I have always believed that pedestrian crossings are one of the biggest causes of traffic slow-downs.
For example:
One person presses the button at a pedestrian crossing and the lights go amber; the lights go red. It's the start of rush hour. 30 cars back up behind the lights on either side. The lights go green and the traffic resumes. Someone else presses the button at the crossing and the lights go amber; the lights go red. 10 of the 30 cars from before are now stuck behind the lights, plus another 30 cars. There are now 40 cars behind the crossing. This continues all the way through rush-hour(s). Eventually there are 100 cars backed up from the lights and a lot of people who will be late for work. Hundreds of people are late for work costing the local economy thousands of $s because several people wanted to cross a road.
Would it not be easier to pay those people not to cross the road?! Obviously, that's a silly idea. However, an alternative crossing - a bridge, a subway - could be placed there instead of the lights. Yes, a large initial cost, but in the long run those thousands of $s lost every day - because of several people crossing a road - would be avoided.
I know that what I have stated above is a very simplified version of the truth. In reality there are many many crossings, and a lot more money is lost due to the inefficient transportation system(s).
I find it highly amusing that the only place I could find clips for this new movie was on WindowsMedia.com!
"Created using Linux, advertised by Microsoft."
Re:You don't need that fast of a computer?
on
P4 3.2GHz Reviews
·
· Score: 1
...that their 3Ghz processors aren't fast enough
!! Damn HTML !!
(this finishes off my last post if you're wondering)
Re:You don't need that fast of a computer?
on
P4 3.2GHz Reviews
·
· Score: 1
I have to agree with you here. There are always good reasons for upgrading the CPU to one with a higher clock speed. It, of course, depends on what you are going to use the CPU for.
I personally encode every new CD I purchase into mp3 for the collection on my second hard drive. This is a CPU intensive task where every clock cycle counts - a faster processor does a good job of shaving seconds off the time it takes to encode an album
Video encoding hasn't really hit the mainstream yet but I bet it'll be on the way, and for this we'll need faster processors again. When video encoding hits the mainstream everyone will realise that their
As I understand it the majority of Hydroelectric dams are considered to be very damaging to the environment (not so much as coal/gas/nuclear plants, but still bad).
So here's my question, if every rooftop in China were covered by Solar Panels, (a) how much energy would this create and (b) would it cost as much? (or as much per MegaWatt of electricity?)
If you want to simulate something completely, Your computer hase to be bigger than what you want to simulate. Because somewhere you have to store all the information, and you'll need exactly as much quantums to store the information about them as you simulate. Conclusion: we won't be able to even simulate the earth.
Maybe a type of compression will be applied where only moving quantums are accounted for at a particular moment in time? Much like how video compression works.
Even if we cannot simulate the entire world it is very possible that we could simulate entire towns/cities non-stop for the minds of those enslaved/inside. When residents of these simulated cities leave for the countryside, various rules would be there regarding the part of the planet they were in at that time. The computer would step in and generate a scene on the fly to keep the traveller happy and unaware of the simulation taking place before his/her eyes. Of course only the things that the traveller could see up to the horizon would need to be generated visually thus reducing the computer load.
I believe that with various optimisations such as these the whole world could be simulated, albeit not very accurately - but how often do you check whether there is X amount of Polar Bears in Antarctica or Y amount of Penguins? My point being that the only simulation required is that to mislead/satisfy the minds of those involved.
A human mind cannot take in everything at once and thus it would be silly to bombard it with too much stimuli.
Re:Oh great it's a virus installer
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
·
· Score: 1
LOL
I don't know if you have used the feature yet but when you click the 'launch file' button a dialog pops up to warn you that this is an executable file and may be "dangerous"... There is of course an option to 'not show me this dialog again' but why would you want to select that?!
In my opinion this option is a useful feature because I often download executables and want to launch there and then instead of performing a couple of clicks too many and going into explorer. So don't give the Mozilla developers a hard time. I think the majority of Mozilla users would want a feature like this.
