The fact that mutants have extraordinary powers. Geeks are just people who don't fit well in society. We got our asses kicked lots as children. We got ridiculed. We cannot summon fire with our minds and make people's braces fly out of their mouths. Finding parallels here is just romanticising being a geek into some sort of super hero. If you want to do that, go rent Hackers and get a good laugh while you do it.
So you're saying you DON'T have any mutant powers? Well damn, who let you in here? Someone get rid of this guy quick, he's not one of us!
That would be a generic 'You' as I personally live 3 miles to work and I'm starting to bike to work now. But I also might be getting another job, my current home was chosen for it's nearness to my workplace. The next job I get might be 45 minutes away, and I won't be able to bike to that. Changing circumstances force someone to commute when once they didn't have to. My total transportation cost is about 10$ every 2 weeks for gas.
Well if I was in the UK I would bitch also. But you have to keep in mind, that the in the UK you get alot more social programs than we have in the US, I may be mistaken but I guess that your fuel is very havely taxed to pay for these programs. Also I would assume that your overall cost of living is higher than in the US. Thus if you where to make both of these factors equal fuel prices would be about the same. I wish diesel was more popular here in the US, it is much more effenict that gas engines, but the only to get a diesel here in the US is to buy at least a 3/4 ton truck. I wish we could get smaller veichels with diesel engines. That way I could have a small truck that gets 30 to 40 mpg.
Pretty much every volkswagen has a diesel version. Our diesel new beetle gets about 45mpg and it only has 2K miles on it. The mileage will actually get better after another thousand or so miles. I don't know of Volkswagen makes a truck in the US though...
This is without even addressing the point that cars contribute to the breakdown of neighborhoods, and that a quarter of a million americans are killed in car accidents a year. F cars. They suck. No sympathy from me. Gas should cost 6 bucks a gallon, given the harm it does.]
Gee thank you, and now I can walk the 15 miles to the nearest bus/metro stop ride 30 miles into the city, then walk/bike (assuming they let me take my bike on the metro/bus) the other 15 miles through the city to work. And repeat at night. That's rather a lot of effort to go through when I could cut my commute time in half, be able to listen to whatever music I wanted to, and have decent climate control (biking 15 miles through the snow or in 100 degree whether is not exactly enjoyable). When public transit becomes as convenient as private transit more people will use it. If I actually lived and worked IN the city I'd use it. But some people don't live in the middle of the city and there is no need for those people to pay more for the privelage of being able to travel.
3)Caffeine doesn't hold any current medicinal value. No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs
Ok, whatever you are smoking you need to cut back. (Yes, that is supposed to be funny) Caffeine IS very much an addictive substance. It causes withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking it, and alters your mental state. It is by every definition of the word a Drug. The reason you don't see anyone rob a store to buy Caffeine is because Caffeine is legal and reasonably price. It only costs me 50 cents to buy a mountain dew. If drugs were legalized, taxed and regulated you wouldn't have the kind of massive criminal activity centered around them that you do now. When Caffeine is outlawed just see what those 2 pot a day coffee drinkers do, I garauntee they'll be growing beans in their basement and mugging passerby for a fix.
Um, everything's an argument for better encryption to/. readers isn't it? I resort to the oldest argument against encryption: if YOU aren't doing anything wrong, why do you care if THEY read your emails? Take, for instance, the emails I wrote this morning. If the FBI wants to hear about how drunk I got over the weekend, I'm sure they'll enjoy these little tidbits of informations. If, however, they're looking for stories about people planning a nationwide terror campaign, I'm sure they're realize they read the wrong email within a few seconds, and most likely delete it.
Because it's none of their damn business. They ahve no need to know and hence shouldn't be looking. If they are going to look anyways then I'm going to find a way to stop them. And I'm going to do it because it's my RIGHT as a human being not to have every detail of my private life examined by some government thug to be sure it meets with his approval.
