I know one good thing that will come out of this. I'm blacklisting Merck.
Before reading this article, I was neutral toward this company. I didn't really know much about them. But now I know they are not to be trusted. I will make my best effort to avoid using any of their drugs, and I will be wary if any doctor tries to prescribe a Merck drug to me. And more importantly, I will not own any of their stock. Just this week I was reviewing my stock portfolio to do some more dollar cost averaging into the market rebound. Merck is now purged from my portfolio, and I will keep an eye out for it in any index or mutual funds that I buy. They are now in the same list as Monsanto.
I will also pass this article along to my fiends and co-workers. Hopefully they too will take this into consideration before buying their stock.
The justification for not owning their stock is not just moral. It is an economic concern as well. If a company behaves this recklessly, it puts itself at economic risk, as already demonstrated by it's multi-billion dollar Vioxx recall.
All major corporations are engaged in morally dubious behavior of one kind or another. But when it becomes this excessive and blatant, I have to draw a line.
It's a safe bet that Internet Explorer (or whatever MS decides to call their browser) will not count as an application. They'll use that to reinforce their legal argument that browsers are actually part of the OS. And it's the only way they can stop users from migrating to Firefox.
However, this might be a good thing for gamers. If nothing else in the OS is crippled, this should work for gaming, which is the only thing I need Windows for anyway.
No, this is real. You can search for patent application 20090083107 directly from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO isn't known for their sense of humor.
I think the best way to simulate living on Mars would be to build an underground installation. Go to a cold barren climate like the Alaskan tundra or North Dakota, then excavate a cavern about 100 meters in diameter and 50 meters deep that is entirely subterranean. You could then accurately simulate many aspects of the environment as follows.
Atmosphere: Reinforce the walls of the cavern so you can pump all the air out, then fill the cavern with an atmosphere containing the same density and composition as Mars. The astronauts' habitats would be constructed inside this environment, and they would have to wear actual functioning spacesuits to work in the environment.
Temperature: Use compressors and heaters to create temperature variations to simulate Martian days and nights.
Soil: Create an artificial soil several meters deep similar to what has been found on Mars, in terms of chemical composition, pH, density, etc.
Light: Use artificial lighting to simulate Martian days and nights, using the same low luminosity and the 24.6 hour day.
Combining all these factors, you could potentially create a simulation very similar to Mars except for the lower gravity. A project like this would require billions of dollars in funding, but if you're serious about testing a Mars habitat, or even a lunar habitat, this seems like the way to go.
I did a google search for Belkin Bayard, and it returned that link. He had an Amazon account under M. Bayard, and he was reviewing Belkin products. His Amazon account has been renamed to B. Ekim "BE" presumably to avoid detection. (Mike spelled backwards. This guy is a master of disguise.) If you click on his profile, you'll see his nickname is listed as "mikebayard". He only reviews Belkin products, and he only gives 5 star reviews. His listmania is a series of Belkin products.
Given U.S. military budget (about the same as the rest of the world combined), it's a safe bet that our military technology, and any battlebots that would go with it, would be superior to any other army out there. In the same sense that no country would want to go head-to-head in a tank battle against the U.S., I don't think they'd want to go head-to-head in a battle of robots vs. robots.
The most significant implication of autonomous combat robots is guerrilla warfare. This is the only remaining area where an insurgency would have an advantage, especially in an urban setting. But if you're using robots for all your search-and-destroy missions, and you're really not that concerned about robot casualties, the effectiveness of an enemy insurgency is greatly diminished. Imagine a war of 100,000 robots against the Mahdi army in Iraq. The U.S would lose a few thousand robots, and the Mahdi army would probably be completely decimated. If the army could get the price per robot below one million dollars each, 1000 robots would be acceptable losses in a month of war, and would have a negligible effect on U.S. public opinion.
I do think it's good news for the people of the U.S. Army, as they won't be killed or subjected to PTSD. But the implications for the rest of the world are pretty grim. If the U.S. was a constant source of goodwill, it would be fine. But it's not. U.S. military actions are always done in self-interest, and always in conflict with someone else's best interests. Unchecked American military supremacy is a scary thing, even for Americans. I'm sure the military is aware of how much of a game-changer robotic warriors are. That's why these projects are heavily funded, and why you keep seeing new and more sophisticated battle robots.