I haven't checked but I'd imagine this feature can be disabled through either the preferences or the 'about:config' options if you wanted. Anyone?
Re:I'm a Mozilla user, but...
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I submitted almost exactly the same story yesterday and it was rejected (I'm not jealous, honest). I guessed this was because it is only a release candidate and slashdot would rather publish full version and beta releases...
I have to agree with you there that the best way to improve gaming skills (and possibly hand-eye co-ordination skills) is to increase the pace of games you play regularly to try and get more and more out of your abilities.
I cannot remember specifically which games I used to increase the speed settings in but I believe that when playing many racing games I always went for the fastest cars (but maybe that was because I wanted to win). Once I got bored with 'ordinary' racing I went on to faster race sims such as F-Zero, Wipeout, Extreme G racing etc.
Whenever I buy game genres which I am familiar with I always pick the ones which will chuck the sensory info fastest at me. This helps keep me focused and when I go round a friend's house to race them at 'ordinary speeds' in 'ordinary cars' using an 'ordinary race game' I nearly always win because the game seems so slow - it becomes very easy to react to the corners and other vehicles/objects on the track. Meanwhile my mates seem to react about a half-a-second too late for similar things.
I seriously believe in pushing yourself to the limit when gaming. It is no different to athletes trying to achieve the fastest 100 metre sprint or Formula 1 drivers (along with the engineers) trying to pump as much performance out of their cars as possible.
From what I can see everything is heading toward one device - the PC. The PC of the future, as many of us know, will be compact enough to put on a table top (or under your TV) and will be a compliment to your lounge/living room as it may be well designed and stylish.
So, what's going to come through this little wonder? Well pretty much everything. People will have wireless digital phones which connect to this 'base unit' via bluetooth or other wireless tech. All this telephone traffic will travel across a VoIP system and additional features will most probably be video links through built-in cams and possibly a text message feature to send info such as telephone numbers or addresses through on-the-fly without having to talk it out loud on the phone.
Also coming down the high speed net links will be television on demand. No more arial/satellite systems, just pure internet provided media. It could be argued that radio is very much internet based already - I for one have no arial set up for FM signals.
The international network coupled with a micro-PC in every home is the way of the future. Faster internet backbones will provide a media-rich lifestyle.
Finally Europe is beginning to stand up in the face of the USA. America may see the Galileo system as a competitor to it's own GPS. At the end of the day though why should the USA run everything in the world? The USA is 'one country' yet it's sticks it's fingers into as many other countries/regions as possible, interfering here, interfering there. But to be quite honest what Europe wants to do in/above it's own territory is nothing to do with the American government.
I didn't have a problem with the war in Iraq; I felt this was quite necessary to stablise the world situation.
America likes being in ultimate control of a situation. When Russia were racing to beat the USA to space/the moon the USA absolutely hated it. Well America is going to have to get used to sharing a bit of power in the coming decades. No doubt it will not be long before China/Japan/Asia install it's own satellite positioning system too.
Gradually both Europe and Asia are degrading America's 'market share' of world power and the American's are getting itchy trigger fingers. Be prepared for some harsh words between the two continents of N.America, Europe, and Asia.
The same could be done with worms
on
Ant Farm PC
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
A similar case mod could be achieved using mixed layers of soil and worms. Patterns are traced by the worms as the travel through the alternating colour soils. I'd be more inclined to have worms in my house than ants as well.
Life as a whole is a quest for speed and efficiency really. It can be seen in almost any aspect of life.
For example; Reading has people that want to read faster - speed readers. Offices have people who want you to work efficiently - managers. Parcel companies try to squeeze out every second for faster delivery times (even though the customer might not realise!). Lift manufacturers try and push the limit as far as how fast a lift can go whilst still being comfortable for the people in it, how fast the doors can close, and also giving the lifts intelligence (with microchips) that allow them to 'know when they are full' so they can skip a floor.
All in all, things are getting faster - everywhere.
A good book that summarises this is "Faster - James Gleick", which I give 5 stars.
