Who watches the wathcers... well, close enought. One point for using a latin quote in your subjectline.
The thing is.. No one makes you use BT as your provider. No one is restricting your choice as to where you look for pr0n. For all BT and the IWF care, you can ditch the BT's DNS server (where I assune the actuall blocking takes place) and get all the childsmut you want.
And yes, the IWF does, according to their own website, have an internet hotline which can look into "potentially illegal Internet content" which may, as you point out, _potentialy_ breach UK laws... but that is not the same as to say that all the sites that some fundamentalist looney reports to the hotline ends up on the list that BT blocks.
And if you follow the links on the page you yourself link to, you'll see that images of child abuse is defined as "...any images of children, apparently under 18 years old, involved in sexual activity or posed to be sexually provocative."
Personaly, I got more problem with the "apperantly under 18 years old" than with the fact that someone is trying to clean up the smut thats online.
A 15" screen has, at least the ones I've seen, usually a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. As far as TV goes... well: PAL: 625 scanlines, at 4:3 this will give 833 pixels in the horisontal plane NTSC: 480 scanlines, and the same 4:3 ratio giving 640 pixels horisontaly HDTV has different meanings depending on who makes them, but is often used for sets having a refreshrate twice the normal and a resolution of either 1920x1080 or 1280x720. mind you, the actuall signall recived over the antenna will be the same as in an old PAL/NTSC set...
I guess 'near-TV' in this case don't refer to the actuall resolution - since it could be argued that it's better than the telly - but perhaps to lightlevel or contrast. Kinda hard to tell, and rather subjective to.
Those of us in the world who have entrusted our governments with the sole power of lethal force are in far more danger than those places where good citizens are trusted to have the ability to defend themselves and their families. History is pretty clear on this.
You must have some weird history where you live then... maybe statistics may be a better source of information on weither people are in more danger? I mean, according to the avilable information, there is less crime per citizen in Norway (where you must get a lisence for a gun, and those are hard to get) than in the USA*. Of the crime we do have, there is a smaller percentage of violent crimes. Of the violent crimes, there is a smaller percentage of crimes involving guns.
Please note that I'm not saying that restricting access to firearms would magicly transforms the US to a place I would like to settle down - what is needed to make the US a safer place is a nationwide change in peoples approch to firearms and violence in general... something which would include a timemachine and some serious rewriting of history. The US is, for a lot of reasons, not the same as Europe. Not better or worse, but different.
*) that is, the USA as a whole - I'm well aware that there is more crime, and more violent crime, in the major cities than in, for instance, the city of Hen, WV
...until only the OEM will be allowed to open your box and repair / upgrade / modefy it?
I do hope this ruling is overturned. If it's left standing, it may lead to fewer and fewer computer (and other) related items that could be serviced / upgraded by everyone (and thus cheaper than if only the OEM could do so). If this is allowed to go on, how long will it be before we see the first car which only the OEM could change oil on?
It's a simple enought question, but one that I don't think there is a simple answer for.. one of the few suggestions I've seen involves having a probe that melts its way to the lake, letting the ice reform behind it to create a sealed passage to the surface - which at lest in theory means that stuff from the lake can't come up and stuff from above can't come down... which 'only' leave the trouble of managing to completly sterilising the actuall probe.
...layered in a fabric layered sandwich, which they claim is fairly comfortable.
Maybe I'm not geeky enought, but given a choice I'll rather wear a t-shirt that is really comfertable and has a static picture than one thats fairly comfertable and interactive... but this may be just the next big thing in fastfood places and other retail related industries ("todays special is..."). And once the technology matures enought to show full colour video, we'll see teenagers walking around with not only the logo of their prefered shoes all over their chest, but actually the latest comercial for them.
For me, that will be the day I'll officially start to talk about the 'good old days';)
I loved that game when I was younger... played it on my trusty old (even if it was newer back then;) ) Commodore 64 until I could walk thru it with my eyes shut. Played it again when Day of the Tentacle came out.. in cause you havn't found it, the entire MM was included as an easteregg.
