Jet engines are also hideously expensive and complex compared to rocket engines. You would have to get the engines from wherever they cut out (40,000ft?) to the ground safely so you could re-use them. Of course, you would save a lot of money on fuel.
The way i see it, they've been swimming downstream for so long they've forgotten how to swim. I hope this will make some record company execs actually have to work for a living, but it will probably just make them rip off artists and consumers even harder.
On the whole this should be good for consumers though - we get to sample music while it lasts, and this will surely force companies to take online music seriously.
What really bugs me is Gaff's last line - "Too bad she won't live, then again who does?". I always assumed it to mean that Rachel didn't have a limited life span, but it didn't concern him (Gaff) anyway.
However, if Deckard is a replicant, then it could mean that both Rachel and Deckard's days are numbered.
So why would Bryant make such a stupid slip if he knew Deckard was one of the escaped replicants? It would have been extremely dangerous if Deckard had found out, and it would have been easy to lie.
I just want to know whether both Rachel and Deckards had limited life-spans or not. Gaff's enigmatic phrase "Too bad she won't live - then again who does?" could be interpreted either way.
There is a lot of other crap governments do which would be much better scrapped instead of space programs. Pacticularly because it is quite easy to formulate statistics to show that NASA has actually made the US a lot of money. How much money do you think the DOD spent this year on the upkeep of nuclear weapons? How much on keeping thousands of minor drug offenders in jail and catching more? I'm sure there are many examples in India (including nukes).
The fact is, this could be good for India simply by pushing along their technology. By showing they can do this, it will certainly help their commercial space operations. Of course it will also advance their military capabilities but that is another issue.
The sad thing is that in the days of the international space station and numerous other collaborative efforts, India seems unable to cooperate with other nations. I guess they think the US would want concessions on their arms capabilities to help them with rocket tech - god forbid someone stops them making a mistake the US is still living with.
I'd like to think that on day people will look back on all this stupidity and laugh, but it's not helping the Indian populace at all.
"Hang on gov'ner - you've got the StegFS program on this box. What'cher hidin'?".
I could be wrong, but if you use a program like this or a graphics-steg system you have to have the program lying around. In which case they can look for hidden stuff on your HD / in graphics files.
4,5 and 6 were kids movies - I loved them. I also loved the Lion King when I was an adult (that there's some awful grammar, but I can't be bothered). A good kids movie is generally good for grown-ups (or maybe i'm just immature, but a lot of people are the same way).
The Phantom Menace, however, was only good for kids, not because of puppets but because of poor acting, a lame plot and most of all a crap script. Getting these right would have made Jar-Jar bearable, but they could have at least made him a lovable fool, rather than an annoying one.
I bet the Darwin Awards people are watching closely. The number of things which could go wrong is enormous.
If my memory was any good I'd put in facts and figures about the guy(s?) who went to the edge of space in a baloon and parachuted down. I'm sure that would be a lot easier than Mr. Walker's plan - and you'd get better pictures.
"I'm only carrying so much fuel. I can only go so high, and when I run out of fuel, I'll come back down."
Well, at least he's bound to get one thing right (assuming he gets off the ground in one piece).
Is there any reason I should be liable when someone gets a program from me themselves and installs it on their own computer? Even for viruses / worms the program is sent to the user and "installed" without them knowing. I could be wrong - if I distribute free apples which are poisoned I would soon be behind bars, but I don't know of a specific law which applies.
I'm afraid the only way to deal with this is to be harsh. It's utter rubbish. The whole point of lossy compression is that it removes elements bof the audio signal that are 'masked' by others, such that their absence is minimally noticeable. Once these elements are gone, they're gone for good.
Not really. I don't think anyone is getting what they are actually trying to do here - not surprising as the article is dumbed down.
Say you are ripping a CD track to an MP3 - the MP3 produces something like the original but with errors, mostly in the high frequency range. Now take the original, subtract the MP3 output and you get the error. Now encode the error using a different format. You now have a (still lossy) compressed version of the sound with less error than the MP3.
Of course, this means less compression and you'd have to weigh it up against using a higher bit rate, but i don't see any reason it won't work.
If the method is any good, the real question is, what IP covers this method? Are Kenwood going to produce "free" encoders / decoders and 2 years later start charging royalties?
