More important than the subnet firewall are host based firewalls. We had three laptops come in yesterday and pick up the virus almost as fast as they could be plugged in. We were slack with updates and only had about half our comptuers updated at the time. Most had proper host based firewall and virus protection and faired all day without catching any virus. Only a few that were really old, non-standard builds got infected besides the laptops.
And besides, if Klingons are so great, why doesn't speaking their language get you laid?!?!?
You try saying "ghu neH Ha' lItHa'?" to some chick and see what happens.
You've obviously never been to a con.
It's not that speaking Klingon can't get you laid but whether you want to get laid by the women that it will work on.
Well, not great. But if he acknowledges that it's being abused then at least he's marginally better.
Of course he's going to say its being abused, it's being used by a Republican!
Point is, they may say that its beign abused but they are shy of actually saying how they'll fix it except to use vague terms like "protecting civil rights". They never actually tell us how they're going to protect civil rights while keeping the Patriot act. As usual, they're running ont he platform of "I'm not a Republican." While they say what the Republicans are doing is bad and that they'll do better, they don't give a clear idea of how they are different or what they plan to do instead.
Of course, this is all sort of stupid because the president doen't do much with such bills. Congress is the one to actually write and pass them and the democrats did so without contest for both invading Iraq and the Patriot act. In these cases the President isn't much more than a rubber stamp. If you're wanting to affect politics then write your congressmen and when it comes time to vote, get the right congressmen by voting in primaries, and then vote for them.
And don't forget:
"President Bush has been pushing Congress to renew all of the Patriot Act before it expires next year..."
Vote.
...and do what? Vote out a guy that is in favor of it and vote in the guy who made it law? He voted for it. Kerry is not against the Patriot act. His only public grief with it is that Bush's appointee is utilizing it instead of his appointee.
Head over to JohnKerry.com if you don't beleive me:
FACT: You can sum up the problems with the Patriot Act in two words: John Ashcroft.
John Kerry stands by his vote for the Patriot Act.
He says that it is not the law that is the problem but the abuse of the law that is causeing problems with civil liberty. In other words, "give us the power, not them and we'll only use it for good." Ya, right. If the government has the power, they're going to use that power.
Re:This is news? Company A cares about smth strate
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Microsoft's Strategy Memos
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· Score: 3, Interesting
For a company with 500+ employees, it makes a little difference whether you deploy Linux + OpenOffice + IBM Global Services or Windows + MSOffice + Ms Support. Pricewise the enterprise agreements are about the same.
I don't think so, about the "little difference" anyway. I've worked for both larger and smaller companies as desktop, applications and server support for the last six years. I've never called for support from Mircosoft ever. Everything has always been handled in house. I have paid lots of licensing fees for servers, applications, and such. If we were to switch to Linux products, I would have to spend more time learning about and fixing Linux problems which is paid for by my salary but our overall costs would go down due to no need for licensing.
Applications support is a little different as we do pay the (server) application company support but they handle the OS of the server it runs on also and thus are the only ones to pay and call MS. Thus, I expect these applications to start switching over to Linux in the next five to ten years as there will be no licensing fees but support from the OS vendor will be the same. Not to mention that their coders would then be able to inspect the OS code to look for problems with their applications rather than be depenant on MS.
I talk to quite a few US people and few of them seem to "get" the EU. The german are german, the french french and so on. We're not becoming "europeans" the way you are "americans". Different people, but working together for the good of all of us.
You don't get it. You may not be "Europeans" now, but tha day is coming. We didn't used to be "Americans" but Georgians, Virginians, New Yorkers, etc. Hell, the langauges were as varied as Europe also. The consititution was a loose guidlines to mutual economics and foreign relations. Defence was still meant to be handled by individual states resouces (militias) and did not provide for a standing army unless specially ordered by congress. Then came our civil war and we became a federal orgnaization. you're not "Europeans" now because most people born today were born before the EU. give it a generatin or two after the EU tries to assume more power and people can't remember a time when there wasn't an EU.
The european way is to try to cooperate, because we have to. The american way is "are you with us, or are you against us?". And it rubs the whole of EU the wrong way.
I suspect that is the European way is to cooperate with other Europeans. The United States, the rest of the America, and much of the world is shaped the way it is only due to European imperialism. Even then, half a century ago, suspect that people talked about France and Germany similar to how they talk about Isreal and Palestine. "There has always been war between the two, there is war between the two, there will be war between the two. Europes history is a collection of wars with eachother. Any recent effort of cooperation can be seen as the enevitable homogenization of Europe into "Europeans".
