In fact, if you actually trace out the orbital paths, the moon does not "revolve" around the Earth. What actually happens is it is sometimes further from the sun and sometimes nearer, and it sometimes leads and sometimes lags the earth in orbit. This gives the appearance, from earth, of revolution, but from the point of view of an observer on a line perpendicular to the plane of the Ecliptic, it just looks like a wobble.
The point that the Moon's wobble revolves around is always within the sphere of the Earth. As such, the Moon orbits the Earth. As such, it's Earth's moon.
I read the article too- if I recall correctly, he was stating that because of the fact (I can't verify this atm, maybe tomorrow) that the force exerted on the Moon by the Sun was greater than the force exerted on the Moon by the Earth, it would be more appropriate to say the Moon orbited the Sun, not the Earth, and as such couldn't be called one of Earth's moons.
However, the point of his argument was to put forth an interesting argument. Issac Asimov is an author by trade, not a scientist. (to say nothing of the fact he was very good at it)
We need to define what a "moon" is, and I would suggest a definition based around the relative gravitational forces on the body of sun and primary. The sun is about 300000 earth masses and is about 400 times as far from the moon as the earth is - so a rough calculation suggests that the sun-moon gravity is about twice that between the moon and the earth. On this basis, the moon seems to be a satellite of the sun rather than the earth, and the earth-moon system is a dual planet.
The standard practicing definition of a moon is something along the lines of "any hunk of matter which has enough gravity to form itself into a sphere and has a stable, relatively circular orbit around a planet." Issues with the definition as I stated it are A) it doesn't include Phobos and Deimos(sp?). This isn't much of a problem as IMHO they shouldn't be moons anyway, just large asteroids stuck orbiting a planet. B) It assumes you have a working definition of a planet. We're working on that.
This is because the moon is so massive and close to earth compared to all other planetary moons in the solar system.
It's because A) the Moon is so massive compared to the Earth. Several moons of Jupiter and Saturn are more massive than the Moon, and they do not exibit any of the properties stated above. B) the Moon is so far from the Earth. If the Moon was close to the Earth the Earth would exert a much greater force on it, eventually more than that of the Sun. Additionally, if the Moon was even farther away than it is now, the combined center of gravity of the Earth/Moon system would be outside Earth's surface, and what you stated in your post would be true. C) the Earth/Moon are so close to the Sun. Gravity decreases as per the square of the distance, and so the Sun exerts a far, far greater force on the Moon than the more massive moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
For the record, I don't think Pluto is a planet. Its physical characteristics are virtually identical to those of other Kuiper belt objects, it just happens to be bright enough to be noticed so long before the Kuiper belt was discovered that astronomers assumed it was a planet. The initial estimates of Pluto's size made it a far larger planet than we know it to be today- at least 3 times larger. Pluto was just initially assumed to be the ninth planet, and it's been that way ever since.
Not quite, brown dwarves have to be hot/dense enough to maintain fusion in their cores just like stars do. The difference between stars and brown dwarves is that brown dwarves are not hot enough on their surface to radiate visible light, and stars are. (brown dwarves would probably radiate a good chunk of low frequency light, infrared, microwave etc)
I may be wrong, but gas giants (like jupiter, saturn, neptune, etc) become brown dwarves at 10-13x Jupiter's mass, and the point at which they become full stars (well, red dwarves) is some unknown mass above that. Really- last I checked, the exact mass wasn't known.
So, to recap. Stars are objects massive enough to maintain nuclear fusion in their cores and are hot enough on their surface to radiate visible light. Brown dwarves are objects not as massive as stars, but massive enough to maintain fusion in their cores but aren't hot enough to radiate visible light. Planets are objects not as massive as brown dwarves, but are.... uhhhh.... hmm....
Explain to me how using an 'aggressively clocked' CPU will result in smashed fingers?
If you're like most gamers, and all you care about is having the best framerate possible, you're going to want the fastest possibly CPU. Or to use your analagy, a hammer that not only pounds in a finishing nail but crushes coal into diamonds as well. If you can afford the extra $30 for a quality powersupply and the extra $20 for a quality heatsink/fan, why not overclock your CPU into the realm of boiling water and frying eggs? Why get a beowulf cluster of Crusoe's when you can just get a P4 with a jet engine on top of it for half the price and complexity?
