Re:FYI: US not spending 1.2B per day in Iraq.
on
Clock Ticking for Hubble
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· Score: 2, Informative
"I just find is pathetic that the U.S. can't find $600m to refurb the HST. We're spending about twice that EVERY DAY on operations in Iraq.
Just pull the troops out two days earlier and there you have it... enough cash to service the Hubble twice!" -gerardrj
"The number is 4B per month." -glrotate
While it is ends up that glrotate's information seems to be more correct, I really dislike it when people just assert something as true, while providing no evidence. In the end it just ends up being a 'No I'm right!" sort of argument. So although it's a bit off topic (very), here's some of the information I've been able to find.
"Congress in April passed an initial $62.4 billion measure to pay for the fighting. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently put the cost at $3.9 billion a month. Also, L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator of Iraq, last week said $29 billion will be needed just to repair Iraq's electricity and water systems." July 26th - Associated Press
"At the onset of war, Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, said postcombat operations were expected to cost about $2.2 billion a month. By early June, he adjusted that forecast to $3 billion." July 13th - Orlando Sentinel
"Mr. Dorgan (Senator [D]) said the administration knows it's spending $4 billion a month in Iraq and it makes little sense to pretend the costs do not exist."
July 17th - Associated Press
"Safety? It has jet-pilot seat belts and a racing-regulation roll cage; it weighs more than 3,000 pounds, about the same as a Toyota Camry, including 1,100 pounds of Yellow Top batteries under the floorboards as ballast, so it's not tippy on turns." from the article
I don't know man, this 3,000 pound car weighs more than my Mazda Protege (approx. 2.6k pounds)
-mandalayx
And it's obviously much smaller. I wonder how it would do in a crash test. It looks like a dense bullet compared to other cars. -SKPhoton
In terms of being able to survive a collision with another vehicle, I don't really think the weight of the vehicle is the important issue. Larger cars are safer than smaller cars not because they weigh more, but because they have more room to let the car crumple to absorb the energy created by a collision.
If you don't have this extra room, not only is the body of the vehicle more likely to collapse on you, but you also will have much higher g-forces during the crash. In a large car you might have a foot or 2 of 'crunch' space before the car becomes rigid and forcing you to a very rapid stop. In a very small car such as this, even if the body of the car maintained it's integrity during the crash (it doesn't crush you) you'd be much more prone to be injured by rapid deceleration because it lacks this 'crunch' space that would allow it a smoother deceleration.
I'm all for electric cars, and I understand that the creators wanted something to cut through traffic, but I don't think I'd really want to move one of these things through traffic next to insane soccer moms in their H2s.
You ever notice that with the exception of hardware, most people only use Microsoft products as they are forced to?
The only reason people in the outside world use it is because even they feel like they HAVE to use Word, Windows, Excel, etc. When it comes to options in other parts of life, most people recognize that MS sucks donkey balls.
For starters, I think most people use MS products are because they are unaware of any alternatives. Whenever I mention Linux to my friends who just use computers, but don't really live their lives on them, they have no clue what I'm talking about, or at best, they have some vague idea that there is something out there called Linux, and it works with the computer somehow. They have no idea that it is an entire OS, nor do they really know what an OS is. They don't know that it is free, nor do they understand how something that is similar to Windows even could be free.
That being said, I use Windows as my OS not because Microsoft has a gun to my head, but, despite the many times I've tried a wide variety of Linux distributions, I found them all to be a complete hassle. Now I'm not computer illiterate, I know how to compile software, and can poke around code a bit. When my friends and family have computer software/hardware problems, they normally ask me how to fix it. It might be that I'm only used to MS products, and that's why I find working with Linux annoying. Some of the open source programs I've used on Windows are great, I love WinPT/GNUpg, I uses filezilla for all of my ftp needs. But a lot of open source programs, I'll use the example of OpenOffice, not to pick on them specifically, but just because it's the first example I can think of, just feel like a cheaper knock off of an MS product. Right now I'm on a system that's starved for ram, and OO continues to use more ram than MS Office. I know that after the load time there is little difference in the overall speed, but, I have MS office installed on this computer, and it works better, so it is the one I use. I'm not using it because I'm unaware of alternatives or I was forced, I'm using it because I've tried both, and the product that MS offers is better for my needs.
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature...
on
Mutating Animations
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· Score: 1
Given the number of people that play counter-strike, I would think that there would be sufficient user input to create bots that learn to play the levels and against people very well and in a human like fashion.
Of course in order for it to work really well, you'd have to have some sort of distributed system of learning, sort of like a seti program for CS bots, but I'd think if you even had a dedicated group as small as 100 people each willing to play 100 rounds of counterstrike, you could get pretty damn good bots out of it.
