BitTorrent is evil P2P software which is being used illegally and must be killed.
My entire music collection which I copied off my CD's is pirated.
The sound effects from Day of Defeat are pirated.
Ditto for Ceasar 3
Blizzard's 12 days of Christmas which they released for free download by all and sundry is pirated.
MP3's of my cousin's wedding are apparently pirated copyright material.
I'm suprised that it didn't throw a wobbly about the videos of the TA Spring engine.
NOT. For those of us who wanted a proper internet connection this system is worthless, why? because we've already got ourselves cable-based broadband.
Is there any reason why 8MBit won't work on cable? I'd have though that it would work better. Why will no-one pander to those who don't get their phone form one of the most expensive providers in the country?
And how much would it cost to send up an new telescope? being as how they already have a working design?
Hubble is what? 15 years old? how much new stuff could they include without actually having to do much R&D? a few newer detectors, a better camera, bigger mirror (properly made first time please).
I suspect that it would be more than US$1billion but it might actually be worth it for a new telescope, rather than to shell all that out developing a robot to keep a piece of decrepid machinery, which is past it's use-by date anyway, working.
Would they send a mission to go and repair the rovers if they wanted to keep exploring on mars?
Personally, the only thing I would see that would pacify both sides would be a complete omission of any theory regarding how we came to be. While politically correct, it would be a massive disservice to the students
Simple, have a second textbook just for "how we came to be here" theories and knock it all out of the normal textbooks. Parents could then keep their children out lessons where these heretic textbooks were being used and everyone's happy. Except the children.
The police (at least in Britain) tend to arrest, question, charge (they only get to hold people for 12 hours without an extension from a magistrate and there is a limit on the total time) before the person has to be released, bailed or charged. (IANAL etc)
it's interesting how, in that article they're talking about missions in the planning stage that we're just getting the results from now. Well, I find it staggering how long it takes between "let's send a probe" to "wooh, turns out the death star is in our solar system", but I suppose they have to research, design, build, test the thing and then it has to get there. It's still staggering just how long it takes though - the rovers seems state of the art, but the newest technology that could be in them is 4 years old.
Uhhh, yes it is... so long as they're willing to broadcast at gamma wavelengths or, indeed, any wavelengths as they theoretically go up to infinity, and down to infinitesimally small.
IANAQP.Y
(I Am Not A Qualified Physicist... Yet)
just replying to myself, 20 million cubic meters per day, the sun only shines for 1/2 a day on average
I also didn't point out that if this were extended to the polar ice caps then the radiated heat that would otherwise be absorbed by the ice would now be absorbed by solar panels, helping to cancel out the rest of the worlds hydrocarbon-burning evilness melting the ice and drowning the Netherlands.
The sun... All we have to do is modify one of the shuttles with regenerative-multi-vector-ablative-reverse-the-pol arity shielding and go get some, there's plenty up there.
But, in all seriousness, solar power to run electrolysis of water
285 KJ per mol of water.
1370 W m^-2 at the upper atmosphere, since I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER how much is absorbed by the atmosphere, I'm going to knock 90% off for the value on the surface, 137 W m^-2. Halve it (for the fact that the extreme north doesn't really face the sun) 68.5 W m^-2 and get 20% of that value for what a solar cell would get out of it 13.7 W m^-2.
5.7 hours for each sqr meter to produce enough energy to make 1 mol.
Now, iceland could probably spare ~ 1000 Km^2. 1 Km^2 is 1,000,000 m^2, so 1000 of them is 1,000,000,000 m^2.
In 5.7 hours that's 1 (US)billion mols of water electrolysised. Or, to put it differently, 20803 sqr meters are required to get 1 mol in a second. 48070 mols per second. Now, a mol = 6.023 x 10^23 molecules of water, that's 2.895 x 10^28 hydrogen molecules per second.
(PV/nT)=R. at STP (T=273, P=1.013x10^5), n is the number above and R = 8.31, V is:
V=nRT/P
V=465.8 cubic meters of hydrogen. Per Second. That's 40,245,120 cubic meters per day.
Now, I suspect that my original energy input is wrong, that it won't be 100% efficient and that iceland probably doesn't want to dedicate 1000 Sqr Km to solar panels, but that's still quite a lot of hydrogen, particularly for a country with a population like that of iceland.