Why is there still no standard model for adding and removing apps? The number of competing models for package management alone is sickening.
Because there isn't a model for adding/removings apps that's both good and widespread. RPM's, the most common package management system, are god-awful.
Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?
Actually, they're not. You can run virtually any program in any WM, as long as you have the proper libraries installed.
But for people who are going to be managing many different systems, not all of which are going to be homogenous, this is insanely annoying.
People who run lots of servers choose the same distro for all of them. Period. Any sys-admin who runs multiple distro's simultaneously deserves all the annoyances.
We need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.
Frankly, who the hell are you, or anyone else, to choose which wm I use?
Furthormore, all standardisation attempts are strictly voluntary. Any other scheme is completely unenforcable, since the vast majority of linux is GPL'd, or has a similar license. All the standards body can do to 'enforce' their scheme is to write a nice note to the offending distro and ask them if they would please comply with their standards. No more.
Tritium gives off beta particles, I believe (either that or it's alpha particles).
Tritium is a proton and two neutrons. Alpha particles are two protons and two neutrons.
Whatever Tritium gives off, I hope it's not alpha particles. =)
Re:Reality vs. Silly stereotypes
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239 MPG Car
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· Score: 1
Yet again- in perpective. When you only use it twice a day to work and back, when are you gonna need more than an hours journey except for exceptional cases? In which case you HIRE something bigger....
I drive my car for more than 2 hours at a time very often. It can take 2 hours just to get from one side of Los Angeles to the other. (Yes, I'm serious.) My roommate visits his grandparents just about every weekend- 3 hours or so each way. The EV1 is wholly impractical as a means of transportation in the US. You have to understand that the average distances between towns in the US is vastly larger than in Europe. Commutes in LA, SF, and NY that are an hour and a half each way- or more- are not unheard of.
But it wasnt an economic venture on Fords part, it was somebady elses. They bought the EV1
They paid money for it? It's an economic venture.
And they did market it. I've seen a few advertisements, and there are recharge stations scattered about my town. It never caught on, because, well, it can't replace a real car.
Since Ford were part of the Coalition that blocked the Kyoto treaty, one would surmise that it is in their interests to keep the fuel co's happy.
There wasn't as much a coalition to block the treaty as much as there was a general understanding that the entire treaty was wildly unfair. Even many environmental groups opposed it.
And Ford doesn't answer to the gasoline companies- they'd be just as happy selling electric cars or hampster powered cars, if they were practical. As long as the cars people buy has "Ford" stamped on the front of it, Ford's happy. Ford shelved the EV1 because no one bought cars that had "EV1" written on the side of it- it was not competative.
Hills do not exactly obstruct tube systems. Number 1- London is not exactly flat, and number 2 - unless they are very iron rich and rocky mountains with extremely solid or volcanic foundations, then tunnelling right through is not impossible.
Being able to drill tubes is irrelevent. First, London is flat when you compare it to San Francisco. The hills there are as steep as 30-35 degrees. (watch the movie Bullit) The altitude difference between the lowest parts of the city and the highest parts of the city is something on the order of 1000 feet. Smooth rail systems will not climb up inclines that steep. You could dig tunnels and lay down track easily enough, but you'll be unable to drive a train in it. The bus system in San Francisco can't even go to the steeper parts of the city. The only system of transportation that does work is SF's celebrated cable cars, which is hugely expensive and only really exists as a tourist attraction.
Party A buys or leases a commodity from Party B. Party B charges a fee to Party C for just looking at (or listening to)the commodity purchased by Party A.
The fun part is, Party A never bought or leased the commodity in the first place. This applies to the radio in your car- you never paid for the music that gets played on it.
(semantics- Party C is charging Party A, not party C)
Soooooo, Party B leases a commodity to Party D. Party D gives said commodity, free of charge, to Party A. Party A gives commodity free of charge to party C. Party B charges Party A for showing said commodity to Party C.
