I was under the impression that an antimatter-matter reaction followed the same law as nukes, i.e. E=MC^2... so, for the same price, how much plutonium could you get? (bearing in mind that antimatter is the most expensive subsatance available & that the matter to react with it is effectively free & doubles the total ammount of stuff reacting) So, if you can get more than double the ammount of plutonium for the same price (assuming that you can get a 100% efficient reaction), how is it any better bang-per-buck than a conventional nuke?
Oh, yeah, what do they propose to store the antimatter in? sandwich tubs?
Why both spending all that time & money developing a totally redundant weapon, when they'd do better to use proven technology and build big H-bombs, or are they planning on dealing with a threat from outer space? like the goa'uld? or the klingons? or the vogons?
If they've got money to burn they can buy me a new computer...
They're not necessarily propeled by air, the requirement is that each pellet, at the point where it comes out of the barrel (so, point-blank) has an energy (kinetic) of 1j or less (IIRC - it might not be 1j, but the restriction is based on the kinetic energy of the pellet).
There are several other methods used, a spring and some fancy thingamijig with an electromagnet are two systems that spring to mind.
You mean they haven't been doing this since the birth of ActiveX anyway?
Well well well, you learn something new everyday, my respect-o-meter for Microsoft has just gone up a tiny fraction.
Oh, wait, they're doing it now, back down it goes...
They now have $160million less to sink into R&D or charging less for their RAM. Either that or the innocent geeks who work for them take a wage cut. Yay!
"Sir, we've detected mass spam coming from your connection. Please clean up your computer. You have one week."
"Sir, we've detected mass spam coming from your connection. Please clean up your computer. If you do not believe that you are capable of doing it we can send you a free booklet, or failing that, send out a nerd to do it for you. Oh, and we'll sent you a knoppix CD"
Yes, it would be expensive, but if ISP's get a reputation for cutting people off because someone else took over their PC's and they were unable to fix it, that ISP will be going out of business, particularly if someone else does start offering
to help people deal with the problem. I mean, what would it cost to send out a CD with all the windows security updates, Zonealarm, AVG & AdAware on it? a few pence? Less than it would cost them to refund for the time cut off, compensation for the inconvenience & the loss of income when the customer cancels?
If the university's network access is being disrupted by other wireless connections... GO BACK TO WIRES! Anyone who wants an internet connection on the university network can get it through a wire with no interference. If they really want it wireless they can get up their own AP from their port. (Perhaps build Faraday's cages [or that new wallpaper BAE Systems is making] into all the rooms to stop access being spread outside).
If invididual student's wireless AP's are interfereing with each other, they can either sort it out among themselves or go back to the wires. Either way, access to the network itself is not interfered with unless a student is using their own 3rd party equipment. It's also by far the best way to keep the network secure against outside access.
so, they're behind by 5 DS9 films & 5 Voyager films... That's 10 films to worry about, and only a few years until they have to worry about Enterprise too.
What I propose is this.
1)Take a hiatus from making series' after Enterprise season4. For ooh 5 or 6 years.
2)Do 1 or 2 films with Each of DS9 & Voyager and another 1 or 2 with both of them (and the Enterprise, Riker's new ship, the USS illustrious et al). Ok, these would probably be a special effects fest rather than a heart-wrenching story, but that's what sensible people like.
Note, they onyl actually need 6 story lines in 5 years, even Bermann could think of that... Species 8472 anyone?
Then, when we're all desperate for a series after having been kept interested by a steady drip of films, they can start making a new series with the USS Illustrious as the principle ship.
Well, that's what I'd like to watch, but I'm probably in a minority.
No, I'm not going to tell you what the USS Illustrious is.
If you want to make it really interesting...
Get a calm day, 2 old computer fans (at 90 degrees to each other) a 12v battery pack & some remote control stuff. A weather baloon can carry weather observing equipment, so it should be able to carry that lot. Then you'll have control over where the camera goes.
If you want to look really clever stick a GPS transmitter on it in lieu of the fans so you can pick it up once it comes down wherever it goes.
Disclaimer: I never played Doom1, or Doom2 & I've not played Doom3.
So, I don't know how it compares, but the music on Diablo added an awful lot to the atmosphere. It's reasonably scary, and when it gets the sound of an angry charger put over it you end up almost jumping out of your seat.