Clearly the logic you suggest isn't true, as many forms of non-verbal communication have been deemed 'speech' and are protected.
There are some (no, I am not one of them) who view adult male, child male sex as not only good, but a requirement for a healthy life. The North American Man Boy Love Association is an example of such a group. Until recently their motto was "sex before eight - or it's too late."
I personally find this sort of behavior abhorrent, but it certainly is an expression of personal belief.
Maybe it's just me, but I've been visiting slashdot for 3+ years now, and I keep seeing articles about new, paper thing, cheap displays that will revolutionize everything, and really small, cheap, huge(storage capacity), solid state storage devices.
I look forward to new stuff as much as anyone, but in those 3 years, hard drive storage and monitors keep making slower (in comparison to what is mentioned in articles such as these), but steady process.
I no longer trust articles saying 'everything will be different in a year.' From my experience, it won't be different and revolutionary, it will just be slightly better.
I hope they do the crashes is a realistic fashion in this game. I can't count the number of PC and console racers that talk about their realistic damage engine, only to end up being really lame when I play them. Yes it's cool to see my car get bashed up, but I don't want predefinded levels of 'crashed.' Most games now seem to use the method of 'point x on the car has been hit, load pre determined damage model to point x'
I want crashes that are different everytime, and if the game claims to have 'realistic damange' end the race if I had a wall head on going 100+ miles an hour. I find few aspects of racing games quite so lame as the whole "I hit a solid wall at speeds that would surely kill me, and all it did was stop by car and load a pre loaded 'my hood is slightly messed up' model" problem.
I've been playing Day of Defeat for the past 2 or so years, since 1.0b and have greatly enjoyed watching my favorite mod grow into what it is today.
I know one of the biggest problems Counter-Strike player and its community encountered when CS when retail was the flood of new, clueless people to forums and servers. I've already seen inumerous people who don't have a clue about DoD on servers.
If you happen to run into somone new like this, don't shout 'n00b' at them, help them out. If they ask a question, give them a quick answer. Yes, you might die when you're typing out the response, but it's only a death. We were all new to the game once, and helping out people when they need it will help keep the strong community DoD is known for.
I just have my proxomitron to convert all flash to links. If I see it is just going to be a garbage ad, I don't click it.
Proxomitron is also nice because it let me change the look of the new games.slashdot.org to look exactlly like the main slashdot page. No more ugly neon purple for me.
I don't really feel that fps have stagnated. While I've never liked CS, I play Day of Defeat daily and it keeps improving with every update, and 1.0 looks like it is going to be amazing.
I never claimed that I wanted run linux on an xbox, I just stated the conditions that would have to be met before I would install linux. If they never happen, then I'll never install it.
A cop would use flawless body armor if it worked, but likely wouldn't use somewhat shotty armor if it involved gluing 100 Lb steel slabs to his shirt.
Some linux enthusiasts might enjoy this 100 Lb steel slab aproach, but I do not.
I like that "Wonder what the DMCA would think about this...*" makes it sound as if the DMCA monster robot is going to come and attack me in my sleep if I mod my xbox.
While it's true that the DMCA is a law that clearly supports companies and not people, it would still be better to phrase this more along the lines "It will be interesting to see how this act is interpreted under the DMCA"
Now you must open up your Xbox *which I don't think I need to explain how to do*, take out the motherboard, and solder the 2x2 jumpers. Now put everything back together, but leave the case top off, and keep the Xbox near your pc!
While this method might not require you to use a mod chip, it definately requires you to mod the xbox in that you have to take it apart, and solder stuff. The only think that will make me run linux on my xbox is if I can install a working system withou touching a screw driver.
Having just filled out the form, this is a win win for Philips. Only 50 people will get the hardware, which costs them next to nothing.
But when they get out of the deal is thousdands of people filling out pretty detailed information that they normally wouldn't fill out in the hopes of getting something for free.
It also changed accounting forecasts forever, which triggered the investment boom that brought us the "greed is good" era.
I highly doubt that this one application started an era of "greed is good." People have always been greedy, this just let them be greedying is a slighly more sucessful manner.
" . . . Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one--even the staunchest supporters of science and technology--had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them, is FORECAST THE WEATHER!--for the next one hundred years..."
George Reisman, Ph.D, The Toxicity of Environmentalism
Cheapest IDE drives he could find.. Though the site is/.'d, to get 1.8 TB across 17 drives, we are still talking about 100 GB drives.
I just checked price watch, and the cheapest 100 gb drives they listed was for about $100 after shipping. Perhaps he meant the cheapest 100 GB drives he could find, but this is still at least a $1,700 project.
