I'm no quantum physicist either, but it seems to me that a cloak is a cloak... Consider a man wearing black clothing hiding in a dark room. You try to find him with a flashlight, just like you'd try to find the molecules in the cloak. So if you tried, one of two things would happen:
1. You wouldn't detect the molecules because of the cloak.
2. You'd detect them and the cloak would be a failure.
Certainly nothing of universe-imploding significance, I think.
It's one of the major failing points for me. If I wanted something that duplicated (most of) the virtues and downfalls of paper, I'd just go buy paper books. The only thing the Kindle has over paper books is portability; you can carry a good number of books in one (relatively) convenient package.
What I'd really like to see is an ebook reader that takes the good things from paper and gives you the benefits of electronics.
For me, this means:
1. Backlight that can be turned on/adjusted for dark conditions.
2. High-enough resolution for necessary pictures and diagrams. Color would be nice. A battery drain when using color is acceptable.
3. The ability to write on each page.
4. Compatibility with a wide variety of formats.
5. A much, much lower cost than the Kindle. Books are read in all kinds of environments; the Kindle's cost keeps it from being usable in those environments unless you're fearless and/or made of money.
I might not be the norm, but this is what it'll take for me to buy an ebook reader of some kind. After all, what's the point of an upgrade that's not really an upgrade at all?
Besides, my laptop works fine. I read news on it all the time, so I have absolutely no problems reading books on it. Perhaps the problems a lot of people have stem from the fact that they're stretching text across a 20" screen and scanning that far tires their eyes. Make margins, resize the window so that the text covers a reasonable area -- perhaps you'll find reading more enjoyable then.
The summary seems to make it a lot more revolutionary than I think it is. It's not like the temple represents definite evidence that the current way of thinking is/wrong/. I'm not an anthropologist, but it seems to me like you could make a monument and then a city to support it as well as the other way around; there's no reason it has to be one way or another.
I'm sure that for every Stonehenge in the middle of nowhere, there's a Colosseum in the middle of a city.
Isn't Red Eagle the company that was producing the Wheel of Time comic but ended up stopping because of financial reasons? I'd hesistate to invest money in playing a MMO funded by them unless I knew it was going to be around for a while.
A great board game and apparently a great XBox Live Arcade game as well. I'd imagine that there are other versions floating around too.
Absolutely no combat (unless you get Cities and Knights, the expansion), just building, trading, and negotiation. Great fun.
Obama has several kinds of experience with the education system going for him, since he's been through it a lot more recently than McCain, he worked at a university, and he's got daughters going to school right now. McCain is so old that I can't help but feel he's out of touch with how education works in America now.
How does attaching your name and sacrificing your privacy affect your contribution to the world? It doesn't. They still have your personal history and genome. You could name yourself "Bruce Wayne" and the data would still be the data.
It's great for a nomadic lifestyle and all, but isn't there something like a concept of property that prevents you from just up and going somewhere else? If you own all the land, then it's not very nomadic and odds are that you're not moving very much.
I'm curious about how the new battle.net is going to be affecting both the original Starcraft and Diablo II. Odds are that when the sequels come out, a lot of people will go to those, but some of us may still want to play the originals. Will it be possible to do that on the new Battle.net? What about Open?
Or will the two simply be run in tandem? Or will Starcraft and Diablo II enter the realm of the unsupported?
It struck me as odd that he talks about how some things are better for the environment, but one of the much-lauded advances is the "Brick" process, which, as Ars puts it, is a "manufacturing process that starts with a 2.5 pound slab of aluminum that is then whittled down to a . . . quarter of a pound."
Does this seem incredibly wasteful to anyone else?
Reprap seems relatively low-quality... it would be interesting to see if people start making reprap parts using this service, though, since most people don't have access to someone who already has a printer that could extrude the parts for them.
