Here's the website of one of the biggest computerized sewing machine makers:
http://www.husqvarnaviking.com/
My mom got one about a year ago. It cost more than my car, but it's awesome. This thing doesn't have a direct computer link (instead, it has a floppy drive), but it's still the coolest sewing machine that I've ever seen. It has this computer software that lets you take any image and make an embroidery file out of it. I actually helped her make our family crest for some shirts for a family reunion. It was pretty fun.
And yes, I am a guy. I'm 19 and I even live in Texas and I still thought that it was cool!
That was never about copyright. It was about brand recognition, so it fell under trademark laws.
Actually, the settlement was that Apple Computers could never put music into their computers. They were allowed beeps and not much else. Apple Computers bought out the settlement when they decided that their computers needed MIDI capabilities. Essentially, since the first Macs, Apple has not been bound to that agreement. That's why they were able to make QuickTime, iTunes, the iPod, buy Emagic (makers of Logic software), and start the iTunes Music Store.
Since Apple is only distributing music, they aren't quite to the level of directly competing with Apple Records, but they could get there easily.
Well, it's similar to how I buy software from Corel because they have a nice licensing policy. They state outright in the EULA that you can install their software on several computers as long as they are not used concurently. Since they aren't nasty and draconian, I buy stuff from them.
Compare this to Wolfram which uses a sort of activation a-la Microsoft, but even worse. They only let me install Mathematica on one computer at a time, even though I have a license to use it on two simultaneously. I plan to never buy from them again. In fact, since I purchased a license allowing me to run Mathematica on two computers at once, I might hack a copy and install it on my PowerBook.
I don't really know much about Novell, but I'm sure that they make something that I could use. If their software costs several hundred dollars per license, then I might not get it because I'm a poor college student. However, at the very least I am certainly going to have a good opinion of them from now on. If Novell helps out the Linux world by ending this SCO madness, then we all owe them our gratitude.
It could very well be that SCO is threatening to sue Novell to prevent just that. Really, it would be very big of Novell to just nullify their contract with SCO. If they did that, I would be sure to buy a few copies of whatever they release next.
That probably has to do with typing while your right hand is on your mouse. I use my right index finger for almost every space except for the ones at the ends of sentences. For those, I use my left thumb. Weird, huh? Of course, my keyboard is at about a -30 degree angle relative to my body, so my right thumb isn't anywhere near the spacebar most of the time.
I also have my mouse close enough to my keyboard that I can hit the number-pad Enter with my thumb when I need to enter something.
The cool thing about that "keyboard's" layout is that it's ALL is software. If you were able to obtain driver level access to it, you could probably remap the key positions arbitrarily. For instance, you could make the entire bottom inch into a giant space-bar. I wonder how long it will be before someone hacks it to accept user-designed keyboard files.
Since it's all in software, it can also move the mouse and handle real hand gestures. You can use gestures to control zoom levels in Photoshop, for instance. Or, at least, that's how they're supposed to work. I don't have one to test that on, so I don't really know how well the gestures work.
When I was reading the part about the lossless compression, I suddenly wondered what would happen if lossy compression was used. The chair could start rotating, shifting, and/or changing size and shape randomly. That would make for a rather interesting world. You go to sit down only to have your chair randomly spin and zip off and become a part of the wall.
The problem with that is that the programs probably wouldn't make good parents. I can just see Agent Smith sealing a baby's mouth to keep it from crying.
Then you simulate what would be seen. Everything could be treated as a surface with a varying transparency and a texture mapped on top of it. You wouldn't have to visually simulate anything smaller than the eye could resolve, but if needed, the simulation could simulate portions in more detail.
It would be easier from a programming standpoint to simulate all of the individual atoms, but that would be prohibitively slow. We're talking tens of thousands of years for less than a second of simulation time using conventional computers on anything less than a planetary scale.
Quantum computers and chemical computers could speed it up greatly, but it would still take massive amounts of raw processing power to keep track of all of those atoms, let alone let anything interact with them.
