Heinlen touched on this approach to weaponry in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Basically, Luna at top of gravity well + Earth at bottom + big rocks (which are in large supply on the moon, incidentally) = holy $#@&!!
Don't forget about the Corporate Revenue Assurance Program (CRAP), where you can be prosecuted for such unthinkable, terroristic acts as NOT SUBSCRIBING to cable/satellite TV at all!! Oh, the humanity!!!
...an abandonware challenge for the ever-resourceful Slashdot crowd. I'm sure that major mod-points await someone who can post a link to a download of Word 5.1 (preferably one that runs on Windows).:)
Scotty: "It'll take eight hours...but you don't have eight hours, so I'll do it in two." Kirk: "Mr. Scott, do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?" Scotty: "Certainly, sir. How else would I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?" Kirk: "Your reputation is secure..."
The people that would plunk down the coin for one of these boxes are not interested in "just fine"...a lot of these same people probably spend thousands of dollars on aftermarket parts for their '98 Honda Civic to squeeze 5-10 more HP out of the engine, not because they actually need it to win races or anything semi-practical like that, but so they can win the pissing contest after class with the rest of the guys at their high school.
Why do you think that AlienWare PCs ship with benchmarking software preinstalled? Who cares about benchmarks? Most AlienWare PCs passed the "just fine" point about 20-30 frames per second ago. These people care.
Also, another glaring problem with this whole concept is that you can't "fire George Lucas." Um, yeah, he *is* Star Wars, its his, and its that simple.
"Star Trek" was Gene Roddenberry's, until the first movie tanked and Paramount decided to "promote" him to the largely-ceremonial title of "executive consultant". True, you can't fire Lucas, but someone still has to put up the dollars to make the movies, and THEY ultimately have the final say.
I don't think anyone should forget that this "environmentally focused" movie is based in part on the book The Coming Global Superstorm, written by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, not exactly the paragons of scientific objectivity.
While 250 MB is a huge update, this is the first MS service pack (that I can recall) that actually consists mostly of new features and not just bug fixes...the security features of XP have been overhauled (new security "dashboard" control app, vastly improved firewall, and lots of "default off" security settings in Messenger, Outlook Express, etc.) and it includes a new version of IE with pop-up blocking built-in and extension management, a new bluetooth and 802.11x wireless detection/connection tool, and a number of smaller (but no less visible) enhancements (like a streamlined Add/Remove Programs tool).
Ii might have something to do with the inconvenience of downloading and installing iTunes, creating an account (which includes entering a credit card number), and then finally entering the code and picking a song.
But I think more importantly, the vast majority of people simply don't know much about iTunes (or don't even know what it IS). I dug a lot of "one free song" bottle caps out of the wastebaskets in our office because people didn't have a clue what they were...however, once I showed them how to redeem them, their reaction was usually something like "I can get any song I want?!? COOL!". This leads me to believe that Apple still has a ways to go in terms of public interest and awareness of the online music store scene...which is actually an exciting opportunity for them.
Every day or so, I head over to this site to check out the latest images. Some of the high-res color photos look like something I could have shot with my digital camera out in the desert somewhere, but then I remember: they were taken on ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET. It really is a amazing thing to be alive to see. The folks at NASA and the JPL should be proud of themselves.
Maybe my memory is faulty, but wasn't this originally supposed to be a selling point for DVDs waaaay back when? Selectable MPAA ratings? What would be wrong with a DVD that comes with the original (lets say "R") version of a movie as well as an encoded list of all of the content in the movie that needs to be bleeped/cut/etc. to make it PG-13, PG, etc. You can then select which version of the movie you watch from the DVD menu.
Now granted, the article sounds like this feature is implemented at the player level, but assuming it is accurate (and it can be turned off by the owner of the player of course), what is the problem with this? I'm not a parent now, but if I am at some point, I would love this feature.
(1) The Han vs. Greedo scene in Episode IV: Han didn't shoot first...no hero would hide behind his blaster like that. The original scene will never be seen again as long as Lucas is alive.
(2) The Death Star trench attack in IV: Lucas goes off on some bizarre tangent about the symbolism in this scene, claiming that it actually represented an Oedipal desire by Luke to distance himself from his father by attacking the trench, which represents his mother's birth canal. The act of destroying the Death Star via the port in the trench was a figurative "abortion" of his father's evil plans. I swear I'm not making this up.
(3) The "I am your father" scene from Episode V: Mark Hamill's scream was too girly and had to be dubbed. The harness he had to wear while hanging from the bridge was very uncomfortable.
Also, don't forget that before Hoagland started fixating on Mars, his contention was that there were giant glass domes and stuff on the moon...his evidence was JPEG copies of moon photos that were enlarged to such a ridiculous degree that all you could see was pixellation and JPEG compression artifacts (these of course being "geometric regularity that indicates artificial construction" according to Hoagland).
