I was wondering, what is the weight of ion drives?
Would it be possible for an ion drive to slowly decelerate a spacecraft before re-entry? I'm assuming it wouldn't be able to slow the craft fast enough.
If the Japanese kidnapped and shot at everyone who came in to rebuild that country after World War II they never would have gone anywhere as a country.
At some point you have to realize that it's in your best interest to lay down your guns and MOVE ON.
And Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is based on Wagner's ring cycle and the Norse myths before it.
That doesn't change the fact that execution of the idea was more important than the degree of originality. Some of the most original ideas are also the least accessible to mainstream audiences.
In the case of Star Wars, the execution was very well done indeed, at least for Ep. IV and V. IV is very rough around the edges technically, but in a very endearing homebrew way that has been lost in modern CGI filmmaking.
The problem is that there is a 200+ dollar price difference between an LCD computer monitor and an LCD TV at the same size. This is ridiculous since the only real difference may be the addition of cheap speakers and a TV tuner.
You can get a 14" LCD monitor for less than $300 but the TV version is over $500. It's just not worth it. And of course price increases geometrically with size.
Economy of scale has not worked its magic the way it has with tube TVs (tube TVs are dirt-cheap these days).
So we're all selfish hyprocrites. That doesn't change the fact that the "greens" are right that overpopulation is the reason for environmental problems. The planet can not sustain infinite population growth. Plenty of species have died off when their numbers grew too big for their environment. Technology can only go so far to delay that.
Why is it when people get angry at an entity they have to try to nullify that entity's accomplishments? The two are not interrelated!
Regardless of whether Apple Corp are acting fairly or not doesn't take away from the accomplishments of the Beatles. You can't just wipe that away in some revisionist armchair criticism just because you are pissed off.
Some kids gravitate towards the classic games naturally. Not by the time they are competing with other kids for having the fanciest game du jour, but when they are young enough to react to the game based on its own merits, they do.
Classic games are iconic. They are abstract. They appeal to the younger kids ability to fill in the blanks with their imagination.
I know my 4-year-old enjoys Joust, Elevator Action, and Paperboy a lot, although she is only able to control the fire button in those games.
Do you think I can share a game of Rainbow Six with her?
I have a PC and the games that come out for PC are almost uniformly violent simulations. I've got nothing against them for myself but I'd rather have her shooting pixellated bullets in Elevator Action or Galaxian than teaming up with me on a modern ultra-realistic wargame simulation.
-- DS9 will remain the best Star Trek, unless they can figure out a way to top it. I think it could have easily gone on another 7 series if they'd not decided to end it. Such a shame. --
DS9 really didn't have any likeable characters outside of Worf when he came over, and Worf was one of the stiffest TNG castmembers (Mr. Dorn, you know, Klingons ARE capable of laughing, you aren't supposed to be playing a Vulcan).
Avery Brooks has got a serious speaking problem. His diction is too deliberate. He puts these unnatural spaces inbetween his words. Shatner's delivery is far more natural in comparison.
It's like a weird Johnny Mathis or Neville Brothers like delivery.
I guess that's his idea of shakespearean diction but I think it's robotic and fakey.
They made a fundemental flaw in Enterprise by not going into a retro 60s chic look.
They had an opportunity to do a whole series that felt like the Tribbles episode of DS9 and instead they went with a TNG aesthetic which just spoils continuity with the original series.
I mean, talk about fatigue, when you go from watching TNG to any of the other post TNG series they all have the same basic "feel" to them, which is the Berman/Braga feel. BLANDNESS. Only on a Berman show can you watch an action scene with a seemingly incongruent droning synth-pad soundtrack in the background. There is no sense of excitement or high drama on these shows.
That's something the current stewards of Star Trek just don't understand because they have been riding on coat-tails for 15+ years.
When you pop in an episode of TOS you are reminded of the original day-glo technicolor hyper-melodramatic roots of Star Trek, and it just has so much more LIEF to it, regardless of how much its dated or over-the-top. It ENTERTAINS better.
