It's OK, the Italians will ignore it and create a safe haven for open source in Europe! (Seriously, the Italians are notorious for supporting every piece of EU legislation during its creation, then failing to comply once it comes into force.)
An interesting fact is that the DVD of the first film was released without Macrovision copy protection. I don't know about the second film, but piracy didn't appear to hurt sales of the first DVD very much.
It all depends where you draw the line. "The Lord Of The Rings" is heavily influenced by Beowulf. The Chronicles of Narnia are based, in places, on the Bible (particularly The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Last Battle - which also implies that all Muslims are devil worshippers, oh dear). JK Rowling's stuff appears to borrow from both of these - Wormtail/Wormtongue are both servants of evil wizards, for instance - and if you read "The Midnight Folk" and "The Box Of Delights" by John Masefield, which predate Tolkien, Lewis and Rowling, there are other common themes.
Basically, the Potter books aren't 100% original, nor are they as well written as their predecessors. They all have a very linear plot with Harry in every scene - compare The Two Towers where there are three simultaneous stories- and they're relentlessly literal where they could be surreal. Masefield's stuff is amazingly surreal, but then he *was* Poet Laureate.
Ballmer could never be a Sith - he doesn't have the midichlorian level. He's more of a Grand Moff (fantasy film sequence: imagine the 1-second clip of Monkey Boy thoughfully fingering his chin just before the proton torpedoes strike Redmond campus)
From the article: if you must use Windows I would recommend Windows 2000 over XP as it has a slightly thinner GUI and tends to manage resources a bit better.
This is true enough, but running an old OS just so you can have a shoe box-sized PC seems like a rather arse-about-face logic to me.
They've been raking it in for a while by selling.nu domains, often for "adult" material ("nu" means "nude" to some people).
Where's the Pentium 5?
on
P4 3.2GHz Reviews
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm getting bored of "P4"...at least "Pentium 5" would be etymologically correct again!
(Yes, fellow pedants, I am aware that "Pentium" was used for the chip following the 486, as Intel couldn't copyright a number and stop their competitors using the term "586".)
Seriously though, how long have successive generations of Pentium technology lasted? Is it just me, or was the PIII the primary product line for longer than the PII, and when will the P4 break the PIII's record?
Yeah, my Toyota has it too. It's still based on mechanical camshafts though, and the Honda system in particular is very "on-off" in nature. A series of pins engages at certain rpm and locks in an alternative cam profile. The Toyota system is continously variable but only works on the inlet valve and, on my car, can't adjust the lift. Formula 1 cars have had pneumatic valve actuators for ages, which (along with amazing attention to airflow) is part of the key to getting 800bhp from a 3 litre engine, but they're not exactly reliable.
There was a story about a year ago about a team that had redesigned the basic crank arrangement in an engine to get more power from the fuel. A conventional cylinder and crank design has to be carefully optimised so peak cylinder pressure occurs at the right point in the cycle (about 15 degrees after top dead centre) so that as much as possible of the force on the piston can then be translated into turning the crankshaft, without disappearing as heat (which is what happens to the vertical component of the piston force, which is of course resisted by the crankshaft bearings). Unfortunately the useful torque rapidly dimishes when the crank isn't at 90 degrees. The new design put an extra link in the conrod to increase the angle through which maximum torque is developed. There were fairly spectacular increases in economy (or power, if you wanted).
The other major improvement would be fully variable valve timing and lift using solenoids, which allows massive valve overlap (for power) at high revs but very slow idling in traffic. Mechanical variable-valve timing is more limited and is still based around physical cam profiles. The trouble is, both of these ideas, while not especially expensive, add a lot of complexity and increase the number of moving parts. No manufacturer wants to be at the bottom of the reliability surveys.
Wouldn't it have been better to start with a slightly more sensible saloon car? One with some basic aerodynamics and weighing under 2 tons?
Short circuits?
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 3, Interesting
42V is enough to pass through dirty water, so I anticipate all kinds of problems when things get wet, unless everything is carefully designed to tolerate some electrical leakage. On the contrary, a 12V motor will actually run underwater with no sealing!