Good memories... this will definitly be downloaded once I get home from work today!
If you're looking for something spesific, it's easy to find it.. our mind is good at recognisong patterns, even when they arn't there. Off course, this is what leads people to see cities om Mars, Lenin in their shower curtain and, in this cause, traces of Atlantis. It's called pareidolia, and it's more common than you might think.
PS: I urge everyone to visit the link and explore the site - it's a good read and quite interesting as well as funny.
...then perhaps they should look at why projects forks? If they can manage to spot things that might lead to a fork early on, they can adress it in a way that benefits everyone as well as avoids forks.
Off course, that also requires whoever is responsible for the code to be able to work with others...
It is a start. Once you have something like this, hopefully flying paying passangers on suborbital flights, you have proven that there is a marked for commercal, manned access to space (there allready exists commercal launcers for unmanned sattelites and probes - Sea Launch is one). Once you proven that, companies will start sinking real cash into it - perhaps taking the logical next step and build a 'space hotel' and a shuttle able to ferry more than three people up and down at a time.
One has to prove that a marked exist before the big corps are willing to put money on the table; to suggest that they should go ahead and build a launcer able to put 100 metric tons in LEO is like saying NASA shouldn't have wasted time on Mercury and Gemini, but gone straight to the moon. You must learn to walk before you can run.
The pilot (to be announced at a later date) of the up-coming June sub-orbital space flight will become the first person to earn astronaut wings in a non-government sponsored vehicle, and the first private civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere. SpaceShipOne then coasts up to its goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to earth.
Seeing as a) most people in the aerospace industry defines space as 'anything above 100km over SL (sealevel), and b) they havn't gotten any money from the big, evil goverment to build their vessel, this is correct. Off course, he won't be completly out of out atmosphere, but then the edge of that isn't a sharply defined line.
The pilot experiences a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, sees the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon.
According to This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury (freely avilable from NASA's website), this is a very good description of what Alan Shepard experienced on his suborbital flight on the 5th of May 1961 (see chapter 11-4 of the aforementioned bood, or see what Wikipedia has to say on that flight).
Interestingly enought, when I first heard of the X-prize, I assumed it would be won by a reusable capsule modeled on the early american designs (Mercury, Gemeni or Apollo) launced by reusable solidfueled rockets. I'm happy a more inovative, less 'brute force' approach seems to be winning.
I think they'll manage to get over 100 km in their vessel. Then I assume we'll see them attemt the quick turnaround needed to win the prize and a new launch within two weeks. Then first, having proven their system, will they announce their officall attempt for the prize.
At least that makes sence to me - test that it work first, before they go for the big one. Just the same as NASA did with their first spacecapsules; unmanned ballistic flights first, then a ballistic flight with a monkey, then an unmanned orbital flight and a monkeyed orbital flight - and once they knew their craft would behave as expected under all phases of the mission, they did a couple of manned suborbital flights to prove that humans would behave as expected (they did better than expected AFAIK) before they launced a man into orbit. In fact, it's just the same these guys do; prove that the spacecraft can handle all aspects of the mission before they put three people into it and light the fuse;)
Since just about anything else avilable today (at least to general consumers) are running at 32 bit (disregarding the fact that it's still possible to get hold of 16 bit and 8 bit chips off course) it make damn good sence to compare the new AMD64 to other chips while running it in 32 bit mode. Otherwise, you would be comparing apples and oranges... since no other CPU runs in 64 bit mode.
Could be interesting to benchmark a AMD64 in 32 bit mode against a AMD64 in 64 bit mode thought... that would say a lot about how much there is to gain in going to 64 bit mode in the first place...
The Wikipedia suggest this definition of a robot:[qoute] In practical usage, a robot is a mechanical device which performs automated tasks, either according to direct human supervision, a pre-defined program or, a set of general guidelines, using artificial intelligence techniques. These tasks either replace or enhance human work, such as in manufacturing, construction or manipulation of heavy or hazardous materials.