You can never see anything smaller than the smallest dot that your eye can perceive. However, you can design devices to enlarge objects (or increase the resolution of your eye, depending on how you look at it).
One of the huge problems with The Matrix is the question of how people were actually put into it. If anyone had memories of the real world, then they would undoubtedly find a way to pass them on to their children. So, that implies that none of the first generation of Matrix denizens was ever outside the Matrix at any prior point in their lives. Yet they had parents. The programs in the Matrix aren't compassionate at all, so they certainly couldn't have raised the children. Perhaps they had been imprisoned for millennia, but if that were the case, I would have expected the robots to have wiped out the last of the independent humans. Due to the way memories are stored, there is no way to erase specific memories from the human mind without some serious brain damage. We can only stop new ones from forming. Perhaps the robots were able to create synthetic sets of memories for the first parents, but again, how? That would require someone in the Matrix in the first place so that his memories could be copied. Perhaps the first parents were willing subjects? I don't really see that as in The Animatrix, the general populace was destroying the robots in the streets. That would be like southern whites agreeing to be slaves to some blacks during the Civil War. Very few would. Perhaps enough did that they were the first generation.
Well, you see, the funny thing is that you don't need to simulate the atoms at all. All that you need to simulate visually is the smallest object a person can resolve with his unadied eyes. Everything else is simply mapped on top of that.
For touch, you just simulate the smallest texture difference that a human can feel. For sound, all you need to do is simulate the sounds that a human can hear.
All of these would need to have a certain safely margin to account for people whose senses are better than others, but all that you really have to feed the brain is sense data. As long as it is input propperly,
Now, you would need to physicaly simulate things, but you can reduce the complexity of a model arbitrarily if you are willing to sacrifice quality. The computer detects that we don't need high quality simulations of tables, so it only simulates where the corners would be and fills the rest in as a polygon.
Of course, all of this assumes that you have a more-or-less sentient computer. It would have to be able to decide when we don't need obscenely high quality simulations in order to save its processor power. That wouldn't require true sentience, but it would take quite a bit of clever AI programming.
All of this is a gross simplification. It would still be impossible with modern computing methods because it would require a computer larger than Jupiter, and that's not even with a power source.
That is a pretty good shot. In the rest, it seems like the photographer is accentuating the whole breasts thing at the expense of the rest of the photo. A good photographer would completely ignore what everyone else goes for (read: bikini, v-cut shirts, etc.) and make her look more like a person than a sex object. Well, good by my standards, anyway.
Just look at what Ansel Adams did. His stuff is stunningly beautiful and he didn't do a single thing that mainstream photographers of the day did.
Now, back on topic!
She didn't quite answer some of the questions in the interview, so to me, she comes off as a bit ditzy. She didn't answer the question about Lessig at all! I could be completely wrong, but based solely on that interview, it doesn't seem like she really understands some of the stuff that she was talking about. Of course, she IS still in high school, so her comprehension seems to be quite a bit above average for her age group. I think that I'll read some of her writings when I get some free time. Perhaps then I will have a better opinion.
Actually, both of what you described are forms of dwarfism. The first is Pseudoachondroplasia (pronounced like sue-d'oh-a-kon-dro-plays-ya) and results in almost normal proportions for the head, face, and trunk, but slightly short and stubby hands, arms, and legs.
The second form that you described more closely resembles Achondroplasia (same as above minus sue-d'oh). "Affected patients have short limbs (rhizomelic micromelia) and stubby, trident hands. Radiographic findings include a large cranium with a small foramen magnum."
For more information check these two sites:
http://www.amershamhealth.com/medcyclopaedia/Vol um e%20III%201/Pseudoachondroplasia.asp
http://www.amershamhealth.com/medcyclopaedia/Vol um e%20III%201/achondroplasia.asp
Re:Knoppix is impressive
on
ClusterKnoppix
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I have. It killed my hard drive.
