It is pointless articles like this that give that ridiculous man publicity (which he seems to thrive on). I don't want to read any more about it, stop posting on/. and he will be forgotten. Nobody is taking him seriously anyway (not anyone that counts at least - e.g. courts).
I must admit that the in game parody sound good though. But still, not newsworthy.
First of all, the electrons orbiting around the atom's nucleus is an atomic model that was valid during the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Our atomic models of the last 80 years are not as simple as that. You are right about the electron and the positron being able to annihilate each other (producing a couple of photons IIRC, I guess your "explosion" of radiation). However, you are limited to high school level (particles orbiting each other) and Hollywood level (matter-antimater explosions) physics, but you are getting in quantum physics territory, where the particle-antiparticle annihilation does not exactly happen when the particles "touch". In fact we cannot even say that two particles "touch" in the traditional sense of the word. Anyway, without being a particle physicist and without RTFA (leaving for work now), I can tell you that I don't see a reason that a positron-electron pair could not survive for a brief time. Where "brief" in physics is measured in ps or at least ns. When you hear physics news like "we created the xxx exotic particle" they are usually referring to something that existed in their accellerator for a picosecond or so...
Yeah, that would be bad. Imagine how much effort posting to slashdot will be after a disfavorable ruling:
"I think Vista is maturing - wink wink, nudge nudge" "OOXML is a marvel of a file format - wink wink, nudge nudge" "What do you mean the iPhone is still overpriced? - wink wink, nudge nudge"
I was an amateur astronomer for years before I switched to being just a computer geek (no dark skies where I live now). However, even if my Messier-marathon nights are over, I think I can still give some good advice. So, let us start with equipment. Since you really don't know what you are mostly interested in viewing, I would say get a 6" - 8" Newtonian reflector with a decent equatorial mount (you can find deals for much less than $1000), or if you want to stretch your budjet you could get a more compact Schmidt Cassegrain (again 6"-8" aperture). Go for either Celestron or Meade (with the latter probably being better but more expensive). This type of telescope will provide a rich viewing experience, for both planetary and deep space targets. It is also astrophotography ready (computerized or motor equatorial drives are usually standard). So, at first I recommend "testing the waters" for astrophotography. Find a cheap, old, mechanican Canon, Minolta etc SLR. Start with that, and if you are still interested you can invest to a CCD camera in the future. I can't recommend books, since been such a long time, except Stars and Planets by Peterson Field Guides which was a nice reference and gets updated once in a while. I was a fan of the Astronomy magazine for years. Sky & Telescope was also decent, you should certainly pick one of those up. I have also skipped the part about telescope accessories, but I do have to go to sleep now, so you'll have to do with the included eyepieces for now...;)
> the idea that you are entitled to a refund for something you bought two months ago is ridiculous.
Whoa there cowboy! Next thing you tell us is that the idea of being able to listen to the music CD you paid for is ridiculous...
Many Credit Cards offer a two month price guarrantee. I guess that is ridiculous. One of Amazon's best features is the no-hassle 30-day price matching guarantee, I guess that is also ridiculous. Many stores have no-fee return policies which can work as price guarantee if you do return-rebuy, I guess that is even more ridiculous.
I am of the opinion that iPhone early adopters should have known they were grossly overpaying and should not really complain now. However there is nothing ridiculous with consumer-friendly concepts such as price guarantees.
What seems ridiculously suspicious to me on the other hand is the fact that while many people paid with credit cards and credit cards that offer price protection have a 2 month limit, the price lowering happened 2 MONTHS + 1 WEEK later! Take that first week buyers!