A robot may include a feedback-driven connection between sense and action, not under direct human control. The action may take the form of electro-magnetic motors or actuators that move an arm, open and close grips, or propel the robot. The step by step control and feedback is provided by a computer program run on either an external or embedded computer or a microcontroller. By this definition, a robot may include nearly all automated devices.
Alternately, robot has been used as the general term for a mechanical man, or an automaton resembling an animal, either real or imagined. It has come to be applied to many machines which directly replace a human or animal in work or play. In this way, a robot can be seen as a form of biomimicry. Anthropomorphism is perhaps what makes us reluctant to refer to the highly complex modern washer-dryer as a robot. However, in modern understanding, the term implies a degree of autonomy that would exclude many automatic machine tools from being called robots. It is the search for ever more highly autonomous robots which is the major focus of robotics research and which drives much work in artificial intelligence. [/qoute]
So, this inflatable dummy may or may not be defined as a robot... allthought my gut feeling is that it's 'merely' a piece of automatic gadgetery.
Re:Next project? The Analytical Engine!
on
Mechanical Computing
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Charles Babbage gave up on the differiensial engine because he thought he could build a general purpose mechanical computer - the Analytical Engine! To recreate that device would really rock... if I had the time, money and (last but not least) the knowhow, I might try it myself...
Off course, an Analytical Engine would be way larger than a Difference Engine , since it would have to include a CPU (the 'mill'), a input device (Babbage himself suggested punch cards - an idea which the early electromechanical computers picked up), an output device (Babbage wanted to built a complete, automated printingpress, curveplotter and a bell to alert the operator of errors),and last but not least a 'store' (memory - the one envisoned by Babbage would store 1000 numbers, each 50 digits long). The Analytical Enginge was to be programable - which was it great strenght compared to the Differensial Engine - in a language resembling todays assembler languages. Such a machine would be slow and lowpowered by our standards, but would have been a gigantic leap forward back in the 1830's... shame he never got around to build it.
I'll hazard a guess... you're not running a mainstream website that atracts Joe Avrage *smiles*.
It's also worth noting that, as the write up states, quite a few users has more than one browser installed - myself, I got four; IE (seldom used), Netscape 6.somethng (seldom used), Opera (my prefered choice) and Lynx (just for the fun of doing the web as pure text now and then). So yes, it's possible that 93% of the users has IE installed... which isn't the same as to say that each and everyone prefers it to the other options avilable.
...110lbs of camera, vacumpump, sandbags and a specially reinforced cradle? Me think we won't see this kind of sofistication (and stunning pictures) from a consumerlevel camera anytime soon. Or at all, as he rightly points out in the article.
Maybe as well - a 5'x10', sharply focused photo of my own fingertip wouldn't be all that interesting;)
Not a player? Sorry mate - but as far as I'm concerned the Psion5 I got is still the best thing when it comes to putting in large amounths of texts on the road (it runs EPOC - the forerunner to symbian) - while I can't ask for more in a PDA than my Palm m130 delivers.
Just because MicroSoft claims to be about the same size as Palm on the OS side of things, it don't mean that there wont be people like me who'll either stick to the old devices or are willing to pay for getting new devices with the same OS on them... It's also worth noting that your source seems awfully biased;)
Re:How many people will go to Mars?
on
What To Wear On Mars
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· Score: 3, Insightful
As for the article, why bother designing the suits now? I'm sure that in 20 years there will be materials that will be much more advanced that we'll want to use instead.
Why bother upgrading your PC now? In two years time there will be faster processors and larger harddisk avilable, and then you can just ask yourself the same question again...
A spacesuit is in essence a highly complex, articulate one man spaceship. As such, it takes time to develop and iron out the bugs. The A7L suit used on the Apollo missions took nine years to develop, and was, as far as I can understand, a simpler piece of enginering than a suit for Mars will be - for starters, the gravity on the moon are less, meaning that the suit could have more mass without beeing uncomfertable to wear for extended periods of time. Also the moon has no atmosphere, while if you're going to Mars you might want to make sure there is no way the atmosphere on Mars affects your suit in a negative manner.