And here's a follow-up thought (I'm sure it's been said before, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it.) These military robots are going to make war trivial. Consider the difference between these two headlines:
50 thousand more United States troops were deployed to Iran this month, bringing the total to 210 thousand. Heavy fighting continues in the streets of Tehran, with U.S. casualties reaching 112 for the month. The president's approval rating on the handling of the war remains steady at 47 percent.
vs.
50 thousand more United States ACLUs (Autonomous Combat and Logistical Units) were deployed to Iran this month, bringing the total to 210 thousand. Heavy fighting continues in the streets of Tehran, but the Pentagon states that fewer than 200 military robots have been disabled this month. The president's approval rating on the handling of the war remains steady at 87 percent.
It's nice to know we'd win all our wars with few, if any, American casualties, but I shudder to think of the chaos that Bush and Cheney would have unleashed on the world if they had one million autonomous combat robots at their disposal.
Automated military units like this render the second amendment obsolete. The main purpose of the second amendment is to protect the citizenry from a central government gone bad. What good is your stockpile of hunting rifles going to be against 20 of these Gladiators? I don't think you'll get much satisfaction saying, "Well, at least I took 5 robots out with me."
I'm not saying this scenario is likely to happen. But if it does happen, we're TSOL.
Last week my wife and I watched Conan the Barbarian and had a discussion/argument about whether Conan's sword would be elven or dwarven. My money's on dwarven. Sure, elves can make great bows and pretty armor, but if you want a dependable two-handed sword to cleave a man's skull in half, you've gotta go with dwarven steel.
In hindsight, the whole discussion sounded like fodder for Penny Arcade.
There's really not much to see. The video of the spaceflight was pieced together from Thunderbirds stock footage. But I will give them credit for photoshopping the strings out.
No, this likely won't have any affect. Keep in mind that when a studio creates a movie, they're making it for the big screen, as in the 35 foot movie screen. Digital theaters display at 1080P, so the pixel count will be the same as on your Blueray HDTV at home, but with a much larger display. Analog theater film is still considered higher resolution than 1080P digital.
This may change in the future as professional digital movie cameras and projectors increase in resolution (the latest theater projectors support 4096 x 2160 resolution). But the driving factor will be the studio and theater equipment, which will generally be superior to the home HDTV formats.
Currently, the only time film makers have to really be concerned about detail is for IMAX movies, which are displayed on much larger screens with substantially higher resolution film.
The argument here is not Linux vs Vista. It's XP vs Vista. I am an avid 3D junkie. I own a set of Elsa 3D shutter classes. (Able was I, ere I bought Elsa.) I even bought an eMagin head-mounted display with tracking. And I've used both specifically with nVidia cards because nVidia drivers have the best stereoscopic support. I would love to buy a set of these new glasses, but I won't upgrade to Vista to do it. There are plenty of avid Windows gamers out there that are perfectly happy running on a high-end XP box, and have no intention of moving to Vista in the foreseeable future. I hope nVidia is aware of that, because I'd like to give them my money for this product.
What's the chance that a 7 year old in 1981 had a discretionary budget that allowed them to buy $670's worth of Star Wars toys?
A very good chance, if you spread it out over several years. I was born in 1971. During my "Star Wars toy years", ('77 to '81), I accumulated the large scale Death Star, Millennium Falcon, Tie Fighter, Troop Transport, Robot Droid Factory, the 12' R2D2, numerous smaller scale spaceships, at least two dozen action figures, and a large number of Star Wars themed comic books, collector cards, board games, puzzles and Atari cartridges. I financed my habit through Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, allowance and doing extra chores. The total cost was around $500, spread across 5 years.
As for the new movie, it answers the unasked question of what you'd get if you rendered an entire movie with just a 3DFX Voodoo video card.
I won't be bothering to see this movie. I may not even bother to rent it.
Where does the surface of the Earth start? Knowing what we know today about the Earth, that is a silly question. The earth is spherical, and therefore does not have a start or an end. It is continuous.
In my opinion, space and time in our universe are wrapped around a 4th dimensional sphere. Therefore, it has no start or end. Like the surface of the earth, it too, is continuous. Suggesting that time has a start doesn't make sense, in the same way it doesn't make sense to say that the surface of a sphere starts at some particular point.