Reality vs. Silly stereotypes
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239 MPG Car
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· Score: 1
Remember how Ford bought the EV1 and shelved it. Before people troll about how useless it was to have to leave it plugged in those eight hours a day you are sleeping and dont use it, or those eight hours a day you are working and dont use it - it might not be for everyone but for some of us it was a great alternative.
The EV1 could only drive an hour or so before having to be recharged. As a vehicle, it was useless. As an economic venture on Ford's part, it was even more useless. (Yes, believe it or not, Ford is in the business of making money.)
The American nation decided to ignore, abstain or even counteract many environmental treaties while the whole world - even China - signed them.
The Kyoto treaty (which I'm assuming you're referring to, because it's the only instance your rash generalization would be true) was ludiciously unfair to the US. The Senate voted against it unanimously- and there are at least a few staunch environmentalists in the Senate. No American environmentalist group who read the treaty and actually understood it supported it. The US voted against it not because we don't particularly care about the environment but because it basically amounted to economic sanctions against the US.
The British public have slightly better attitudes, and drive smaller cars which are slightly more fuel efficient. The germans have some excellent concerns.
People in Europe, as a whole, drive more fuel efficient cars not because they care about the environment but because fuel is far more expensive in Europe than in the US. There is also more pressure to drive smaller cars because the lanes in most of Europe, in my experience, are several feet narrower.
Public transport was much cleaner and safer than any I have seen with a notable security presence and much more efficient trains.
Again, the US is lagging behind not because of environmental friendliness, but because of practicality. Los Angeles is simply too large and too spread out, geographically, for a subway system to work. It's just not dense enough. It wouldn't work in San Francisco because of all the hills. San Francisco tried, with BART and MUNI but it just doesn't work effectively- as a result, people drive their cars. New York and Chicago tried, but they couldn't bury the trains and built mostly elevated trains instead of subways, which are loud and most of the local residents hate them as a result. Then there the whole issue of the American subway's image of being unsafe. (By unsafe I don't mean your train crashes, I mean you get on the train late one night and get mugged)
Basically, don't try to stereotype an American. It just doesn't work. Saying Americans don't care about the environment is like saying Europeans have are arrogant bastards who drive like lunatics and have bad teeth.
The main difference between them is that 99.5% of players in EverQuest don't give a crap if someone else is using ShowEQ. There isn't a huge and overwhelming advantage vs. other players if someone's using ShowEQ. (There is on PvP servers. However, no one plays on the PvP servers because Everquest's PvP system sucks. And it has nothing to do with cheaters.)
I used SEQ when I still played Everquest. All of my friends knew I used ShowEQ. My entire guild knew I used ShowEQ. About 2/3 of the people I got experience with knew I used ShowEQ. No one ever said to me, "Dude, that's fucked up. You're ruining the game for other people." Know why? Because I wasn't.
I hate cheaters in half-life and its mods, and in quake and it's sequels and mods, but that's because the act of cheating ruins other peoples' enjoyment of the game which is an enormous difference IMO.
It was amazing to watch people immediately start to whine when MS disabled modded X-Boxes from Live. Sure you can say there were "legitimate" reasons to mod the boxes, but come on.
iirc, the "Big Deal" wasn't that you couldn't use your modchip while playing on Live, it's that MS banned you for life if your X-Box had a modchip in it, even if it's not enabled while playing on Live. It also did not discriminate between legitimate uses of modchips (playing imports, linux on X-Box- though that's not really legitimate in MS's eyes.;)) and the ones who used it for cheating.
There is also the little issue about unscrupulous modders changing the codes on their X-Boxes and banning codes that could very well that of a customer with a non-modded box.
The people who made the thing know it, and aren't trying to install any on airliners. It's used mainly in ultralights, where catastrophic structural failures (ie, a wing (or two) falls off) are common enough for a system like this to be useful, and are light enough that a parachute the size of a few large city blocks wouldn't be required. The exceptionally low speed of ultralights is also very very helpful.
The only reason this case is special is that it's the first time it's been used successfully in anything other than an ultralight in a real emergency.
