I was trying to be funny in that post; I don't actually believe that fusion stations on the moon will be a feasable idea anytime soon.
My understanding is that there are believed to be ample amounts of He3 located in the surface layers of the moons "soil"; deposited there by the solar wind, thanks to the moon's lack of atmosphere. I guess that from a cosmic perspective there really isn't that much, but I've read that there is believed to be enough to power the earth for centuries. The "ease" (if mining anything on the moon could said to be easy) in mining would be do to the fact you don't need to dig very far.
I was refering to the D-He3 reaction. It's the "easier" one (if producing fusion reactions on the moon can be said to be easy). The He3-He3 reaction is the one which produces no radiation.
The problem blocking laser (and maybe maser) power transmission is that both lasers and photoelectric cells are extremely inefficient. Last I checked 30% efficiency is considered pretty good for a laser. Ditto for photoelectric cells, 30% is the best we can do so far. So basically assuming that there is no interference (like air) you are still getting back only 10% of what you put into the system.
Needing that much power I could almost see it used on the ground where generating large amounts of power was not an issue, but the ground is covered in air (not to mention clouds and smog). All that junk is going to kill your beams efficiency even more (a cloud would probably completely block it).
It might work on the moon if you could build a power station there. I hear the top "soil" of the moon is saturated with helium-3 which is the easiest element to create a fusion reaction with. You would just have to work out the whole building a fusion reactor on the moon problem.
Then there is the problem of limited range. The beam is never perfect and does fan out. Once its wider then the cell receiving it, it loses its efficiency.
Lasers are so problematic that I would modestly propose that shooting batteries out of cannons is probably a better idea.:-)
Not necessarily. Microsoft and Sony both have the advantage in that they make other products. Microsoft has hemorrhaged money via the xBox (I know little about Sony so I'm sticking to MS, though its slightly off topic). The are hoping to turn a profit within a year or two on the new one and have only recently shown profit on the old one. Loses like that would put any video-game-only companies out of business. For MS video games are just part of their big picture, try calling xBox Live customer support and you will see what I mean.
Its not that I am hating on Microsoft and Sony, but some of the most innovative games ever created were born on the Dreamcast, which died. Sega and Nintendo both have been incredibly innovative, but have failed in the production of big budget blockbusters like Halo. As much as I love my Halo, we need companies willing to innovate. Microsoft has not historically shown this quality; Nintendo and Sega have. But there is no room for innovation when you are competing against giants that can easily smash you by swallowing losses that you cannot.
Had Sony not stepped in the DC would probably not have died and we might be playing totally different games now (in addition to what is currently available, not many games are dependent on the PS platform).
My point is that market competition doesn't really count when the companies involved don't actually have to compete in a way thats good for the consumer.
"'m against all drug use, including marijuana, but I can never seem to come up with a decent logical discourse to support my position against marijuana use. I'd be interested to see what/.ers come up with.
I don't really think there is one, except perhaps: "Why don't you have something better to do with your time?"
Ultimately I would suggest that marijuana is the most benign of all the drugs. Its less addictive and physically harmful then the legal drugs (alcohol and cigarettes), and most heavy users eventually moderate their use or out grow the stuff all together.
Generally speaking I take a policy of let bygones be bygones when it comes to other peoples dietary, drug, religious, etc. habits. After all, what do I know? Many people lead much different lives then me; who am I to judge their choices?
I think originally it had something to do with smoking crystal meth: crank becomes crunk as drink becomes drunk. Now it just means "drunk" with a +1 ebullience modifier.
I really am hoping that Nintendo will pull this one off. I hope they have some damn good ideas as to what to do with that second screen. They really rely on the portable market.
I would hate to see Nintendo go the way of Sega and Atari; beat out of the markets they practically invented (collectively) and are completely dedicated to --by outsiders Sony and Microsoft.
So far there a 0 viruses for OSX. Symantec's Mac revenues are probably pretty much the same.
I'm not saying that its impossible for someone to create a Mac virus; but with 3% of the market, how is it going to spread?