If you get in an airplane and constantly fly west, eventually you'll end up right back where you started. I think universal space is similar. If you were to fly at.9999 the speed of light in a particular direction, you'd eventually end up right back where you started, although so much time would have transpired (billions of years) that you wouldn't realize you were back where you started.
I've wondered if we will ever create a telescope powerful enough to see around the entirety of the universe, so that what we are seeing is actually our own galaxy, but tens of billions of years in the past.
As for the concept of God, I have my own "bacteria" theory. Right now you are covered with millions of microscopic bacteria. Relative to them, you are all-powerful, and all-knowing. And yet, you are completely oblivious to them. You really could care less what the bacteria on your body are doing right now. As you type on your keyboard, with each keystroke you are crushing countless thousands of bacteria. Do you care? Not in the least.
It is possible there are more powerful multi-dimensional beings out there in the universe that are undiscovered, and possibly beyond our ability and compression to ever be discovered. But if they do exist, I would image they would be just as indifferent to us humans as we are to the bacteria on our arms. To suggest that an all powerful being would take such a focused interest in puny humans seems arrogant on our part.
I have a different theory. It is not gravity that pulls the baseball back to earth. Rather, it is God's Love. So in the interest of academic freedom, today class, we will spend the hour discussing God's Love.
Slashdot Mirror
I know one good thing that will come out of this. I'm blacklisting Merck.
Before reading this article, I was neutral toward this company. I didn't really know much about them. But now I know they are not to be trusted. I will make my best effort to avoid using any of their drugs, and I will be wary if any doctor tries to prescribe a Merck drug to me. And more importantly, I will not own any of their stock. Just this week I was reviewing my stock portfolio to do some more dollar cost averaging into the market rebound. Merck is now purged from my portfolio, and I will keep an eye out for it in any index or mutual funds that I buy. They are now in the same list as Monsanto.
I will also pass this article along to my fiends and co-workers. Hopefully they too will take this into consideration before buying their stock.
The justification for not owning their stock is not just moral. It is an economic concern as well. If a company behaves this recklessly, it puts itself at economic risk, as already demonstrated by it's multi-billion dollar Vioxx recall.
All major corporations are engaged in morally dubious behavior of one kind or another. But when it becomes this excessive and blatant, I have to draw a line.
This has got me all nostalgic, so I loaded up Duke Nukem 3D to pay my last respects. But when I try to run it, I keep getting this message:
SecureROM Activation Failed: Could not connect to the 3drealms activation server.
What does it mean??
No, they recently changed their motto to 'Evil is as evil does.'
ed is the standard browser, you insensitive clod!
It's a safe bet that Internet Explorer (or whatever MS decides to call their browser) will not count as an application. They'll use that to reinforce their legal argument that browsers are actually part of the OS. And it's the only way they can stop users from migrating to Firefox.
However, this might be a good thing for gamers. If nothing else in the OS is crippled, this should work for gaming, which is the only thing I need Windows for anyway.
No, this is real. You can search for patent application 20090083107 directly from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO isn't known for their sense of humor.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
Penny Arcade thanks you. With this constant flow of profoundly stupid corporate decisions, the comic strip practically writes itself.
How's this for a hip young 18 to 25 demographic: "I'm in your base, killing your Nielsen ratingz!"
Now if you don't mind, I'll go back to watching the Hypnotoad...
I think the best way to simulate living on Mars would be to build an underground installation. Go to a cold barren climate like the Alaskan tundra or North Dakota, then excavate a cavern about 100 meters in diameter and 50 meters deep that is entirely subterranean. You could then accurately simulate many aspects of the environment as follows.
Atmosphere: Reinforce the walls of the cavern so you can pump all the air out, then fill the cavern with an atmosphere containing the same density and composition as Mars. The astronauts' habitats would be constructed inside this environment, and they would have to wear actual functioning spacesuits to work in the environment.
Temperature: Use compressors and heaters to create temperature variations to simulate Martian days and nights.
Soil: Create an artificial soil several meters deep similar to what has been found on Mars, in terms of chemical composition, pH, density, etc.
Light: Use artificial lighting to simulate Martian days and nights, using the same low luminosity and the 24.6 hour day.
