There is nothing like DirectX. There is only really OpenGL, which is great and all, but not nearly as complete or well documented as the DirectX api (Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectInput, etc..)
...except that quite a few games are also being released for the MacOS X, which IIRC is based on BSD. Do those games use OpenGL for their graphics, or are they porting to some other proprietary Macintosh graphics API? Not being a regular Mac user, I don't know that much about Mac games, but it seems to me that if MacOS X is based on BSD, porting these games to Linux and a pure OpenGL environment wouldn't be that difficult.
<PICK type="nit"> There is no dark side of the moon. Only a far side. (That's why we have new moons -- the sun is shining on the part we can't see.) </PICK>
The moon has a lot less gravity than earth so I'm guessing it would take a lot less fuel to break out.
That's right, you're guessing. Don't bother to look up facts or anything.
It sounds like you listened to that FOX "scientist" about the moon or something. Go do some reading and learn something.
OK, how about a Bachelor's Degree in Aerospace Engineering? Is that enough reading for you?
And as for the dust, did you ever even watch the moon landings?? Did enormous clouds of dust fly up with Armstrong jumped down to the ground?
The amount of thrust needed to break out of the gravity well has nothing to do with the amount of dust blown up from the ground. If you don't know what you're talking about, just stop talking.
Real facts, for those of you who don't look them up:
When breaking out of the Earth's gravity well, you are indeed only breaking out of the Earth's gravity well. Not the Earth's and the Moon's.
The moon's gravity is 1/6th that of the Earth's. From a kinetic energy standpoint (so we can compare apples to apples) it's 22 times harder to escape the Earth's pull than it is to escape the moon's pull. That doesn't mean it will require 22 times more fuel, since that would depend on the rocket design.
The Shuttle's total mass is 85% fuel. (That one you got right.) The boosters use a solid fuel and the main engines are burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen at a 6:1 O/F ratio. That means at liftoff, the shuttle is carrying about 1.4 million lbs (650,000 kg) of oxygen, a substance which is readily available in the atmosphere the shuttle is flying through. Rocket liftoff from Earth is highly inefficient, but that's a topic for another post.
A moon base right now doesn't make any sense. It costs far too much money to get materials off the planet. Let's focus on getting inexpensive, reliable access to space* before we plan to set up camp on the moon. The purpose of a moon base is to get Bush reelected. I guarantee he'll scale back or cut the program if he's elected again.
*Obligitory joke: "I like my space access like I like my women: cheap and easy." **ducks**
My opinion is that yes, the LOTR movies really were that good. In the context of highly anticipated trilogies such as LOTR, Matrix, or the SW Prequels, much of a viewer's impression of the movie is based on the hype. How can it not be, when our entire society is oversaturated with tie-in crap? That being said, take a step back from the films and pretend that you have never heard of LOTR before seeing them, and look at them objectively as book adaptations. On that score, they succeeded.
The sheer amount of technical work that went into the movies to create a completely believable world is mind-boggling. A great deal of skill also went into turning a dense, rambling, laboring, symbolist epic into a screen adaptation without losing any of its power, grace, or richness. Jackson struck exactly the right chord with most audiences: his version was easy to follow by people who didn't know the books, yet so chock-full of information as to satisfy even the most die-hard fans of the books.
No movie will ever live up to hype. Ever. Our minds can create expectations that will never be exceeded by the director. Where a movie succeeds despite the hype is how it seems later, when the roar has died down. Rewatching the LOTR films, I get more out of them every time. I pick up on more subtle plot points. I see character relationships I didn't notice before. I see small details. The picture gains depth.
Contrast this rewatching with something like The Matrix trilogy, or the Star Wars Prequels. Every time I rewatch Episodes I and II, I cringe. They are worse with every viewing, far removed from the gee-whiz special effects hype. The original Matrix movie holds up well, but that was back when the Wachowskis were trying to prove themselves. Reloaded still seems ok, although the mythology is a little cheapened, and the pacing is plodding. I don't like rewatching Revolutions at all, because it's far too over-the-top. There's no substance.
Do the LOTR movies stand as a work on their own? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, they can't be considered their own work: they are an adaptation of another work. But on the other hand, they are well executed and digestable by people who have not read the books.
*Disclaimer: I refuse to comment on whether or not Return of the King deserved best picture, either by its own right or as a proxy for the entire trilogy. The five movies nominated were so totally and utterly diverse that comparing them to each other would be a waste of time. There was no "single winner" in that category this year.
Yes, LaGrange points (or libration points, in mathspeak) are valuable interplanetary jump points. They're already far out of the gravity well, so very little energy needs to be expended to go somewhere. They are relatively easy to get to from Earth orbit, if you have the fuel, and they are stable locations, which makes communications much easier.
In fact, they might very well be what we're looking for in terms of getting around the solar system. Read up on the Interplanetary SuperHighway, which is just a series of low-energy corridors connecting all the LaGrange points in the solar system (there are five LaGrange points per two-body system -- we would most likely use Earth-Moon L1, which is directly between the Earth and Moon, as our manned launchpad).
wouldn't a base in orbit around earth be more practical?
As opposed to that giant thing orbiting the earth called 'The Moon'?
You seem to be forgetting about orbital distances. The ISS orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 500 km. The moon orbits at an average altitude of 378,000 km. (Analogy: the difference between traveling three miles to the grocery store or from Chicago to Los Angeles.)
