According to a recent scientific american article that was written to debunk common myths about the universe, given that the universe is expanding, the visible universe is actually larger than 14 billion ly radius. This is because light from a star that is *now* 30 billion ly away could have reached us by now because for part of its trip it was closer than 30 billion lys from us. This is, of course, assuming that light goes at a constant speed.
The problem with all this highly theoretical physics is that no one really understands it - even the people who study it. I don't study it; I am just repeating what I read in an article, so I am sure that I know even less about all this stuff.
Free-doom does not copy the levels from doom, it involves creating whole new levels, graphics, and sounds.
For example, Yahoo has a game called Literati, which is basically the same concept and rules as scrabble, but a different layout. They are not getting sued. E-scrabble, from the sound of it, is an exact copy of scrabble.
The thing that annoys me about Mensa is it centers around pride for something you were born with, not something you earned. You can have an IQ of 180 and I still won't respect you if you don't do something great with it. People in Mensa (who show it off) think they are better than the average population because of they way they were born. How does that make them any better than one of those white pride people?
That's a really good idea. I would like to see something like that built into google (ie. a checkbox next to the seach box along the lines of "filter out commercial sites"). Google could then look for keywords that indicate that they are trying to sell you something and remove the offending pages from the results. This would benefit the user by giving better searches, and benefit google by giving more attention to their own ads. They probably already have the algorithms to do this from froogle.
I personally am starting to get annoyed with how much effort I need to put in to search for information about commercial products on google. The amount of noise in the results can be mind-boggling.
The decoder could probably be placed into hardware (although this would still be years away I am sure). My main concern would be that the "lossiness" of the compression would be unacceptable. In the future, the demand for higher quality video will only increase, and bandwidth and storage will increase to meet that need even with today's compression standards.
As I recall reading (I don't remember where), one of the reasons for the switch was because answers.com is free ie. you can access everything without paying for "premium" services. For example, answers.com has a pronounciation feature for free, whereas dictionary.com charges for it. Don't know how true this is because I lost my source.
As I understand it, encryption is useless unless both users have enabled it. On my AIM list right now, 1/75 users has it on. 90% of the people on my list don't even know what encryption means in this context. I doubt these people will care about the new TOS and will likely not go to the trouble to turn encryption on. Just my guess...
You missed my point. 10x as many people (at least) use azureus than the official program. Most of the "new" options in the official program have been in a previous client. Why does the official program get slashdot front page coverage when other client upgrades don't?
I think you are partly missing the point. It's not that this product will be successful - it won't, because it won't be supported for years, by which time it will be old technology.
It is exciting because it is groundbreaking for games - it will prove that it can considerably speed up games by freeing up CPU resources that are normally used for the very cpu-intensive physics modeling. It will probaly also allow the physics to be more realistic.
I bet you the first graphics cards were either highly priced failures or academic inventions that never saw the public. Nevertheless, they directly led to what gaming is today. Perhaps this PPU will do the same. I'd guess that 15 years from now, cheap computers will come with motherboards with cheap, built-in physics processors (like GPUs are integrated today in cheap computers today)
I entirely agree. As a hardware person, I find a hardware and software monopoly much scarier than just a software monopoly. Imagine the death grip apple would have on the world if they won out - they would have tight control on the hardware accessories market, like they have on the iPod. It is hard to find cheap accesories for the iPod because apple is so damned closed about its products and interfaces.
I don't understand why open source fans worship apple so much - seems to me like their whole business model is just as closed source as microsoft's. I can understand using their products if they are superior, but the amount of sycophantic love for apple I see sickens me. Apple lovers seem too short-sighted to understand that they are promoting a company that seeks to control the market far more than microsoft ever could.
That's like saying that DVDs can't have previews of upcoming movies before them. Hasn't stopped them from doing it...
I do agree, however, that it is a dumb idea. People wouldn't stand for ads in their TV shows that they *paid* for. At least I wouldn't. I would just download the dvd without the ads and burn it. I refuse to pay to watch advertisements.