For the non-western-culture impaired, wasabi is a strong spice used in Japan, commonly with sushi and sashimi. It has a unique, hot flavour and is very good for clearing the sinuses.
Now, for the Budweiser-culture-impaired (like me), what's with all this "Wazzzup" crap floating around at the moment?
The real question this raises is whether film awards are useful. Their purpose is to rewards and acknowledge great works of art and entertainment and to encourage high quality films to be made.
If they refuse to acknowledge low-budget films, films released other than in theatres, etc. then they obviously may not be seeing the best on offer.
Of course there are many who would say that AFI awards and Oscars are already meaningless except to the elite filmakers. I have never heard of a film-maker who makes a good movies specifically because of awards on offer, and have never gone to see a film just because it won awards. To a viewer, a good critical review is worth any number of "nominated for XXX awards".
Hopefully this will mean far more interest in the exploration of Mars. In fact I would go so far as to predict that this discovery makes a manned mission to mars in the nearer future far more likely, not to mention easier.
And if life is found (which seems quite possible considering the strange places micro-organisms have been found), goverments around the world will be slavering to try to get their hands on a possible new biological weapon. Er.. I mean, to try to find out where it came from and whether it's related to life on Earth, of course.
Every "Web Surfer" out there needs to know about online privacy. That is, it doesn't exist unless you work really hard for it.
I doubt many of the readers here actually put valid details into the forms at web sites for "free registration" etc. It's obvious that even if the company does intend to use your details responsibly it's too easy for someone else to get their hands on them. Similar with spam - most people have a throw-away address like mine above for any public uses. For similar reasons I won't use the passport / e-wallet system which are becoming common - my computer can't be trusted with running games properly, let alone my personal details.
The greatest concern I can see is governments misusing personal details. In my country (Australia) there are always cases of this, from councils selling mailing lists to the electoral roll being used for mailouts. This has nothing to do with the web - similarly for anyone you buy stuff from who needs your home address.
So why do we need specific "online" privacy laws? Sure, I can be harassed at things I say or do online, but this is hardly different to being yelled at by old ladies or religious nuts for wearing a heavy metal t-shirt (yes, this has happened to me).
Why don't more people know about on-line privacy? Why don't they realise that e-mail is far easier to intercept than a phone call, and that when you post to a public forum it might be traced back to you? I guess it's the same old story - people don't want to learn, they just want it done for them. You can only try to tell them.
The bit I liked about this is that the satellite is so cheap - a million for a full launch. But surely the can do something more interesting than this.
I guess an orbital collision could be devastating (but incredibly unlikely), but are they going to make one of these for each of the thousands of pieces of junk up there? Besides, the junk may be useful to someone if there's ever a space colony - it saves the effort of carting stuff up to orbit.
Why can't they put together cheap science projects or communications satellites instead? I'm sure there are tons of projects which could be done with a 6kg satellite which would be far more productive.
OK, this sounds great at first, but what happens when you get a piece of hardware that came out after the game was produced? Why not use a kernel that's already set up for the user's hardware?
I have to use NT at work, and sometimes win98 at home, and of course have had a lot of fun trying to resurrect a dying OS on several occasions.
I'm no expert on windows (nor do I wish to be), but there are always programs/services running which I don't know anything about. When a program locks up the systems, I sometimes try to kill it to fix the problem, but if I don't know its name and things are really bad, I just start killing unknown processes (what the hell, it's not like i'm going to be able to save the system anyway).
Now I wonder what those things are, I kill them and nothing happens - sometimes the OS continues without the process and works fine. I know some of them are supposed to be there, but how many are set up by installers without asking me? Or worse still, I could have Back Orifice or something running without my knowledge.
I'd really like to know where the hell information on these services is, and how I can find out what the processes are. And I'd prefer actual documentation to some proprietary program which will sanitise my PC for me without telling me what it's doing.
Another pet peeve: how the hell do I get rid of startup programs? I empty the "Statup" folder like a good luser, and have even dug through the registry getting rid of some programms, but I still have annoying programs popping up on startup that I can't get rid of.
Is there any sane way of setting up a windows box? (OK, this is rhetorical just in case anyone's tempted to try to answer it.)