You clearly have not read TFA, otherwise I can't explain this highly irrelevant post. Nobody's "caught on" to any "scheme" and in fact TFA isn't really about Fry's (and neither is the FatWallet thread of course). In any case, I found the FatWallet thread very amusing (still highly irrelevant). It is a game of cats and mice. The manufacturers try to trick buyers with their "Free after rebate" offerings and some buyers actually take on the risky task of beating them at their own game. And of course the July thread you linked on is certainly not one of the first such threads - although it is one of the most impressive ones. People have been doing this for years (at least since 2000 on FatWallet for example), but it is definately nothing like a "get rich" scheme. It requires a lot of work for rather small an not guarranteed returns. However I do understand how some people like to "beat the system". And the annoying (euphemism) rebate system is something that needs to be beat and abandonded by all.
I 've also had horrible experience with Real Player in the past.
Once, I really needed to install it for a course. The professor was ingenious enough to have notes in some streaming format that required Real Player (real alternative couldn't handle it). Instead of setting up something like a VM for it, I was in a hurry so reluctantly decided to give Real Player another try (don't remember which version, it was around 2004). Despite my previous bad experiences I was unprepared for what awaited, as Real Player for some reason assumed that everybody had Windows Media Player installed and that it could hijack it as it pleased. I, of course, did not have Windows Media Player, I had replaced it completely with Media Player Classic. So, the installation crashed halfway through. It left me with a system whose registry was full of Real's (failed) hijacks, a system on which trying to launch a media file resulted in a call to mplayerc with some unrecognised command line options and a few error popups. Of course no automatic uninstallation was possible - the installer crashed before creating that.
For me, Real is up there with Sirius Cypernetics in the all-time hall of shame, and there is no way I will ever trust their products again in an unprotected (i.e. non-vm) environment.
What? Darth is Luke's father??? Damn you poster! I wanted to watch that movie!!!
At least I don't recognise "Malcom Crowe" so whatever that movie is I'm spared.
Anyway, since Star Wars is spoiled for me I guess I'll have to rent another flick. I guess I'll try that Bruce Willis thriller everyone was talking about a few years ago but I never got to see. Hmm... what was it's name...
Actually there was one lead. They knew which 3 cellphone antennas the wiretappers were mostly using for their phones, so they had a triangle containing their location. That "triangle" (quite unsurprisingly IMHO) didn't contain much of importance other than a certain well-known embassy. The fact that the programs AND LOGS were purged, was either clear ineptitude and idiocy (a quite likely scenario), or deliberate (the conspiracy theory scenario) - which can't be ruled out as the breach seemed like an insider job.
So it's Microsoft's fault for installing patches and rebooting PC's, right? I mean, you are not supposed to handle an extra load of logins, MS should make sure the PC's stay on forever (and boy are they far from that)... I admit I read only part of the article (didn't think it was worth my time), so please correct my brief analysis on why this makes no sense at all if I missed something further down. They admit to two days of downtime, so I would assume the reboots where spread over this timeframe. However, every morning, at around 9PM EST, a large percentage of east coast's PC's boot up (with a similar event an hour later moving to central US) etc. Unless bussiness PC's are not skype's usual target. Well, home PC's also routinelly turn off at night and switch on in the morning (not mine or the average/.er's of course), so the extra reboot cycle when there is already at least one reboot cycle per day (for crapware-ladden unstable Windows even more) should not have made any difference.
Actually, "March of the Penguins" was not a Hollywood documentary, but a French production. What's more, having seen both the original French version and the English translation, I have to say that all Hollywood did to the movie, by adding the narration of Morgan Freeman, was to destroy one great and original aspect of the film. You see, the French version doesn't have a narrator, but voices for Mother, Father and Baby penguin. It sounds very silly doesn't it? Well, apparently it was very hard to make it good enough, so that it doesn't sound silly, and the translated versions followed the easy route of narration. Now in the original French version, the voice over was done brilliantly so that it does not sound like a "animals are talking" kids movie, but rather an alternate and more "personal" narration that added more feeling to the movie. </offtopic>
On the current topic, I always thought it would be very hard to make a good live action Transformers movie. They pulled it off very well. But Voltron? Come on! From the far-fetched Transformers we are going to ridiculous lion headed fighters (or even worse, lionhead-limbed when combined as Voltron). If you want giant mecha, do Macross or something...