The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) that was developed for use on the Shuttle faced a simpler problem - no gravity to worry about, no moondust that could get into the joints, no chance of the astronaut stumbling over a rock - yet it took as long as the shuttle to develop the first flightrated variants.
Why indeed start designing the suits ten to twenty years ahead of the mission? Because it takes about that time to get the best possible design worked out, all the bugs ironed out and enought suits manufactured - during the apollo program each astronaut had 3 suits; one for training, one for flights and one backup.
Useless fact; The A7L suit had a mass of 22 while the assosiated PLSS (Portable Life Support System) had a mass of 26 kg. The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) used on the US spaceshuttle had a mass of 50 kg and a PLLS weigthing 15 kg.
AFAIK, there is no international treatys which restrics who that can fire lumps of metal into orbit - but there is a treaty describing what's not allowed. Only caveat there is that it's a "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies", meaning it may or may not apply to you as a private person.
The main trouble I see is that you need to travel thru someones airspace to get there - and to fly thru controlled airspace you need permission from the relevant autorites in your country. As others have noted in reference to the article, in the US you need a waver from the FAA. In other nations you need to apply to the local aviation autority to launch somethign that passes thru the regulated airspace, providing you can get permission at all.
International law is not whats stopping you - it's the local laws that are the nail in your plan.
I'm seriously in love with my trusty old Psion Series 5 for writing stuff on - I mean, the odd short note is fine to do on the Palm M130 I got, but nothing can beat the Psion for datainput. True, it has only a serial conector, but then, nothing is perfect. A Psion 5MX or a Revo might be just what you need.
...or shaped charges as they are often know:
Back when the shaped charge was first developed as a usable weapon against tanks, it was seen as a way to defeat the newer, more heavily armoured tanks that had started appearing. Up to that point, a anti-tank gun had relied on the penetrating power of a solid shot - often with a tungsten core.
After a little while people realised that since a HEAT warhead did not rely on kinetic energy to punch a hole thru armour, lighter, manportable anti tank weapons could be designed and built - including the US bazooka, the british PIAT and the german Panzerfaust (the worlds first disposable anti tank weapon). Shells fireing HEAT warheads was also fired from guns of virtually any caliber during and shortly after WWII.
Relatively soon however, it was found that composite armour and, to a lesser extent, spaced armour was efficient in protecting against both HEAT and HESH shells, signaling a return to the solid penetrators - now fired by guns that could achive much higher muzzles velocities than the pre WWII designs. For manportable weapons however, it was difficult to increase the velocity of the weapon without making it larger, heavier and thus more difficult to transport and operate. Therefore the wast majoity of the manportable anti tank weapons, including the M72, the RPG-7, the TOW missile and many, many more, still uses HEAT warheads - and is likely to do so for the forseeable future. The deliverysystems for the warheads are simply not capable of delivering enought energy to make a kinetic penetrator a viable option.
Funny, the weapon you describe is actually very close to one of the earliest form of airborne weapons developed. It was called Fléchette (french for dart) and was dropped bu the ten of thousands over german troops. However, they were recognised as beeing inefficent, lacking penetrating power and virtually inpossible to aim (wind could bring them out of course). Straffing with machineguns proved much more efficent.
The basic point of the article is corect however - no need to use explosives if you can provide as much or more energy delivered to the target by other means - and since the kinetic increases by the square of the velocity, a lump of metal can be deadly if it moves fast enought.
A jammer - in the spesific sence of a white-noise transmitter - wouldn't give a 'denial of service' style attack. It would drown out the other transmitters, thus fooling your device into thinking that there is no network avilable. Perhaps we should call it a Lack of Carrier Attack? Splitting hairs, I know;).
That, and using a PDA and a network card is a much geekier - and thus more intersting - way of doing it. Jammers are soooo 80's.
