Yeah, that's fine with Linux, but with Windows, there have been reported issues with completely disabling swap. So why not set aside a small amount of RAM to keep the system happy and have a RAMDisk at the same time?
If I had 2GB of RAM or more, I'd set up a 512MB RAMdisk and use 256MB of it for swap (Everything's in RAM =D). The chances of a system using 2GB of RAM or more are very, very small. As it stands, with my paltry 512MB of RAM, I never swap out unless I'm doing something with soundfonts, or I'm playing a newer game, and then I never breach 1GB unless something's very wrong.
Actually, if you pull anything dangerous at all on a pilot and start barking commands, they are (supposed to be) trained to comply faithfully in a yes-sir-no-sir-three-bags-full-sir sort of manner. After all, if the pilot dies or is incapacitated, and there's nobody to fly the plane, everyone on board also dies. It's one of the only situations where terrorists have any semblance of control against authorities.
The RIAA are the only people I know of in the entire world who are legally entitled to slander and sue you for not doing business with them. Imagine if you will, the RIAA taken to another market.
The WWAA (Wood Workers Association of America) has recently monitored your activities in creating a shelf that is exactly the same as the shelf a friend of yours has purchased. The WMAA has deemed it necessary to take legal action because the shelf you made was an exact reproduction of the shelf your friend bought, and because you didn't buy it, but rather built it yourself, you're stealing from them. You've duplicated their work using your own time and effort, and because of it, you're liable to pay them many times what the shelf retails for.
Different world? Yes. Parallels? All there. Could it happen? Unless the RIAA is knocked onto its ass and exposed for the loudmouthed monopoly it is, then I say yes. Yes it could.
Why? Good god, people. Not only do they not say how large the device (or even the screen) is, but why would you even need to play 1280x720 or 1920x1080 video on an iPod? At that screen size, 320x240 (iPod Video) is almost more than enough. Why HD? Why?
I know why. HD is the new hot tech buzzword. Idiots.
I almost cried during Ace Combat 04 and 5. I don't think I've ever truly cried over a video game, but those got me the closest of all. Beautiful games, beautiful music, amazing storylines and gameplay that just doesn't get old. Ace Combat Zero didn't quite do it for me, though.
And honestly, people, since the subject's been brought up so much, Aeris was a ditzy flower girl who happened to be a good healer. I didn't like her at all and didn't miss her when she bit the dust.
Ah, but that's why "telepathy" is often referred to as a portion of (and sometimes interchangeably with) "extra-sensory perception", which this electromagnetic sensitivity, by definition, falls into the definition of.
Software works to a degree thanks to Wine integration in the kernel, but what about drivers? Where do they come from? Are they *nix-based or Windows? Drivers are the big thing to look out for, because if it doesn't JustWork (TM), then a lot of average people won't bother.
If mines can be programmed to move from place to place based on information links, then can't said links trigger them to deactivate themselves (or detonate if the area is cordoned off) after the conflict has ended? If this is the case, then both the US military and landmine activists get their way.
That's not to say that a landmine that can move isn't a scary thought. Fortunately, as another has pointed out, antipersonnel mines are banned, so these are designed to attack vehicles. Another interesting technology that might develop from this could be a subterranean 'torpedo' of sorts, where this mine technology is launched as a higher-speed munition to seek out high-pressure areas and detonate. It'd be a 'dumb' munition unless remotely-controlled and detonated, but its effects on enemy morale would be severe.
Science is an extremely necessary step to the evolution of mankind. As a species, we are curious in nature, and we are always striving to understand more and more about our environment; And believe it or not, the universe is our environment.
Instead of scrapping these projects, why not cut the US defense budget? At an excess of $419.3 billion for 2006, I'm sure even if only $20 billion (~10 B-2's or a few ICBM's) was shaved off that, a lot of the problems you describe could be taken care of. NASA's current budget is only $16.5 billion.