Any weapon fired from the moon would have tremendous difficulties. A rocket-based weapon, such as an ICBM (IPBM?), would take 3 to 4 days to reach the Earth. One we fire from Earth could reach its target in a matter of minutes. Any laser-based or beam-based weapon would also have big problems, since the Earth, seen from the moon, only covers about 2 degrees of the sky. Aiming at a target on the Earth would require an instrument of incredibly high precision, and any such sensitive equipment would be exceedingly difficult to set up on the moon.
The moon is not strategic militarily. But I would agree that going to the moon as a jump-off point to Mars is a bit pointless, and it only made sense in the 1950s scifi books. Why leave one gravity well, just to land in another and have to overcome it again? The surface of the moon is every bit as unforgiving as orbit, since there's no insulating atmosphere. True, it has gravity, but that dust gets EVERYWHERE. It would make far more sense to do everything in orbit: build the spacecraft, fuel it, launch it, return it. Just stay out of the gravity well as long as possible.
So Michael has this fabulously fast machine, one that rivals the computing power of God Himself, and he uses it to...
- Play games? No time. He's an executive. - Compile sophisticated code? Hahahahaha.... - Find the billionth digit of pi? You've got to be kidding.
No, most likely he simply...
- Types emails in Outlook (perhaps with bold text) - Writes memos and other executive-type papers in Word - Surfs the internet - Uses Dell's in-house accounting software - Makes pretty presentations in PowerPoint
But then again, probably 80%* of the desktop population has many magnitudes more machine than they require. I'm waiting for the day when a computer company realizes that a computer does not have to be the end-all electronic appliance in a home. A glorified toaster for Office, web browsing, and email would suffice for the masses, if they can get their gaming fix from a console. Those of us with real computing needs can get the real computers.
Hopefully, it is not that harmful, but I suspect that gleeful killing of innocents may not be a good thing to practice in a fantasy setting. Can you state unequivically that your mental state is unaffected by it?
No, I can't, but I also can't say that my "mental state" is uneffected by other forms of media as well: movies, television, books, etc. The difference is that I am mature enough to handle the difference between fantasy and reality. Parenting is about knowing what your child has access to and helping them to know that difference. Part of knowing what they have access to is paying attention to the various rating systems for video games, movies, and television shows (none yet for books, but that's what librarians are for: recommending quality reading material for your children).
...I don't play GTA and I don't let my kids play rated M games.
That's a good philosophy. I wouldn't let my kids play M-rated games, either, if I had kids. What I find offensive about parents who try to decry video games based on content is that they act like the rating system isn't even there. Apparently rating a game "Mature - 17+" means that it's not the parents' fault if their 6-year-old is playing it. Parents don't complain about R rated movies, because they know that the movies are only for mature audiences, who can handle the themes without emulating them.
Perhaps it's time for the ESRB to change their rating scheme to match that of the movies, since many parents don't seem to get it. Parents apparently already know what G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 stand for and mean, but they are clueless about EC, E, T, M, and AO, which mean exactly the same things. It's a 1:1 translation.
Agreed. When most people talk about jobs/money being lost to free software, they are talking about licensing software, not developing it. There's a huge difference.
As the OSS community becomes more powerful in the commercial marketplace, software licensing is going to become archaic. Companies will not spend millions of dollars producing closed-source software and then sell the customer one license per copy. This model flies in the face of digital media: there is no "hard copy" and it costs (basically) nothing to produce more of the same. The customer ends up paying only for R&D costs, since there is no manufacturing to speak of. Additionally, the fact that the software is closed source means that there will, by nature, be compatibility issues with other software required to interact with it. For general software (OSs, databases, web servers, etc.) this would require either a). the company must spend a bunch more money documenting ways to interact with their software for other developers (APIs and such) or b). they must spend the money to produce all the other software which interacts with their product (as Microsoft has done, to a large extent). All of this costs the customer a bundle, since the price of each license skyrockets to accomodate the high R&D costs. And the customers aren't going to want to buy it if a F/OSS product which accomplishes the same function is available.
Now let's look at a world where licensing is a thing of the past. All the general software packages used by a majority of the population (OSs, browsers, office suites, databases, web servers, and so on) are developed by OSS programmers around the world and distributed via a license that allows their use within proprietary software. Suddenly, development of additional software becomes easier, since the codebase they will need to interact with is freely available. Customers using this software do not have to pay exhorbitant licensing fees, and can pump that savings into their own product, software or otherwise.
"But what about the developers?", you ask.
In this model, developers will no longer be paid to write general use software. They will do that in their free time, via OSS projects. The more people who are involved, the higher quality the products can be without anyone having to dedicate their entire lives to the project. These developers will put food on the table by working on proprietary niche software. Company XYZ, Inc. is in dire need of some software, and their needs are very specific. So specific, in fact, that no F/OSS product exists that could meet their needs. They hire software development firm XSoft to develop their software. The developers working for XSoft are paid by XYZ, Inc. for developing the software. Once XSoft delivers the software and completes the contract, XYZ, Inc. can use that software in any way they see fit (subject to the terms of the contract signed before development). They will not have to license it from XSoft, since XYZ, Inc. actually owns the sofware. XSoft was only paid to develop it.