All OS will have vulnerabilities and it would be foolish to think that OSX is totally secure. Still, how well would a virus be able to reproduce if it only has 3% to do so on. Even if the (previous) article is right in hailing a 5% year for Apple; even then it would be hard for a virus to spread when 95% of all potential boxes are completely incompatible. Add to that that not all users will fall for it and you have a very unspectacular virus.
Actually the mini might be a good solution for broadcast animation --you would just want to have more then one. If you xgrid together 5 (or 10, or however many you want) of them I bet they would be a pretty good poor man's rendering farm.
Rendering hardware can get pretty steep. I am betting building a cluster might deliver good power for the buck, especially with the G4's altivec support and short pipelines. Anyone know if thats actually the case?
Technically, everytime you download something you copy it. Google caches the "entire" internet. So technically they (and everyone who are uses AFP's site) are making copies. AFP isn't sueing them for caching the site though; they are sueing them for the google news section. Technically the news section doesn't copy anything (except the headline). It just sends you to their site when you click a link. You could argue that the copyright extends to urls I suppose, but that would create liability anytime anyone links to anything (if the party being linked to does not consent).
I don't know if civil cases set a legal precedent or not; But if google loses this case in DC it would seem to be the end of the internet as we know it. It would allow you to sue anyone for linking to your site site without permission. So everytime someone says "X.com sucks!" they could get sued (more so then today).
In trek distance is warped!...sorry about the pun...
In V they went from earth to that outpost (sorry forgot which one, and V was horrible so I'm not rewatching), to the center of the galaxy --all in a matter of days.
And yet it would take Voyager 75 years to cover what could be only 3 times that distance.
[sarcasm]
If games are training teenagers to kill, isn't that a good thing?
[/sarcasm]
After all, many of them are going to have to go to the middle east (Iraq... Iran, Syria, etc.) and kill people in RL. I thought the whole point of the military sponsored FPSs was to teach teens that war is just a game.
Given how unorthodox this whole situation is, if Paramount actually does produce another season it might be a good opportunity for them to try offering downloads. Looking at ISOHunt, the (frequently broken) torrent search engine, Enterprise is always in the top ten downloads. I wonder if perhaps that may be a signal that Trekkers might be a good market on which to try legal television downloads. If they made the episodes downloadable from Startrek.com (complete with commercials) the response might really be surprising.
I would certainly download the episode -even with commercials- providing the download was nice and fast. I would bet that since the download would be legal (and not complicated by having to use torrents) you would also see a much higher number of downloads then on the torrent sites, especially if they advertised its availability. It might even make up a bit for the slumping ratings. It would give Paramount some hard numbers to show their advertisers, and would not present much risk for Paramont since the fans are subsidizing the production.
HERE!! HERE!!! Macromedia get your act TOGETHER! I only use DW to edit simple HTML, and then only in the text view (wait why do I use DW?... must be the nice colored coded HTML), but the fact that it doesn't conform never fails to piss me off!
On the other hand Adobe Apps are wonderful under OS X, I always get annoyed at the clunky interface under Windows. I once applied for a job where in order to qualify you had to be the fastest on PS6 in a production oriented environment. Basically you had to be able to play the hot keys like a piano. they told me I came in second (and so I didn't get the job). I swear I would have been first if I could have done the test on a Mac.
Looking back, that job would have been hell on earth anyway...
Radar is an "active" sensor system which means that it emits energy and waits for it to bounce back. This is much different from a human sight which is "passive" system, and uses energy available in the environment (visible light in this case).
With a "passive" system its much more difficult to make something invisible because you have to make it transparent to light hitting it from all directions. With an "active" system you only have to prevent the emitted energy from finding its way back to the emitter. "Blackening" the aircraft I think its sometimes called. I can tell the parent is aware of this, I just wanted add to the discussion by stating the difference clearly.