So I guess we need to start a new trade deal between teh US and Canada. Send the sick Canadians to the US and the cheap drugs to the US.:P
We already do. I work in a hospital in Seattle and we get plenty of Candians. Any of them with money anyway, who want CT or MRI scans done without waiting for three or four months, schedule them down here and get them the next weekend.
You go to the Mac boards, and its all the same "Gee, a G4 is all you need, you don't need any more speed".
Don't know what boards you've been hanging out in, but the Mac zealot boards I've been in have been screaming for G5 laptops since the desktops were announced and have been spreading rumors about them coming out "next week' for the last five months.
Maybe RealPlayer 10 is crammed with Spyware(tm). I mean, if they give away the player and it doesn't blast you with ads and Real is footing the bandwidth for NPR, what's the business model?
Could be advertising. Besides the publicity of Car Talk going back to them, it lets the Real sales guy go to other people and say "look who else uses us." When I used to help with a small local magazine, we gave certain stores free ads just so other stores would read our magazine and see that they were advertising with us. That way they felt we must know what we're doing if the other store was advertisign with ut. Competition would feel obligated to advertise to keep up with the other businesses advertising. Later, after we'd established ourselves, we could go back to the first advertisers and either cut off the free ads or at least work out some kind of deal.
According to the reports, the three countries will help their private sectors develop Linux, an open-source OS that can be copied and modified freely.
Dude, this is SLASHDOT. In Slashdot, EVERYONE knows what Linux is:)
Yes, but what about people not on Slahsdot? All of these internet news and computer sites canibalize each other for news stories. Slashdot readers may know what Linux is but if some Chinese news site picks up the story with links to Slashdot, readers there may not be in the know when they get here or otherwise read the story in question.
I've always loved Sterling more than Gibson. Both had soem really good ideas back int eh day but things like the Shapers and Machinists, e.g. 20 Evocations, really just hit the spot with me. Especially when you could read half a dozen stories and see them all play out independantly in the same world and see the differences in world with the passage of time. Other books such as The Artifical Kid and Holy Fire were similarly really fun to read with ideas that I just enjoyed. In comparison, Gibson just seems to drift further and further from my intrests and enjoyablity. It took me four attempts to get through Pattern Recognition, although it was still a good book it just never grabbed me.
Still, Sterling, Gibson, Stephenson, etc. all seem to be tryign to get away from Sci Fi and neat ideas and bring their stuff closer to the persent day. I don't know if they're trying to break into "respectable writing" or what but I don't like it. I finished Cryptonomicon and felt like I'd just read the latest Crichton or Clansey. If I wanted to read Crichton or Clansey, I'd be reading them. I want Sci Fi. I want fantastic worlds and technology. Want neat ideas in what might be. If I wanted technothrillers, i'd be reading techno thrillers to begin with. It was sad enough for Stephenson to put out uninspired stuff, but now that Sterling is joining him, there's no longer any authors for me to eagerly await books from (except for Rudy Rucker).
Ya, but they had a near sentient computer running the ship. It could basically just listen to the bridge chatter and impliment orders before the crew could. All the crew were probably doing with their toggle switches and buttons was the equivilant of pressing the "OK" button.
I have a degree in engineering (and physics). I work in computers, specifically desktop/application support. It provides me with good challenging work without the brain numbing math. I get to play with hardware and software and other toys. In general, it's fun and easy compared to the jobs I went to school for. Even if the pay wasn't superior, I'd probably still stick with this carreer.
In order to change careers, it would have to either pay much much more or soemthign I find equally fun. Things such as bad management or projects would only make me find different jobs, not different careers
Don't be so naive. The difference between then and now is the level of detail and interactivity that is now capable. I grew up playing D&D with friends because there weren't any computer games available that involved the level of detail, imagery, and interaction that those games provided. Now, games like Neverwinter Nights have this and more. And D&D was never a poster child for being sweet and innocuous.
Depends what you mean. D&D is violent but certain subject have always been taboo, namely sex. Some of the earliest module artwork was canned because it showed a little too much flesh on female characters in compromising situations. Later there was a "no breats" in the artwork. Lately, with Hasbro, this era has been entered once again with the D20 license being changed to prevent referecnes to sex.
"Remember, D&D is the family game about killing sub-human pigmen and looting their corpses,...no breasts."
St. Augustine, back in the day, posited that if there are other planets with life on them, Jesus would have had to visit them all in order to "save" them.
If Jesus did in fact do this, it would remove the uniqueness of Jesus. Since the bible states that Jesus' is unique, this could not have happened.
Thus he surmised that there is no life on other planets.