Without commercial licenses, software companies become contract firms, not manufacturers. Members of these firms will likely choose at some point in their career to donate their time to some pro-bono software work, i.e., F/OSS projects. Many software companies already are firms, and they are the ones who are going to continue to find work, long after the world has stopped purchasing high-priced licenses for closed-source code in lieu of free software that works just as well.
> This is interesting considering Google is not even W3C compliant.
Yes, but take a look at the *nature* of their non-compliance. They don't have a !DOCTYPE declaration, but when I substitute an HTML 4.01 Transitional for them, the only errors I get are: missing "type" attribute on <style> and <script> tags, and missing quotes around all other tags' attributes. That's all. So even though they are not following the exact letter of the W3C compliance, they still write incredibly good code that renders properly in every browser on the planet, without having to resort to gimmicks like alternate stylesheets.
Their search results page seems to have similar results. The only additional mistakes I saw were a few missing "alt" attribtes in an <img> tag, a few <img> tags without "src" attributes (they are 1px x 1px placeholders), and some nesting issues with <tr>, <td> and <form> tags. These are a little more serious, but are easily changed within the page generation script.
Perhaps as a community, Slashdot should email suggestions@google.com and recommend W3C compliance. A few small changes in the code will help Google become a forerunner in standards compliance. Google already does many, many things right... why not add standards compliance?
There is only a need for so many doctor (even that they can do remotely these days) or burger flippers.
Have you seen the kitchen of a McDonald's lately? The griddle they cook the burgers on folds in half like a waffle iron to cook both sides at once, so the patties take less time to cook (I imagine other fast-food places will follow suit, if they haven't already). The burgers don't need to be flipped. Even the American bastion of lowest-common-denominator-ism, the noble McDonald's burger-flipper, is now defunct. What is the world coming to, when even our stereotypes are becoming obsolete?
The ends of each hamster tube (the ones colored blue and yellow) each contain a distance sensor. The three pairs of tubes represent the three voices in the music. For each voice, once hamster controls the speed of the notes being played, and the other hamster controls the note choice (both based on the hamster's distance from the sensor). So as the hamsters move around, the note choices and note speeds change, which changes the music. Obviously, the note being played is not directly proportional to the distance, or the music would be disonant. More likely, they chose a set of notes in a chord to play in a sequence: when the hamster is between distance x and distance y, use notes x, y, and z.
Tough, in this case, does not include flogging, stoning, hanging, or electrocution. Having to spend a few years all by your lonesome is quite sufficient.
Yes, but unfortunately, the vast majority of the murderers and rapists (the premeditating type, at any rate) spend most of their time "all by their lonesome," quietly going mad and justifying their own actions to themselves. Even if they're surrounded by other people, they're still in their own little world. Making them sit by themselves for a few (dozen) years will not rehabilitate them. Either we have to keep them locked up for life (which costs the taxpayers a bundle) or we just get rid of them. (Any and all organized crime or gang activity is not included in the above comment -- they are a different category altogether.)
There are no simple solutions for these compex problems. Kill the offenders off, and the anti-death penalty types cry foul: "you're playing God!" Reform the prisons into places that are truly punishment (to reduce costs), and the civil liberties camp cries foul: "cruel and unusual!" Say that you will rehabilitate society instead of the criminals, and the taxpayers cry foul: "you're taking too much of our money to give to inner city schools full of kids who will be arrested later in life anyway!" Decide to impose highly restrictive measures on the entire populace to deter crime, and innocent people cry foul: "I'm not breathing into a damn tube every 200 miles in order to drive my car!"
Obviously, these are all extremes. Balance needs to be found. But what worries me is that a couple of these extremes seem to be falling neatly into place...
I'd probably lend my time to The JusTeX Foundation, an OSS group building automated judging software called JusTeX (which uses the TeX engine for all the legal documents). Such software would be a little harder to operate, but it would be fair to everyone and very stable. With our luck, though, 95% of courtrooms would be using MS Justice, which would have slick graphics and commercial tie-ins, but would crash regularly and set you free only if you gave it a big bag of cash.
Spammers are conscious of this and their continuing to do it is an indication of sociopathic behavior.
It's not sociopathic, it's just plain and simple economics.
The spammer makes $200 a day off those four bottles of pills, but he spent far less than that (per day) on all of his servers, purchased scripts, purchased email lists, and internet time. Spam is, unfortunately, the ultimate in advertising. "Have millions of people see your product for thousandths of pennies on the dollar!" It makes people money, so they will continue to do it. I doubt they have grand master plans to rob the world of $100,000 in time.
Besides, calculations of wasted money based on time spent really becomes a moot point when the timespans get too low (like 5 seconds). Now, the money wasted because the sysadmin for the company spends hours installing and upgrading spam protection software, or writing his/her own scripts, is money worth complaining about. Or downtime on the servers because of spam floods, or lost productivity due to viral spams, or... well, you get the idea.
Agreed, but spend some time working with the average Windows consumer in techsupport, and you'll see how ridiculous these names have gotten: these people will tell you, in all seriousness, that their operating system is Dell, their browser is the Start menu, they write letters in Windows 97, and their ISP is Internet Explorer. Imagine their confusion in a couple of years when Microsoft finally gets around to releasing Windows 2005. The consumers will ask, "but what happened to Longhorn? I thought that was supposed to be the cool one..."
