Guys, you can't just tell an element as young as element 118 it's heavy. You'll crush its self esteem. I think the proper term these days is "in danger of becoming overweight".
I don't think being able to tell the difference between a reflection and not a reflection makes a robot self aware. True self awareness comes when a robot can actually think and communicate in ways it wasn't originally programmed to.
I've always wondered what keeps the orbiting counterweight of a space elevator in orbit. If I start to climb the elevator, don't I pull it down? Does it need some sort of thruster to keep it up? How come pulling myself up and counter-thrusting at the top uses significantly less power than just thrusting up from the bottom?
There is a small on-demand publishing company called LuLu. You give them the PDF file and work out some pricing system things, and then when someone orders your book they print a copy of it and send it to them.
Unlike a regular publisher, they don't print a huge number of books at once to rot in a wearhouse and reduce profit, and they can print the books relatively inexpensively, meaning most of the profit finds its way into your pocket.
And it does F.M, so no funny business like being tied down by distance!
I don't know what you did to your iTrip, but mine certainly has range limitations. If I take it more than about 5 feet from my car antenna, it starts to get a bit crackly, and if I go even farther, it cuts out entirely to static.
FM may go farther than Bluetooth, but it still has distance limitations.
Unless I am mistaken, I believe that WiMax draws a lot more power than WiFi does. This makes it quite usable in the place of a cable modem, but quite hard to use on a PDA or Laptop, because of battery life concerns.
I think WiMax is more of a distribution method for sparse areas than a way for you to connect your laptop directly to the Internet. So you'll have WiMax -> WiFi -> Laptop.
I just bought Firefly on DVD. It's really good and I recommend that everyone watch it, but I wish someone would have told me in advance so I could have saved $35.
It's no secret that the reason for Apple's comeback was the iPod, who's popularity was primarily due to rampant music piracy. Come on, does anyone really think a college kid purchased 10,000 songs for their iPod at $0.99 each?
No, but I'm sure an awful lot of people do what I do and rip their CDs to MP3s. I have something like 6 gigs of completely legit music.
"The new "#ID" music service is provided by San Francisco-based Musicphone in cooperation UK-based Shazam Entertainment, which operates a propriety recognition database of more than one million recorded songs. AT&T Wireless customers can trial the music recognition service at no charge beyond standard airtime charges when they first dial "#ID." Afterwards, the service costs $.99 cents, plus standard airtime charges, each time they use it." -mobilemag.com
My cell phone is equipped with E911, which sends my GPS coordinates when (and only when) I make a 911 call. The GPS location is calculated by triangulating nearby towers. This way, the cell network has a very good idea of which 911 to connect me to, and the 911 operator has a general idea of where I am. I'm not sure how accurate this GPS is exactly, but it sure beats only knowing what the closest cell tower was.
Plus, since the GPS is only sent with the call when you call 911 (unless you set it to go with all calls), there is little risk of a privacy violation.
Maybe people realize that 911 is a service in place designed to save lives and decide that prank calling it isn't such a hot idea. I would hope that there aren't many people in this world malicious enough to get their giggles from prank calling 911 from behind an untracable phone number.
It would be very expensive, even if easy. Would you really pay $100 for a USB-GPS so that you can use (free) VOIP on your laptop? And what if you are using Skype via WiFi on your Windows Mobile device?
And what if I sign up for my VOIP with a canadian company, but primarily use it in the US. Do I need GPS then? Seems to be a blow to US companies if you require it.
I'm really underwhelmed by that. I thought the entire case would be shaped like a three dimensional geometric figure.
How many Slashdotters would buy a computer case shaped like a D20? That's where the real market is. It might be a little expensive to throw around the room, so maybe you'd just want to stick with normal dice.
FIRST is an organization that also sponsors the FIRST Lego League. In FIRST, high school teams are given six weeks to build a robot designed to play that year's game, which is unveiled at the beginning of the six weeks. Teams must design, build, and program their robots to compete.
"If the goal is to increase the kids awareness of STDs and prevention of things like pregnancy, they should just be taught good safe sex practices and the use of a condom and contraception."
And we all know how well that works...
We don't have open campus lunches. We're not even allowed to leave the cafeteria during lunch.
High School is really a lot more like prison than an educational experience, but I suppose going through it does teach you a lot about real life. Paul Graham wrote the best essay I've ever read about what High School is really there for and how you can get through it and actually learn a thing or two: "What You'll Wish You'd Known".
Wikipedia already does something like this with their "featured articles". They tend to be of much higher quality than your usual Wikipedia article, and are usually interesting (who wants to read something boring like some obscure biomedical article).
I wonder how much additional work it would be to transfer these to a printed medium and mail them out? It seems like the perfect way to get people educated a little bit about a whole lot of different things, and I would probably subscribe to such a publication as well.
Surely text compresses well. Not to mention that most of the linking between different articles could be handled in such a way as to reduce wiki-markup overhead.
Then again, there are a heck of a lot of articles in the Wikipedia...
