Yes, everyone seems to have forgotten that a number of issues including unexpected rolls occurred during flights 15p and 16p of SpaceShipOne, and while it never seemed that the flights were to end catastrophically, things were still very edgy. I suppose that many of those celebrities willing to risk their lives for 3 1/2 minutes of weightlessness must think one or more of the following:
1 The experience is worth the risk 2 They can brag about having gone to space 3 Their lives are not worth living anymore and pushing the envelope is the only way to derive pleasure at this point 4 They will get some type of immortality in history
The second is pure ego, and may get a blowjob or two, the third reason is pathetic, and the fourth is unlikely, as some rich monkey will not go down in history for being the 7th guy to go on a commercial space flight. So that leaves the first. Is 3 1/2 minutes of weightlessness worth the risk? I'm not so sure. I believe you can get a number of equally rewarding experiences in life without such risk. There's also the Vomit Comit. It's only 30 seconds, but what's the big difference?
Yes, but as has been said before by many Slashdot posters, getting to the edge of space and getting into orbit are as different as driving to the store and flying across the country. The Virgin craft will not get into orbit, and is thus useless for any sustained space flight or delivery. You are comparing apples and oranges sir. There is currently no other way to get a nut into orbit other than stacking TNT to the height of a street lamp.
Sorry, experts, I call you on this one. Who are these "experts" by the way? And why must we always defer to "experts" and "authorities". This one only requires common sense. Information is now digital and comes in all shapes and sizes, and the pipe it's carried on comes in various flow rates, so a single resolution for everyone will soon be (already is?) a thing of the past. Perhaps the available resolutions for video data, and/or the percentage of screens at a certain resolution probably follows some sort of a bell curve. The future is already here, it's just not widely distributed.
Trying to peg a date on the adoption of the next TV standard is like saying "paper mail has been around for 200 years, so the replacement for email will come in 100 years". Nope, sorry. Now that things are digital, it's all just bits. You can do whatever you want with those bits. Successors and complements to email have already arrived, e.g. instant messaging, SMS, etc. The same goes for television resolution. As connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, and bandwidth goes up, and more devices (TVS, computers, phones, etc) gain in resolution, a number of channels will be available to transfer content of variable resolution. A single resolution standard was simply an artifact of an analog infrastructure. This is no longer the case.
I heard that Taco and crew are gonna smoke weed and sit on the couch thinking of more "what ifs" for tomorrow's stories as well. Perhaps there should be a new "what if" section for slashdot!
There are so many problems with this. Why weren't liquids blocked before? I'm sure in the billions they spent investigating possible methods for bombing a plane that liquid explosives were considered. Authorities aren't gonna make people get on planes naked, so they have to let people take stuff on. They are only blocking liquids now because they have to show the public that they are doing something. There are still dozens of other ways to easily get dangerious stuff onto planes, but they don't block those now, do they? easy examples: Sharp pencils and pens, materials in laptops and other electronics that show up as normal shapes on the xray but could easily be reconfigured into weapons, etc.
In any event I just took a flight from China to Los Angeles and they claimed you couldn't bring liquids aboard, but no one was checking. It's all just noise to make people feel like they are being protected.
Look man, i realize that 'good' and 'evil' are subjective terms, but so are 'intelligent' and 'selfish'. Who are you to decide that words as fundamental as these are crap? Words like these are abstractions for shared experiences, not mathematically defined formulas. Good and evil are subjective, not absolute, so people get confused and think they don't exist. Here's an example of something evil: Someone who likes to break into homes and rape newborn babies and then slice their mother's throats for fun. If you don't think that is evil then you have lost yourself to objectivism, materialism and science, and might as well commit suicide now because reality is purely a bunch of molecules bouncing off of each other, and you are nothing more than a tiny sack of meat on a ball of dirt floating against the infinite backdrop of space for an infinitesmal length of time.