That being said, Lindows is in clear violation of the trademark, since they created their name with the intention of sounding similar and taking business away from Microsoft. I didn't like Lindows' approach (always root, claiming Plug 'n Play works, etc.) and of course I think Microsoft is a bully, but the case was pretty clear.
Bullies sueing sleazeballs -- we should sell tickets.
Re:Only so much carbon...
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Space Burial
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· Score: 1
By the way, the largest diamond they offer is 1 Carat, which is 0.2 grams. Which could easily be fired into space.
Re:NASA-esque mistake!
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Space Burial
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In fact, the masses of the two bodies cancel out of the equations entirely. The only quantities needed to determine an orbit are velocity and distance.
The only thing changing the mass of one of the bodies would do is to slightly shift the barycenter of the two-body system. Since the Sun is so much larger than the Earth, the Earth-Sun barycenter is currently very, very close to the center of the Sun (on the order of inches).
Re:Only so much carbon...
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Space Burial
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So, in the future, you can get involved in petty wars with pirated versions of yourself.
You'd think that the MPAAC (Mercenary Protection Association of Alpha Centauri) would jump on that.
Re:slingshot...
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Space Burial
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Your bit about gaining velocity by slingshotting around a planet is spot on. The orbital energy you gain is the same as the orbital energy the planet loses, but since the planet is so massive, it's velocity hardly changes at all (Kinetic energy is one-half the mass times the velocity squared... and the planet's mass certainly doesn't change during the manouver).
Flybys work like this: The planet you are approaching is orbiting the sun at some velocity (about 30 km/s for the Earth). As you approach, you enter the planet's "sphere of influence," meaning the distance at which the effect of the planet's gravity on you is stronger than the effect of the Sun's gravity. Your velocity when you enter the SOI determines the curve of the hyperbolic orbit around the planet. You fly around the planet and exit the SOI at a different angle than when you started. Your exit velocity will be the sum of your hyperbolic velocity (with respect to the planet) and the planet's velocity (with respect to the Sun). Picture throwing a ball off a moving train, and measuring the speed of that ball from the ground, not moving. Throw the ball forward at speed x with respect to the train, and it's moving faster than the train with respect to the ground, and vice versa. You can tailor your exit and entry angles as to adjust your overall velocity (since entry and exit velocity with respect to the planet are both the same).
Of course, the same thing happens around the sun, but since we never leave the Sun's SOI (with the possible exception of deep space probes) we can't adjust our velocity with respect to it. In other words, in order for a spacecraft to "slingshot around the Sun" it would have to have started on an orbit around the center of the Galaxy and entered the Sun's SOI, nearly perpendicular to the Sun's galactic orbit, and exit the Sun's SOI moving forward along the Sun's galactic orbit.
All of the above assumes a completely unpowered orbital trajectory. If the spacecraft were to fire engines at any point, the story would change dramatically.
By the way, I'm an Aerospace Engineering graduate student with experience in orbital mechanics courses.
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher.
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Comic Book Physics
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Hmmm. So when Neo caught Trinity, it would have been like she was getting hit with a Neo-sized rifle bullet. In a best-case scenario, she simply breaks every bone in her body, not counting the bullet wound she got before she was caught. (I'm not sure I want to think about the worst-case scenario-- bug on a windshield, anyone?)
OK, so she breaks bones in the Matrix. According to Morpheus, "Your body makes it real." So would her bones spontaneously crack as she was sitting in the chair? Aside from the sheer creepiness factor (imagine Link's reaction to the horrible cracking noise) that just doesn't seem possible, even for the diehard mind-over-matter sect. Dying I can see... since as you die, your "mind" -- meaning the thought processes (perhaps soul), not the physical brain matter -- leaves your body. In Neo's case, he floated around the hallway for a bit and then found his way back to his body. Injuries, on the other hand... you may ache when you wake up, but I find it hard to believe that a bone would spontaneously break.
On the other hand, if it happened fast enough, Trinity's mind would not be able to comprehend what just happened, and it would be as if it never did. Which is probably what happened.
I agree that there are problems with such a system. Keeping components on Earth is always much easier than doing it in space, especially if they are sensitive electronics.
However NASA does have two compelling reasons: the rotation of the Earth and the rotation of Mars.
Without satellite relays, if the probes are on the opposite side of Mars, they have to wait several hours before the Earth is in view again to transmit or receive data. On the same token, in order for NASA to transmit or receive that data, they have to use an antenna which is on the Mars side of the Earth: because the rotations are not the same, the region of Earth suitable for Mars transmission will process around the planet slowly (Mars' day is only about 35 minutes longer than Earth's). So right now, NASA is required to lease space on antennas all over the world and retransmit through them.
It would probably be much easier for them to have a full satellite network in place for all their Earth-Mars transmissions. A couple of satellites in Earth geosync and several in Martian geosync would really simplify data transmission. Set up a few standardized, open protocols for other space agencies to use, and presto!... MarsNet.
USA Today, is right, though. The lag time between Earth and Mars is anywhere between 3 and 22 minutes when Earth and Mars are clostest and farthest away from each other in their orbits.
