"US School zones are 24 hours? Wow, that's alien and strange to me... "
I dunno. I just know the section of road I was on was a 25 mph zone and it was next to a school. I wouldn't base all of America on my detail lacking post.
"The stickers that Microsoft used were rather slick on the top, I hear, and putting them on the curbs and sidewalks is like an invitation for hip-breaking."
No doubt about that. And if they did break somebody's hip you know MS'd be in rather big trouble.
Question: Weren't the 'stickers' more like mouse pads? They didn't really stick so much as they just didn't move very easily? Weren't they really easy to pick up?
Unfortunately, it was hard to tell that from TV. It didn't look like clean-up would have been a big deal as long as MS did it themseles instead of having the city waste taxpayer money to do it.
I do suspect, though, that there might have been concern over whether or not MS would retaliate. Imagine what an MS audit would bring up...
"Yeah - there's a lot of times where admitting you were wrong, publically apologizing, and cleaning up your mess is all that is needed. Propose that to the cop when you get pulled over..."
I have. I was pulled over once at 2am in the morning going 40 in a 25. The rest of the road was 40 mph, but this was next to a school. However, at 2am in the morning on a Saturday (Sunday?) there was no children. What I did was illegal, but for all intents and purposes it was harmless.
When the officer asked for my license I handed it to him and said "I'm sorry, I was going way too fast." That was it. I didn't even get a written warning. I imagine the officer was happy that I didn't try to give him a BS excuse to rationalize doing something illegal.
"But I think you'll need to concede my basic point, which is that it is impossible for you to have an antimatter burrito."
The technology to do that cannot be that far off. Today it's possible for the human body to convert a burrito from one state of matter into another. If the human body can turn a solid into a gas, then it's possible to have an anti-matter burrito one day.
"In a DS9 novel, they talk about transferring antimatter between holding tanks by using tightly confined magnetic field beams and piping the antimatter through their magnetic pipes from one place to the other."
Isn't that sort of how plasma is handled today?
I think the holy grail technology will be a forcefieled that is powered by the anti-matter that it contains. As long as it's not powered by an external field, it should be safe. (That is provided the field itself is generated by components that don't wear down easily.)
Okay, maybe that suggestion wasn't that helpful heh.
I think a better example would be "it's impossible to build a space station capable for the average person to spend a month on." They know what they need to do to contain anti-matter just as well as they know how to make a livable space station, unforunately there are a lot of components to it that need to be well thought out and tested before faith can be put into it.
"...but the cost needs to be taken down by something like nine orders of magnitude"
I know that's an issue, but I'm not convinced that's the biggest issue. The biggest issue is safety. Anti-matter is hard to contain. Imagine if gasoline violent explodeded when exposed to air. Nobody'd wanna put that into their cars.
However, if Anti-matter were capable of powering ships capable of say... travelling to one of Mars or Jupiter's moons for the sake of bringing back large quantities of valuable minerals, then you'd find a great deal of effort going into anti-matter generation.
When safety goes up and demand goes up, the price will magically fall as a bunch of places jump on board to start extracting it. (or converting a better word? I can't remember how anti-matter is generated.)
"...and build my own Beo^H^H^HCLIC cluster out of crappy Pentium II's and do something stupid like calculate PI to a googol digits, even though my power bill will probably be insane."
Heh. If anybody calls you a dork, it's cos you earned it!
I have a cell phone, I think it's because of that I don't get telemarketing calls. I bet they'll change that one day, though. Fine with me. If I get a call that the caller ID doesn't show up on, it goes to voicemail. If the floodgates open and telemarketers start pestering me, what's gonna happen is I'm going to change my voicemail to say "unsolicited calls unwelcome". That should deter them. Of course, reality may be a different story.
Hrmm. I wish there was a service that was kind of like voicemail, except it only plays back a message. "Hi, thanks for calling. I don't want to speak with you. If what you have to say is urgent, email me at this address..."
That'd be worth a few bucks a month to me. Nice thing is: no ringing phones, no voicemail to check.
"I have no more sympathy left for any of the dot-com ass holes. They are the reason the economy is on it's knees right now... and some people still manage to find pride in it."