Business: Look! We were attacked by hackers and lost X millions of dollars, call the insurance company!
Insurance Company: We're sorry, but you were attacked by CRACKERS, not Hackers, and you only purchased the Hacker insurance. It's an extra 50K a year for the Cracker insurance. Sorry. (Evil cackle)
We continually cheer new PDAs because of their "neat" features such as ultra high ammounts of memory, or their wireless ability. But when it really comes down to what PDA you buy, isn't the data entry interface the most important thing? I mean, if I'm sitting in a class, in order for me to take notes on a PDA, I have to enter data as fast as it's being said. With enough time to still listen and understand the lecture so that I might ask questions.
We need a PDA with near perfect speech to text and a nice built in microphone. With enough storage space you could keep a entire semester of lectures on your palm, without all of that messy ink run off I always had trouble with!
yes there is a long history in the united states of women having the "motherly" role.. while feeling unable to function in other circles of their environment.. hopefully in time less women will be hung up on the stigma of being accepted by the majority
Maybe when our society stops thinking of child birth as such a wonderful accomplishment that will decline some. But everyone praises these couples that have 8 kids at once even though there is no way 2 people can support 8 kids. People need to realize that there are 6 billion of us, that's enough for now, let's chill out on the breeding for a little while and learn to manage our current population.
No one said anything about pushing girls into tech careers. The whole point of the gender (or racial or age or whatever) divide is that assuming people are in fact equal, why is there this huge difference in the percentage of men in tech fields vs women in tech files? Since we assume that people are equal, we expect the percentages to be the same, and if they aren't, then we say, something is "wrong."
Ok, I just have to say this here. I am SOOO Tired of everyone screaming about how everyone is equal. Everyone is NOT EQUAL! NOT! People are Equal in the Eyes of the Law. That does not mean that if JoeBob the weightlifter can bench 415 then I can bench 415, It doesn't mean that if I can strip down a computer to its component parts and then reconstruct it that JoeBob will be able to. We all have different skills, different abilities. Those skills and abilities aren't always divided along racial or gender lines but sometimes they are. No one is Equal to me, I am not Equal to anyone else. We are all viewed as equal by Law. Which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT concept. So now that I've got that rant out of the way you can continue your conversation.
A guy who doesn't feel his masculinity threatened if he has to take care of the children, or put on an aprin and bake some cookies, and a women who doesn't feel her femininity threatened if she plays rugby or works in a traditionally "male" field.
A fun way to mess with a guys mind is to see what colors they are willing to wear in public. A guy who is REALLY REALLY insecure will refuse to wear anything that isn't dark blue, black, brown or Red. With the possiblity of dark green. A guy who is secure will wear any color. I myself wander around in clothes with pink elephants on them (My wife's pajama shirt) occasionally. Of course, my prents thought I was going to be a girl... Hrmmm... >:)
CSS and systems like it (such as this digitial music system) are bad, especially because of the DMCA. That law means anyone can override all the fair use provisions of copyright law by simply writing an access control/encryption system that makes it even one bit harder than trivial to access or copy the data. If you write code to make an activity "hard" (i.e. not completely trivial), DMCA makes that activity illegal. Any programmer can be her/his own legislature. Write the code and outlaw the activity.
You even admit it yourself, it's not the TECHNOLOGY that is wrong or evil, it's the legislation which allows it to be abused. We shouldn't be crusading against the Tech, but against the DMCA. Write your congressman, fight against the legislation so that the Tech can be used for good.
Yeah, it's not as if Metallica is going to be around this time next year to bitch about their album being pirated.
That seems to be the crux of the matter, the actualy good bands (Metallica WAS good at one point) are still around to bitch, while the crappy pop bands disappear. So I imagine 3 doors Down will still be around in 15 years to complain about their music being pirated. But their last 2 songs released on the radio (Kyrptonite and I'm a Loser) lasted about 4 months apiece in their top radio play spots. Now they are part of the regular music rotation. In another 12 months they won't be sought after songs, and 3 Doors Down will have made their money from those songs. So why not let them enter the public domain? Hopefully the band will have new songs out by then. And if people are able to get their old stuff and listen to it then people are more likely to buy the new stuff. See my point?