And I think NASA has had plans to incorporate signal relay satellites for some time. Of course, NASA plans to build many more probes/satellites than actually get launched, so we're just now seeing satellites with relay capabilities. There were plans as far back as 1997 to launch a series of satellites whose only purpose was to relay signals from other spacecraft. Interplanetary routers, if you will. However, due to budget cuts, the capability was instead built into satellites with otherwise scientific payloads.
Slashdot Mirror
There is nothing like DirectX. There is only really OpenGL, which is great and all, but not nearly as complete or well documented as the DirectX api (Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectInput, etc..)
...except that quite a few games are also being released for the MacOS X, which IIRC is based on BSD. Do those games use OpenGL for their graphics, or are they porting to some other proprietary Macintosh graphics API? Not being a regular Mac user, I don't know that much about Mac games, but it seems to me that if MacOS X is based on BSD, porting these games to Linux and a pure OpenGL environment wouldn't be that difficult.
L5 is on the dark side of the moon right?
g range.html
Nope. L5 trails the minor body on its orbit by 60 degrees.
http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/la
<PICK type="nit">
There is no dark side of the moon. Only a far side. (That's why we have new moons -- the sun is shining on the part we can't see.)
</PICK>
That's right, you're guessing. Don't bother to look up facts or anything.
It sounds like you listened to that FOX "scientist" about the moon or something. Go do some reading and learn something.
OK, how about a Bachelor's Degree in Aerospace Engineering? Is that enough reading for you?
And as for the dust, did you ever even watch the moon landings?? Did enormous clouds of dust fly up with Armstrong jumped down to the ground?
The amount of thrust needed to break out of the gravity well has nothing to do with the amount of dust blown up from the ground. If you don't know what you're talking about, just stop talking.
Real facts, for those of you who don't look them up:
A moon base right now doesn't make any sense. It costs far too much money to get materials off the planet. Let's focus on getting inexpensive, reliable access to space* before we plan to set up camp on the moon. The purpose of a moon base is to get Bush reelected. I guarantee he'll scale back or cut the program if he's elected again.
*Obligitory joke: "I like my space access like I like my women: cheap and easy." **ducks**
My opinion is that yes, the LOTR movies really were that good. In the context of highly anticipated trilogies such as LOTR, Matrix, or the SW Prequels, much of a viewer's impression of the movie is based on the hype. How can it not be, when our entire society is oversaturated with tie-in crap? That being said, take a step back from the films and pretend that you have never heard of LOTR before seeing them, and look at them objectively as book adaptations. On that score, they succeeded.
The sheer amount of technical work that went into the movies to create a completely believable world is mind-boggling. A great deal of skill also went into turning a dense, rambling, laboring, symbolist epic into a screen adaptation without losing any of its power, grace, or richness. Jackson struck exactly the right chord with most audiences: his version was easy to follow by people who didn't know the books, yet so chock-full of information as to satisfy even the most die-hard fans of the books.
No movie will ever live up to hype. Ever. Our minds can create expectations that will never be exceeded by the director. Where a movie succeeds despite the hype is how it seems later, when the roar has died down. Rewatching the LOTR films, I get more out of them every time. I pick up on more subtle plot points. I see character relationships I didn't notice before. I see small details. The picture gains depth.
Contrast this rewatching with something like The Matrix trilogy, or the Star Wars Prequels. Every time I rewatch Episodes I and II, I cringe. They are worse with every viewing, far removed from the gee-whiz special effects hype. The original Matrix movie holds up well, but that was back when the Wachowskis were trying to prove themselves. Reloaded still seems ok, although the mythology is a little cheapened, and the pacing is plodding. I don't like rewatching Revolutions at all, because it's far too over-the-top. There's no substance.
Do the LOTR movies stand as a work on their own? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, they can't be considered their own work: they are an adaptation of another work. But on the other hand, they are well executed and digestable by people who have not read the books.
*Disclaimer: I refuse to comment on whether or not Return of the King deserved best picture, either by its own right or as a proxy for the entire trilogy. The five movies nominated were so totally and utterly diverse that comparing them to each other would be a waste of time. There was no "single winner" in that category this year.
Yes, LaGrange points (or libration points, in mathspeak) are valuable interplanetary jump points. They're already far out of the gravity well, so very little energy needs to be expended to go somewhere. They are relatively easy to get to from Earth orbit, if you have the fuel, and they are stable locations, which makes communications much easier.
In fact, they might very well be what we're looking for in terms of getting around the solar system. Read up on the Interplanetary SuperHighway, which is just a series of low-energy corridors connecting all the LaGrange points in the solar system (there are five LaGrange points per two-body system -- we would most likely use Earth-Moon L1, which is directly between the Earth and Moon, as our manned launchpad).
Google's findings for the Interplanetary SuperHighway
wouldn't a base in orbit around earth be more practical?
As opposed to that giant thing orbiting the earth called 'The Moon'?
You seem to be forgetting about orbital distances. The ISS orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 500 km. The moon orbits at an average altitude of 378,000 km. (Analogy: the difference between traveling three miles to the grocery store or from Chicago to Los Angeles.)
Any weapon fired from the moon would have tremendous difficulties. A rocket-based weapon, such as an ICBM (IPBM?), would take 3 to 4 days to reach the Earth. One we fire from Earth could reach its target in a matter of minutes. Any laser-based or beam-based weapon would also have big problems, since the Earth, seen from the moon, only covers about 2 degrees of the sky. Aiming at a target on the Earth would require an instrument of incredibly high precision, and any such sensitive equipment would be exceedingly difficult to set up on the moon.
