hopefully they'll bring them to market soon. In the meantime if I were in your place I'd try to make do for a while. Alternatively you could always snag one and sell it later on eBay. Hmmm...actually there may be one or two up for sale now. Might be worth it until the XT hits the market.
The first would be the lack of tactile response. After all, your desktop or any other hard surface would become uncomfortable after just a few minutes IMHO.
The second would be the lack of any position designators - i.e. the 'f' and 'j' keys. Most 10 fingered typers probably don't even think about it anymore, but it's very easy to lose your place without them. I suspect this would become very annoying if taking notes in class during a lecture or in a business meeting.
As far as a good portable keyboard for a PDA, my money is on the new Stowaway XT. It's been getting really good reviews/previews.
Anyone been lucky enough to play around with one yet?
Anyone know why this was implemented? The article (now /.'ed) doesn't explain the reasoning, just that it exists. Why get rid of the old MOLEX? Since an adapter is included with the drive it doesn't seem that there are any new voltages required. What's the deal?
Is this just another one of those PITA upgrades?
Except you forgot one point.
Directly from the trailer, this terminator was designed, "to destory other cybernetic organisms".
I guess even killer robots from the future get horny sometimes?
Something I've been wondering about here...
I recall a few years back a friend of mine telling me a story about his experiences in the military. He did aircraft maintenance on a number of different craft.
Apparently, many of them make use of extremely high RPM gyroscopes in their on board guidance systems. While I don't recall the technical specs, I do remember him telling me that there were specific regulations for how long you had to wait after the aircraft was powered down before you were allowed to begin servicing the systems. Otherwise, there was a very real danger to both the mechanic and the machine. He related that on one occasion he and his team waited the regulated time period and then began to disassemble the planes systems. As they removed the housing with the gyroscope and began to lower it to the tarmack it suddenly flew from there hands and took off - thereby destroying itself. They were all a bit shaken and one of the long time crew chiefs remarked, "Guess that was a good one" because it still hadn't come to a stop.
Now the SegWay supposedly uses, "aircraft quality gyroscopes" for balance and control. If these are powerful enough to keep an adult human upright they must be spinning at a terrific RPM. What are the dangers involved in this? That is to say if someone on one of these were to be struck by a car, would one of these gyros take off and remove some unfortunate soul's head?
Yeah, your right.
The FBI obviously has no reason whatsoever to spy on American citizens.
That's good to know Cato. But you know, that brings to mind a question I've been asking myself off and on for a few months now:
if they can easily monitor something like bandwidth usage on a per-customer basis, why the heck can't they also scan for other violations/problems like code red?
I live in the midwestern U.S. (Ohio) and have Time Warner's Road Runner service. To this day I'm still seeing a large number of code red attempts on my router logs - greatly reduced from when it first hit of course, but still quite a few. When I spoke to RR's customer service back when CR first hit (and brought the entire RR network to it's knees) I asked them why they didn't just monitor for the bug and either cutoff or contact anyone with an infected machine. They told me they didn't have that capability.
Now granted, this was just a customer service flunkie, but I still remember thinking, "What the heck?! You guys can't track this sort of thing on your own network?" Apparently he may have been correct, given the number of CR attempts I'm still seeing.
Any idea what the real story is?
Well, I believe that what he's saying is that by connecting both his machines this way instead of using a hub/switch he got around the standard 128kbps upload cap.
At least I suppose that is what he's saying - he didn't actually say what his cable company's upload speed policy is.