Slashdot Mirror
Who watches the wathcers... well, close enought. One point for using a latin quote in your subjectline.
The thing is.. No one makes you use BT as your provider. No one is restricting your choice as to where you look for pr0n. For all BT and the IWF care, you can ditch the BT's DNS server (where I assune the actuall blocking takes place) and get all the childsmut you want.
And yes, the IWF does, according to their own website, have an internet hotline which can look into "potentially illegal Internet content" which may, as you point out, _potentialy_ breach UK laws... but that is not the same as to say that all the sites that some fundamentalist looney reports to the hotline ends up on the list that BT blocks.
And if you follow the links on the page you yourself link to, you'll see that images of child abuse is defined as "...any images of children, apparently under 18 years old, involved in sexual activity or posed to be sexually provocative."
Personaly, I got more problem with the "apperantly under 18 years old" than with the fact that someone is trying to clean up the smut thats online.
...all the freshmen gets sued by the RIAA for pirating music...
(It's logical - they own a digital playbackdevice and has access to 'da interweb'; off course they steal music, and at least 10 gig each)
A 15" screen has, at least the ones I've seen, usually a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. As far as TV goes... well:
PAL: 625 scanlines, at 4:3 this will give 833 pixels in the horisontal plane
NTSC: 480 scanlines, and the same 4:3 ratio giving 640 pixels horisontaly
HDTV has different meanings depending on who makes them, but is often used for sets having a refreshrate twice the normal and a resolution of either 1920x1080 or 1280x720. mind you, the actuall signall recived over the antenna will be the same as in an old PAL/NTSC set...
I guess 'near-TV' in this case don't refer to the actuall resolution - since it could be argued that it's better than the telly - but perhaps to lightlevel or contrast. Kinda hard to tell, and rather subjective to.
Those of us in the world who have entrusted our governments with the sole power of lethal force are in far more danger than those places where good citizens are trusted to have the ability to defend themselves and their families. History is pretty clear on this.
You must have some weird history where you live then... maybe statistics may be a better source of information on weither people are in more danger? I mean, according to the avilable information, there is less crime per citizen in Norway (where you must get a lisence for a gun, and those are hard to get) than in the USA*. Of the crime we do have, there is a smaller percentage of violent crimes. Of the violent crimes, there is a smaller percentage of crimes involving guns.
Please note that I'm not saying that restricting access to firearms would magicly transforms the US to a place I would like to settle down - what is needed to make the US a safer place is a nationwide change in peoples approch to firearms and violence in general... something which would include a timemachine and some serious rewriting of history. The US is, for a lot of reasons, not the same as Europe. Not better or worse, but different.
*) that is, the USA as a whole - I'm well aware that there is more crime, and more violent crime, in the major cities than in, for instance, the city of Hen, WV
...until only the OEM will be allowed to open your box and repair / upgrade / modefy it?
I do hope this ruling is overturned. If it's left standing, it may lead to fewer and fewer computer (and other) related items that could be serviced / upgraded by everyone (and thus cheaper than if only the OEM could do so). If this is allowed to go on, how long will it be before we see the first car which only the OEM could change oil on?
It's a simple enought question, but one that I don't think there is a simple answer for.. one of the few suggestions I've seen involves having a probe that melts its way to the lake, letting the ice reform behind it to create a sealed passage to the surface - which at lest in theory means that stuff from the lake can't come up and stuff from above can't come down... which 'only' leave the trouble of managing to completly sterilising the actuall probe.
Maybe I'm not geeky enought, but given a choice I'll rather wear a t-shirt that is really comfertable and has a static picture than one thats fairly comfertable and interactive... but this may be just the next big thing in fastfood places and other retail related industries ("todays special is..."). And once the technology matures enought to show full colour video, we'll see teenagers walking around with not only the logo of their prefered shoes all over their chest, but actually the latest comercial for them.
