Ilovebees = fun. I enjoy playing it and I couldn't give a damn about Halo 2. So should a "marketing gimmick" be ignored even if it is entertaining on its own? Do you refuse to be entertained by an inventive television commercial because even though it's funny, it's there to sell you something? For that matter, the purpose of television is to keep you watching so you see the commercials and they make money. So I guess since the entertainment inustry isn't out intentionally keeping us amused for free, we'd all better go back to making shadow puppets in our living rooms so we're not beholden to corporate interests.
The reference to the Hawkings Effect is the key.
Steve H. has a well accepted theory that black holes leak. The smaller they are
the faster they leak. (It's basically a quantum effect, if the black hole is low
enough mass the singularity is close enough to the event horizon to let some
matter tunnel out and escape. The event horizon shrinks further until the black
hole evaporates.) If all goes right the holes we could create with our limited
technology couldn't last long enough to cause any problems. This of course is
all just theory, if he's wrong there will be hell to pay.
First off, IANAQP (I am not a quantum physicist), but, that said, some
corrections are in order... first of all black holes do not release matter as
they dissipate, they release radiation (according to Dr. Hawking at least).
Secondly, if he's wrong there won't be hell to pay, because the same theories
that explain what black holes do are the theories that will allow this
experiment to occur; in other words, we won't be able to create the black holes
if the theories are wrong.
Here's an question- since we put matter into the black hole and get out only
radiation as it dissipates (or so the theory goes) could we theoretically create
black-hole-driven power plants where we feed matter into black holes and harness
the energy as it escapes? Or is the radiation created as the black hole
collapses unusable as a source of energy? I suppose it would also depend on the
amount of energy used to create the holes. And from a P.R. standpoint, the fact
that many people (in the U.S. at least) are still scared of nuclear plants, and
apparently even many slashdot readers think that tiny black holes function like
ultra-powerful vacuum cleaners, could mean a little trouble getting the local
black-hole power plant approved.
By the way, I highly recommend Dr. Hawking's book The Universe In A
Nutshell. You can get it
here. It's a lot easier to swallow than his previous book, and gets
into many of the more interesting theories in science today without involving
too much math. Topics covered include black holes, time travel, wormholes,
etc.
OK, this is one of the only websites where I see the abbreviation "IP" and can never be immediately sure if we're talking Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property. How about we cut down a little on the abbreviations, so that I DHTTAFITM (Don't Have To Think At Five In The Morning)?
Peter Norton's Complete Guide To Linux was the only book I used when I decided to learn linux. It is a little bit outdated now (the version of Redhat mentioned in it is 6.0), but it took me from "never used linux/unix in my life" to "set up own web, dns, ftp, and mail servers" in a matter of days. It is concise, informative, and sometimes humorous ("comprehensive sendmail books can be used as boat anchors", reads the chapter on sendmail). However, I would not go so far as to recommend it on the show unless a new version comes out.
Does anyone know what prices Hormel charges for bulk shipments of actual SPAM? I'd chip in a few bucks to the "feed Ralsky fund." Let's ensure that he never goes hungry again.
By the way Alan, good luck tracking down and suing those 300 anonymous internet guys.
Money is just a concept- an idea we use to encourage the exchange of goods and services. As such, it's the easiest thing to BE digital- it can be represented just as well by a string of ones and zeros as it can be by paper with dead guys' faces on it. For all intents and purposes, we've already got digital cash. When I get paid at the end of the week, I get my money direct deposited. I use credit cards to pay for just about everything, and everything else gets paid via electronic transfer (including my credit card bills). In fact, as soon as McDonald's starts taking Mastercard, I'll be done with cash alltogether. I fail to see what possible advantages could be had by simply changing the way our computers see money, when we already have electronic systems in place that work just fine.
Another good place to browse around (if you're into this sort of thing) is the IBM Archive. In addition to what's available there online, the staff at the archive is extremely helpful- I sent them a quick email requesting a sampling of IBM advertising material from the '50s and '60s for a research paper, and they sent me (overnight!) a HUGE collection (photocopies of course).
This project will fail. Period. And I don't mean because of engineering problems (ie actually getting the damn thing to work). It will fail because of one simple rule that applies to almost all inventions of this type:
Any device that attempts to do two completely different things will do neither of them well.
Prime example: The "spork"- how many do you own?
So last week I was rummaging around in my great-uncle Nathaniel's basement, and what do I find but an original Gutenberg Bible. I was awestruck at this incredible find- it was the perfect size for the computer I was building! I immediately took it home and got to work. First things first, I ripped off the cover and the back, and used my dremel to cut a "box" shape in all the pages (don't worry, I didn't let any of it go to waste... I used the rest to line my birdcage). Anyway, I won't waste space here with all the details, but suffice to say, all I needed to use was a mini-itx motherboard, a hard drive I had laying around, and a power supply I built myself using old Deusenberg parts. I topped it off by making it holy-water-cooled and creating a neat lighting effect by burning the souls of your unborn children. I'll have a link and pics soon!
