Apart from the fact that there were problems reproducing the cold fusion effects, it's very easy to see why cold fusion has always been given the cold shoulder.
It would effectively end the fission power-based business aswell as fossil fuel generated electricity.
It certainly won't be easy for free software in these developing countries, especially considering how inexperienced with computers many of the users will be. Love it or hate it, any idiot can use Windows.
It's certainly an oppurtunity to introduce many new people to the Free Software philosophy. This can only be a good thing and give MS cause for concern. in these new markets.
I believe a simple factor in this is the fact that Microsoft charge for their products and Google offer them for free.
If Google started charging for access to their search engine and other technologies, there would be a huge backlash against them.
I didn't see anything about the proposed cost of such a battery. I would guess it would be prohibitively expensive.
That said, CPUs and other components are designed these days to eat up less and less power, so perhaps there isn't even a need for more efficient energy storage?
I wouldn't be surprised if Valve release TF2 as a free add-on for HL2. Not only would it bump up sales for HL2, it would create an instant online multiplayer community for HL2.
Hell, they did it for the first game - why not the sequel?
According to the readme, the texture-maps are generated in real-time:
We do.not. have some kind of magical data compression machine that is able to squeeze hundreds of megabytes of mesh/texture and sound data into 96k. We merely store the individual steps employed by the artists to produce their textures and meshes, in a very compact way. This allows us to get.much. higher data density than is achievable with normal data compression techniques, at some expense in artistic freedom and loading times.
The problem with this, of course, is that it requires major computational power, and you're limited with the type of textures you can produce. It's probably a case of this program specifying 'bumpy metallic texture' or 'smooth stone texture' on the fly.
I remember the old flight-sim 'Strike Commander' would generate the game's maps during installation based on fractals. It used take AGES... this program generates many more megabytes of graphics on the fly... very impressive.
I'm not a lawyer but I'd bet the guy is pretty safe. Satire is protected from accusations of copyright infringement and IMO there's not a judge in the land that wouldn't view the AmEx parodies as just that.
Is it a good idea to have a one-stop shop for potential crackers out there? Do the benefits really outweigh the fact that it's just gotten a hell of a lot easier to find a vulnerability in someone's server?
I thought the whole point of hash encryption was that it's not able to ever be unencrypted, even by the legitimate users?
In order to check if there is a matching telephone number, you would first have to run the encryption algorithm on the number and then match this against every encrypted number you have in your data store. So if the two encrypted strings are equal, you have a match. But there is no way to know what the encrypted number is unless you have something to test for in the first place.
But I'm not sure how much use that is. Wouldn't you then need to be able to see who's number that is, i.e. decrypt the person's personal data?
Also, it would be interesting to see what the reaction to this software would be in the EU what with its Data Protection directive. Storing personal details about someone is prohibited except for certain circumstances... long term storage of someone's personal data for distribution to companies is not one of them. Whether the encryption of the data would make this acceptable or not would make for an interesting argument.
Spam and legitimate business do not mix
on
Junkie Loves His Spam
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The problem I would have with buying *anything* from a spam email is the fact that the company has resorted to spam to pitch their wares. To me, it always smells of desperation and contempt for the customer.
In the current anti-spam climate, a company cannot use spam to market themselves and be seen as a professionally-run organisation.
Sealand is a small platform off the east coast of England. It claims to be an independant country, and hasn't signed the Berne Convention on copyright. Theoretically you could distribute copyrighted material from there. Handily, it is home to HavenCo, a hosting company.
Considering how old the technology that went into Hubble is, it would make more sense to plough the money into a new telescope with the latest technology.
A modern telescope could capture images with less of an exposure time, letting us view more of the sky in less time, and with greater clarity.
One limitation of Google is that fact that a site that bases its navigation through a drop-down menu or submission form (i.e. choose a section from the list and click Go) cannot be spidered by Google.
Personally, I find this infuriating. A site I once worked on was available in numerous languages, which could be chosen by choosing from a drop down list box. The upshoot of this is that Google has only cached the site in English, meaning users who would use the other languages do not get my site returned when they search in Google.
We need an open-source alternative that can address these problems, as well as get rid of the security concerns and mysterious methods Google uses to rank sites.
Sounds like a lot of work has gone into this just to get it to work between just two specific languages.
While the ability to speak in the colloquial language is useful, I would imagine a robot that could speak in MANY languages, with lower accuracy, would be more useful.
This talk of trips to the moon and Mars makes me ask: why?
What can people on the moon or Mars do that a robot can't?
The answer is, of course, nothing. Robots are even better suited because, well, they can be specially built to be suited.
Bush announcing these plans felt, to me, like he was announcing a return to the Cold War. Then, and now, space travel exists merely so nations can demonstrate that their country is the most advanced.
Here in Ireland, there is a major stink being made over the government's plans to introduce e-voting machines in the next election. They will replace *all* paper ballots everywhere in the country.
What worries me most about e-voting is the fact there is no paper trail. There has been talk here of altering the machines so that they also produce a printout of the vote made by an individual, but the government is resisting it citing expense.
I would rather the old reliable and transparent paper ballot system rather than the closed and opaque e-voting machines.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought Kill Bill didn't have any CGI work. Wasn't it a deliberate choice by Tarantino?
Apart from the fact that there were problems reproducing the cold fusion effects, it's very easy to see why cold fusion has always been given the cold shoulder. It would effectively end the fission power-based business aswell as fossil fuel generated electricity.
It certainly won't be easy for free software in these developing countries, especially considering how inexperienced with computers many of the users will be. Love it or hate it, any idiot can use Windows.