So yes, a system like this won't be used in airliners anytime in the near future. They probably won't even be used in the majority of civilian single engine airplanes. But they will be used in some, and will probably be present in a lot of ultralights.
Also, this system isn't intended to be used when an engine fails. (well, it would be useful if an engine failed immediately after takeoff- keep in mind it can be used effectively in as little as 300 feet of altitude) It's main intent is for when the plane is incapable of landing safely. In this case, it was because an aileron was stuck.
I've read on the alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia newsgroup that many high-end games still have trouble with the latest nVidia Detonator 40.72 driver (shrug).
Those are beta, fyi. Latest stable drivers are 30.something iirc.
But yeah, it's good to see ATI making steps in the right direction.
1) Put a cap on how many copies of itself a bot can make.
2) Add some sort of mechanism to the bots to only allow duplication when there are less than some number of bots in the surrounding area.
3) Only allow bots to reproduce when told to do so by Humans.
4) provide som sort of "master kill signal" (i.e. a specific radio frequency) that will cause all bots reciving it to cease functioning.
And do this how? Nanites aren't big enough for any type of counting/computing device to be embedded. Think of them as enzymes. They won't have eyes, they won't have ears, they won't be able to touch, smell, or taste. They're just chemicals designed to accomplish a task, and they do it.
Interesting corallary: Mad cow disease works the exact same way the 'grey goo' problem works. A protein in the brain turns other naturally occuring proteins into itself. Eventually, there are so many of these proteins in the way of everything, the brain ceases to function.
5) Any of several other ideas I didn't just think of in the past 2 min.
Step 6, Profit!
The only way I can think of to prevent grey goo is by never allowing a nanite to reproduce either itself, or another nanite that produces itself. Unfortunetally, humans tend to be pretty stupid, and eventually someone in the future may very well screw up. That's the real problem- intelligent, rational folks may make all the right decisions and put in all the right safeguards blah blah blah, but eventually, some dumbass will take a few shortcuts and unleash something he hadn't intended.
As soon as ATI gets stable, reliable, current, and unifed drivers, I'll consider buying an ATI card. Until then, I'll continue buying the best supported cards in the business. (ie, nvidia's)
What you should be asking yourself is: is it moral for you to go online, with your modchip, and screw over people who want to play online without dealing with cheaters? Is it? I don't think so.
Are there cheats for online games? If not, are there any being attempted?
The major opposition to mod chips, that I've seen is the belief that it fosters cheating. Is this a real concern or is it just supposition?
If there are cheats being used and circulated, then ban them. If not, having a DiVX and ogg/vorbis player for your TV sounds damned cool.
If this was something else - going to be polite and not mention it:) - you know what it would be like.
*cough*Emacs*cough* 21.2? Yeesh.
Better than the 2000th version of Windows though. =^D
I think they have succeeded well, even now when everyone is used to having all the graphical bells and whistles my Mom - who had never used email before, learned pine quicker than outlook (she never learnt to use it, actually).
Agreed... Pine is one of the most intuitive mail clients I've ever used. (Or at least, it was. I haven't used it in years)
If there were no proponents of closed source technology, (ie, a bunch of linux guru's sitting there saying "Hey, yeah, open source is better") it wouldn't be an objective view, now would it? The panel doesn't exist to automatically approve OSS, it's there to discuss the pro's and con's of OSS. Microsoft is there, for better or for worse, to make sure the con's get discussed.
I'm a major fan of open-source and all that, (using Gentoo as I type this) but there are still bad parts of OSS, like a lack of a really good Office clone, which is very important for businesses. It would be remiss for any organisation to choose OSS over MS based without looking at the (few) things they'll lose by chosing OSS.
People don't get satellite based internet service because it's better than DSL/cable- it's not. Like everyone has said, the latency is horrible. They get it because they live out in the boonies and don't have access to DSL or cable. Satellite based 'net is better than dial-up, which is often the only other option.
main problem with sending nuclear waste and nukes with rockets up to space is that rockets may explode on their way up and then half of the globe would be contaminated.