If you mean _naive_ sentiment, I would obviously disagree. I would posit that the most horrendous crimes in the history of the world are actually executed by a tiny majority in overly strong governments which take advantage of a weak-minded and normally peaceful populace. I would like you to give me an example of a genocide or other serious crime against humanity that wasn't orchestrated by a dictator, monarch, or totalitarian government of some sort.
You claim that government keeps people in line. But this is a circular argument, because people pre-existed government; people created government, which indicates that the morals and values and organization that create government come from the people, and not the other way around. Countless philosphers, historians, heros, saints, and common folk throughout time developed civilization's sense of justice and morality that government is built upon without a beating stick keeping them in line, and I feel sad for you if your root of your values is the fear of punishment.
What this boils down to is that I believe that the vast majority of people are good (or at least good intentioned), but perhaps a bit gullible, and a small minority take advantage of this, some of them evil, some of them not.
I'm sorry that you are so scared of the truth that you jump at such a weak opportunity to keep the rug from being pulled out from under you. Who are "they" that you speak about? You say this as if you actually prefer strong authority figures keeping the world in order for you because you are unable to do it yourself. There is no "they" that either care or don't care for this country and its people, becase the government is made up of thousands upon thousands of people with different ideas and goals, some of them good, and some of them very sinister. Stop laying your parental fantasies on top of the government, because others like myself prefer not to have these nannies looking over our shoulders, especially when some of them have already proven to be homicidal.
BTW, what happened to Slashdot's tagging system? Most of the stories don't have tags anymore, and the ones that do add no extra information - they are simply repeats of the words in the title, or non-words such as "fud, duh, wow", or worthless words such as "no, yes, maybe". Look at every story today and you'll see.
As someone who's worked as a quality engineer for years, a good QA engineer gets paid something close to a good software engineer. I currently work as a software engineer, and I can honestly say that in some ways testing software is much more difficult than writing it. With the amount of money the Mozilla foundation brings in, putting aside a microscopic $50 as a prize for quality assurance is a bit of a joke. How about something a little more meaty guys?
I don't know if they could do this without inking the deal, but quite often the majority of news stories in a single entry on Google News are copies of the same AP news wire article. Perhaps this will give Google an opportunity to mark articles as the same, or somehow reduce clutter.
When you take the cost of living and consider the net pay adjusted for that cost, places like Montgomery, Ala., Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Fort Smith, Ark.
How about China? Cost of living is extremely low here in Beijing, but it's fun as hell, unlike some of these outback joints. Furthermore, I'm making an American salary by doing contracts remotely. My work has nothing to do with China, but I know plenty of Americans who came here to study chinese, but then got a job at Microsoft or some other local American tech company at either a Chinese or American salary, depending on the position.
What's even the need for anecdotal evidence? Just take off your socks, curl your toes upward so that no part touches the ground, and walk around. It's not difficult, in fact it doesn't take much effort to walk absolutely normally.
The pile of shards is also physically and chemically connected. It's just that the atomic forces are very weak, so they don't overcome the force of gravity when you pull on one piece. If that pile of shards was floating in the depths of space, and you pulled one piece outward at a mega-super-slow speed, 1 centimeter per decade or something, the atomic forces may keep the object together.
Also, if your measure of something being a "single item" is being able to move things with your hand, would the earth count as a single object? I could pick up a rock, and it doesn't pull the earth up with me....
Yeah, and what's up with him mentioning Homeland Security in lowercase, as if it's already the fabric of our society, like the state department or some such. creepy...
So what's the difference between the example that Linus gives, and DRM? The purpose. In his example, the company wants to restrict users from running software that has not been approved by the company. This sounds a lot like some Microsoft initiatives put forward during the early Vista days about only running signed software. This is supposedly to protect users from malicious software. DRM on the otherhand is about preventing users from using software and data that they have no rights to. The purposed are very different, but the mechanism is the same. This is similar to the government installing wiretaps in central phone switching offices. It can be used for good or bad... but given enough time, it will be used for the worse. I don't have anything against DRM in private software, but I tend to agree with banning it in the GPL.
