"The larger goal here is not to just navigate a course, but to win a war by killing lots of people."
I'd love to know who in the hell decided this was funny. I'm so tired of hearing "The defense department loves to kill people". That's not what they do, actually it's quite the opposite. They're their to PROTECT PEOPLE. They go out of their way spending billions to not kill people.
Example: smart bombs. Billions in research, millions more to purchase and maintain than "dumb bombs", but able to knock out a satelite dish on top of a building without leveling the building. If the defense department "loved to kill people" than they would just as easily drop dumb bombs and kill everything within a 100 yards. Much easier and much cheaper.
Oh and let's not forget all the defense technology that reaches the public. Microwaves, GPS, lasers and even computers were all funded thanks to the defense department.
So while you sit there and bash the defense department for developing technology to "kill people", remember you're able to bash them using technology they helped research and develop.
After reading the article and seeing the words "space technology" used far too many times (which reads $$$$$$ to me) I think they should determine future winners based on the price of the materials used in the car compared to the time to completion.
For example, if the 5 million dollar car finishes only 5% quicker than the half million dollar car than I think the half million dollar car should be declared the winner. Cost won't include design, only the price of the physical materials used to build the car.
Why? Because it's more useful. If this is ever going to become a pratical solution for the public (and that's the point, right? To prove solar power is practical?) than they're going to have to stop building 5 million dollar vehicles that get 60mph and start creating $100,000 vehicles that get 50mph. Sure it's slower, but at least the price is dropping, and technology that's $100,000 now might be $30,000 in 10 years.
Otherwise in 5 years they'll be making 15 million dollar cars that get 90mph and all they'll prove is how expensive solar power is.
According to the article the car "uses advanced space technology, provided to the team via ESA's European Space Agency) Technology Transfer Programme" and the "ESA not only provided them with engineering support via its Technology Transfer Programme but also with general support via the Education Office, previously headed by former ESA astronaut Wubbo Ockels, who is also adviser to the team."
The article also points out that the "Nuna II also carries Maximum Power Point Trackers... many satellites carry these devices, for instance ESA's Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, due for launch in February 2004."
So while everyone else was racing cars built by students with relatively small budgets, the Dutch were racing the latest and greatest technology that the space industry can provide. So which is it, a competition between colleges, or various countries flexing their technological might? US went with the former, obviously the Dutch chose the latter.
Why does this sound a lot like the 1st grader who turns in a working nuclear reactor as a science fair project? Hmm...
Doesn't matter because he waited too long. Says the idea was "Announced on 28.02.1997", but according to Patent It Yourself 8th Edition "in the United States you must file your patent application within one year after you first commercialize or publish details of the invention. However most foreign countries doesn't have this one-year grace period..."
So unless he filed in 98 and has been waiting for the last 6 years to be approved he's lost his opportunity to patent.
I find it ironic that people buy cheap systems with slow discs, slow network and insufficient RAM and then try to make it faster by overclocking the CPU.
Because once the application is loaded from hd to ram it's the cpu & ram speed that matters, not the hd speed.
Let's not forget that very few apps even need fast load speeds, even games don't need it. A modern IDE hard drive offers 50+ mB/sec speeds, that's fast enough to load even the largest games quickly, only when video editing would faster speeds be desireable. And hard drives are not like CPUs, their are no hard drives that offer double or triple the transfer rate of the inexpensive drives, your fastest 15k rpm drive might offer 20mB/sec more, which isn't worth the extra $200 and 80+ gig sacrifice to many people, especially when that money could be better spent on faster cpus, video cards or memory.
A fast cpu plus lots of ram paired with a slow hd is like a speed reader who took a few minutes to find the book vs a "metally challenged" person who found the book immediately. Which would you rather be?
Ok quit with the "Death of PDA" comments. This doesn't spell the death of PDAs, this is just another form of PDA. Calling a PDA with a phone built-in the "Death of PDAs" is like calling a PDA with a built-in camera the "Death of PDAs" and declaring that cameras are replacing PDAs because it has a camera built-in. Um, no. Just because PDAs have a new feature doesn't mean they've suddenly disappeared.
In 10 years every PDA will probably have a built-in cellphone, it doesn't mean cellphones OR PDAs have "died", it's just the same device with more features.
The overclockers.com article was dated 2001, who knows how long before that the actual enclosure was built, but it seems to me that modern drives aren't as loud as they use to be.
Manufactures have now addressed the noise issue and 7200rpm 120+ gig drives can be purchased that are quieter than a whisper @ 10 feet; whisper = 3 bels, or 30db (decibels = tenths of a bel). Sure it does nothing for the heat, but I think hard drive enclosures are a thing of the past, unless you're holding on to that old 6.4gig drive.
And?? Model number? Western Digital has been making 40+ gig drives since Summer 2000, so for all we know this drive is almost 4 years old.
I don't have to remind everyone 4 years is a few generations in computer years. Next time you do a review how about telling us the drive number, or do a review using modern drives.