The moon is not strategic militarily. But I would agree that going to the moon as a jump-off point to Mars is a bit pointless, and it only made sense in the 1950s scifi books. Why leave one gravity well, just to land in another and have to overcome it again? The surface of the moon is every bit as unforgiving as orbit, since there's no insulating atmosphere. True, it has gravity, but that dust gets EVERYWHERE. It would make far more sense to do everything in orbit: build the spacecraft, fuel it, launch it, return it. Just stay out of the gravity well as long as possible.
So Michael has this fabulously fast machine, one that rivals the computing power of God Himself, and he uses it to...
- Play games? No time. He's an executive.
- Compile sophisticated code? Hahahahaha....
- Find the billionth digit of pi? You've got to be kidding.
No, most likely he simply...
- Types emails in Outlook (perhaps with bold text)
- Writes memos and other executive-type papers in Word
- Surfs the internet
- Uses Dell's in-house accounting software
- Makes pretty presentations in PowerPoint
But then again, probably 80%* of the desktop population has many magnitudes more machine than they require. I'm waiting for the day when a computer company realizes that a computer does not have to be the end-all electronic appliance in a home. A glorified toaster for Office, web browsing, and email would suffice for the masses, if they can get their gaming fix from a console. Those of us with real computing needs can get the real computers.
* Warning! Made-up statistic!
Hopefully, it is not that harmful, but I suspect that gleeful killing of innocents may not be a good thing to practice in a fantasy setting. Can you state unequivically that your mental state is unaffected by it?
...I don't play GTA and I don't let my kids play rated M games.
No, I can't, but I also can't say that my "mental state" is uneffected by other forms of media as well: movies, television, books, etc. The difference is that I am mature enough to handle the difference between fantasy and reality. Parenting is about knowing what your child has access to and helping them to know that difference. Part of knowing what they have access to is paying attention to the various rating systems for video games, movies, and television shows (none yet for books, but that's what librarians are for: recommending quality reading material for your children).
That's a good philosophy. I wouldn't let my kids play M-rated games, either, if I had kids. What I find offensive about parents who try to decry video games based on content is that they act like the rating system isn't even there. Apparently rating a game "Mature - 17+" means that it's not the parents' fault if their 6-year-old is playing it. Parents don't complain about R rated movies, because they know that the movies are only for mature audiences, who can handle the themes without emulating them.
Perhaps it's time for the ESRB to change their rating scheme to match that of the movies, since many parents don't seem to get it. Parents apparently already know what G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 stand for and mean, but they are clueless about EC, E, T, M, and AO, which mean exactly the same things. It's a 1:1 translation.
Agreed. When most people talk about jobs/money being lost to free software, they are talking about licensing software, not developing it. There's a huge difference.
As the OSS community becomes more powerful in the commercial marketplace, software licensing is going to become archaic. Companies will not spend millions of dollars producing closed-source software and then sell the customer one license per copy. This model flies in the face of digital media: there is no "hard copy" and it costs (basically) nothing to produce more of the same. The customer ends up paying only for R&D costs, since there is no manufacturing to speak of. Additionally, the fact that the software is closed source means that there will, by nature, be compatibility issues with other software required to interact with it. For general software (OSs, databases, web servers, etc.) this would require either a). the company must spend a bunch more money documenting ways to interact with their software for other developers (APIs and such) or b). they must spend the money to produce all the other software which interacts with their product (as Microsoft has done, to a large extent). All of this costs the customer a bundle, since the price of each license skyrockets to accomodate the high R&D costs. And the customers aren't going to want to buy it if a F/OSS product which accomplishes the same function is available.
Now let's look at a world where licensing is a thing of the past. All the general software packages used by a majority of the population (OSs, browsers, office suites, databases, web servers, and so on) are developed by OSS programmers around the world and distributed via a license that allows their use within proprietary software. Suddenly, development of additional software becomes easier, since the codebase they will need to interact with is freely available. Customers using this software do not have to pay exhorbitant licensing fees, and can pump that savings into their own product, software or otherwise.
"But what about the developers?", you ask.
In this model, developers will no longer be paid to write general use software. They will do that in their free time, via OSS projects. The more people who are involved, the higher quality the products can be without anyone having to dedicate their entire lives to the project. These developers will put food on the table by working on proprietary niche software. Company XYZ, Inc. is in dire need of some software, and their needs are very specific. So specific, in fact, that no F/OSS product exists that could meet their needs. They hire software development firm XSoft to develop their software. The developers working for XSoft are paid by XYZ, Inc. for developing the software. Once XSoft delivers the software and completes the contract, XYZ, Inc. can use that software in any way they see fit (subject to the terms of the contract signed before development). They will not have to license it from XSoft, since XYZ, Inc. actually owns the sofware. XSoft was only paid to develop it.
Without commercial licenses, software companies become contract firms, not manufacturers. Members of these firms will likely choose at some point in their career to donate their time to some pro-bono software work, i.e., F/OSS projects. Many software companies already are firms, and they are the ones who are going to continue to find work, long after the world has stopped purchasing high-priced licenses for closed-source code in lieu of free software that works just as well.
a kind of CG coffee-table-book
**pops Episode II into the DVD player**
**mute**
Ahh, that's much better.