Well, you could say the same thing for different continents. Jesus didn't have to visit all the continents to save everybody. The word of God was carried there at a later date by evangelists. Sam thing could be said for other planets with life.
Perhaps Jesus was on all these places, and then I'm sure that angels will come down and reveal themselves and the truth just as they did with the Mormons and Jesus' history in the new world.
Nonsense. Without a atmospere, the projectile could be launched only a few meters above the surface of the moon and then for the last kilometer or so magnetic feilds could continue to aim the projectile just as they accelerated it in the main part of the launcher. The launcher would travel with the moon around the earth and could shoot at the target directly when pointed twards it and use the Earth's gravity to slingshot around it when facing away. Using multiple orbit trajectories, you could probably hit anywhere you wanted in the solar system beyond a minimum range.
If needed, chemical rockets could be part of the projectile and used for aiming. This would still be very minor compared with the rockets needed to launch, aim and safely land MADMEN on the target.
Or just build the thing in a lagrange point and you could aim the entire space station where ever you wanted. Recoil would become an issue and you'd loose half your shots to balanceing out the momentum and keeping it in the same spot sicne you're shooting heavy things fast enough to move a large asteroid.
Wouldn't it be esasier to build a large rail gun on the moon that could shoot projectiles into the asteroid instead? This would save the trouble of having to deal with the problems with what would be the equivilant of thousands of Mars landers.
Properly stored original film negatives last decades, whereas digital media is gone in a blink of an eye when your harddrive/memory card breaks down or you accidentally erase your media.
So what you're saying is that properly stored negatives will last decades and improperly stored digital media won't.
I retort with "Properly maintained SAN will last forever where film negatives can be ruined in a blink of an eye when you cram then into a garbage disposal."
From what I know of the system (did not read the whole AF brief) the proposal is to have a satellite orbit geosynchronously relatively above the target, and just fire the projectile downwards. The heat generated by re-entry is because of the horizontal motion of the craft, but a projectile of this type would only have vertical motion with respect to the atmosphere, and therefore relatively little heat generated. Please correct me if I'm wrong, physicists!
No, there would be horizontal motion associated with a rod dropped from geo-stationary orbit. Even assuming that the target was directly under the sattelite (as geo-stationary orbits are only possible along the equator) the rotational velocity in orbit is much greater than that at surface level. Thus it would have to decelerate to hit the spot directly under it. If it didn't decelerate, it would be moving faster than the surronding atmosphere and thus stmopheric breaking would occur.
Still, I would imagine that they'd just put a heat shield on the rods similar to space craft, either ablative or ceramic to protect the kenetic payload.
Re:If there is water on mars
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Brine on Mars?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Gases do move into outer space. Gravity slows down the process, but it doesn't stop it. When you get to the outer atmosphere, the velocity of gas atoms and molecules follow a predictable statistical distribution, dependent on their atomic mass and average temperature. Many atoms and molecules will reach escape velocity, and diffuse away from the planet. What do you think happened to the atmospheric helium on Earth?
Yes, Mars most likely used to have a thicker atmosphere but has dwindled to a lack of volcanic activity, evaporation of water, and leeching of atmosphere off into space. The gravity of Mars is not great enough to hold an earlth like atmosphere. One astrophysisit friend of mine did the calculations once. If you gave Mars an earthlike atmosphere, say by dumping comets on to the surface, it would last for about 10,000 years before bleeding off into space. Not long at all in geological time, but good enough to figure it into terraforming studies.
To take this one step further, things other than gases could also leave the atmostphere and enter space. Small spores enter the upper atmostphere and could be leaving the Earth's gravity. Some spores are highly durable and could survive in space indefinatly despite vacuum and radiation. Thus, we could have already colonated mars as spores leave our atmosphere, float across space, get caught by the other planet's gravity and fall to the surface. Or it could have happened the other way around and Mars populated the Earth with the first life. Similarly, one planet could be populating the region of space around them in such a way, so that life only needs to develop once on one world and could send out colonizing spores to bring life to suitable planets. At least, that was put forth in an article i read once. I keep meaning to do the calculations but never get around to it.
Am I the only one surprised that professional writers don't utilize voice recognition software?
Some do, most don't.
I handle the voice dictation for a large hospital using a voice recognition system called Talk. It seems really hit or miss. Some doctors love it and can dictate reports as fast as they can say them without missing a word. Others can't go an entire sentence without saying one word and having a different one show up. Those doctors refer to the program as Type and hate it with a passion.