I hope not. Look at the cell phone -- it started as a brick that worked as a phone, now it's some kind of converged monstrosity. My (Japanese) phone is a phone, address book, calendar, voice memo recorder, GPS device/navigation system, television, music player, game console, web browsing device, and e-mail device. Every time you see someone talk about cell phones on slashdot, they usually go on to say "I just want a simple damn phone, now get off my lawn!"
I don't want to be thinking that about music players two or three years from now.
Then again, look at the iPod Touch/iPhone... web browsers, music players, video players, gaming devices... sigh.
I personally think that when you're dealing with something like cancer, even if the computer-assisted detection is ALMOST as good as two humans, it's still not good enough to be used on a regular basis.
It's all well and good to say that it's almost as good as two humans together, but I'm sure the couple of dozens of people who slip through the cracks would have something to say to the contrary.
I mean, imagine if you had two bullet-proof vests -- one with multiple layers that let bullets through 23 out of 10,000 times, and one with a lightweight, high-tech material that let bullets through 89 out of 10,000 times. Would you really want to go with the latter?
Just some stupid math, but if you figure that you had a 40 GB HD when you had 128 MB RAM, you'd need 256 MB for swap space; that's about.006% of your hard drive. Windows installs were also correspondingly smaller at that time.
Now, if you suppose that someone has 4 GB RAM and a 750 GB drive, they'd be using 8 GB for swap space, which represents about.011% of their hard drive... and Windows installs, games, and applications are much bigger.
HOWEVER, if you look at smaller drive sizes, which are still common in the modern day -- I know plenty of people who just use 120 GB or 200 GB drives; not everyone likes all their eggs in one basket.
8 GB swap on a 120 GB drive represents about.07% of the drive. On a 200 GB drive, it represents about.04% of the drive. Still and order of magnitude larger than was required back when "swap space should be double your amount of RAM" was a standard rule of thumb.
This kind of technology would be absolutely fantastic for them if they were to set up some kind of outpost on the moon or Mars. They could also probably work on it and use it for their vehicles and the ISS too, though NASA may not be involved in that for much longer.
The Netherlands have various kinds of incredibly costly structures erected to prevent those 1 in 100 year events that you seem to scoff at. Sure, they could just sit around waiting for one to happen and clean up after the mess by pumping out the water and holding it back again after a flood, but I doubt anyone would really want to live there knowing that it could happen to their grandkids because the government was too cheap to protect them.
On one hand, I agree that it would be simple enough to appease the fans by doing that, and of course it would probably get a few more people to buy the product in the end, but the other thing to consider is that it compromises artistic integrity.
Sure, it's what the people want, but in this case, the game designers are the artists trying to present their particular view of THEIR product to the world; it's not supposed to appeal to everyone, as much as it would be nice if that happened, from a commercial point of view. Of course, whether or not video games are art is still being debated, but I don't think it particularly matters in this case. As someone who produces a product, you do have to compromise a bit to reach an audience, but at the same time, you are in no way OBLIGATED to compromise in any way even though it may cost you customers.
Perhaps an author is writing a sequel to a popular series -- just because fans are clamoring for a scene they've always wanted to see or something they want to learn doesn't mean the author is obliated to put that stuff in to satisfy them. It's ultimately made by the author, not the fans.
Isn't this regulated in some way? It seems like it should be, since space junk is a very real hazard that NASA has to keep track of. The last thing you want to worry about on a shuttle mission is your visor being broken by some kid's favorite toy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no quantum physicist either, but it seems to me that a cloak is a cloak... Consider a man wearing black clothing hiding in a dark room. You try to find him with a flashlight, just like you'd try to find the molecules in the cloak. So if you tried, one of two things would happen:
1. You wouldn't detect the molecules because of the cloak.
2. You'd detect them and the cloak would be a failure.
Certainly nothing of universe-imploding significance, I think.
