I knew the real estate market in Japan was pricey, but 50,000 yen for a "virtual" house???
Sounds like some frustrated Japanese are desperate become homeowners they're willing to settle for houses that don't even exist in the material world....
It's simple, really... mountains are the new thing in pornography. People are snapping and posting so many pictures of naughty, erotically shaped rock formations that the number of mountain pics available worldwide on the net is rising by about 10,000 every 10 minutes.
Soon, the number of phallic granite pics worldwide will even exceed the number of Jenna Jameson facials. Quite the phenomenon, really.
IANABSMIL (I am not a blood-sucking music industry lawyer), but I would guess that about $0.15 per copy goes straight to those wonderful legal minds who draft the contracts and enforce the copyrights. The money that pays for their kids' braces doesn't just pop out of thin air, you know.
Oh no! More jobs will be lost! The horror!
on
Virtual Volunteering
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Has anyone thought this through? Won't the third-world children who educate themselves on our used PCs grow up to compete in the labor market with good old American techies and engineers?
These commies and subversives are undermining the US economy! They are fostering a pool of cheap technical labour that will suck thousands of jobs across the border, to IT sweatshops where children as young as 12 pound out third-rate code for $1.75 a day! On our own PCs, no less... the irony!
Our very livelihoods are at stake and I, for one, will not stand for this terrorist plot. Do the patriotic thing and let your computers erode in landfills where they belong! (Just make sure you don't drink nearby well water for 30 years)
Finally, a way to track the "real people" movements of residents of Amsterdam. Now I can find the marijuana cafes and red-light clubs frequented by Dutchmen who know what they're doing, as opposed to settling for the crappy spots they push on tourists.
I didn't want a robot doggy last year, and I have no use for the ER1 this year. People, all I'm asking for is a frickin' robot that can kill people. How am I supposed to dominate the neighborhood with a miniscule hopped-up "industrial table" on wheels? Heck, that wouldn't even scare the kids next door.
"Run, Timmy run! I think that small mobile platform with the laptop on it is heading our way!"
Why on earth you'd actually want your AIBO to zoom around on a skateboard is another question.
So it can finally chase cars, of course!
The only problem is the reaction of irate motorists being chased by an annoying, skateboarding robot-dog. Once they overcame their initial surprise, could they resist the temptation to brake and reverse?
Vehicle operators might quickly change the camouflage paint scheme on vehicles with "smart" coatings with an electrical impulse, Battista explains. "What we hope this coating can do is amazing. We're also looking at making it seem invisible."
Of course, there's always the danger than an enemy might be able to "hack" the smart paints by zapping vehicles with electrical impulses of their own.
"What's going on, Sarge? The color of our tank just changed to hot pink! Mayday! Mayday!"
The slow operation of the gates -- some required seconds to settle -- underscores the fact that the work was part of a research project. "We have made extraordinarily small, albeit exceedingly slow, logic circuits," Heinrich said.
250,000 times smaller than the most advanced silicon circuitry. Of course, it's also 250,000,000 times slower. I'm guessing there won't be molecular cascade chips in my PC anytime soon, unless I have a lot of free time...
By 2006, the group said, flat-panel screens will outsell CRT monitors by a ratio of five to one.
That's a pretty optimistic prediction, because the current price ratio is about 5 CRT monitors for the cost of 1 flat-panel. Common sense tell us that the price of a flat-panel screen would have to drop by about 60%-70% before the majority of consumers would consider buying forking out the extra cash to save 1 or 2 cubic feet of desk space.
PanIP's principal owner, Lawrence Lockwood, previously had filed suit against American Airlines in 1994, charging that the company's online reservation system infringed on other patents he holds. Lockwood lost that lawsuit, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court
This Lockwood guy sounds like a real pro. He's been at it for at least 10 years. He sniffs out broad new technological trends in business - the kind of thing you might read about in a Forbes article - and then cynically abuses the weakness of US Patent Law by patenting a vague expression of that trend. He never intends to produce anything with his "ideas"... he just slinks into his hole and waits for the real innovators to come along so he can extort money from them.
He's going to lose any court case--that's almost a given--but in the meantime he's hoping that enough of his small, carefully picked victims cave in and throw him $30k, or at least a few grand to make him disappear.
The key to wiping the smirk off his face is to make sure no more of his victims cave. Sure, lawyers aren't cheap, but the 30 companies have to realize that there is no way they can lose this disgusting and frivolous lawsuit, especially if they work together.
See below for an example of the Deep Fritz "heckling"
the human player, Kramnik. I'm surprised Kramnik was able to restrain himself from reaching across the table and ripping out its power supply.