The problem is that corporations with stock holders/owners must answer to them. If a company does something in the interest of the greater good which doesn't help the company, it must answer to its stock holders. As long as the employees make their salary and the owners are millionares/billionares, all is dandy.
This wasn't a problem for google until they went public. Now they have millions of people to answer to if they don't make decisions that are in *their* interest. Does this make them evil? Probably not, but it also forces them to be more evil than they were.
Google will likely push many of the developers to do things that aren't in the best interest of the direction of firefox (for example, integrate it with google products, which goes against the modular nature of firefox). Luckily firefox is an opensource project and this will not have to kill it. If google is extreme enough with this, I envision a rift in firefox development, which I think would be terrible
Who do you like more?
on
Ask mc chris
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· Score: 1
Do you think your success as a musician rests on aqua teen hunger force and sealab continuing to do well? Or do you think you will be able to disattach yourself from the shows enough that people will continue to listen to your music after the shows are gone?
BTW, I went to your show in Baltimore, and it was great! I got trampled in the "merchandise riot."
I also use the bulbs frequently, and have not had problems with short life. Maybe my bulbs are newer than yours and use better technology. I read somewhere that everytime you turn the bulb on or off, the lifetime is decreased by about 15 minutes, so maybe you are flickering them too much.
I have found that the fluorescent bulbs are best used in areas with a lot of traffic, like hallways. I personally think the glow of incandescent bulbs is nicer, so I use them in my bedroom.
Perhaps it uses a lot of RAM because you have a lot. I've never taken an OS class, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a possibility. When I upgraded from 256 to 768 megs of ram, I found my computer actually made use of the additional ram and ran faster (perhaps less paging?).
There is a constant struggle in software development of features vs speed. Normally, adding to one detracts from the other. As a speed freak, I entirely understand what you mean. But there is a key difference between bloat and useful functionality. The problem is this difference is entirely subjective. One man's bloat is another man's favorite extension:)
The great thing about firefox is it has allowed the line to be drawn by the user with extensions. The problem is drawing this line takes considerable effort for a newbie, and thus many people are first introduced to firefox may complain about its lack of functionality (eg. flash). As I said, it's always a constant struggle.
BTW, I disagree with your opinion that firefox uses too much memory. While webpages are loaded, they need to be in memory, and all those pretty little pictures take up a lot of memory. Although, in all fairness, I am pretty sure there is a big memory leak in firefox that *needs* to be fixed ASAP. I hate when I have one window loaded with google and it's taking up 75 megs of ram and 75 megs of virtual memory.
I don't think they will ever sell shows for that cheap because DVD sales are becoming very popular for TV. Why would you pay 30 dollars for season 2 of family guy when you could download the whole season for 5 bucks?
But using tools for us humans is almost as natural as using our hands. Maybe thats true for monkeys too. Perhaps the only thing that is stopping a monkey from using a tool is the lack of opposable thumbs.
You should actually look at media player classic - it is modeled after 6.4, but is better imo. I did use 6.4 for a while when I first got WinXP, but it is not easy to find, especially for the average user.
too bad a surround dvd-audio song takes up about 500 megs each. Maybe in 10 years... Also, too bad that the music-computer industry would never allow open formats like that to be sold.
No, the future of the music industry is closed, inconvenient formats and copy-protected discs.
I disagree - I am a normal windows user, but I find Windows Media Player to be the biggest piece of crap ever. Media player classic, an open source alternative, is 5x faster/smaller, 5x more customizable, and does what 99% of the people need (play files, cds, and dvds).
Windows used to come bundled with WiMP 6.4, with a nice clean interface. MS then switched to the new media player, which is when I realized that windows was starting to become very, very bloated. I still use windows because it is:
a. Easier to get working with all the old random hardware I have attached to my franken-computer b. I'm a gamer c. I'm too lazy to switch
Slashdot Mirror
According to a recent scientific american article that was written to debunk common myths about the universe, given that the universe is expanding, the visible universe is actually larger than 14 billion ly radius. This is because light from a star that is *now* 30 billion ly away could have reached us by now because for part of its trip it was closer than 30 billion lys from us. This is, of course, assuming that light goes at a constant speed.