They knocked 39.39% of weight off of that car, how impressive! It makes you realise how much un-necessary weight there is in a car...
I always make the effort to remove CDs from the glove box, keep the rubbish out the back, and keep the boot empty... I take the parcel shelf off also. I reckon over the next 40 years of my life I will save a few litres of petrol, but it all counts... and I'll go *so* much faster getting to work.
Seriously though, I wonder how much the limit could really be pushed with making cars lighter (without making them look silly like this Nissan).
Two obvious choices for future cars are: - Aluminum body. - Carbon Fibre bits.
Anyone else think of some other obvious weight saving stuff (without chopping the car to pieces)?
This can be done but it is a but fiddly. You have to highlight the image (click and drag the mouse across an image), then press Ctrl-C (or Edit > Copy)... the image is now in the clipboard...
It works for me anyway;-)
I also think it is quite a bad feature in both IE and Mozilla because the image goes all fuzzy around the edges on a resize.
The resize method only uses a very basic 'pixel resize' method which leads to the jaggy edges.
More advanced image resizing tools are around. "Bilinear resample" and "Bicubic resample" being two of them. If only Mozilla could implement better looking image resizing - that would be another "one up" on IE6... QUICK, SOMEONE RAISE A BUG!
If you have discovered something that is so very earth-changing, then use a bit of judgement. If it will all be ok then let everyone know about it straight away. If it is really going to mess everything up and will destroy all life on earth then it is probably best that you take it with you to your grave.
Basically, it is a case of 'now or never'.
Alternatively, toss a coin and let the wonderful unit of currency make the decision for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I have always believed that pedestrian crossings are one of the biggest causes of traffic slow-downs.
For example:
One person presses the button at a pedestrian crossing and the lights go amber; the lights go red. It's the start of rush hour. 30 cars back up behind the lights on either side. The lights go green and the traffic resumes. Someone else presses the button at the crossing and the lights go amber; the lights go red. 10 of the 30 cars from before are now stuck behind the lights, plus another 30 cars. There are now 40 cars behind the crossing. This continues all the way through rush-hour(s). Eventually there are 100 cars backed up from the lights and a lot of people who will be late for work. Hundreds of people are late for work costing the local economy thousands of $s because several people wanted to cross a road.
Would it not be easier to pay those people not to cross the road?! Obviously, that's a silly idea. However, an alternative crossing - a bridge, a subway - could be placed there instead of the lights. Yes, a large initial cost, but in the long run those thousands of $s lost every day - because of several people crossing a road - would be avoided.
I know that what I have stated above is a very simplified version of the truth. In reality there are many many crossings, and a lot more money is lost due to the inefficient transportation system(s).
That isn't correct. Microsoft used Tony Blair to help promote the launch of Office XP -not Windows XP. This was reported at ZDNet News.
That link again (clickable and working):
Two Kernel Monte (Linux loading Linux on x86)I would have to agree with you on that one. I would really use Composer a lot more if colour-coding was implemented.
Well, there is the Official Sinbad site, and seen as no one else has posted a link to that I thought I should
I find it highly amusing that the only place I could find clips for this new movie was on WindowsMedia.com!
"Created using Linux, advertised by Microsoft."
...that their 3Ghz processors aren't fast enough
!! Damn HTML !!
(this finishes off my last post if you're wondering)
I have to agree with you here. There are always good reasons for upgrading the CPU to one with a higher clock speed. It, of course, depends on what you are going to use the CPU for.
I personally encode every new CD I purchase into mp3 for the collection on my second hard drive. This is a CPU intensive task where every clock cycle counts - a faster processor does a good job of shaving seconds off the time it takes to encode an album
Video encoding hasn't really hit the mainstream yet but I bet it'll be on the way, and for this we'll need faster processors again. When video encoding hits the mainstream everyone will realise that their
As I understand it the majority of Hydroelectric dams are considered to be very damaging to the environment (not so much as coal/gas/nuclear plants, but still bad).