Not true. Getting the couple kilograms of plutonium in an average nuke spread across the earth's surface would hit the average human being with a lot less radiation than he's get ingesting the potassium in a banana. (No, not all potassium is radioactive. But enough of it is radioactive to start a geiger counter buzzing) In addition, the US and the USSR set off literally thousands of nuclear weapons tests during the cold war. One or two more won't hurt. At all.
FYI, most space probes sent to Mars and beyond are nuclear powered. Most earth-bound satellites are powered with solar panels, because they're cheaper, but as soon as you get too far from the sun for solar panels to be practical, it's all nuclear.
thats the real reason that we are still storing our nuclear waste on earth when it would be much better to launch it into the orbit. its same thing with weapons. think about the rage among other countries it would provoke if usa sent nukes/waste into the orbit and rocket exploded on its way up and contaminated most of the earth surface...
Actually, the reason we don't put nuclear weapons in space is that it costs about $10,000 per pound to put anything in space. It costs a fukton less money to dig a great big outhouse and put all our waste in it than it would to put even a tenth of the nuclear waste in the world into orbit. (putting all that waste into solar orbit would cost even more. Plunging it into the sun would cost even more than that.)
Radiation really isn't what it's all cracked up to be. All life on earth is radioactive. You've heard of carbon dating? Know how that works? The basic principle behind it is the fact that a percentage of any group of carbon atoms is radioactive. The whole "Radioactivity will kill j00" thing is mostly perpetuated by stupid people who can't tell the difference between a nuke landing on your head and the radioactivity we live with every few hundredths of a second of every day.
Errr, how exactly would Norten Utilities work in linux? You mean to scan your windows partition for viruses (virii?) or harddisk/partition errors in case windows won't boot up?
Doesn't the Norten Utilities CD do that when you boot off it? (you do own the CD right?)
* David wrote the first prototype in tcl, which was ready on Tue Dec 30 1997. This prototype served both as a demonstration of Dasher as a text-entry device, and as a teaching facility for explaining arithmetic coding.
So it's not exactly new. A friend of mine was messing around with it around 6 months or so.
One of the most interesting features about this is how it "guesses" what you're trying to write. Don't move your mouse, just let it sit there and "type" for you. If you've started typing the first few letters of a word, it will bring the rest of the word up, so it's easier to write.
Believe it or not, the thing actually quoted Shakespeare for me once. I wonder how long it would take to do my homework (correctly) for me...
It needs air containing oxygen coming in at mach 6-7 or whatever in order for the engine to ignite. It's a jet, not a rocket- it can't operate in a vacuum.
And magnet levitation wouldn't work because you'd need a "railway" suspended at whatever altitude the thing operates at.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the article too- if I recall correctly, he was stating that because of the fact (I can't verify this atm, maybe tomorrow) that the force exerted on the Moon by the Sun was greater than the force exerted on the Moon by the Earth, it would be more appropriate to say the Moon orbited the Sun, not the Earth, and as such couldn't be called one of Earth's moons.
However, the point of his argument was to put forth an interesting argument. Issac Asimov is an author by trade, not a scientist. (to say nothing of the fact he was very good at it)
The standard practicing definition of a moon is something along the lines of "any hunk of matter which has enough gravity to form itself into a sphere and has a stable, relatively circular orbit around a planet." Issues with the definition as I stated it are A) it doesn't include Phobos and Deimos(sp?). This isn't much of a problem as IMHO they shouldn't be moons anyway, just large asteroids stuck orbiting a planet. B) It assumes you have a working definition of a planet. We're working on that. It's because A) the Moon is so massive compared to the Earth. Several moons of Jupiter and Saturn are more massive than the Moon, and they do not exibit any of the properties stated above. B) the Moon is so far from the Earth. If the Moon was close to the Earth the Earth would exert a much greater force on it, eventually more than that of the Sun. Additionally, if the Moon was even farther away than it is now, the combined center of gravity of the Earth/Moon system would be outside Earth's surface, and what you stated in your post would be true. C) the Earth/Moon are so close to the Sun. Gravity decreases as per the square of the distance, and so the Sun exerts a far, far greater force on the Moon than the more massive moons of Jupiter or Saturn.For the record, I don't think Pluto is a planet. Its physical characteristics are virtually identical to those of other Kuiper belt objects, it just happens to be bright enough to be noticed so long before the Kuiper belt was discovered that astronomers assumed it was a planet. The initial estimates of Pluto's size made it a far larger planet than we know it to be today- at least 3 times larger. Pluto was just initially assumed to be the ninth planet, and it's been that way ever since.