Of course we don't like this. The system is nothing more then a slightly glorified CSS. It still requires that the decrypting and playing/displaying be in a controlled environment following the agenda of somebody other then the user. You think you'll ever see an open source player for this? Think they are going to be happy when somebody reverse engineers it and makes a tool that write the raw data to disk rather then hardware?
The idea of controlling information is just wrong. It doesn't matter how good the system is, by defenition it has to mean that you are infringing on the freedom of viewer and somehow controlling his actions. You may LIKE that, but I sure as hell don't.
Ohhhh ok, so it's alright for our software to be protected from misuse under the GPL, but it's not alright for a musician to protect his or her music using technological means? Just because CSS was and is misused to control where you can view a DVD doesn't mean the technology itself is wrong. I don't think any of us should have a problem with someone who creates something being able to profit from it. I imagine we ALL object to the RIAA profitting from someone elses work though. And of course, if they hijack the tech and try to use it to further control the distribution of music they did not create then it will be a Bad Thing(tm), but if this becomes a tool for musicians to use to protect their work from misuse and allows them to distribute it without the interference of the RIAA then that will be a Good Thing(tm). So we shouldn't be bitching about an 'Evil Technology' we should be cheering for an excellent technology and then bitching if/when it is misused.
I especially hate the bullshit about USE licensing. That's breaking up a product into multiple pieces. Frankly I expect to pay less if I'm not allowed full use.
The real motivation for most artists in wanting to protect their work is not to prevent their fans from listening to it, but to prevent some dumbass from burning 2000 CDs of their music and selling them for 10$ apiece. That person is profitting from someone elses work. As a poet I wouldn't like it if someone took my work and sold it for a profit without even asking me. But I also don't think my work should be perpetually protected. I think 2 years is more than sufficient before any form of artwork becomes public domain.... Some would disagree with me I'm sure. But I think that is plenty of time for an artist to profit from their work. Heck, it's about 5 times what the average popular lifetime of a piece of music is nowadays. It's not as if N-Sync is going to be around this time next year to bitch about their album being pirated.
I thought slashdotters liked strong crypto and innovative crypto and anything else that could be used to keep the government out of your hair. Why are we getting our panties in a bunch that someone else might get to use crypto too? If, as we've stated many many times, the RIAA is obsolete then they will have no use for this technology because they won't have any music to encrypt. The musicians will all be using this to encrypt the songs they are selling off of their websites. Does anyone have a problem with the musicians profiting from their work and using this to enforce how something they created is used? Not I.
Oh well. Whenever I DO still play, I just play with friends who started when I did, and we play old school rules. At least then it is still fun.
Same here. I occasionally attend a sealed deck event, or hit a card shop for a night of T2. But most of the time it's just with friends. And the fact that you can do that without buying new cards every 3 weeks is what will keep the game alive and popular for years and years to come.
Isn't the idea of these aggregate computers (clusters, whatever) that you can just keep on growing them?
Add a couple hundred nodes, buy another switch or two, increase your flops by a couple of hundred g?
Any idea if that's what they did? None of the articles have said whether they just plugged 9 more teraflops worth of power into the existing 3 or put a whole new 12 tf system in. That would be interesting to know.
Kintanon
s/human genome project/nuclear energy/g
on
Frankenstein Time
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· Score: 1
Your position, while understandable, has been taken before. Perhaps it is the mere presence of such doomsayers that has resulted in their predictions never coming true. So while I completely disagree as to the direction our new discoveries will take us, I can see that you have a place in our society as a sort of crackpot canary that serves as a VERY early warning of possible consequences of our actions. Luckily we've managed to slip by without destroying ourselves yet, and I think we'll make it through this discovery as well.