Technically, I suppose that it was Windows (95 OSR2 upgraded to 98 SE) that killed my hard drive, but the result was the same. I installed Linux and the drive died. That single-handedly killed any thoughts I had of dual-booting. It also caused my parents to chew me out for well over 7 hours. Have you ever stood for 7 hours straight? Apparently, upgraded versions of Windows don't like living on dual-boot drives, so they somehow crash the drive. I'm talking hardcore crashing, here. The drive was physically destroyed. Fortunately, it was still under warranty.
That machine was simply the worst conglomeration of hardware and software possible. I used an Asus motherboard, a 400 MHz AMD K6-2 processor, and Windows 95 OSR2. The three didn't get along at all. I got IOS protection faults every time I booted until I found the patch and installed it. I never did get it working well.
Later, I installed it on a clean drive on another machine, but the machine that I was using was WAY too slow, so I just had a bad user experience.
Apple always uses Airborne Express. I really like that company, but they're a bit screwy when it comes to delivering stuff.
I called Apple support for the REP for the PowerBook 5300. They shipped me a box. Unfortunately, I wasn't there when the delivery guy called or stopped by, so he dropped the box off at the main office for my apartment complex. They left no note, so I had no idea that it was there. I called Apple again and they said that they would ship the box imediately. I got it 10AM the next day. I packed my 5300, called the number on the box, and within 15 minutes, the guy was at my door to pick it up.
It turns out that Apple fixed it and sent it back within about a day and a half, but the delivery person missed me again and left no note agian, so I had no idea that it was delivered. I called Apple a week or so later and they told me that it had been delivered, so I decided to check the main office. There both boxes were and no one had ever told me about them.
Anyway, what type of iPod do you have? First, second, or third generation? I have a second and my remote's metal surfaces have been turning kind of yellow. I wonder if they would replace it. I really doubt it because mine is a purely cosmetic issue, but I might as well try.
Actually, I use Maya. I wouldn't use it on a standard eMac (mostly because of that whole 128 MB of RAM thing), but even if I did, I have a Wacom tablet with a three button, wireless, batteryless mouse. I SO love this thing! It's simply great. I use the stylus to make textures and the mouse to control Maya.
Anyway, if you got at least a 512 MB stick of RAM, the eMac would make a pretty respectable Maya workstation. It has a reasonably powerful processor, a sufficient graphics card, FireWire (Maya Live MatchMoving. Mmmmmm), and enough hard drive space to store a few hours of DV quality footage. Plus, it's not very expensive, especially if you have a developer's discount.
I would still prefer a nice dual 1.33 GHz Xserve for the actual rendedering, but an eMac would make a nice modeling machine.
I've used Knoppix to rescue a Windows 2000 user when his machine suddenly decided not to boot. We never did figure out what was wrong, but he was able to boot, transfer all of the data to one of his two hard drives, and then burn it all to CDs in another Windows 2000 machine after verifying its integrity.
Now, he loves Knoppix because "it didn't just find some generic video card, it detected MY video card".
I've been distributing it to a few close friends here at my university. Most of them like it, burn a few more copies for their friends and the process continues.
Well, I just went there and got a connection refused. Of course, it has an entry in my hosts file, so I kind of expected that. I wonder if the story submitter has a similar entry and just forgot about it.
Argh. It's been years since I did anything black hole related. I keep forgetting that the Schwarzschild Radius and the event horizon are NOT the same thing. They are related, but not the same.
As the size of the black hole aproaches infinity, its event horizon becomes more and more flat from a constant distance, such that large black holes would apear to have very little surface curvature, similar to how a planet's surface seems flat. Therefore, there shouldn't be much more force pulling on one part of an object than there is pulling on another, right? Since gravity is fairly uniform, so is the distortion of time.
I would imagine that from the perspective of a free-falling observer, it would appear to be very hot, indeed. As the matter falls towards the center of the black hole, its volume decreases and its mass remains constant. Therefore, heat has to go up. Of course, with a large black hole, the matter isn't compressed very much by the time it falls beneath a stationary observer's percieved event horizon. Therefore, the 'surface' of the hole wouldn't be hot, but the contents further down would be, but from the stationary observer's point of view, there aren't contents further down. You only see that as you descend. Of course, I'm coming to these conclusions mostly with classical physical thought, and it has a nasty tendancy to return infinities when black holes are involved.