For me, that will be the day I'll officially start to talk about the 'good old days' ;)
I loved that game when I was younger... played it on my trusty old (even if it was newer back then ;) ) Commodore 64 until I could walk thru it with my eyes shut. Played it again when Day of the Tentacle came out.. in cause you havn't found it, the entire MM was included as an easteregg.
Good memories... this will definitly be downloaded once I get home from work today!
If you're looking for something spesific, it's easy to find it.. our mind is good at recognisong patterns, even when they arn't there. Off course, this is what leads people to see cities om Mars, Lenin in their shower curtain and, in this cause, traces of Atlantis. It's called pareidolia, and it's more common than you might think.
PS: I urge everyone to visit the link and explore the site - it's a good read and quite interesting as well as funny.
...then perhaps they should look at why projects forks? If they can manage to spot things that might lead to a fork early on, they can adress it in a way that benefits everyone as well as avoids forks.
Off course, that also requires whoever is responsible for the code to be able to work with others...
It is a start. Once you have something like this, hopefully flying paying passangers on suborbital flights, you have proven that there is a marked for commercal, manned access to space (there allready exists commercal launcers for unmanned sattelites and probes - Sea Launch is one). Once you proven that, companies will start sinking real cash into it - perhaps taking the logical next step and build a 'space hotel' and a shuttle able to ferry more than three people up and down at a time.
One has to prove that a marked exist before the big corps are willing to put money on the table; to suggest that they should go ahead and build a launcer able to put 100 metric tons in LEO is like saying NASA shouldn't have wasted time on Mercury and Gemini, but gone straight to the moon. You must learn to walk before you can run.
The pilot (to be announced at a later date) of the up-coming June sub-orbital space flight will become the first person to earn astronaut wings in a non-government sponsored vehicle, and the first private civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere. SpaceShipOne then coasts up to its goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to earth.
Seeing as a) most people in the aerospace industry defines space as 'anything above 100km over SL (sealevel), and b) they havn't gotten any money from the big, evil goverment to build their vessel, this is correct. Off course, he won't be completly out of out atmosphere, but then the edge of that isn't a sharply defined line.
The pilot experiences a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, sees the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon.
According to This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury (freely avilable from NASA's website), this is a very good description of what Alan Shepard experienced on his suborbital flight on the 5th of May 1961 (see chapter 11-4 of the aforementioned bood, or see what Wikipedia has to say on that flight).
Interestingly enought, when I first heard of the X-prize, I assumed it would be won by a reusable capsule modeled on the early american designs (Mercury, Gemeni or Apollo) launced by reusable solidfueled rockets. I'm happy a more inovative, less 'brute force' approach seems to be winning.
I think they'll manage to get over 100 km in their vessel. Then I assume we'll see them attemt the quick turnaround needed to win the prize and a new launch within two weeks. Then first, having proven their system, will they announce their officall attempt for the prize.
At least that makes sence to me - test that it work first, before they go for the big one. Just the same as NASA did with their first spacecapsules; unmanned ballistic flights first, then a ballistic flight with a monkey, then an unmanned orbital flight and a monkeyed orbital flight - and once they knew their craft would behave as expected under all phases of the mission, they did a couple of manned suborbital flights to prove that humans would behave as expected (they did better than expected AFAIK) before they launced a man into orbit. In fact, it's just the same these guys do; prove that the spacecraft can handle all aspects of the mission before they put three people into it and light the fuse ;)
Since just about anything else avilable today (at least to general consumers) are running at 32 bit (disregarding the fact that it's still possible to get hold of 16 bit and 8 bit chips off course) it make damn good sence to compare the new AMD64 to other chips while running it in 32 bit mode. Otherwise, you would be comparing apples and oranges... since no other CPU runs in 64 bit mode.
Could be interesting to benchmark a AMD64 in 32 bit mode against a AMD64 in 64 bit mode thought... that would say a lot about how much there is to gain in going to 64 bit mode in the first place...