The War of 1812 was a war between now-Canada and the United States. Officially, the war ended a stalemate. The British colonies had in fact launched successful attacks against US soil, having burned the White House and treasury to the ground. They had also taken Detroit, though it was retaken before war's end. The Americans also caused a great amount of damage, but again, it all ended in stalemate.
All offensive action into Canada taken by the United States was successfully repelled, and so, too, was all retalliatory offensive action into the United States. The War of 1812 was a US military failure; Its main objective was to invade and seize Canada. To that end, it can be seen as a British victory, since their only initial objective was to repel the American advance.
I'm not very well-versed in how the legal system works, but one very obvious way to do this would be to require (and enforce) that any bills passing into law must use direct and solid speech, rather than leaving ubiquitous remarks such as "patently offensive". Require descriptions of what makes it offensive, describe what *exactly* it is that is being banned. Saying "Let's ban offensive material!" means nothing, since offensive material is subjective; It's different from one person to another.
If violent video games are to be banned from sale to minors with such penalties, they should at least describe what makes a video game violent in the first place (rather than simply "It's offensive") so that there's something to compare future cases to. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject itself, but the fact that the US legal system is currently accepting such silliness is simply outrageous.
Unfortunately, juries aren't involved in every case that gets presented to the court, so not every case gets the opportunity to get those neutral, rational minds to make the decision.
The main problem, though, is that even with juries and judges, this stuff shouldn't be allowed anyway; It's going through the courts, taking up valuable time and money, when it should never have been so in the first place because someone worded something in nonspecific language. Fact is, law is supposed to be law for a reason. There is a certain leeway for each different situation, but to word a law in such a way that it becomes subjective is nothing short of stupid. That allows near-infinite leeway.
At least we know the US judicial system isn't completely buggered yet. I can't imagine what the world would be like if any more of those fuzzy terms were introduced into law; It would make everything subjective, people could eventually be arrested for anything at all. Why this and other such stuff even got and continues to get passed is beyond me. I guess the courts and patent offices have a lineup at their door, so they have to rush things along. It's the only thing that makes sense, beyond bribery and blackmail, which I'm sure had a hand in it as well.
I quite enjoyed Indigo Prophecy. I thought it was a refreshing departure from the normal tedium of button-mashing action. Instead, there is button-mashing, but in the form of moving the analog-sticks to different thoughts and ideas, and in certain situations, to a Simon-like fast-reaction sequence. I found it kept me focused on everything that went on, and the fact that the game is nearly all story (it *does* say "Play Movie" at the start) made it, well, interactive. There isn't much freedom, and it is quite linear in its general storyline, but it doesn't stop the first playthrough from being great.
I guess it's the linearity that makes it more like a movie than a game, and therefore making it a rental. Now, if they managed to make an Indigo Prophecy style game with an entire city for you to walk around in, with multiple storylines to engage in that end in multiple ways and branch out in... Aw, why even bother asking for something like that? It won't happen unless Blu-Ray really takes off and they pack 33GB of data onto a PS3 disc; And spend three years developing it. The combination of all those things really doesn't add up to a plausible game idea. But what a game it would be.
Yep. EA has destroyed some good companies in their time. Jane's used to make the absolute best military simulations on the market (unless you count DID) before being sunk and long-forgotten by EA, and Westwood, well... Westwood doesn't even exist any more. At least with Red Alert 2, they let them keep the name. Now it's all EA. Maxis survived, I guess (their logo is plastered all over The Sims), but Bullfrog and Origin are, AFAIK, gone, too.
I remember when EA used to present these brands and logos with pride, as though it were simply a representative of them. That was a long, long time ago. I think I was still using my P166 back then, and Jane's Combat.net was still up. Those were the days.