Here's a question, if as you approach the black hole, the event horizon recedes, then could you in theory escape from beneath the percieved event horizon of a stationary observer? Is the event horizon's position a function of acceleration, velocity, or distance? If distance, then it should be possible to escape, but if it's related to acceleration or velocity, then as you accelerate away, I would imagine that it would rise up and swallow you.
Of course, all of that would take an infinite amount of time from the perspective of the observer, but it's kind of fun to figure out what would happen.
Well, I should have said that I was talking about this from the perspective of a 'stationary' observer relative to the center of the black hole.
OK, so I was wrong about the fog. I didn't really think that that was at all likely, but it seemed the logical extension of the shell idea as I was typing. I was assuming that time relative to a stationary observer stops inside the SR. That must have been my mistake. Was I more or less right about the rest?
I really need to find a copy of that article. I had no idea that someone had already written about it. I knew that there was no way that I was the first to think of that, but I thought that it was probably wrong because I had never read anything about it. What could cause the shell to move outwards? This is all terribly fascinating to me.
I wonder what it would look like from the point of view of someone falling in. Assuming that he wasn't torn to pieces by the gravitational and temporal differentials, that is. If the shell seems to sink back, I wonder if that means that the perceived SR sinks, too. If so, then you would never cross it from your perspective, only from someone else's.
If I understand correctly, they plan to make some of those proton-sized toroidal black holes. They should only exist for a few billionths of a second before their gravity is no longer enough to maintain a Schwarzschild Radius and they simply become very massive subatomic particles.
The temporal shear should only extend a few angstroms from the SR, so we don't really have to worry about it tearing stuff to pieces. Its gravity should only be a few nanometers per second squared any more than a few meters away from its surface, and that's barely detectable, so no worries there.
We could actually learn quite a bit about space-time by observing these black holes.
I have always wondered what happens beneath the Schwarzschild Radius. Since time dilation approaches infinity as you approach the Radius, wouldn't time be at a standstill inside the black hole? Therefore, material would accumulate at the surface and never move any further in because time stops for anything inside. You would get an infinitely thin layer of very high density right at the SR. Of course, since the more matter a black hole consumes, the more massive it becomes, the further its SR is from its center, so you wouldn't ever get a shell, you would find something more like a fog.
If anyone knows that any of the above is wrong, then please reply and correct me. It just seems to be what would happen based on what I know of physics and relativity.
Tell her that 'daemon' actually means something closer to "guardian angel" than "demon".
From the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary entry for demon:
1 a : an evil spirit b : a source or agent of evil, harm, distress, or ruin 2 usually daemon : an attendant power or spirit : GENIUS 3 usually daemon : a supernatural being of Greek mythology intermediate between gods and men
All of those daemons running in the background on your machine are attendant spirits. The name has been rationalized by calling it an acronym for Disk And Execution MONitors, but acording to the Jargon File it was originaly based on the second or third meaning quoted above.
Nope. It (probably) wouldn't be admissible because of the part that says no reverse compiling. Reverse engineering is something totally different.
Reverse engineering is taking a black box and figuring out what it contains by giving it test inputs and watching the outputs. There are a few other things considered reverse engineering, but that describes most of it.
Of course, all of this ignores the fact that EULAs have never been tested in court. They could be proven invalid as contracts fairly easily since the exchange of goods occurs before you ever see the EULA and most stores don't accept returns of opened software. Therefore, if you don't agree to the EULA, you still have the right to use what you purchased.
On an interesting side note, various free trade laws specifically protect reverse engineering.
I mean a "trusted" clock. It would need to be tamper-proof, encrypted, and all that other fun stuff. The software in the player would neet to be "trusted", too. Can't have someone just using audio-out to copy a file, now can we?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the website of one of the biggest computerized sewing machine makers:
http://www.husqvarnaviking.com/
My mom got one about a year ago. It cost more than my car, but it's awesome. This thing doesn't have a direct computer link (instead, it has a floppy drive), but it's still the coolest sewing machine that I've ever seen. It has this computer software that lets you take any image and make an embroidery file out of it. I actually helped her make our family crest for some shirts for a family reunion. It was pretty fun.