> This is interesting considering Google is not even W3C compliant.
Yes, but take a look at the *nature* of their non-compliance. They don't have a !DOCTYPE declaration, but when I substitute an HTML 4.01 Transitional for them, the only errors I get are: missing "type" attribute on <style> and <script> tags, and missing quotes around all other tags' attributes. That's all. So even though they are not following the exact letter of the W3C compliance, they still write incredibly good code that renders properly in every browser on the planet, without having to resort to gimmicks like alternate stylesheets.
Their search results page seems to have similar results. The only additional mistakes I saw were a few missing "alt" attribtes in an <img> tag, a few <img> tags without "src" attributes (they are 1px x 1px placeholders), and some nesting issues with <tr>, <td> and <form> tags. These are a little more serious, but are easily changed within the page generation script.
Perhaps as a community, Slashdot should email suggestions@google.com and recommend W3C compliance. A few small changes in the code will help Google become a forerunner in standards compliance. Google already does many, many things right... why not add standards compliance?
There is only a need for so many doctor (even that they can do remotely these days) or burger flippers.
Have you seen the kitchen of a McDonald's lately? The griddle they cook the burgers on folds in half like a waffle iron to cook both sides at once, so the patties take less time to cook (I imagine other fast-food places will follow suit, if they haven't already). The burgers don't need to be flipped. Even the American bastion of lowest-common-denominator-ism, the noble McDonald's burger-flipper, is now defunct. What is the world coming to, when even our stereotypes are becoming obsolete?
The ends of each hamster tube (the ones colored blue and yellow) each contain a distance sensor. The three pairs of tubes represent the three voices in the music. For each voice, once hamster controls the speed of the notes being played, and the other hamster controls the note choice (both based on the hamster's distance from the sensor). So as the hamsters move around, the note choices and note speeds change, which changes the music. Obviously, the note being played is not directly proportional to the distance, or the music would be disonant. More likely, they chose a set of notes in a chord to play in a sequence: when the hamster is between distance x and distance y, use notes x, y, and z.
Please give credit where Mr. Zappa's credit is due.
Tough, in this case, does not include flogging, stoning, hanging, or electrocution. Having to spend a few years all by your lonesome is quite sufficient.
Yes, but unfortunately, the vast majority of the murderers and rapists (the premeditating type, at any rate) spend most of their time "all by their lonesome," quietly going mad and justifying their own actions to themselves. Even if they're surrounded by other people, they're still in their own little world. Making them sit by themselves for a few (dozen) years will not rehabilitate them. Either we have to keep them locked up for life (which costs the taxpayers a bundle) or we just get rid of them. (Any and all organized crime or gang activity is not included in the above comment -- they are a different category altogether.)
There are no simple solutions for these compex problems. Kill the offenders off, and the anti-death penalty types cry foul: "you're playing God!" Reform the prisons into places that are truly punishment (to reduce costs), and the civil liberties camp cries foul: "cruel and unusual!" Say that you will rehabilitate society instead of the criminals, and the taxpayers cry foul: "you're taking too much of our money to give to inner city schools full of kids who will be arrested later in life anyway!" Decide to impose highly restrictive measures on the entire populace to deter crime, and innocent people cry foul: "I'm not breathing into a damn tube every 200 miles in order to drive my car!"
Obviously, these are all extremes. Balance needs to be found. But what worries me is that a couple of these extremes seem to be falling neatly into place...
This will always be a problem as long as humans control the justice system for their government.
So we'll just have to wait until the computers can deal out justice.
I'd probably lend my time to The JusTeX Foundation, an OSS group building automated judging software called JusTeX (which uses the TeX engine for all the legal documents). Such software would be a little harder to operate, but it would be fair to everyone and very stable. With our luck, though, 95% of courtrooms would be using MS Justice, which would have slick graphics and commercial tie-ins, but would crash regularly and set you free only if you gave it a big bag of cash.
Spammers are conscious of this and their continuing to do it is an indication of sociopathic behavior.
... well, you get the idea.
It's not sociopathic, it's just plain and simple economics.
The spammer makes $200 a day off those four bottles of pills, but he spent far less than that (per day) on all of his servers, purchased scripts, purchased email lists, and internet time. Spam is, unfortunately, the ultimate in advertising. "Have millions of people see your product for thousandths of pennies on the dollar!" It makes people money, so they will continue to do it. I doubt they have grand master plans to rob the world of $100,000 in time.
Besides, calculations of wasted money based on time spent really becomes a moot point when the timespans get too low (like 5 seconds). Now, the money wasted because the sysadmin for the company spends hours installing and upgrading spam protection software, or writing his/her own scripts, is money worth complaining about. Or downtime on the servers because of spam floods, or lost productivity due to viral spams, or
Winamp is rather dissimlar from Windows.
Agreed, but spend some time working with the average Windows consumer in techsupport, and you'll see how ridiculous these names have gotten: these people will tell you, in all seriousness, that their operating system is Dell, their browser is the Start menu, they write letters in Windows 97, and their ISP is Internet Explorer. Imagine their confusion in a couple of years when Microsoft finally gets around to releasing Windows 2005. The consumers will ask, "but what happened to Longhorn? I thought that was supposed to be the cool one..."