The best way to make an aircraft invisible would be to develop a material that completely absorbs microwave radiation. I believe the skins of the stealth fighter and bomber both are constructed of a material that decreases radar reflectivity, though it isn't perfect, so they rely on the sharp angles they incorporate into their design to reflect the microwaves in directions away from the emitting station. Because of this, altitude and position relative to the emitter are very important to retaining their decreased radar image. I've heard that a lot of the stealth is lost if they do not fly relatively low and avoid banking. This is because by flying higher or by banking they present the bottom/top of the plane to the emitter --instead of the sides where it is most narrow and sharply angled.
I was recently trying to design a space ship for an RTS mod that was designed similarly to the stealth fighter. I realized that if you didn't know the direction of the incoming radar beam (which you wouldn't in 3D combat) it was going to be nearly impossible to design. It was really difficult to think of a hull geometry that would minimize reflectivity from any angle, and what I finally came up with did look very aesthetically pleasing.
A) Shut down the whole freaking internet.
or
B) Just get those stupid warnings plastered on every single damn site that has a BBS.
or
C) Not pass, or get struck down.
My magic 8-Ball predicts C. After all.... What would craigslist be without anonymity and complete non-accountability!?! No one would ever get to gang-bang a 18 year old transvestite ever again...I kid, I kid (for the humor impaired)
I didn't mean that they would disappear over night or anything. It would have to be widespread before they would really begin to be effected. Once a homeowner have the option of vinyl siding or "solar" siding, they might start feeling a squeeze. Thats all I meant.
On a side note: Imagine how much value you could add to a property by altering it to have generate "free" self-sustaining power.
I imagine that as the efficiency increases, the areas where it becomes feasible increase as well. Even in the short term, as a supplement to the existing power grid it would really decrease costs, both monetarily speaking and in terms of pollution.
I doubt the power monopolies are very happy about this though. If you can buy a machine that generates power, it will eventually put them out of business.
"Whatever happened to learning for learning's sake? What ever happened to just expanding your own mind, and your own understanding of the world? That was originally the role of Universities - a place to go and learn."
Probably died off right about the time tuition began increasing at several times the inflation rate. Education in the US now has to be viewed as a financial investment, and so there really isn't any room for it if it doesn't produce a financial return.
I graduate in 2002. I had a ton of scholarship, but I still graduated with about $16,000 in dept. This wouldn't be unreasonable if it wasn't for the fact that I was studying fine art; my roommate was $50,000 under when he graduated and his was the more typical case. I could afford a frivolous education because I received some of the most prestigious scholarships offered, one which was actually awarded by President Clinton in person. 99.999% of the population cannot receive such treatment under our current system.
My example was about art, but it also applies to english, history, philosophy, etc. If we continue in this fashion, I firmly believe that our culture will suffer (if it hasn't already). I don't know if socialized education is the answer or not, but I think its something the country should consider.
VPC 7 is very impressive in this respect. It recognized my laptops video card and everything (even though MS/Connectix makes no claims that it will). I was able to play older PC games (Like the original Homeworld), as if running them on, well... an older PC. Even Quake3 ran, which surprised me. Not quite the 60-90 frames I get on the Mac version, but still pretty playable, if you are not picky.
Clearly shows, lots of people play games on PC... in this case Half-Life. As a Mac owner, I would really like to have the same selection of games as a PC owner. Someone should get on this, or at least convince the game developers to use OpenGL instead of Direct3D so that other companies can convert them.
At this point, every geek I know (hardly a scientific sample, I know) who used to build their own unix/ linux boxes has now bought a powerbook. Eventually they just got tired of fooling with something that was going to be their primary machine (plus BSD tends to be a pain on laptops).
They will just start using those pop-ups that can defeat modern pop-up blockers. Pop ups are almost always per impression I think. For every domain name typo, you have 30 pop-ups.
It will be like the late 90's all over again (except without the jobs or money).
Slashdot Mirror
I was trying to be funny in that post; I don't actually believe that fusion stations on the moon will be a feasable idea anytime soon.