And yes, I am a guy. I'm 19 and I even live in Texas and I still thought that it was cool!
That was never about copyright. It was about brand recognition, so it fell under trademark laws.
Actually, the settlement was that Apple Computers could never put music into their computers. They were allowed beeps and not much else. Apple Computers bought out the settlement when they decided that their computers needed MIDI capabilities. Essentially, since the first Macs, Apple has not been bound to that agreement. That's why they were able to make QuickTime, iTunes, the iPod, buy Emagic (makers of Logic software), and start the iTunes Music Store.
Since Apple is only distributing music, they aren't quite to the level of directly competing with Apple Records, but they could get there easily.
Well, it's similar to how I buy software from Corel because they have a nice licensing policy. They state outright in the EULA that you can install their software on several computers as long as they are not used concurently. Since they aren't nasty and draconian, I buy stuff from them.
Compare this to Wolfram which uses a sort of activation a-la Microsoft, but even worse. They only let me install Mathematica on one computer at a time, even though I have a license to use it on two simultaneously. I plan to never buy from them again. In fact, since I purchased a license allowing me to run Mathematica on two computers at once, I might hack a copy and install it on my PowerBook.
I don't really know much about Novell, but I'm sure that they make something that I could use. If their software costs several hundred dollars per license, then I might not get it because I'm a poor college student. However, at the very least I am certainly going to have a good opinion of them from now on. If Novell helps out the Linux world by ending this SCO madness, then we all owe them our gratitude.
It could very well be that SCO is threatening to sue Novell to prevent just that. Really, it would be very big of Novell to just nullify their contract with SCO. If they did that, I would be sure to buy a few copies of whatever they release next.
That probably has to do with typing while your right hand is on your mouse. I use my right index finger for almost every space except for the ones at the ends of sentences. For those, I use my left thumb. Weird, huh? Of course, my keyboard is at about a -30 degree angle relative to my body, so my right thumb isn't anywhere near the spacebar most of the time.
I also have my mouse close enough to my keyboard that I can hit the number-pad Enter with my thumb when I need to enter something.
The cool thing about that "keyboard's" layout is that it's ALL is software. If you were able to obtain driver level access to it, you could probably remap the key positions arbitrarily. For instance, you could make the entire bottom inch into a giant space-bar. I wonder how long it will be before someone hacks it to accept user-designed keyboard files.
Since it's all in software, it can also move the mouse and handle real hand gestures. You can use gestures to control zoom levels in Photoshop, for instance. Or, at least, that's how they're supposed to work. I don't have one to test that on, so I don't really know how well the gestures work.
When I was reading the part about the lossless compression, I suddenly wondered what would happen if lossy compression was used. The chair could start rotating, shifting, and/or changing size and shape randomly. That would make for a rather interesting world. You go to sit down only to have your chair randomly spin and zip off and become a part of the wall.
The problem with that is that the programs probably wouldn't make good parents. I can just see Agent Smith sealing a baby's mouth to keep it from crying.
Argh. I never was able to spell words with double letters well. Thanks for pointing out my error.
:-)
I meant to correct the part where I left off the end of a sentence. I finished it.
No erros in this post, I hope!
Then you simulate what would be seen. Everything could be treated as a surface with a varying transparency and a texture mapped on top of it. You wouldn't have to visually simulate anything smaller than the eye could resolve, but if needed, the simulation could simulate portions in more detail.
It would be easier from a programming standpoint to simulate all of the individual atoms, but that would be prohibitively slow. We're talking tens of thousands of years for less than a second of simulation time using conventional computers on anything less than a planetary scale.
Quantum computers and chemical computers could speed it up greatly, but it would still take massive amounts of raw processing power to keep track of all of those atoms, let alone let anything interact with them.
You can never see anything smaller than the smallest dot that your eye can perceive. However, you can design devices to enlarge objects (or increase the resolution of your eye, depending on how you look at it).
