One shuttle flight - $300M One Russian flight - $20M
If the shuttle fleet weren't grounded, each US flight would cost as much as, what, 60 Russian launches. Forgive me if I got the numbers wrong; they should be in the ballpark, at least. It's way more cost effective for NASA to pay the Russians for the lift. Russian space tech is crappier than NASA's, but it's also way cheaper than it's crappier:-). Of course, it would be even cheaper to pay these guys, or even these guys, but they are not quite up to the task yet.
I just seriously doubt that anyone will die of hunger/cold as a result of the flood. Of course they can't make money without infrastructure, especially in the countries like Thailand, where the economy is built around tourism. But I doubt that a single person would actually die. There are enough resources being brought in to keep it under control, and a $30K donation is comparatively very little. There are hundreds of millions of dollars involved in disaster relief already, your money (well, your government's) included. Your additional personal donation just won't make a difference, just because everyone is, or will be, trying to help.
On the other hand, the court case in question, if lost, can create a dangerous precedent that will help bring about criminal sentences for stupid file copying, and millions of americans will go to jail, which is a form of loss of life. And you modest $30K can really make a difference.
In other words - pick a cause that you can afford:-).
It may not make you feel quite as good as helping people in distress, but it can make a heck of a lot more difference.
I hope not only that Loki loses the court battle...
You son/daughter is probably downloading an mp3 right now, and by the time they prosecute you, it's going to be a criminal offense, and you will get jail time. All because Loki lost their case and created a precedent. So keep hoping.
Are you, like, a Norwegian god or a large rich country? How the heck are you going to save lives from a fucking tsunami? You can't, and it's too late anyways. All your donation can do now is help them clean up the mess, and $30K won't really go a long way there either. Unfortunately. I'm not trying to troll here, it's just how things are.
So, if you have $30K you'd like to donate, you better consider some cause where it can actually make a difference, like file sharing.
Besides, a successful suit against MPAA can potentially also save quite a few lives - from being destroyed by our fine justice system. I mean, people actually go to jail for copyright voilations, and jail terms are comparable to what you'd get for a robbery or murder.
I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will die defending your right to say it.
And your tombstone will say "Another idealist bites the dust". Sorry. Bad joke.
not as many as youd hope know lasers are dangerous and how to handle them safely.
Really? I don't think too many people would be stupid enough to shine a laser into someone's eye once they realize that it actually burns through plastic cups. Not people that would blow $700 on a laser toy, anyways:-).
It's a lot more fun to watch a 1 joule pulsed laser blow a hole in the cup, and blow the cup off the desk (by ablation pressure) in the process. At one point in my career we got a hole of a pulsed ruby unit, and played with it a bit.
If you shoot at a lightweight object that ablates easily, the object is knocked away. The darker the color the better.
If you shoot a pulse at your hand, it makes a 0.5mm diameter/0.5mm deep pit, with no blood, and you can barely feel the pain.
Oh, and it detonated firecrackers, killed bugs, and pretty much did about nothing to about anything else we tried:-).
They can see the beam in the air, in addition to seeng the spot it hits. Invisible IR would be a much better option, IMHO, and high power IR laser diodes are VERY available (unlike green), so you could just make a weapon out of one those, without going to the expense of a 100mW DPSSFD. Just get a bigger communications diode laser.
If you want to see where you're shooting, just use a low power red dot laser sight, like on a normal gun.
If you want to make it more practical, use 50 lasers for a 5W CW unit, and converge the beams automatically using one of the laser beams as a rangefinder.
The whole gizmo wouldn't be all that expensive and large. It would be able to set flammable things on fire remotely with more stealth than a tracer bullet, and at longer distance than an arrow with an oil-soaked rug on the end.
Still, pretty stupid use of technology if you ask me.
The actual Class IIIa standard allows up to 5mW CW output, with higher allowed peak power for pulsed lasers. The allowed peak power grows as 4th degree root of duty cycle, and decreases as 4th degree root of rep. rate. Or something like that. They assume blinking time of 1/4 second, and the formula gives 5mW with 4 rep/sec pulse rate and 100% duty cycle.
....till someone uses one of these as a cat toy.....and the cat cathes on fire? You don't need a laser for that - just some gasoline and matches *diabolic laughter*
Serioisly, if you think stupid people's ability would be enhanced by having access to odd dangerous objects, like 100mW lasers, just think how much damage one can cause with readily available dangerous objects like a $1 bottle of rubbing alcohol and a book of matches.
Sorry for typo, make that $100K. That patent was for a very concrete and useful device that would've never gotten manufactured otherwise. I mean, I'm not sure they ended up actually using the device in any of the production cars, but at least the invention has been published.
Patents do not protect little guys from the big guys.
I know a guy who actually patented something (a brake pad thickness meter) and sold the patent to Ford for a $100 or so. Would've never been possible without a patent system.