Combining all these factors, you could potentially create a simulation very similar to Mars except for the lower gravity. A project like this would require billions of dollars in funding, but if you're serious about testing a Mars habitat, or even a lunar habitat, this seems like the way to go.
If he was not such a retard he'd just sign up with bogus accounts and write the reviews himself, from a public library terminal.
Actually, he did. Check out this link from Google cache.
I did a google search for Belkin Bayard, and it returned that link. He had an Amazon account under M. Bayard, and he was reviewing Belkin products. His Amazon account has been renamed to B. Ekim "BE" presumably to avoid detection. (Mike spelled backwards. This guy is a master of disguise.) If you click on his profile, you'll see his nickname is listed as "mikebayard". He only reviews Belkin products, and he only gives 5 star reviews. His listmania is a series of Belkin products.
I have a version of the Cyclades PC-300 T1 card driver patched to run on sparc64 kernels.
This alone is sufficient credentials for Real Nerd status.
Given U.S. military budget (about the same as the rest of the world combined), it's a safe bet that our military technology, and any battlebots that would go with it, would be superior to any other army out there. In the same sense that no country would want to go head-to-head in a tank battle against the U.S., I don't think they'd want to go head-to-head in a battle of robots vs. robots.
The most significant implication of autonomous combat robots is guerrilla warfare. This is the only remaining area where an insurgency would have an advantage, especially in an urban setting. But if you're using robots for all your search-and-destroy missions, and you're really not that concerned about robot casualties, the effectiveness of an enemy insurgency is greatly diminished. Imagine a war of 100,000 robots against the Mahdi army in Iraq. The U.S would lose a few thousand robots, and the Mahdi army would probably be completely decimated. If the army could get the price per robot below one million dollars each, 1000 robots would be acceptable losses in a month of war, and would have a negligible effect on U.S. public opinion.
I do think it's good news for the people of the U.S. Army, as they won't be killed or subjected to PTSD. But the implications for the rest of the world are pretty grim. If the U.S. was a constant source of goodwill, it would be fine. But it's not. U.S. military actions are always done in self-interest, and always in conflict with someone else's best interests. Unchecked American military supremacy is a scary thing, even for Americans. I'm sure the military is aware of how much of a game-changer robotic warriors are. That's why these projects are heavily funded, and why you keep seeing new and more sophisticated battle robots.
And here's a follow-up thought (I'm sure it's been said before, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it.) These military robots are going to make war trivial. Consider the difference between these two headlines:
50 thousand more United States troops were deployed to Iran this month, bringing the total to 210 thousand. Heavy fighting continues in the streets of Tehran, with U.S. casualties reaching 112 for the month. The president's approval rating on the handling of the war remains steady at 47 percent.
vs.
50 thousand more United States ACLUs (Autonomous Combat and Logistical Units) were deployed to Iran this month, bringing the total to 210 thousand. Heavy fighting continues in the streets of Tehran, but the Pentagon states that fewer than 200 military robots have been disabled this month. The president's approval rating on the handling of the war remains steady at 87 percent.
It's nice to know we'd win all our wars with few, if any, American casualties, but I shudder to think of the chaos that Bush and Cheney would have unleashed on the world if they had one million autonomous combat robots at their disposal.
Automated military units like this render the second amendment obsolete. The main purpose of the second amendment is to protect the citizenry from a central government gone bad. What good is your stockpile of hunting rifles going to be against 20 of these Gladiators? I don't think you'll get much satisfaction saying, "Well, at least I took 5 robots out with me."
I'm not saying this scenario is likely to happen. But if it does happen, we're TSOL.
I married a female elf, you insensitive clod!
Last week my wife and I watched Conan the Barbarian and had a discussion/argument about whether Conan's sword would be elven or dwarven. My money's on dwarven. Sure, elves can make great bows and pretty armor, but if you want a dependable two-handed sword to cleave a man's skull in half, you've gotta go with dwarven steel.
In hindsight, the whole discussion sounded like fodder for Penny Arcade.
Er. Oops. I went back and reread the original post. I did type it wrong, although I know the difference between the two. Snarky response rescinded.
My papers are in order, Mr. Anonymous Grammar Nazi. I used the word correctly. Generally, effect is used as a noun, and affect is used as a verb.
"Oil prices affect gas prices."
"If there is no cause, there won't be any effect."
No soup for you.
