I always thought it was the resistance that caused heat and not the current.
Anybody got any links that demonstrate what the correct situation is?
(The following is extremely simplified, and ignores alternating voltages, capacitive and inductive effects).
Two equations:
U = I*R (Ohm's law)
and
E = U*I
E is the heat energy
U is the voltage
I is the current
Now, it depends on your situation. If your power source is constant voltage (or, in more engineering terms, it has low internal resistance, for example mains power), U is pretty much constant. The current through a load is then determined by the resistance of the load (using equation 1). The amount of heat you get is then proportional to the current, and inversely proportional to your resistance. So, if you plug in a heater to the wall, the lower the resistance of the heating coil, the more current flows through the circuit and the more heat energy you get.
A less perfect voltage source (say, a battery) has significant internal resistance; the more current you extract from it, the more its voltage drops. Your first equation becomes U = I*(R+r), with R being the internal resistance of your battery. You'll get most power from this setup when the resistance of your load equals the internal resistance. At this point, the heat generated in the battery is equal to the heat generated in the external load.
And, for fun, you can also build current sources, that force a certain current through any load you connect to them (within limits, of course). They do this by changing their output voltage to match the resistance of the load. There are *many* uses for such sources in electronic devices.
What was that turbo button for? IIRC, it didn't do... anything. At all. On any operating system.
IIRC, many games and other software written for the original IBM PC used software timing loops for delays (assuming the watch to be at 4.77 MHz). As faster 286 and 386 machines started showing up, the software that depended on those loops became unusable. So manufacturers added a "slow" mode, for compatibility. The turbo button remained a feature on cases for a long time after; many builders didn't connect it to anything.
I stand corrected, you are right, a properly implemeted IIS solution includes a reverse apache proxy server running linux or solaris IN FRONT of the IIS machine..
You seemed so sure of your facts that I assumed you checked some vulnerabilities database before posting to slashdot - you wouldn't want to look silly, now would you? But it looks like you didn't have enough time. Let me help you with our argument: (quotes from Secunia):
Apache 2.0.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Less critical.
This is based on the most severe Secunia advisory, which is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database. Go to Unpatched/Patched list below for details.
Currently, 2 out of 24 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.
The Secunia database currently contains 0 Secunia advisories marked as "Unpatched", which affects Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.
This is based on the most severe Secunia advisory, which is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database. Go to Unpatched/Patched list below for details.
Currently, 0 out of 3 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.
So, to spell it out for you, until now IIS 6 had a total of 3 advisories, all patched, while Apache 2.0 had 24, of which at the moment of writing 2 are still unpached.
Do you stand corrected now?
Terrible, even for a 1.0 release
on
Nvu 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
I downloaded NVU a couple of days ago and tried it a bit (the Windows version). The test project was a basic photo album site. I gave the thing a couple of hours, but gave up in disgust after it lost a file I had painfully edited (so please don't consider what follows as anything but a rant. I didn't get to the advanced features at all. The thing may be a diamond in the rough for all I know)
The software is buggy and doesn't respect the platform's conventions (extremely annoying: why for example doesn't Ctrl+F4 close the current page?). Introducing basic text in WYSYWIG mode was a pain; selection works weirdly, deletion doesn't do what you expect, the arrows work intermittently and so on. I found myself using mostly the HTML source code editor (which was almost as bad). Inserting and editing a table was an exercise in frustration. The table format dialog is fairly counter-intuitive - I had to go back to the HTML source code editor for that too. I might as well have used notepad to begin with. Working with templates is also difficult and the software offers very little support.
NVU has a CSS editor, but using it is completely non-intuitive for a beginner. And a more knowledgeable web programmer will probably have better tools.
All in all, it's more what I'd expect from an early beta, not a 1.0 release.
People who want b&w images using conventional chemical photography seem to be moving to the chromogenic, C-41 process films like Kodak's T400CN and Ilford's XP-2. They cite finer grain and workflow simplification--C-41 films seem to scan easier
For amateurs who do their own scanning C-41 process monochromes have another big advantage over silver halide: the infrared dust cleaning technology (like Canon's FARE) doesn't work with silver-based film. But I agree, silver-based images look better to me too.