Slashdot Mirror
"Safety? It has jet-pilot seat belts and a racing-regulation roll cage; it weighs more than 3,000 pounds, about the same as a Toyota Camry, including 1,100 pounds of Yellow Top batteries under the floorboards as ballast, so it's not tippy on turns." from the article
I don't know man, this 3,000 pound car weighs more than my Mazda Protege (approx. 2.6k pounds)
-mandalayx
And it's obviously much smaller. I wonder how it would do in a crash test. It looks like a dense bullet compared to other cars.
-SKPhoton
In terms of being able to survive a collision with another vehicle, I don't really think the weight of the vehicle is the important issue. Larger cars are safer than smaller cars not because they weigh more, but because they have more room to let the car crumple to absorb the energy created by a collision.
If you don't have this extra room, not only is the body of the vehicle more likely to collapse on you, but you also will have much higher g-forces during the crash. In a large car you might have a foot or 2 of 'crunch' space before the car becomes rigid and forcing you to a very rapid stop. In a very small car such as this, even if the body of the car maintained it's integrity during the crash (it doesn't crush you) you'd be much more prone to be injured by rapid deceleration because it lacks this 'crunch' space that would allow it a smoother deceleration.
"Golf cart on steroids!"
Hrm, how about Shiny, Fast, Red Coffin.
I'm all for electric cars, and I understand that the creators wanted something to cut through traffic, but I don't think I'd really want to move one of these things through traffic next to insane soccer moms in their H2s.
You ever notice that with the exception of hardware, most people only use Microsoft products as they are forced to?
The only reason people in the outside world use it is because even they feel like they HAVE to use Word, Windows, Excel, etc. When it comes to options in other parts of life, most people recognize that MS sucks donkey balls.
For starters, I think most people use MS products are because they are unaware of any alternatives. Whenever I mention Linux to my friends who just use computers, but don't really live their lives on them, they have no clue what I'm talking about, or at best, they have some vague idea that there is something out there called Linux, and it works with the computer somehow. They have no idea that it is an entire OS, nor do they really know what an OS is. They don't know that it is free, nor do they understand how something that is similar to Windows even could be free.
That being said, I use Windows as my OS not because Microsoft has a gun to my head, but, despite the many times I've tried a wide variety of Linux distributions, I found them all to be a complete hassle. Now I'm not computer illiterate, I know how to compile software, and can poke around code a bit. When my friends and family have computer software/hardware problems, they normally ask me how to fix it. It might be that I'm only used to MS products, and that's why I find working with Linux annoying. Some of the open source programs I've used on Windows are great, I love WinPT/GNUpg, I uses filezilla for all of my ftp needs. But a lot of open source programs, I'll use the example of OpenOffice, not to pick on them specifically, but just because it's the first example I can think of, just feel like a cheaper knock off of an MS product. Right now I'm on a system that's starved for ram, and OO continues to use more ram than MS Office. I know that after the load time there is little difference in the overall speed, but, I have MS office installed on this computer, and it works better, so it is the one I use. I'm not using it because I'm unaware of alternatives or I was forced, I'm using it because I've tried both, and the product that MS offers is better for my needs.
Given the number of people that play counter-strike, I would think that there would be sufficient user input to create bots that learn to play the levels and against people very well and in a human like fashion.
Of course in order for it to work really well, you'd have to have some sort of distributed system of learning, sort of like a seti program for CS bots, but I'd think if you even had a dedicated group as small as 100 people each willing to play 100 rounds of counterstrike, you could get pretty damn good bots out of it.
If child porn were speech, it would be just talk.
Clearly the logic you suggest isn't true, as many forms of non-verbal communication have been deemed 'speech' and are protected.
There are some (no, I am not one of them) who view adult male, child male sex as not only good, but a requirement for a healthy life. The North American Man Boy Love Association is an example of such a group. Until recently their motto was "sex before eight - or it's too late."
I personally find this sort of behavior abhorrent, but it certainly is an expression of personal belief.
Maybe it's just me, but I've been visiting slashdot for 3+ years now, and I keep seeing articles about new, paper thing, cheap displays that will revolutionize everything, and really small, cheap, huge(storage capacity), solid state storage devices.
I look forward to new stuff as much as anyone, but in those 3 years, hard drive storage and monitors keep making slower (in comparison to what is mentioned in articles such as these), but steady process.
I no longer trust articles saying 'everything will be different in a year.' From my experience, it won't be different and revolutionary, it will just be slightly better.
heh, you had me hopeful there for a moment.