Actually, I think it was all the people who believed in the '3.) ???? 4.) Profit!!' business model and invested in it that caused the economic slowdown.
a.) it's overblown b.) There's LOTS of corps out there c.) It's just a recent fad. Though it may have reprecussions on us all.
I think it's a good thing, really. Just about any business is doing something at least a little shady. Now that there is media-enhanced awareness of it, then it lights a fire under everybody else to keep their noses clean.
"Turn on the news, and all you see is the Enrons, Microsofts, and all these other coopertions who do everything they can to screw the consumer and their employees to make an extra penny."
Yeah, cos you know how stories about businesses who operate legally keep people glued to their sets.
This post was brought to you by Ford. Thick like a rock!
I skimmed the comments so far and it seems like some people don't have a very high opinion of PHP. It's one thing to feel like something is better, but to despise it baffles me.
I do programming in PHP and have found it not only to be useful, but quite an upgrade over ASP. Is there something inherently bad about PHP that should make me shy away from it, or is it more of a religious debate?
"In any regard the argument still stands that present software can not reprogram itself to take advantage of the P4's extensions. It was smart of AMD to have a stronger floating point unit, when Intel decided it wanted to go technically superior in chip design."
Oh I definitely agree with that. AMD made a wise move, and if they can make their 64-bit processors realistic then they'll always be a pain in Intel's side. Good for everybody.:)
"Well, that's certainly a pretty low denominator! But let me ask you this. If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you set the speed limit at 30 mph, to ensure that those who choose to drive around in Model T's can keep up with traffic?"
Arrrgh I'm sick of people arguing with metaphors! Feels like I'm watching an old episode of Star Trek!
There are reasons to not rely 100% on the imagery of your site. For example: I went on a business trip, the modem connection was awful. I turned off images in Opera so that I could browse the web in a reasonable amount of time. The reason why that works is because most of the sites I went to had documented what each of the images are.
It's a matter of accessibility, not speed. If you support blind people, for example, then your website doesn't suddely slow down to 30mph as your poorly chosen metaphor suggests.
These debates are funny. I watched a debate vs. Luke Skywalker and Captain Picard one day, I think it was over at spacebattles.com. They all had fun talking about how poor Mr. Picard'd get his butt kicked without even laying a finger on Mr. Skywalker. Then somebody chimed in with a devastating blow: "I'd like to see how long Luke Skywalker can fend off a continual fire phaser with his lightsaber."
"The true fact in the matter is that intel are going to rely almost entirely on the marketability of a big number with the P4, as it's handling is rather unimpressive when compared to such ordinary designs as those from AMD, which clock poorly, yet crunch happily."
Intel changed their architecture, they didn't just crank up the numbers. Now they're working with developers to take better use of it.
Case in point: Lightwave 7.5. 3D rendering app, needs to render as fast as possible. I did a benchmark yesterday comparing LW on an Athlon machine and a P4 machine. Guess what? MHZ to MHZ, the Athlon was maybe 1 or 2% faster than the P4. (And no, I was going by the actual mhz rating on the processor, not the inflated marketing number)
Intel worked with Newtek to P4 optimize LW. Seeing as how the Intel chips are the fastest on the market right now (mhz wise), wouldn't that imply that there's something to the P4 architecture?
In any event, if AMD has a trick up their sleeve, now'd be a good time to pull it. They're not so interesting in my eyes these days.
Slashdot Mirror
" Plus it seems like a lot of the ambience was stolen from Star Wars (Tatooine anyone?)."
Yeah, cos you know how much variety desert evironments have.
"US School zones are 24 hours? Wow, that's alien and strange to me... "
I dunno. I just know the section of road I was on was a 25 mph zone and it was next to a school. I wouldn't base all of America on my detail lacking post.
"The stickers that Microsoft used were rather slick on the top, I hear, and putting them on the curbs and sidewalks is like an invitation for hip-breaking."
No doubt about that. And if they did break somebody's hip you know MS'd be in rather big trouble.
Question: Weren't the 'stickers' more like mouse pads? They didn't really stick so much as they just didn't move very easily? Weren't they really easy to pick up?
Unfortunately, it was hard to tell that from TV. It didn't look like clean-up would have been a big deal as long as MS did it themseles instead of having the city waste taxpayer money to do it.