The only way you can possibly benefit from this is to uncap the modem, which is about as kosher as petty shoplifting. And you wouldn't need to reflash the modem for it anyways.
So, if you are not uncapping it, then what's the point? It's not like you are going to add any badly missed features, or make a linux print server out of it. Maybe it's just my lack of imagination, but I just don't see any practical uses for a hacked cable modem. I mean, other than getting the inner satisfaction from proving that you are actually able to read and flash the EEPROM:-). But then, you could just use a screwdriver and an EEPROM programmer...
If you were both working on two commercial projects for a company (with a reasonable management)... he probably wouldn't be working there anymore. That's assuming that a fork over differences in design decisions would be allowed in the first place.
No, what I meant was that is you are selling a graphics program for $700, you probably expect your users to be pros, and pros should be able to invest time into learning your UI. So you don't have to focus on UI, and you can spend your development mana on functionality.
..someone made a new UI for the gimp. Not that the old oen is all that nasty, it's just that a poor UI reduces usability a LOT, especially for people who don't use it full-time.
Photoshop UI is not particularly hot either.
I use both photoshop and gimp occasionally, about 10 hr a month, and the UI suxxors in both. A thousand cryptic icons, with cryptic names in the tooltips, with about 10 alt-ctrl-shift-click-drag variants for each tool is something I'm never going to learn fully.
A thousand filters with cryptic names and parameters are al useless, unless you already spent 200 hours learning which one does what. I can't invest 200 hours into this; I don't do GD full time. Now, I don't have time to rewrite the gimp UI myself either, so it being open-source doesn't help here at all. But someone somewhere had time to write the damn thing. I suppose they could spend a few more hours to design a proper UI for it to make it actually useful.
Adobe maybe has the excuse that with a $700 sale price they expect only the full-time pros to be using the program. Gimp is unexcusable.
The question is, do you know why reality is shifting in that direction?
Every country, especially a large a powerful country, needs a fascist government every once in a while, just to teach the moron part of the population to value their freedom. US is long overdue:-)/.
Slashdot Mirror
these guys
One shuttle flight - $300M
One Russian flight - $20M
If the shuttle fleet weren't grounded, each US flight would cost as much as, what, 60 Russian launches. Forgive me if I got the numbers wrong; they should be in the ballpark, at least. It's way more cost effective for NASA to pay the Russians for the lift. Russian space tech is crappier than NASA's, but it's also way cheaper than it's crappier:-). Of course, it would be even cheaper to pay these guys, or even these guys, but they are not quite up to the task yet.
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
Every security scheme eventually fails. -- me.
I just seriously doubt that anyone will die of hunger/cold as a result of the flood. Of course they can't make money without infrastructure, especially in the countries like Thailand, where the economy is built around tourism. But I doubt that a single person would actually die. There are enough resources being brought in to keep it under control, and a $30K donation is comparatively very little. There are hundreds of millions of dollars involved in disaster relief already, your money (well, your government's) included. Your additional personal donation just won't make a difference, just because everyone is, or will be, trying to help.
On the other hand, the court case in question, if lost, can create a dangerous precedent that will help bring about criminal sentences for stupid file copying, and millions of americans will go to jail, which is a form of loss of life. And you modest $30K can really make a difference.
In other words - pick a cause that you can afford:-).
It may not make you feel quite as good as helping people in distress, but it can make a heck of a lot more difference.
I hope not only that Loki loses the court battle...
You son/daughter is probably downloading an mp3 right now, and by the time they prosecute you, it's going to be a criminal offense, and you will get jail time. All because Loki lost their case and created a precedent. So keep hoping.
Is this a serious abridgement of your right to free speech?
What right to free speech?
Transparent aluminum I understand. But transparent transistors???
Saving lives > File trading.
Are you, like, a Norwegian god or a large rich country? How the heck are you going to save lives from a fucking tsunami? You can't, and it's too late anyways. All your donation can do now is help them clean up the mess, and $30K won't really go a long way there either. Unfortunately. I'm not trying to troll here, it's just how things are.
So, if you have $30K you'd like to donate, you better consider some cause where it can actually make a difference, like file sharing.
Besides, a successful suit against MPAA can potentially also save quite a few lives - from being destroyed by our fine justice system. I mean, people actually go to jail for copyright voilations, and jail terms are comparable to what you'd get for a robbery or murder.
I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will die defending your right to say it.
And your tombstone will say "Another idealist bites the dust". Sorry. Bad joke.
According to the article, the impact is 3 microseconds/day.
they really seem to be running on hot air
Actually, they seems to be running on rather cold air:-). They even propose using the exhaust for air conditioning.
not as many as youd hope know lasers are dangerous and how to handle them safely.
