The equivalent mini-itx motherboard costs around $200. Add RAM, hard drive, power supply, and the spendy cases that you have to buy for a mini-itx, and suddenly the mac mini isn't expensive at all in comparison. The two are pretty much in the same ballpark.
Yep, we're having his birthday party tomorrow. At least, that was the plan. Now, the plan is probably more like 'find a new hosting provider' after hostsave kicks me off.
I know this community, and I know that we all like the idea of ubiquitous internet access. I have a computer in my car and I'm a cheap bastard, so I would stand to directly benefit from a plan that would get me legit free internet access.
But I have a concern... Without setting off the 'crazy anarchist' alarm, I think that the scope of the government should be limited at this point, not increased. The original purpose of our government was to provide a loose framework that would facilitate order and protect our borders from foreign invasion. Over the past 250 years, something changed, and many now look to government to fulfill a parental role as well. We expect the government to make sure we all share, take care of things we as children couldn't fathom (analogous to parents paying the utlity bill. If you're a 5 year old, you just see 'we have electricity', not 'we just paid for a service'). It has expanded time and time again, and each time we transfer something from private enterprise to the government, we lose a little power and flexibility.
A free market economy isn't perfect, but it has undeniably been the greatest boom to human rights since the invention of the cave. Every time a company has to compete, you get innovation. Every time you get innovation, you get lowered costs and better products.
If governments (city, federal, state, it doesn't matter which) then the competition aspect disapears. Maybe the service at the time of creation is perfect (Wow, 2 megabit, 5ms ping time, right on!) but after 5 years, it would probably start to feel a bit tight. After ten years, it would be hopelessly out of date. Remember the modem you used ten years ago? How satisfied would you be with it today?
Finally, business is the lubrication that prevents the gears of democracy from locking up. Money is power, and the flow of money back and forth keeps things fluid. If you destroy a company, that cash flow begins to stagnate, and stagnation is what hurts the economy. In the end, the government grows, money slows down, and everyone is hurt a little bit.
Is it a worthy tradeoff for bandwidth? I'm sure there are plenty of people who say 'yeah' because instead of death, they just see the tradeoffs as 'a little pain', something that they won't notice. The problem is, that as citizens, we're making compromises for the little pain every day, and pretty soon it starts to add up.
This isn't a rant against government, it's a rant against stagnation and overcentralization.
Using the code to inspire a car to: - Flash obscene messages in morse code through the brake light - Warn of imminent empty tank, then say 'Just kidding' on the information center display. - Mess with the volume of the radio subtly, if it uses CANbus. - Lock the doors while playing a WAV of cackling laughter through the NAV system's audio interface.
If you avoid the obvious 'rofl make teh car crash like windows lololololol omfg' ideas, there should be lots of fun things you could do with the security hole this virus uses.
A quick trick of interest, perhaps good if you're ever in a situation where you can't use the dial pad and can't generate DTMF tones, is the super easy method of dialing a phone with nothing but the hangup switch.
On a mechanical phone (eg, any cheapo phone that doesn't need power or beep or anything), pick it up and listen for dialtone. Then just tap the hang-up switch with pauses for each number. For example, if calling 708-482-0623, you tap the switch 7 times, pause, then 10 times, pause, then 8 times, pause, etc. Rinse & repeat.
It's dirt simple, and most of us already know this, but... it's an easy fun thing to know.
If you'd like, I can put a [dry humor][/dry humor] tag on other posts I write like this. If you feel it'll help with your ability to enjoy the creative nectar that drips from my keyboard onto your screen, then I'd be happy to.
Please, consider it part of the service. [/dry humor]
NASA had trouble making cheap, low cost, light weight re-usable heat shields.
For each of those requirements you scrap, you save a boatload of money. If you equip your capsules (no need for big wings like the shuttle) with one use heatshields, you might incur a weight penalty, but you can use 40 year old Apollo or Soyuz technology. If you can squeeze an extra half a percent of efficiency from your engines or start with more boost then you think you'd need, you can chuck the light weight requirement.
Commercial space flight will be different from government in a few important ways. I suspect that being able to design your craft without congressional 'input' will help. A lot of the things that make the shuttle complicated and expensive to run are leftover from 1970s requirements that it serve everyone, from civilian NASA to the NRO (spy sats) to the Air Force (dropping bombs on USSR using once around orbits and landing back at Vandenburg).
