I've actually read the book before, many years ago, but many of the details have faded, so the audiobook version is a re-read for me. The reader is Connor O'Brien - he does a pretty good job with the book, especially giving the different characters distinctive voices. You can here a snippet of him reading the book here
I think the question that was being asked was, if the earth had been in the path of the asteroid, which hemisphere/continent(s) would have been most likely to have been struck? Granted, it's most likely that it would have been the northern hemisphere, since it's spring here now, and the asteroid is probably in the ecliptic. And probability says it would have hit water.
I've been listening to the audio book version of Niven & Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" during my morning & evening commutes for the past week and a half. Of course, in that book, it's a comet that smacks the earth, and it's a lot more than a 70 meter diameter piece of rock.
Anyway, I've been really getting into the book the past couple days, and seeing this posting on/. was almost scary.
Do you know that a single hurricane can cause destruction on a scale that makes even our biggest nuclear bombs look puny?
Such hogwash. Huricanne Camille [usatoday.com] killed 143 people on the coast and 113 people as it moved inland. Compare those fatalities to Hiroshima, which wasn't even a big nuclear bomb.
Apparently you don't know the difference between destruction and fatalities. Besides... I'm sure if the people who lived in the path of Hurricane Camille had not known it was coming, or had stayed put rather than evacuated, the statistics you quoted would not have been quite the same.
That could make dating so much more reliable for us geeks. Just think what it would be like if you already knew that she shared the same interests, etc. You could probably have built in web access to these things too and check out her online profile. Oh wait... we're probably already sitting in front of our computers looking at her profile before we attempt dating anyway:-)
Yes, but imagine the abuses of this information:
WARNING: Subject currently in menstruation cycle
Hmmm, guess I'll ask her out in another week or so...
I suspect that Lockheed probably has prior art, however. Force feedback is fairly standard in fly by wire military aircraft.
But if this design were deemed "top secret" at the time, then they probably wouldn't have applied for a patent, correct? Hence, someone else could have "invented" and patented it in the meanwhile.
From the pictures on their site, the input method reminds me of several bits in the 'movie' "A Brief History of Time", where they showed the system used by Stephen Hawking for entering text or "talking". His system doesn't use a thumbwheel, the highlight bar moves over the row or column while he holds down a lever. Anyway, this method is certainly slow, but I recall that he and his staff researched various methods, and this was the quickest they could come up with, at least at that time.
Simple. If and when things fumble down to such nazi nonsense, there will be demand for an open system, and it will be produced by ourselves FOR ourselves. GPL'ed hardware isn't such a far-fetched idea these days.
That's all well and good, provided that the latest greatest processors you want are not also tied into the lockdown and encryption. But what happens when Intel and AMD also buy into the whole idea?
And yes, I know, all the old hardware will still be around for us to use, they can't change that. But honestly, who's going to want to use a pokey 1.5GHz system with only 512MB of RAM when all the state of the art ones are running at 10 times that speed and memory?
... but perhaps the same as doing something else all by yourself, when no one's around?
Re:Am I the only person...
on
Flying on Mars
·
· Score: 1
Admit it, you're just a MTG junkie, aren't you?
Actually, I have no idea what "MTG" stands for. I just thought the idea of "life imitating art" was an interesting one (i.e. a real invention that was similar in concept to something from Herbert's "Dune" series).
Marx Brothers marathon on Turner Classic Movies
on
New Years Marathons
·
· Score: 1
For those who get TCM on their cable/satellite lineup, all 13 Marx Brothers movies are being aired today, starting at 9:30am Eastern time. Which means they are partway into "A Night In Casablanca" as we speak... but anyway, go here for today's schedule.
Am I the only person...
on
Flying on Mars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
... who read that article and thought "too bad they didn't call these vehicles 'ornithopters' "?
It may relate to why Dell, after stating their support for linux with some fanfare, never shipped it (to my knowledge) on a box costing less than $2500.
Sorry, have to disagree with you there. We recently purchased a PowerEdge 1400SC, which was around $600 (no monitor), and it included Red Hat 7, with media. In fact, Dell's servers with Linux are a lot less expensive than their Windows NT/2000 ones, since a 5 user license for 2000 Advanced Server adds $799 to the cost of any system.
Paul Graham rounded off the talks by talking about his new dialect of Lisp, which he called Arc. Arc is designed to be a language for "good programmers" only, and gets away without taking the shortcuts and safeguards that you need if you're trying to be accessible.
I predict that someone will later come out with a new and improved version of this language which is backward compatible, and runs 10 times faster. That language will, of course, be called Zip.