I guess it would ruin the feelgood factor at the end of the film, because a lot of Men get killed. I'm not sure how PJ is going to deal with Saruman and Wormtongue, though.
Making it illegal will be about as effective as the "Do Not Make Illegal Copies Of This Disc" label on software piracy. Spammers are already on the shady side of the law with a lot of the stuff they're trying to sell (e.g. hardcore pr0n and prescription drugs), so they're not going to be scared by this. Add to this the facts that most spam has its origins well obfuscated, preventing the culprits from being tracked, and we're onto a loser if we try and track them down.
My suggestion is that the SUPPLIER of the advertised goods is fined, not the spammers. The supplier is, after all, paying someone to send the spam, and they're easily traceable (otherwise they'd have trouble fulfilling your orders for Viagra, septic tank cleaner and goat pr0n).
Because immediately it's out, the cinematic release drops to under 10 UKP so I can afford it. I'm sorry, but given how much stuff is missing from the films compared to the books, another 30 minutes of random scenes won't help much.
OK for shallow depths, but as the robot gets compressed at greater depths, its volume decreases and it will sink faster and faster (like a submarine that blows too much air from its tanks). There are also problems with temperature change. There's an interesting passage in Lothar-Gunther Bucheim's book "Das Boot" (better known as a TV series and film) where the Chief Engineer explains the variable buoyancy problem caused by temperature, depth and varying salt concentrations to the narrator. The U-boat has to take on or lose a surprisingly large weight of water to compensate for even a 1 degree change in water temperature.
But I digress, I doubt there's much call for a deep-sea robot cockroach.
Remember when someone went for the "maximum players fragged with one railgun shot" record in Quake II? They got 64 players on a server and (eventually) got 63 of them to stand in a line while the 64th player fired the railgun.
The server crashed. It couldn't cope with sending 64^2 simultaneous death messages.
Bloody hell, that's generous! It's about 60 UKP a week in the UK, and that reduces after 6 months. You also have to prove you're actively looking for a job, and after a certain time they make you look further and further afield. There is income support for things like mortgage interest, but only after 9 months of unemployment and only if your mortgage is less than 100,000 UKP (about the average these days). Basically, if you're out of work in the UK you find a job fast, have insurance against such things, or join the underclass.
Not true. I can just remember when there was *no* VAT in the UK (before 1973), then when it was 8% and later raised to 17.5%. It's a nasty regressive tax, favoured by the Conservative government because people with spare cash to invest (their core voters) avoid paying it. Its saving graces are the large list of exempt and zero-rated goods (IANA tax expert, but there is a difference), and it gives small traders, whose work is mainly labour, a big competitive advantage because they don't have to add VAT to their prices.
My Philips DVD+RW recorder lets you mark the beginning and end of the advert break as a chapter, then make the chapter invisible. I'm currently working my way through Star Wars, which was shown on a commercial channel in the UK on Saturday.
Obviously I'm driven to such measures because George Lucas won't release it on "proper" DVD until 2006, when he's finished splicing Jar Jar Binks into it etc etc.
Slashdot Mirror
RJKing: i pwned in that map, ll4m4s
Player: bfg wh0r3
It's OK, the Italians will ignore it and create a safe haven for open source in Europe! (Seriously, the Italians are notorious for supporting every piece of EU legislation during its creation, then failing to comply once it comes into force.)
An interesting fact is that the DVD of the first film was released without Macrovision copy protection. I don't know about the second film, but piracy didn't appear to hurt sales of the first DVD very much.
Basically, the Potter books aren't 100% original, nor are they as well written as their predecessors. They all have a very linear plot with Harry in every scene - compare The Two Towers where there are three simultaneous stories- and they're relentlessly literal where they could be surreal. Masefield's stuff is amazingly surreal, but then he *was* Poet Laureate.
