The problem is, memory is also one of the easiest and least expensive components of a computer to fix! Any tech that doesn't check the RAM first is pretty much an idiot,... 9 times out of 10, you really don't even need a memory tester -- just pull the RAM out, maybe blow some compressed air on it, and reseat it. If that doesn't work, try replacing it (any shop ought to have a few extra sticks of RAM floating around). Most of these geek shops, though, don't do that -- they go right for the big stuff, because they know that they'll make more money replacing a hard drive or video card than replacing a stick of RAM for somebody,...
there ain't much light pollution at all! It helps when you have a major observatory in town and the city passes "dark sky" ordinances!;-) So if this is a competition, it's really not fair for the rest of you,. ..
Definitely lots of stars here! And still NINE planets!:-)
a doctor with lots of disposable income and spare time to spend with his family
One of my uncles is a radiologist, and I can pretty guarantee that this is absolutely false. The "doctor with lots of disposable income" and the "spare time to spend with his family" just don't work well together,...
If you were a real nerd, you would've bought your own domain long before you graduated and not used your "tilde account" for anything useful anyways,...;-)
Well, Wikipedia's Featured Article Director, Raul654, the one that determines what FAs make it on the main page each day, is also a slashdotter,... so that would explain the rather high number of "geeky" articles, wouldn't it?;-)
I think the future of television is about to change quite drastically, and hopefully for the better of both the cable companies (for their profits) and the consumer (so we're not overloaded with crap). Instead of paying for cable services and getting packages of complete "channels", I think each production company (channel) should focus on producing and providing individual programs. So when you go to your cable company, instead of getting 200 channels of crap, you'll buy a package that gives you x number of hour-long programs for a set price; 500 programs for $30, 1000 programs for $60, 5000 programs for $100 (the actual costs are irrelevant - I'm just displaying the concept here). When you go to watch TV, you'll see the traditional "grid" with all the programs airing at any given time, with all the "channels" available. You'll also see a little counter showing how many programs you've watched this month, and how many credits you have left.
So this way, you have full control over what shows you want to watch when you want to watch them. And the cable companies and content providers will also have a very efficient and easy way of tracking what programs are popular and which ones no one is paying for. Unfortunately, Nielsen probably won't like this plan much, but those ratings are pretty much history anyways,...
On the downside, there will probably still be a bunch of people that pay for way more "credits" or programs than they actually watch each month, much in the same way that most people pay for way too many minutes on their cell phones. But if there's enough individual levels of program packages, it would allow those that care to select packages of value to them.
Seriously, with Cox Cable (digital) in Phoenix, Arizona, I notice that at varying times during the day, certain channels are just not accessible,... for example, CNN or Comedy Central or some other channel, will just blank out completely for a couple of hours, then come back later. It's kind of hard to file a report on this, since you call them saying CNN doesn't work, and when they finally send somebody out, it's working again. I haven't complained too much since I don't really give a flying fark if I can't see Anderson Cooper on CNN at some random time, but the moment it blanks Sci-Fi during Doctor Who, there'll be hell to pay (fortunately, this hasn't happened yet)!
Not really true. MTV killed videos itself about 10 years ago when it decided to stop airing them,... replacing real music content with Beavis and Butt-Head, and crap pop culture reality shows,... The good news is, at least YouTube seems to have somewhat resurrected music videos!;-)
Has anyone noticed that the quality of the programming & content on television seems to be inversely proportional to the quality of the actual signal? I mean, seriously,... has anybody seen the latest crap their trying to pump out at us these days? MTV hasn't shown a music video (or anything that actually even remotely classifies as "music", for that matter) since the early 1990s; there's championship "wrestling" on the Sci-Fi Channel (and don't even get me started on the so-called "sci-fi" called "Painkiller Jane" or "Flash Gordon" - please bring back SG-1!!!!); TechTV got merged with G4, and promptly went to the sh*tter quite fast; and most of the "news" channels don't seem to have gotten the message that we really don't give a rat's ass about Paris & Britney!
Seriously, by 2012, who the heck is going to even want to **own** a television anyway? On the bright side, I wonder what bittorrent will look like by then?
I'd be interested to know how often, if at all, the "V-Ger" computer has been rebooted,... It's hard to imagine having to push the reset button from millions of miles away, but I suppose they've probably already figured it out,... Still, if the voyager probes were running windows, they wouldn't even have gotten out of LEO without crashing!;-)
Has anybody tried looking here? Of course, if he was shot down for wandering into restricted airspace, he's (a) dead by now and (b) the government will say nothing about it ever happening.