The problem with all this highly theoretical physics is that no one really understands it - even the people who study it. I don't study it; I am just repeating what I read in an article, so I am sure that I know even less about all this stuff.
Free-doom does not copy the levels from doom, it involves creating whole new levels, graphics, and sounds.
For example, Yahoo has a game called Literati, which is basically the same concept and rules as scrabble, but a different layout. They are not getting sued. E-scrabble, from the sound of it, is an exact copy of scrabble.
The thing that annoys me about Mensa is it centers around pride for something you were born with, not something you earned. You can have an IQ of 180 and I still won't respect you if you don't do something great with it. People in Mensa (who show it off) think they are better than the average population because of they way they were born. How does that make them any better than one of those white pride people?
That's a really good idea. I would like to see something like that built into google (ie. a checkbox next to the seach box along the lines of "filter out commercial sites"). Google could then look for keywords that indicate that they are trying to sell you something and remove the offending pages from the results. This would benefit the user by giving better searches, and benefit google by giving more attention to their own ads. They probably already have the algorithms to do this from froogle.
I personally am starting to get annoyed with how much effort I need to put in to search for information about commercial products on google. The amount of noise in the results can be mind-boggling.
The decoder could probably be placed into hardware (although this would still be years away I am sure). My main concern would be that the "lossiness" of the compression would be unacceptable. In the future, the demand for higher quality video will only increase, and bandwidth and storage will increase to meet that need even with today's compression standards.
As I recall reading (I don't remember where), one of the reasons for the switch was because answers.com is free ie. you can access everything without paying for "premium" services. For example, answers.com has a pronounciation feature for free, whereas dictionary.com charges for it. Don't know how true this is because I lost my source.
As I understand it, encryption is useless unless both users have enabled it. On my AIM list right now, 1/75 users has it on. 90% of the people on my list don't even know what encryption means in this context. I doubt these people will care about the new TOS and will likely not go to the trouble to turn encryption on. Just my guess...
You missed my point. 10x as many people (at least) use azureus than the official program. Most of the "new" options in the official program have been in a previous client. Why does the official program get slashdot front page coverage when other client upgrades don't?
no one uses the official bit torrent client. The most popular clients the last time I checked are Azureus and ABC, both fine programs.
"At what point does one say, enough is enough, how many different processors need to be in a computer."
:)
Never - you are clearly not a gamer
I think you are partly missing the point. It's not that this product will be successful - it won't, because it won't be supported for years, by which time it will be old technology.
It is exciting because it is groundbreaking for games - it will prove that it can considerably speed up games by freeing up CPU resources that are normally used for the very cpu-intensive physics modeling. It will probaly also allow the physics to be more realistic.
I bet you the first graphics cards were either highly priced failures or academic inventions that never saw the public. Nevertheless, they directly led to what gaming is today. Perhaps this PPU will do the same. I'd guess that 15 years from now, cheap computers will come with motherboards with cheap, built-in physics processors (like GPUs are integrated today in cheap computers today)
$13.2 million? that's like a penny to Microsoft.
"What's a quarter?"
-Bill Gates on Family Guy
I entirely agree. As a hardware person, I find a hardware and software monopoly much scarier than just a software monopoly. Imagine the death grip apple would have on the world if they won out - they would have tight control on the hardware accessories market, like they have on the iPod. It is hard to find cheap accesories for the iPod because apple is so damned closed about its products and interfaces.
I don't understand why open source fans worship apple so much - seems to me like their whole business model is just as closed source as microsoft's. I can understand using their products if they are superior, but the amount of sycophantic love for apple I see sickens me. Apple lovers seem too short-sighted to understand that they are promoting a company that seeks to control the market far more than microsoft ever could.
That's like saying that DVDs can't have previews of upcoming movies before them. Hasn't stopped them from doing it...
