Before long there could be no one alive who has set foot anywhere other than Earth. That's damning.
I don't want to downplay his achievements, but he has not set foot anywhere else than earth either - if you mean another planet/moon and not a ship in space by that.
Also, having been on an earlier Australian sub (Oberon class), late model Australian submarine (Colins class), British submarine and several US subs, I might be tempted to say no other nation in the world can compete with the technology in the US subs.
In addition to the Australian subs somebody mentioned above, you also might want to have a look at the German fuel cell powered subs. Sorry for not finding a better link, but it covers the basic facts.
Absolutely silent, can dive for weeks, only 56 meters long, therefore can also operate in shallow waters. And cheap: 300-500 million Euros.
The reason why Germany developed those? Well, the price, and IIRC, Germany is not allowed to build nuclear powered ships.
Re:Terraforming or ecosynthesising mars
on
Making Tracks on Mars
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· Score: 3, Funny
I started to wonder - what gas other than nitrogen would be good to compose the other 80% (assuming we reach earth density - could we have a 1/5 less atomosphere than was 99% 02?
I don't think anything that has evolved on earth could survive in such an atmosphere for very long. And having things from earth there is the point of terraforming, right?
Also, if you had played The Little Terraformer's Virtual Lab (aka Sim Earth) long enough, you would know that if the oxygen ratio is higher than 25%, trees start to burn spontaneous. And then everybody dies, unless you have a fish civilization, or whales, or crustacean, or...
One of Google's advantages over their competitors is their own linux-based cluster-ish software that allows them to use cheap commodity PC hardware to run their business. I don't think they would change that and buy (relatively) expensive Sun hardware without a *very* good reason.
They might be a bit deluded when they think of themselves as a master race (well, only some of them do)
Next time, will you please write a sentence like that in the past tense? Thank you very much.
I assure you, right now there are no more people in Germany thinking of themselves as the "master race" than there are people in the US thinking of their nation as superior to others.
What it really needs to be even better than the current obsolete system can get, is public-key based encryption and authentication to fight spam and preserve a little privacy.
And how would you do that with a web-based service? Upload your private key or what?
Is not this the same institute that had the submarine MP3 patents?
Yes, it is.
I might be wrong and their work is probably very interesting, but obvious "patents" might perhaps turn it into another GIF/MP3/...-like story.
You are wrong. This is not a technology that everybody will use in a few years, only to pay Fraunhofer licence fees.
We are speaking of 300-400 speakers here, carefully adjusted, spread over the space of big cinemas. If this technology ever gets used, there will be a handful of companies building the expensive hardware for cinemas. They will have to pay licence fees to Fraunhofer, ranted.
I don't know, after making it easier for people to fly the small, non-dangerous type of planes, maybe it will be made *much* harder to learn to fly the big ones...
I don't think the parent poster "forgot" that the Mac OS X UI source isn't available for custom compiles. That's not what Gentoo MacOS is about -- it's about being able to easily install and update popular *nix software on Mac OS X.
I know that, but the parent explicitly stated that it is possible to compile your own optimized build of OS X. I personally don't really believe in all that optimizing, but I don't have any Gentoo experience and don't want to start a flame war here.
Who would want a Mac without Quartz, Spotlight, etc? I certainly wouldn't give up these features. But some people might want to use alternate desktop managers on Apple hardware. Just because you're not interested in doing so doesn't mean there is no reason for others to want to.
Point taken. Although then a PowerPC Linux distribution might be the easier (and presently available) choice.
Besides, you don't necessarily have to forgo the Finder and Exposé to use Gentoo MacOS. It's a package manager, and as such can install a bunch of *nix tools that work alongside Mac OS X without replacing it.
I thought that Fink managed to do that quite well. But again, IANAGU (Gentoo user), so if people think that portage is superior, they should go ahead. After all, choice is what free software is all about, isn't it.
In other words, a 'better build system: a public one' has been unleashed on a commercial operating system, so that - separate from the company itself - alternative builds of the OS can be done, publically.
I think you forgot that while the source for Darwin, the system "under the hood" of OS X, is available, the UI is not. That means no Quartz, Spotlight or Core Image technologies, and no applications like the Finder or Expose.
Now, who would want a Mac without all this? That stuff, among other, makes it special. If you want only the underlying system, you can install OpenBSD right now.
MS can't grow their software division much more in a saturated market, but if they use their own chipset (or licence it to a couple of 3rd party suppliers) they can take over all of Intel's current profit.
Mind you, it's not so easy to design a new chip with a performance comparable to Intels' recent x86 processors (or AMDs', for that matter). It would take a few years at least, and that is with buying some technology from others.