Re:Lora Croft was not created for girls
on
Getting the Girl
·
· Score: 1
Also, how can you say there is a line at the womens room for the first time, and in the same breath wonder if the industry has/is changing.
Clearly, you observations dictate that it is changing.
Clearly there were less cubicles in the ladies at E3 2004 than E3 2003, thus increasing the queue size and leading you to BELIEVE that the industry is changing. Or they were marketing more soft drinks to the women in 2004. Maybe it's both, if *I* were tryign to show people that the industry was changing that's what I'd do!
It looks like you need one. The BBC are funded entirely through tax money, just like any division of government organization. It is also controlled by a government board.... just like any other division of government.
Nope, the BBC is funded entirely through the license fee, which you have to pay if you own a TV. The government allows it to demand this, and it is effectively a tax, but that's not to be confused with 'tax money'
Nor is it controlled by a government board.
The day to day running is controlled by the Director general. The overall direction is controlled by the government (who do have to be approved by the government, but that doesn't mean that they are part of the government), only above that is the culture secretary, who doesn't really get much say either way. The only other contact that the government has with it is the Royal charter whic has to be renewed every 10 years by act of parliament. It's not a good idea for the BBC to annoy the government, but the government doesn't actually control them at any direct level.
Mostly right, but a few details wrong:
1) It's the antarctic
2) more than 6000 years
3) It's a woman
4) It's not a human, it's an ancient
Don't you pay attention when watching Stargate?
*cough* wrong expansion of OBE
on
Sir Peter Molyneux?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
although the letters obe mean order of the british empire, they refer to several actual 'titles'
If you get an OBE it stands for Officer of the British Empire, a specific title. Above MBE (member) and below CBE (commander).
combined with the fact that if the original file didn't really contain the music then, although you intended to break copyright law, you actually didn't.
So presumably you see nothing wrong with a 16 year old having to prove their age to but as game marked '15'? Even though that 16 year old may well not have a drivers license or passport or other form of ID. Fine.
I got refused service at a computer game store when I was 16 and wanted to buy the D2 battlechest (rated 15) because I couldn't prove my age. (Bearing in find that this was an ERSB rating, i.e. a non-legally binding one). I had to have my Dad dig my passport out so I could make another bus journey into town the next week (and then the person who served me didn't demand ID).
Have it happen to you before you start suggesting it as a good idea.
clicky The geniuses suceeded in publishing a report with a map on the front which just had a gap where Wales should have been.
Stuff Spelling and Grammar, 3 million people and a few billion sheep just ceased to exist!
hook it up to America's Army. A 100,000 player MMOFPS/RTS, with a command structure, a continent to fight over and no modular missions. A big-picture, constantly changing war. Wanna make it even cooler? have new technology appear every few years, have the ammount of new weapons you can build related to how much of the land/natural resources you control - have things built on percentages, not just numerical limits.
Of course, the thing is that this just becomes a big computer game rather than a military training system, but like America's Army which is really designed to get people to sign up for the US Army, (as long as everything is realistic) this would actually allow the powers that be to know just who the best leaders/tacticians/strategists are in a time of crisis, without having to actually get a few 1000 soldiers brains blown out to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Oh, and have the 'leaders' in a virtual command HQ, which could potentially be overrun / blown up.
Wait... that was the entire plan for my world-dominating computer game... d'oh. No-one do anything with it for a while, will you? I'm just popping out to the patent office.
IANAL But I'd be interested to see this 'contract of sale' get held up in court. Switching the buttons to effectively trick someone, who just wants to close the ad, into buying something tends to be illegal. Infact, accepting an advert probably doesn't count as part of the contract.
Invitation to treat: the ad pops up
Offer: You get tricked into clicking accept
Acceptance: I doubt they have a person at the other end - since when can you make a contract with a machine? (actually, when you shop online I suppose that you do...)
Either way, you got tricked into accepting it, oh, and in the UK at least, it would come under the distance selling regulations, which tend to blunt dirty tricks.
"It's a voluntary program based on the ratings you already see on the game boxes."