Ballmer could never be a Sith - he doesn't have the midichlorian level. He's more of a Grand Moff (fantasy film sequence: imagine the 1-second clip of Monkey Boy thoughfully fingering his chin just before the proton torpedoes strike Redmond campus)
This is true enough, but running an old OS just so you can have a shoe box-sized PC seems like a rather arse-about-face logic to me.
By the way, I'd love one of the PCs :-)
If so, maybe it's a good thing (although it was always amusing when the site went down before the 5th post).
They've been raking it in for a while by selling .nu domains, often for "adult" material ("nu" means "nude" to some people).
(Yes, fellow pedants, I am aware that "Pentium" was used for the chip following the 486, as Intel couldn't copyright a number and stop their competitors using the term "586".)
Seriously though, how long have successive generations of Pentium technology lasted? Is it just me, or was the PIII the primary product line for longer than the PII, and when will the P4 break the PIII's record?
Here's a link if it helps. No idea if it really works, but it got a lot of press coverage in the UK.
Yeah, my Toyota has it too. It's still based on mechanical camshafts though, and the Honda system in particular is very "on-off" in nature. A series of pins engages at certain rpm and locks in an alternative cam profile. The Toyota system is continously variable but only works on the inlet valve and, on my car, can't adjust the lift. Formula 1 cars have had pneumatic valve actuators for ages, which (along with amazing attention to airflow) is part of the key to getting 800bhp from a 3 litre engine, but they're not exactly reliable.
Given the number of Netscape users these days, that should be about $25,000 each :-)
The other major improvement would be fully variable valve timing and lift using solenoids, which allows massive valve overlap (for power) at high revs but very slow idling in traffic. Mechanical variable-valve timing is more limited and is still based around physical cam profiles. The trouble is, both of these ideas, while not especially expensive, add a lot of complexity and increase the number of moving parts. No manufacturer wants to be at the bottom of the reliability surveys.
Wouldn't it have been better to start with a slightly more sensible saloon car? One with some basic aerodynamics and weighing under 2 tons?
42V is enough to pass through dirty water, so I anticipate all kinds of problems when things get wet, unless everything is carefully designed to tolerate some electrical leakage. On the contrary, a 12V motor will actually run underwater with no sealing!
I guess it would ruin the feelgood factor at the end of the film, because a lot of Men get killed. I'm not sure how PJ is going to deal with Saruman and Wormtongue, though.
My suggestion is that the SUPPLIER of the advertised goods is fined, not the spammers. The supplier is, after all, paying someone to send the spam, and they're easily traceable (otherwise they'd have trouble fulfilling your orders for Viagra, septic tank cleaner and goat pr0n).
Because immediately it's out, the cinematic release drops to under 10 UKP so I can afford it. I'm sorry, but given how much stuff is missing from the films compared to the books, another 30 minutes of random scenes won't help much.
But I digress, I doubt there's much call for a deep-sea robot cockroach.
...commenting on this story, since the editors have already done it for us? Must be a slow day ;-)
I suppose they don't like Bob Marley either.
The server crashed. It couldn't cope with sending 64^2 simultaneous death messages.
Bloody hell, that's generous! It's about 60 UKP a week in the UK, and that reduces after 6 months. You also have to prove you're actively looking for a job, and after a certain time they make you look further and further afield. There is income support for things like mortgage interest, but only after 9 months of unemployment and only if your mortgage is less than 100,000 UKP (about the average these days). Basically, if you're out of work in the UK you find a job fast, have insurance against such things, or join the underclass.
Not true. I can just remember when there was *no* VAT in the UK (before 1973), then when it was 8% and later raised to 17.5%. It's a nasty regressive tax, favoured by the Conservative government because people with spare cash to invest (their core voters) avoid paying it. Its saving graces are the large list of exempt and zero-rated goods (IANA tax expert, but there is a difference), and it gives small traders, whose work is mainly labour, a big competitive advantage because they don't have to add VAT to their prices.
Obviously I'm driven to such measures because George Lucas won't release it on "proper" DVD until 2006, when he's finished splicing Jar Jar Binks into it etc etc.