I get your point, but how does that relate to my comment? For example, would you compare some new mini-tractor from Catepillar with a Civic from 13 years ago? The new tractor might have a terrible design regardless of what you compare it to, but that's beside the point. The point of this article is to compare the two products, and the point of my comment is to note that the comparison is flawed.
Why must a MMORPG be a single avatar per player? A player could control several characters, or a team, or a military, or a civiliation, or research lab, or a starship, or whatever. The players could be super-titanium robots, which would get rid of the gun problem. Or other alien races that developed different types of weapons. Or perhaps some real time strategy aspects could be pulled in, but on a larger scale. You'd then have a mechanism for balancing out extremely power technologies. I suppose you lose a bit of the immersion when you don't play at the single character level, but I could see a market for a more complex gaming mechanism that would suit a sci-fi universe.
Furthermore "mecos" is Mexican slang for cum. I just wanted everyone to know that, so you can never again think about black holes and MECOs again without thinking about cum.
Should they be comparing the Newton with a minaturized desktop PC, or should they be comparing it with a Palm Pilot or Windows Mobile? It seems like the comparison is really between *cough* uhh apples and oranges. The Q1 device is clearly targeted at a market that wants power and functionality in a handheld, while Windows Mobile devices are aimed at efficient usability (or at least that's the goal). Anyway, this comparison is a non sequitur of sorts...
I've never played it, but my friend claims that Alpha Centauri made him cry. He played a peaceful civilization, and made it into space and beat the game. The beauty of the progression and flowering of the civilizatoin made him shed a tear.
Did YOU read the article? The iPod's processor is not used. It is simply acting as a hard drive for the sleeve. The sleeve's processor is responsible for decoding the video.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, everyone seems to have forgotten that a number of issues including unexpected rolls occurred during flights 15p and 16p of SpaceShipOne, and while it never seemed that the flights were to end catastrophically, things were still very edgy. I suppose that many of those celebrities willing to risk their lives for 3 1/2 minutes of weightlessness must think one or more of the following:
1 The experience is worth the risk
2 They can brag about having gone to space
3 Their lives are not worth living anymore and pushing the envelope is the only way to derive pleasure at this point
4 They will get some type of immortality in history
The second is pure ego, and may get a blowjob or two, the third reason is pathetic, and the fourth is unlikely, as some rich monkey will not go down in history for being the 7th guy to go on a commercial space flight. So that leaves the first. Is 3 1/2 minutes of weightlessness worth the risk? I'm not so sure. I believe you can get a number of equally rewarding experiences in life without such risk. There's also the Vomit Comit. It's only 30 seconds, but what's the big difference?
LS
Yes, but as has been said before by many Slashdot posters, getting to the edge of space and getting into orbit are as different as driving to the store and flying across the country. The Virgin craft will not get into orbit, and is thus useless for any sustained space flight or delivery. You are comparing apples and oranges sir. There is currently no other way to get a nut into orbit other than stacking TNT to the height of a street lamp.
a novelty."
Sorry, experts, I call you on this one. Who are these "experts" by the way? And why must we always defer to "experts" and "authorities". This one only requires common sense. Information is now digital and comes in all shapes and sizes, and the pipe it's carried on comes in various flow rates, so a single resolution for everyone will soon be (already is?) a thing of the past. Perhaps the available resolutions for video data, and/or the percentage of screens at a certain resolution probably follows some sort of a bell curve. The future is already here, it's just not widely distributed.
LS
Trying to peg a date on the adoption of the next TV standard is like saying "paper mail has been around for 200 years, so the replacement for email will come in 100 years". Nope, sorry. Now that things are digital, it's all just bits. You can do whatever you want with those bits. Successors and complements to email have already arrived, e.g. instant messaging, SMS, etc. The same goes for television resolution. As connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, and bandwidth goes up, and more devices (TVS, computers, phones, etc) gain in resolution, a number of channels will be available to transfer content of variable resolution. A single resolution standard was simply an artifact of an analog infrastructure. This is no longer the case.