I do suspect, though, that there might have been concern over whether or not MS would retaliate. Imagine what an MS audit would bring up...
"Yeah - there's a lot of times where admitting you were wrong, publically apologizing, and cleaning up your mess is all that is needed. Propose that to the cop when you get pulled over..."
I have. I was pulled over once at 2am in the morning going 40 in a 25. The rest of the road was 40 mph, but this was next to a school. However, at 2am in the morning on a Saturday (Sunday?) there was no children. What I did was illegal, but for all intents and purposes it was harmless.
When the officer asked for my license I handed it to him and said "I'm sorry, I was going way too fast." That was it. I didn't even get a written warning. I imagine the officer was happy that I didn't try to give him a BS excuse to rationalize doing something illegal.
"On a side note, most other companies probably would have been fined per ad, though somehow MS got off, pretty much scot-free."
They admitted wrong, publically apologized, and cleaned up their mess. That's how they got off 'scot-free'.
"But I think you'll need to concede my basic point, which is that it is impossible for you to have an antimatter burrito."
The technology to do that cannot be that far off. Today it's possible for the human body to convert a burrito from one state of matter into another. If the human body can turn a solid into a gas, then it's possible to have an anti-matter burrito one day.
"In a DS9 novel, they talk about transferring antimatter between holding tanks by using tightly confined magnetic field beams and piping the antimatter through their magnetic pipes from one place to the other."
Isn't that sort of how plasma is handled today?
I think the holy grail technology will be a forcefieled that is powered by the anti-matter that it contains. As long as it's not powered by an external field, it should be safe. (That is provided the field itself is generated by components that don't wear down easily.)
Okay, maybe that suggestion wasn't that helpful heh.
I think a better example would be "it's impossible to build a space station capable for the average person to spend a month on." They know what they need to do to contain anti-matter just as well as they know how to make a livable space station, unforunately there are a lot of components to it that need to be well thought out and tested before faith can be put into it.
"...but the cost needs to be taken down by something like nine orders of magnitude"
I know that's an issue, but I'm not convinced that's the biggest issue. The biggest issue is safety. Anti-matter is hard to contain. Imagine if gasoline violent explodeded when exposed to air. Nobody'd wanna put that into their cars.
However, if Anti-matter were capable of powering ships capable of say... travelling to one of Mars or Jupiter's moons for the sake of bringing back large quantities of valuable minerals, then you'd find a great deal of effort going into anti-matter generation.
When safety goes up and demand goes up, the price will magically fall as a bunch of places jump on board to start extracting it. (or converting a better word? I can't remember how anti-matter is generated.)
"That is quite possibly the most circuitous way I have ever seen someone admit that something is impossible. Fascinating."
Sorry Mr. Spock, think you missed the point of what he was saying.
"The real hub is the storage," Howe says. "There's a lot of technology between here and there."
What he means is that it's not as simple as a gas tank.
"...and build my own Beo^H^H^HCLIC cluster out of crappy Pentium II's and do something stupid like calculate PI to a googol digits, even though my power bill will probably be insane."
:)
Heh. If anybody calls you a dork, it's cos you earned it!
I have a cell phone, I think it's because of that I don't get telemarketing calls. I bet they'll change that one day, though. Fine with me. If I get a call that the caller ID doesn't show up on, it goes to voicemail. If the floodgates open and telemarketers start pestering me, what's gonna happen is I'm going to change my voicemail to say "unsolicited calls unwelcome". That should deter them. Of course, reality may be a different story.
Hrmm. I wish there was a service that was kind of like voicemail, except it only plays back a message. "Hi, thanks for calling. I don't want to speak with you. If what you have to say is urgent, email me at this address..."
That'd be worth a few bucks a month to me. Nice thing is: no ringing phones, no voicemail to check.
"I have no more sympathy left for any of the dot-com ass holes. They are the reason the economy is on it's knees right now... and some people still manage to find pride in it."
Actually, I think it was all the people who believed in the '3.) ???? 4.) Profit!!' business model and invested in it that caused the economic slowdown.
