When I was 16 or so I started doing some freelance web programming. I got a couple $1000 (or less) contracts to start, a couple of which fell through. So I decided to write some stuff that I can sell over and over again.
I started looking around for something that works well, is simple and doesnt have many variants. I came across a script that I liked, so I made my own version. I spent a weekend writing the script, and it started selling like hotcakes. I put it up on a simple website and listed it at various resource indexes around the net and its been selling ever since. The script sells for ~ $29.95 and started selling at about 2 or three copies a week. Its been dying down now, after about 2 years on the web, but I still made some nice coin off of it.
I realize that this may be small change for most people, but the trick is to come up with 10 - 20 scripts (or small programs) that each fill a particular niche and sell as well. I havent had much time to write any simmilar simple scripts like this recently because I have been swamped with other custom projects and university.
But this long rant brings me to my point. Alot of times existing software can be bloated with useless features. By writing a simpler version that is easy to use and serves its intended purpose well, then you will be doing well.
For those of you who are interested, the script I wrote was based off of PayPal's knowledge base script.
You would think that NASA would have put in failsafes for both of your points. They should make the rover auto-power down after an hour or two of no commands. Have it power down to the point where the only thing running is a radio monitoring a particular "wake" frequency. That way it acts just like my laptop. I leave it alone for a while, and the thing goes to sleep to conserve battery life.
With the issue of the motor getting jammed/stuck, I could see a simmilar fail safe. Its probably set to goto a certain position or make a certain number of revolutions, and it should really have sensors to tell that "hey, I am givin this thing juice but its not moving... guess I should stop trying and await commands".
Just a thought, maybe they will do like what they do now with movie trailers, allow the users to select a quality size. Default would be top quality but they could put lower quality options that are remembered via cookie.
I am still not condoneing (sp?) the idea, but just mentioning a possible solution to the parent thread.
Now heres what I think would be cool. Line all of the walls and ceilings with millions of RGB tricolor LED's Then hook it up to various computer(s) / TV(s). That would kick ass.
Screw Ambient Lighting, I want a 50ft monitor on all the walls. he he he.
I can imagine playing some music with the winamp visualization running on all of the walls. That would be "psychadelic" (sp?)
I read an article a couple of years ago about global warming. The article was backed by very interesting data and graphs (although I am sure it was slightly biased).
Basically, what the article proved was that global warming isnt really an issue. The "global climate" if you will, will change naturally over time. Humanity has existed during a global "summer" and that summer, believe it or not, is due to end within the next few hundred years. The earth spends millions of years in ice age, and then returns to a brief summer that lasts a fraction of that.
Another good point that they had made in the article is that there was a higher global temperature in the middle ages, and that was the highest it has been in our history.
If you dont believe the stuff I listed above, perhaps you will find this next little point a bit more interesting. Humans result in
I dont really think that we have much to worry about. We are comming to the end of the fossil-fuel age anyways, perhaps none of this will really matter at all in the long run?
This will never do as well as the iPod. Microsoft have to realize that cramming a device full of low quality features is not what people want. I would rather have a device that does one thing really well than one device that does a shotty job of several things. People arent going to want to lug around a large video screen when their going off jogging or roller blading. Heres what I think would be handy. Take the basic ipod (or a comparable device with a simmilar size, weight and battery life) and throw an s-video/component video jack on the side. This way people can play their videos on most any TV without the burden of a huge fragile video screen.
Personally, I believe that Time Travel is possible, but not quite in the way people would think.
Through time dilation (as theorized by Einstein), its possible to travel to the future simply by going really f'n fast. The equation is:
T = T0 / (1 - u^2/c^2)1/2
where T is the time elapsed in the rest frame and T0 is the time in the moving frame.
Just to give an example of how this would work... If you wanted to travel into the future 100 years, and only take 5 years of your life for the actual travel time...
105 = 5 / (1 - u^2)^1/2 where U is a multiple of c) ... some more math...
u =.9988c
And that is the speed you would have to go in order to travel 100 years into the future while only spending 5 years of your life. Good luck getting up to that speed, and once your at it, I wish you even better luck when trying to slow down.
It seems to me to be basically another form of cryptography. For instance, alot of places use encrypted passwords, meaning that when a new password is issued, it will encrypt it and store it in the database. If the database is ever hacked, the encrypted passwords are still useless because they are encrypted and theres no simple way of recovering the actual password from the encrypted form.
Simmilarily, when someones eye is scanned into a string of ones and zeros, that string is still useless unless the thief has a way to convert this string back into an eyeball, which is not inconceivable... I could imagine someone making a glass marble that would trick the scanner into thinking its a real eye.
Actually, the card reader they use for the door isnt too secure anyway. It doesnt verify the card is in fact a debit card, just checks to see if it has a magnetic strip. You can use a library card to get in if you want.
I guess I could enter a bunch of wrong PINS in the ATM.. but then the ATM would eat up my card.
Theres an idea for a scam.. Setup a fake ATM machine that will take your card, and ask you to enter the pin three times. After the client enters the same pin number three times (the legit code of course), then it eats the card. No need to make a duplicate when you can use the origional.
This is by far my favorite Science joke...
