Seriously, though, how does someone steal a network card (much less three) so important to the operations of a major colocation center? Wouldn't the cards, oh, I don't know, be in use?? If they weren't in use, they couldn't have been that critical, could they?
My guess is that it's petabits times meters (as in physical distance between the machines). Which seems kind of stupid -- if the distance makes any real difference, something is wrong. How about communicating with Voyager II -- then you could get some real numbers, even at modem speeds!
Plus, I'm betting it's not a "land" speed record, seeing as how the data probably jumps through the air (satillite/microwave transmissions) at one or more points. (Not to mention the fact that being on, over, or under the surface of land or water means nothing to a data cable.)
Your father, of course, has the option of quitting that crazy-ass place and going somewhere more sane. (I assume...is there some reason he's stuck there?)
Others who may not have that choice always have these choices in addition to the previous one I mentioned:
Emigrate legally
Emigrate illegally
Instigate revolution against the decapitators
Of course, the farther down the list you go, the more side-effects there may be. Your mileage may vary.
(What? Do you want unrestricted web access or not?)
For years, Klingon fans have looked to the Worf character for their education in Klingon culture.
The Worf character was supposed to be a bit of a stiff, over-serious, stick-in-the-mud, not a guide to Klingon culture -- result of straddling two cultures when growing up. All the other Klingons are more raucous, lusty hellions.
That said, I'd say the geek factor with this is at least a 9.
Oh, and Jolene Blalock, get a good gander, 'cuz this is your new permanent home.
Whenever I watch something dubbed from Japanese into English, it seems like the voice-over actors have to talk a hundred miles an hour to get their lines into the allotted time. So I've always assumed Japanese has a much higher information-to-syllables ratio. And it made me want to see a Japanese-to-Spanish dub...they'd have to talk twice as fast as that.
We might discover, for example, that we're reletively advanced (came early in the wave) and that we're less likely to find more advanced life. On the other hand, we may find that we're late in the wave and thus likely surrounded by life much more advanced than us.
This is a thought that's haunted me ever since I read The Sentinel, Arthur C. Clarke's short story that preceded 2001: A Space Oddysey. I thought about this very old spacefaring civilization and its beacons. They must have been the first advanced civilization out of the interstellar gate -- it would only take a couple of thousand years difference between civilizations to put one hopelessly behind the other (as the article points out, possibly less than that to go from no computational ability to all possible computational ability, just to cite one area of technology), and since evolutionary (not to mention stellar) timescales tend toward several orders of magnitude higher than that, chances are there would be a very clear first one. This would mean that we would (eventually) be subject to, at best, shepherding, or, at worst, obliteration, by this First Civilization.
But our searching so far (admittedly, what little there's been of it) for signs of intelligence elsewhere in the universe have come up blank. You'd think the First Civilization would be everywhere and then some -- the first guy to invent TV would pick up The Gnar.xbl's Bride, Zordonia's hottest reality show of 745 years ago, when the signal left their star system. (That's assuming their Space Saucers' exhaust fumes didn't sprinkle down on our early atmosphere, poisoning our single-celled (great-great ^ N) grandpas to death in the first place.) So either they're really good at hiding (if they'd even want to? Possibly so advanced we don't know how to detect their existence?), or -- gulp -- they aren't there. Now there's the terrifying thought. That we are the best the galaxy (universe??) has to offer. Yikes.
This would mean we would be the First Civilization, which is, to say the least, a dumbfounding responsibility.
Well, I guess we'd better get to work on those Warp Ten engines so we can start placing Sentinels...we only have 600 years till we're bored 'cuz our computers max out and we're stuck permanently without the horsepower to run Doom 30 any higher than 25 frames per second.
We already have too many TLAs -- DVD, VCR, ATM, SUV. All because no one can come up with a decent name for a new class of objects, only too-verbose phrases. "Automatic Teller Machine" is clearly too much to say, so the lazy thing to do is acronymify it, and you get "aee tee em". T'would be better to come up with an easy, catchy, single-word, pronouncable term for it (as in some European countries -- "autobank" or "bankomat" do nicely).
But here we sit, saddled with "dee vee are". "Yuck. 'Teevoh'? Hey, neat!"