So are ELSPA ratings (as opposed to BBFC, which are compulsory). So, I was suprised a few years back, age 16, when I went into my local Game to purchase the Diablo battlechest. (no BBFC rating at all, just an ELSPA one) I was asked for ID, being 16 and not planning on hopping over to France (or any other country that I would need my passport to go to) once I'd bought my game, I didn't have any ID with me...
The nice man explained to me that unless I could prove to him that I was over 15 we were each risking a £5000 fine and he therefore couldn't sell me the game, which was garbage. I knew it was garbage, perhaps he was poorly-trained, or just stupid, I don't know. Being only 16 and with people behind me, I didn't make a scene (although in hindsight, I should have demanded to see the manager, or someone with an IQ greater than that of a boiled potato), I simply paid for Theme Hospital and left. (Luckily I got TH, or I would have paid the rip-off fees charged by my local bus company to come home empty handed). So, I concluded that Game were now acting like brainless morons, asking 16 year olds to prove that they are over 15 to buy a game that they don't actually HAVE to be over 15 to buy.
Anyway, on to the next week, I go back, determined to get the game, I walk in (different person there), pick up a Diablo battlechest. Put it, £35 and my passport down on the counter. With a bemused expression the assistant looks at my passport and asks "why are you giving me this?"...
So, he explains that I didn't need ID and the guy the week before was wrong (ok, he didn't categorically say that - admitting that your own colleagues are stupid infront of the punters is a bad idea), which I knew all along...
What really annoyed me though was:
1)The embarrasment of being asked for ID, which I didn't have, to buy a game that I didn't need to have ID to buy [for those this hasn't happened to, it feels lke being treated as a quasi-criminal]
2)Having had to wait another week to play
3)Having had to pay for 2 bus trips
4)Then looking like a prat the next week when I handed the guy my passport - no queue that week luckily.
I would buy my games elsewhere, but there are only 3 stores, the other 2 of which have very poor PC selections:-(
I can understand not wanting to have mixed groups, by day 100 all the women will be pregnant, by just before day 400 they'll be giving birth, and I doubt that there's a maternity ward on any spaceship pre-24th century. Particularly with all those cute Russian women, er, um, I didn't say that. The only other solution would be filling the 'women' slots with the likes of Ann Widecombe, but, alas, I fear the whole mission would never get off the ground.
I see no politically correct reason why an all-female group couldn't go though. Politically incorrect (and probably just plain incorrect) reasons would include: -Women are physically weaker than men -Women are psychologically weaker than men -Women are stupid -The sheer weight of tampons/make-up/perfume/hair conditioner/exfoliating rub that would have to be added to the luggage -Not on Earth to make babies for the glory of the great soviet motherland, or something.
As you see, there are myriad good reasons why men are better than women... (note to self: don't go into research, work for SCO instead, they like watertight arguments)
When the site launches, and some wag *looks in mirror* finds a reason to submit a story about it every day for the first few months, one of 2 things will happen.
Their servers will keep running at a nice, cool, 40 degrees c, and we'll all find out that they're running THEIR operating system, yeah, the one which everyone else has and THEY want to keep for themselves, or something, because they claim that it's theirs, although everyone else has it.
Or they'll be running windows..
Nice choice, effectively hang a sign around their necks saying "we're hypocrites" or have their site go down and get ridiculed on/. for using M$ based stuff...
but, as people have already said, 1 year might be a smidge too short.
I don't know if they were planning to do this anyway (RTFA? what do you think I am? some sort of TFA reader?), but changing the goal for each prize, so, the one in a few years time will be (say) "get to 200Km", a few more years, "get a rock back from the moon, without smashing your capsule with the rock in into the Utah desert", "get a space station, capable of supporting 12 poople, into orbit & keep it there for 6 months", "build a reuseable shutle capable of carrying 20 people around the moon and back", "put a 3-man team on mars", (obviously some of these would be for quite a few years time).
Another idea would be somw runners up prizes, instead of giving out a $10mil to someone every year for doing what's alreayd been done (which will result in a half dozen or so spaceships taking off on 1st January next year) a runners up prize of say $1mil could be given to any group who completes the requirements in the same year as the main prize winning entry (or within 9 months of).