My understanding is that there are believed to be ample amounts of He3 located in the surface layers of the moons "soil"; deposited there by the solar wind, thanks to the moon's lack of atmosphere. I guess that from a cosmic perspective there really isn't that much, but I've read that there is believed to be enough to power the earth for centuries. The "ease" (if mining anything on the moon could said to be easy) in mining would be do to the fact you don't need to dig very far.
I was refering to the D-He3 reaction. It's the "easier" one (if producing fusion reactions on the moon can be said to be easy). The He3-He3 reaction is the one which produces no radiation.
The problem blocking laser (and maybe maser) power transmission is that both lasers and photoelectric cells are extremely inefficient. Last I checked 30% efficiency is considered pretty good for a laser. Ditto for photoelectric cells, 30% is the best we can do so far. So basically assuming that there is no interference (like air) you are still getting back only 10% of what you put into the system.
:-)
Needing that much power I could almost see it used on the ground where generating large amounts of power was not an issue, but the ground is covered in air (not to mention clouds and smog). All that junk is going to kill your beams efficiency even more (a cloud would probably completely block it).
It might work on the moon if you could build a power station there. I hear the top "soil" of the moon is saturated with helium-3 which is the easiest element to create a fusion reaction with. You would just have to work out the whole building a fusion reactor on the moon problem.
Then there is the problem of limited range. The beam is never perfect and does fan out. Once its wider then the cell receiving it, it loses its efficiency.
Lasers are so problematic that I would modestly propose that shooting batteries out of cannons is probably a better idea.
Not necessarily. Microsoft and Sony both have the advantage in that they make other products. Microsoft has hemorrhaged money via the xBox (I know little about Sony so I'm sticking to MS, though its slightly off topic). The are hoping to turn a profit within a year or two on the new one and have only recently shown profit on the old one. Loses like that would put any video-game-only companies out of business. For MS video games are just part of their big picture, try calling xBox Live customer support and you will see what I mean.
Its not that I am hating on Microsoft and Sony, but some of the most innovative games ever created were born on the Dreamcast, which died. Sega and Nintendo both have been incredibly innovative, but have failed in the production of big budget blockbusters like Halo. As much as I love my Halo, we need companies willing to innovate. Microsoft has not historically shown this quality; Nintendo and Sega have. But there is no room for innovation when you are competing against giants that can easily smash you by swallowing losses that you cannot.
Had Sony not stepped in the DC would probably not have died and we might be playing totally different games now (in addition to what is currently available, not many games are dependent on the PS platform).
My point is that market competition doesn't really count when the companies involved don't actually have to compete in a way thats good for the consumer.
"'m against all drug use, including marijuana, but I can never seem to come up with a decent logical discourse to support my position against marijuana use. I'd be interested to see what /.ers come up with.
I don't really think there is one, except perhaps: "Why don't you have something better to do with your time?"
Ultimately I would suggest that marijuana is the most benign of all the drugs. Its less addictive and physically harmful then the legal drugs (alcohol and cigarettes), and most heavy users eventually moderate their use or out grow the stuff all together.
Generally speaking I take a policy of let bygones be bygones when it comes to other peoples dietary, drug, religious, etc. habits. After all, what do I know? Many people lead much different lives then me; who am I to judge their choices?
I think originally it had something to do with smoking crystal meth: crank becomes crunk as drink becomes drunk. Now it just means "drunk" with a +1 ebullience modifier.
I really am hoping that Nintendo will pull this one off. I hope they have some damn good ideas as to what to do with that second screen. They really rely on the portable market.
I would hate to see Nintendo go the way of Sega and Atari; beat out of the markets they practically invented (collectively) and are completely dedicated to --by outsiders Sony and Microsoft.
So far there a 0 viruses for OSX. Symantec's Mac revenues are probably pretty much the same.
I'm not saying that its impossible for someone to create a Mac virus; but with 3% of the market, how is it going to spread?
All OS will have vulnerabilities and it would be foolish to think that OSX is totally secure. Still, how well would a virus be able to reproduce if it only has 3% to do so on. Even if the (previous) article is right in hailing a 5% year for Apple; even then it would be hard for a virus to spread when 95% of all potential boxes are completely incompatible. Add to that that not all users will fall for it and you have a very unspectacular virus.