Now say this faster than a hard disk can store it:
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the Juice of Safu that thoughts aquire speed, the lips aquire stains, the stains become a warning, it is by will alone I set my mind in motion."
...all those arrested will be quietly released next week when the various police departments receive PGP-signed email instructions "from the courts" to do so.
They don't want you paying the meter like you're supposed to. If you do, they only get 25 cents per 15 minutes or whatever (which would be a maximum of, what $24 per day? Even if they are in force 24 hours, which few are?). If you fail to pay, and the meter-maid spots it, they get $25 (or similar). They get more (possibly far more) for one ticket than for a whole day of good little parkers.
This is why there's often a short maximum total parking time limit -- gotta have turnover. The more people park, the more tickets have a chance of getting written.
This is also why you see news stories every now and then about people who go around feeding other people's meters getting arrested or otherwise harrased. These Helpy Helpertons cut down on revenue.
Municipalities don't want obedience, they want money. The parking-meter scam is but one method.
AT FIRST glance, the quaint little house outside the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia engineering faculty looks like any house. But there is more to it than meets the eye.
Hm...checking out that photo, if that's what "any house" in Malaysia looks like, I'd say they're a bit more advanced than I thought.
Sorry for the sloppy terminology...I meant the range of the power levels, as in "a range of 0.1% to 100000% normal", not range as in distance between antennae.
Cell phones can tranceive at 0.1% their normal power level -- in addition to who knows how many times normal when in that highest-power mode? What, 1000x? That would be millionfold range. Is that true? Talk about planning ahead...
Is it possible to make patent approvals open-source? Which is to say, volunteers (preferably, whole teams thereof) would do the work done now by individual patent clerks (Patent reviewers? Whatever they're called), with all decisions publicly reviewable and modifiable.
...I thought I'd join in on it to ask another technical question:
What's the point?
No, really? What is the point? How is this better than existing disks? The article mentions easier labeling, that it's scissorable, and some vagueness about a higher information-to-raw-material ratio.
As far as I ever knew, labeling has never yet been a problem.
You can cut it with scissors? So what. There are plenty of easy wasy to destroy regular disks.
Slashdot Mirror
- Click Start -> Shut Down...
- Select "Shut down"
- Click OK
- Wait for machine to power down
- Unscrew case
- Unscrew card
- Pull card out firmly but gently
- Put card in large coat pocket
- Leave like nothing happened
Seriously, though, how does someone steal a network card (much less three) so important to the operations of a major colocation center? Wouldn't the cards, oh, I don't know, be in use?? If they weren't in use, they couldn't have been that critical, could they?My guess is that it's petabits times meters (as in physical distance between the machines). Which seems kind of stupid -- if the distance makes any real difference, something is wrong. How about communicating with Voyager II -- then you could get some real numbers, even at modem speeds!
Plus, I'm betting it's not a "land" speed record, seeing as how the data probably jumps through the air (satillite/microwave transmissions) at one or more points. (Not to mention the fact that being on, over, or under the surface of land or water means nothing to a data cable.)
Why did you mount it in plain sight on your roof, you dodo? At least put it in the back yard, for corn's sake!
Others who may not have that choice always have these choices in addition to the previous one I mentioned:
- Emigrate legally
- Emigrate illegally
- Instigate revolution against the decapitators
Of course, the farther down the list you go, the more side-effects there may be. Your mileage may vary.(What? Do you want unrestricted web access or not?)
You've been listening to Marketing droids too long.
Build one, I dares ya!
...satellite-based access. Then the UAE has no control.
There's always a way around, my friend. Always.
That said, I'd say the geek factor with this is at least a 9.
Oh, and Jolene Blalock, get a good gander, 'cuz this is your new permanent home.
Whenever I watch something dubbed from Japanese into English, it seems like the voice-over actors have to talk a hundred miles an hour to get their lines into the allotted time. So I've always assumed Japanese has a much higher information-to-syllables ratio. And it made me want to see a Japanese-to-Spanish dub...they'd have to talk twice as fast as that.
Melinda Gates.
(And an awexome smiting ensues.)