How come almost every time there is a post about supersomputers, they are being used for nuclear bomb explosion simulations? While I realize that this is a better thing to simulate than to actually do, aren't these computers being used for anything else? Is it that the people who these computers are being built for only want them for those purposes? I just think it would be great to see an announcement mention that a supercomputer would be used for analyzing weather patterns, help with the human genome mapping effort, or something else, well, different.:-)
Ok, What I want to know is where did the old computer go? They had a 3.??? teraflop computer before. Now they havea 12.??? teraflop computer. What did they do with the 3? Scrap it? Give it to another branch of science? Sell it? Stick it in a warehouse? Why can't we take it and set it up in a big room and let every research facility around that wants time on it buy some. Or even just allocate X amount of time per month for each scientific institution and let them use it to further research. It would very much suck if they just threw the thing away....
I'm getting the feeling that the posters stating swords weigh in the 20-40lb range have either never held a real sword, or never actually weighed the swords they did.
I have held them, and I have weighed them. I just happened to have weighed a VERY VERY poorly made sword. Which skewed my perception. The ones I held were probably not as poorly made, but still felt heavy due to the length. I have since corrected my misinformation and posted a link earlier in the thread to an excellent website which will dispell any myths concerning the weight of medieval swords and armor. I apologize for my previous ignorance.
I would tend to think it would be closer to the 5-10lbs. Of the swords that I have looked at, (and own,) none are that large. AT 40-50 lbs, it is more of a two-hander, and actually more of a club. Here's a greatsword, (43" blade), that weighs in just under 6 lbs, and this is a REAL sword, (this is about the finest manufacturer I have found, I have a long sword from them) Great Sword The main thing I see, is that you really can't weild a 40lb sword effectively for much of anything. Perhaps one horseback, but even then it becomes very unweildy, and generally the balance is not going to be very good on a weapon of that size(well, the balance may be good, but it won't be superb just because of the size of it.)
I am forced to concede as I just reaxmined some of my information. The sword I weighed was apparently of pretty disgustingly crappy workmanship. Because citing from this page I realize I am in error and you sir, are correct:
Myth #2: Medieval broadswords weighed 10 to 15 pounds, some as much as 40 pounds. This myth comes from the same place as the myth about the weight of plate armor. Plate armor was worn by knights in the 14th to 17th centuries, and it was certainly bulkier than normal street clothes. However, if a knight wore armor that made it hard to get up after falling from his horse, then such a knight didn't live very long, no matter how thick his armor was. And such a knight would die just as fast trying to wield a sword that weighed 15 pounds.
Actually, the average medieval broadsword weighed around 3 to 5 pounds, and only the very strongest warriors could handle the 5 to 8 pound hand-and-a-half swords and early Claymores. And then there were those giants who hauled the occasional two-handed great sword into battle, but even those only pushed 12 pounds at the maximum. Even the so-called Austrian Masterpiece two-handed sword with a flamberge blade weighed only 8 to 10 pounds.
Just to give you an idea, the Marto Excalibur is 48" long overall and weighs around 6 pounds, the CAS Iberia Black Baron sword is about 38" and weighs just 3¼ pounds, the CAS Iberia Swept Hilt Rapier is 44" long and weighs only 2½ pounds. And even Marto's largest Claymore is 56" long and weighs only 8½ pounds. All these swords feature steel blades and have the same size and proportions as their Medieval and Renaissance counterparts.
I said the only 10lb sword THERE, as in at the location where I was able to weigh the broadsword. That has no bearing on any other location on earth. But the collection of swords I was looking at contained only 1 rapier, the only sword that was around 10lbs.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that mutants have extraordinary powers. Geeks are just people who don't fit well in society. We got our asses kicked lots as children. We got ridiculed. We cannot summon fire with our minds and make people's braces fly out of their mouths. Finding parallels here is just romanticising being a geek into some sort of super hero. If you want to do that, go rent Hackers and get a good laugh while you do it.