What I wonder about is the huge mass of existing monochrome negatives that people have accumulated over the years
I'm currently scanning and archiving my old films. The oldest ones I have are 20+ year old silver based monochromes. They're in excellent condition (I did the negative processing myself, and stored them carefully).
I also have a number of East German slide films (ORWOchrome), dating from the same period - before 1985) and those look very well too. Again, I did the processing myself, using fresh solutions and washing all traces of chemicals from the film very thoroughly.
On the other hand, a few Kodak color negatives I have from the same period have degraded visibly (color shift and contrast loss). I don't have C41 process monochromes quite as old, so I can't comment, but I expect the same behavior. Those were comercially processed, which may be a factor.
But I guess that since paper is merely a rendition of a monochrome negative, digital sampling of the negatives would suffice to a degree. Maybe not as nicely as people would hope, though
Actually good scans, a bit of digital processing (mostly dust cleaning) and printing on an adequate ink-jet printer with good paper produce very satisfactory photos. Some of them can be even better than the lab-based ones, because the digital processing makes a lot of things so much easier (for example, very selective dodging and burning, fine control of the levels, and so on).
Commercially available film scanners are relatively cheap and good enough for most advanced amateur jobs. My scanner does 4000 dpi, and it's starting to show the film grain on fast films (slower films developed in fine-grain developer don't show grain yet). A more expensive scanner may perhaps improve the density range, but the resolution is there. But if you have negatives with such an extreme density range, your image taking and initial processing were problematic to begin with.
If the file is already well compressed, generating blocks from parity information won't make it faster
I don't think you understand the smart trick here. It's got nothing to do with compression; the point is that Microsoft's technique increases the number of choices you get for candidate blocks when downloading a message.
Here's an example: suppose you want to download a file composed of 100 blocks. The blocks are distributed randomly between a number of servers, some blocks may be missing, some duplicated. Your node needs to collect all 100 packets to reconstitute the original file. Now, let's suppose 70% of the blocks may be obtained quickly and easily. 20% more are on a slow servers, and the last 10% are missing altogether. At this point, your machine can't complete the message until some server carrying the missing blocks comes online.
With Microsoft's technology, the original file is also split in 100 blocks, but extra blocks are computed as a linear combination of the original blocks. Both the original and the extra blocks are distributed. The nice trick is that your machine can reconstitute all the original message by getting any 100 of the original or extra blocks. Any 100 different packets will do! Your node will have to solve a system of linear equations (as many equations as the number of original blocks you've missed)and it will obtain the whole original message
Let's assume 100 extra blocks were created (for a total of 200 blocks) and let's also assume we have the same server quality distribution as above; 70% of the 200 blocks(140 different blocks) are available quickly and easily. At this point you don't need to wait for the slow (or missing) servers at all. You can go to the quickest servers because you don't have to wait for a certain missing packet. And you don't need to download extra bits either: you still have to get the same 100 packets and can stop the download once those have been acquired.
They can't retroactively change the license you're using the software under.
But they can use a new license for patches, bug fixes and new versions. You can refuse to apply them, but then you're leaving your data center vulnerable to all kinds of unpleasantness.
That means you can't use the damn thing for more than 20 minutes a day. The music and video would drain the battery in no time.
You never had an iPaq, have you? With my usage pattern, I only ran out of power twice in the years I had the device (both times in airports). I often listen to music on the iPaq while reading an e-book (didn't bother to check the time, but it's at least 2-3 hours at a stretch). I do turn the backlight off, that's true, and I have recharging cradles both at home and at work.
Contacts, schedules, notes, and simple applications. Which is still what you use these things for, and it's still what you NEED these things for.
You really shouldn't generalize blindly. That may be your usage pattern, but other folks do different things with their PDAs. I use mine to listen to music, read e-books, I have Streets And Trips maps on it, and also use it to manage my expenses. I experimented with video too, and I'm working in my spare time on a script that would record a couple of shows on my desktop computer, encode them for the iPaq overnight and transfer them to the device, so I can watch them during the morning's commute.