A new prize could be introduced every few years, and the cash sit in an X-prize bank account somewhere ready to give it out to whoever wins, the interest on $10mil should provide enough cash to run most of the other stuff related to the prizes. Now, if NASA wants to start putting prize money up for something, $50mil would cover the next 5 first prizes.
Or, the prize money could be related to how hard the task is based on current standards, for instance, if, in 6 months time, someone started selling jaunts around the sun or something then that would be a lot of cash, whereas, if, in the same year as 3 different groups put 3 people on Mars, someone brings back a moon rock, the prize would be smaller.
Just my two 0.01 coins (before they get phased out)
Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent is evil P2P software which is being used illegally and must be killed.
My entire music collection which I copied off my CD's is pirated.
The sound effects from Day of Defeat are pirated.
Ditto for Ceasar 3
Blizzard's 12 days of Christmas which they released for free download by all and sundry is pirated.
MP3's of my cousin's wedding are apparently pirated copyright material.
I'm suprised that it didn't throw a wobbly about the videos of the TA Spring engine.
NOT. For those of us who wanted a proper internet connection this system is worthless, why? because we've already got ourselves cable-based broadband.
Is there any reason why 8MBit won't work on cable? I'd have though that it would work better.
Why will no-one pander to those who don't get their phone form one of the most expensive providers in the country?
And how much would it cost to send up an new telescope? being as how they already have a working design?
Hubble is what? 15 years old? how much new stuff could they include without actually having to do much R&D? a few newer detectors, a better camera, bigger mirror (properly made first time please).
I suspect that it would be more than US$1billion but it might actually be worth it for a new telescope, rather than to shell all that out developing a robot to keep a piece of decrepid machinery, which is past it's use-by date anyway, working.
Would they send a mission to go and repair the rovers if they wanted to keep exploring on mars?
No, I wouldn't worry about being detained.
They'll have you on a flight deporting you back from whence you came at the earliest opportunity with minimal fuss, bother or time wasted.
not charged immediately....
The police (at least in Britain) tend to arrest, question, charge (they only get to hold people for 12 hours without an extension from a magistrate and there is a limit on the total time) before the person has to be released, bailed or charged. (IANAL etc)
it's interesting how, in that article they're talking about missions in the planning stage that we're just getting the results from now. Well, I find it staggering how long it takes between "let's send a probe" to "wooh, turns out the death star is in our solar system", but I suppose they have to research, design, build, test the thing and then it has to get there. It's still staggering just how long it takes though - the rovers seems state of the art, but the newest technology that could be in them is 4 years old.
IANAQP.Y
(I Am Not A Qualified Physicist... Yet)
just replying to myself, 20 million cubic meters per day, the sun only shines for 1/2 a day on average
I also didn't point out that if this were extended to the polar ice caps then the radiated heat that would otherwise be absorbed by the ice would now be absorbed by solar panels, helping to cancel out the rest of the worlds hydrocarbon-burning evilness melting the ice and drowning the Netherlands.
The sun... All we have to do is modify one of the shuttles with regenerative-multi-vector-ablative-reverse-the-pol arity shielding and go get some, there's plenty up there.
But, in all seriousness, solar power to run electrolysis of water
285 KJ per mol of water.
1370 W m^-2 at the upper atmosphere, since I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER how much is absorbed by the atmosphere, I'm going to knock 90% off for the value on the surface, 137 W m^-2. Halve it (for the fact that the extreme north doesn't really face the sun) 68.5 W m^-2 and get 20% of that value for what a solar cell would get out of it 13.7 W m^-2. 5.7 hours for each sqr meter to produce enough energy to make 1 mol.
Now, iceland could probably spare ~ 1000 Km^2. 1 Km^2 is 1,000,000 m^2, so 1000 of them is 1,000,000,000 m^2.
In 5.7 hours that's 1 (US)billion mols of water electrolysised. Or, to put it differently, 20803 sqr meters are required to get 1 mol in a second. 48070 mols per second. Now, a mol = 6.023 x 10^23 molecules of water, that's 2.895 x 10^28 hydrogen molecules per second.
(PV/nT)=R. at STP (T=273, P=1.013x10^5), n is the number above and R = 8.31, V is:
V=nRT/P
V=465.8 cubic meters of hydrogen. Per Second. That's 40,245,120 cubic meters per day.