So you're saying you DON'T have any mutant powers? Well damn, who let you in here? Someone get rid of this guy quick, he's not one of us!
Kintanon
That would be a generic 'You' as I personally live 3 miles to work and I'm starting to bike to work now. But I also might be getting another job, my current home was chosen for it's nearness to my workplace. The next job I get might be 45 minutes away, and I won't be able to bike to that. Changing circumstances force someone to commute when once they didn't have to. My total transportation cost is about 10$ every 2 weeks for gas.
Kintanon
Well if I was in the UK I would bitch also. But you have to keep in mind, that the in the UK you get alot more social programs than we have in the US, I may be mistaken but I guess that your fuel is very havely taxed to pay for these programs. Also I would assume that your overall cost of living is higher than in the US. Thus if you where to make both of these factors equal fuel prices would be about the same. I wish diesel was more popular here in the US, it is much more effenict that gas engines, but the only to get a diesel here in the US is to buy at least a 3/4 ton truck. I wish we could get smaller veichels with diesel engines. That way I could have a small truck that gets 30 to 40 mpg.
Pretty much every volkswagen has a diesel version. Our diesel new beetle gets about 45mpg and it only has 2K miles on it. The mileage will actually get better after another thousand or so miles. I don't know of Volkswagen makes a truck in the US though...
Kintanon
This is without even addressing the point that cars contribute to the breakdown of neighborhoods, and that a quarter of a million americans are killed in car accidents a year. F cars. They suck. No sympathy from me. Gas should cost 6 bucks a gallon, given the harm it does.]
Gee thank you, and now I can walk the 15 miles to the nearest bus/metro stop ride 30 miles into the city, then walk/bike (assuming they let me take my bike on the metro/bus) the other 15 miles through the city to work. And repeat at night. That's rather a lot of effort to go through when I could cut my commute time in half, be able to listen to whatever music I wanted to, and have decent climate control (biking 15 miles through the snow or in 100 degree whether is not exactly enjoyable). When public transit becomes as convenient as private transit more people will use it. If I actually lived and worked IN the city I'd use it. But some people don't live in the middle of the city and there is no need for those people to pay more for the privelage of being able to travel.
Kintanon
3)Caffeine doesn't hold any current medicinal value. No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs
Ok, whatever you are smoking you need to cut back. (Yes, that is supposed to be funny)
Caffeine IS very much an addictive substance. It causes withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking it, and alters your mental state. It is by every definition of the word a Drug.
The reason you don't see anyone rob a store to buy Caffeine is because Caffeine is legal and reasonably price. It only costs me 50 cents to buy a mountain dew. If drugs were legalized, taxed and regulated you wouldn't have the kind of massive criminal activity centered around them that you do now.
When Caffeine is outlawed just see what those 2 pot a day coffee drinkers do, I garauntee they'll be growing beans in their basement and mugging passerby for a fix.
Kintanon
Helping to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
.sig Thief!! Someone stop him!!!
.Sig, go get your own! >:)
HELP! HELP!
Bad Bad naughty JoeLinux! That's my
Kintanon
Um, everything's an argument for better encryption to /. readers isn't it? I resort to the oldest argument against encryption: if YOU aren't doing anything wrong, why do you care if THEY read your emails? Take, for instance, the emails I wrote this morning. If the FBI wants to hear about how drunk I got over the weekend, I'm sure they'll enjoy these little tidbits of informations. If, however, they're looking for stories about people planning a nationwide terror campaign, I'm sure they're realize they read the wrong email within a few seconds, and most likely delete it.
Because it's none of their damn business. They ahve no need to know and hence shouldn't be looking. If they are going to look anyways then I'm going to find a way to stop them. And I'm going to do it because it's my RIGHT as a human being not to have every detail of my private life examined by some government thug to be sure it meets with his approval.