Fritz: "Is this the scourge of France?
Is this the Kramnik, so much fear'd abroad
That with his name the mothers still their babes?
I see report is fabulous and false:
I thought I should have seen some Hercules,
A second Hector, for his grim aspect,
And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.
Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf!
It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp
Should strike such terror to his enemies."
Kramnik, normally not one to be drawn out by such taunts, proceeds to go into a long think. After a few minutes of this, Fritz disrupts him again.
Of course, Afghanistan or Serbia didn't even have the resources to detect conventional aircraft, let alone shoot them down. Enemy radar and AA sites are the first targets for American bombing in any military action. So using stealth technology in these conflicts would have been pointless.
Stealth technology is designed to counter the resources of an enemy army that is sophisticated and technologically advanced enough to be able to shoot down aircraft with missiles. These enemies are in short supply, these days.
For years now I've been hearing that stealth fighter technology is the "American Maginot Line"... all those billions of dollars have been invested in it, yet it was designed only to defeat the radars used by the former Soviet Union. I've heard that it can easily be made obsolete by using lower frequency radar, or heat-sensitive infrared radar systems. In any case, the enemy need only make a comparatively tiny investment in radar to render any form of stealth techology useless.
The Bird of Prey looks pretty, but I'm worried that it will turn out to be a costly debacle. Does anyone who knows more about this than I do than I care to comment?
It's easy to see why Ballmer feels a little threatened... he owns almost a quarter billion shares of MSFT, worth $11.7 billion. Next to that, his $700,000 CEO salary looks like chump change.
He dumped 4 million shares in the past 2 years, but at that rate it would take several lifetimes to sell off his entire stake. His only chance of staying in the 11-digit club (as opposed to 10 digits or even 9) is to hope like hell that MSFT can maintain its current market share in the face of neverending pressure from competitor's innovation and open source. Steve's position is that of a fat guy on a treadmill, running to keep in place as it steadily speeds up...
The cameras can easily isolate the viewer's bright pupils, enabling them to track the eyes and adjust the location of the shifting stripes so that they always block the image in a way that sustains the stereoscopic effect.
Sounds wonderful, but one limitation that jumps immediately to mind is that the 3d effect is limited to a single viewer. I was reminded of the scene in "Minority Report" which shows Tom Cruise watching 3d video of his deceased wife, and then the eerie image distorion of the wife as the camera shifts from Cruise's POV to circle behind the projection.
"Literally, our very lives are at stake now. George and I are just praying that we can finish 'Episode III' in time, before it's all over."
Is it just me, or does Mr. McCallum sound a little paranoid/delusional? If Episode III brings in less than half a billion in box office and 3 hundred million in merchandising tie-ins, I'd be surprised. Yet Rick and George "literally" have their "very lives" at stake. I guess they're just a few pirated DVDs away from living in a cardboard box.
email sent by Robert Hughes, disgruntled Time art critic, to AOLTimeWarner macher Gerry Levin, quoted by Tina Brown:
How can I convey to you the disgust which your name awakens in me begins Hughes to LevinThe merger with Warner was a catastrophe. But the hitherto unimagined stupidity, the blind arrogance of your deal with Case simply beggars description. How can you face yourself knowing how much history, value and savings you have thrown away on your mad, ignorant attempt to merge with a wretched dial-up ISP? . . . I dot know what advice you have to offer, but I have some for you. Buy some rope, go out the back, find a tree and hang yourself. If you had any honour you would.
Seems like some of the Time Warner employees are feeling some strong emotions about their management's attempt to hitch themselves to a sinking ISP...
Sounds great, but what kind of resolution are we talking about here? I wouldn't want to see fuzzy, pixellated video writ large on my TV screen, whether it comes from my VCR or a tiny MP3 player
Actually, the largest foreign supplier of oil to the US is Canada. Venezuela is in second place.
it's ludicrous to suggest that an American attack on Iraq will raise local oil prices.
Anyone who knows anything about global economics, oil prices, or world events would laugh at this statement. Heck, the exact opposite is true; local oil prices (i.e. NYMEX) have been fluctuating considerably because of the mere possibility of invasion. Why? Oil is a globally traded commodity. The price of crude oil in any country would be the same everywhere were it not for variations in local demand/supply and the costs of transporting oil to market.
Because Europe and Asia get most of their oil from the Middle East, instability in the region sends oil prices everywhere skyrocketing. Just look at the last Gulf War for proof. Prices can't shoot up in Europe and Asia without rising in the US as well.