Oh, Total Annihilation had a great score, but it didn't actually do much for the game, it just sounded great.
The Buran Built by the Russians, looked like the shuttle externally (although it was different internally).
Ok, so they may not have FLOWN reuseable engines, but they designed & built engines to do it.
You need:
-An ex-military minigun (or other electronically-fired automatic weapon)
-A Person in Room detector
-An ISA interface card
-A little knowledge of programming in QB (ok, a lot)
-A bit of thought into a good excuse to give the police when the ask why Joe next door got ripped to shreds by a minigun when he came in to borrow a calculator
And you'll be all set for your stuff to be safe.
You'll also have to invest in some sort of a method of disabling the gun (RFID tags, a numeric keypad, a timer before it fires, etc.) unless you're willing to live with not being able to get into your dorm either.
uncensored?
75% of the refreshes that I've done so far(4 in total) contain some sort of pr0n.
Either their 'crawler', 'aggregator' or 'gadget that they use for gathering images' is biased, of the intarweb has more pr0n on it than I thought.
Shocking.
Well, then perhaps Sourceforge should get some offshore serverage for 'controversial' projects like this.
And to get around the no-linking rules, host the front page offshore, and link to the non-controversial on the cheaper US based servers.
Who has juristiction in the south pole?
If you read the license for the game, it mentions the StarForce installation. If you click "ok" (which you have to to play the game), you agree to it.
Which doesn't apply unless it says on the box in a text size comparable to the rest of the text on the box.
Since no-one, in their right mind, would take back a computer game because you didn't like the T&C around installing it, those T&C's must be available before you purchase the product, i.e. on the box, otherwise the goods aren't as described and someone other than you is in deep doggy-do.
In short, if the obscure terms that they want you to agree to aren't easily visible on the box then they don't apply (or won't stand up in court) whether you clicked OK or not.
Re:Some of the changes (possible spoilers)
on
Star Wars on DVD
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
LotR is one thing. They have additional scenes on the super fancy-pants versions. But they don't go changing the scenes you've already watched
Oh yes PJ does.
A relative of mine was an extra in the cinema/VHS release, but the scene that he was in was chopped out for the extended DVD.
as someone else has already mentioned, since the copyright on the file rests with the nice people at MS, the actual torrent is still illegal, if useful.
A better example would be the World of Warcraft beta, which is being distributed using bittorrent by Blizzard. Legal and Useful.
Green? Is the Tony's latest plan? he wants us to pay in US dollars?
I believe that the speeding fine is £80 at the moment. So, a £50 note is red, a £20 is purpley & a £10 note is orange.
Er, does anyone know what you get when you mix those colours? (Red) + (Red + Blue) + (Red + yellow) = Very red with a dash of green?
ok, so it's partly about the green, but mostly about the red.
is to drop all this "as-good-as-a-real-PC...Honest" stuff.
Look, it's 12" long, 9" wide & less than 1" thick.
You aren't going to get a fully functional computer into that space at reasonable cost, pea -brain.
What they need to do is get rid of:
1)Optical drives
2)The floppy drive
3)Any processor above ~ 1GHz
4)Copious quantities of RAM
i.e. BARE BONES, VERY bare bones.
All it needs is a low-power processor, a cut down OS that will fit into minimal quantities of RAM (and will be stored in a ROM or similar solid-state storage), wireless networking & onboard everything-that-currently-comes-on-a-card (and cut down editions).
With the higher bandwidth wireless networking coming over the horizon it's soon going to be feasable to run the tablet as a dumb terminal hooked up to a proper PC - let's face it, anyone who can afford to be using such a gadget instead of pen & paper probably has a PC as well.
This has several advantages:
1)Cheaper Overall for the tablet (assuming that you have a PC already)
2)You aren't putting all your eggs in one basket - if you drop it it's just an LCD and a few cheap components, not a complete PC
3)You can upgrade it easily, since you actually upgrade the host computer using standard components - as long as you don't break it, the tablet could last a decade or more as it's just relaying what another PC is processing
4)You still have a real PC for typing tasks\gaming\hacking\programming\reading/. on etc
Oh, and since it won't have so much stuff in it you can either make it cheaper by using less-miniature components, or still use the mini ones (but less of them) and have more space in the case for batteries - imagine getting 12 hours out of it.