Kintanon
I just can't wait for the first claim to come in:
Business: Look! We were attacked by hackers and lost X millions of dollars, call the insurance company!
Insurance Company: We're sorry, but you were attacked by CRACKERS, not Hackers, and you only purchased the Hacker insurance. It's an extra 50K a year for the Cracker insurance. Sorry. (Evil cackle)
Kintanon
We continually cheer new PDAs because of their "neat" features such as ultra high ammounts of memory, or their wireless ability. But when it really comes down to what PDA you buy, isn't the data entry interface the most important thing? I mean, if I'm sitting in a class, in order for me to take notes on a PDA, I have to enter data as fast as it's being said. With enough time to still listen and understand the lecture so that I might ask questions.
We need a PDA with near perfect speech to text and a nice built in microphone. With enough storage space you could keep a entire semester of lectures on your palm, without all of that messy ink run off I always had trouble with!
Kintanon
yes there is a long history in the united states of women having the "motherly" role.. while feeling unable to function in other circles of their environment.. hopefully in time less women will be hung up on the stigma of being accepted by the majority
Maybe when our society stops thinking of child birth as such a wonderful accomplishment that will decline some. But everyone praises these couples that have 8 kids at once even though there is no way 2 people can support 8 kids. People need to realize that there are 6 billion of us, that's enough for now, let's chill out on the breeding for a little while and learn to manage our current population.
Kintanon
No one said anything about pushing girls into tech careers. The whole point of the gender (or racial or age or whatever) divide is that assuming people are in fact equal, why is there this huge difference in the percentage of men in tech fields vs women in tech files? Since we assume that people are equal, we expect the percentages to be the same, and if they aren't, then we say, something is "wrong."
Ok, I just have to say this here. I am SOOO Tired of everyone screaming about how everyone is equal. Everyone is NOT EQUAL! NOT! People are Equal in the Eyes of the Law. That does not mean that if JoeBob the weightlifter can bench 415 then I can bench 415, It doesn't mean that if I can strip down a computer to its component parts and then reconstruct it that JoeBob will be able to. We all have different skills, different abilities. Those skills and abilities aren't always divided along racial or gender lines but sometimes they are. No one is Equal to me, I am not Equal to anyone else. We are all viewed as equal by Law. Which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT concept.
So now that I've got that rant out of the way you can continue your conversation.
Kintanon
A guy who doesn't feel his masculinity threatened if he has to take care of the children, or put on an aprin and bake some cookies, and a women who doesn't feel her femininity threatened if she plays rugby or works in a traditionally "male" field.
A fun way to mess with a guys mind is to see what colors they are willing to wear in public. A guy who is REALLY REALLY insecure will refuse to wear anything that isn't dark blue, black, brown or Red. With the possiblity of dark green. A guy who is secure will wear any color. I myself wander around in clothes with pink elephants on them (My wife's pajama shirt) occasionally. Of course, my prents thought I was going to be a girl... Hrmmm... >:)
Kintanon
CSS and systems like it (such as this digitial music system) are bad, especially because of the DMCA. That law means anyone can override all the fair use provisions of copyright law by simply writing an access control/encryption system that makes it even one bit harder than trivial to access or copy the data. If you write code to make an activity "hard" (i.e. not completely trivial), DMCA makes that activity illegal. Any programmer can be her/his own legislature. Write the code and outlaw the activity.
You even admit it yourself, it's not the TECHNOLOGY that is wrong or evil, it's the legislation which allows it to be abused. We shouldn't be crusading against the Tech, but against the DMCA. Write your congressman, fight against the legislation so that the Tech can be used for good.
Kintanon
Yeah, it's not as if Metallica is going to be around this time next year to bitch about their album being pirated.