It's certainly an oppurtunity to introduce many new people to the Free Software philosophy. This can only be a good thing and give MS cause for concern. in these new markets.
Far greater than faster drives, of course, would be drives with no moving parts.
No wear, faster transfer (no seek time!) and silent. Should this be the way research should be going?
I believe a simple factor in this is the fact that Microsoft charge for their products and Google offer them for free. If Google started charging for access to their search engine and other technologies, there would be a huge backlash against them.
Are any of these courses degree status?
It is specifically referring to the fabrication of fibre itself.
Optical Fibre Technology Centre:
http://www.oftc.usyd.edu.au/?section=fibre
I didn't see anything about the proposed cost of such a battery. I would guess it would be prohibitively expensive.
That said, CPUs and other components are designed these days to eat up less and less power, so perhaps there isn't even a need for more efficient energy storage?
I wouldn't be surprised if Valve release TF2 as a free add-on for HL2. Not only would it bump up sales for HL2, it would create an instant online multiplayer community for HL2.
Hell, they did it for the first game - why not the sequel?
According to the readme, the texture-maps are generated in real-time:
.not. have some kind of magical data compression machine that is able to squeeze hundreds of megabytes of mesh/texture and sound data into 96k. We merely store the individual steps employed by the artists to produce their textures and meshes, in a very compact way. This allows us to get .much. higher data density than is achievable with normal data compression techniques, at some expense in artistic freedom and loading times.
We do
The problem with this, of course, is that it requires major computational power, and you're limited with the type of textures you can produce. It's probably a case of this program specifying 'bumpy metallic texture' or 'smooth stone texture' on the fly.
I remember the old flight-sim 'Strike Commander' would generate the game's maps during installation based on fractals. It used take AGES... this program generates many more megabytes of graphics on the fly... very impressive.
I'm not a lawyer but I'd bet the guy is pretty safe. Satire is protected from accusations of copyright infringement and IMO there's not a judge in the land that wouldn't view the AmEx parodies as just that.
Is it a good idea to have a one-stop shop for potential crackers out there? Do the benefits really outweigh the fact that it's just gotten a hell of a lot easier to find a vulnerability in someone's server?
While I'm sure this is a great codec, hasn't DivX pretty much sewn up the market on video codecs?
It's established, popular and gives tight compression. Can new codecs such as Theora break into this market to any significant degree?
I thought the whole point of hash encryption was that it's not able to ever be unencrypted, even by the legitimate users?
In order to check if there is a matching telephone number, you would first have to run the encryption algorithm on the number and then match this against every encrypted number you have in your data store. So if the two encrypted strings are equal, you have a match. But there is no way to know what the encrypted number is unless you have something to test for in the first place.
But I'm not sure how much use that is. Wouldn't you then need to be able to see who's number that is, i.e. decrypt the person's personal data?
Also, it would be interesting to see what the reaction to this software would be in the EU what with its Data Protection directive. Storing personal details about someone is prohibited except for certain circumstances... long term storage of someone's personal data for distribution to companies is not one of them. Whether the encryption of the data would make this acceptable or not would make for an interesting argument.
The problem I would have with buying *anything* from a spam email is the fact that the company has resorted to spam to pitch their wares. To me, it always smells of desperation and contempt for the customer.
In the current anti-spam climate, a company cannot use spam to market themselves and be seen as a professionally-run organisation.
Whoops, I mean the Centrino chip.
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?
And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one?
Won't the person on the receiving end need one of these phones also, or some VoIP technology?
Surely this makes it useless when it comes to regular phonelines?
Sealand is a small platform off the east coast of England. It claims to be an independant country, and hasn't signed the Berne Convention on copyright. Theoretically you could distribute copyrighted material from there. Handily, it is home to HavenCo, a hosting company.
Considering how old the technology that went into Hubble is, it would make more sense to plough the money into a new telescope with the latest technology.
A modern telescope could capture images with less of an exposure time, letting us view more of the sky in less time, and with greater clarity.
One limitation of Google is that fact that a site that bases its navigation through a drop-down menu or submission form (i.e. choose a section from the list and click Go) cannot be spidered by Google.
Personally, I find this infuriating. A site I once worked on was available in numerous languages, which could be chosen by choosing from a drop down list box. The upshoot of this is that Google has only cached the site in English, meaning users who would use the other languages do not get my site returned when they search in Google.
We need an open-source alternative that can address these problems, as well as get rid of the security concerns and mysterious methods Google uses to rank sites.
Considering 1.5 tonnes of this material is water, it's hardly a terrible waste.
Sounds like a lot of work has gone into this just to get it to work between just two specific languages.
While the ability to speak in the colloquial language is useful, I would imagine a robot that could speak in MANY languages, with lower accuracy, would be more useful.
This talk of trips to the moon and Mars makes me ask: why?
What can people on the moon or Mars do that a robot can't?
The answer is, of course, nothing. Robots are even better suited because, well, they can be specially built to be suited.
Bush announcing these plans felt, to me, like he was announcing a return to the Cold War. Then, and now, space travel exists merely so nations can demonstrate that their country is the most advanced.
Interesting (and worrying) article.
Here in Ireland, there is a major stink being made over the government's plans to introduce e-voting machines in the next election. They will replace *all* paper ballots everywhere in the country.
Some interesting related reading:
Experts warn about timing of e-voting
Pressure group outlines concerns about electronic voting
What worries me most about e-voting is the fact there is no paper trail. There has been talk here of altering the machines so that they also produce a printout of the vote made by an individual, but the government is resisting it citing expense.
I would rather the old reliable and transparent paper ballot system rather than the closed and opaque e-voting machines.