A good deal of this is because voice dictation actually takes more effort than typeing. The good ones learn from your speech and modify themselves to how you actually talk. trouble is, if you don't pay attention to what you're doing and train everything that goes wrong when it goes wrong the first time, it's going to blow up on you. There is a high training curve besides the initial hour and half training that can really slow you down at first. Typeing is pretty simple, little training, and it doesn't matter if you are a female with an indian accent and the speech engine is based on an American male voice.
I've heard of authors using it, particularly those who have trouble typeing because of problems with their hands or are otherwise immobilized. I'm sure there are some people out ther that use it that don't have to. Besides the differences in speeking to writing, there is plenty of resistance to learning a new program that costs a decent amount of money. It's still a niche application that has its uses in certain instances, but not to replace typeing all together.
Re:Did Eisner drop Pixar to avoid Comcast?
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Steve Jobs' Grand Vision
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· Score: 5, Interesting
If the big bad cable company trying to take you over wants content, killing value by dropping an agreement with a major content provider (Pixar) might just be the way to go.
Anyone else think Eisner would do that to fend off Comcast and keep the keys to the Kingdom to himself?
No, if anything I think it was done by Steve to force Eisner out. Disney loses Pixar, Roy Disney is up in arms about Eisner ruining Disney ( savedisney.com ), and an election of the CEO coming up. Roy says that Eisner is killing Disney and Pixar leaves then board votes. With two films left to go, it seems early for a splitting of the ways (perhaps not as I don't know what they have planned or how long it takes to put it out). We'll see if Eisner gets the boot by shareholders and if Disney and Pixar kiss and make up afterwards.
What are Steve's plans for Apple? I think he's stickign with the killer app theory and moving into various nitches. He doesn't have to be the best computer all round. he simply has to be the best computer for graphics and video. IF apple puts out the best, that's what people will buy. An extra thousand or so really doesn't matter when it can save you ten thousand in time. Combined with the video apps that Apple has bought and is now making, this seems a the way it's going. The Xserve seems made from day one for cheap render farms. It doesn't matter what Apple's market share is because if Apple can just maintain these two markets, there's plenty of money to keep a computer company afloat.
From there, it's just a matter of picking another niche and moving into it. They've got some with the ease of use home segment using OS X as a killer app and at the same time sucking in *nix people in the laptops.
Music seems the next killer app they're moving into. They've bought and are producing apps for music production. They bought Emagic and Logic and have put out music apps from Garageband on up. Eventually they'll be the standard in music as they are in video (and already are depending on who you ask).
What will Apple do next? Who knows. Look to see what Apple buys next because the problem hasn't been that Apple didn't license out clones but that Apple stopped publishing their own apps. People will use what ever computer does the job. What computer does the job is dependant on the Killer App. From now on, I expect Apple to make both the computer and the Killer App.
Of course... Linux on a Mac presents an interesting question.
There are x86s available without Windows, but Apple will start shipping PPC based PCs without OSX shortly after Satan orders anti-freeze and warm winter woollens.
Does that make it more or less a candidate for replacement with Linux??
Well, look at it this way, Mac OSX costs aobut $120 shirnk wrapped. Figure the equivilant price of the OS installed on a factory machine is about half of that price, or een less since you can get 5 licenses for $199. Even if they did sell a Mac hardware without the OS, you're looking at a $60 savings. It'd probbly cost you that much for the special order to get it without the software. Considering that you're speaking about "high priced Apple hardware" and not some $400 x86 non-name brand, the extra price is not really worth worrying about.
The thing with Apple is that it is premium pro hardware (I'm ignoring the iStuff) and if you're quibbling over $60 or less, then it's not for you. If you really want a discount, find a student or staff at a school that will proxy buy one for you with a student discount or buy an old machine. The thing aobut macs is that if you find a pallette of 5 year old Macs in an auction, chances are they'll all boot up just fine and be ready for any Linux install. That's one of the great things aobut Linux, right? it runs great on older hardware.
I like laptops for gaming. At LAN parties I would be set up, ready to go, and eating snacks while my friends were still carrying their computers in from the car. The thing I really learned to appreciate was the same resolution screen in a smaller physical space. Everything was in my center of vision and I never needed to look around on the screen. Playing games on my desktop, I get irritated that I have to look around on the screen because action is happening in my periphial vision.
I've been looking around and debating if should go for small and light or desktop replacement. I quickly found that the best desktop replacements out there seemed to be gaming computers because they had the top kit. Alienware looks good for a desktop replacement not only because it's beefy but because it looks cool. I don't think Dell is going to put out computers in Cyborg Green or Saucer Silver.