It's an older iPaq 3800, and it's starting to feel slow, so I'm planning on getting a faster one soon. I had a Handspring Visor still gathering dust in some drawer, but there is no way I'd go back to it.
A better approach to that is take a phrase and change it like so
iLikeFi$he$Bec@useTheyreSoDelicio$
That doesn't add much to your password's security, you know; your changes aren't random enough, especially since "leet" ortography is so prevalent. There are dictionary attack programs that use expanded dictionaries, using also words with the obvious replacements (I/L -> 1, e -> 3 and so on).
They could just be suggesting a high price so that MSFT slaps a $400 price tag and they sweep in for $350 or so
I don't see how Sony could maneuver MSFT here. Remember that the XBox 360 will be out for a few months to a year before the PS3 or Nintendo's box. So MSFT will have no competition during this interval, and they can sell the product at whatever price they want. If Sony leaks a price of $500, MSFT can set the initial price to $499 and, when the PS3 finally comes out, cut the price to match Sony's. Matching the cost should be easy for MSFT, since the PS3 BOM looks seriously more expensive than the XBox 360 one. Moreover, by the time the PS3 launches, MSFT will have had a few months to streamline the production process for the XBox and reduce the costs.
And I don't see Sony leaking too small a price either; the customers will be pretty annoyed if Sony swears they'll sell the device at $199 and later launch it at $399.
To awnser your question on work , well I am an IT Director(by title) and Systems Admin(by trade) so yes i have worked more than a single day in my life.
IOW, you're a user of somebody else's creative work, and not a creator yourself (except perhaps for some admin scripts that probably don't take too long to write). So it's easy for you to request the "freeing" of all IP, since you won't lose anything yourself.
Now, suppose programming staff requests that all system administrators be legally mandated to work for free (they can always sell t-shirts if they want to eat). I'm sure you wouldn't support *this* position...
...a lot of open source advocates have set an unreasonable level of expectations by proclaiming the amazing magic of open source: A fantasy world where every line is thoroughly vetted by thousands of super-experts...
Please, name these magical advocates and provide some links or at least one quote from a well known advocate who preaches that.
Here. If you argue for a position, it's a good idea to read the defining literature. Will save you from looking uninformed or worse. And, to avoid a waste of time with technicalities, I know ESR doesn't mention superexperts, but that's not necessary at all for the argument in the grandparent post.
Complexity *does* spring into existence without cause.
Entropy is forever increasing. We are moving toward zero complexity.
Either entropy hasn't always been increasing, or the universe started with full complexity
Your reasoning is faulty, because it's based on a misunderstanding of the principles of thermodynamics. All the principles of thermodynamics require is that the global entropy stay constant or increase. That does not in any way preclude local variations. Entropy can very well decrease locally at the expense of an increase in entropy in other parts of the universe.
That's how life works: it uses energy from various sources to decrease its entropy. The energy that the lifeform needs to maintain its complexity (and therefore local low entropy) is degraded and dumped into the environment as heat, body wastes etc. That leads to a net increase of global entropy in the universe, but allows the lifeform to exist.
Re:Golems. Lots of Golems.
on
Iron Council
·
· Score: 1
What I find interesting is that over the last few years, fantasy has been filled with golems.
Also Jonathan Stroud second Bartimaeus book.
Also Terry Pratchett's older Feet of Clay or more recent Going Postal. Feet of Clay predates 72 letters by some 4 years.
Inconsistency
on
Iron Council
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Another annoying feature of Iron Council is that everything is subservient to the special effects of the moment.
I liked the book (though it's clearly not as good as Perdido Street Station), but I have to agree with this comment. I generally prefer my SF (and horror) to be internally consistent. You accept the initial premise (and if you don't, why are you even reading this book, or seeing this movie?), but everything else should flow logically from here. Most horror flicks, for example, fail miserably at that - one of the reasons why most horror flicks are so bad.