One of the huge problems with The Matrix is the question of how people were actually put into it. If anyone had memories of the real world, then they would undoubtedly find a way to pass them on to their children. So, that implies that none of the first generation of Matrix denizens was ever outside the Matrix at any prior point in their lives. Yet they had parents. The programs in the Matrix aren't compassionate at all, so they certainly couldn't have raised the children. Perhaps they had been imprisoned for millennia, but if that were the case, I would have expected the robots to have wiped out the last of the independent humans. Due to the way memories are stored, there is no way to erase specific memories from the human mind without some serious brain damage. We can only stop new ones from forming. Perhaps the robots were able to create synthetic sets of memories for the first parents, but again, how? That would require someone in the Matrix in the first place so that his memories could be copied. Perhaps the first parents were willing subjects? I don't really see that as in The Animatrix, the general populace was destroying the robots in the streets. That would be like southern whites agreeing to be slaves to some blacks during the Civil War. Very few would. Perhaps enough did that they were the first generation.
Oops. Forgot to hit preview. Correction to the third paragraph's final sentance:
As long as it is input propperly, the brain shouldn't be able to tell the difference between reality and the simulated world.
Well, you see, the funny thing is that you don't need to simulate the atoms at all. All that you need to simulate visually is the smallest object a person can resolve with his unadied eyes. Everything else is simply mapped on top of that.
For touch, you just simulate the smallest texture difference that a human can feel. For sound, all you need to do is simulate the sounds that a human can hear.
All of these would need to have a certain safely margin to account for people whose senses are better than others, but all that you really have to feed the brain is sense data. As long as it is input propperly,
Now, you would need to physicaly simulate things, but you can reduce the complexity of a model arbitrarily if you are willing to sacrifice quality. The computer detects that we don't need high quality simulations of tables, so it only simulates where the corners would be and fills the rest in as a polygon.
Of course, all of this assumes that you have a more-or-less sentient computer. It would have to be able to decide when we don't need obscenely high quality simulations in order to save its processor power. That wouldn't require true sentience, but it would take quite a bit of clever AI programming.
All of this is a gross simplification. It would still be impossible with modern computing methods because it would require a computer larger than Jupiter, and that's not even with a power source.
That is a pretty good shot. In the rest, it seems like the photographer is accentuating the whole breasts thing at the expense of the rest of the photo. A good photographer would completely ignore what everyone else goes for (read: bikini, v-cut shirts, etc.) and make her look more like a person than a sex object. Well, good by my standards, anyway.
Just look at what Ansel Adams did. His stuff is stunningly beautiful and he didn't do a single thing that mainstream photographers of the day did.
Now, back on topic!
She didn't quite answer some of the questions in the interview, so to me, she comes off as a bit ditzy. She didn't answer the question about Lessig at all! I could be completely wrong, but based solely on that interview, it doesn't seem like she really understands some of the stuff that she was talking about. Of course, she IS still in high school, so her comprehension seems to be quite a bit above average for her age group. I think that I'll read some of her writings when I get some free time. Perhaps then I will have a better opinion.
Actually, both of what you described are forms of dwarfism. The first is Pseudoachondroplasia (pronounced like sue-d'oh-a-kon-dro-plays-ya) and results in almost normal proportions for the head, face, and trunk, but slightly short and stubby hands, arms, and legs.
l um e%20III%201/Pseudoachondroplasia.asp
l um e%20III%201/achondroplasia.asp
The second form that you described more closely resembles Achondroplasia (same as above minus sue-d'oh). "Affected patients have short limbs (rhizomelic micromelia) and stubby, trident hands. Radiographic findings include a large cranium with a small foramen magnum."
For more information check these two sites:
http://www.amershamhealth.com/medcyclopaedia/Vo
http://www.amershamhealth.com/medcyclopaedia/Vo
I have. It killed my hard drive.