The cause/effect relationship between an Iraq war and oil prices is so obvious I have never heard anyone dispute it, whether expert or layperson, left-wing or right-wing. Until now, that is.
They go to internet cafes instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those cafes had a virus infection of 100%. Most of the cafes that are cheap enough to be affordable are unlicensed and poorly maintained.
Earlier this year, once such cafe caught fire and 40 users died. The PRC responded by shutting down thousands of these establishments... at least for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew the real estate market in Japan was pricey, but 50,000 yen for a "virtual" house???
Sounds like some frustrated Japanese are desperate become homeowners they're willing to settle for houses that don't even exist in the material world....
It's simple, really... mountains are the new thing in pornography. People are snapping and posting so many pictures of naughty, erotically shaped rock formations that the number of mountain pics available worldwide on the net is rising by about 10,000 every 10 minutes.
Soon, the number of phallic granite pics worldwide will even exceed the number of Jenna Jameson facials. Quite the phenomenon, really.
IANABSMIL (I am not a blood-sucking music industry lawyer), but I would guess that about $0.15 per copy goes straight to those wonderful legal minds who draft the contracts and enforce the copyrights. The money that pays for their kids' braces doesn't just pop out of thin air, you know.
Has anyone thought this through? Won't the third-world children who educate themselves on our used PCs grow up to compete in the labor market with good old American techies and engineers?
These commies and subversives are undermining the US economy! They are fostering a pool of cheap technical labour that will suck thousands of jobs across the border, to IT sweatshops where children as young as 12 pound out third-rate code for $1.75 a day! On our own PCs, no less... the irony!
Our very livelihoods are at stake and I, for one, will not stand for this terrorist plot. Do the patriotic thing and let your computers erode in landfills where they belong! (Just make sure you don't drink nearby well water for 30 years)
Finally, a way to track the "real people" movements of residents of Amsterdam. Now I can find the marijuana cafes and red-light clubs frequented by Dutchmen who know what they're doing, as opposed to settling for the crappy spots they push on tourists.
I didn't want a robot doggy last year, and I have no use for the ER1 this year. People, all I'm asking for is a frickin' robot that can kill people. How am I supposed to dominate the neighborhood with a miniscule hopped-up "industrial table" on wheels? Heck, that wouldn't even scare the kids next door.
"Run, Timmy run! I think that small mobile platform with the laptop on it is heading our way!"
Ironic, considering the Chinese government's stance as a champion of the repression of independent belief systems...
So it can finally chase cars, of course!
The only problem is the reaction of irate motorists being chased by an annoying, skateboarding robot-dog. Once they overcame their initial surprise, could they resist the temptation to brake and reverse?
Of course, there's always the danger than an enemy might be able to "hack" the smart paints by zapping vehicles with electrical impulses of their own.
"What's going on, Sarge? The color of our tank just changed to hot pink! Mayday! Mayday!"
250,000 times smaller than the most advanced silicon circuitry. Of course, it's also 250,000,000 times slower. I'm guessing there won't be molecular cascade chips in my PC anytime soon, unless I have a lot of free time...
That's a pretty optimistic prediction, because the current price ratio is about 5 CRT monitors for the cost of 1 flat-panel. Common sense tell us that the price of a flat-panel screen would have to drop by about 60%-70% before the majority of consumers would consider buying forking out the extra cash to save 1 or 2 cubic feet of desk space.
This Lockwood guy sounds like a real pro. He's been at it for at least 10 years. He sniffs out broad new technological trends in business - the kind of thing you might read about in a Forbes article - and then cynically abuses the weakness of US Patent Law by patenting a vague expression of that trend. He never intends to produce anything with his "ideas"... he just slinks into his hole and waits for the real innovators to come along so he can extort money from them.
He's going to lose any court case--that's almost a given--but in the meantime he's hoping that enough of his small, carefully picked victims cave in and throw him $30k, or at least a few grand to make him disappear.
The key to wiping the smirk off his face is to make sure no more of his victims cave. Sure, lawyers aren't cheap, but the 30 companies have to realize that there is no way they can lose this disgusting and frivolous lawsuit, especially if they work together.
See below for an example of the Deep Fritz "heckling" the human player, Kramnik. I'm surprised Kramnik was able to restrain himself from reaching across the table and ripping out its power supply.
Fritz: "Is this the scourge of France? Is this the Kramnik, so much fear'd abroad That with his name the mothers still their babes? I see report is fabulous and false: I thought I should have seen some Hercules, A second Hector, for his grim aspect, And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.
Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf! It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike such terror to his enemies."