What they mean is "it's too expensive". You can do it with a large dam and a small hydroelectric plant / pump but this requires a good location.
Capacitors are far too expensive for their capacity and lead-acid batteries are worse than the problem they solve. The only small, viable alternatives are fuel cells and possible those flywheels featured on slashdot a while ago.
Privatising an industry is great for lowering prices, but in the electricity industry this means slashing maintenance and capital budgets.
So if you want cheap power, fine - but don't expoect reliability when your power company lays off half it's workforce and outsources everything to save a few bucks. Try totally deregulating the industry and see how reliable your power supply is.
If you don't believe me do some research on Mercury Energy in New Zealand.
Government Energy Monopolies may be slow, costly and inefficient but at least they get the job done and are accountable to the consumers.
Home generated power will not solve this problem unless the entire power system is rethunk.
There are two reasons for this - firstly, the main consumers of power are either cities or industries, neither of which are suitable for this kind of thing.
However the most important reason is that solar power is generated at the wrong time. power consumption peaks in the morning and just before tea time, with OPHW in the middle of the night. Coal and nuclear power plants take hours (days for nuclear) to change their output, so having power generated in the middle of the day is pretty useless.
I think the only way to solve the problem is to have viable fuel cells and fuel transportation. Then large power plants can simply generate hydrogen to store power, areas can use hydrogen to generate their power or it can be used to smooth out the load and allow cogenerators to really make a difference.
The other problem is with "energy conservation". Remember all that talk back in the eighties about using flourescent lights and efficient appliances? It all came to nothing (at least here in Australia) because people want more and more air conditioning, computers and crap and think the power system is someone else's problem.
I could go on all day (I work for a power distributor), but I'd better stop here.
Actually, I believe this is another trojan horse:-)
As for the name, you might as well get over it. We're stuck with "virus" until jounalists start doing actual research (sometime after hell freezes over).
Slashdot Mirror
Jet engines are also hideously expensive and complex compared to rocket engines. You would have to get the engines from wherever they cut out (40,000ft?) to the ground safely so you could re-use them. Of course, you would save a lot of money on fuel.
Maybe they couldn't "shut down" Gnutella, but they can easily attack it.
- Spam the crap out of it (this is already happening
- Track down the users sharing illegal files using IP numbers (easy with ISP cooperation), get ISPs to ban users
- Force Unis to install firewalls which block Gnutella traffic
I just hope people don't try using freenet for this - I don't think it will be good at transferring huge amount of Britney Spears songs.The way i see it, they've been swimming downstream for so long they've forgotten how to swim. I hope this will make some record company execs actually have to work for a living, but it will probably just make them rip off artists and consumers even harder.
On the whole this should be good for consumers though - we get to sample music while it lasts, and this will surely force companies to take online music seriously.
What really bugs me is Gaff's last line - "Too bad she won't live, then again who does?". I always assumed it to mean that Rachel didn't have a limited life span, but it didn't concern him (Gaff) anyway.
However, if Deckard is a replicant, then it could mean that both Rachel and Deckard's days are numbered.
So why would Bryant make such a stupid slip if he knew Deckard was one of the escaped replicants? It would have been extremely dangerous if Deckard had found out, and it would have been easy to lie.
I just want to know whether both Rachel and Deckards had limited life-spans or not. Gaff's enigmatic phrase "Too bad she won't live - then again who does?" could be interpreted either way.
There is a lot of other crap governments do which would be much better scrapped instead of space programs. Pacticularly because it is quite easy to formulate statistics to show that NASA has actually made the US a lot of money. How much money do you think the DOD spent this year on the upkeep of nuclear weapons? How much on keeping thousands of minor drug offenders in jail and catching more? I'm sure there are many examples in India (including nukes).
The fact is, this could be good for India simply by pushing along their technology. By showing they can do this, it will certainly help their commercial space operations. Of course it will also advance their military capabilities but that is another issue.
The sad thing is that in the days of the international space station and numerous other collaborative efforts, India seems unable to cooperate with other nations. I guess they think the US would want concessions on their arms capabilities to help them with rocket tech - god forbid someone stops them making a mistake the US is still living with.
I'd like to think that on day people will look back on all this stupidity and laugh, but it's not helping the Indian populace at all.