That being said, Lindows is in clear violation of the trademark, since they created their name with the intention of sounding similar and taking business away from Microsoft. I didn't like Lindows' approach (always root, claiming Plug 'n Play works, etc.) and of course I think Microsoft is a bully, but the case was pretty clear.
Bullies sueing sleazeballs -- we should sell tickets.
And now you can.
By the way, the largest diamond they offer is 1 Carat, which is 0.2 grams. Which could easily be fired into space.
In fact, the masses of the two bodies cancel out of the equations entirely. The only quantities needed to determine an orbit are velocity and distance.
The only thing changing the mass of one of the bodies would do is to slightly shift the barycenter of the two-body system. Since the Sun is so much larger than the Earth, the Earth-Sun barycenter is currently very, very close to the center of the Sun (on the order of inches).
So, in the future, you can get involved in petty wars with pirated versions of yourself.
You'd think that the MPAAC (Mercenary Protection Association of Alpha Centauri) would jump on that.
Your bit about gaining velocity by slingshotting around a planet is spot on. The orbital energy you gain is the same as the orbital energy the planet loses, but since the planet is so massive, it's velocity hardly changes at all (Kinetic energy is one-half the mass times the velocity squared ... and the planet's mass certainly doesn't change during the manouver).
Flybys work like this: The planet you are approaching is orbiting the sun at some velocity (about 30 km/s for the Earth). As you approach, you enter the planet's "sphere of influence," meaning the distance at which the effect of the planet's gravity on you is stronger than the effect of the Sun's gravity. Your velocity when you enter the SOI determines the curve of the hyperbolic orbit around the planet. You fly around the planet and exit the SOI at a different angle than when you started. Your exit velocity will be the sum of your hyperbolic velocity (with respect to the planet) and the planet's velocity (with respect to the Sun). Picture throwing a ball off a moving train, and measuring the speed of that ball from the ground, not moving. Throw the ball forward at speed x with respect to the train, and it's moving faster than the train with respect to the ground, and vice versa. You can tailor your exit and entry angles as to adjust your overall velocity (since entry and exit velocity with respect to the planet are both the same).
Of course, the same thing happens around the sun, but since we never leave the Sun's SOI (with the possible exception of deep space probes) we can't adjust our velocity with respect to it. In other words, in order for a spacecraft to "slingshot around the Sun" it would have to have started on an orbit around the center of the Galaxy and entered the Sun's SOI, nearly perpendicular to the Sun's galactic orbit, and exit the Sun's SOI moving forward along the Sun's galactic orbit.
All of the above assumes a completely unpowered orbital trajectory. If the spacecraft were to fire engines at any point, the story would change dramatically.
By the way, I'm an Aerospace Engineering graduate student with experience in orbital mechanics courses.
Hmmm. So when Neo caught Trinity, it would have been like she was getting hit with a Neo-sized rifle bullet. In a best-case scenario, she simply breaks every bone in her body, not counting the bullet wound she got before she was caught. (I'm not sure I want to think about the worst-case scenario-- bug on a windshield, anyone?)
... you may ache when you wake up, but I find it hard to believe that a bone would spontaneously break.
OK, so she breaks bones in the Matrix. According to Morpheus, "Your body makes it real." So would her bones spontaneously crack as she was sitting in the chair? Aside from the sheer creepiness factor (imagine Link's reaction to the horrible cracking noise) that just doesn't seem possible, even for the diehard mind-over-matter sect. Dying I can see... since as you die, your "mind" -- meaning the thought processes (perhaps soul), not the physical brain matter -- leaves your body. In Neo's case, he floated around the hallway for a bit and then found his way back to his body. Injuries, on the other hand
On the other hand, if it happened fast enough, Trinity's mind would not be able to comprehend what just happened, and it would be as if it never did. Which is probably what happened.
I agree that there are problems with such a system. Keeping components on Earth is always much easier than doing it in space, especially if they are sensitive electronics.
... MarsNet.
However NASA does have two compelling reasons: the rotation of the Earth and the rotation of Mars.
Without satellite relays, if the probes are on the opposite side of Mars, they have to wait several hours before the Earth is in view again to transmit or receive data. On the same token, in order for NASA to transmit or receive that data, they have to use an antenna which is on the Mars side of the Earth: because the rotations are not the same, the region of Earth suitable for Mars transmission will process around the planet slowly (Mars' day is only about 35 minutes longer than Earth's). So right now, NASA is required to lease space on antennas all over the world and retransmit through them.
It would probably be much easier for them to have a full satellite network in place for all their Earth-Mars transmissions. A couple of satellites in Earth geosync and several in Martian geosync would really simplify data transmission. Set up a few standardized, open protocols for other space agencies to use, and presto!
USA Today, is right, though. The lag time between Earth and Mars is anywhere between 3 and 22 minutes when Earth and Mars are clostest and farthest away from each other in their orbits.
And I think NASA has had plans to incorporate signal relay satellites for some time. Of course, NASA plans to build many more probes/satellites than actually get launched, so we're just now seeing satellites with relay capabilities. There were plans as far back as 1997 to launch a series of satellites whose only purpose was to relay signals from other spacecraft. Interplanetary routers, if you will. However, due to budget cuts, the capability was instead built into satellites with otherwise scientific payloads.