Okay, I apologize for the "american" assumption - it was an uncalled-for troll. (It would have fit with the cliché, though.)
"Life on Mars will offer no more insight to the genesis of life itself than life on Earth which is many orders of magnitude more abundant." Life on Mars may or may not have evolved independently from life on earth. If it has, then Mars may well be our only chance to study truly alien life-forms - which would almost certainly prove to be an insightful and worthwile venture.
I know that Jupiter's Europa is also a possible candidate as a host for bacterial lifeforms, but it isn't anywhere near as accessible for study as Mars is. Losing Mars' aboriginal ecosystem (such as there is) would be a lost chance.
Finally... the terraforming of Mars will take many generations. You won't be able to buy a holiday house there anyway - so there's no real reason to rush it. The best we can hope for is an opportunity to visit Mars and see it in its present, desolate state - which I do not find to be devoid of beauty, either.
About the correlation of planetary gravity and athmospheric pressure: Ever since the Cassini/Huygens mission, there's one thing that's been puzzling me to no end.
Titan's mass is less than one tenth of the earth's. Yet it possesses an athmosphere much denser than ours - how can that be? According to Wikipedia, Titan has no magnetic field either. Might the tectonic/volcanic activity have anything to do with it?
Let me guess... you're american. No, really, before we go and plant an ecosystem on Mars that will most certainly destroy the present one, we should research the planet as thoroughly as possible. It may offer essential scientific insight into matters such as the genesis of life itself - a chance we should not readily throw away.
The problem is, before you can perform this feat of straightforward kernel-scheduler-changing, you first have to know: a) That the option exists b) That it is in a user-editable config file c) The name and location of said file
All of these are non-obvious knowledge, and unlike a system configuration GUI, you're unlikely to chance upon this option by exploration.
It always irks me when someone says: "Ha, this puny problem is so easily solved in Linux. Just invoke [short, but incomprehensible CLI gibberish]." The naive user has no idea that the command even existed, and often there is no way of discovering a command short of roving aimlessly through arcane fora and reading tons of manpages and HOWTOs.
Maybe an explorable GUI can not expose as many options as text config files, but the learning and problem-solving process are so much less painful that I'd choose the GUI any day.
Re:Yeah but if China did this then we'd have a fit
on
Revamping Freenet
·
· Score: 1
"Remember the star wars kid who become suicidal after his video was put all over the internet?"
But isn't this exactly an example of speech causing harm? Star Wars Kid's act of hopping around and making lightsaber noises didn't harm anyone, it was the distribution of information and the talk about it that did it.
Similarly, after an act of child abuse, what about the victim's dignity when images thereof are passed around as masturbation material? I'd say it does harm.
Now don't get me wrong, I believe in the ideal of Free Speech. I also think it's an all or nothing deal: even if you censor only the parts commonly thought as "wrong", it's not Free anymore; hence the bad stuff must be tolerated.
The content of truly free speech is a mirror image of the human soul. If you think a free medium is bad, corrupted, and rotten: participate! Make it a better one with your more enlightened ideas, expressed in your very own free speech.
If I wasn't told lies in class, then the company in question was first established under the name of "Micro-Soft", with the objective of developing and delivering a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. I can't remember the year, though.
I really wouldn't like to see other planets (or even parts of them) claimed or owned by a corporation, and there should be legislation to prevent such a thing.
Corporations are, by definition, non-moral entities. Whatever they own they will employ for one sole purpose: the maximization of their own profit. That's nothing evil per se, it's just their modus vivendi.
However - and you may cide me a romantic if you will - I think the celestial bodies should not be primarily employed as means of financial profit. I think the path for the betterment of mankind is amongst the stars. If humans will ever stand united, not as Americans, Europeans, Chinese, African... but as members of the human species, cooperating in the rational endeavor to improve life for everyone, progressing in the sciences and philosophies... then this will happen upon leaving this cradle of a planet.
But we had best leave behind our childish, petty squabbles and archaic egoistical motives, and start out there with - don't laugh - a pure heart.