1. Paypal is not a bank. 2. Sometimes people lie. 3. I've done almost 100 transactions through paypal knowing #1 and #2, and I've been lucky enough not to get hit. If I want absolute security, I'll pay through the nose for an escrow service. If I want convenience for small purchases, I'll use PayPal.
Rockets might not 'feel' right to you, but they exist, are a known technology, and there's over 60 years of large scale design and construction experience behind them.
$1.5 billion is a lot of money when you're looking at buying groceries, but it's peanuts compared to the cost of developing a whole new technology (carbon nanotube, for example which might be needed for space elevators), then testing and building the new technology (literally) from the ground up.
In regards to the 'some new technology that nobody's invented yet' comment, I'd rather take one rocket now versus a hundred ephemeral fairy dust ideas of things that may or may not happen in the future. This isn't the only money that will ever be spent on private aerospace. If new technologies become promising and affordable to develop, then other companies will do that in the future.
These guys may succeed, they may fail. That's a great thing about America, you can take risks with commensurate payback. If every company needed the public to vote on whether to let them do their thing, we'd be where the USSR is. Oh yeah, they don't exist anymore.
The parent post is clearly a troll. PayPal isn't perfect, nobody is, but making the paypal slam AND the 'up in smoke' comment in the same sentence, that's straight up under the bridge, 'gonna eat some billy goats' type trolling.
Slashdot Mirror
Well sorry, but then you lose extra points for not getting the point. Suggestion, read the article and the posts that you're responding to next time.
Frankly, my dear, you're a dumbass.
The equivalent mini-itx motherboard costs around $200. Add RAM, hard drive, power supply, and the spendy cases that you have to buy for a mini-itx, and suddenly the mac mini isn't expensive at all in comparison. The two are pretty much in the same ballpark.
Much less? Mac mini is $500, roughly equivalent to a comparable mini-itx.
I have an M10000 Mini-itx mobo in my car, and I know the costs. Your message smacks of 'it's a mac, so it's obviously much more expensive'.
We live in a strange time, with cheap Macs (mini) and iPods (shuffles). We're like one wax seal away from the apocalypse.
If by 'laser tag' you mean '12 gauge shotgun', then I'm way ahead of you.
You're probably right, I don't know how much I paid attention during high school.
Then again, you're posting as A/C, so... pttthpht.
I thought about doing that, and probably will in a future version for exactly the reasons you mention.
If not a control cable, at least I could do a thin gauge metal cable for the tugging part.
Cake and ice cream!
Yep, we're having his birthday party tomorrow. At least, that was the plan. Now, the plan is probably more like 'find a new hosting provider' after hostsave kicks me off.
I have good Karma, I moderate fairly. What did I do to deserve this?
My hosting service just caught fire.
Obviously, the plural of octopus is octopussy.
DUH.
That's nothing. Call me when they RFID the cards. I've got a hankerin for some poker.
The $1 billion cost is not just parts, it's mostly the money to launch the shuttle, pay for mission support, etc.
Even if they can build a replacement for less then $1B, it would still be about one billion more than repairing it.
These guys might be good astronomers, but their math ain't that super.
Absolutely not. I said free market, not Soviet stealonomics.
I know this community, and I know that we all like the idea of ubiquitous internet access. I have a computer in my car and I'm a cheap bastard, so I would stand to directly benefit from a plan that would get me legit free internet access.
But I have a concern... Without setting off the 'crazy anarchist' alarm, I think that the scope of the government should be limited at this point, not increased. The original purpose of our government was to provide a loose framework that would facilitate order and protect our borders from foreign invasion. Over the past 250 years, something changed, and many now look to government to fulfill a parental role as well. We expect the government to make sure we all share, take care of things we as children couldn't fathom (analogous to parents paying the utlity bill. If you're a 5 year old, you just see 'we have electricity', not 'we just paid for a service'). It has expanded time and time again, and each time we transfer something from private enterprise to the government, we lose a little power and flexibility.
A free market economy isn't perfect, but it has undeniably been the greatest boom to human rights since the invention of the cave. Every time a company has to compete, you get innovation. Every time you get innovation, you get lowered costs and better products.
If governments (city, federal, state, it doesn't matter which) then the competition aspect disapears. Maybe the service at the time of creation is perfect (Wow, 2 megabit, 5ms ping time, right on!) but after 5 years, it would probably start to feel a bit tight. After ten years, it would be hopelessly out of date. Remember the modem you used ten years ago? How satisfied would you be with it today?