There's really not much to see. The video of the spaceflight was pieced together from Thunderbirds stock footage. But I will give them credit for photoshopping the strings out.
Blu-Ray will most likely be this decade's Laserdisc. A niche market for home theatre geeks.
How dare you insult the Laserdisc format by comparing it to Blu-Ray, you insensitive clod!
No, this likely won't have any affect. Keep in mind that when a studio creates a movie, they're making it for the big screen, as in the 35 foot movie screen. Digital theaters display at 1080P, so the pixel count will be the same as on your Blueray HDTV at home, but with a much larger display. Analog theater film is still considered higher resolution than 1080P digital.
This may change in the future as professional digital movie cameras and projectors increase in resolution (the latest theater projectors support 4096 x 2160 resolution). But the driving factor will be the studio and theater equipment, which will generally be superior to the home HDTV formats.
Currently, the only time film makers have to really be concerned about detail is for IMAX movies, which are displayed on much larger screens with substantially higher resolution film.
"The more you tighten your grip, EA, the more customers will slip through your fingers."
The argument here is not Linux vs Vista. It's XP vs Vista. I am an avid 3D junkie. I own a set of Elsa 3D shutter classes. (Able was I, ere I bought Elsa.) I even bought an eMagin head-mounted display with tracking. And I've used both specifically with nVidia cards because nVidia drivers have the best stereoscopic support. I would love to buy a set of these new glasses, but I won't upgrade to Vista to do it. There are plenty of avid Windows gamers out there that are perfectly happy running on a high-end XP box, and have no intention of moving to Vista in the foreseeable future. I hope nVidia is aware of that, because I'd like to give them my money for this product.
What's the chance that a 7 year old in 1981 had a discretionary budget that allowed them to buy $670's worth of Star Wars toys?
A very good chance, if you spread it out over several years. I was born in 1971. During my "Star Wars toy years", ('77 to '81), I accumulated the large scale Death Star, Millennium Falcon, Tie Fighter, Troop Transport, Robot Droid Factory, the 12' R2D2, numerous smaller scale spaceships, at least two dozen action figures, and a large number of Star Wars themed comic books, collector cards, board games, puzzles and Atari cartridges. I financed my habit through Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, allowance and doing extra chores. The total cost was around $500, spread across 5 years.
As for the new movie, it answers the unasked question of what you'd get if you rendered an entire movie with just a 3DFX Voodoo video card.
I won't be bothering to see this movie. I may not even bother to rent it.
In order for a honeypot to work, you have to actually put honey in the pot. It doesn't work as well when you use shit for the bait.
Where does the surface of the Earth start? Knowing what we know today about the Earth, that is a silly question. The earth is spherical, and therefore does not have a start or an end. It is continuous.
.9999 the speed of light in a particular direction, you'd eventually end up right back where you started, although so much time would have transpired (billions of years) that you wouldn't realize you were back where you started.
In my opinion, space and time in our universe are wrapped around a 4th dimensional sphere. Therefore, it has no start or end. Like the surface of the earth, it too, is continuous. Suggesting that time has a start doesn't make sense, in the same way it doesn't make sense to say that the surface of a sphere starts at some particular point.
If you get in an airplane and constantly fly west, eventually you'll end up right back where you started. I think universal space is similar. If you were to fly at
I've wondered if we will ever create a telescope powerful enough to see around the entirety of the universe, so that what we are seeing is actually our own galaxy, but tens of billions of years in the past.
As for the concept of God, I have my own "bacteria" theory. Right now you are covered with millions of microscopic bacteria. Relative to them, you are all-powerful, and all-knowing. And yet, you are completely oblivious to them. You really could care less what the bacteria on your body are doing right now. As you type on your keyboard, with each keystroke you are crushing countless thousands of bacteria. Do you care? Not in the least.
It is possible there are more powerful multi-dimensional beings out there in the universe that are undiscovered, and possibly beyond our ability and compression to ever be discovered. But if they do exist, I would image they would be just as indifferent to us humans as we are to the bacteria on our arms. To suggest that an all powerful being would take such a focused interest in puny humans seems arrogant on our part.
I have a different theory. It is not gravity that pulls the baseball back to earth. Rather, it is God's Love. So in the interest of academic freedom, today class, we will spend the hour discussing God's Love.
You can see where this is heading.