Wouldn't you have huge diffusion issues with hydrogen at this altitude? Also, it seems to me that such a contraption would be severely payload-limited. You need to lift not only the hull, but also the solar collectors, the tracking mechanism, some propulsion to counter the winds, fuel cells, and the electrolyzation equipment.
It would seem to me that, in the long run, going into orbit (and staying there) would be actually easier and more economical. An orbiting satellite is just going to stay where you put it, without worries about wind drift, solar power availability or leakage. The payload is only limited by your lifting capability.
Your concept may be more ecological, however, and it has the big bonus of not producing any space debris. But does it outweigh the limitations? Hell if I know...
I'd mostly agree with your list, save for one exception... IMHO, the G4 Powermac (in its latest, final "Quicksilver" incarnation) was the very finest design Apple ever produced. It's futuristic, curvy, and despite all the plastic not cheap. I'm tempted to grab a G4 off eBay just for that case...:-)
Problem is, this little red icon isn't supported by all skins. I use the "SomeOrbitYellow" theme, and have never seen this icon - it's there and clickable, but invisible.
The fact that your toilet needs sophisticated cooling systems is a tell-tale sign that you should consider a visit to your urologist soon. Or you should change those chili ingredients...
I think I would have gotten it, if that particular quote hadn't been mangled in the german dub. At least now I know where the translators pulled the sentence "Ist es etwas, das wir umsetzen können?" from.
What's so bad about "code monkey"? Now I'm not a native english speaker, but I do think it sounds more like a badge of (geek) honor. I wouldn't consider it an insult, at any rate.
I like programming, and I've put that label onto myself a couple of times.
"Suppose I develop software for linux, and I want to run it on PPC machines as well. Then the Mac Mini seems like an ok machine, I don't have to buy it in parts. And I don't get any money back if I use the OS that it comes with. Plus, it's such a pretty box."
In that scenario, I'd say PearPC is your friend, and a zero-cost option to boot. Sure, the speed won't be stellar, but if you just want to ascertain that it works, it should suffice.
Well, that's peculiar. I for one wouldn't consider such an implant unless it were bi-directional... if only for the immersive pr0n. Er.. I mean, um, games. Yeah.
PSP modification outlawed?
on
Inside the PSP
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Disassembling your own is merely art. Well, I wonder about that. Using common sense,I'd be inclined to agree, but TFA says:
Sony explicitly outlaws any modifications to their PSP. If you don't believe me, check out page 15 of the manual where they state, "No authorization for the analysis or modification of the system, or the analysis and use of circuit configurations, is provided."
Can they really do that? Is there any legal basis for this? With software, it seems to be like this: when you purchase a program, you don't own the program, but are merely granted a license to use it. As such, the licensor can set limits to what you are allowed to do with the software.
However, the medium you buy the software on, as I understand it, is entirely your property.
So how does this translate to a hardware purchase, like the PSP? Of course, the hardware design is Sony's intellectual property. As is the firmware and all other software stored on a PSP. However, the PSP itself ought to be my property, and it should be within my rights to do with it however I may please. Including any modification and extension of it.
Different thing. Avalon is an API which seems to be geared to bringing 3d-accelerated features to ordinary desktop programs, and to make this easy for the programmer. For example, in Avalon you can create a window, a rendering context and a simple scene with very few lines of code.
I guess you could use Avalon to create effects as shown in TFA. But it's really not limited to that.
The Firefox update process really sucks from an ease-of-use point of view. Since it's a complete new install, I wouldn't even call it an "update"...
For a proper update procedure, it seems you have to download the new version, uninstall the old one, and then re-install the new one - hoping that all plugins survive the procedure.
That's not user friendly, and will drive people away from Firefox, perhaps back to IE, which is definitely easier to keep up to date. I do hope that Firefox will get a true "patch" mechanism yet...
But isn't a dedicated drive for this a rather huge waste? Surely you won't need more than one or two GB for that, and you can't buy drives that small anymore.
Also, is the increase in energy consumption, heat and noise really worth it?