Money is an issue and I don't think the mobility will convince me to buy a laptop that costs that much unless I would need the power and mobility for work also. of course, now that Dell is putting one out, I probably have a better chance of getting work to buy me a Dell laptop than an Alienware one.
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More important than the subnet firewall are host based firewalls. We had three laptops come in yesterday and pick up the virus almost as fast as they could be plugged in. We were slack with updates and only had about half our comptuers updated at the time. Most had proper host based firewall and virus protection and faired all day without catching any virus. Only a few that were really old, non-standard builds got infected besides the laptops.
And besides, if Klingons are so great, why doesn't speaking their language get you laid?!?!? You try saying "ghu neH Ha' lItHa'?" to some chick and see what happens.
You've obviously never been to a con.
It's not that speaking Klingon can't get you laid but whether you want to get laid by the women that it will work on.
Well, not great. But if he acknowledges that it's being abused then at least he's marginally better.
Of course he's going to say its being abused, it's being used by a Republican!
Point is, they may say that its beign abused but they are shy of actually saying how they'll fix it except to use vague terms like "protecting civil rights". They never actually tell us how they're going to protect civil rights while keeping the Patriot act. As usual, they're running ont he platform of "I'm not a Republican." While they say what the Republicans are doing is bad and that they'll do better, they don't give a clear idea of how they are different or what they plan to do instead.
Of course, this is all sort of stupid because the president doen't do much with such bills. Congress is the one to actually write and pass them and the democrats did so without contest for both invading Iraq and the Patriot act. In these cases the President isn't much more than a rubber stamp. If you're wanting to affect politics then write your congressmen and when it comes time to vote, get the right congressmen by voting in primaries, and then vote for them.
And don't forget: "President Bush has been pushing Congress to renew all of the Patriot Act before it expires next year..."
Vote.
...and do what? Vote out a guy that is in favor of it and vote in the guy who made it law? He voted for it. Kerry is not against the Patriot act. His only public grief with it is that Bush's appointee is utilizing it instead of his appointee.
Head over to JohnKerry.com if you don't beleive me:
FACT: You can sum up the problems with the Patriot Act in two words: John Ashcroft.
John Kerry stands by his vote for the Patriot Act.
He says that it is not the law that is the problem but the abuse of the law that is causeing problems with civil liberty. In other words, "give us the power, not them and we'll only use it for good." Ya, right. If the government has the power, they're going to use that power.
For a company with 500+ employees, it makes a little difference whether you deploy Linux + OpenOffice + IBM Global Services or Windows + MSOffice + Ms Support. Pricewise the enterprise agreements are about the same.
I don't think so, about the "little difference" anyway. I've worked for both larger and smaller companies as desktop, applications and server support for the last six years. I've never called for support from Mircosoft ever. Everything has always been handled in house. I have paid lots of licensing fees for servers, applications, and such. If we were to switch to Linux products, I would have to spend more time learning about and fixing Linux problems which is paid for by my salary but our overall costs would go down due to no need for licensing.
Applications support is a little different as we do pay the (server) application company support but they handle the OS of the server it runs on also and thus are the only ones to pay and call MS. Thus, I expect these applications to start switching over to Linux in the next five to ten years as there will be no licensing fees but support from the OS vendor will be the same. Not to mention that their coders would then be able to inspect the OS code to look for problems with their applications rather than be depenant on MS.
This answer is going to cost me an arm and a leg in karma, but what the heck. That's what it's for, right?
Show some employer loyalty.
Naw. If I had points, I'd mod you up "+1 Funny".
I talk to quite a few US people and few of them seem to "get" the EU. The german are german, the french french and so on. We're not becoming "europeans" the way you are "americans". Different people, but working together for the good of all of us.
You don't get it. You may not be "Europeans" now, but tha day is coming. We didn't used to be "Americans" but Georgians, Virginians, New Yorkers, etc. Hell, the langauges were as varied as Europe also. The consititution was a loose guidlines to mutual economics and foreign relations. Defence was still meant to be handled by individual states resouces (militias) and did not provide for a standing army unless specially ordered by congress. Then came our civil war and we became a federal orgnaization. you're not "Europeans" now because most people born today were born before the EU. give it a generatin or two after the EU tries to assume more power and people can't remember a time when there wasn't an EU.
The european way is to try to cooperate, because we have to. The american way is "are you with us, or are you against us?". And it rubs the whole of EU the wrong way.
I suspect that is the European way is to cooperate with other Europeans. The United States, the rest of the America, and much of the world is shaped the way it is only due to European imperialism. Even then, half a century ago, suspect that people talked about France and Germany similar to how they talk about Isreal and Palestine. "There has always been war between the two, there is war between the two, there will be war between the two. Europes history is a collection of wars with eachother. Any recent effort of cooperation can be seen as the enevitable homogenization of Europe into "Europeans".
