Just a quick thought that occurs to me: is the DMCA retroactive?
If not, all music problems are surely reduced to bog standard copyright issues - as we all know the major labels haven't released anything worth copying in the past few years anyway.
(Disclaimer: haven't actually read the DMCA - have better things to do. Can anyone send me a copy - or is that verboten too?)
I too take fairly good care of my CDs and such, but you can never guarantee when an unexpected occurrence will hose your media - that's the definition of an accident. Case in point - hired a van to move some stuff, and made the fatal mistkae of using the CD player in it which scratched up my CD good and proper. The band in question no longer exists and the album was only released via their website - so I can't even go out and buy another copy.
On the modchip topic - if I had a console (PC gamer through and through) the reason I thought most people used modchips is so you can stick the games on the HDD and not have to root around for CDs every time you want to switch games.
What exactly is it that they are implying with this quote about decay - "It also requires a very rapid decay of methane... more rapid than photochemistry would allow".
As I understood it, the presence of methane was indicative of life, because you'd expect any atmospheric methan to photodissociate withina few hundred years of it - therefore there should be very little of it.
They mention this abnormally rapid decay is required, but it doesn't seem at all clear why? Can anyone shed some light on this?
I'm very disappointed in/. today... If I could have I'd have moderated about 90% of this whole discussion offtopic...:/
Err, well.
According to the filing system in my brain, virus comes from, rather unsurprisingly, the latin word, errr...
virus - (mainly meaning poison)
BTW - those of us who pluralise virus that way tend to pluralise it to virii, which is not the same as viri.
As to WHY we use Latin?
Errm, because it's cool?
With all the discussion about the fallibility of user tagging, with regards to spam/porn - I can't help but suggest that some of you take a look at http://www.stumbleupon.com/
It gets comparisons to del.ici.ous, and has similarities, but in SU the general tendency seems to be based on auto-classification, with some human oversight where users can update blatantly miscategorised sites. The only problem I've seen so far is a lack of breadth of categories.
Agreed that we need to start thinking about orbital spaceflight now.
So what are the current thoughts on HOW we might get orbital - realistically? Are we still dependent on pure chemical propellant, which would require a lot of initial mass - which would surely keep the project strictly in the domain of a few very well equipped companies.
The only improvement I know of is nuclear thermal propulsion - using hydrogen as a propellant, but heating it up and getting it out of the exhaust at high speed with the aid of a nuclear reactor. But I don't know for sure if this is usable for getting into orbit, or just once orbit has been reached.
Finally - interesting book - George Dyson's Project Orion, about a massive interplanetary craft powered by bombs, just in case anyone hasnt caught it yet:)
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Just a quick thought that occurs to me: is the DMCA retroactive? If not, all music problems are surely reduced to bog standard copyright issues - as we all know the major labels haven't released anything worth copying in the past few years anyway. (Disclaimer: haven't actually read the DMCA - have better things to do. Can anyone send me a copy - or is that verboten too?)
I too take fairly good care of my CDs and such, but you can never guarantee when an unexpected occurrence will hose your media - that's the definition of an accident. Case in point - hired a van to move some stuff, and made the fatal mistkae of using the CD player in it which scratched up my CD good and proper. The band in question no longer exists and the album was only released via their website - so I can't even go out and buy another copy. On the modchip topic - if I had a console (PC gamer through and through) the reason I thought most people used modchips is so you can stick the games on the HDD and not have to root around for CDs every time you want to switch games.
According to Wikipedia, they are cousins. I always wondered that too, so thanks for making me look it up.
What exactly is it that they are implying with this quote about decay - "It also requires a very rapid decay of methane... more rapid than photochemistry would allow". As I understood it, the presence of methane was indicative of life, because you'd expect any atmospheric methan to photodissociate withina few hundred years of it - therefore there should be very little of it. They mention this abnormally rapid decay is required, but it doesn't seem at all clear why? Can anyone shed some light on this? I'm very disappointed in /. today... If I could have I'd have moderated about 90% of this whole discussion offtopic... :/
Err, well. According to the filing system in my brain, virus comes from, rather unsurprisingly, the latin word, errr... virus - (mainly meaning poison) BTW - those of us who pluralise virus that way tend to pluralise it to virii, which is not the same as viri. As to WHY we use Latin? Errm, because it's cool?
With all the discussion about the fallibility of user tagging, with regards to spam/porn - I can't help but suggest that some of you take a look at http://www.stumbleupon.com/ It gets comparisons to del.ici.ous, and has similarities, but in SU the general tendency seems to be based on auto-classification, with some human oversight where users can update blatantly miscategorised sites. The only problem I've seen so far is a lack of breadth of categories.
Agreed that we need to start thinking about orbital spaceflight now. So what are the current thoughts on HOW we might get orbital - realistically? Are we still dependent on pure chemical propellant, which would require a lot of initial mass - which would surely keep the project strictly in the domain of a few very well equipped companies. The only improvement I know of is nuclear thermal propulsion - using hydrogen as a propellant, but heating it up and getting it out of the exhaust at high speed with the aid of a nuclear reactor. But I don't know for sure if this is usable for getting into orbit, or just once orbit has been reached. Finally - interesting book - George Dyson's Project Orion, about a massive interplanetary craft powered by bombs, just in case anyone hasnt caught it yet :)
Unless you're researching paradigm shifts themselves of course, which someone surely must be doing?