"It is extremely well suited to numerical and scientific computation."
Right. That's what they actually told us in a first-year University course that had us learning FORTRAN. While this statement was perfectly accurate a few decades ago, more appropriate now is to say "It is extremely ill suited for anything but numerical and scientific computation". Don't get me wrong. I actually liked writing "numerical recipies"-style stuff in FORTRAN. However it is clear that it no longer holds any advantage (but many obvious disadvantages) over more "modern" languages. While the language itself holds no advanages, just because of the fact that it USED to have the advantage there is now an enormous amount of scientific FORTRAN code out there. If you don't want to write something from scratch, you might find a FORTRAN library that works. Yes, if you did start from scratch you would not choose FORTRAN nowadays, but if it is there already why not? And this is the reason FORTRAN is still alive. It is no particularly good, it is just adequate. But because it was once the best in some areas, chances are that something you want to use is already written in FORTRAN.
Apogee (3D Realms now) was the publisher. id was the developer. You would see both logos on the game. Common practice in the video game world, move on.
The Enigma comes in different designs. The easily crackable "in a few minutes" has three rotors. The messages the project M4 uses were encrypted with the much tougher to break 4 rotor design (hence the M4 name of the project).
They demanded that 3D Realms updates their website. They were late with DNF as it was, if they also have web design tasks, I am afraid they might never finish it...
But that's exactly the problem. The iPhone handshakes with a "How are you gentlemen." and asks for a MAC address, at which point the WLAN's response is "What you say !!" and it goes downhill from there...
Slashdot Mirror
It is pointless articles like this that give that ridiculous man publicity (which he seems to thrive on). I don't want to read any more about it, stop posting on /. and he will be forgotten. Nobody is taking him seriously anyway (not anyone that counts at least - e.g. courts).
I must admit that the in game parody sound good though. But still, not newsworthy.
Watch Reuters video. It is a Greek site, but the video is English.
First of all, the electrons orbiting around the atom's nucleus is an atomic model that was valid during the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Our atomic models of the last 80 years are not as simple as that.
You are right about the electron and the positron being able to annihilate each other (producing a couple of photons IIRC, I guess your "explosion" of radiation). However, you are limited to high school level (particles orbiting each other) and Hollywood level (matter-antimater explosions) physics, but you are getting in quantum physics territory, where the particle-antiparticle annihilation does not exactly happen when the particles "touch". In fact we cannot even say that two particles "touch" in the traditional sense of the word.
Anyway, without being a particle physicist and without RTFA (leaving for work now), I can tell you that I don't see a reason that a positron-electron pair could not survive for a brief time. Where "brief" in physics is measured in ps or at least ns. When you hear physics news like "we created the xxx exotic particle" they are usually referring to something that existed in their accellerator for a picosecond or so...
Yeah, that would be bad. Imagine how much effort posting to slashdot will be after a disfavorable ruling:
"I think Vista is maturing - wink wink, nudge nudge"
"OOXML is a marvel of a file format - wink wink, nudge nudge"
"What do you mean the iPhone is still overpriced? - wink wink, nudge nudge"
And who said turning off the auto sleep does not also void your warranty?
There can be no limits to shameless vendors and their consumer unfriendliness.
Brilliant! Finaly, the solution to piracy! Increase the profit margin, how didn't they think of it earlier? ...wait...what???
I was an amateur astronomer for years before I switched to being just a computer geek (no dark skies where I live now). However, even if my Messier-marathon nights are over, I think I can still give some good advice. So, let us start with equipment. Since you really don't know what you are mostly interested in viewing, I would say get a 6" - 8" Newtonian reflector with a decent equatorial mount (you can find deals for much less than $1000), or if you want to stretch your budjet you could get a more compact Schmidt Cassegrain (again 6"-8" aperture). Go for either Celestron or Meade (with the latter probably being better but more expensive). This type of telescope will provide a rich viewing experience, for both planetary and deep space targets. It is also astrophotography ready (computerized or motor equatorial drives are usually standard). ;)
So, at first I recommend "testing the waters" for astrophotography. Find a cheap, old, mechanican Canon, Minolta etc SLR. Start with that, and if you are still interested you can invest to a CCD camera in the future.