So I guess we need to start a new trade deal between teh US and Canada. Send the sick Canadians to the US and the cheap drugs to the US. :P
We already do. I work in a hospital in Seattle and we get plenty of Candians. Any of them with money anyway, who want CT or MRI scans done without waiting for three or four months, schedule them down here and get them the next weekend.
You go to the Mac boards, and its all the same "Gee, a G4 is all you need, you don't need any more speed".
Don't know what boards you've been hanging out in, but the Mac zealot boards I've been in have been screaming for G5 laptops since the desktops were announced and have been spreading rumors about them coming out "next week' for the last five months.
Maybe RealPlayer 10 is crammed with Spyware(tm). I mean, if they give away the player and it doesn't blast you with ads and Real is footing the bandwidth for NPR, what's the business model?
Could be advertising. Besides the publicity of Car Talk going back to them, it lets the Real sales guy go to other people and say "look who else uses us." When I used to help with a small local magazine, we gave certain stores free ads just so other stores would read our magazine and see that they were advertising with us. That way they felt we must know what we're doing if the other store was advertisign with ut. Competition would feel obligated to advertise to keep up with the other businesses advertising. Later, after we'd established ourselves, we could go back to the first advertisers and either cut off the free ads or at least work out some kind of deal.
Yes, but what about people not on Slahsdot? All of these internet news and computer sites canibalize each other for news stories. Slashdot readers may know what Linux is but if some Chinese news site picks up the story with links to Slashdot, readers there may not be in the know when they get here or otherwise read the story in question.
I've always loved Sterling more than Gibson. Both had soem really good ideas back int eh day but things like the Shapers and Machinists, e.g. 20 Evocations, really just hit the spot with me. Especially when you could read half a dozen stories and see them all play out independantly in the same world and see the differences in world with the passage of time. Other books such as The Artifical Kid and Holy Fire were similarly really fun to read with ideas that I just enjoyed. In comparison, Gibson just seems to drift further and further from my intrests and enjoyablity. It took me four attempts to get through Pattern Recognition, although it was still a good book it just never grabbed me. Still, Sterling, Gibson, Stephenson, etc. all seem to be tryign to get away from Sci Fi and neat ideas and bring their stuff closer to the persent day. I don't know if they're trying to break into "respectable writing" or what but I don't like it. I finished Cryptonomicon and felt like I'd just read the latest Crichton or Clansey. If I wanted to read Crichton or Clansey, I'd be reading them. I want Sci Fi. I want fantastic worlds and technology. Want neat ideas in what might be. If I wanted technothrillers, i'd be reading techno thrillers to begin with. It was sad enough for Stephenson to put out uninspired stuff, but now that Sterling is joining him, there's no longer any authors for me to eagerly await books from (except for Rudy Rucker).
Ya, but they had a near sentient computer running the ship. It could basically just listen to the bridge chatter and impliment orders before the crew could. All the crew were probably doing with their toggle switches and buttons was the equivilant of pressing the "OK" button.
I have a degree in engineering (and physics). I work in computers, specifically desktop/application support. It provides me with good challenging work without the brain numbing math. I get to play with hardware and software and other toys. In general, it's fun and easy compared to the jobs I went to school for. Even if the pay wasn't superior, I'd probably still stick with this carreer. In order to change careers, it would have to either pay much much more or soemthign I find equally fun. Things such as bad management or projects would only make me find different jobs, not different careers
Don't be so naive. The difference between then and now is the level of detail and interactivity that is now capable. I grew up playing D&D with friends because there weren't any computer games available that involved the level of detail, imagery, and interaction that those games provided. Now, games like Neverwinter Nights have this and more. And D&D was never a poster child for being sweet and innocuous.
Depends what you mean. D&D is violent but certain subject have always been taboo, namely sex. Some of the earliest module artwork was canned because it showed a little too much flesh on female characters in compromising situations. Later there was a "no breats" in the artwork. Lately, with Hasbro, this era has been entered once again with the D20 license being changed to prevent referecnes to sex.
"Remember, D&D is the family game about killing sub-human pigmen and looting their corpses, ...no breasts."
St. Augustine, back in the day, posited that if there are other planets with life on them, Jesus would have had to visit them all in order to "save" them. If Jesus did in fact do this, it would remove the uniqueness of Jesus. Since the bible states that Jesus' is unique, this could not have happened. Thus he surmised that there is no life on other planets.