The Wikipedia suggest this definition of a robot:[qoute]
In practical usage, a robot is a mechanical device which performs automated tasks, either according to direct human supervision, a pre-defined program or, a set of general guidelines, using artificial intelligence techniques. These tasks either replace or enhance human work, such as in manufacturing, construction or manipulation of heavy or hazardous materials.
A robot may include a feedback-driven connection between sense and action, not under direct human control. The action may take the form of electro-magnetic motors or actuators that move an arm, open and close grips, or propel the robot. The step by step control and feedback is provided by a computer program run on either an external or embedded computer or a microcontroller. By this definition, a robot may include nearly all automated devices.
Alternately, robot has been used as the general term for a mechanical man, or an automaton resembling an animal, either real or imagined. It has come to be applied to many machines which directly replace a human or animal in work or play. In this way, a robot can be seen as a form of biomimicry. Anthropomorphism is perhaps what makes us reluctant to refer to the highly complex modern washer-dryer as a robot. However, in modern understanding, the term implies a degree of autonomy that would exclude many automatic machine tools from being called robots. It is the search for ever more highly autonomous robots which is the major focus of robotics research and which drives much work in artificial intelligence.
[/qoute]
So, this inflatable dummy may or may not be defined as a robot... allthought my gut feeling is that it's 'merely' a piece of automatic gadgetery.
Charles Babbage gave up on the differiensial engine because he thought he could build a general purpose mechanical computer - the Analytical Engine! To recreate that device would really rock... if I had the time, money and (last but not least) the knowhow, I might try it myself...
Off course, an Analytical Engine would be way larger than a Difference Engine , since it would have to include a CPU (the 'mill'), a input device (Babbage himself suggested punch cards - an idea which the early electromechanical computers picked up), an output device (Babbage wanted to built a complete, automated printingpress, curveplotter and a bell to alert the operator of errors),and last but not least a 'store' (memory - the one envisoned by Babbage would store 1000 numbers, each 50 digits long). The Analytical Enginge was to be programable - which was it great strenght compared to the Differensial Engine - in a language resembling todays assembler languages. Such a machine would be slow and lowpowered by our standards, but would have been a gigantic leap forward back in the 1830's... shame he never got around to build it.
I'll hazard a guess... you're not running a mainstream website that atracts Joe Avrage *smiles*.
It's also worth noting that, as the write up states, quite a few users has more than one browser installed - myself, I got four; IE (seldom used), Netscape 6.somethng (seldom used), Opera (my prefered choice) and Lynx (just for the fun of doing the web as pure text now and then). So yes, it's possible that 93% of the users has IE installed... which isn't the same as to say that each and everyone prefers it to the other options avilable.
...110lbs of camera, vacumpump, sandbags and a specially reinforced cradle? Me think we won't see this kind of sofistication (and stunning pictures) from a consumerlevel camera anytime soon. Or at all, as he rightly points out in the article.
Maybe as well - a 5'x10', sharply focused photo of my own fingertip wouldn't be all that interesting ;)
Not a player? Sorry mate - but as far as I'm concerned the Psion5 I got is still the best thing when it comes to putting in large amounths of texts on the road (it runs EPOC - the forerunner to symbian) - while I can't ask for more in a PDA than my Palm m130 delivers.
Just because MicroSoft claims to be about the same size as Palm on the OS side of things, it don't mean that there wont be people like me who'll either stick to the old devices or are willing to pay for getting new devices with the same OS on them... It's also worth noting that your source seems awfully biased ;)
As for the article, why bother designing the suits now? I'm sure that in 20 years there will be materials that will be much more advanced that we'll want to use instead.
Why bother upgrading your PC now? In two years time there will be faster processors and larger harddisk avilable, and then you can just ask yourself the same question again...
A spacesuit is in essence a highly complex, articulate one man spaceship. As such, it takes time to develop and iron out the bugs. The A7L suit used on the Apollo missions took nine years to develop, and was, as far as I can understand, a simpler piece of enginering than a suit for Mars will be - for starters, the gravity on the moon are less, meaning that the suit could have more mass without beeing uncomfertable to wear for extended periods of time. Also the moon has no atmosphere, while if you're going to Mars you might want to make sure there is no way the atmosphere on Mars affects your suit in a negative manner.