Technically, I suppose that it was Windows (95 OSR2 upgraded to 98 SE) that killed my hard drive, but the result was the same. I installed Linux and the drive died. That single-handedly killed any thoughts I had of dual-booting. It also caused my parents to chew me out for well over 7 hours. Have you ever stood for 7 hours straight? Apparently, upgraded versions of Windows don't like living on dual-boot drives, so they somehow crash the drive. I'm talking hardcore crashing, here. The drive was physically destroyed. Fortunately, it was still under warranty.
That machine was simply the worst conglomeration of hardware and software possible. I used an Asus motherboard, a 400 MHz AMD K6-2 processor, and Windows 95 OSR2. The three didn't get along at all. I got IOS protection faults every time I booted until I found the patch and installed it. I never did get it working well.
Later, I installed it on a clean drive on another machine, but the machine that I was using was WAY too slow, so I just had a bad user experience.
Apple always uses Airborne Express. I really like that company, but they're a bit screwy when it comes to delivering stuff.
I called Apple support for the REP for the PowerBook 5300. They shipped me a box. Unfortunately, I wasn't there when the delivery guy called or stopped by, so he dropped the box off at the main office for my apartment complex. They left no note, so I had no idea that it was there. I called Apple again and they said that they would ship the box imediately. I got it 10AM the next day. I packed my 5300, called the number on the box, and within 15 minutes, the guy was at my door to pick it up.
It turns out that Apple fixed it and sent it back within about a day and a half, but the delivery person missed me again and left no note agian, so I had no idea that it was delivered. I called Apple a week or so later and they told me that it had been delivered, so I decided to check the main office. There both boxes were and no one had ever told me about them.
Anyway, what type of iPod do you have? First, second, or third generation? I have a second and my remote's metal surfaces have been turning kind of yellow. I wonder if they would replace it. I really doubt it because mine is a purely cosmetic issue, but I might as well try.
Actually, I use Maya. I wouldn't use it on a standard eMac (mostly because of that whole 128 MB of RAM thing), but even if I did, I have a Wacom tablet with a three button, wireless, batteryless mouse. I SO love this thing! It's simply great. I use the stylus to make textures and the mouse to control Maya.
Anyway, if you got at least a 512 MB stick of RAM, the eMac would make a pretty respectable Maya workstation. It has a reasonably powerful processor, a sufficient graphics card, FireWire (Maya Live MatchMoving. Mmmmmm), and enough hard drive space to store a few hours of DV quality footage. Plus, it's not very expensive, especially if you have a developer's discount.
I would still prefer a nice dual 1.33 GHz Xserve for the actual rendedering, but an eMac would make a nice modeling machine.
I've used Knoppix to rescue a Windows 2000 user when his machine suddenly decided not to boot. We never did figure out what was wrong, but he was able to boot, transfer all of the data to one of his two hard drives, and then burn it all to CDs in another Windows 2000 machine after verifying its integrity.
Now, he loves Knoppix because "it didn't just find some generic video card, it detected MY video card".
I've been distributing it to a few close friends here at my university. Most of them like it, burn a few more copies for their friends and the process continues.
Playing "Extreme Tetris" with pieces of rubble is neither funny nor recommended.
Well, I just went there and got a connection refused. Of course, it has an entry in my hosts file, so I kind of expected that. I wonder if the story submitter has a similar entry and just forgot about it.
Argh. It's been years since I did anything black hole related. I keep forgetting that the Schwarzschild Radius and the event horizon are NOT the same thing. They are related, but not the same.
As the size of the black hole aproaches infinity, its event horizon becomes more and more flat from a constant distance, such that large black holes would apear to have very little surface curvature, similar to how a planet's surface seems flat. Therefore, there shouldn't be much more force pulling on one part of an object than there is pulling on another, right? Since gravity is fairly uniform, so is the distortion of time.
I would imagine that from the perspective of a free-falling observer, it would appear to be very hot, indeed. As the matter falls towards the center of the black hole, its volume decreases and its mass remains constant. Therefore, heat has to go up. Of course, with a large black hole, the matter isn't compressed very much by the time it falls beneath a stationary observer's percieved event horizon. Therefore, the 'surface' of the hole wouldn't be hot, but the contents further down would be, but from the stationary observer's point of view, there aren't contents further down. You only see that as you descend. Of course, I'm coming to these conclusions mostly with classical physical thought, and it has a nasty tendancy to return infinities when black holes are involved.