Yes, but from what you've said it's clear you don't. Zip drives were out long before CD-R drives were even avaliable. In the mid-90s there were basically two options for portable media: floppy and Zip. I bought my first EPSON Zip drive (yes, Epson made Zip drives) for $99 after mail-in rebate in 1996. A 1x CD-R drive would have easily cost $1000 at that time, and blank CD-Rs were $5+ each. CD-RW was just a dream in a memo on someone's desk.
the basic lack of Windows support for zip disks
What exactly do you mean by "lack of Windows support? It was supported about as well as any other peripheral, which means the manufacture supplied drivers & support.
"I have film on "Digital-8" format that is going to be expensive to find a camera to read it."
Unless you consider that Sony still makes "Digital-8" camcorders, so I wouldn't exactly consider Digital8 "obsolete" yet, at least until they stop making the camcorders...
"The PDA is dead" says...
on
Death of the PDA?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
""The PDA is dead," says David Levin, the boss of Symbian, the leading maker of smartphone software."
LOL. Is this like Bill Gates declaring Linux dead? Actually no, it's the opposite since smartphone is the underdog. This is more like Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs declaring Microsoft dead. Why is this newsworthy?
Am I the only person that noticed that the second player joystick has the buttons on the wrong side? So if you want to play with another player, the second player must be left-handed.
According to 2002 census information there's 2.5 million people in the US city I live in but the closest IMAX theater listed on that site is 4 hours away.
Am I missing something? Is 2.5 million people not enough? It's not because we don't have a theater either, we have a IMAX theater. So who decided the theaters?
hate to say this, but Linux is only "cool" when it's cheaper than the dominant player. A $400 Linux DVR that doesn't even include a hard drive isn't "cool" anymore than if the Linux OS cost double what a competing Windows OS costs and if Linux software cost $$$.
I'll be flamed for saying this, but I hope this $400 Linux DVR goes no where... except down in price. Call me when it hits $199.
It doesn't have the hard disk spinning all the time. This is not only to prevent skipping but also to dramatically increase battery life.
We'll just completely ignore the fact that the only way a hard drive could "skip" is if the heads smack the platters, which would destroy the hard drive. We'll just go ahead and believe it's that great 32megs buffer preventing skipping...
The first 45 seconds and last minute and a half is nothing but credits, disclaimers, and other BS. What a waste! This isn't a 2 hour movie guys, you don't need 2+ minutes for a 14:30 clip, especially when we're downloading it, adding an extra ~25 megs on the mpeg version.
Besides that some of the fight scenes were a little slow and obviously choreographed, and the whole British theme is overdone since everyone knows every nationality will speak American English in the future...
so this is the way to get a job in today's economy? Copy exactly what the potential employeer is doing and do it on a shoe string budget? So if I want to work at Microsoft I have to make my own OS?
"In the fairly likely event of the software crashing, a wire coming loose, a component failing, or the batteries running low, the wheels will lock and the entire kinetic energy of the system will be used to accelerate my head toward the ground. "
Slashdot Mirror
I'd love to know who in the hell decided this was funny. I'm so tired of hearing "The defense department loves to kill people". That's not what they do, actually it's quite the opposite. They're their to PROTECT PEOPLE. They go out of their way spending billions to not kill people.
Example: smart bombs. Billions in research, millions more to purchase and maintain than "dumb bombs", but able to knock out a satelite dish on top of a building without leveling the building. If the defense department "loved to kill people" than they would just as easily drop dumb bombs and kill everything within a 100 yards. Much easier and much cheaper.
Oh and let's not forget all the defense technology that reaches the public. Microwaves, GPS, lasers and even computers were all funded thanks to the defense department.
So while you sit there and bash the defense department for developing technology to "kill people", remember you're able to bash them using technology they helped research and develop.
For example, if the 5 million dollar car finishes only 5% quicker than the half million dollar car than I think the half million dollar car should be declared the winner. Cost won't include design, only the price of the physical materials used to build the car.
Why? Because it's more useful. If this is ever going to become a pratical solution for the public (and that's the point, right? To prove solar power is practical?) than they're going to have to stop building 5 million dollar vehicles that get 60mph and start creating $100,000 vehicles that get 50mph. Sure it's slower, but at least the price is dropping, and technology that's $100,000 now might be $30,000 in 10 years.
Otherwise in 5 years they'll be making 15 million dollar cars that get 90mph and all they'll prove is how expensive solar power is.
According to the article the car "uses advanced space technology, provided to the team via ESA's European Space Agency) Technology Transfer Programme" and the "ESA not only provided them with engineering support via its Technology Transfer Programme but also with general support via the Education Office, previously headed by former ESA astronaut Wubbo Ockels, who is also adviser to the team."
The article also points out that the "Nuna II also carries Maximum Power Point Trackers... many satellites carry these devices, for instance ESA's Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, due for launch in February 2004."