I hope they do the crashes is a realistic fashion in this game. I can't count the number of PC and console racers that talk about their realistic damage engine, only to end up being really lame when I play them. Yes it's cool to see my car get bashed up, but I don't want predefinded levels of 'crashed.' Most games now seem to use the method of 'point x on the car has been hit, load pre determined damage model to point x'
I want crashes that are different everytime, and if the game claims to have 'realistic damange' end the race if I had a wall head on going 100+ miles an hour. I find few aspects of racing games quite so lame as the whole "I hit a solid wall at speeds that would surely kill me, and all it did was stop by car and load a pre loaded 'my hood is slightly messed up' model" problem.
Steam was briefly supported in between the 2.0b and 2.1b release, but I don't believe it is currently supported.
You do, though you have to wait about 10 to 15 seconds, depending on how many people are in the server.
I've been playing Day of Defeat for the past 2 or so years, since 1.0b and have greatly enjoyed watching my favorite mod grow into what it is today.
I know one of the biggest problems Counter-Strike player and its community encountered when CS when retail was the flood of new, clueless people to forums and servers. I've already seen inumerous people who don't have a clue about DoD on servers.
If you happen to run into somone new like this, don't shout 'n00b' at them, help them out. If they ask a question, give them a quick answer. Yes, you might die when you're typing out the response, but it's only a death. We were all new to the game once, and helping out people when they need it will help keep the strong community DoD is known for.
I just have my proxomitron to convert all flash to links. If I see it is just going to be a garbage ad, I don't click it.
Proxomitron is also nice because it let me change the look of the new games.slashdot.org to look exactlly like the main slashdot page. No more ugly neon purple for me.
I don't really feel that fps have stagnated. While I've never liked CS, I play Day of Defeat daily and it keeps improving with every update, and 1.0 looks like it is going to be amazing.
Spy-Hunter
Status: In Development
Cast: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Director: None
Writer: None
Sweet! The Rock! He's good in anything!!!
Hopefully this will be a bit more entertaining involving than the NES game... although I still hate those fat blue cars... knock me the road will you?
I never claimed that I wanted run linux on an xbox, I just stated the conditions that would have to be met before I would install linux. If they never happen, then I'll never install it.
A cop would use flawless body armor if it worked, but likely wouldn't use somewhat shotty armor if it involved gluing 100 Lb steel slabs to his shirt.
Some linux enthusiasts might enjoy this 100 Lb steel slab aproach, but I do not.
I like that "Wonder what the DMCA would think about this...*" makes it sound as if the DMCA monster robot is going to come and attack me in my sleep if I mod my xbox.
While it's true that the DMCA is a law that clearly supports companies and not people, it would still be better to phrase this more along the lines "It will be interesting to see how this act is interpreted under the DMCA"
I think we're all pretty happy about Linux on an unmodded Xbox. This will only mean good things for linux users.
What you'll need:
"Soldering Iron + Solder (and torx screw drivers)
Now you must open up your Xbox *which I don't think I need to explain how to do*, take out the motherboard, and solder the 2x2 jumpers. Now put everything back together, but leave the case top off, and keep the Xbox near your pc!
While this method might not require you to use a mod chip, it definately requires you to mod the xbox in that you have to take it apart, and solder stuff. The only think that will make me run linux on my xbox is if I can install a working system withou touching a screw driver.
Having just filled out the form, this is a win win for Philips. Only 50 people will get the hardware, which costs them next to nothing.
But when they get out of the deal is thousdands of people filling out pretty detailed information that they normally wouldn't fill out in the hopes of getting something for free.
Good idea.
How about they build reasonable networks in the US first! Half the time when I ask "Can you hear me now?" I get a "what?" in reponse.
Keep your 3d graphics, give me a phone that works well and consitantly first.
It also changed accounting forecasts forever, which triggered the investment boom that brought us the "greed is good" era.
I highly doubt that this one application started an era of "greed is good." People have always been greedy, this just let them be greedying is a slighly more sucessful manner.
" . . . Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one--even the staunchest supporters of science and technology--had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them, is FORECAST THE WEATHER!--for the next one hundred years..."
George Reisman, Ph.D, The Toxicity of Environmentalism
A Playstation 2 Linux kit is required to use BlackRhino
Finally the wide based and easy to use system that will unlease the power of linux on the masses!
Cheapest IDE drives he could find.. Though the site is /.'d, to get 1.8 TB across 17 drives, we are still talking about 100 GB drives.
I just checked price watch, and the cheapest 100 gb drives they listed was for about $100 after shipping. Perhaps he meant the cheapest 100 GB drives he could find, but this is still at least a $1,700 project.