I've put up a mirror of the special projects page at gotfog.com, as well as the "making fog hug the ground" and "vortex" special projects. The mirror should be significantly faster than the original, and can be found at http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/gotfog/index.h tml
This power source would knock all of our current (no pun intended) Uninterruptible Power Supplies on their collective asses. If the power goes out, no worries, my server can stay on for 50 years... Also, in all seriousness, this seems like it would be the ideal power source for robots such as the "servant" variety that have been a staple of future homes in many science fiction stories. After all, it seems like a waste of time to have Robo-Jeeves plug himself in every night. The only obstacle that is obvious to me is the question of production efficiency; basically, how cheap is it to find/produce/refine large quantities of this Nickel isotope? If it takes a tremendous amount of power and time, that translates into tremendous expense, and decreases the likelyhood that we will ever see them in commercial products.
I have a few maps of my hometown that predate the oldest LOC maps of the area (mine are from early 1800s). Does anyone know of a method to submit maps for archival? (I don't really want to give them away, but I would like to see them digitally archived)
I seem to remember a series of documentaries from the 1950's or so, detailing Japan's experiments with rocketry. As I recall, the rockets inevitably crashed and caused a beast that had slept for centuries to awaken and wreak havoc on the poor locals, who were often so distrought that they failed to make their mouths sync up with their screams of terror. Must we repeat this tragedy? I think we've all had just about enough Raymond Burr.
I've set up a mirror of both the projectblack story and the quicktime movie of the plane in flight. http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/batplane/index.html
Well, one of these would only come in handy if I actually vacuumed in the first place. Now, make me a robot that posts to slashdot, drinks mountain dew and takes naps, and you've got yourself a customer!
Laser eye-beams probably wouldn't hurt either.
http://www.geocities.com/robot_president/quotes.ht ml
Wouldn't it be more effective to just stamp "return to sender" on the thing right when you get it? No postage fees.
Personally, I've always enjoyed using them to play "Hallway Death Frisbee"- it's like dodgeball, but with more chaos and greater injury potential.
So it's been what, a year now that these guys have been at it, and they've managed to collect 64,000 cds. At this rate, they'll be done in around 15 years. Whoopee. I'll be fairly surprised if in the year 2017 A) dial-up still exists, and B) CD-ROMs are still the media of choice for this crap.
Slashdot Mirror
ah crap, I just posted the same thing that a dozen other people have already said. Time to quit browsing with a threshold of 5.
not true. The Macintosh LC3 sold quite well.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Ilovebees = fun. I enjoy playing it and I couldn't give a damn about Halo 2. So should a "marketing gimmick" be ignored even if it is entertaining on its own? Do you refuse to be entertained by an inventive television commercial because even though it's funny, it's there to sell you something? For that matter, the purpose of television is to keep you watching so you see the commercials and they make money. So I guess since the entertainment inustry isn't out intentionally keeping us amused for free, we'd all better go back to making shadow puppets in our living rooms so we're not beholden to corporate interests.
The reference to the Hawkings Effect is the key. Steve H. has a well accepted theory that black holes leak. The smaller they are the faster they leak. (It's basically a quantum effect, if the black hole is low enough mass the singularity is close enough to the event horizon to let some matter tunnel out and escape. The event horizon shrinks further until the black hole evaporates.) If all goes right the holes we could create with our limited technology couldn't last long enough to cause any problems. This of course is all just theory, if he's wrong there will be hell to pay.
First off, IANAQP (I am not a quantum physicist), but, that said, some corrections are in order... first of all black holes do not release matter as they dissipate, they release radiation (according to Dr. Hawking at least). Secondly, if he's wrong there won't be hell to pay, because the same theories that explain what black holes do are the theories that will allow this experiment to occur; in other words, we won't be able to create the black holes if the theories are wrong.
Here's an question- since we put matter into the black hole and get out only radiation as it dissipates (or so the theory goes) could we theoretically create black-hole-driven power plants where we feed matter into black holes and harness the energy as it escapes? Or is the radiation created as the black hole collapses unusable as a source of energy? I suppose it would also depend on the amount of energy used to create the holes. And from a P.R. standpoint, the fact that many people (in the U.S. at least) are still scared of nuclear plants, and apparently even many slashdot readers think that tiny black holes function like ultra-powerful vacuum cleaners, could mean a little trouble getting the local black-hole power plant approved.
By the way, I highly recommend Dr. Hawking's book The Universe In A Nutshell. You can get it here. It's a lot easier to swallow than his previous book, and gets into many of the more interesting theories in science today without involving too much math. Topics covered include black holes, time travel, wormholes, etc.
OK, this is one of the only websites where I see the abbreviation "IP" and can never be immediately sure if we're talking Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property. How about we cut down a little on the abbreviations, so that I DHTTAFITM (Don't Have To Think At Five In The Morning)?
Peter Norton's Complete Guide To Linux was the only book I used when I decided to learn linux. It is a little bit outdated now (the version of Redhat mentioned in it is 6.0), but it took me from "never used linux/unix in my life" to "set up own web, dns, ftp, and mail servers" in a matter of days. It is concise, informative, and sometimes humorous ("comprehensive sendmail books can be used as boat anchors", reads the chapter on sendmail). However, I would not go so far as to recommend it on the show unless a new version comes out.