LS
Retarded. News. Story.
Ever.
I heard that Taco and crew are gonna smoke weed and sit on the couch thinking of more "what ifs" for tomorrow's stories as well. Perhaps there should be a new "what if" section for slashdot!
There are so many problems with this. Why weren't liquids blocked before? I'm sure in the billions they spent investigating possible methods for bombing a plane that liquid explosives were considered. Authorities aren't gonna make people get on planes naked, so they have to let people take stuff on. They are only blocking liquids now because they have to show the public that they are doing something. There are still dozens of other ways to easily get dangerious stuff onto planes, but they don't block those now, do they? easy examples: Sharp pencils and pens, materials in laptops and other electronics that show up as normal shapes on the xray but could easily be reconfigured into weapons, etc.
In any event I just took a flight from China to Los Angeles and they claimed you couldn't bring liquids aboard, but no one was checking. It's all just noise to make people feel like they are being protected.
Look man, i realize that 'good' and 'evil' are subjective terms, but so are 'intelligent' and 'selfish'. Who are you to decide that words as fundamental as these are crap? Words like these are abstractions for shared experiences, not mathematically defined formulas. Good and evil are subjective, not absolute, so people get confused and think they don't exist. Here's an example of something evil: Someone who likes to break into homes and rape newborn babies and then slice their mother's throats for fun. If you don't think that is evil then you have lost yourself to objectivism, materialism and science, and might as well commit suicide now because reality is purely a bunch of molecules bouncing off of each other, and you are nothing more than a tiny sack of meat on a ball of dirt floating against the infinite backdrop of space for an infinitesmal length of time.
Apparently you ARE a teenager. Otherwise you wouldn't hide behind anonymity making pitiful attempts at ego sniping.
If you mean _naive_ sentiment, I would obviously disagree. I would posit that the most horrendous crimes in the history of the world are actually executed by a tiny majority in overly strong governments which take advantage of a weak-minded and normally peaceful populace. I would like you to give me an example of a genocide or other serious crime against humanity that wasn't orchestrated by a dictator, monarch, or totalitarian government of some sort.
You claim that government keeps people in line. But this is a circular argument, because people pre-existed government; people created government, which indicates that the morals and values and organization that create government come from the people, and not the other way around. Countless philosphers, historians, heros, saints, and common folk throughout time developed civilization's sense of justice and morality that government is built upon without a beating stick keeping them in line, and I feel sad for you if your root of your values is the fear of punishment.
What this boils down to is that I believe that the vast majority of people are good (or at least good intentioned), but perhaps a bit gullible, and a small minority take advantage of this, some of them evil, some of them not.
I'm sorry that you are so scared of the truth that you jump at such a weak opportunity to keep the rug from being pulled out from under you. Who are "they" that you speak about? You say this as if you actually prefer strong authority figures keeping the world in order for you because you are unable to do it yourself. There is no "they" that either care or don't care for this country and its people, becase the government is made up of thousands upon thousands of people with different ideas and goals, some of them good, and some of them very sinister. Stop laying your parental fantasies on top of the government, because others like myself prefer not to have these nannies looking over our shoulders, especially when some of them have already proven to be homicidal.
BTW, what happened to Slashdot's tagging system? Most of the stories don't have tags anymore, and the ones that do add no extra information - they are simply repeats of the words in the title, or non-words such as "fud, duh, wow", or worthless words such as "no, yes, maybe". Look at every story today and you'll see.
As someone who's worked as a quality engineer for years, a good QA engineer gets paid something close to a good software engineer. I currently work as a software engineer, and I can honestly say that in some ways testing software is much more difficult than writing it. With the amount of money the Mozilla foundation brings in, putting aside a microscopic $50 as a prize for quality assurance is a bit of a joke. How about something a little more meaty guys?