This was a question on some exam a few years back...
"Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle?s Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass.
If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for souls entering hell, let?s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle?s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls to the volume must remain constant.
So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given me by Therese Banyan during freshman year ("It will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you"), and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and therefore hell must be exothermic.
The bubble may be a bubble, but it would seem to me sort of inefficient to make the bubble any biger than it has to be. Why not make the bubble the same shape as the ship, but maybe a few feet bigger? In which case I guess you would have to worry about aerodynamics, but not of the shape of the ship, the shape of the bubble which would be the same as the ship but a bit bigger.
Does it really matter whether or not an intergalactic space ship is aerodynamic? I mean, honestly, if they have enough resources to waste to even consider launching the thing from a plannet, I dont think they need to worry too much about aerodynamics. Look at the borg cube, now theres efficiency. They dont give a damn about aerodynamics cause they are in space. he he he.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I am all for stackable spaceships!
I remember a few years back there was the "can-do" ("Can" for Canada). Not sure what became of it, but I think the project was canned because of stupid environmental activists that didnt want the next chernobyl to be in Canada.
From what I heard, the reactor design was designed to be powerfull enough to generate electricity for a Canadian University.
Actually, I believe that we talked about that the other day in my physics class. In "theory", the universe is inside what is called (I believe) a "Multiverse" where there exists other universes. The difference though, is that the "Multiverse" is 4 dimensional, so any universe can exist in the multiverse at its x,y,z,t coordinates.
But thats all just a theory. Not sure if I got the terminology quite right, it was more of an informal discussion that we covered.
Because there isnt enough air in space. The "radiometer" that I recall using was in a glass tube with a vacume, and the way it works is by having several fins mounted on a very smooth bearing. Each fin has two sides, the black side and a white side. The Black absorbs the heat causing it to spin.
Not sure how usefull this would be in space, unless you can dynamically change the color of your spaceships hull.
I believe the idea is that you use another means of propulsion to get the ship up to speed. Once up to a decent speed you deploy the solar sail and use it to maintain speed (not sure why it would slow down though...)
The reason that you just dont use the propulsion that you used to accelerate is because thats alot more pricy, just accelerate to the target speed, deploy the sail, and sit back while the sun moves you to where you need to go.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was 16 or so I started doing some freelance web programming. I got a couple $1000 (or less) contracts to start, a couple of which fell through. So I decided to write some stuff that I can sell over and over again.
I started looking around for something that works well, is simple and doesnt have many variants. I came across a script that I liked, so I made my own version. I spent a weekend writing the script, and it started selling like hotcakes. I put it up on a simple website and listed it at various resource indexes around the net and its been selling ever since. The script sells for ~ $29.95 and started selling at about 2 or three copies a week. Its been dying down now, after about 2 years on the web, but I still made some nice coin off of it.
I realize that this may be small change for most people, but the trick is to come up with 10 - 20 scripts (or small programs) that each fill a particular niche and sell as well. I havent had much time to write any simmilar simple scripts like this recently because I have been swamped with other custom projects and university.
But this long rant brings me to my point. Alot of times existing software can be bloated with useless features. By writing a simpler version that is easy to use and serves its intended purpose well, then you will be doing well.
For those of you who are interested, the script I wrote was based off of PayPal's knowledge base script.
You would think that NASA would have put in failsafes for both of your points. They should make the rover auto-power down after an hour or two of no commands. Have it power down to the point where the only thing running is a radio monitoring a particular "wake" frequency. That way it acts just like my laptop. I leave it alone for a while, and the thing goes to sleep to conserve battery life.
With the issue of the motor getting jammed/stuck, I could see a simmilar fail safe. Its probably set to goto a certain position or make a certain number of revolutions, and it should really have sensors to tell that "hey, I am givin this thing juice but its not moving... guess I should stop trying and await commands".
Just a thought, maybe they will do like what they do now with movie trailers, allow the users to select a quality size. Default would be top quality but they could put lower quality options that are remembered via cookie. I am still not condoneing (sp?) the idea, but just mentioning a possible solution to the parent thread.
Now heres what I think would be cool. Line all of the walls and ceilings with millions of RGB tricolor LED's Then hook it up to various computer(s) / TV(s). That would kick ass.
Screw Ambient Lighting, I want a 50ft monitor on all the walls. he he he.
I can imagine playing some music with the winamp visualization running on all of the walls. That would be "psychadelic" (sp?)
I read an article a couple of years ago about global warming. The article was backed by very interesting data and graphs (although I am sure it was slightly biased).
Basically, what the article proved was that global warming isnt really an issue. The "global climate" if you will, will change naturally over time. Humanity has existed during a global "summer" and that summer, believe it or not, is due to end within the next few hundred years. The earth spends millions of years in ice age, and then returns to a brief summer that lasts a fraction of that.
Another good point that they had made in the article is that there was a higher global temperature in the middle ages, and that was the highest it has been in our history.
If you dont believe the stuff I listed above, perhaps you will find this next little point a bit more interesting. Humans result in
I dont really think that we have much to worry about. We are comming to the end of the fossil-fuel age anyways, perhaps none of this will really matter at all in the long run?