"I can't use flat panel monitors anyway because I have a sight defect that means I get very bad headaches at anything less than ~75Hz refresh rates"
I couldn't help but wonder at that... why would that preclude you from using LCD panels? I thought LCD technology is flicker-free by design, since pixels aren't constantly re-lit (as in a CRT) but only switched when their color actually changes.
I have a CRT and an LCD side-by-side in front of me, and while I can perceive a slight flicker in the CRT even at 85Hz, I cannot do so in the LCD at all.
Well, it has been speculated that Sony would ship the PS3 with Cells of the next (65nm?) production process generation. That would lower the CPU's capacitance, and it might enable them to lower the voltage, thus reducing the power consumption.
Also, remember that power consumption is a function of clock speed... IIRC, those 50-80 Watts (quite a broad range, isn't it?) were speculated for 4GHz. The PS3 might do with less than that.
Well, I'd rather Microsoft hadn't touched the entertainment sector at all. IMHO, that ambition was quite harmful to the PC gaming sector. Good games have been tied "exclusively" to the XBox that might have been good PC games. Those that were cross-platformed have suffered horribly...
Proof you want? How about this: -KotOR (PC): good game, but with a terrible inventory system due to a lack of mouse on the XBox. -Deus Ex Invisible War: I needn't really comment, need I? -Halo: Way short of its promises, it became a standard shooter. The only feature that made it worth playing (Co-op) was removed in the PC port... which took 1 effin' year to make. -Fable: well... it might have sucked on the PC as well.:)
Anyway, I do sympathize with your desire for cheap hardware hacking... but I'd really prefer a healthier game industry.
But will the PS3 be backwards-compatible to its first two incarnations? If not, I would think the next-gen consoles will have a relatively equal starting position.
At this point it's impossible to compare hardware capabilites - the only thing that's certain is that both XBox2 and PS3 will pack quite a punch in that department. Both Sony and Microsoft have a few good development studios in their grasp, so I don't see a favourite there either. Sony is a bit ahead in matters of hype, though.:-)
It will definitely be an interesting "shoot-out" to watch.
Oh yeah... Microsoft isn't prideful, IMHO. They're greedy.
Slashdot Mirror
...or you could model with clay and take a 3d scan of it.
Okay, I apologize for the "american" assumption - it was an uncalled-for troll. (It would have fit with the cliché, though.)
"Life on Mars will offer no more insight to the genesis of life itself than life on Earth which is many orders of magnitude more abundant."
Life on Mars may or may not have evolved independently from life on earth. If it has, then Mars may well be our only chance to study truly alien life-forms - which would almost certainly prove to be an insightful and worthwile venture.
I know that Jupiter's Europa is also a possible candidate as a host for bacterial lifeforms, but it isn't anywhere near as accessible for study as Mars is. Losing Mars' aboriginal ecosystem (such as there is) would be a lost chance.
Finally... the terraforming of Mars will take many generations. You won't be able to buy a holiday house there anyway - so there's no real reason to rush it. The best we can hope for is an opportunity to visit Mars and see it in its present, desolate state - which I do not find to be devoid of beauty, either.
About the correlation of planetary gravity and athmospheric pressure: Ever since the Cassini/Huygens mission, there's one thing that's been puzzling me to no end.
Titan's mass is less than one tenth of the earth's. Yet it possesses an athmosphere much denser than ours - how can that be? According to Wikipedia, Titan has no magnetic field either. Might the tectonic/volcanic activity have anything to do with it?
Let me guess... you're american. No, really, before we go and plant an ecosystem on Mars that will most certainly destroy the present one, we should research the planet as thoroughly as possible. It may offer essential scientific insight into matters such as the genesis of life itself - a chance we should not readily throw away.
The problem is, before you can perform this feat of straightforward kernel-scheduler-changing, you first have to know:
a) That the option exists
b) That it is in a user-editable config file
c) The name and location of said file
All of these are non-obvious knowledge, and unlike a system configuration GUI, you're unlikely to chance upon this option by exploration.
It always irks me when someone says: "Ha, this puny problem is so easily solved in Linux. Just invoke [short, but incomprehensible CLI gibberish]." The naive user has no idea that the command even existed, and often there is no way of discovering a command short of roving aimlessly through arcane fora and reading tons of manpages and HOWTOs.