When I went to see Master and Commander I was reminded so much about how Trek was really Horatio Hornblower in space. I saw direct connections to the TOS episodes like Balance of Terror or the nebula sequence of Star Trek II. It was all about the new "frontier" and how dangerous it was and how the technology to navigate that frontier was just barely viable via the combined teamwork and discipline of the crew. Kirk was always calling down to damage control. Scotty was always fixing things. The ship needed constant maintenance. Space was dangerous. This tone was maintained into the original cast movies pretty well, but TNG with its ultra refined technology made space travel look too easy. Enterprise makes too much of a connection with NASA rather than the analogy of the old navy so it still doesn't strike the right chord.
-- Really, if these jobs are going to Indians with CS degrees...why wouldn't they deserve the job? If they're qualified, why not give them work? --
Isn't it more the obligation of a country to supply native work for its own skilled labor pool than it is for a foreign country to be responsible for employing them via offshore contracts? America should not be seen as some kind of global employment service. Why doesn't India support its own programmers with its own industry? You know what, one day they will, because we are providing them with paid on-the-job training to do so. And then they will come back and compete with us.
For all we know the Indian Bill Gates is over there right now hatching up some ideas.
Political arguments should be settled within a political sphere.
Once people resort to violence as a form of political speech the "point" they really don't deserve anything in return but a bullet in the head.
It's shameful that Sadr can walk away from the mosque and enter politics after being responsible as the leader of the militia for all the deaths in these clashes. He's basically being treated like Ross Perot or something.
It would be equally shameful for anyone to respond to terrorism by paying it back through attention to their chosen causes.
I went to a car show in the mid 80s right before Star Trek V came out and Shatner was there presumably to sign autographs.
Apparently spooked by the large crowd, he changed his mind and wound up doing a "shake hands" thing with people in the line but NO autographs.
By the time I got up to meet him I had already memorized what I was going to say to him. I was going to say something like "Looking forward to seeing you in Star Trek V".
When I got up to meet him I started to say my line and he immediately cut me off with "what's your name?"
He was acting like a robot and going through the motions. He'd say "what's your name?" You responded, he said "nice to meet you, XXX", shook your hand, and you went on.
I was seriously pissed that I couldn't at least get some kind of response out of him. It was like he was looking straight through me.
His hand was clammy and soft.
Later when I DID see him in Trek V my disillusionment was complete, since the movie was a turd.
I had seen most of the other actors from Trek at conventions. Yes, Doohan was a class act at conventions, as was Takei.
That's where USB-on-the-go comes in. If you can use a PDA's usb port like a master then you can hopefully hook up a lot of stock USB peripherals to it including audio inputs.
I mean, if laptops have had USB for ages, why not PDAs?
-- PDAs are Personal Digital Assistants. They're not meant to be personal video players --
There was a time when the IBM PC sold because it had monochrome graphics and a shitty speaker for sound. The business market thought that defined a 'PC'. You want graphics? Get a Nintendo, they said.
Then after a while the rest of the general public wanted games and multimedia and the PC had to upgrade its image or become a tiny niche market.
You know what I use my PC for more than anything else? To play movies! PCs just aren't PCs anymore in a classical sense and you know what? I don't care because they are more useful than anyone had ever imagined and that is a good thing.
PDAs must evolve to satisfy consumer demand otherwise something else (like a smartphone or a subnotebook) will make them obsolete.
Threads like this pull out all sorts of people from under rocks who say they love using their old Palm IIIs or Psions but we're in a whole new era.
The newest XScale chips and the graphics subsystems behind them, when mated to the newest generation of 640x480 LCD displays have the capability to make a system with more horsepower than the notebooks from a few years ago. All they would need to break through their limitation is a decent keyboard and a hard drive.
The limiting of PDAs to PDA functions or personal media players to media player functions is wholly artificial and forces the consumer to buy redundant devices or opt for a bulky non-convertible laptop.
The subnotebooks we've seen posted on Slashdot are all around $2000 or more.
For me, as long as a device like this is fast enough to play fullres Divx movie files it's as fast as I'm going to require. The emerging generation of XScale chips can do that.
>> It's like we never learn in this country. Dependence on foreign oil isn't bad enough, now we're dependent on foreign manufacturing...actually shipping entire factories including specialized equipment overseas. Now we're exporting mind share. Economists be blowed, I think this is a really dangerous trend. It's not being xenophobic to suggest that too much reliance on other countries, for anything, is a really bad idea.