And if you want to use if for watching films, either copy them to hard disk before you go out, or, if you opt for one without a hard disk which does a network boot (requiring wireless networking support to be built into the BIOS, but hey, they did it with CD's), you could have a little box to clip on the end with oodles of solid-state storage. Just using the storage density of todays USB pen drives, you could get 20Gb in one, that's 4 movies anyway, minimum.
Alternatively, stay within range of your network and watch them straight off the main PC.
Stick a few ports (USB & firewire) & some PCCard slots and you're sorted for printers/keyboards(if you're desperate) & TV reception.
All the functionality of a full-blown PC in a small box with a screen on the front, for a fraction of what it would cost today.
Utilising all the wireless internet hotspots hanging about nowadays, yuo could even run it on the other side of the world (albeit for quite a bit of lag).
1) It could become very popular with amateur writers who won't have to secure a publishing deal to get their books distributed, they can just stand by the machine for a few hours.
2) So, when are they making one for CD-ROM's? Getting out-of-print books is a nightmare, but so it getting out-of-print computer games (read Core Contingency). I'd use one, a lot.
sort of like how when I just got a 'register' box which had my email address already in it for me...
Unfortunately, I'm a big softy willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt & assume that they just scavved it from outlook express, but picasa and downloader.exe and definately not getting internet access through zonealarm.
I have to agree against traditional martial arts.
Practical versions are better, but 'taditional' is most definately worse.
Karate, for instance, is largely set-piece. Actions are done in a specific way and that makes your opponent predictable. Yes, you can beat someone when sparring, but you'll end up relying on them always following the rules of karate.
You then get into a real fight and discover that your opponent is not predictable and you lose all advantage. You just cease to be unpredictable.
They thought that they were a superpower too... oh, wait, they were, until at least 25 years ago. Making America "global superpower" for a maximum of 25 years. (Now, had you meant "A global superpower" {or maybe your did and I mis-read the tone of your post} that would have been fine)
Besides the British empire is, er, was larger than the American empire ever has been.
Slashdot Mirror
I was under the impression that an antimatter-matter reaction followed the same law as nukes, i.e.
E=MC^2... so, for the same price, how much plutonium could you get? (bearing in mind that antimatter is the most expensive subsatance available & that the matter to react with it is effectively free & doubles the total ammount of stuff reacting) So, if you can get more than double the ammount of plutonium for the same price (assuming that you can get a 100% efficient reaction), how is it any better bang-per-buck than a conventional nuke?
Oh, yeah, what do they propose to store the antimatter in? sandwich tubs?
Why both spending all that time & money developing a totally redundant weapon, when they'd do better to use proven technology and build big H-bombs, or are they planning on dealing with a threat from outer space? like the goa'uld? or the klingons? or the vogons?
If they've got money to burn they can buy me a new computer...
Littl plastic pellets propelled by air
They're not necessarily propeled by air, the requirement is that each pellet, at the point where it comes out of the barrel (so, point-blank) has an energy (kinetic) of 1j or less (IIRC - it might not be 1j, but the restriction is based on the kinetic energy of the pellet).
There are several other methods used, a spring and some fancy thingamijig with an electromagnet are two systems that spring to mind.
Harold Shipman committed suicide 9 months ago
There must have been a better analogy than mentioning hiring a dead person
You mean they haven't been doing this since the birth of ActiveX anyway?
Well well well, you learn something new everyday, my respect-o-meter for Microsoft has just gone up a tiny fraction.
Oh, wait, they're doing it now, back down it goes...
Benefit?
What are you smoking?
They now have $160million less to sink into R&D or charging less for their RAM. Either that or the innocent geeks who work for them take a wage cut. Yay!
"Sir, we've detected mass spam coming from your connection. Please clean up your computer. You have one week."
"Sir, we've detected mass spam coming from your connection. Please clean up your computer. If you do not believe that you are capable of doing it we can send you a free booklet, or failing that, send out a nerd to do it for you. Oh, and we'll sent you a knoppix CD"
Yes, it would be expensive, but if ISP's get a reputation for cutting people off because someone else took over their PC's and they were unable to fix it, that ISP will be going out of business, particularly if someone else does start offering to help people deal with the problem. I mean, what would it cost to send out a CD with all the windows security updates, Zonealarm, AVG & AdAware on it? a few pence? Less than it would cost them to refund for the time cut off, compensation for the inconvenience & the loss of income when the customer cancels?