Maybe an explorable GUI can not expose as many options as text config files, but the learning and problem-solving process are so much less painful that I'd choose the GUI any day.
"Remember the star wars kid who become suicidal after his video was put all over the internet?"
But isn't this exactly an example of speech causing harm? Star Wars Kid's act of hopping around and making lightsaber noises didn't harm anyone, it was the distribution of information and the talk about it that did it.
Similarly, after an act of child abuse, what about the victim's dignity when images thereof are passed around as masturbation material? I'd say it does harm.
Now don't get me wrong, I believe in the ideal of Free Speech. I also think it's an all or nothing deal: even if you censor only the parts commonly thought as "wrong", it's not Free anymore; hence the bad stuff must be tolerated.
The content of truly free speech is a mirror image of the human soul. If you think a free medium is bad, corrupted, and rotten: participate! Make it a better one with your more enlightened ideas, expressed in your very own free speech.
If I wasn't told lies in class, then the company in question was first established under the name of "Micro-Soft", with the objective of developing and delivering a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. I can't remember the year, though.
I really wouldn't like to see other planets (or even parts of them) claimed or owned by a corporation, and there should be legislation to prevent such a thing.
Corporations are, by definition, non-moral entities. Whatever they own they will employ for one sole purpose: the maximization of their own profit. That's nothing evil per se, it's just their modus vivendi.
However - and you may cide me a romantic if you will - I think the celestial bodies should not be primarily employed as means of financial profit. I think the path for the betterment of mankind is amongst the stars. If humans will ever stand united, not as Americans, Europeans, Chinese, African... but as members of the human species, cooperating in the rational endeavor to improve life for everyone, progressing in the sciences and philosophies... then this will happen upon leaving this cradle of a planet.
But we had best leave behind our childish, petty squabbles and archaic egoistical motives, and start out there with - don't laugh - a pure heart.
Wouldn't you have huge diffusion issues with hydrogen at this altitude? Also, it seems to me that such a contraption would be severely payload-limited. You need to lift not only the hull, but also the solar collectors, the tracking mechanism, some propulsion to counter the winds, fuel cells, and the electrolyzation equipment.
It would seem to me that, in the long run, going into orbit (and staying there) would be actually easier and more economical. An orbiting satellite is just going to stay where you put it, without worries about wind drift, solar power availability or leakage. The payload is only limited by your lifting capability.
Your concept may be more ecological, however, and it has the big bonus of not producing any space debris. But does it outweigh the limitations? Hell if I know...
I'd mostly agree with your list, save for one exception... IMHO, the G4 Powermac (in its latest, final "Quicksilver" incarnation) was the very finest design Apple ever produced. It's futuristic, curvy, and despite all the plastic not cheap. I'm tempted to grab a G4 off eBay just for that case... :-)
Problem is, this little red icon isn't supported by all skins. I use the "SomeOrbitYellow" theme, and have never seen this icon - it's there and clickable, but invisible.
The fact that your toilet needs sophisticated cooling systems is a tell-tale sign that you should consider a visit to your urologist soon. Or you should change those chili ingredients...
If they grow 'em themselves, then the costs will amount to only the raw materials (negligible), time, energy, labour and base investments.
I think I would have gotten it, if that particular quote hadn't been mangled in the german dub. At least now I know where the translators pulled the sentence "Ist es etwas, das wir umsetzen können?" from.
What's so bad about "code monkey"? Now I'm not a native english speaker, but I do think it sounds more like a badge of (geek) honor. I wouldn't consider it an insult, at any rate.
I like programming, and I've put that label onto myself a couple of times.
"Suppose I develop software for linux, and I want to run it on PPC machines as well. Then the Mac Mini seems like an ok machine, I don't have to buy it in parts. And I don't get any money back if I use the OS that it comes with. Plus, it's such a pretty box."
In that scenario, I'd say PearPC is your friend, and a zero-cost option to boot. Sure, the speed won't be stellar, but if you just want to ascertain that it works, it should suffice.