I may be wrong, but gas giants (like jupiter, saturn, neptune, etc) become brown dwarves at 10-13x Jupiter's mass, and the point at which they become full stars (well, red dwarves) is some unknown mass above that. Really- last I checked, the exact mass wasn't known.
So, to recap. Stars are objects massive enough to maintain nuclear fusion in their cores and are hot enough on their surface to radiate visible light. Brown dwarves are objects not as massive as stars, but massive enough to maintain fusion in their cores but aren't hot enough to radiate visible light. Planets are objects not as massive as brown dwarves, but are.... uhhhh.... hmm....
If you're like most gamers, and all you care about is having the best framerate possible, you're going to want the fastest possibly CPU. Or to use your analagy, a hammer that not only pounds in a finishing nail but crushes coal into diamonds as well. If you can afford the extra $30 for a quality powersupply and the extra $20 for a quality heatsink/fan, why not overclock your CPU into the realm of boiling water and frying eggs? Why get a beowulf cluster of Crusoe's when you can just get a P4 with a jet engine on top of it for half the price and complexity?
Furthormore, all standardisation attempts are strictly voluntary. Any other scheme is completely unenforcable, since the vast majority of linux is GPL'd, or has a similar license. All the standards body can do to 'enforce' their scheme is to write a nice note to the offending distro and ask them if they would please comply with their standards. No more.
Just like Dow Jones. =D
Whatever Tritium gives off, I hope it's not alpha particles. =)
I drive my car for more than 2 hours at a time very often. It can take 2 hours just to get from one side of Los Angeles to the other. (Yes, I'm serious.) My roommate visits his grandparents just about every weekend- 3 hours or so each way. The EV1 is wholly impractical as a means of transportation in the US. You have to understand that the average distances between towns in the US is vastly larger than in Europe. Commutes in LA, SF, and NY that are an hour and a half each way- or more- are not unheard of.
They paid money for it? It's an economic venture.And they did market it. I've seen a few advertisements, and there are recharge stations scattered about my town. It never caught on, because, well, it can't replace a real car.
There wasn't as much a coalition to block the treaty as much as there was a general understanding that the entire treaty was wildly unfair. Even many environmental groups opposed it.And Ford doesn't answer to the gasoline companies- they'd be just as happy selling electric cars or hampster powered cars, if they were practical. As long as the cars people buy has "Ford" stamped on the front of it, Ford's happy. Ford shelved the EV1 because no one bought cars that had "EV1" written on the side of it- it was not competative.
Being able to drill tubes is irrelevent. First, London is flat when you compare it to San Francisco. The hills there are as steep as 30-35 degrees. (watch the movie Bullit) The altitude difference between the lowest parts of the city and the highest parts of the city is something on the order of 1000 feet. Smooth rail systems will not climb up inclines that steep. You could dig tunnels and lay down track easily enough, but you'll be unable to drive a train in it. The bus system in San Francisco can't even go to the steeper parts of the city. The only system of transportation that does work is SF's celebrated cable cars, which is hugely expensive and only really exists as a tourist attraction.The fun part is, Party A never bought or leased the commodity in the first place. This applies to the radio in your car- you never paid for the music that gets played on it.
(semantics- Party C is charging Party A, not party C)
Soooooo, Party B leases a commodity to Party D. Party D gives said commodity, free of charge, to Party A. Party A gives commodity free of charge to party C. Party B charges Party A for showing said commodity to Party C.
The EV1 could only drive an hour or so before having to be recharged. As a vehicle, it was useless. As an economic venture on Ford's part, it was even more useless. (Yes, believe it or not, Ford is in the business of making money.)