If the university's network access is being disrupted by other wireless connections... GO BACK TO WIRES! Anyone who wants an internet connection on the university network can get it through a wire with no interference. If they really want it wireless they can get up their own AP from their port. (Perhaps build Faraday's cages [or that new wallpaper BAE Systems is making] into all the rooms to stop access being spread outside).
If invididual student's wireless AP's are interfereing with each other, they can either sort it out among themselves or go back to the wires.
Either way, access to the network itself is not interfered with unless a student is using their own 3rd party equipment.
It's also by far the best way to keep the network secure against outside access.
Fact is, they're behind.
5 tos films 4 or 5 Next gen films.
so, they're behind by 5 DS9 films & 5 Voyager films... That's 10 films to worry about, and only a few years until they have to worry about Enterprise too.
What I propose is this. 1)Take a hiatus from making series' after Enterprise season4. For ooh 5 or 6 years. 2)Do 1 or 2 films with Each of DS9 & Voyager and another 1 or 2 with both of them (and the Enterprise, Riker's new ship, the USS illustrious et al). Ok, these would probably be a special effects fest rather than a heart-wrenching story, but that's what sensible people like.
Note, they onyl actually need 6 story lines in 5 years, even Bermann could think of that... Species 8472 anyone?
Then, when we're all desperate for a series after having been kept interested by a steady drip of films, they can start making a new series with the USS Illustrious as the principle ship.
Well, that's what I'd like to watch, but I'm probably in a minority.
No, I'm not going to tell you what the USS Illustrious is.
If you want to make it really interesting...
Get a calm day, 2 old computer fans (at 90 degrees to each other) a 12v battery pack & some remote control stuff. A weather baloon can carry weather observing equipment, so it should be able to carry that lot. Then you'll have control over where the camera goes.
If you want to look really clever stick a GPS transmitter on it in lieu of the fans so you can pick it up once it comes down wherever it goes.
Kirk, Spock & Ensign Gomez beam down to the surface. Guess who isn't coming back?
Disclaimer: I never played Doom1, or Doom2 & I've not played Doom3.
So, I don't know how it compares, but the music on Diablo added an awful lot to the atmosphere. It's reasonably scary, and when it gets the sound of an angry charger put over it you end up almost jumping out of your seat.
Oh, Total Annihilation had a great score, but it didn't actually do much for the game, it just sounded great.
The Buran
Built by the Russians, looked like the shuttle externally (although it was different internally).
Ok, so they may not have FLOWN reuseable engines, but they designed & built engines to do it.
You need:
-An ex-military minigun (or other electronically-fired automatic weapon)
-A Person in Room detector
-An ISA interface card
-A little knowledge of programming in QB (ok, a lot)
-A bit of thought into a good excuse to give the police when the ask why Joe next door got ripped to shreds by a minigun when he came in to borrow a calculator
And you'll be all set for your stuff to be safe.
You'll also have to invest in some sort of a method of disabling the gun (RFID tags, a numeric keypad, a timer before it fires, etc.) unless you're willing to live with not being able to get into your dorm either.
Simple!
uncensored?
75% of the refreshes that I've done so far(4 in total) contain some sort of pr0n.
Either their 'crawler', 'aggregator' or 'gadget that they use for gathering images' is biased, of the intarweb has more pr0n on it than I thought.
Shocking.
Well, then perhaps Sourceforge should get some offshore serverage for 'controversial' projects like this.
And to get around the no-linking rules, host the front page offshore, and link to the non-controversial on the cheaper US based servers.
Who has juristiction in the south pole?
Which doesn't apply unless it says on the box in a text size comparable to the rest of the text on the box.
Since no-one, in their right mind, would take back a computer game because you didn't like the T&C around installing it, those T&C's must be available before you purchase the product, i.e. on the box, otherwise the goods aren't as described and someone other than you is in deep doggy-do.
In short, if the obscure terms that they want you to agree to aren't easily visible on the box then they don't apply (or won't stand up in court) whether you clicked OK or not.
Oh yes PJ does.
A relative of mine was an extra in the cinema/VHS release, but the scene that he was in was chopped out for the extended DVD.