"Hang on gov'ner - you've got the StegFS program on this box. What'cher hidin'?".
I could be wrong, but if you use a program like this or a graphics-steg system you have to have the program lying around. In which case they can look for hidden stuff on your HD / in graphics files.
Kind of a difficult problem.
4,5 and 6 were kids movies - I loved them. I also loved the Lion King when I was an adult (that there's some awful grammar, but I can't be bothered). A good kids movie is generally good for grown-ups (or maybe i'm just immature, but a lot of people are the same way).
The Phantom Menace, however, was only good for kids, not because of puppets but because of poor acting, a lame plot and most of all a crap script. Getting these right would have made Jar-Jar bearable, but they could have at least made him a lovable fool, rather than an annoying one.
I bet the Darwin Awards people are watching closely. The number of things which could go wrong is enormous.
If my memory was any good I'd put in facts and figures about the guy(s?) who went to the edge of space in a baloon and parachuted down. I'm sure that would be a lot easier than Mr. Walker's plan - and you'd get better pictures.
Well, at least he's bound to get one thing right (assuming he gets off the ground in one piece).
Is there any reason I should be liable when someone gets a program from me themselves and installs it on their own computer? Even for viruses / worms the program is sent to the user and "installed" without them knowing. I could be wrong - if I distribute free apples which are poisoned I would soon be behind bars, but I don't know of a specific law which applies.
That's it. I'm taking the blue pill.
Not really. I don't think anyone is getting what they are actually trying to do here - not surprising as the article is dumbed down.
Say you are ripping a CD track to an MP3 - the MP3 produces something like the original but with errors, mostly in the high frequency range. Now take the original, subtract the MP3 output and you get the error. Now encode the error using a different format. You now have a (still lossy) compressed version of the sound with less error than the MP3.
Of course, this means less compression and you'd have to weigh it up against using a higher bit rate, but i don't see any reason it won't work.
If the method is any good, the real question is, what IP covers this method? Are Kenwood going to produce "free" encoders / decoders and 2 years later start charging royalties?
For the non-western-culture impaired, wasabi is a strong spice used in Japan, commonly with sushi and sashimi. It has a unique, hot flavour and is very good for clearing the sinuses.
Now, for the Budweiser-culture-impaired (like me), what's with all this "Wazzzup" crap floating around at the moment?
The real question this raises is whether film awards are useful. Their purpose is to rewards and acknowledge great works of art and entertainment and to encourage high quality films to be made.
If they refuse to acknowledge low-budget films, films released other than in theatres, etc. then they obviously may not be seeing the best on offer.
Of course there are many who would say that AFI awards and Oscars are already meaningless except to the elite filmakers. I have never heard of a film-maker who makes a good movies specifically because of awards on offer, and have never gone to see a film just because it won awards. To a viewer, a good critical review is worth any number of "nominated for XXX awards".
Oh, and the TV award night specials are crap too.
Hopefully this will mean far more interest in the exploration of Mars. In fact I would go so far as to predict that this discovery makes a manned mission to mars in the nearer future far more likely, not to mention easier.
And if life is found (which seems quite possible considering the strange places micro-organisms have been found), goverments around the world will be slavering to try to get their hands on a possible new biological weapon. Er.. I mean, to try to find out where it came from and whether it's related to life on Earth, of course.
Every "Web Surfer" out there needs to know about online privacy. That is, it doesn't exist unless you work really hard for it.
I doubt many of the readers here actually put valid details into the forms at web sites for "free registration" etc. It's obvious that even if the company does intend to use your details responsibly it's too easy for someone else to get their hands on them. Similar with spam - most people have a throw-away address like mine above for any public uses. For similar reasons I won't use the passport / e-wallet system which are becoming common - my computer can't be trusted with running games properly, let alone my personal details.
The greatest concern I can see is governments misusing personal details. In my country (Australia) there are always cases of this, from councils selling mailing lists to the electoral roll being used for mailouts. This has nothing to do with the web - similarly for anyone you buy stuff from who needs your home address.
So why do we need specific "online" privacy laws? Sure, I can be harassed at things I say or do online, but this is hardly different to being yelled at by old ladies or religious nuts for wearing a heavy metal t-shirt (yes, this has happened to me).