Slashdot Mirror
Guys, you can't just tell an element as young as element 118 it's heavy. You'll crush its self esteem. I think the proper term these days is "in danger of becoming overweight".
I don't think being able to tell the difference between a reflection and not a reflection makes a robot self aware. True self awareness comes when a robot can actually think and communicate in ways it wasn't originally programmed to.
I've always wondered what keeps the orbiting counterweight of a space elevator in orbit. If I start to climb the elevator, don't I pull it down? Does it need some sort of thruster to keep it up? How come pulling myself up and counter-thrusting at the top uses significantly less power than just thrusting up from the bottom?
The Open Developers Score Ladies?
The Optional Donuts Save Lunches?
The Original Dolphin Saved Lassie?
I'm confused.
There is a small on-demand publishing company called LuLu. You give them the PDF file and work out some pricing system things, and then when someone orders your book they print a copy of it and send it to them.
Unlike a regular publisher, they don't print a huge number of books at once to rot in a wearhouse and reduce profit, and they can print the books relatively inexpensively, meaning most of the profit finds its way into your pocket.
I don't know what you did to your iTrip, but mine certainly has range limitations. If I take it more than about 5 feet from my car antenna, it starts to get a bit crackly, and if I go even farther, it cuts out entirely to static.
FM may go farther than Bluetooth, but it still has distance limitations.
Unless I am mistaken, I believe that WiMax draws a lot more power than WiFi does. This makes it quite usable in the place of a cable modem, but quite hard to use on a PDA or Laptop, because of battery life concerns.
I think WiMax is more of a distribution method for sparse areas than a way for you to connect your laptop directly to the Internet. So you'll have WiMax -> WiFi -> Laptop.
If I were designed a car, I'd want to be sure it had a dashboard too!
And since it's autonomous, it doesn't need any Windows!
RTFA, he got them back out of calling it a "stealth bomber" in all sorts of commercial materials.
If these guys want to be real pokemon masters, they're going to have to step it up a little.
I just bought Firefly on DVD. It's really good and I recommend that everyone watch it, but I wish someone would have told me in advance so I could have saved $35.
unless this is a year old news story...
My cell phone is equipped with E911, which sends my GPS coordinates when (and only when) I make a 911 call. The GPS location is calculated by triangulating nearby towers. This way, the cell network has a very good idea of which 911 to connect me to, and the 911 operator has a general idea of where I am. I'm not sure how accurate this GPS is exactly, but it sure beats only knowing what the closest cell tower was.
Plus, since the GPS is only sent with the call when you call 911 (unless you set it to go with all calls), there is little risk of a privacy violation.
Maybe people realize that 911 is a service in place designed to save lives and decide that prank calling it isn't such a hot idea. I would hope that there aren't many people in this world malicious enough to get their giggles from prank calling 911 from behind an untracable phone number.
It would be very expensive, even if easy. Would you really pay $100 for a USB-GPS so that you can use (free) VOIP on your laptop? And what if you are using Skype via WiFi on your Windows Mobile device?
And what if I sign up for my VOIP with a canadian company, but primarily use it in the US. Do I need GPS then? Seems to be a blow to US companies if you require it.
I'm really underwhelmed by that. I thought the entire case would be shaped like a three dimensional geometric figure.
How many Slashdotters would buy a computer case shaped like a D20? That's where the real market is. It might be a little expensive to throw around the room, so maybe you'd just want to stick with normal dice.
FIRST is an organization that also sponsors the FIRST Lego League. In FIRST, high school teams are given six weeks to build a robot designed to play that year's game, which is unveiled at the beginning of the six weeks. Teams must design, build, and program their robots to compete.
More info at: The official FIRST site and Wikipedia
"Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage."
I don't know about you, but my Gmail has 2121.046851 megabytes of storage space. I mean 2121.047702 megabytes. I mean 121.048913 megabytes. I mean...
I'd like to see a graphic map of where these stories are, rather than just a list of places
I have a hard time connecting words and locations.
Our lunches aren't free either... Heavily discounted, but not free. $2.25 a day.
"If the goal is to increase the kids awareness of STDs and prevention of things like pregnancy, they should just be taught good safe sex practices and the use of a condom and contraception." And we all know how well that works...
We don't have open campus lunches. We're not even allowed to leave the cafeteria during lunch.
High School is really a lot more like prison than an educational experience, but I suppose going through it does teach you a lot about real life. Paul Graham wrote the best essay I've ever read about what High School is really there for and how you can get through it and actually learn a thing or two: "What You'll Wish You'd Known".
Wikipedia already does something like this with their "featured articles". They tend to be of much higher quality than your usual Wikipedia article, and are usually interesting (who wants to read something boring like some obscure biomedical article).
I wonder how much additional work it would be to transfer these to a printed medium and mail them out? It seems like the perfect way to get people educated a little bit about a whole lot of different things, and I would probably subscribe to such a publication as well.
Surely text compresses well. Not to mention that most of the linking between different articles could be handled in such a way as to reduce wiki-markup overhead.
Then again, there are a heck of a lot of articles in the Wikipedia...