This will never do as well as the iPod. Microsoft have to realize that cramming a device full of low quality features is not what people want. I would rather have a device that does one thing really well than one device that does a shotty job of several things. People arent going to want to lug around a large video screen when their going off jogging or roller blading.
Heres what I think would be handy. Take the basic ipod (or a comparable device with a simmilar size, weight and battery life) and throw an s-video/component video jack on the side. This way people can play their videos on most any TV without the burden of a huge fragile video screen.
Personally, I believe that Time Travel is possible, but not quite in the way people would think.
... some more math ... .9988c
Through time dilation (as theorized by Einstein), its possible to travel to the future simply by going really f'n fast. The equation is:
T = T0 / (1 - u^2/c^2)1/2
where T is the time elapsed in the rest frame and T0 is the time in the moving frame.
Just to give an example of how this would work... If you wanted to travel into the future 100 years, and only take 5 years of your life for the actual travel time...
105 = 5 / (1 - u^2)^1/2 where U is a multiple of c)
u =
And that is the speed you would have to go in order to travel 100 years into the future while only spending 5 years of your life. Good luck getting up to that speed, and once your at it, I wish you even better luck when trying to slow down.
Yes, but wheres the catchy slogan. =)
Heres a name that I like.... Doors - "its easier to walk through a door than it is to jump through a window".
Does this mean that its ok to go with strange green men boasting free candy on days other than Sunday... ? Hrmm...
It seems to me to be basically another form of cryptography. For instance, alot of places use encrypted passwords, meaning that when a new password is issued, it will encrypt it and store it in the database. If the database is ever hacked, the encrypted passwords are still useless because they are encrypted and theres no simple way of recovering the actual password from the encrypted form.
Simmilarily, when someones eye is scanned into a string of ones and zeros, that string is still useless unless the thief has a way to convert this string back into an eyeball, which is not inconceivable... I could imagine someone making a glass marble that would trick the scanner into thinking its a real eye.
Actually, the card reader they use for the door isnt too secure anyway. It doesnt verify the card is in fact a debit card, just checks to see if it has a magnetic strip. You can use a library card to get in if you want.
I guess I could enter a bunch of wrong PINS in the ATM.. but then the ATM would eat up my card.
Theres an idea for a scam.. Setup a fake ATM machine that will take your card, and ask you to enter the pin three times. After the client enters the same pin number three times (the legit code of course), then it eats the card. No need to make a duplicate when you can use the origional.
"I'll give you this cow for that rack mounted server."
Your not a Canadian farmer are you? he he he..
This is by far my favorite Science joke... This was a question on some exam a few years back...
"Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle?s Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass.
If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for souls entering hell, let?s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle?s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls to the volume must remain constant.
So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose. Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given me by Therese Banyan during freshman year ("It will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you"), and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and therefore hell must be exothermic.
The bubble may be a bubble, but it would seem to me sort of inefficient to make the bubble any biger than it has to be. Why not make the bubble the same shape as the ship, but maybe a few feet bigger? In which case I guess you would have to worry about aerodynamics, but not of the shape of the ship, the shape of the bubble which would be the same as the ship but a bit bigger.
Does it really matter whether or not an intergalactic space ship is aerodynamic? I mean, honestly, if they have enough resources to waste to even consider launching the thing from a plannet, I dont think they need to worry too much about aerodynamics. Look at the borg cube, now theres efficiency. They dont give a damn about aerodynamics cause they are in space. he he he.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I am all for stackable spaceships!
In Soviet Russia, Space Station deteriorates you!
our Nuclear Wielding Yukon River overloards and will join the rest of man slaving in their Uranium mines.
I remember a few years back there was the "can-do" ("Can" for Canada). Not sure what became of it, but I think the project was canned because of stupid environmental activists that didnt want the next chernobyl to be in Canada.
From what I heard, the reactor design was designed to be powerfull enough to generate electricity for a Canadian University.
Actually, I believe that we talked about that the other day in my physics class. In "theory", the universe is inside what is called (I believe) a "Multiverse" where there exists other universes. The difference though, is that the "Multiverse" is 4 dimensional, so any universe can exist in the multiverse at its x,y,z,t coordinates.
But thats all just a theory. Not sure if I got the terminology quite right, it was more of an informal discussion that we covered.
Toss your laptop in the aquairum.. That should provide SOME heat...
Because there isnt enough air in space. The "radiometer" that I recall using was in a glass tube with a vacume, and the way it works is by having several fins mounted on a very smooth bearing. Each fin has two sides, the black side and a white side. The Black absorbs the heat causing it to spin. Not sure how usefull this would be in space, unless you can dynamically change the color of your spaceships hull.
I believe the idea is that you use another means of propulsion to get the ship up to speed. Once up to a decent speed you deploy the solar sail and use it to maintain speed (not sure why it would slow down though...)
The reason that you just dont use the propulsion that you used to accelerate is because thats alot more pricy, just accelerate to the target speed, deploy the sail, and sit back while the sun moves you to where you need to go.
I wonder what the Packet Loss is like when you have a station wagon loaded with tapes... "Whoops, spilled my coffee on one.."