Now, I suspect that my original energy input is wrong, that it won't be 100% efficient and that iceland probably doesn't want to dedicate 1000 Sqr Km to solar panels, but that's still quite a lot of hydrogen, particularly for a country with a population like that of iceland.
Pass me my hat would you? It's the shiny one.
Nope, the BBC is funded entirely through the license fee, which you have to pay if you own a TV. The government allows it to demand this, and it is effectively a tax, but that's not to be confused with 'tax money'
Nor is it controlled by a government board. The day to day running is controlled by the Director general. The overall direction is controlled by the government (who do have to be approved by the government, but that doesn't mean that they are part of the government), only above that is the culture secretary, who doesn't really get much say either way. The only other contact that the government has with it is the Royal charter whic has to be renewed every 10 years by act of parliament. It's not a good idea for the BBC to annoy the government, but the government doesn't actually control them at any direct level.
Mostly right, but a few details wrong:
1) It's the antarctic
2) more than 6000 years
3) It's a woman
4) It's not a human, it's an ancient
Don't you pay attention when watching Stargate?
although the letters obe mean order of the british empire, they refer to several actual 'titles'
If you get an OBE it stands for Officer of the British Empire, a specific title. Above MBE (member) and below CBE (commander).
Free pedant points please
combined with the fact that if the original file didn't really contain the music then, although you intended to break copyright law, you actually didn't.
IANAL yadda yadda yadda
So presumably you see nothing wrong with a 16 year old having to prove their age to but as game marked '15'? Even though that 16 year old may well not have a drivers license or passport or other form of ID. Fine.
I got refused service at a computer game store when I was 16 and wanted to buy the D2 battlechest (rated 15) because I couldn't prove my age. (Bearing in find that this was an ERSB rating, i.e. a non-legally binding one). I had to have my Dad dig my passport out so I could make another bus journey into town the next week (and then the person who served me didn't demand ID).
Have it happen to you before you start suggesting it as a good idea.
clicky
The geniuses suceeded in publishing a report with a map on the front which just had a gap where Wales should have been.
Stuff Spelling and Grammar, 3 million people and a few billion sheep just ceased to exist!
I assume that you speak of the USPTO.
For perpetual motion devices, they require a working prototype, so I'd guess a long time.
Although I have been working on something involving a lead ball and a bottomless pit...
hook it up to America's Army. A 100,000 player MMOFPS/RTS, with a command structure, a continent to fight over and no modular missions. A big-picture, constantly changing war. Wanna make it even cooler? have new technology appear every few years, have the ammount of new weapons you can build related to how much of the land/natural resources you control - have things built on percentages, not just numerical limits.
Of course, the thing is that this just becomes a big computer game rather than a military training system, but like America's Army which is really designed to get people to sign up for the US Army, (as long as everything is realistic) this would actually allow the powers that be to know just who the best leaders/tacticians/strategists are in a time of crisis, without having to actually get a few 1000 soldiers brains blown out to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Oh, and have the 'leaders' in a virtual command HQ, which could potentially be overrun / blown up.
Wait... that was the entire plan for my world-dominating computer game... d'oh. No-one do anything with it for a while, will you? I'm just popping out to the patent office.
IANAL But I'd be interested to see this 'contract of sale' get held up in court. Switching the buttons to effectively trick someone, who just wants to close the ad, into buying something tends to be illegal. Infact, accepting an advert probably doesn't count as part of the contract.
Invitation to treat: the ad pops up
Offer: You get tricked into clicking accept
Acceptance: I doubt they have a person at the other end - since when can you make a contract with a machine? (actually, when you shop online I suppose that you do...)
Either way, you got tricked into accepting it, oh, and in the UK at least, it would come under the distance selling regulations, which tend to blunt dirty tricks.
The nice man explained to me that unless I could prove to him that I was over 15 we were each risking a £5000 fine and he therefore couldn't sell me the game, which was garbage. I knew it was garbage, perhaps he was poorly-trained, or just stupid, I don't know. Being only 16 and with people behind me, I didn't make a scene (although in hindsight, I should have demanded to see the manager, or someone with an IQ greater than that of a boiled potato), I simply paid for Theme Hospital and left. (Luckily I got TH, or I would have paid the rip-off fees charged by my local bus company to come home empty handed). So, I concluded that Game were now acting like brainless morons, asking 16 year olds to prove that they are over 15 to buy a game that they don't actually HAVE to be over 15 to buy.