The Kyoto treaty (which I'm assuming you're referring to, because it's the only instance your rash generalization would be true) was ludiciously unfair to the US. The Senate voted against it unanimously- and there are at least a few staunch environmentalists in the Senate. No American environmentalist group who read the treaty and actually understood it supported it. The US voted against it not because we don't particularly care about the environment but because it basically amounted to economic sanctions against the US.
People in Europe, as a whole, drive more fuel efficient cars not because they care about the environment but because fuel is far more expensive in Europe than in the US. There is also more pressure to drive smaller cars because the lanes in most of Europe, in my experience, are several feet narrower.
Again, the US is lagging behind not because of environmental friendliness, but because of practicality. Los Angeles is simply too large and too spread out, geographically, for a subway system to work. It's just not dense enough. It wouldn't work in San Francisco because of all the hills. San Francisco tried, with BART and MUNI but it just doesn't work effectively- as a result, people drive their cars. New York and Chicago tried, but they couldn't bury the trains and built mostly elevated trains instead of subways, which are loud and most of the local residents hate them as a result. Then there the whole issue of the American subway's image of being unsafe. (By unsafe I don't mean your train crashes, I mean you get on the train late one night and get mugged)
Basically, don't try to stereotype an American. It just doesn't work. Saying Americans don't care about the environment is like saying Europeans have are arrogant bastards who drive like lunatics and have bad teeth.
The main difference between them is that 99.5% of players in EverQuest don't give a crap if someone else is using ShowEQ. There isn't a huge and overwhelming advantage vs. other players if someone's using ShowEQ. (There is on PvP servers. However, no one plays on the PvP servers because Everquest's PvP system sucks. And it has nothing to do with cheaters.)
I used SEQ when I still played Everquest. All of my friends knew I used ShowEQ. My entire guild knew I used ShowEQ. About 2/3 of the people I got experience with knew I used ShowEQ. No one ever said to me, "Dude, that's fucked up. You're ruining the game for other people." Know why? Because I wasn't.
I hate cheaters in half-life and its mods, and in quake and it's sequels and mods, but that's because the act of cheating ruins other peoples' enjoyment of the game which is an enormous difference IMO.
iirc, the "Big Deal" wasn't that you couldn't use your modchip while playing on Live, it's that MS banned you for life if your X-Box had a modchip in it, even if it's not enabled while playing on Live. It also did not discriminate between legitimate uses of modchips (playing imports, linux on X-Box- though that's not really legitimate in MS's eyes. ;)) and the ones who used it for cheating.
There is also the little issue about unscrupulous modders changing the codes on their X-Boxes and banning codes that could very well that of a customer with a non-modded box.
The people who made the thing know it, and aren't trying to install any on airliners. It's used mainly in ultralights, where catastrophic structural failures (ie, a wing (or two) falls off) are common enough for a system like this to be useful, and are light enough that a parachute the size of a few large city blocks wouldn't be required. The exceptionally low speed of ultralights is also very very helpful.
The only reason this case is special is that it's the first time it's been used successfully in anything other than an ultralight in a real emergency.
So yes, a system like this won't be used in airliners anytime in the near future. They probably won't even be used in the majority of civilian single engine airplanes. But they will be used in some, and will probably be present in a lot of ultralights.
Also, this system isn't intended to be used when an engine fails. (well, it would be useful if an engine failed immediately after takeoff- keep in mind it can be used effectively in as little as 300 feet of altitude) It's main intent is for when the plane is incapable of landing safely. In this case, it was because an aileron was stuck.
Ah. I haven't checked in 2 weeks, it's changed since then.
Those are beta, fyi. Latest stable drivers are 30.something iirc.
But yeah, it's good to see ATI making steps in the right direction.
And do this how? Nanites aren't big enough for any type of counting/computing device to be embedded. Think of them as enzymes. They won't have eyes, they won't have ears, they won't be able to touch, smell, or taste. They're just chemicals designed to accomplish a task, and they do it.