Oddly enough, Arthur C. Clarke didn't stop the series there, nor in 2010. The series continues with 2061: Odyssey Three (ironically, in the same general era as this article is discussing), and then closes off with 3001: The Final Odyssey.
By 2061, Clarke has mankind (countries still exist, but much of the world has largely united post-2010, mainly due to the knowledge that "we're not alone" after Jupiter blew up into a star and HAL sent that message) traveling throughout the solar system in muon-catalyzed rockets that essentially use water as their primary fuel source. Ships fly regularly to the Jovian moons (except Europa, of course, which HAL told us we couldn't ever land on), and one ship landed on Halley's comet. There's space stations all over earth orbit (nothing new, based on his previous novels), and permanent colonies on both the moon and mars. There's already been a mission to land on Mercury, and discussion of, "when will we go back?"
By 3001, there's not just space elevators, but entire "towers" that go all the way to geosynchronous orbit. Individual nation-states have pretty much all collapsed by then. Most people are bald, because they wear these "braincaps" that connect them to computer networks. Everyone is implanted with RFID-like chips in the palms of both hands for identification (I really hope he's wrong about this). Space miners & space "cowboys" are regularly cruising the Kuiper belt looking for water-ice chunks to take back to Mercury & Venus, which are beginning to be colonized. There's entire groups of people that live in space their whole lives, mainly because their bodies are so adapted to the low G environment that they can't go back to earth, ever.
I wonder if this is one of those projects that came out of Google's "20% time" policy, where engineers are given 20% of their time (one day per week) to work on a project of "personal interest"? It's plausible, since this isn't exactly a main feature of google earth. Then again, Google Sky might have been a 20% time project, too?
Bill Gates is probably going to be real pissed if this starts eating into his M$ Flight Sim profits, especially if (a) this remains free and (b) Google expands it to include more aircraft and options.
On another note, I wonder if they could make this a network thing, so perhaps we could have dog fights with other users in the air? But the feds would probably put a stop to that, since that would also require Google to install live missiles and bombs in the simulator, allowing people to start bombing various structures in google earth,...
On the outside, yes, it will LOOK a lot more like the spacecraft from the Apollo era and such. But on the inside, it will have modernized technology, and other things that we've learned from the space shuttle program. So in the end, it will be a heck of a lot more reliable, more comfortable, and overall a much better spacecraft. It's true,... we can learn a lot from failure.
Titan - Titan at least has a decent atmosphere, toxic to humans, but still makes it more hospitable.
Sounds an awful lot like New Jersey,...
Europa - At least has gas pockets, and the possibility of subterranean bases. But it's inside Jupiter's radiation belt.
Didn't that last message from HAL 9000 say we couldn't ever land there?
Callisto - About as attractive as our moon, but at least near the hot spot in the solar system for fuel and materials for further exploration.
Did you say, "fuel?" I think Dubya might be listening here? Halliburton's already planning! Got to get there before those middle eastern wackos!
If Hillary Clinton was in charge, she'd be more ambitions. We'd be headed for the first mission to land a spacecraft on the sun. But, due to the heat, we'd send the mission to land at night!
This would've been really cool had it come out about 5 years ago, but today, with all the music videos available on YouTube, who wants to stream the music when you can get the whole music video? Still, I suppose the library might be a little greater, as you can get more than just some of the major, popular songs that music videos are made for,... But still,...
Slashdot Mirror
And so ends the Apple's "Dell Battery Supply Deal" . . .
I'll ... I'll ... I'll ... set the building on fire! I'll ... I'll ... put strychnine in the guacamole!
Midwestern property?!?! What ever happened to Arizona & Nevada?!?!
The problem is, memory is also one of the easiest and least expensive components of a computer to fix! Any tech that doesn't check the RAM first is pretty much an idiot,... 9 times out of 10, you really don't even need a memory tester -- just pull the RAM out, maybe blow some compressed air on it, and reseat it. If that doesn't work, try replacing it (any shop ought to have a few extra sticks of RAM floating around). Most of these geek shops, though, don't do that -- they go right for the big stuff, because they know that they'll make more money replacing a hard drive or video card than replacing a stick of RAM for somebody,...
I heard he just wanted $2, and he sent a young punk kid on a bicycle to collect it!
Definitely lots of stars here! And still NINE planets! :-)
Will they be recruiting William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy to help promote it?
One of my uncles is a radiologist, and I can pretty guarantee that this is absolutely false. The "doctor with lots of disposable income" and the "spare time to spend with his family" just don't work well together,...
If you were a real nerd, you would've bought your own domain long before you graduated and not used your "tilde account" for anything useful anyways,... ;-)
Microsoft is apparently counting on the fact that nobody will even be here after 2012,. . .