Because if in the end all you have left to represent a company is the power structure then it is equivalent to an empire, like the end of the Roman empire when the identiy of Rome was diluted by all the mergers, acquisitions of entire countries.
If the identity of the US is its companies and everything that makes the company run except for the leadership is outside the US then it's going to lead to a point where these outside forces realize they could do better running THEMSELVES, and then we're in for trouble.
Sam Walton, now there is a humanitarian for you. He's done more to destroy what was left of american manufacturing and lower the average wage of retail workers than anybody.
I think he's doing it because this is his only opportunity to work as an actor.
I think the guy is an okay actor but for whatever reason his career is over aside from anything related to Galactica.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0368745/
How much of a market is left for TV repair these days? I see perfectly good TVs getting placed down next to dumpsters all the time. I salvaged two myself (one doesn't work perfectly, but good enough). Why would anyone pay to repair one unless it was a big-screen model?
I don't know about you but I use a hands-free cable with my phone so I don't give a shit if the phone is not a perfect form-factor to hold up to my ear. Oversized PDA size would be fine with me.
That being said, if you want to separate cell phones from PDAs and laptops then fine, but there should be much tighter and universal integration. All cell phones should allow a PDA or laptop, through standard protocols, to connect to the internet or provide an alternate method of controlling the cell phone so that the phone is simply an earpiece and transmitter with its own battery. But cell phones to date have been too proprietary and too closed.
If you do that, then you can make the phone as dumbed down as you want and move all the tasks related to cell phone connectivity that require more horsepower to a larger device with a better screen (and a bigger battery).
The phone simply becomes a wireless router in essense.
Slashdot Mirror
I was wondering, what is the weight of ion drives?
Would it be possible for an ion drive to slowly decelerate a spacecraft before re-entry? I'm assuming it wouldn't be able to slow the craft fast enough.
Unfortunately, mother nature is the ultimate lawgiver.
If any species consumes too many resources it risks extinction.
Don't blame the messenger.
If the Japanese kidnapped and shot at everyone who came in to rebuild that country after World War II they never would have gone anywhere as a country.
At some point you have to realize that it's in your best interest to lay down your guns and MOVE ON.
And Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is based on Wagner's ring cycle and the Norse myths before it.
That doesn't change the fact that execution of the idea was more important than the degree of originality. Some of the most original ideas are also the least accessible to mainstream audiences.
In the case of Star Wars, the execution was very well done indeed, at least for Ep. IV and V. IV is very rough around the edges technically, but in a very endearing homebrew way that has been lost in modern CGI filmmaking.
The problem is that there is a 200+ dollar price difference between an LCD computer monitor and an LCD TV at the same size. This is ridiculous since the only real difference may be the addition of cheap speakers and a TV tuner.
You can get a 14" LCD monitor for less than $300 but the TV version is over $500. It's just not worth it. And of course price increases geometrically with size.
Economy of scale has not worked its magic the way it has with tube TVs (tube TVs are dirt-cheap these days).
What's so bad about Froogle? I use it all the time. It's good for price-comparison shopping.
Maybe in Episode III there will be carbombing and imperials' charred bodies being dragged through the streets. That will play well in the US.
So we're all selfish hyprocrites. That doesn't change the fact that the "greens" are right that overpopulation is the reason for environmental problems. The planet can not sustain infinite population growth. Plenty of species have died off when their numbers grew too big for their environment. Technology can only go so far to delay that.
You index video quite easily by parsing closed captioning. No speech recognition necessary.
Why is it when people get angry at an entity they have to try to nullify that entity's accomplishments? The two are not interrelated!
Regardless of whether Apple Corp are acting fairly or not doesn't take away from the accomplishments of the Beatles. You can't just wipe that away in some revisionist armchair criticism just because you are pissed off.
--
but why should you have the good job and not someone who is equally qualified
--
It's not America's job to treat the whole world as some kind of welfare state!
Some kids gravitate towards the classic games naturally. Not by the time they are competing with other kids for having the fanciest game du jour, but when they are young enough to react to the game based on its own merits, they do.