Why don't more people know about on-line privacy? Why don't they realise that e-mail is far easier to intercept than a phone call, and that when you post to a public forum it might be traced back to you? I guess it's the same old story - people don't want to learn, they just want it done for them. You can only try to tell them.
The bit I liked about this is that the satellite is so cheap - a million for a full launch. But surely the can do something more interesting than this.
I guess an orbital collision could be devastating (but incredibly unlikely), but are they going to make one of these for each of the thousands of pieces of junk up there? Besides, the junk may be useful to someone if there's ever a space colony - it saves the effort of carting stuff up to orbit.
Why can't they put together cheap science projects or communications satellites instead? I'm sure there are tons of projects which could be done with a 6kg satellite which would be far more productive.
OK, this sounds great at first, but what happens when you get a piece of hardware that came out after the game was produced? Why not use a kernel that's already set up for the user's hardware?
If you have a look at last years results, you'll see that "rockbot" (Good ole rock. Nuthin' beats rock.) came 39th out of 42.
I have to use NT at work, and sometimes win98 at home, and of course have had a lot of fun trying to resurrect a dying OS on several occasions.
I'm no expert on windows (nor do I wish to be), but there are always programs/services running which I don't know anything about. When a program locks up the systems, I sometimes try to kill it to fix the problem, but if I don't know its name and things are really bad, I just start killing unknown processes (what the hell, it's not like i'm going to be able to save the system anyway).
Now I wonder what those things are, I kill them and nothing happens - sometimes the OS continues without the process and works fine. I know some of them are supposed to be there, but how many are set up by installers without asking me? Or worse still, I could have Back Orifice or something running without my knowledge.
I'd really like to know where the hell information on these services is, and how I can find out what the processes are. And I'd prefer actual documentation to some proprietary program which will sanitise my PC for me without telling me what it's doing.
Another pet peeve: how the hell do I get rid of startup programs? I empty the "Statup" folder like a good luser, and have even dug through the registry getting rid of some programms, but I still have annoying programs popping up on startup that I can't get rid of.
Is there any sane way of setting up a windows box? (OK, this is rhetorical just in case anyone's tempted to try to answer it.)
What they mean is "it's too expensive". You can do it with a large dam and a small hydroelectric plant / pump but this requires a good location.
Capacitors are far too expensive for their capacity and lead-acid batteries are worse than the problem they solve. The only small, viable alternatives are fuel cells and possible those flywheels featured on slashdot a while ago.
I sincerely hope this is a joke.
Privatising an industry is great for lowering prices, but in the electricity industry this means slashing maintenance and capital budgets.
So if you want cheap power, fine - but don't expoect reliability when your power company lays off half it's workforce and outsources everything to save a few bucks. Try totally deregulating the industry and see how reliable your power supply is.
If you don't believe me do some research on Mercury Energy in New Zealand.
Government Energy Monopolies may be slow, costly and inefficient but at least they get the job done and are accountable to the consumers.
Home generated power will not solve this problem unless the entire power system is rethunk.
There are two reasons for this - firstly, the main consumers of power are either cities or industries, neither of which are suitable for this kind of thing.
However the most important reason is that solar power is generated at the wrong time. power consumption peaks in the morning and just before tea time, with OPHW in the middle of the night. Coal and nuclear power plants take hours (days for nuclear) to change their output, so having power generated in the middle of the day is pretty useless.
I think the only way to solve the problem is to have viable fuel cells and fuel transportation. Then large power plants can simply generate hydrogen to store power, areas can use hydrogen to generate their power or it can be used to smooth out the load and allow cogenerators to really make a difference.
The other problem is with "energy conservation". Remember all that talk back in the eighties about using flourescent lights and efficient appliances? It all came to nothing (at least here in Australia) because people want more and more air conditioning, computers and crap and think the power system is someone else's problem.
I could go on all day (I work for a power distributor), but I'd better stop here.
I'm reminded of a quote I found when I started fencing:
Your education as a programmer is always incomplete, that's part of the fun :-)
Actually, I believe this is another trojan horse :-)
As for the name, you might as well get over it. We're stuck with "virus" until jounalists start doing actual research (sometime after hell freezes over).