Does anyone know what prices Hormel charges for bulk shipments of actual SPAM? I'd chip in a few bucks to the "feed Ralsky fund." Let's ensure that he never goes hungry again.
By the way Alan, good luck tracking down and suing those 300 anonymous internet guys.
Money is just a concept- an idea we use to encourage the exchange of goods and services. As such, it's the easiest thing to BE digital- it can be represented just as well by a string of ones and zeros as it can be by paper with dead guys' faces on it. For all intents and purposes, we've already got digital cash. When I get paid at the end of the week, I get my money direct deposited. I use credit cards to pay for just about everything, and everything else gets paid via electronic transfer (including my credit card bills). In fact, as soon as McDonald's starts taking Mastercard, I'll be done with cash alltogether. I fail to see what possible advantages could be had by simply changing the way our computers see money, when we already have electronic systems in place that work just fine.
Another good place to browse around (if you're into this sort of thing) is the IBM Archive. In addition to what's available there online, the staff at the archive is extremely helpful- I sent them a quick email requesting a sampling of IBM advertising material from the '50s and '60s for a research paper, and they sent me (overnight!) a HUGE collection (photocopies of course).
This project will fail. Period. And I don't mean because of engineering problems (ie actually getting the damn thing to work). It will fail because of one simple rule that applies to almost all inventions of this type: Any device that attempts to do two completely different things will do neither of them well. Prime example: The "spork"- how many do you own?
Unlimited data but only 300 voice minutes? Easy:
1. VoIP
2. ???
3. Profit!!
US the worst? You don't need math to figure that out, you just need to look at the results.
So last week I was rummaging around in my great-uncle Nathaniel's basement, and what do I find but an original Gutenberg Bible. I was awestruck at this incredible find- it was the perfect size for the computer I was building! I immediately took it home and got to work. First things first, I ripped off the cover and the back, and used my dremel to cut a "box" shape in all the pages (don't worry, I didn't let any of it go to waste... I used the rest to line my birdcage). Anyway, I won't waste space here with all the details, but suffice to say, all I needed to use was a mini-itx motherboard, a hard drive I had laying around, and a power supply I built myself using old Deusenberg parts. I topped it off by making it holy-water-cooled and creating a neat lighting effect by burning the souls of your unborn children. I'll have a link and pics soon!
I've put up a mirror of the special projects page at gotfog.com, as well as the "making fog hug the ground" and "vortex" special projects. The mirror should be significantly faster than the original, and can be found at http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/gotfog/index.h tml
This power source would knock all of our current (no pun intended) Uninterruptible Power Supplies on their collective asses. If the power goes out, no worries, my server can stay on for 50 years... Also, in all seriousness, this seems like it would be the ideal power source for robots such as the "servant" variety that have been a staple of future homes in many science fiction stories. After all, it seems like a waste of time to have Robo-Jeeves plug himself in every night. The only obstacle that is obvious to me is the question of production efficiency; basically, how cheap is it to find/produce/refine large quantities of this Nickel isotope? If it takes a tremendous amount of power and time, that translates into tremendous expense, and decreases the likelyhood that we will ever see them in commercial products.
I have a few maps of my hometown that predate the oldest LOC maps of the area (mine are from early 1800s). Does anyone know of a method to submit maps for archival? (I don't really want to give them away, but I would like to see them digitally archived)
I seem to remember a series of documentaries from the 1950's or so, detailing Japan's experiments with rocketry. As I recall, the rockets inevitably crashed and caused a beast that had slept for centuries to awaken and wreak havoc on the poor locals, who were often so distrought that they failed to make their mouths sync up with their screams of terror. Must we repeat this tragedy? I think we've all had just about enough Raymond Burr.
I've set up a mirror of both the projectblack story and the quicktime movie of the plane in flight. http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/batplane/index .html
fizzirst pizzost, ma nizzles. Fo' sheezy etc
Well, one of these would only come in handy if I actually vacuumed in the first place. Now, make me a robot that posts to slashdot, drinks mountain dew and takes naps, and you've got yourself a customer! Laser eye-beams probably wouldn't hurt either. http://www.geocities.com/robot_president/quotes.ht ml
1. hack BIOS to utilize vacuum tubes in other ways 2. combine linux with ham radio technology 3. ??? 4. Profit!
Wouldn't it be more effective to just stamp "return to sender" on the thing right when you get it? No postage fees. Personally, I've always enjoyed using them to play "Hallway Death Frisbee"- it's like dodgeball, but with more chaos and greater injury potential.
So it's been what, a year now that these guys have been at it, and they've managed to collect 64,000 cds. At this rate, they'll be done in around 15 years. Whoopee. I'll be fairly surprised if in the year 2017 A) dial-up still exists, and B) CD-ROMs are still the media of choice for this crap.
YOUR TOWN- In a related story, several zombies broke into a local CompUSA, chanting "Braaaaaains" and licking every processor in sight.