Well, Wikipedia's Featured Article Director, Raul654, the one that determines what FAs make it on the main page each day, is also a slashdotter,... so that would explain the rather high number of "geeky" articles, wouldn't it? ;-)
So this way, you have full control over what shows you want to watch when you want to watch them. And the cable companies and content providers will also have a very efficient and easy way of tracking what programs are popular and which ones no one is paying for. Unfortunately, Nielsen probably won't like this plan much, but those ratings are pretty much history anyways,...
On the downside, there will probably still be a bunch of people that pay for way more "credits" or programs than they actually watch each month, much in the same way that most people pay for way too many minutes on their cell phones. But if there's enough individual levels of program packages, it would allow those that care to select packages of value to them.
Seriously, with Cox Cable (digital) in Phoenix, Arizona, I notice that at varying times during the day, certain channels are just not accessible,... for example, CNN or Comedy Central or some other channel, will just blank out completely for a couple of hours, then come back later. It's kind of hard to file a report on this, since you call them saying CNN doesn't work, and when they finally send somebody out, it's working again. I haven't complained too much since I don't really give a flying fark if I can't see Anderson Cooper on CNN at some random time, but the moment it blanks Sci-Fi during Doctor Who, there'll be hell to pay (fortunately, this hasn't happened yet)!
Not really true. MTV killed videos itself about 10 years ago when it decided to stop airing them,... replacing real music content with Beavis and Butt-Head, and crap pop culture reality shows,... The good news is, at least YouTube seems to have somewhat resurrected music videos! ;-)
Seriously, by 2012, who the heck is going to even want to **own** a television anyway? On the bright side, I wonder what bittorrent will look like by then?
Well, to be fair, we're not really sure what's inside the great pyramid, either, . . . or what the Sphinx does?
I'd be interested to know how often, if at all, the "V-Ger" computer has been rebooted,... It's hard to imagine having to push the reset button from millions of miles away, but I suppose they've probably already figured it out,... Still, if the voyager probes were running windows, they wouldn't even have gotten out of LEO without crashing! ;-)
By 2061, Clarke has mankind (countries still exist, but much of the world has largely united post-2010, mainly due to the knowledge that "we're not alone" after Jupiter blew up into a star and HAL sent that message) traveling throughout the solar system in muon-catalyzed rockets that essentially use water as their primary fuel source. Ships fly regularly to the Jovian moons (except Europa, of course, which HAL told us we couldn't ever land on), and one ship landed on Halley's comet. There's space stations all over earth orbit (nothing new, based on his previous novels), and permanent colonies on both the moon and mars. There's already been a mission to land on Mercury, and discussion of, "when will we go back?"
By 3001, there's not just space elevators, but entire "towers" that go all the way to geosynchronous orbit. Individual nation-states have pretty much all collapsed by then. Most people are bald, because they wear these "braincaps" that connect them to computer networks. Everyone is implanted with RFID-like chips in the palms of both hands for identification (I really hope he's wrong about this). Space miners & space "cowboys" are regularly cruising the Kuiper belt looking for water-ice chunks to take back to Mercury & Venus, which are beginning to be colonized. There's entire groups of people that live in space their whole lives, mainly because their bodies are so adapted to the low G environment that they can't go back to earth, ever.
Of course, sadly, we already know that the first part of this saga is bullsh*t. But it's quite interesting nonetheless,...
Bill Gates is probably going to be real pissed if this starts eating into his M$ Flight Sim profits, especially if (a) this remains free and (b) Google expands it to include more aircraft and options.
On another note, I wonder if they could make this a network thing, so perhaps we could have dog fights with other users in the air? But the feds would probably put a stop to that, since that would also require Google to install live missiles and bombs in the simulator, allowing people to start bombing various structures in google earth,...
Sounds an awful lot like New Jersey,...
Europa - At least has gas pockets, and the possibility of subterranean bases. But it's inside Jupiter's radiation belt.
Didn't that last message from HAL 9000 say we couldn't ever land there?
Callisto - About as attractive as our moon, but at least near the hot spot in the solar system for fuel and materials for further exploration.
Did you say, "fuel?" I think Dubya might be listening here? Halliburton's already planning! Got to get there before those middle eastern wackos!
If Hillary Clinton was in charge, she'd be more ambitions. We'd be headed for the first mission to land a spacecraft on the sun. But, due to the heat, we'd send the mission to land at night!
Too bad there's no translation in sumerian for "marshmallow man." ;-)
This would've been really cool had it come out about 5 years ago, but today, with all the music videos available on YouTube, who wants to stream the music when you can get the whole music video? Still, I suppose the library might be a little greater, as you can get more than just some of the major, popular songs that music videos are made for,... But still,...