Here's a question, if as you approach the black hole, the event horizon recedes, then could you in theory escape from beneath the percieved event horizon of a stationary observer? Is the event horizon's position a function of acceleration, velocity, or distance? If distance, then it should be possible to escape, but if it's related to acceleration or velocity, then as you accelerate away, I would imagine that it would rise up and swallow you.
Of course, all of that would take an infinite amount of time from the perspective of the observer, but it's kind of fun to figure out what would happen.
Well, I should have said that I was talking about this from the perspective of a 'stationary' observer relative to the center of the black hole.
:-)
OK, so I was wrong about the fog. I didn't really think that that was at all likely, but it seemed the logical extension of the shell idea as I was typing. I was assuming that time relative to a stationary observer stops inside the SR. That must have been my mistake. Was I more or less right about the rest?
I really need to find a copy of that article. I had no idea that someone had already written about it. I knew that there was no way that I was the first to think of that, but I thought that it was probably wrong because I had never read anything about it. What could cause the shell to move outwards? This is all terribly fascinating to me.
I wonder what it would look like from the point of view of someone falling in. Assuming that he wasn't torn to pieces by the gravitational and temporal differentials, that is. If the shell seems to sink back, I wonder if that means that the perceived SR sinks, too. If so, then you would never cross it from your perspective, only from someone else's.
I'm probably wrong about all of that, too.
If I understand correctly, they plan to make some of those proton-sized toroidal black holes. They should only exist for a few billionths of a second before their gravity is no longer enough to maintain a Schwarzschild Radius and they simply become very massive subatomic particles.
The temporal shear should only extend a few angstroms from the SR, so we don't really have to worry about it tearing stuff to pieces. Its gravity should only be a few nanometers per second squared any more than a few meters away from its surface, and that's barely detectable, so no worries there.
We could actually learn quite a bit about space-time by observing these black holes.
I have always wondered what happens beneath the Schwarzschild Radius. Since time dilation approaches infinity as you approach the Radius, wouldn't time be at a standstill inside the black hole? Therefore, material would accumulate at the surface and never move any further in because time stops for anything inside. You would get an infinitely thin layer of very high density right at the SR. Of course, since the more matter a black hole consumes, the more massive it becomes, the further its SR is from its center, so you wouldn't ever get a shell, you would find something more like a fog.
If anyone knows that any of the above is wrong, then please reply and correct me. It just seems to be what would happen based on what I know of physics and relativity.
Tell her that 'daemon' actually means something closer to "guardian angel" than "demon".
From the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary entry for demon:
1 a : an evil spirit b : a source or agent of evil, harm, distress, or ruin
2 usually daemon : an attendant power or spirit : GENIUS
3 usually daemon : a supernatural being of Greek mythology intermediate between gods and men
All of those daemons running in the background on your machine are attendant spirits. The name has been rationalized by calling it an acronym for Disk And Execution MONitors, but acording to the Jargon File it was originaly based on the second or third meaning quoted above.
Nope. It (probably) wouldn't be admissible because of the part that says no reverse compiling. Reverse engineering is something totally different.
Reverse engineering is taking a black box and figuring out what it contains by giving it test inputs and watching the outputs. There are a few other things considered reverse engineering, but that describes most of it.
Of course, all of this ignores the fact that EULAs have never been tested in court. They could be proven invalid as contracts fairly easily since the exchange of goods occurs before you ever see the EULA and most stores don't accept returns of opened software. Therefore, if you don't agree to the EULA, you still have the right to use what you purchased.
On an interesting side note, various free trade laws specifically protect reverse engineering.
I mean a "trusted" clock. It would need to be tamper-proof, encrypted, and all that other fun stuff. The software in the player would neet to be "trusted", too. Can't have someone just using audio-out to copy a file, now can we?