Really? I don't think too many people would be stupid enough to shine a laser into someone's eye once they realize that it actually burns through plastic cups. Not people that would blow $700 on a laser toy, anyways:-).
It's a lot more fun to watch a 1 joule pulsed laser blow a hole in the cup, and blow the cup off the desk (by ablation pressure) in the process. At one point in my career we got a hole of a pulsed ruby unit, and played with it a bit.
If you shoot at a lightweight object that ablates easily, the object is knocked away. The darker the color the better.
If you shoot a pulse at your hand, it makes a 0.5mm diameter/0.5mm deep pit, with no blood, and you can barely feel the pain.
Oh, and it detonated firecrackers, killed bugs, and pretty much did about nothing to about anything else we tried:-).
They can see the beam in the air, in addition to seeng the spot it hits. Invisible IR would be a much better option, IMHO, and high power IR laser diodes are VERY available (unlike green), so you could just make a weapon out of one those, without going to the expense of a 100mW DPSSFD. Just get a bigger communications diode laser.
If you want to see where you're shooting, just use a low power red dot laser sight, like on a normal gun.
If you want to make it more practical, use 50 lasers for a 5W CW unit, and converge the beams automatically using one of the laser beams as a rangefinder.
The whole gizmo wouldn't be all that expensive and large. It would be able to set flammable things on fire remotely with more stealth than a tracer bullet, and at longer distance than an arrow with an oil-soaked rug on the end.
Still, pretty stupid use of technology if you ask me.
The actual Class IIIa standard allows up to 5mW CW output, with higher allowed peak power for pulsed lasers. The allowed peak power grows as 4th degree root of duty cycle, and decreases as 4th degree root of rep. rate. Or something like that. They assume blinking time of 1/4 second, and the formula gives 5mW with 4 rep/sec pulse rate and 100% duty cycle.
....till someone uses one of these as a cat toy... ..and the cat cathes on fire? You don't need a laser for that - just some gasoline and matches
*diabolic laughter*
Serioisly, if you think stupid people's ability would be enhanced by having access to odd dangerous objects, like 100mW lasers, just think how much damage one can cause with readily available dangerous objects like a $1 bottle of rubbing alcohol and a book of matches.
Sorry for typo, make that $100K. That patent was for a very concrete and useful device that would've never gotten manufactured otherwise. I mean, I'm not sure they ended up actually using the device in any of the production cars, but at least the invention has been published.
Patents do not protect little guys from the big guys.
I know a guy who actually patented something (a brake pad thickness meter) and sold the patent to Ford for a $100 or so. Would've never been possible without a patent system.
The only way you can possibly benefit from this is to uncap the modem, which is about as kosher as petty shoplifting. And you wouldn't need to reflash the modem for it anyways.
So, if you are not uncapping it, then what's the point? It's not like you are going to add any badly missed features, or make a linux print server out of it. Maybe it's just my lack of imagination, but I just don't see any practical uses for a hacked cable modem. I mean, other than getting the inner satisfaction from proving that you are actually able to read and flash the EEPROM:-). But then, you could just use a screwdriver and an EEPROM programmer...
You're right about that. I wonder how she did that bit. Anyone know?
If you were both working on two commercial projects for a company (with a reasonable management)... he probably wouldn't be working there anymore. That's assuming that a fork over differences in design decisions would be allowed in the first place.
No, what I meant was that is you are selling a graphics program for $700, you probably expect your users to be pros, and pros should be able to invest time into learning your UI. So you don't have to focus on UI, and you can spend your development mana on functionality.
Would be amusing to see some references:-)
..someone made a new UI for the gimp. Not that the old oen is all that nasty, it's just that a poor UI reduces usability a LOT, especially for people who don't use it full-time.
Photoshop UI is not particularly hot either.
I use both photoshop and gimp occasionally, about 10 hr a month, and the UI suxxors in both. A thousand cryptic icons, with cryptic names in the tooltips, with about 10 alt-ctrl-shift-click-drag variants for each tool is something I'm never going to learn fully.
A thousand filters with cryptic names and parameters are al useless, unless you already spent 200 hours learning which one does what. I can't invest 200 hours into this; I don't do GD full time. Now, I don't have time to rewrite the gimp UI myself either, so it being open-source doesn't help here at all. But someone somewhere had time to write the damn thing. I suppose they could spend a few more hours to design a proper UI for it to make it actually useful.
Adobe maybe has the excuse that with a $700 sale price they expect only the full-time pros to be using the program. Gimp is unexcusable.
What country?
In the US, if you steal a car and go for a ride in it, and then put it back, and they catch you, you go to jail all the same.
The question is, do you know why reality is shifting in that direction?
Every country, especially a large a powerful country, needs a fascist government every once in a while, just to teach the moron part of the population to value their freedom. US is long overdue:-)/.