It's one of the major failing points for me. If I wanted something that duplicated (most of) the virtues and downfalls of paper, I'd just go buy paper books. The only thing the Kindle has over paper books is portability; you can carry a good number of books in one (relatively) convenient package.
What I'd really like to see is an ebook reader that takes the good things from paper and gives you the benefits of electronics.
For me, this means:
1. Backlight that can be turned on/adjusted for dark conditions.
2. High-enough resolution for necessary pictures and diagrams. Color would be nice. A battery drain when using color is acceptable.
3. The ability to write on each page.
4. Compatibility with a wide variety of formats.
5. A much, much lower cost than the Kindle. Books are read in all kinds of environments; the Kindle's cost keeps it from being usable in those environments unless you're fearless and/or made of money.
I might not be the norm, but this is what it'll take for me to buy an ebook reader of some kind. After all, what's the point of an upgrade that's not really an upgrade at all?
Besides, my laptop works fine. I read news on it all the time, so I have absolutely no problems reading books on it. Perhaps the problems a lot of people have stem from the fact that they're stretching text across a 20" screen and scanning that far tires their eyes. Make margins, resize the window so that the text covers a reasonable area -- perhaps you'll find reading more enjoyable then.
The summary seems to make it a lot more revolutionary than I think it is. It's not like the temple represents definite evidence that the current way of thinking is /wrong/. I'm not an anthropologist, but it seems to me like you could make a monument and then a city to support it as well as the other way around; there's no reason it has to be one way or another.
I'm sure that for every Stonehenge in the middle of nowhere, there's a Colosseum in the middle of a city.
Isn't Red Eagle the company that was producing the Wheel of Time comic but ended up stopping because of financial reasons? I'd hesistate to invest money in playing a MMO funded by them unless I knew it was going to be around for a while.
A great board game and apparently a great XBox Live Arcade game as well. I'd imagine that there are other versions floating around too. Absolutely no combat (unless you get Cities and Knights, the expansion), just building, trading, and negotiation. Great fun.
Obama has several kinds of experience with the education system going for him, since he's been through it a lot more recently than McCain, he worked at a university, and he's got daughters going to school right now. McCain is so old that I can't help but feel he's out of touch with how education works in America now.
How does attaching your name and sacrificing your privacy affect your contribution to the world? It doesn't. They still have your personal history and genome. You could name yourself "Bruce Wayne" and the data would still be the data.
How does it affect you? Immensely.
Maybe those planets showed signs of dangerously uncivilized behavior and the Martians decided to off them.
Also, what? I didn't check "Post Anonymously" and I /am/ logged in. Yet it posted as Anonymous Coward? Sigh.
It's great for a nomadic lifestyle and all, but isn't there something like a concept of property that prevents you from just up and going somewhere else? If you own all the land, then it's not very nomadic and odds are that you're not moving very much.
I wonder if different kinds of tape would generate different amounts of x-rays depending on stickiness -- for example, duct tape or packing tape.
I suppose it's kind of hard to use tape in the vacuum of space since the cold also tends to ruin the stickiness almost immediately...
I'm curious about how the new battle.net is going to be affecting both the original Starcraft and Diablo II. Odds are that when the sequels come out, a lot of people will go to those, but some of us may still want to play the originals. Will it be possible to do that on the new Battle.net? What about Open?
Or will the two simply be run in tandem? Or will Starcraft and Diablo II enter the realm of the unsupported?
It struck me as odd that he talks about how some things are better for the environment, but one of the much-lauded advances is the "Brick" process, which, as Ars puts it, is a "manufacturing process that starts with a 2.5 pound slab of aluminum that is then whittled down to a . . . quarter of a pound."
Does this seem incredibly wasteful to anyone else?
It seems dangerous to be trying to stimulate seizures (as in the case of epilepsy) when your tools are in the patient's squishy matter.
Reprap seems relatively low-quality... it would be interesting to see if people start making reprap parts using this service, though, since most people don't have access to someone who already has a printer that could extrude the parts for them.