Anyway, on to the next week, I go back, determined to get the game, I walk in (different person there), pick up a Diablo battlechest. Put it, £35 and my passport down on the counter. With a bemused expression the assistant looks at my passport and asks "why are you giving me this?"...
So, he explains that I didn't need ID and the guy the week before was wrong (ok, he didn't categorically say that - admitting that your own colleagues are stupid infront of the punters is a bad idea), which I knew all along...
What really annoyed me though was:
1)The embarrasment of being asked for ID, which I didn't have, to buy a game that I didn't need to have ID to buy [for those this hasn't happened to, it feels lke being treated as a quasi-criminal]
2)Having had to wait another week to play
3)Having had to pay for 2 bus trips
4)Then looking like a prat the next week when I handed the guy my passport - no queue that week luckily.
I would buy my games elsewhere, but there are only 3 stores, the other 2 of which have very poor PC selections
I can understand not wanting to have mixed groups, by day 100 all the women will be pregnant, by just before day 400 they'll be giving birth, and I doubt that there's a maternity ward on any spaceship pre-24th century.
Particularly with all those cute Russian women, er, um, I didn't say that. The only other solution would be filling the 'women' slots with the likes of Ann Widecombe, but, alas, I fear the whole mission would never get off the ground.
I see no politically correct reason why an all-female group couldn't go though. Politically incorrect (and probably just plain incorrect) reasons would include:
-Women are physically weaker than men
-Women are psychologically weaker than men
-Women are stupid
-The sheer weight of tampons/make-up/perfume/hair conditioner/exfoliating rub that would have to be added to the luggage
-Not on Earth to make babies for the glory of the great soviet motherland, or something.
As you see, there are myriad good reasons why men are better than women... (note to self: don't go into research, work for SCO instead, they like watertight arguments)
Perhaps they should run simultaneous tests...
When the site launches, and some wag *looks in mirror* finds a reason to submit a story about it every day for the first few months, one of 2 things will happen.
/. for using M$ based stuff...
Their servers will keep running at a nice, cool, 40 degrees c, and we'll all find out that they're running THEIR operating system, yeah, the one which everyone else has and THEY want to keep for themselves, or something, because they claim that it's theirs, although everyone else has it.
Or they'll be running windows..
Nice choice, effectively hang a sign around their necks saying "we're hypocrites" or have their site go down and get ridiculed on
Oh the dilemma, my heart bleeds for them...
but, as people have already said, 1 year might be a smidge too short.
I don't know if they were planning to do this anyway (RTFA? what do you think I am? some sort of TFA reader?), but changing the goal for each prize, so, the one in a few years time will be (say) "get to 200Km", a few more years, "get a rock back from the moon, without smashing your capsule with the rock in into the Utah desert", "get a space station, capable of supporting 12 poople, into orbit & keep it there for 6 months", "build a reuseable shutle capable of carrying 20 people around the moon and back", "put a 3-man team on mars", (obviously some of these would be for quite a few years time).
Another idea would be somw runners up prizes, instead of giving out a $10mil to someone every year for doing what's alreayd been done (which will result in a half dozen or so spaceships taking off on 1st January next year) a runners up prize of say $1mil could be given to any group who completes the requirements in the same year as the main prize winning entry (or within 9 months of).
A new prize could be introduced every few years, and the cash sit in an X-prize bank account somewhere ready to give it out to whoever wins, the interest on $10mil should provide enough cash to run most of the other stuff related to the prizes. Now, if NASA wants to start putting prize money up for something, $50mil would cover the next 5 first prizes.
Or, the prize money could be related to how hard the task is based on current standards, for instance, if, in 6 months time, someone started selling jaunts around the sun or something then that would be a lot of cash, whereas, if, in the same year as 3 different groups put 3 people on Mars, someone brings back a moon rock, the prize would be smaller.
Just my two 0.01 coins (before they get phased out)