No, I think the only thing that might happen is a MS system based on PowerPC chips, as is happening with the next Xbox, AFAIK.
Tell your phone what you're looking for, go for a walk on campus, or have coffee at starbucks, and it'll be there when you get back home.
...to recharge your phone, because hour-long Bluetooth session drained it faster than you can say "mobile bluetooth virus".
Re:Interesting choice of words...
on
An Online ID Registry
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· Score: 4, Informative
You know, here in Germany, we have a rather good system for that purpose. If some online business wants to verify your identity, they can use PostIdent from Deutsche Post (known as DHL in the rest of the world, I think). That means you register with your data at the company's website, then, a few days later, your friendly postman rings and asks for your ID or passport, checks it against the data he got from the online company, then sends them a form stating that you are really you.
Works like a charm, is rather fast (total processing time 3-5 working days), no data is stored by the verifying company, and I think it is rather cheap (5-10 Euros IIRC). Businesses that are forced to identify their customers by law, like online banks, are very glad to have something like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely silent, can dive for weeks, only 56 meters long, therefore can also operate in shallow waters. And cheap: 300-500 million Euros.
The reason why Germany developed those? Well, the price, and IIRC, Germany is not allowed to build nuclear powered ships.
...did those things spot any buggalos yet?
Also, if you had played The Little Terraformer's Virtual Lab (aka Sim Earth) long enough, you would know that if the oxygen ratio is higher than 25%, trees start to burn spontaneous. And then everybody dies, unless you have a fish civilization, or whales, or crustacean, or...
Ahem, I got a little carried away there. Sorry.
Good to know, as the Oktoberfest is starting on saturday.
Boy, do I intend to do something for my health there...
You're spreading FUD.
The UN want your money, right.
And the EU is no closer to putting RFID tags into the Euro bills than the US into Dollars.
Oh wait, now I read the antichrist part. You're just a troll. Sorry for responding.
One of Google's advantages over their competitors is their own linux-based cluster-ish software that allows them to use cheap commodity PC hardware to run their business. I don't think they would change that and buy (relatively) expensive Sun hardware without a *very* good reason.
All the major vendors have European outposts; they wouldn't be major if they had not.
I assure you, right now there are no more people in Germany thinking of themselves as the "master race" than there are people in the US thinking of their nation as superior to others.
Oh, wait...
...are the "commercial code vendors" interested in small code size?
I found something funny today on macosxhints.com:
Use a Linksys NSLU2 NAS appliance on 10.3.
It was posted half an hour before NSLU2 Now More Useful.
What a coincidence!
...is a business phone with Bluetooth, calendar and stuff, but *without* a camera.
I don't know about the situation in the US, but here in Europe, camera phones are not allowed in many companies for fear of industrial espionage.
I really like the Sony-Ericsson phones, but they don't seem to make any camera-less ones any more...
We are speaking of 300-400 speakers here, carefully adjusted, spread over the space of big cinemas. If this technology ever gets used, there will be a handful of companies building the expensive hardware for cinemas. They will have to pay licence fees to Fraunhofer, ranted.
I don't know, after making it easier for people to fly the small, non-dangerous type of planes, maybe it will be made *much* harder to learn to fly the big ones...
by Shaheen (313)
Wow, that's gotta be the post with the lowest Slashdot ID I've ever seen... and now you say you work with Microsoft.
All I believed in is shattered now, thank you very much.
Point taken. Although then a PowerPC Linux distribution might be the easier (and presently available) choice.
I thought that Fink managed to do that quite well. But again, IANAGU (Gentoo user), so if people think that portage is superior, they should go ahead. After all, choice is what free software is all about, isn't it.
Now, who would want a Mac without all this? That stuff, among other, makes it special. If you want only the underlying system, you can install OpenBSD right now.
No, I think the only thing that might happen is a MS system based on PowerPC chips, as is happening with the next Xbox, AFAIK.
IIRC, the Anaconda installer used in Progeny only supports i386. But I might be wrong.
You know, here in Germany, we have a rather good system for that purpose. If some online business wants to verify your identity, they can use PostIdent from Deutsche Post (known as DHL in the rest of the world, I think). That means you register with your data at the company's website, then, a few days later, your friendly postman rings and asks for your ID or passport, checks it against the data he got from the online company, then sends them a form stating that you are really you.
Works like a charm, is rather fast (total processing time 3-5 working days), no data is stored by the verifying company, and I think it is rather cheap (5-10 Euros IIRC). Businesses that are forced to identify their customers by law, like online banks, are very glad to have something like it.
As you can see here and here, Xscale is based on ARM designs, thus making Intel an ARM customer, not a competitor.