Irony at its finest.
I hope not. Look at the cell phone -- it started as a brick that worked as a phone, now it's some kind of converged monstrosity. My (Japanese) phone is a phone, address book, calendar, voice memo recorder, GPS device/navigation system, television, music player, game console, web browsing device, and e-mail device. Every time you see someone talk about cell phones on slashdot, they usually go on to say "I just want a simple damn phone, now get off my lawn!"
I don't want to be thinking that about music players two or three years from now.
Then again, look at the iPod Touch/iPhone... web browsers, music players, video players, gaming devices... sigh.
I personally think that when you're dealing with something like cancer, even if the computer-assisted detection is ALMOST as good as two humans, it's still not good enough to be used on a regular basis.
It's all well and good to say that it's almost as good as two humans together, but I'm sure the couple of dozens of people who slip through the cracks would have something to say to the contrary.
I mean, imagine if you had two bullet-proof vests -- one with multiple layers that let bullets through 23 out of 10,000 times, and one with a lightweight, high-tech material that let bullets through 89 out of 10,000 times. Would you really want to go with the latter?
Yeah, it was pretty early in the morning for me and I forgot to multiply them all by 100 when I decided to put in percent signs... sigh.
Just some stupid math, but if you figure that you had a 40 GB HD when you had 128 MB RAM, you'd need 256 MB for swap space; that's about .006% of your hard drive. Windows installs were also correspondingly smaller at that time.
.011% of their hard drive... and Windows installs, games, and applications are much bigger.
.07% of the drive. On a 200 GB drive, it represents about .04% of the drive. Still and order of magnitude larger than was required back when "swap space should be double your amount of RAM" was a standard rule of thumb.
Now, if you suppose that someone has 4 GB RAM and a 750 GB drive, they'd be using 8 GB for swap space, which represents about
HOWEVER, if you look at smaller drive sizes, which are still common in the modern day -- I know plenty of people who just use 120 GB or 200 GB drives; not everyone likes all their eggs in one basket.
8 GB swap on a 120 GB drive represents about
Just some thoughts.
This kind of technology would be absolutely fantastic for them if they were to set up some kind of outpost on the moon or Mars. They could also probably work on it and use it for their vehicles and the ISS too, though NASA may not be involved in that for much longer.
The Netherlands have various kinds of incredibly costly structures erected to prevent those 1 in 100 year events that you seem to scoff at. Sure, they could just sit around waiting for one to happen and clean up after the mess by pumping out the water and holding it back again after a flood, but I doubt anyone would really want to live there knowing that it could happen to their grandkids because the government was too cheap to protect them.
I'm sure there are also plenty of things they would love to be doing but can't really expand into because they're limited by antitrust legislation.
I was going to post that as well, but I feared karmic reprisal as well as this particular riposte.
On one hand, I agree that it would be simple enough to appease the fans by doing that, and of course it would probably get a few more people to buy the product in the end, but the other thing to consider is that it compromises artistic integrity.
Sure, it's what the people want, but in this case, the game designers are the artists trying to present their particular view of THEIR product to the world; it's not supposed to appeal to everyone, as much as it would be nice if that happened, from a commercial point of view. Of course, whether or not video games are art is still being debated, but I don't think it particularly matters in this case. As someone who produces a product, you do have to compromise a bit to reach an audience, but at the same time, you are in no way OBLIGATED to compromise in any way even though it may cost you customers.
Perhaps an author is writing a sequel to a popular series -- just because fans are clamoring for a scene they've always wanted to see or something they want to learn doesn't mean the author is obliated to put that stuff in to satisfy them. It's ultimately made by the author, not the fans.
Am I making sense to anyone here?
Isn't this regulated in some way? It seems like it should be, since space junk is a very real hazard that NASA has to keep track of. The last thing you want to worry about on a shuttle mission is your visor being broken by some kid's favorite toy.