Yeah, I agree that you can't totally write off Coast to Coast just because Hoagland is a frequent guest. Rarely (VERY rarely, unfortunately) they do have credible guests that speak on interesting subjects...they've had Mitnick on a few times and a couple of weeks ago they had someone (sorry, can't remember her name) on talking about electronic voting and its recent problems. They've also recently done genuinely-interesting interviews with the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS and someone from NASA about Sedna (the recently-discovered planetoid).
Unfortunately, e-voting chick, Mitnick, and Sedna are all too often wedged between shows about numerology, planet X, and El Chupacabra, the Mexican goat-sucker.:)
would you rather program against the pitiful number API's that come with C#
Completely ignoring the fact that no APIs could "come with" C# because C# is just a one of many languages that compiles to.NET CLR bytecode (thanks once again for showing your complete ignorance of.NET)...I have written a lot of.NET apps and have yet to find myself needing some functionality not already provided somewhere in the.NET class library. It is (by far) the richest set of application APIs I have ever developed with.
...when saying that all of these nifty extensions "save the session state", since "session" has a very specific meaning in the context of the HTTP. "Session" in this context is something that the web server manages...I'm guessing these browser add-ins don't preserve that.
You are correct...I don't believe the microscopic imager has the magnification muscle to view something as small as bacteria, and the Mossbauer spectrometer is very specific in what it can analyze (iron-bearing minerals). These rovers are, as designed, primarily geological instruments.
For details about what the rovers are carrying, instrument-wise, see this page.
No, I've just been looking at store shelves.:) But I pulled up FreeSpace 2 and it looks very slick. I'll definitely check into it because I miss the good space shoot-em-ups.
I'm not sure that we can pin the decline of "Wing Commander" on EA alone...I think that the gaming public's taste for that particular genre (space combat/simulation) has been declining in general. The X-Wing/TIE Fighter series from LucasArts is another example. Those sorts of games just aren't trendy right now (which is a shame...X-Wing is probably my favorite PC game ever, and I would love to see what today's graphics cards could do with a space combat simulator like that now).
Slashdot Mirror
Heinlen touched on this approach to weaponry in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Basically, Luna at top of gravity well + Earth at bottom + big rocks (which are in large supply on the moon, incidentally) = holy $#@&!!
Don't forget about the Corporate Revenue Assurance Program (CRAP), where you can be prosecuted for such unthinkable, terroristic acts as NOT SUBSCRIBING to cable/satellite TV at all!! Oh, the humanity!!!
...an abandonware challenge for the ever-resourceful Slashdot crowd. I'm sure that major mod-points await someone who can post a link to a download of Word 5.1 (preferably one that runs on Windows). :)
Also, from "Star Trek III"...
Scotty: "It'll take eight hours...but you don't have eight hours, so I'll do it in two."
Kirk: "Mr. Scott, do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?"
Scotty: "Certainly, sir. How else would I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?"
Kirk: "Your reputation is secure..."
The people that would plunk down the coin for one of these boxes are not interested in "just fine"...a lot of these same people probably spend thousands of dollars on aftermarket parts for their '98 Honda Civic to squeeze 5-10 more HP out of the engine, not because they actually need it to win races or anything semi-practical like that, but so they can win the pissing contest after class with the rest of the guys at their high school.
Why do you think that AlienWare PCs ship with benchmarking software preinstalled? Who cares about benchmarks? Most AlienWare PCs passed the "just fine" point about 20-30 frames per second ago. These people care.
Also, another glaring problem with this whole concept is that you can't "fire George Lucas." Um, yeah, he *is* Star Wars, its his, and its that simple.
"Star Trek" was Gene Roddenberry's, until the first movie tanked and Paramount decided to "promote" him to the largely-ceremonial title of "executive consultant". True, you can't fire Lucas, but someone still has to put up the dollars to make the movies, and THEY ultimately have the final say.
I don't think anyone should forget that this "environmentally focused" movie is based in part on the book The Coming Global Superstorm, written by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, not exactly the paragons of scientific objectivity.
...we just need to apply the face detector to that hunk of rock on Mars and see what IT has to say about it!
While 250 MB is a huge update, this is the first MS service pack (that I can recall) that actually consists mostly of new features and not just bug fixes...the security features of XP have been overhauled (new security "dashboard" control app, vastly improved firewall, and lots of "default off" security settings in Messenger, Outlook Express, etc.) and it includes a new version of IE with pop-up blocking built-in and extension management, a new bluetooth and 802.11x wireless detection/connection tool, and a number of smaller (but no less visible) enhancements (like a streamlined Add/Remove Programs tool).
Ii might have something to do with the inconvenience of downloading and installing iTunes, creating an account (which includes entering a credit card number), and then finally entering the code and picking a song.