Classic games are iconic. They are abstract. They appeal to the younger kids ability to fill in the blanks with their imagination.
I know my 4-year-old enjoys Joust, Elevator Action, and Paperboy a lot, although she is only able to control the fire button in those games.
Do you think I can share a game of Rainbow Six with her?
I have a PC and the games that come out for PC are almost uniformly violent simulations. I've got nothing against them for myself but I'd rather have her shooting pixellated bullets in Elevator Action or Galaxian than teaming up with me on a modern ultra-realistic wargame simulation.
--
DS9 will remain the best Star Trek, unless they can figure out a way to top it. I think it could have easily gone on another 7 series if they'd not decided to end it. Such a shame.
--
DS9 really didn't have any likeable characters outside of Worf when he came over, and Worf was one of the stiffest TNG castmembers (Mr. Dorn, you know, Klingons ARE capable of laughing, you aren't supposed to be playing a Vulcan).
Avery Brooks has got a serious speaking problem.
His diction is too deliberate. He puts these unnatural spaces inbetween his words. Shatner's delivery is far more natural in comparison.
It's like a weird Johnny Mathis or Neville Brothers like delivery.
I guess that's his idea of shakespearean diction but I think it's robotic and fakey.
They made a fundemental flaw in Enterprise by not going into a retro 60s chic look.
They had an opportunity to do a whole series that felt like the Tribbles episode of DS9 and instead they went with a TNG aesthetic which just spoils continuity with the original series.
I mean, talk about fatigue, when you go from watching TNG to any of the other post TNG series they all have the same basic "feel" to them, which is the Berman/Braga feel. BLANDNESS. Only on a Berman show can you watch an action scene with a seemingly incongruent droning synth-pad soundtrack in the background. There is no sense of excitement or high drama on these shows.
That's something the current stewards of Star Trek just don't understand because they have been riding on coat-tails for 15+ years.
When you pop in an episode of TOS you are reminded of the original day-glo technicolor hyper-melodramatic roots of Star Trek, and it just has so much more LIEF to it, regardless of how much its dated or over-the-top. It ENTERTAINS better.
When I went to see Master and Commander I was reminded so much about how Trek was really Horatio Hornblower in space. I saw direct connections to the TOS episodes like Balance of Terror or the nebula sequence of Star Trek II. It was all about the new "frontier" and how dangerous it was and how the technology to navigate that frontier was just barely viable via the combined teamwork and discipline of the crew. Kirk was always calling down to damage control. Scotty was always fixing things. The ship needed constant maintenance. Space was dangerous. This tone was maintained into the original cast movies pretty well, but TNG with its ultra refined technology made space travel look too easy. Enterprise makes too much of a connection with NASA rather than the analogy of the old navy so it still doesn't strike the right chord.
--
Really, if these jobs are going to Indians with CS degrees...why wouldn't they deserve the job? If they're qualified, why not give them work?
--
Isn't it more the obligation of a country to supply native work for its own skilled labor pool than it is for a foreign country to be responsible for employing them via offshore contracts? America should not be seen as some kind of global employment service. Why doesn't India support its own programmers with its own industry? You know what, one day they will, because we are providing them with paid on-the-job training to do so. And then they will come back and compete with us.
For all we know the Indian Bill Gates is over there right now hatching up some ideas.
Political arguments should be settled within a political sphere.
Once people resort to violence as a form of political speech the "point" they really don't deserve anything in return but a bullet in the head.
It's shameful that Sadr can walk away from the mosque and enter politics after being responsible as the leader of the militia for all the deaths in these clashes. He's basically being treated like Ross Perot or something.
It would be equally shameful for anyone to respond to terrorism by paying it back through attention to their chosen causes.
Shatner wouldn't, that's for sure.
I went to a car show in the mid 80s right before Star Trek V came out and Shatner was there presumably to sign autographs.
Apparently spooked by the large crowd, he changed his mind and wound up doing a "shake hands" thing with people in the line but NO autographs.
By the time I got up to meet him I had already memorized what I was going to say to him. I was going to say something like "Looking forward to seeing you in Star Trek V".