Some authors can get away with internal inconsistency through continuous invention - Douglas Adams is a good example. Also Terry Pratchett, who, when asked about contradictions between different books in the Discworld series, said that there are no contradictions - there are however alternate pasts.
China Mieville doesn't even try; he invents new rules, brings in machine gods and joyfully contradicts himself anytime he needs to solve a problem. He's almost like Wile E. Coyote: never twice the same trick. This said, his writing style (which I quite like) hasn't changed much, and he does keep throwing new and interesting things at the reader, so Iron Council is IMHO quite acceptable.
As for having one external drive bay, that drive is a DVD+R DL, DVD+/-RW, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM. What else do you need it to do?
I'd like to be able to copy data from a CD directly to another without having to copy it first to the hard drive. It's like an echo from the ancient copy on floppy disks: "Insert source disk..."
By the time IE gets to where FF is today, FF will have advanced way beyond what IE can hope to achieve from typical corporate development.
Remember your history; when MS became interested in this new intarweb thang, Netscape was far ahead in features and product quality. MS came from behind to catch up and pass Netscape (and before somebody starts whining about bundling with Windows, I'm talking product quality: remember the difference between IE 4 and especially 5 and the catastrophe that was Navigator 4). You may say that OSS development is quicker than corporate dev, but remember how long it took to get to Mozilla 1.0?
Apparently, the whole idea comes from a policeman from Toronto who sent an email to Bill Gates to convince him to help them do something about kiddie orn.
think about the uses to which you can put that underlying code, which is now all open source. now imagine what will happen when someone takes this open source code and perverts it into a complete ID theft tool. what will the M$ press release look like then?
On Slashdot at least it shouldn't be a problem, eh? The Slashdot majority opinion seems to be that the manufacturer of the tool is not at fault if the tool is used to break the law, as long as the tool has legitimate legal uses. Isn't that what the BitTorrent defenders say?
Slashdot Mirror
I always thought it was the resistance that caused heat and not the current. Anybody got any links that demonstrate what the correct situation is?
(The following is extremely simplified, and ignores alternating voltages, capacitive and inductive effects).
Two equations:
U = I*R (Ohm's law)
and
E = U*I
E is the heat energy
U is the voltage
I is the current
Now, it depends on your situation. If your power source is constant voltage (or, in more engineering terms, it has low internal resistance, for example mains power), U is pretty much constant. The current through a load is then determined by the resistance of the load (using equation 1). The amount of heat you get is then proportional to the current, and inversely proportional to your resistance. So, if you plug in a heater to the wall, the lower the resistance of the heating coil, the more current flows through the circuit and the more heat energy you get.
A less perfect voltage source (say, a battery) has significant internal resistance; the more current you extract from it, the more its voltage drops. Your first equation becomes U = I*(R+r), with R being the internal resistance of your battery. You'll get most power from this setup when the resistance of your load equals the internal resistance. At this point, the heat generated in the battery is equal to the heat generated in the external load.
And, for fun, you can also build current sources, that force a certain current through any load you connect to them (within limits, of course). They do this by changing their output voltage to match the resistance of the load. There are *many* uses for such sources in electronic devices.
I'd love to have an external LCD display showing the time, even when the machine's not on. hell, that'd even be useful on a desktop machine
It's coming
Or google for "Microsoft auxilliary display"
What was that turbo button for? IIRC, it didn't do... anything. At all. On any operating system.
IIRC, many games and other software written for the original IBM PC used software timing loops for delays (assuming the watch to be at 4.77 MHz). As faster 286 and 386 machines started showing up, the software that depended on those loops became unusable. So manufacturers added a "slow" mode, for compatibility. The turbo button remained a feature on cases for a long time after; many builders didn't connect it to anything.
I stand corrected, you are right, a properly implemeted IIS solution includes a reverse apache proxy server running linux or solaris IN FRONT of the IIS machine..
You seemed so sure of your facts that I assumed you checked some vulnerabilities database before posting to slashdot - you wouldn't want to look silly, now would you? But it looks like you didn't have enough time. Let me help you with our argument: (quotes from Secunia):
Apache 2.0:
Apache 2.0.x with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Less critical.