I can't recommend books, since been such a long time, except Stars and Planets by Peterson Field Guides which was a nice reference and gets updated once in a while. I was a fan of the Astronomy magazine for years. Sky & Telescope was also decent, you should certainly pick one of those up.
I have also skipped the part about telescope accessories, but I do have to go to sleep now, so you'll have to do with the included eyepieces for now...
> the idea that you are entitled to a refund for something you bought two months ago is ridiculous.
Whoa there cowboy! Next thing you tell us is that the idea of being able to listen to the music CD you paid for is ridiculous...
Many Credit Cards offer a two month price guarrantee. I guess that is ridiculous. One of Amazon's best features is the no-hassle 30-day price matching guarantee, I guess that is also ridiculous. Many stores have no-fee return policies which can work as price guarantee if you do return-rebuy, I guess that is even more ridiculous.
I am of the opinion that iPhone early adopters should have known they were grossly overpaying and should not really complain now. However there is nothing ridiculous with consumer-friendly concepts such as price guarantees.
What seems ridiculously suspicious to me on the other hand is the fact that while many people paid with credit cards and credit cards that offer price protection have a 2 month limit, the price lowering happened 2 MONTHS + 1 WEEK later! Take that first week buyers!
You clearly have not read TFA, otherwise I can't explain this highly irrelevant post. Nobody's "caught on" to any "scheme" and in fact TFA isn't really about Fry's (and neither is the FatWallet thread of course).
In any case, I found the FatWallet thread very amusing (still highly irrelevant). It is a game of cats and mice. The manufacturers try to trick buyers with their "Free after rebate" offerings and some buyers actually take on the risky task of beating them at their own game. And of course the July thread you linked on is certainly not one of the first such threads - although it is one of the most impressive ones. People have been doing this for years (at least since 2000 on FatWallet for example), but it is definately nothing like a "get rich" scheme. It requires a lot of work for rather small an not guarranteed returns. However I do understand how some people like to "beat the system". And the annoying (euphemism) rebate system is something that needs to be beat and abandonded by all.
I 've also had horrible experience with Real Player in the past.
Once, I really needed to install it for a course. The professor was ingenious enough to have notes in some streaming format that required Real Player (real alternative couldn't handle it). Instead of setting up something like a VM for it, I was in a hurry so reluctantly decided to give Real Player another try (don't remember which version, it was around 2004). Despite my previous bad experiences I was unprepared for what awaited, as Real Player for some reason assumed that everybody had Windows Media Player installed and that it could hijack it as it pleased. I, of course, did not have Windows Media Player, I had replaced it completely with Media Player Classic. So, the installation crashed halfway through. It left me with a system whose registry was full of Real's (failed) hijacks, a system on which trying to launch a media file resulted in a call to mplayerc with some unrecognised command line options and a few error popups. Of course no automatic uninstallation was possible - the installer crashed before creating that.
For me, Real is up there with Sirius Cypernetics in the all-time hall of shame, and there is no way I will ever trust their products again in an unprotected (i.e. non-vm) environment.
What? Darth is Luke's father???
Damn you poster! I wanted to watch that movie!!!
At least I don't recognise "Malcom Crowe" so whatever that movie is I'm spared.
Anyway, since Star Wars is spoiled for me I guess I'll have to rent another flick. I guess I'll try that Bruce Willis thriller everyone was talking about a few years ago but I never got to see. Hmm... what was it's name...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1418165.st m
Actually there was one lead. They knew which 3 cellphone antennas the wiretappers were mostly using for their phones, so they had a triangle containing their location. That "triangle" (quite unsurprisingly IMHO) didn't contain much of importance other than a certain well-known embassy.