When I got up to meet him I started to say my line and he immediately cut me off with "what's your name?"
He was acting like a robot and going through the motions. He'd say "what's your name?" You responded, he said "nice to meet you, XXX", shook your hand, and you went on.
I was seriously pissed that I couldn't at least get some kind of response out of him. It was like he was looking straight through me.
His hand was clammy and soft.
Later when I DID see him in Trek V my disillusionment was complete, since the movie was a turd.
I had seen most of the other actors from Trek at conventions. Yes, Doohan was a class act at conventions, as was Takei.
That's where USB-on-the-go comes in. If you can use a PDA's usb port like a master then you can hopefully hook up a lot of stock USB peripherals to it including audio inputs. I mean, if laptops have had USB for ages, why not PDAs?
--
PDAs are Personal Digital Assistants. They're not meant to be personal video players
--
There was a time when the IBM PC sold because it had monochrome graphics and a shitty speaker for sound. The business market thought that defined a 'PC'. You want graphics? Get a Nintendo, they said.
Then after a while the rest of the general public wanted games and multimedia and the PC had to upgrade its image or become a tiny niche market.
You know what I use my PC for more than anything else? To play movies! PCs just aren't PCs anymore in a classical sense and you know what? I don't care because they are more useful than anyone had ever imagined and that is a good thing.
PDAs must evolve to satisfy consumer demand otherwise something else (like a smartphone or a subnotebook) will make them obsolete.
Threads like this pull out all sorts of people from under rocks who say they love using their old Palm IIIs or Psions but we're in a whole new era.
The newest XScale chips and the graphics subsystems behind them, when mated to the newest generation of 640x480 LCD displays have the capability to make a system with more horsepower than the notebooks from a few years ago. All they would need to break through their limitation is a decent keyboard and a hard drive.
The limiting of PDAs to PDA functions or personal media players to media player functions is wholly artificial and forces the consumer to buy redundant devices or opt for a bulky non-convertible laptop.
The subnotebooks we've seen posted on Slashdot are all around $2000 or more.
For me, as long as a device like this is fast enough to play fullres Divx movie files it's as fast as I'm going to require. The emerging generation of XScale chips can do that.
>>
It's like we never learn in this country. Dependence on foreign oil isn't bad enough, now we're dependent on foreign manufacturing...actually shipping entire factories including specialized equipment overseas. Now we're exporting mind share. Economists be blowed, I think this is a really dangerous trend. It's not being xenophobic to suggest that too much reliance on other countries, for anything, is a really bad idea.
Because if in the end all you have left to represent a company is the power structure then it is equivalent to an empire, like the end of the Roman empire when the identiy of Rome was diluted by all the mergers, acquisitions of entire countries.
If the identity of the US is its companies and everything that makes the company run except for the leadership is outside the US then it's going to lead to a point where these outside forces realize they could do better running THEMSELVES, and then we're in for trouble.
Sam Walton, now there is a humanitarian for you. He's done more to destroy what was left of american manufacturing and lower the average wage of retail workers than anybody.
I think he's doing it because this is his only opportunity to work as an actor. I think the guy is an okay actor but for whatever reason his career is over aside from anything related to Galactica. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0368745/
How much of a market is left for TV repair these days? I see perfectly good TVs getting placed down next to dumpsters all the time. I salvaged two myself (one doesn't work perfectly, but good enough). Why would anyone pay to repair one unless it was a big-screen model?
So use an email program besides Outlook!
I don't know about you but I use a hands-free cable with my phone so I don't give a shit if the phone is not a perfect form-factor to hold up to my ear. Oversized PDA size would be fine with me.
That being said, if you want to separate cell phones from PDAs and laptops then fine, but there should be much tighter and universal integration. All cell phones should allow a PDA or laptop, through standard protocols, to connect to the internet or provide an alternate method of controlling the cell phone so that the phone is simply an earpiece and transmitter with its own battery. But cell phones to date have been too proprietary and too closed.
If you do that, then you can make the phone as dumbed down as you want and move all the tasks related to cell phone connectivity that require more horsepower to a larger device with a better screen (and a bigger battery).
The phone simply becomes a wireless router in essense.