The nuclear stockpile in the United States needs to be reduced for a whole other reason than "it's old". It needs to be reduced because there's not a single nuclear threat to the United States today that isn't kept in check by every other nation in the world, or that wouldn't be kept in check with maybe a dozen nukes, versus the number of ICBM's currently stockpiled in the USA. You can't use nukes in a war on terror (unless you're a complete idiot and decided to blow away every country that "could" harbour terrorists), and most nuclear-capable nations are either friendly or so new into the "nuclear community" that it really doesn't matter, since they don't have the capability to actually deliver the payload. The only way it could possibly happen is through black-market sales of some sort, and even then, the USA nuclear stockpile doesn't exactly deter a terrorist organization.
The United States should be more focused on fighting 'conventional' (specifically urban and desert) warfare than nuclear warfare. The fact that there is currently no superpower poised to take over the world makes these relics of the Cold War era obsolete both in technology and in practice. They simply aren't needed. If even half of the USA nuclear stockpile were to be dismantled tomorrow, there would still be more than enough deterrent to wipe out any prospective enemy that might arise in the foreseeable future. As it stands, America has the power to blow most all countries on the planet to kingdom come and have some left over for the Martians, too.
Nuclear weapons have their purpose, but to have so many is insane. Deterrence is fine; Hell, even tactical nuclear weapons are fine, but why so many? And why bother researching more into the subject? The only possible plus I can see to research into new nuclear weaponry is to reduce the amount of radioactivity left over from the blast (or to increase the rate at which it dissipates or decays). Aside from that, it's still just new technology to do the same thing.
I say that if keeping the stockpile is that important, then just dismantle the ones that are ready to fall apart, and upgrade/repair the newer ones. Saves a lot of time, effort, and money.
People keep saying that the human race is fundamentally evil, is doomed to annihilate itself, all those lovely things, and yet the human race has thrived and advanced so far in such a short amount of time (even just one hundred years ago, things like cathode ray tubes, plastics, and any number of modern-day polymers were unthinkable). The very fact that people are aware of the problems we as a species have created means that humanity, at its very core, is not entirely as bad as some of its members make it out to be. It's inevitable, however, that something will happen someday that will threaten the existence of mankind - It happened with the dinosaurs, unless you're one of those people who believe the Earth is 4,000 years old.
Maybe it isn't feasible to go to space now, but if we, as a species, come together to pool our resources to create interstellar travel or indeed any kind of feasible, long-term space flight, we could just pull it off in a few generations. Things like cancer research, AIDS research, and research into creating more efficient and environmentally-friendly ways of life would all continue on while the project is underway; The world wouldn't stand still for a few centuries while such a project is put in motion. In fact, it could be considered as top priority in the research required for such a thing, since in order for a colony to be sustainable, it must have a higher standard of health than we've ever known, and it must be composed almost entirely of renewable resources. It would require a renewable source of food, a renewable power source, renewable water sources, a renewable source of oxygen, a renewable crew (both robotic and human), military/policing forces, skilled workers, a large surplus of parts and materials to fashion new parts, sufficient fuel to reach its projected destination (preferably with excess), medical services, entertainment services, and so on. It would have to be, in and of itself, capable of functioning as a country on Earth might, with the added disadvantage of the inability to perform trade (and so requiring a mass surplus of supplies).
I think Hawking is one of the greatest people of our time, and I also think that he's dead-on about this particular issue. However, I also think that wider-scale marine colonization would probably be a better place to start this venture than the Moon or Mars. If we can successfully live day-to-day life in an underwater environment for extended periods of time, with high degrees of external pressure, then it's entirely possible to live in space, where the opposite is true. The preparations for such space travel are right here on Earth; We just need to use it, and I'm sure the extra habitable space wouldn't go unused.
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Yeah, that's fine with Linux, but with Windows, there have been reported issues with completely disabling swap. So why not set aside a small amount of RAM to keep the system happy and have a RAMDisk at the same time?
If I had 2GB of RAM or more, I'd set up a 512MB RAMdisk and use 256MB of it for swap (Everything's in RAM =D). The chances of a system using 2GB of RAM or more are very, very small. As it stands, with my paltry 512MB of RAM, I never swap out unless I'm doing something with soundfonts, or I'm playing a newer game, and then I never breach 1GB unless something's very wrong.