Actually the mini might be a good solution for broadcast animation --you would just want to have more then one. If you xgrid together 5 (or 10, or however many you want) of them I bet they would be a pretty good poor man's rendering farm.
Rendering hardware can get pretty steep. I am betting building a cluster might deliver good power for the buck, especially with the G4's altivec support and short pipelines. Anyone know if thats actually the case?
Technically, everytime you download something you copy it. Google caches the "entire" internet. So technically they (and everyone who are uses AFP's site) are making copies. AFP isn't sueing them for caching the site though; they are sueing them for the google news section. Technically the news section doesn't copy anything (except the headline). It just sends you to their site when you click a link. You could argue that the copyright extends to urls I suppose, but that would create liability anytime anyone links to anything (if the party being linked to does not consent).
I don't know if civil cases set a legal precedent or not; But if google loses this case in DC it would seem to be the end of the internet as we know it. It would allow you to sue anyone for linking to your site site without permission. So everytime someone says "X.com sucks!" they could get sued (more so then today).
Has anyone else noticed that in the past few months Apple has done everything /. users have suggested?
Everything from upping the specs of the mini, to -and I think the list is pretty long- a two button mouse.
Start making ridiculous demands! Who knows what we can get out of them!
Damn that google traffic redirect trick really does work!
In trek distance is warped! ...sorry about the pun...
In V they went from earth to that outpost (sorry forgot which one, and V was horrible so I'm not rewatching), to the center of the galaxy --all in a matter of days.
And yet it would take Voyager 75 years to cover what could be only 3 times that distance.
[sarcasm]
If games are training teenagers to kill, isn't that a good thing?
[/sarcasm]
After all, many of them are going to have to go to the middle east (Iraq... Iran, Syria, etc.) and kill people in RL. I thought the whole point of the military sponsored FPSs was to teach teens that war is just a game.
Given how unorthodox this whole situation is, if Paramount actually does produce another season it might be a good opportunity for them to try offering downloads. Looking at ISOHunt, the (frequently broken) torrent search engine, Enterprise is always in the top ten downloads. I wonder if perhaps that may be a signal that Trekkers might be a good market on which to try legal television downloads. If they made the episodes downloadable from Startrek.com (complete with commercials) the response might really be surprising.
I would certainly download the episode -even with commercials- providing the download was nice and fast. I would bet that since the download would be legal (and not complicated by having to use torrents) you would also see a much higher number of downloads then on the torrent sites, especially if they advertised its availability. It might even make up a bit for the slumping ratings. It would give Paramount some hard numbers to show their advertisers, and would not present much risk for Paramont since the fans are subsidizing the production.
HERE!! HERE!!! Macromedia get your act TOGETHER! I only use DW to edit simple HTML, and then only in the text view (wait why do I use DW?... must be the nice colored coded HTML), but the fact that it doesn't conform never fails to piss me off!
On the other hand Adobe Apps are wonderful under OS X, I always get annoyed at the clunky interface under Windows. I once applied for a job where in order to qualify you had to be the fastest on PS6 in a production oriented environment. Basically you had to be able to play the hot keys like a piano. they told me I came in second (and so I didn't get the job). I swear I would have been first if I could have done the test on a Mac.
Looking back, that job would have been hell on earth anyway...
Radar is an "active" sensor system which means that it emits energy and waits for it to bounce back. This is much different from a human sight which is "passive" system, and uses energy available in the environment (visible light in this case).
With a "passive" system its much more difficult to make something invisible because you have to make it transparent to light hitting it from all directions. With an "active" system you only have to prevent the emitted energy from finding its way back to the emitter. "Blackening" the aircraft I think its sometimes called. I can tell the parent is aware of this, I just wanted add to the discussion by stating the difference clearly.