But I think more importantly, the vast majority of people simply don't know much about iTunes (or don't even know what it IS). I dug a lot of "one free song" bottle caps out of the wastebaskets in our office because people didn't have a clue what they were...however, once I showed them how to redeem them, their reaction was usually something like "I can get any song I want?!? COOL!". This leads me to believe that Apple still has a ways to go in terms of public interest and awareness of the online music store scene...which is actually an exciting opportunity for them.
Every day or so, I head over to this site to check out the latest images. Some of the high-res color photos look like something I could have shot with my digital camera out in the desert somewhere, but then I remember: they were taken on ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET. It really is a amazing thing to be alive to see. The folks at NASA and the JPL should be proud of themselves.
Maybe my memory is faulty, but wasn't this originally supposed to be a selling point for DVDs waaaay back when? Selectable MPAA ratings? What would be wrong with a DVD that comes with the original (lets say "R") version of a movie as well as an encoded list of all of the content in the movie that needs to be bleeped/cut/etc. to make it PG-13, PG, etc. You can then select which version of the movie you watch from the DVD menu.
Now granted, the article sounds like this feature is implemented at the player level, but assuming it is accurate (and it can be turned off by the owner of the player of course), what is the problem with this? I'm not a parent now, but if I am at some point, I would love this feature.
(1) The Han vs. Greedo scene in Episode IV: Han didn't shoot first...no hero would hide behind his blaster like that. The original scene will never be seen again as long as Lucas is alive.
(2) The Death Star trench attack in IV: Lucas goes off on some bizarre tangent about the symbolism in this scene, claiming that it actually represented an Oedipal desire by Luke to distance himself from his father by attacking the trench, which represents his mother's birth canal. The act of destroying the Death Star via the port in the trench was a figurative "abortion" of his father's evil plans. I swear I'm not making this up.
(3) The "I am your father" scene from Episode V: Mark Hamill's scream was too girly and had to be dubbed. The harness he had to wear while hanging from the bridge was very uncomfortable.
Someone wrote a flight simulator in Excel... ;)
Maybe they meant a .NET assembly. Now THAT is scary...
Also, don't forget that before Hoagland started fixating on Mars, his contention was that there were giant glass domes and stuff on the moon...his evidence was JPEG copies of moon photos that were enlarged to such a ridiculous degree that all you could see was pixellation and JPEG compression artifacts (these of course being "geometric regularity that indicates artificial construction" according to Hoagland).
Yeah, I agree that you can't totally write off Coast to Coast just because Hoagland is a frequent guest. Rarely (VERY rarely, unfortunately) they do have credible guests that speak on interesting subjects...they've had Mitnick on a few times and a couple of weeks ago they had someone (sorry, can't remember her name) on talking about electronic voting and its recent problems. They've also recently done genuinely-interesting interviews with the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS and someone from NASA about Sedna (the recently-discovered planetoid).
:)
Unfortunately, e-voting chick, Mitnick, and Sedna are all too often wedged between shows about numerology, planet X, and El Chupacabra, the Mexican goat-sucker.
would you rather program against the pitiful number API's that come with C#
.NET CLR bytecode (thanks once again for showing your complete ignorance of .NET)...I have written a lot of .NET apps and have yet to find myself needing some functionality not already provided somewhere in the .NET class library. It is (by far) the richest set of application APIs I have ever developed with.
Completely ignoring the fact that no APIs could "come with" C# because C# is just a one of many languages that compiles to
...when saying that all of these nifty extensions "save the session state", since "session" has a very specific meaning in the context of the HTTP. "Session" in this context is something that the web server manages...I'm guessing these browser add-ins don't preserve that.
You are correct...I don't believe the microscopic imager has the magnification muscle to view something as small as bacteria, and the Mossbauer spectrometer is very specific in what it can analyze (iron-bearing minerals). These rovers are, as designed, primarily geological instruments.
For details about what the rovers are carrying, instrument-wise, see this page.
LOL, I know why they changed the name...they desparately need to rediscover rack-mounted servers...
:)
Ah...nothing says "professional hosting outfit" like Home Depot shelving with tower cases piled on them and some switches sitting on top.
You've been listening to Interplay and EA...
:) But I pulled up FreeSpace 2 and it looks very slick. I'll definitely check into it because I miss the good space shoot-em-ups.
No, I've just been looking at store shelves.
I'm not sure that we can pin the decline of "Wing Commander" on EA alone...I think that the gaming public's taste for that particular genre (space combat/simulation) has been declining in general. The X-Wing/TIE Fighter series from LucasArts is another example. Those sorts of games just aren't trendy right now (which is a shame...X-Wing is probably my favorite PC game ever, and I would love to see what today's graphics cards could do with a space combat simulator like that now).
Eye in the Sky, indeed. :)
Unfortunately, it is on Yahoo, so if anyone else has a better place to mirror, it would be appreciated.
Screenshots