So while everyone else was racing cars built by students with relatively small budgets, the Dutch were racing the latest and greatest technology that the space industry can provide. So which is it, a competition between colleges, or various countries flexing their technological might? US went with the former, obviously the Dutch chose the latter.
Why does this sound a lot like the 1st grader who turns in a working nuclear reactor as a science fair project? Hmm...
Doesn't matter because he waited too long. Says the idea was "Announced on 28.02.1997", but according to Patent It Yourself 8th Edition
"in the United States you must file your patent application within one year after you first commercialize or publish details of the invention. However most foreign countries doesn't have this one-year grace period..."
So unless he filed in 98 and has been waiting for the last 6 years to be approved he's lost his opportunity to patent.
Because once the application is loaded from hd to ram it's the cpu & ram speed that matters, not the hd speed.
Let's not forget that very few apps even need fast load speeds, even games don't need it. A modern IDE hard drive offers 50+ mB/sec speeds, that's fast enough to load even the largest games quickly, only when video editing would faster speeds be desireable. And hard drives are not like CPUs, their are no hard drives that offer double or triple the transfer rate of the inexpensive drives, your fastest 15k rpm drive might offer 20mB/sec more, which isn't worth the extra $200 and 80+ gig sacrifice to many people, especially when that money could be better spent on faster cpus, video cards or memory.
A fast cpu plus lots of ram paired with a slow hd is like a speed reader who took a few minutes to find the book vs a "metally challenged" person who found the book immediately. Which would you rather be?
In 10 years every PDA will probably have a built-in cellphone, it doesn't mean cellphones OR PDAs have "died", it's just the same device with more features.
Manufactures have now addressed the noise issue and 7200rpm 120+ gig drives can be purchased that are quieter than a whisper @ 10 feet; whisper = 3 bels, or 30db (decibels = tenths of a bel). Sure it does nothing for the heat, but I think hard drive enclosures are a thing of the past, unless you're holding on to that old 6.4gig drive.
And?? Model number? Western Digital has been making 40+ gig drives since Summer 2000, so for all we know this drive is almost 4 years old.
I don't have to remind everyone 4 years is a few generations in computer years. Next time you do a review how about telling us the drive number, or do a review using modern drives.
Anyone want to read my review of my p3 600mhz?
Yes, but from what you've said it's clear you don't. Zip drives were out long before CD-R drives were even avaliable. In the mid-90s there were basically two options for portable media: floppy and Zip. I bought my first EPSON Zip drive (yes, Epson made Zip drives) for $99 after mail-in rebate in 1996. A 1x CD-R drive would have easily cost $1000 at that time, and blank CD-Rs were $5+ each. CD-RW was just a dream in a memo on someone's desk.
the basic lack of Windows support for zip disks
What exactly do you mean by "lack of Windows support? It was supported about as well as any other peripheral, which means the manufacture supplied drivers & support.
Unless you consider that Sony still makes "Digital-8" camcorders, so I wouldn't exactly consider Digital8 "obsolete" yet, at least until they stop making the camcorders...
LOL. Is this like Bill Gates declaring Linux dead? Actually no, it's the opposite since smartphone is the underdog. This is more like Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs declaring Microsoft dead. Why is this newsworthy?
Am I the only person that noticed that the second player joystick has the buttons on the wrong side? So if you want to play with another player, the second player must be left-handed.
Is that why this is the "Ultimate" MAME Box?
I declared the death of Laptops years ago when PDAs were introduced... oh, wait.
I think you mean "Of course Apple doesn't feel too worried about this..."
He meant the fastest at emptying your wallet
Am I missing something? Is 2.5 million people not enough? It's not because we don't have a theater either, we have a IMAX theater. So who decided the theaters?
ten twenty-four... hundred
I'm guessing your "print screen" key was broken?
I'll be flamed for saying this, but I hope this $400 Linux DVR goes no where... except down in price. Call me when it hits $199.
counter-sue the parents for frivolous claims, either that or we're going to have to have "designated cellphone rooms" in public areas...
We'll just completely ignore the fact that the only way a hard drive could "skip" is if the heads smack the platters, which would destroy the hard drive. We'll just go ahead and believe it's that great 32megs buffer preventing skipping...
The first 45 seconds and last minute and a half is nothing but credits, disclaimers, and other BS. What a waste! This isn't a 2 hour movie guys, you don't need 2+ minutes for a 14:30 clip, especially when we're downloading it, adding an extra ~25 megs on the mpeg version. Besides that some of the fight scenes were a little slow and obviously choreographed, and the whole British theme is overdone since everyone knows every nationality will speak American English in the future...
so this is the way to get a job in today's economy? Copy exactly what the potential employeer is doing and do it on a shoe string budget? So if I want to work at Microsoft I have to make my own OS?
I have no answers, just questions.
/. has been shoving Linux down my throat since the first day I found this site, and now you suggest everyone jump ship?!? How dare you sir!
I'LL TAKE TWO!