Well, that's peculiar. I for one wouldn't consider such an implant unless it were bi-directional... if only for the immersive pr0n. Er.. I mean, um, games. Yeah.
Disassembling your own is merely art.
Well, I wonder about that. Using common sense,I'd be inclined to agree, but TFA says:
Sony explicitly outlaws any modifications to their PSP. If you don't believe me, check out page 15 of the manual where they state, "No authorization for the analysis or modification of the system, or the analysis and use of circuit configurations, is provided."
Can they really do that? Is there any legal basis for this? With software, it seems to be like this: when you purchase a program, you don't own the program, but are merely granted a license to use it. As such, the licensor can set limits to what you are allowed to do with the software.
However, the medium you buy the software on, as I understand it, is entirely your property.
So how does this translate to a hardware purchase, like the PSP? Of course, the hardware design is Sony's intellectual property. As is the firmware and all other software stored on a PSP. However, the PSP itself ought to be my property, and it should be within my rights to do with it however I may please. Including any modification and extension of it.
Different thing. Avalon is an API which seems to be geared to bringing 3d-accelerated features to ordinary desktop programs, and to make this easy for the programmer. For example, in Avalon you can create a window, a rendering context and a simple scene with very few lines of code.
:-)
I guess you could use Avalon to create effects as shown in TFA. But it's really not limited to that.
In the end it's all about eye-candy though..
The Firefox update process really sucks from an ease-of-use point of view. Since it's a complete new install, I wouldn't even call it an "update"...
For a proper update procedure, it seems you have to download the new version, uninstall the old one, and then re-install the new one - hoping that all plugins survive the procedure.
That's not user friendly, and will drive people away from Firefox, perhaps back to IE, which is definitely easier to keep up to date. I do hope that Firefox will get a true "patch" mechanism yet...
But isn't a dedicated drive for this a rather huge waste? Surely you won't need more than one or two GB for that, and you can't buy drives that small anymore.
Also, is the increase in energy consumption, heat and noise really worth it?
"I can't use flat panel monitors anyway because I have a sight defect that means I get very bad headaches at anything less than ~75Hz refresh rates"
I couldn't help but wonder at that... why would that preclude you from using LCD panels? I thought LCD technology is flicker-free by design, since pixels aren't constantly re-lit (as in a CRT) but only switched when their color actually changes.
I have a CRT and an LCD side-by-side in front of me, and while I can perceive a slight flicker in the CRT even at 85Hz, I cannot do so in the LCD at all.
Well, it has been speculated that Sony would ship the PS3 with Cells of the next (65nm?) production process generation. That would lower the CPU's capacitance, and it might enable them to lower the voltage, thus reducing the power consumption.
Also, remember that power consumption is a function of clock speed... IIRC, those 50-80 Watts (quite a broad range, isn't it?) were speculated for 4GHz. The PS3 might do with less than that.
Well, I'd rather Microsoft hadn't touched the entertainment sector at all. IMHO, that ambition was quite harmful to the PC gaming sector. Good games have been tied "exclusively" to the XBox that might have been good PC games. Those that were cross-platformed have suffered horribly...
:)
Proof you want? How about this:
-KotOR (PC): good game, but with a terrible inventory system due to a lack of mouse on the XBox.
-Deus Ex Invisible War: I needn't really comment, need I?
-Halo: Way short of its promises, it became a standard shooter. The only feature that made it worth playing (Co-op) was removed in the PC port... which took 1 effin' year to make.
-Fable: well... it might have sucked on the PC as well.
Anyway, I do sympathize with your desire for cheap hardware hacking... but I'd really prefer a healthier game industry.
But will the PS3 be backwards-compatible to its first two incarnations? If not, I would think the next-gen consoles will have a relatively equal starting position.
:-)
At this point it's impossible to compare hardware capabilites - the only thing that's certain is that both XBox2 and PS3 will pack quite a punch in that department. Both Sony and Microsoft have a few good development studios in their grasp, so I don't see a favourite there either. Sony is a bit ahead in matters of hype, though.
It will definitely be an interesting "shoot-out" to watch.
Oh yeah... Microsoft isn't prideful, IMHO. They're greedy.