Well, you could say the same thing for different continents. Jesus didn't have to visit all the continents to save everybody. The word of God was carried there at a later date by evangelists. Sam thing could be said for other planets with life.
Perhaps Jesus was on all these places, and then I'm sure that angels will come down and reveal themselves and the truth just as they did with the Mormons and Jesus' history in the new world.
Nonsense. Without a atmospere, the projectile could be launched only a few meters above the surface of the moon and then for the last kilometer or so magnetic feilds could continue to aim the projectile just as they accelerated it in the main part of the launcher. The launcher would travel with the moon around the earth and could shoot at the target directly when pointed twards it and use the Earth's gravity to slingshot around it when facing away. Using multiple orbit trajectories, you could probably hit anywhere you wanted in the solar system beyond a minimum range.
If needed, chemical rockets could be part of the projectile and used for aiming. This would still be very minor compared with the rockets needed to launch, aim and safely land MADMEN on the target.
Or just build the thing in a lagrange point and you could aim the entire space station where ever you wanted. Recoil would become an issue and you'd loose half your shots to balanceing out the momentum and keeping it in the same spot sicne you're shooting heavy things fast enough to move a large asteroid.
Wouldn't it be esasier to build a large rail gun on the moon that could shoot projectiles into the asteroid instead? This would save the trouble of having to deal with the problems with what would be the equivilant of thousands of Mars landers.
Properly stored original film negatives last decades, whereas digital media is gone in a blink of an eye when your harddrive/memory card breaks down or you accidentally erase your media.
So what you're saying is that properly stored negatives will last decades and improperly stored digital media won't.
I retort with "Properly maintained SAN will last forever where film negatives can be ruined in a blink of an eye when you cram then into a garbage disposal."
From what I know of the system (did not read the whole AF brief) the proposal is to have a satellite orbit geosynchronously relatively above the target, and just fire the projectile downwards. The heat generated by re-entry is because of the horizontal motion of the craft, but a projectile of this type would only have vertical motion with respect to the atmosphere, and therefore relatively little heat generated. Please correct me if I'm wrong, physicists!
No, there would be horizontal motion associated with a rod dropped from geo-stationary orbit. Even assuming that the target was directly under the sattelite (as geo-stationary orbits are only possible along the equator) the rotational velocity in orbit is much greater than that at surface level. Thus it would have to decelerate to hit the spot directly under it. If it didn't decelerate, it would be moving faster than the surronding atmosphere and thus stmopheric breaking would occur.
Still, I would imagine that they'd just put a heat shield on the rods similar to space craft, either ablative or ceramic to protect the kenetic payload.
Gases do move into outer space. Gravity slows down the process, but it doesn't stop it. When you get to the outer atmosphere, the velocity of gas atoms and molecules follow a predictable statistical distribution, dependent on their atomic mass and average temperature. Many atoms and molecules will reach escape velocity, and diffuse away from the planet. What do you think happened to the atmospheric helium on Earth?
Yes, Mars most likely used to have a thicker atmosphere but has dwindled to a lack of volcanic activity, evaporation of water, and leeching of atmosphere off into space. The gravity of Mars is not great enough to hold an earlth like atmosphere. One astrophysisit friend of mine did the calculations once. If you gave Mars an earthlike atmosphere, say by dumping comets on to the surface, it would last for about 10,000 years before bleeding off into space. Not long at all in geological time, but good enough to figure it into terraforming studies.
To take this one step further, things other than gases could also leave the atmostphere and enter space. Small spores enter the upper atmostphere and could be leaving the Earth's gravity. Some spores are highly durable and could survive in space indefinatly despite vacuum and radiation. Thus, we could have already colonated mars as spores leave our atmosphere, float across space, get caught by the other planet's gravity and fall to the surface. Or it could have happened the other way around and Mars populated the Earth with the first life. Similarly, one planet could be populating the region of space around them in such a way, so that life only needs to develop once on one world and could send out colonizing spores to bring life to suitable planets. At least, that was put forth in an article i read once. I keep meaning to do the calculations but never get around to it.
Am I the only one surprised that professional writers don't utilize voice recognition software?
Some do, most don't.
I handle the voice dictation for a large hospital using a voice recognition system called Talk. It seems really hit or miss. Some doctors love it and can dictate reports as fast as they can say them without missing a word. Others can't go an entire sentence without saying one word and having a different one show up. Those doctors refer to the program as Type and hate it with a passion.