That seems to be the crux of the matter, the actualy good bands (Metallica WAS good at one point) are still around to bitch, while the crappy pop bands disappear. So I imagine 3 doors Down will still be around in 15 years to complain about their music being pirated. But their last 2 songs released on the radio (Kyrptonite and I'm a Loser) lasted about 4 months apiece in their top radio play spots. Now they are part of the regular music rotation. In another 12 months they won't be sought after songs, and 3 Doors Down will have made their money from those songs. So why not let them enter the public domain? Hopefully the band will have new songs out by then. And if people are able to get their old stuff and listen to it then people are more likely to buy the new stuff. See my point?
Kintanon
Of course we don't like this. The system is nothing more then a slightly glorified CSS. It still requires that the decrypting and playing/displaying be in a controlled environment following the agenda of somebody other then the user. You think you'll ever see an open source player for this? Think they are going to be happy when somebody reverse engineers it and makes a tool that write the raw data to disk rather then hardware?
The idea of controlling information is just wrong. It doesn't matter how good the system is, by defenition it has to mean that you are infringing on the freedom of viewer and somehow controlling his actions. You may LIKE that, but I sure as hell don't.
Ohhhh ok, so it's alright for our software to be protected from misuse under the GPL, but it's not alright for a musician to protect his or her music using technological means? Just because CSS was and is misused to control where you can view a DVD doesn't mean the technology itself is wrong. I don't think any of us should have a problem with someone who creates something being able to profit from it. I imagine we ALL object to the RIAA profitting from someone elses work though. And of course, if they hijack the tech and try to use it to further control the distribution of music they did not create then it will be a Bad Thing(tm), but if this becomes a tool for musicians to use to protect their work from misuse and allows them to distribute it without the interference of the RIAA then that will be a Good Thing(tm). So we shouldn't be bitching about an 'Evil Technology' we should be cheering for an excellent technology and then bitching if/when it is misused.
Kintanon
I especially hate the bullshit about USE licensing. That's breaking up a product into multiple pieces. Frankly I expect to pay less if I'm not allowed full use.
The real motivation for most artists in wanting to protect their work is not to prevent their fans from listening to it, but to prevent some dumbass from burning 2000 CDs of their music and selling them for 10$ apiece. That person is profitting from someone elses work. As a poet I wouldn't like it if someone took my work and sold it for a profit without even asking me. But I also don't think my work should be perpetually protected. I think 2 years is more than sufficient before any form of artwork becomes public domain.... Some would disagree with me I'm sure. But I think that is plenty of time for an artist to profit from their work. Heck, it's about 5 times what the average popular lifetime of a piece of music is nowadays. It's not as if N-Sync is going to be around this time next year to bitch about their album being pirated.
Kintanon
I thought slashdotters liked strong crypto and innovative crypto and anything else that could be used to keep the government out of your hair. Why are we getting our panties in a bunch that someone else might get to use crypto too?
If, as we've stated many many times, the RIAA is obsolete then they will have no use for this technology because they won't have any music to encrypt. The musicians will all be using this to encrypt the songs they are selling off of their websites. Does anyone have a problem with the musicians profiting from their work and using this to enforce how something they created is used? Not I.
Kintanon
Oh well. Whenever I DO still play, I just play with friends who started when I did, and we play old school rules. At least then it is still fun.
Same here. I occasionally attend a sealed deck event, or hit a card shop for a night of T2. But most of the time it's just with friends. And the fact that you can do that without buying new cards every 3 weeks is what will keep the game alive and popular for years and years to come.
Kintanon
Isn't the idea of these aggregate computers (clusters, whatever) that you can just keep on growing them?
Add a couple hundred nodes, buy another switch or two, increase your flops by a couple of hundred g?
Any idea if that's what they did? None of the articles have said whether they just plugged 9 more teraflops worth of power into the existing 3 or put a whole new 12 tf system in. That would be interesting to know.
Kintanon
Your position, while understandable, has been taken before. Perhaps it is the mere presence of such doomsayers that has resulted in their predictions never coming true. So while I completely disagree as to the direction our new discoveries will take us, I can see that you have a place in our society as a sort of crackpot canary that serves as a VERY early warning of possible consequences of our actions. Luckily we've managed to slip by without destroying ourselves yet, and I think we'll make it through this discovery as well.