I do agree, however, that it is a dumb idea. People wouldn't stand for ads in their TV shows that they *paid* for. At least I wouldn't. I would just download the dvd without the ads and burn it. I refuse to pay to watch advertisements.
The problem is that corporations with stock holders/owners must answer to them. If a company does something in the interest of the greater good which doesn't help the company, it must answer to its stock holders. As long as the employees make their salary and the owners are millionares/billionares, all is dandy.
This wasn't a problem for google until they went public. Now they have millions of people to answer to if they don't make decisions that are in *their* interest. Does this make them evil? Probably not, but it also forces them to be more evil than they were.
Google will likely push many of the developers to do things that aren't in the best interest of the direction of firefox (for example, integrate it with google products, which goes against the modular nature of firefox). Luckily firefox is an opensource project and this will not have to kill it. If google is extreme enough with this, I envision a rift in firefox development, which I think would be terrible
Do you think your success as a musician rests on aqua teen hunger force and sealab continuing to do well? Or do you think you will be able to disattach yourself from the shows enough that people will continue to listen to your music after the shows are gone? BTW, I went to your show in Baltimore, and it was great! I got trampled in the "merchandise riot."
I also use the bulbs frequently, and have not had problems with short life. Maybe my bulbs are newer than yours and use better technology. I read somewhere that everytime you turn the bulb on or off, the lifetime is decreased by about 15 minutes, so maybe you are flickering them too much.
I have found that the fluorescent bulbs are best used in areas with a lot of traffic, like hallways. I personally think the glow of incandescent bulbs is nicer, so I use them in my bedroom.
Perhaps it uses a lot of RAM because you have a lot. I've never taken an OS class, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a possibility. When I upgraded from 256 to 768 megs of ram, I found my computer actually made use of the additional ram and ran faster (perhaps less paging?).
There is a constant struggle in software development of features vs speed. Normally, adding to one detracts from the other. As a speed freak, I entirely understand what you mean. But there is a key difference between bloat and useful functionality. The problem is this difference is entirely subjective. One man's bloat is another man's favorite extension :)
The great thing about firefox is it has allowed the line to be drawn by the user with extensions. The problem is drawing this line takes considerable effort for a newbie, and thus many people are first introduced to firefox may complain about its lack of functionality (eg. flash). As I said, it's always a constant struggle.
BTW, I disagree with your opinion that firefox uses too much memory. While webpages are loaded, they need to be in memory, and all those pretty little pictures take up a lot of memory. Although, in all fairness, I am pretty sure there is a big memory leak in firefox that *needs* to be fixed ASAP. I hate when I have one window loaded with google and it's taking up 75 megs of ram and 75 megs of virtual memory.
I don't think they will ever sell shows for that cheap because DVD sales are becoming very popular for TV. Why would you pay 30 dollars for season 2 of family guy when you could download the whole season for 5 bucks?
But using tools for us humans is almost as natural as using our hands. Maybe thats true for monkeys too. Perhaps the only thing that is stopping a monkey from using a tool is the lack of opposable thumbs.
You should actually look at media player classic - it is modeled after 6.4, but is better imo. I did use 6.4 for a while when I first got WinXP, but it is not easy to find, especially for the average user.
too bad a surround dvd-audio song takes up about 500 megs each. Maybe in 10 years... Also, too bad that the music-computer industry would never allow open formats like that to be sold.
No, the future of the music industry is closed, inconvenient formats and copy-protected discs.
I disagree - I am a normal windows user, but I find Windows Media Player to be the biggest piece of crap ever. Media player classic, an open source alternative, is 5x faster/smaller, 5x more customizable, and does what 99% of the people need (play files, cds, and dvds).
Windows used to come bundled with WiMP 6.4, with a nice clean interface. MS then switched to the new media player, which is when I realized that windows was starting to become very, very bloated. I still use windows because it is:
a. Easier to get working with all the old random hardware I have attached to my franken-computer
b. I'm a gamer
c. I'm too lazy to switch
It appears in these tests that Moox is actually a lot slower than normal firefox in windows. So, what is it optimized for?