Slashdot Mirror
I've actually read the book before, many years ago, but many of the details have faded, so the audiobook version is a re-read for me. The reader is Connor O'Brien - he does a pretty good job with the book, especially giving the different characters distinctive voices. You can here a snippet of him reading the book here
I think the question that was being asked was, if the earth had been in the path of the asteroid, which hemisphere/continent(s) would have been most likely to have been struck? Granted, it's most likely that it would have been the northern hemisphere, since it's spring here now, and the asteroid is probably in the ecliptic. And probability says it would have hit water.
I've been listening to the audio book version of Niven & Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" during my morning & evening commutes for the past week and a half. Of course, in that book, it's a comet that smacks the earth, and it's a lot more than a 70 meter diameter piece of rock.
/. was almost scary.
Anyway, I've been really getting into the book the past couple days, and seeing this posting on
Apparently you don't know the difference between destruction and fatalities. Besides... I'm sure if the people who lived in the path of Hurricane Camille had not known it was coming, or had stayed put rather than evacuated, the statistics you quoted would not have been quite the same.
Well, for people who really want to be up to date, they could recompile the kernel every time they log in or boot up.
That could make dating so much more reliable for us geeks. Just think what it would be like if you already knew that she shared the same interests, etc. You could probably have built in web access to these things too and check out her online profile. Oh wait... we're probably already sitting in front of our computers looking at her profile before we attempt dating anyway :-)
Yes, but imagine the abuses of this information:
WARNING: Subject currently in menstruation cycle
Hmmm, guess I'll ask her out in another week or so...
I didn't see any references here, so here it is:
http://www.ebnews.com/story/OEG20020226S0040
I suspect that Lockheed probably has prior art, however. Force feedback is fairly standard in fly by wire military aircraft.
But if this design were deemed "top secret" at the time, then they probably wouldn't have applied for a patent, correct? Hence, someone else could have "invented" and patented it in the meanwhile.
The WWW is the the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
From the pictures on their site, the input method reminds me of several bits in the 'movie' "A Brief History of Time", where they showed the system used by Stephen Hawking for entering text or "talking". His system doesn't use a thumbwheel, the highlight bar moves over the row or column while he holds down a lever. Anyway, this method is certainly slow, but I recall that he and his staff researched various methods, and this was the quickest they could come up with, at least at that time.
Simple. If and when things fumble down to such nazi nonsense, there will be demand for an open system, and it will be produced by ourselves FOR ourselves. GPL'ed hardware isn't such a far-fetched idea these days.
That's all well and good, provided that the latest greatest processors you want are not also tied into the lockdown and encryption. But what happens when Intel and AMD also buy into the whole idea?
And yes, I know, all the old hardware will still be around for us to use, they can't change that. But honestly, who's going to want to use a pokey 1.5GHz system with only 512MB of RAM when all the state of the art ones are running at 10 times that speed and memory?
... but perhaps the same as doing something else all by yourself, when no one's around?
Admit it, you're just a MTG junkie, aren't you?
Actually, I have no idea what "MTG" stands for. I just thought the idea of "life imitating art" was an interesting one (i.e. a real invention that was similar in concept to something from Herbert's "Dune" series).
For those who get TCM on their cable/satellite lineup, all 13 Marx Brothers movies are being aired today, starting at 9:30am Eastern time. Which means they are partway into "A Night In Casablanca" as we speak... but anyway, go here for today's schedule.
... who read that article and thought "too bad they didn't call these vehicles 'ornithopters' "?
Sorry, have to disagree with you there. We recently purchased a PowerEdge 1400SC, which was around $600 (no monitor), and it included Red Hat 7, with media. In fact, Dell's servers with Linux are a lot less expensive than their Windows NT/2000 ones, since a 5 user license for 2000 Advanced Server adds $799 to the cost of any system.
I was actually thinking that this might be ...
(wait for it)
Suicide Squid!
I would actually prefer a group of vikings in a diner having breakfast, but that would obviously be a bit difficult to convey in an icon.
- Mike
Prediction of first radio message sent to the Starshine satellite:
Good morning Starshine, the earth says "hello".
About 30 pounds.
He stole them from Jack Black and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D.
Are you sure they're not Sapphire Bullets (Of Pure Love)?
From the review:
Paul Graham rounded off the talks by talking about his new dialect of Lisp, which he called Arc. Arc is designed to be a language for "good programmers" only, and gets away without taking the shortcuts and safeguards that you need if you're trying to be accessible.
I predict that someone will later come out with a new and improved version of this language which is backward compatible, and runs 10 times faster. That language will, of course, be called Zip.
You forgot "all your terahertz are belong to us!"
I thought that Sunlight was what came from the power LED on the Sparc workstation.
actually,
sylpheed/kmail are probably much easier to use for the ordinary user.
evo has features that 99.9% of users don't use.
Oh, so that makes it exactly like Outlook then.