This is a thought that's haunted me ever since I read The Sentinel , Arthur C. Clarke's short story that preceded 2001: A Space Oddysey. I thought about this very old spacefaring civilization and its beacons. They must have been the first advanced civilization out of the interstellar gate -- it would only take a couple of thousand years difference between civilizations to put one hopelessly behind the other (as the article points out, possibly less than that to go from no computational ability to all possible computational ability, just to cite one area of technology), and since evolutionary (not to mention stellar) timescales tend toward several orders of magnitude higher than that, chances are there would be a very clear first one. This would mean that we would (eventually) be subject to, at best, shepherding, or, at worst, obliteration, by this First Civilization.
But our searching so far (admittedly, what little there's been of it) for signs of intelligence elsewhere in the universe have come up blank. You'd think the First Civilization would be everywhere and then some -- the first guy to invent TV would pick up The Gnar.xbl's Bride, Zordonia's hottest reality show of 745 years ago, when the signal left their star system. (That's assuming their Space Saucers' exhaust fumes didn't sprinkle down on our early atmosphere, poisoning our single-celled (great-great ^ N) grandpas to death in the first place.) So either they're really good at hiding (if they'd even want to? Possibly so advanced we don't know how to detect their existence?), or -- gulp -- they aren't there. Now there's the terrifying thought. That we are the best the galaxy (universe??) has to offer. Yikes.
This would mean we would be the First Civilization, which is, to say the least, a dumbfounding responsibility.
Well, I guess we'd better get to work on those Warp Ten engines so we can start placing Sentinels...we only have 600 years till we're bored 'cuz our computers max out and we're stuck permanently without the horsepower to run Doom 30 any higher than 25 frames per second.
Think I'd be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?
Or even an 6000SUX! I'd buy that for a dollar!
Really, though, I think the proper TLA for an SUV should be PCV -- Penile Compensation Vehicle.
Because "DVR" sucks.
We already have too many TLAs -- DVD, VCR, ATM, SUV. All because no one can come up with a decent name for a new class of objects, only too-verbose phrases. "Automatic Teller Machine" is clearly too much to say, so the lazy thing to do is acronymify it, and you get "aee tee em". T'would be better to come up with an easy, catchy, single-word, pronouncable term for it (as in some European countries -- "autobank" or "bankomat" do nicely).
But here we sit, saddled with "dee vee are". "Yuck. 'Teevoh'? Hey, neat!"
So TiVo it is.
The one with Mentats, of course!
Now say this faster than a hard disk can store it:
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the Juice of Safu that thoughts aquire speed, the lips aquire stains, the stains become a warning, it is by will alone I set my mind in motion."
...all those arrested will be quietly released next week when the various police departments receive PGP-signed email instructions "from the courts" to do so.
They don't want you paying the meter like you're supposed to. If you do, they only get 25 cents per 15 minutes or whatever (which would be a maximum of, what $24 per day? Even if they are in force 24 hours, which few are?). If you fail to pay, and the meter-maid spots it, they get $25 (or similar). They get more (possibly far more) for one ticket than for a whole day of good little parkers.
This is why there's often a short maximum total parking time limit -- gotta have turnover. The more people park, the more tickets have a chance of getting written.
This is also why you see news stories every now and then about people who go around feeding other people's meters getting arrested or otherwise harrased. These Helpy Helpertons cut down on revenue.
Municipalities don't want obedience, they want money. The parking-meter scam is but one method.
Sorry for the sloppy terminology...I meant the range of the power levels, as in "a range of 0.1% to 100000% normal", not range as in distance between antennae.
Cell phones can tranceive at 0.1% their normal power level -- in addition to who knows how many times normal when in that highest-power mode? What, 1000x? That would be millionfold range. Is that true? Talk about planning ahead...
Clearly, you haven't read that many Intarweb postings.
Is it possible to make patent approvals open-source? Which is to say, volunteers (preferably, whole teams thereof) would do the work done now by individual patent clerks (Patent reviewers? Whatever they're called), with all decisions publicly reviewable and modifiable.
...I thought I'd join in on it to ask another technical question:
What's the point?
No, really? What is the point? How is this better than existing disks? The article mentions easier labeling, that it's scissorable, and some vagueness about a higher information-to-raw-material ratio.
As far as I ever knew, labeling has never yet been a problem.
You can cut it with scissors? So what. There are plenty of easy wasy to destroy regular disks.
That ratio? Um...I'm supposed to care WHY?
Am I just missing something basic here?