The best way to make an aircraft invisible would be to develop a material that completely absorbs microwave radiation. I believe the skins of the stealth fighter and bomber both are constructed of a material that decreases radar reflectivity, though it isn't perfect, so they rely on the sharp angles they incorporate into their design to reflect the microwaves in directions away from the emitting station. Because of this, altitude and position relative to the emitter are very important to retaining their decreased radar image. I've heard that a lot of the stealth is lost if they do not fly relatively low and avoid banking. This is because by flying higher or by banking they present the bottom/top of the plane to the emitter --instead of the sides where it is most narrow and sharply angled.
I was recently trying to design a space ship for an RTS mod that was designed similarly to the stealth fighter. I realized that if you didn't know the direction of the incoming radar beam (which you wouldn't in 3D combat) it was going to be nearly impossible to design. It was really difficult to think of a hull geometry that would minimize reflectivity from any angle, and what I finally came up with did look very aesthetically pleasing.
This will either:
A) Shut down the whole freaking internet.
or
B) Just get those stupid warnings plastered on every single damn site that has a BBS.
or
C) Not pass, or get struck down.
My magic 8-Ball predicts C. After all.... What would craigslist be without anonymity and complete non-accountability!?! No one would ever get to gang-bang a 18 year old transvestite ever again...I kid, I kid (for the humor impaired)
Get back in the bottle! Our CD sales might one day dry up!
I didn't mean that they would disappear over night or anything. It would have to be widespread before they would really begin to be effected. Once a homeowner have the option of vinyl siding or "solar" siding, they might start feeling a squeeze. Thats all I meant.
On a side note: Imagine how much value you could add to a property by altering it to have generate "free" self-sustaining power.
I imagine that as the efficiency increases, the areas where it becomes feasible increase as well. Even in the short term, as a supplement to the existing power grid it would really decrease costs, both monetarily speaking and in terms of pollution.
I doubt the power monopolies are very happy about this though. If you can buy a machine that generates power, it will eventually put them out of business.
"Whatever happened to learning for learning's sake? What ever happened to just expanding your own mind, and your own understanding of the world? That was originally the role of Universities - a place to go and learn."
Probably died off right about the time tuition began increasing at several times the inflation rate. Education in the US now has to be viewed as a financial investment, and so there really isn't any room for it if it doesn't produce a financial return.
I graduate in 2002. I had a ton of scholarship, but I still graduated with about $16,000 in dept. This wouldn't be unreasonable if it wasn't for the fact that I was studying fine art; my roommate was $50,000 under when he graduated and his was the more typical case. I could afford a frivolous education because I received some of the most prestigious scholarships offered, one which was actually awarded by President Clinton in person. 99.999% of the population cannot receive such treatment under our current system.
My example was about art, but it also applies to english, history, philosophy, etc. If we continue in this fashion, I firmly believe that our culture will suffer (if it hasn't already). I don't know if socialized education is the answer or not, but I think its something the country should consider.
VPC 7 is very impressive in this respect. It recognized my laptops video card and everything (even though MS/Connectix makes no claims that it will). I was able to play older PC games (Like the original Homeworld), as if running them on, well... an older PC. Even Quake3 ran, which surprised me. Not quite the 60-90 frames I get on the Mac version, but still pretty playable, if you are not picky.
You are tripping balls. Here is a quote:
"..with close to eight million copies of HL(Half-Life) sold on the PC..."
Clearly shows, lots of people play games on PC... in this case Half-Life. As a Mac owner, I would really like to have the same selection of games as a PC owner. Someone should get on this, or at least convince the game developers to use OpenGL instead of Direct3D so that other companies can convert them.
Adding to what you said:
At this point, every geek I know (hardly a scientific sample, I know) who used to build their own unix/ linux boxes has now bought a powerbook. Eventually they just got tired of fooling with something that was going to be their primary machine (plus BSD tends to be a pain on laptops).
I know... I'm getting flamed for this one.
They will just start using those pop-ups that can defeat modern pop-up blockers. Pop ups are almost always per impression I think. For every domain name typo, you have 30 pop-ups.
It will be like the late 90's all over again (except without the jobs or money).