Interesting corallary: Mad cow disease works the exact same way the 'grey goo' problem works. A protein in the brain turns other naturally occuring proteins into itself. Eventually, there are so many of these proteins in the way of everything, the brain ceases to function.
Step 6, Profit!
The only way I can think of to prevent grey goo is by never allowing a nanite to reproduce either itself, or another nanite that produces itself. Unfortunetally, humans tend to be pretty stupid, and eventually someone in the future may very well screw up. That's the real problem- intelligent, rational folks may make all the right decisions and put in all the right safeguards blah blah blah, but eventually, some dumbass will take a few shortcuts and unleash something he hadn't intended.
As soon as ATI gets stable, reliable, current, and unifed drivers, I'll consider buying an ATI card. Until then, I'll continue buying the best supported cards in the business. (ie, nvidia's)
Are there cheats for online games? If not, are there any being attempted?
The major opposition to mod chips, that I've seen is the belief that it fosters cheating. Is this a real concern or is it just supposition?
If there are cheats being used and circulated, then ban them. If not, having a DiVX and ogg/vorbis player for your TV sounds damned cool.
*cough*Emacs*cough* 21.2? Yeesh.
Better than the 2000th version of Windows though. =^D
Agreed... Pine is one of the most intuitive mail clients I've ever used. (Or at least, it was. I haven't used it in years)
I'm a major fan of open-source and all that, (using Gentoo as I type this) but there are still bad parts of OSS, like a lack of a really good Office clone, which is very important for businesses. It would be remiss for any organisation to choose OSS over MS based without looking at the (few) things they'll lose by chosing OSS.
People don't get satellite based internet service because it's better than DSL/cable- it's not. Like everyone has said, the latency is horrible. They get it because they live out in the boonies and don't have access to DSL or cable. Satellite based 'net is better than dial-up, which is often the only other option.
Not true. Getting the couple kilograms of plutonium in an average nuke spread across the earth's surface would hit the average human being with a lot less radiation than he's get ingesting the potassium in a banana. (No, not all potassium is radioactive. But enough of it is radioactive to start a geiger counter buzzing) In addition, the US and the USSR set off literally thousands of nuclear weapons tests during the cold war. One or two more won't hurt. At all.
FYI, most space probes sent to Mars and beyond are nuclear powered. Most earth-bound satellites are powered with solar panels, because they're cheaper, but as soon as you get too far from the sun for solar panels to be practical, it's all nuclear.
Actually, the reason we don't put nuclear weapons in space is that it costs about $10,000 per pound to put anything in space. It costs a fukton less money to dig a great big outhouse and put all our waste in it than it would to put even a tenth of the nuclear waste in the world into orbit. (putting all that waste into solar orbit would cost even more. Plunging it into the sun would cost even more than that.)
Radiation really isn't what it's all cracked up to be. All life on earth is radioactive. You've heard of carbon dating? Know how that works? The basic principle behind it is the fact that a percentage of any group of carbon atoms is radioactive. The whole "Radioactivity will kill j00" thing is mostly perpetuated by stupid people who can't tell the difference between a nuke landing on your head and the radioactivity we live with every few hundredths of a second of every day.
I'd run out of fingers/toes/appendages/hair folicles before I could name all the beautiful pieces of software put forth by open-source.
Errr, how exactly would Norten Utilities work in linux? You mean to scan your windows partition for viruses (virii?) or harddisk/partition errors in case windows won't boot up?
Doesn't the Norten Utilities CD do that when you boot off it? (you do own the CD right?)
Anyone tried running EQ and SEQ on the same box?
One of the most interesting features about this is how it "guesses" what you're trying to write. Don't move your mouse, just let it sit there and "type" for you. If you've started typing the first few letters of a word, it will bring the rest of the word up, so it's easier to write.
Believe it or not, the thing actually quoted Shakespeare for me once. I wonder how long it would take to do my homework (correctly) for me...
It needs air containing oxygen coming in at mach 6-7 or whatever in order for the engine to ignite. It's a jet, not a rocket- it can't operate in a vacuum.
And magnet levitation wouldn't work because you'd need a "railway" suspended at whatever altitude the thing operates at.