Heh I wouldn't get worried about it.
a.) it's overblown
b.) There's LOTS of corps out there
c.) It's just a recent fad. Though it may have reprecussions on us all.
I think it's a good thing, really. Just about any business is doing something at least a little shady. Now that there is media-enhanced awareness of it, then it lights a fire under everybody else to keep their noses clean.
"Nintendo has only loved the pocketbooks of their users, nothing more."
Yeah, you can tell that by their strategy of making kick ass games.
"Turn on the news, and all you see is the Enrons, Microsofts, and all these other coopertions who do everything they can to screw the consumer and their employees to make an extra penny."
Yeah, cos you know how stories about businesses who operate legally keep people glued to their sets.
This post was brought to you by Ford. Thick like a rock!
Is that what happens when you register stuff? If I had known that I wouldn't have made a 'frrpbpb' noise and tossed all those cards away!
I skimmed the comments so far and it seems like some people don't have a very high opinion of PHP. It's one thing to feel like something is better, but to despise it baffles me.
I do programming in PHP and have found it not only to be useful, but quite an upgrade over ASP. Is there something inherently bad about PHP that should make me shy away from it, or is it more of a religious debate?
'At last, I can be gay over the Internet.'
Might have more fun that way. I doubt women will flock towards this. Heh.
"In any regard the argument still stands that present software can not reprogram itself to take advantage of the P4's extensions. It was smart of AMD to have a stronger floating point unit, when Intel decided it wanted to go technically superior in chip design."
:)
Oh I definitely agree with that. AMD made a wise move, and if they can make their 64-bit processors realistic then they'll always be a pain in Intel's side. Good for everybody.
"Well, that's certainly a pretty low denominator! But let me ask you this. If you were commissioned to design a new 8-lane, divided highway, would you set the speed limit at 30 mph, to ensure that those who choose to drive around in Model T's can keep up with traffic?"
Arrrgh I'm sick of people arguing with metaphors! Feels like I'm watching an old episode of Star Trek!
There are reasons to not rely 100% on the imagery of your site. For example: I went on a business trip, the modem connection was awful. I turned off images in Opera so that I could browse the web in a reasonable amount of time. The reason why that works is because most of the sites I went to had documented what each of the images are.
It's a matter of accessibility, not speed. If you support blind people, for example, then your website doesn't suddely slow down to 30mph as your poorly chosen metaphor suggests.
"... and they were both motivated to win(Robin dies if Batman loses Lois dies if Superman loses)."
Would I be correct in assuming that most people feel (on a subconscience level) that Batman and Robin have an.. um... not entirely legal relationship?
I mean... comparing Lois Lane to Robin.. heh.
Musical villains? heh.
These debates are funny. I watched a debate vs. Luke Skywalker and Captain Picard one day, I think it was over at spacebattles.com. They all had fun talking about how poor Mr. Picard'd get his butt kicked without even laying a finger on Mr. Skywalker. Then somebody chimed in with a devastating blow: "I'd like to see how long Luke Skywalker can fend off a continual fire phaser with his lightsaber."
"The true fact in the matter is that intel are going to rely almost entirely on the marketability of a big number with the P4, as it's handling is rather unimpressive when compared to such ordinary designs as those from AMD, which clock poorly, yet crunch happily."
Intel changed their architecture, they didn't just crank up the numbers. Now they're working with developers to take better use of it.
Case in point: Lightwave 7.5. 3D rendering app, needs to render as fast as possible. I did a benchmark yesterday comparing LW on an Athlon machine and a P4 machine. Guess what? MHZ to MHZ, the Athlon was maybe 1 or 2% faster than the P4. (And no, I was going by the actual mhz rating on the processor, not the inflated marketing number)
Intel worked with Newtek to P4 optimize LW. Seeing as how the Intel chips are the fastest on the market right now (mhz wise), wouldn't that imply that there's something to the P4 architecture?
In any event, if AMD has a trick up their sleeve, now'd be a good time to pull it. They're not so interesting in my eyes these days.
"And 'hz' doesn't imply as Hertz (Hz does) and it might mean horzogs. And maybe 3.06 milli horzgos is same as 3.06 mega hertz."
Boy I bet you guys were a riot at the B5 vs. DS9 debates. Heh.