Finally, business is the lubrication that prevents the gears of democracy from locking up. Money is power, and the flow of money back and forth keeps things fluid. If you destroy a company, that cash flow begins to stagnate, and stagnation is what hurts the economy. In the end, the government grows, money slows down, and everyone is hurt a little bit.
Is it a worthy tradeoff for bandwidth? I'm sure there are plenty of people who say 'yeah' because instead of death, they just see the tradeoffs as 'a little pain', something that they won't notice. The problem is, that as citizens, we're making compromises for the little pain every day, and pretty soon it starts to add up.
This isn't a rant against government, it's a rant against stagnation and overcentralization.
Using the code to inspire a car to:
- Flash obscene messages in morse code through the brake light
- Warn of imminent empty tank, then say 'Just kidding' on the information center display.
- Mess with the volume of the radio subtly, if it uses CANbus.
- Lock the doors while playing a WAV of cackling laughter through the NAV system's audio interface.
If you avoid the obvious 'rofl make teh car crash like windows lololololol omfg' ideas, there should be lots of fun things you could do with the security hole this virus uses.
Whoops, the area code was supposed to be 703, not 708.
A quick trick of interest, perhaps good if you're ever in a situation where you can't use the dial pad and can't generate DTMF tones, is the super easy method of dialing a phone with nothing but the hangup switch.
On a mechanical phone (eg, any cheapo phone that doesn't need power or beep or anything), pick it up and listen for dialtone. Then just tap the hang-up switch with pauses for each number. For example, if calling 708-482-0623, you tap the switch 7 times, pause, then 10 times, pause, then 8 times, pause, etc. Rinse & repeat.
It's dirt simple, and most of us already know this, but... it's an easy fun thing to know.
Meow, hiss!
If you'd like, I can put a [dry humor][/dry humor] tag on other posts I write like this. If you feel it'll help with your ability to enjoy the creative nectar that drips from my keyboard onto your screen, then I'd be happy to.
Please, consider it part of the service.
[/dry humor]
If you run the FCC and you get a cartoon to censor itself spontaneously, on FOX of all places, that's how you know you've dealt some serious spankage.
http://www.mp3car.com
A lot of us hobbyists have done a lot of research and put a lot of computers in cars, with fabrication, touchscreens, DC-DC power supplies, and more.
No, they weren't. An AC that posts misinformation? Why, I never!
NASA had trouble making cheap, low cost, light weight re-usable heat shields.
For each of those requirements you scrap, you save a boatload of money. If you equip your capsules (no need for big wings like the shuttle) with one use heatshields, you might incur a weight penalty, but you can use 40 year old Apollo or Soyuz technology. If you can squeeze an extra half a percent of efficiency from your engines or start with more boost then you think you'd need, you can chuck the light weight requirement.
Commercial space flight will be different from government in a few important ways. I suspect that being able to design your craft without congressional 'input' will help. A lot of the things that make the shuttle complicated and expensive to run are leftover from 1970s requirements that it serve everyone, from civilian NASA to the NRO (spy sats) to the Air Force (dropping bombs on USSR using once around orbits and landing back at Vandenburg).
1. Paypal is not a bank.
2. Sometimes people lie.
3. I've done almost 100 transactions through paypal knowing #1 and #2, and I've been lucky enough not to get hit. If I want absolute security, I'll pay through the nose for an escrow service. If I want convenience for small purchases, I'll use PayPal.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but.. c'mon.
Rockets might not 'feel' right to you, but they exist, are a known technology, and there's over 60 years of large scale design and construction experience behind them.
$1.5 billion is a lot of money when you're looking at buying groceries, but it's peanuts compared to the cost of developing a whole new technology (carbon nanotube, for example which might be needed for space elevators), then testing and building the new technology (literally) from the ground up.
In regards to the 'some new technology that nobody's invented yet' comment, I'd rather take one rocket now versus a hundred ephemeral fairy dust ideas of things that may or may not happen in the future. This isn't the only money that will ever be spent on private aerospace. If new technologies become promising and affordable to develop, then other companies will do that in the future.
These guys may succeed, they may fail. That's a great thing about America, you can take risks with commensurate payback. If every company needed the public to vote on whether to let them do their thing, we'd be where the USSR is. Oh yeah, they don't exist anymore.
The parent post is clearly a troll. PayPal isn't perfect, nobody is, but making the paypal slam AND the 'up in smoke' comment in the same sentence, that's straight up under the bridge, 'gonna eat some billy goats' type trolling.