A good deal of this is because voice dictation actually takes more effort than typeing. The good ones learn from your speech and modify themselves to how you actually talk. trouble is, if you don't pay attention to what you're doing and train everything that goes wrong when it goes wrong the first time, it's going to blow up on you. There is a high training curve besides the initial hour and half training that can really slow you down at first. Typeing is pretty simple, little training, and it doesn't matter if you are a female with an indian accent and the speech engine is based on an American male voice.
I've heard of authors using it, particularly those who have trouble typeing because of problems with their hands or are otherwise immobilized. I'm sure there are some people out ther that use it that don't have to. Besides the differences in speeking to writing, there is plenty of resistance to learning a new program that costs a decent amount of money. It's still a niche application that has its uses in certain instances, but not to replace typeing all together.
If the big bad cable company trying to take you over wants content, killing value by dropping an agreement with a major content provider (Pixar) might just be the way to go.
Anyone else think Eisner would do that to fend off Comcast and keep the keys to the Kingdom to himself?
No, if anything I think it was done by Steve to force Eisner out. Disney loses Pixar, Roy Disney is up in arms about Eisner ruining Disney ( savedisney.com ), and an election of the CEO coming up. Roy says that Eisner is killing Disney and Pixar leaves then board votes. With two films left to go, it seems early for a splitting of the ways (perhaps not as I don't know what they have planned or how long it takes to put it out). We'll see if Eisner gets the boot by shareholders and if Disney and Pixar kiss and make up afterwards.
What are Steve's plans for Apple? I think he's stickign with the killer app theory and moving into various nitches. He doesn't have to be the best computer all round. he simply has to be the best computer for graphics and video. IF apple puts out the best, that's what people will buy. An extra thousand or so really doesn't matter when it can save you ten thousand in time. Combined with the video apps that Apple has bought and is now making, this seems a the way it's going. The Xserve seems made from day one for cheap render farms. It doesn't matter what Apple's market share is because if Apple can just maintain these two markets, there's plenty of money to keep a computer company afloat.
From there, it's just a matter of picking another niche and moving into it. They've got some with the ease of use home segment using OS X as a killer app and at the same time sucking in *nix people in the laptops.
Music seems the next killer app they're moving into. They've bought and are producing apps for music production. They bought Emagic and Logic and have put out music apps from Garageband on up. Eventually they'll be the standard in music as they are in video (and already are depending on who you ask).
What will Apple do next? Who knows. Look to see what Apple buys next because the problem hasn't been that Apple didn't license out clones but that Apple stopped publishing their own apps. People will use what ever computer does the job. What computer does the job is dependant on the Killer App. From now on, I expect Apple to make both the computer and the Killer App.
Of course... Linux on a Mac presents an interesting question.
There are x86s available without Windows, but Apple will start shipping PPC based PCs without OSX shortly after Satan orders anti-freeze and warm winter woollens.
Does that make it more or less a candidate for replacement with Linux??
Well, look at it this way, Mac OSX costs aobut $120 shirnk wrapped. Figure the equivilant price of the OS installed on a factory machine is about half of that price, or een less since you can get 5 licenses for $199. Even if they did sell a Mac hardware without the OS, you're looking at a $60 savings. It'd probbly cost you that much for the special order to get it without the software. Considering that you're speaking about "high priced Apple hardware" and not some $400 x86 non-name brand, the extra price is not really worth worrying about.
The thing with Apple is that it is premium pro hardware (I'm ignoring the iStuff) and if you're quibbling over $60 or less, then it's not for you. If you really want a discount, find a student or staff at a school that will proxy buy one for you with a student discount or buy an old machine. The thing aobut macs is that if you find a pallette of 5 year old Macs in an auction, chances are they'll all boot up just fine and be ready for any Linux install. That's one of the great things aobut Linux, right? it runs great on older hardware.
I like laptops for gaming. At LAN parties I would be set up, ready to go, and eating snacks while my friends were still carrying their computers in from the car. The thing I really learned to appreciate was the same resolution screen in a smaller physical space. Everything was in my center of vision and I never needed to look around on the screen. Playing games on my desktop, I get irritated that I have to look around on the screen because action is happening in my periphial vision. I've been looking around and debating if should go for small and light or desktop replacement. I quickly found that the best desktop replacements out there seemed to be gaming computers because they had the top kit. Alienware looks good for a desktop replacement not only because it's beefy but because it looks cool. I don't think Dell is going to put out computers in Cyborg Green or Saucer Silver. Money is an issue and I don't think the mobility will convince me to buy a laptop that costs that much unless I would need the power and mobility for work also. of course, now that Dell is putting one out, I probably have a better chance of getting work to buy me a Dell laptop than an Alienware one.