This is based on the most severe Secunia advisory, which is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database. Go to Unpatched/Patched list below for details.
Currently, 2 out of 24 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.
IIS 6.0:
The Secunia database currently contains 0 Secunia advisories marked as "Unpatched", which affects Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.
This is based on the most severe Secunia advisory, which is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database. Go to Unpatched/Patched list below for details.
Currently, 0 out of 3 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.
So, to spell it out for you, until now IIS 6 had a total of 3 advisories, all patched, while Apache 2.0 had 24, of which at the moment of writing 2 are still unpached.
Do you stand corrected now?
I downloaded NVU a couple of days ago and tried it a bit (the Windows version). The test project was a basic photo album site. I gave the thing a couple of hours, but gave up in disgust after it lost a file I had painfully edited (so please don't consider what follows as anything but a rant. I didn't get to the advanced features at all. The thing may be a diamond in the rough for all I know)
The software is buggy and doesn't respect the platform's conventions (extremely annoying: why for example doesn't Ctrl+F4 close the current page?). Introducing basic text in WYSYWIG mode was a pain; selection works weirdly, deletion doesn't do what you expect, the arrows work intermittently and so on. I found myself using mostly the HTML source code editor (which was almost as bad). Inserting and editing a table was an exercise in frustration. The table format dialog is fairly counter-intuitive - I had to go back to the HTML source code editor for that too. I might as well have used notepad to begin with. Working with templates is also difficult and the software offers very little support.
NVU has a CSS editor, but using it is completely non-intuitive for a beginner. And a more knowledgeable web programmer will probably have better tools.
All in all, it's more what I'd expect from an early beta, not a 1.0 release.
People who want b&w images using conventional chemical photography seem to be moving to the chromogenic, C-41 process films like Kodak's T400CN and Ilford's XP-2. They cite finer grain and workflow simplification--C-41 films seem to scan easier
For amateurs who do their own scanning C-41 process monochromes have another big advantage over silver halide: the infrared dust cleaning technology (like Canon's FARE) doesn't work with silver-based film. But I agree, silver-based images look better to me too.
What I wonder about is the huge mass of existing monochrome negatives that people have accumulated over the years
I'm currently scanning and archiving my old films. The oldest ones I have are 20+ year old silver based monochromes. They're in excellent condition (I did the negative processing myself, and stored them carefully).
I also have a number of East German slide films (ORWOchrome), dating from the same period - before 1985) and those look very well too. Again, I did the processing myself, using fresh solutions and washing all traces of chemicals from the film very thoroughly.
On the other hand, a few Kodak color negatives I have from the same period have degraded visibly (color shift and contrast loss). I don't have C41 process monochromes quite as old, so I can't comment, but I expect the same behavior. Those were comercially processed, which may be a factor.
But I guess that since paper is merely a rendition of a monochrome negative, digital sampling of the negatives would suffice to a degree. Maybe not as nicely as people would hope, though
Actually good scans, a bit of digital processing (mostly dust cleaning) and printing on an adequate ink-jet printer with good paper produce very satisfactory photos. Some of them can be even better than the lab-based ones, because the digital processing makes a lot of things so much easier (for example, very selective dodging and burning, fine control of the levels, and so on).
Commercially available film scanners are relatively cheap and good enough for most advanced amateur jobs. My scanner does 4000 dpi, and it's starting to show the film grain on fast films (slower films developed in fine-grain developer don't show grain yet). A more expensive scanner may perhaps improve the density range, but the resolution is there. But if you have negatives with such an extreme density range, your image taking and initial processing were problematic to begin with.
With the logical consequence: Pratchett's retrophrenology
If the file is already well compressed, generating blocks from parity information won't make it faster
I don't think you understand the smart trick here. It's got nothing to do with compression; the point is that Microsoft's technique increases the number of choices you get for candidate blocks when downloading a message.