I don't know if they could do this without inking the deal, but quite often the majority of news stories in a single entry on Google News are copies of the same AP news wire article. Perhaps this will give Google an opportunity to mark articles as the same, or somehow reduce clutter.
When you take the cost of living and consider the net pay adjusted for that cost, places like Montgomery, Ala., Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Fort Smith, Ark.
How about China? Cost of living is extremely low here in Beijing, but it's fun as hell, unlike some of these outback joints. Furthermore, I'm making an American salary by doing contracts remotely. My work has nothing to do with China, but I know plenty of Americans who came here to study chinese, but then got a job at Microsoft or some other local American tech company at either a Chinese or American salary, depending on the position.
LS
What's even the need for anecdotal evidence? Just take off your socks, curl your toes upward so that no part touches the ground, and walk around. It's not difficult, in fact it doesn't take much effort to walk absolutely normally.
LS
The pile of shards is also physically and chemically connected. It's just that the atomic forces are very weak, so they don't overcome the force of gravity when you pull on one piece. If that pile of shards was floating in the depths of space, and you pulled one piece outward at a mega-super-slow speed, 1 centimeter per decade or something, the atomic forces may keep the object together.
Also, if your measure of something being a "single item" is being able to move things with your hand, would the earth count as a single object? I could pick up a rock, and it doesn't pull the earth up with me....
LS
Yeah, and what's up with him mentioning Homeland Security in lowercase, as if it's already the fabric of our society, like the state department or some such. creepy...
So what's the difference between the example that Linus gives, and DRM? The purpose. In his example, the company wants to restrict users from running software that has not been approved by the company. This sounds a lot like some Microsoft initiatives put forward during the early Vista days about only running signed software. This is supposedly to protect users from malicious software. DRM on the otherhand is about preventing users from using software and data that they have no rights to. The purposed are very different, but the mechanism is the same. This is similar to the government installing wiretaps in central phone switching offices. It can be used for good or bad... but given enough time, it will be used for the worse. I don't have anything against DRM in private software, but I tend to agree with banning it in the GPL.
LS
I get your point, but how does that relate to my comment? For example, would you compare some new mini-tractor from Catepillar with a Civic from 13 years ago? The new tractor might have a terrible design regardless of what you compare it to, but that's beside the point. The point of this article is to compare the two products, and the point of my comment is to note that the comparison is flawed.
LS
Why must a MMORPG be a single avatar per player? A player could control several characters, or a team, or a military, or a civiliation, or research lab, or a starship, or whatever. The players could be super-titanium robots, which would get rid of the gun problem. Or other alien races that developed different types of weapons. Or perhaps some real time strategy aspects could be pulled in, but on a larger scale. You'd then have a mechanism for balancing out extremely power technologies. I suppose you lose a bit of the immersion when you don't play at the single character level, but I could see a market for a more complex gaming mechanism that would suit a sci-fi universe.
LS
Furthermore "mecos" is Mexican slang for cum. I just wanted everyone to know that, so you can never again think about black holes and MECOs again without thinking about cum.
Should they be comparing the Newton with a minaturized desktop PC, or should they be comparing it with a Palm Pilot or Windows Mobile? It seems like the comparison is really between *cough* uhh apples and oranges. The Q1 device is clearly targeted at a market that wants power and functionality in a handheld, while Windows Mobile devices are aimed at efficient usability (or at least that's the goal). Anyway, this comparison is a non sequitur of sorts...
LS
Well, there are pocket PCs with those statistics, so it shouldn't be a problem. Might be expensive though. Anyway, weren't you talking about the iPod?
I've never played it, but my friend claims that Alpha Centauri made him cry. He played a peaceful civilization, and made it into space and beat the game. The beauty of the progression and flowering of the civilizatoin made him shed a tear.
LS
Did YOU read the article? The iPod's processor is not used. It is simply acting as a hard drive for the sleeve. The sleeve's processor is responsible for decoding the video.
LS