Bad PJ, Bad PJ.
as someone else has already mentioned, since the copyright on the file rests with the nice people at MS, the actual torrent is still illegal, if useful.
A better example would be the World of Warcraft beta, which is being distributed using bittorrent by Blizzard. Legal and Useful.
Green? Is the Tony's latest plan? he wants us to pay in US dollars?
I believe that the speeding fine is £80 at the moment. So, a £50 note is red, a £20 is purpley & a £10 note is orange.
Er, does anyone know what you get when you mix those colours? (Red) + (Red + Blue) + (Red + yellow) = Very red with a dash of green?
ok, so it's partly about the green, but mostly about the red.
Instead, it's "everyone's pirating our junk!"
Utterly missing the fact that they aren't selling because it's junk.
Show the RIAA what you think, buy a CFM box-set!
is to drop all this "as-good-as-a-real-PC ...Honest" stuff.
/. on etc
Look, it's 12" long, 9" wide & less than 1" thick.
You aren't going to get a fully functional computer into that space at reasonable cost, pea -brain.
What they need to do is get rid of:
1)Optical drives
2)The floppy drive
3)Any processor above ~ 1GHz
4)Copious quantities of RAM
i.e. BARE BONES, VERY bare bones.
All it needs is a low-power processor, a cut down OS that will fit into minimal quantities of RAM (and will be stored in a ROM or similar solid-state storage), wireless networking & onboard everything-that-currently-comes-on-a-card (and cut down editions).
With the higher bandwidth wireless networking coming over the horizon it's soon going to be feasable to run the tablet as a dumb terminal hooked up to a proper PC - let's face it, anyone who can afford to be using such a gadget instead of pen & paper probably has a PC as well.
This has several advantages:
1)Cheaper Overall for the tablet (assuming that you have a PC already)
2)You aren't putting all your eggs in one basket - if you drop it it's just an LCD and a few cheap components, not a complete PC
3)You can upgrade it easily, since you actually upgrade the host computer using standard components - as long as you don't break it, the tablet could last a decade or more as it's just relaying what another PC is processing
4)You still have a real PC for typing tasks\gaming\hacking\programming\reading
Oh, and since it won't have so much stuff in it you can either make it cheaper by using less-miniature components, or still use the mini ones (but less of them) and have more space in the case for batteries - imagine getting 12 hours out of it.
And if you want to use if for watching films, either copy them to hard disk before you go out, or, if you opt for one without a hard disk which does a network boot (requiring wireless networking support to be built into the BIOS, but hey, they did it with CD's), you could have a little box to clip on the end with oodles of solid-state storage.
Just using the storage density of todays USB pen drives, you could get 20Gb in one, that's 4 movies anyway, minimum.
Alternatively, stay within range of your network and watch them straight off the main PC.
Stick a few ports (USB & firewire) & some PCCard slots and you're sorted for printers/keyboards(if you're desperate) & TV reception.
All the functionality of a full-blown PC in a small box with a screen on the front, for a fraction of what it would cost today.
Utilising all the wireless internet hotspots hanging about nowadays, yuo could even run it on the other side of the world (albeit for quite a bit of lag).
1) It could become very popular with amateur writers who won't have to secure a publishing deal to get their books distributed, they can just stand by the machine for a few hours.
2) So, when are they making one for CD-ROM's? Getting out-of-print books is a nightmare, but so it getting out-of-print computer games (read Core Contingency). I'd use one, a lot.
sort of like how when I just got a 'register' box which had my email address already in it for me...
Unfortunately, I'm a big softy willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt & assume that they just scavved it from outlook express, but picasa and downloader.exe and definately not getting internet access through zonealarm.
I have to agree against traditional martial arts. Practical versions are better, but 'taditional' is most definately worse.
Karate, for instance, is largely set-piece. Actions are done in a specific way and that makes your opponent predictable. Yes, you can beat someone when sparring, but you'll end up relying on them always following the rules of karate.
You then get into a real fight and discover that your opponent is not predictable and you lose all advantage. You just cease to be unpredictable.
They thought that they were a superpower too... oh, wait, they were, until at least 25 years ago. Making America "global superpower" for a maximum of 25 years. (Now, had you meant "A global superpower" {or maybe your did and I mis-read the tone of your post} that would have been fine)
Besides the British empire is, er, was larger than the American empire ever has been.