Here's an example: suppose you want to download a file composed of 100 blocks. The blocks are distributed randomly between a number of servers, some blocks may be missing, some duplicated. Your node needs to collect all 100 packets to reconstitute the original file. Now, let's suppose 70% of the blocks may be obtained quickly and easily. 20% more are on a slow servers, and the last 10% are missing altogether. At this point, your machine can't complete the message until some server carrying the missing blocks comes online.
With Microsoft's technology, the original file is also split in 100 blocks, but extra blocks are computed as a linear combination of the original blocks. Both the original and the extra blocks are distributed. The nice trick is that your machine can reconstitute all the original message by getting any 100 of the original or extra blocks. Any 100 different packets will do! Your node will have to solve a system of linear equations (as many equations as the number of original blocks you've missed)and it will obtain the whole original message
Let's assume 100 extra blocks were created (for a total of 200 blocks) and let's also assume we have the same server quality distribution as above; 70% of the 200 blocks(140 different blocks) are available quickly and easily. At this point you don't need to wait for the slow (or missing) servers at all. You can go to the quickest servers because you don't have to wait for a certain missing packet. And you don't need to download extra bits either: you still have to get the same 100 packets and can stop the download once those have been acquired.
Nifty.
They can't retroactively change the license you're using the software under.
But they can use a new license for patches, bug fixes and new versions. You can refuse to apply them, but then you're leaving your data center vulnerable to all kinds of unpleasantness.
That means you can't use the damn thing for more than 20 minutes a day. The music and video would drain the battery in no time.
You never had an iPaq, have you? With my usage pattern, I only ran out of power twice in the years I had the device (both times in airports). I often listen to music on the iPaq while reading an e-book (didn't bother to check the time, but it's at least 2-3 hours at a stretch). I do turn the backlight off, that's true, and I have recharging cradles both at home and at work.
Contacts, schedules, notes, and simple applications. Which is still what you use these things for, and it's still what you NEED these things for.
You really shouldn't generalize blindly. That may be your usage pattern, but other folks do different things with their PDAs. I use mine to listen to music, read e-books, I have Streets And Trips maps on it, and also use it to manage my expenses. I experimented with video too, and I'm working in my spare time on a script that would record a couple of shows on my desktop computer, encode them for the iPaq overnight and transfer them to the device, so I can watch them during the morning's commute.
It's an older iPaq 3800, and it's starting to feel slow, so I'm planning on getting a faster one soon. I had a Handspring Visor still gathering dust in some drawer, but there is no way I'd go back to it.
They made .NET so it CAN run on any platform, they just didn't implement VMs for other platforms
Not completely true. Microsoft doesn't have commercial VMs for other platforms, but they provide Rotor which runs on FreeBSD and Mac OSX.
A better approach to that is take a phrase and change it like so
iLikeFi$he$Bec@useTheyreSoDelicio$
That doesn't add much to your password's security, you know; your changes aren't random enough, especially since "leet" ortography is so prevalent. There are dictionary attack programs that use expanded dictionaries, using also words with the obvious replacements (I/L -> 1, e -> 3 and so on).
They could just be suggesting a high price so that MSFT slaps a $400 price tag and they sweep in for $350 or so
I don't see how Sony could maneuver MSFT here. Remember that the XBox 360 will be out for a few months to a year before the PS3 or Nintendo's box. So MSFT will have no competition during this interval, and they can sell the product at whatever price they want. If Sony leaks a price of $500, MSFT can set the initial price to $499 and, when the PS3 finally comes out, cut the price to match Sony's. Matching the cost should be easy for MSFT, since the PS3 BOM looks seriously more expensive than the XBox 360 one. Moreover, by the time the PS3 launches, MSFT will have had a few months to streamline the production process for the XBox and reduce the costs.
And I don't see Sony leaking too small a price either; the customers will be pretty annoyed if Sony swears they'll sell the device at $199 and later launch it at $399.
To awnser your question on work , well I am an IT Director(by title) and Systems Admin(by trade) so yes i have worked more than a single day in my life.
IOW, you're a user of somebody else's creative work, and not a creator yourself (except perhaps for some admin scripts that probably don't take too long to write). So it's easy for you to request the "freeing" of all IP, since you won't lose anything yourself.