The fact that the programs AND LOGS were purged, was either clear ineptitude and idiocy (a quite likely scenario), or deliberate (the conspiracy theory scenario) - which can't be ruled out as the breach seemed like an insider job.
Well, I guess I still don't need to read it, right? You gave me all the information I would need ;)
So it's Microsoft's fault for installing patches and rebooting PC's, right? I mean, you are not supposed to handle an extra load of logins, MS should make sure the PC's stay on forever (and boy are they far from that)... /.er's of course), so the extra reboot cycle when there is already at least one reboot cycle per day (for crapware-ladden unstable Windows even more) should not have made any difference.
I admit I read only part of the article (didn't think it was worth my time), so please correct my brief analysis on why this makes no sense at all if I missed something further down.
They admit to two days of downtime, so I would assume the reboots where spread over this timeframe. However, every morning, at around 9PM EST, a large percentage of east coast's PC's boot up (with a similar event an hour later moving to central US) etc. Unless bussiness PC's are not skype's usual target. Well, home PC's also routinelly turn off at night and switch on in the morning (not mine or the average
Actually, "March of the Penguins" was not a Hollywood documentary, but a French production. What's more, having seen both the original French version and the English
translation, I have to say that all Hollywood did to the movie, by adding the narration of Morgan Freeman, was to destroy one great and original aspect of the film. You see, the French version doesn't have a narrator, but voices for Mother, Father and Baby penguin. It sounds very silly doesn't it? Well, apparently it was very hard to make it good enough, so that it doesn't sound silly, and the translated versions followed the easy route of narration. Now in the original French version, the voice over was done brilliantly so that it does not sound like a "animals are talking" kids movie, but rather an alternate and more "personal" narration that added more feeling to the movie.
</offtopic>
On the current topic, I always thought it would be very hard to make a good live action Transformers movie. They pulled it off very well. But Voltron? Come on! From the far-fetched Transformers we are going to ridiculous lion headed fighters (or even worse, lionhead-limbed when combined as Voltron). If you want giant mecha, do Macross or something...
Oh, so it is with XP that MS let us down?
Thank god for Vista then!
"It is extremely well suited to numerical and scientific computation."
Right. That's what they actually told us in a first-year University course that had us learning FORTRAN. While this statement was perfectly accurate a few decades ago, more appropriate now is to say "It is extremely ill suited for anything but numerical and scientific computation".
Don't get me wrong. I actually liked writing "numerical recipies"-style stuff in FORTRAN. However it is clear that it no longer holds any advantage (but many obvious disadvantages) over more "modern" languages.
While the language itself holds no advanages, just because of the fact that it USED to have the advantage there is now an enormous amount of scientific FORTRAN code out there. If you don't want to write something from scratch, you might find a FORTRAN library that works. Yes, if you did start from scratch you would not choose FORTRAN nowadays, but if it is there already why not? And this is the reason FORTRAN is still alive. It is no particularly good, it is just adequate. But because it was once the best in some areas, chances are that something you want to use is already written in FORTRAN.
Apogee (3D Realms now) was the publisher. id was the developer. You would see both logos on the game. Common practice in the video game world, move on.
We don't really have to land the large vehicle. Getting within transporter range should be enough.
Oh, wait...
42
The Enigma comes in different designs. The easily crackable "in a few minutes" has three rotors. The messages the project M4 uses were encrypted with the much tougher to break 4 rotor design (hence the M4 name of the project).
I don't think Best Buys have that many PS3's stacked... in Japan!
(Sorry but I was starting to miss that meme...)
They demanded that 3D Realms updates their website. They were late with DNF as it was, if they also have web design tasks, I am afraid they might never finish it...
But that's exactly the problem. The iPhone handshakes with a "How are you gentlemen." and asks for a MAC address, at which point the WLAN's response is "What you say !!" and it goes downhill from there...