So here's my question, if every rooftop in China were covered by Solar Panels, (a) how much energy would this create and (b) would it cost as much? (or as much per MegaWatt of electricity?)
If you want to simulate something completely, Your computer hase to be bigger than what you want to simulate. Because somewhere you have to store all the information, and you'll need exactly as much quantums to store the information about them as you simulate. Conclusion: we won't be able to even simulate the earth.
Maybe a type of compression will be applied where only moving quantums are accounted for at a particular moment in time? Much like how video compression works.
Even if we cannot simulate the entire world it is very possible that we could simulate entire towns/cities non-stop for the minds of those enslaved/inside. When residents of these simulated cities leave for the countryside, various rules would be there regarding the part of the planet they were in at that time. The computer would step in and generate a scene on the fly to keep the traveller happy and unaware of the simulation taking place before his/her eyes. Of course only the things that the traveller could see up to the horizon would need to be generated visually thus reducing the computer load.
I believe that with various optimisations such as these the whole world could be simulated, albeit not very accurately - but how often do you check whether there is X amount of Polar Bears in Antarctica or Y amount of Penguins? My point being that the only simulation required is that to mislead/satisfy the minds of those involved.
A human mind cannot take in everything at once and thus it would be silly to bombard it with too much stimuli.
LOL
I don't know if you have used the feature yet but when you click the 'launch file' button a dialog pops up to warn you that this is an executable file and may be "dangerous"... There is of course an option to 'not show me this dialog again' but why would you want to select that?!
In my opinion this option is a useful feature because I often download executables and want to launch there and then instead of performing a couple of clicks too many and going into explorer. So don't give the Mozilla developers a hard time. I think the majority of Mozilla users would want a feature like this.
I haven't checked but I'd imagine this feature can be disabled through either the preferences or the 'about:config' options if you wanted. Anyone?
Yeah, I submitted almost exactly the same story yesterday and it was rejected (I'm not jealous, honest). I guessed this was because it is only a release candidate and slashdot would rather publish full version and beta releases...
Ah well... obviously not
I have to agree with you there that the best way to improve gaming skills (and possibly hand-eye co-ordination skills) is to increase the pace of games you play regularly to try and get more and more out of your abilities.
I cannot remember specifically which games I used to increase the speed settings in but I believe that when playing many racing games I always went for the fastest cars (but maybe that was because I wanted to win). Once I got bored with 'ordinary' racing I went on to faster race sims such as F-Zero, Wipeout, Extreme G racing etc.
Whenever I buy game genres which I am familiar with I always pick the ones which will chuck the sensory info fastest at me. This helps keep me focused and when I go round a friend's house to race them at 'ordinary speeds' in 'ordinary cars' using an 'ordinary race game' I nearly always win because the game seems so slow - it becomes very easy to react to the corners and other vehicles/objects on the track. Meanwhile my mates seem to react about a half-a-second too late for similar things.
I seriously believe in pushing yourself to the limit when gaming. It is no different to athletes trying to achieve the fastest 100 metre sprint or Formula 1 drivers (along with the engineers) trying to pump as much performance out of their cars as possible.
From what I can see everything is heading toward one device - the PC. The PC of the future, as many of us know, will be compact enough to put on a table top (or under your TV) and will be a compliment to your lounge/living room as it may be well designed and stylish.
So, what's going to come through this little wonder? Well pretty much everything. People will have wireless digital phones which connect to this 'base unit' via bluetooth or other wireless tech. All this telephone traffic will travel across a VoIP system and additional features will most probably be video links through built-in cams and possibly a text message feature to send info such as telephone numbers or addresses through on-the-fly without having to talk it out loud on the phone.
Also coming down the high speed net links will be television on demand. No more arial/satellite systems, just pure internet provided media. It could be argued that radio is very much internet based already - I for one have no arial set up for FM signals.
The international network coupled with a micro-PC in every home is the way of the future. Faster internet backbones will provide a media-rich lifestyle.