Kintanon
!). It's for "Simple, Many, And Self-Healing".
Isn't that the BORG motto...?
How come almost every time there is a post about supersomputers, they are being used for nuclear bomb explosion simulations? While I realize that this is a better thing to simulate than to actually do, aren't these computers being used for anything else? Is it that the people who these computers are being built for only want them for those purposes? I just think it would be great to see an announcement mention that a supercomputer would be used for analyzing weather patterns, help with the human genome mapping effort, or something else, well, different. :-)
Ok, What I want to know is where did the old computer go? They had a 3.??? teraflop computer before. Now they havea 12.??? teraflop computer. What did they do with the 3? Scrap it? Give it to another branch of science? Sell it? Stick it in a warehouse? Why can't we take it and set it up in a big room and let every research facility around that wants time on it buy some. Or even just allocate X amount of time per month for each scientific institution and let them use it to further research. It would very much suck if they just threw the thing away....
Kintanon
I'm getting the feeling that the posters stating swords weigh in the 20-40lb range have either never held a real sword, or never actually weighed the swords they did.
I have held them, and I have weighed them. I just happened to have weighed a VERY VERY poorly made sword. Which skewed my perception. The ones I held were probably not as poorly made, but still felt heavy due to the length. I have since corrected my misinformation and posted a link earlier in the thread to an excellent website which will dispell any myths concerning the weight of medieval swords and armor. I apologize for my previous ignorance.
Kintanon
I would tend to think it would be closer to the 5-10lbs. Of the swords that I have looked at, (and own,) none are that large. AT 40-50 lbs, it is more of a two-hander, and actually more of a club. Here's a greatsword, (43" blade), that weighs in just under 6 lbs, and this is a REAL sword, (this is about the finest manufacturer I have found, I have a long sword from them) Great Sword
The main thing I see, is that you really can't weild a 40lb sword effectively for much of anything. Perhaps one horseback, but even then it becomes very unweildy, and generally the balance is not going to be very good on a weapon of that size(well, the balance may be good, but it won't be superb just because of the size of it.)
I am forced to concede as I just reaxmined some of my information. The sword I weighed was apparently of pretty disgustingly crappy workmanship. Because citing from this page I realize I am in error and you sir, are correct:
Sword Myths
Myth #2: Medieval broadswords weighed 10 to 15 pounds, some as much as 40 pounds.
This myth comes from the same place as the myth about the weight of plate armor. Plate armor was worn by knights in the 14th to 17th centuries, and it was certainly bulkier than normal street clothes. However, if a knight wore armor that made it hard to get up after falling from his horse, then such a knight didn't live very long, no matter how thick his armor was. And such a knight would die just as fast trying to wield a sword that weighed 15 pounds.
Actually, the average medieval broadsword weighed around 3 to 5 pounds, and only the very strongest warriors could handle the 5 to 8 pound hand-and-a-half swords and early Claymores. And then there were those giants who hauled the occasional two-handed great sword into battle, but even those only pushed 12 pounds at the maximum. Even the so-called Austrian Masterpiece two-handed sword with a flamberge blade weighed only 8 to 10 pounds.
Just to give you an idea, the Marto Excalibur is 48" long overall and weighs around 6 pounds, the CAS Iberia Black Baron sword is about 38" and weighs just 3¼ pounds, the CAS Iberia Swept Hilt Rapier is 44" long and weighs only 2½ pounds. And even Marto's largest Claymore is 56" long and weighs only 8½ pounds. All these swords feature steel blades and have the same size and proportions as their Medieval and Renaissance counterparts.
I said the only 10lb sword THERE, as in at the location where I was able to weigh the broadsword.
That has no bearing on any other location on earth. But the collection of swords I was looking at contained only 1 rapier, the only sword that was around 10lbs.
Kintanon