Now, suppose programming staff requests that all system administrators be legally mandated to work for free (they can always sell t-shirts if they want to eat). I'm sure you wouldn't support *this* position...
...a lot of open source advocates have set an unreasonable level of expectations by proclaiming the amazing magic of open source: A fantasy world where every line is thoroughly vetted by thousands of super-experts...
Please, name these magical advocates and provide some links or at least one quote from a well known advocate who preaches that.
Here. If you argue for a position, it's a good idea to read the defining literature. Will save you from looking uninformed or worse. And, to avoid a waste of time with technicalities, I know ESR doesn't mention superexperts, but that's not necessary at all for the argument in the grandparent post.
Complexity *does* spring into existence without cause. Entropy is forever increasing. We are moving toward zero complexity. Either entropy hasn't always been increasing, or the universe started with full complexity
Your reasoning is faulty, because it's based on a misunderstanding of the principles of thermodynamics. All the principles of thermodynamics require is that the global entropy stay constant or increase. That does not in any way preclude local variations. Entropy can very well decrease locally at the expense of an increase in entropy in other parts of the universe.
That's how life works: it uses energy from various sources to decrease its entropy. The energy that the lifeform needs to maintain its complexity (and therefore local low entropy) is degraded and dumped into the environment as heat, body wastes etc. That leads to a net increase of global entropy in the universe, but allows the lifeform to exist.
What I find interesting is that over the last few years, fantasy has been filled with golems.
Also Jonathan Stroud second Bartimaeus book. Also Terry Pratchett's older Feet of Clay or more recent Going Postal. Feet of Clay predates 72 letters by some 4 years.
Another annoying feature of Iron Council is that everything is subservient to the special effects of the moment.
I liked the book (though it's clearly not as good as Perdido Street Station), but I have to agree with this comment. I generally prefer my SF (and horror) to be internally consistent. You accept the initial premise (and if you don't, why are you even reading this book, or seeing this movie?), but everything else should flow logically from here. Most horror flicks, for example, fail miserably at that - one of the reasons why most horror flicks are so bad.
Some authors can get away with internal inconsistency through continuous invention - Douglas Adams is a good example. Also Terry Pratchett, who, when asked about contradictions between different books in the Discworld series, said that there are no contradictions - there are however alternate pasts.
China Mieville doesn't even try; he invents new rules, brings in machine gods and joyfully contradicts himself anytime he needs to solve a problem. He's almost like Wile E. Coyote: never twice the same trick. This said, his writing style (which I quite like) hasn't changed much, and he does keep throwing new and interesting things at the reader, so Iron Council is IMHO quite acceptable.
As for having one external drive bay, that drive is a DVD+R DL, DVD+/-RW, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM. What else do you need it to do?
I'd like to be able to copy data from a CD directly to another without having to copy it first to the hard drive. It's like an echo from the ancient copy on floppy disks: "Insert source disk..."
By the time IE gets to where FF is today, FF will have advanced way beyond what IE can hope to achieve from typical corporate development.
Remember your history; when MS became interested in this new intarweb thang, Netscape was far ahead in features and product quality. MS came from behind to catch up and pass Netscape (and before somebody starts whining about bundling with Windows, I'm talking product quality: remember the difference between IE 4 and especially 5 and the catastrophe that was Navigator 4). You may say that OSS development is quicker than corporate dev, but remember how long it took to get to Mozilla 1.0?
Surely defined the games-you-play-and-suddenly-it's-next-morning genre
Apparently, the whole idea comes from a policeman from Toronto who sent an email to Bill Gates to convince him to help them do something about kiddie orn.
More details here
think about the uses to which you can put that underlying code, which is now all open source. now imagine what will happen when someone takes this open source code and perverts it into a complete ID theft tool. what will the M$ press release look like then?
On Slashdot at least it shouldn't be a problem, eh? The Slashdot majority opinion seems to be that the manufacturer of the tool is not at fault if the tool is used to break the law, as long as the tool has legitimate legal uses. Isn't that what the BitTorrent defenders say?