Correction!
...should read as:
:-)
This:
Be prepared for some harsh words between the two continents of N.America, Europe, and Asia.
Be prepared for some harsh words between the continents of N.America, Europe, and Asia.
Finally Europe is beginning to stand up in the face of the USA. America may see the Galileo system as a competitor to it's own GPS. At the end of the day though why should the USA run everything in the world? The USA is 'one country' yet it's sticks it's fingers into as many other countries/regions as possible, interfering here, interfering there. But to be quite honest what Europe wants to do in/above it's own territory is nothing to do with the American government.
I didn't have a problem with the war in Iraq; I felt this was quite necessary to stablise the world situation.
America likes being in ultimate control of a situation. When Russia were racing to beat the USA to space/the moon the USA absolutely hated it. Well America is going to have to get used to sharing a bit of power in the coming decades. No doubt it will not be long before China/Japan/Asia install it's own satellite positioning system too.
Gradually both Europe and Asia are degrading America's 'market share' of world power and the American's are getting itchy trigger fingers. Be prepared for some harsh words between the two continents of N.America, Europe, and Asia.
A similar case mod could be achieved using mixed layers of soil and worms. Patterns are traced by the worms as the travel through the alternating colour soils. I'd be more inclined to have worms in my house than ants as well.
Thanks for the link to alltheweb. I think that it is actually quite good. Feels very similar to Google and I guess that's what they intended.
I have thought this myself as well. Good shout.
Life as a whole is a quest for speed and efficiency really. It can be seen in almost any aspect of life.
For example;
Reading has people that want to read faster - speed readers.
Offices have people who want you to work efficiently - managers.
Parcel companies try to squeeze out every second for faster delivery times (even though the customer might not realise!).
Lift manufacturers try and push the limit as far as how fast a lift can go whilst still being comfortable for the people in it, how fast the doors can close, and also giving the lifts intelligence (with microchips) that allow them to 'know when they are full' so they can skip a floor.
All in all, things are getting faster - everywhere.
A good book that summarises this is "Faster - James Gleick", which I give 5 stars.
Metz
They knocked 39.39% of weight off of that car, how impressive! It makes you realise how much un-necessary weight there is in a car...
I always make the effort to remove CDs from the glove box, keep the rubbish out the back, and keep the boot empty... I take the parcel shelf off also. I reckon over the next 40 years of my life I will save a few litres of petrol, but it all counts... and I'll go *so* much faster getting to work.
Seriously though, I wonder how much the limit could really be pushed with making cars lighter (without making them look silly like this Nissan).
Two obvious choices for future cars are:
- Aluminum body.
- Carbon Fibre bits.
Anyone else think of some other obvious weight saving stuff (without chopping the car to pieces)?
This can be done but it is a but fiddly. You have to highlight the image (click and drag the mouse across an image), then press Ctrl-C (or Edit > Copy)... the image is now in the clipboard... It works for me anyway ;-)
An excellent new feature has been added. The ability to drag and drop bookmarks using the menu only. No longer do I have to go into Bookmark Manager!
:-)
Still can't right-click the items in the bookmarks menu, but hey maybe in a future release.
Very good work IMHO.
I also think it is quite a bad feature in both IE and Mozilla because the image goes all fuzzy around the edges on a resize. The resize method only uses a very basic 'pixel resize' method which leads to the jaggy edges. More advanced image resizing tools are around. "Bilinear resample" and "Bicubic resample" being two of them. If only Mozilla could implement better looking image resizing - that would be another "one up" on IE6... QUICK, SOMEONE RAISE A BUG!
Yes, recycling is very important. I try and recycle as much as possible...
If you have discovered something that is so very earth-changing, then use a bit of judgement. If it will all be ok then let everyone know about it straight away. If it is really going to mess everything up and will destroy all life on earth then it is probably best that you take it with you to your grave.
Basically, it is a case of 'now or never'.
Alternatively, toss a coin and let the wonderful unit of currency make the decision for you.