The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) that was developed for use on the Shuttle faced a simpler problem - no gravity to worry about, no moondust that could get into the joints, no chance of the astronaut stumbling over a rock - yet it took as long as the shuttle to develop the first flightrated variants.
Why indeed start designing the suits ten to twenty years ahead of the mission? Because it takes about that time to get the best possible design worked out, all the bugs ironed out and enought suits manufactured - during the apollo program each astronaut had 3 suits; one for training, one for flights and one backup.
Useless fact; The A7L suit had a mass of 22 while the assosiated PLSS (Portable Life Support System) had a mass of 26 kg. The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) used on the US spaceshuttle had a mass of 50 kg and a PLLS weigthing 15 kg.
AFAIK, there is no international treatys which restrics who that can fire lumps of metal into orbit - but there is a treaty describing what's not allowed. Only caveat there is that it's a "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States
in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies", meaning it may or may not apply to you as a private person.
The main trouble I see is that you need to travel thru someones airspace to get there - and to fly thru controlled airspace you need permission from the relevant autorites in your country. As others have noted in reference to the article, in the US you need a waver from the FAA. In other nations you need to apply to the local aviation autority to launch somethign that passes thru the regulated airspace, providing you can get permission at all.
International law is not whats stopping you - it's the local laws that are the nail in your plan.
I'm seriously in love with my trusty old Psion Series 5 for writing stuff on - I mean, the odd short note is fine to do on the Palm M130 I got, but nothing can beat the Psion for datainput. True, it has only a serial conector, but then, nothing is perfect. A Psion 5MX or a Revo might be just what you need.
...or shaped charges as they are often know:
Back when the shaped charge was first developed as a usable weapon against tanks, it was seen as a way to defeat the newer, more heavily armoured tanks that had started appearing. Up to that point, a anti-tank gun had relied on the penetrating power of a solid shot - often with a tungsten core.
After a little while people realised that since a HEAT warhead did not rely on kinetic energy to punch a hole thru armour, lighter, manportable anti tank weapons could be designed and built - including the US bazooka, the british PIAT and the german Panzerfaust (the worlds first disposable anti tank weapon). Shells fireing HEAT warheads was also fired from guns of virtually any caliber during and shortly after WWII.
Relatively soon however, it was found that composite armour and, to a lesser extent, spaced armour was efficient in protecting against both HEAT and HESH shells, signaling a return to the solid penetrators - now fired by guns that could achive much higher muzzles velocities than the pre WWII designs. For manportable weapons however, it was difficult to increase the velocity of the weapon without making it larger, heavier and thus more difficult to transport and operate. Therefore the wast majoity of the manportable anti tank weapons, including the M72, the RPG-7, the TOW missile and many, many more, still uses HEAT warheads - and is likely to do so for the forseeable future. The deliverysystems for the warheads are simply not capable of delivering enought energy to make a kinetic penetrator a viable option.
Funny, the weapon you describe is actually very close to one of the earliest form of airborne weapons developed. It was called Fléchette (french for dart) and was dropped bu the ten of thousands over german troops. However, they were recognised as beeing inefficent, lacking penetrating power and virtually inpossible to aim (wind could bring them out of course). Straffing with machineguns proved much more efficent.
The basic point of the article is corect however - no need to use explosives if you can provide as much or more energy delivered to the target by other means - and since the kinetic increases by the square of the velocity, a lump of metal can be deadly if it moves fast enought.
A jammer - in the spesific sence of a white-noise transmitter - wouldn't give a 'denial of service' style attack. It would drown out the other transmitters, thus fooling your device into thinking that there is no network avilable. Perhaps we should call it a Lack of Carrier Attack? Splitting hairs, I know ;).
That, and using a PDA and a network card is a much geekier - and thus more intersting - way of doing it. Jammers are soooo 80's.