Kramnik, normally not one to be drawn out by such taunts, proceeds to go into a long think. After a few minutes of this, Fritz disrupts him again.
And on, and on....
Of course, Afghanistan or Serbia didn't even have the resources to detect conventional aircraft, let alone shoot them down. Enemy radar and AA sites are the first targets for American bombing in any military action. So using stealth technology in these conflicts would have been pointless.
Stealth technology is designed to counter the resources of an enemy army that is sophisticated and technologically advanced enough to be able to shoot down aircraft with missiles. These enemies are in short supply, these days.
For years now I've been hearing that stealth fighter technology is the "American Maginot Line"... all those billions of dollars have been invested in it, yet it was designed only to defeat the radars used by the former Soviet Union. I've heard that it can easily be made obsolete by using lower frequency radar, or heat-sensitive infrared radar systems. In any case, the enemy need only make a comparatively tiny investment in radar to render any form of stealth techology useless.
The Bird of Prey looks pretty, but I'm worried that it will turn out to be a costly debacle. Does anyone who knows more about this than I do than I care to comment?
It's easy to see why Ballmer feels a little threatened... he owns almost a quarter billion shares of MSFT, worth $11.7 billion. Next to that, his $700,000 CEO salary looks like chump change.
He dumped 4 million shares in the past 2 years, but at that rate it would take several lifetimes to sell off his entire stake. His only chance of staying in the 11-digit club (as opposed to 10 digits or even 9) is to hope like hell that MSFT can maintain its current market share in the face of neverending pressure from competitor's innovation and open source. Steve's position is that of a fat guy on a treadmill, running to keep in place as it steadily speeds up...
Sounds wonderful, but one limitation that jumps immediately to mind is that the 3d effect is limited to a single viewer. I was reminded of the scene in "Minority Report" which shows Tom Cruise watching 3d video of his deceased wife, and then the eerie image distorion of the wife as the camera shifts from Cruise's POV to circle behind the projection.
You can't take MacWorld out of the "Big Apple". It just doesn't fit.
Is it just me, or does Mr. McCallum sound a little paranoid/delusional? If Episode III brings in less than half a billion in box office and 3 hundred million in merchandising tie-ins, I'd be surprised. Yet Rick and George "literally" have their "very lives" at stake. I guess they're just a few pirated DVDs away from living in a cardboard box.
email sent by Robert Hughes, disgruntled Time art critic, to AOLTimeWarner macher Gerry Levin, quoted by Tina Brown:
How can I convey to you the disgust which your name awakens in me begins Hughes to LevinThe merger with Warner was a catastrophe. But the hitherto unimagined stupidity, the blind arrogance of your deal with Case simply beggars description. How can you face yourself knowing how much history, value and savings you have thrown away on your mad, ignorant attempt to merge with a wretched dial-up ISP? . . . I dot know what advice you have to offer, but I have some for you. Buy some rope, go out the back, find a tree and hang yourself. If you had any honour you would.Seems like some of the Time Warner employees are feeling some strong emotions about their management's attempt to hitch themselves to a sinking ISP...
Apparently, as a result of Mr McNicol's actions, 153 penis enlargers and 23 fake degrees never managed to get sold. The bastard.
Sounds great, but what kind of resolution are we talking about here? I wouldn't want to see fuzzy, pixellated video writ large on my TV screen, whether it comes from my VCR or a tiny MP3 player
I'm not going to spend an additional $1000+ or more just to save a cubic foot of space on my desk.
Actually, the largest foreign supplier of oil to the US is Canada. Venezuela is in second place.
it's ludicrous to suggest that an American attack on Iraq will raise local oil prices.
Anyone who knows anything about global economics, oil prices, or world events would laugh at this statement. Heck, the exact opposite is true; local oil prices (i.e. NYMEX) have been fluctuating considerably because of the mere possibility of invasion. Why? Oil is a globally traded commodity. The price of crude oil in any country would be the same everywhere were it not for variations in local demand/supply and the costs of transporting oil to market.
Because Europe and Asia get most of their oil from the Middle East, instability in the region sends oil prices everywhere skyrocketing. Just look at the last Gulf War for proof. Prices can't shoot up in Europe and Asia without rising in the US as well.
The cause/effect relationship between an Iraq war and oil prices is so obvious I have never heard anyone dispute it, whether expert or layperson, left-wing or right-wing. Until now, that is.
They go to internet cafes instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those cafes had a virus infection of 100%. Most of the cafes that are cheap enough to be affordable are unlicensed and poorly maintained.
Earlier this year, once such cafe caught fire and 40 users died. The PRC responded by shutting down thousands of these establishments... at least for a while.