Actually, if you pull anything dangerous at all on a pilot and start barking commands, they are (supposed to be) trained to comply faithfully in a yes-sir-no-sir-three-bags-full-sir sort of manner. After all, if the pilot dies or is incapacitated, and there's nobody to fly the plane, everyone on board also dies. It's one of the only situations where terrorists have any semblance of control against authorities.
Actually, some jet engines are referred to as turbofans.
Because most hacked up drivers don't work, and nobody, to date, has been able to successfully hack the newer ATI/NVidia drivers.
The RIAA are the only people I know of in the entire world who are legally entitled to slander and sue you for not doing business with them. Imagine if you will, the RIAA taken to another market.
The WWAA (Wood Workers Association of America) has recently monitored your activities in creating a shelf that is exactly the same as the shelf a friend of yours has purchased. The WMAA has deemed it necessary to take legal action because the shelf you made was an exact reproduction of the shelf your friend bought, and because you didn't buy it, but rather built it yourself, you're stealing from them. You've duplicated their work using your own time and effort, and because of it, you're liable to pay them many times what the shelf retails for.
Different world? Yes. Parallels? All there. Could it happen? Unless the RIAA is knocked onto its ass and exposed for the loudmouthed monopoly it is, then I say yes. Yes it could.
Social Security numbers are common AOL searches? What? Why would anyone type their SSN into an AOL search?
Oh wait.
You're forgetting where you are. This is Slashdot.
Why? Good god, people. Not only do they not say how large the device (or even the screen) is, but why would you even need to play 1280x720 or 1920x1080 video on an iPod? At that screen size, 320x240 (iPod Video) is almost more than enough. Why HD? Why?
I know why. HD is the new hot tech buzzword. Idiots.
I almost cried during Ace Combat 04 and 5. I don't think I've ever truly cried over a video game, but those got me the closest of all. Beautiful games, beautiful music, amazing storylines and gameplay that just doesn't get old. Ace Combat Zero didn't quite do it for me, though.
And honestly, people, since the subject's been brought up so much, Aeris was a ditzy flower girl who happened to be a good healer. I didn't like her at all and didn't miss her when she bit the dust.
Ah, but that's why "telepathy" is often referred to as a portion of (and sometimes interchangeably with) "extra-sensory perception", which this electromagnetic sensitivity, by definition, falls into the definition of.
When can I see my 16-core hyperthreading AMD Opteron system with 32GB of RAM, 4 high-end GeForce cards in SLi and ten 500GB HDD's?
Mmm... Overkill...
I've got to agree with this. You can use any gaming device at all for a mouse with Joy2Mouse. Quite a useful and interesting piece of software.
If all else fails, she could use MouseKeys, using the numpad to move the mouse.
Software works to a degree thanks to Wine integration in the kernel, but what about drivers? Where do they come from? Are they *nix-based or Windows? Drivers are the big thing to look out for, because if it doesn't JustWork (TM), then a lot of average people won't bother.
For some reason, the thought of having all my bodily fluids turn to a cold, crystalline form gives me the creeps.
Cool, all the same.
If mines can be programmed to move from place to place based on information links, then can't said links trigger them to deactivate themselves (or detonate if the area is cordoned off) after the conflict has ended? If this is the case, then both the US military and landmine activists get their way.
That's not to say that a landmine that can move isn't a scary thought. Fortunately, as another has pointed out, antipersonnel mines are banned, so these are designed to attack vehicles. Another interesting technology that might develop from this could be a subterranean 'torpedo' of sorts, where this mine technology is launched as a higher-speed munition to seek out high-pressure areas and detonate. It'd be a 'dumb' munition unless remotely-controlled and detonated, but its effects on enemy morale would be severe.
Science is an extremely necessary step to the evolution of mankind. As a species, we are curious in nature, and we are always striving to understand more and more about our environment; And believe it or not, the universe is our environment.
e ractives/budget06/budget06Agencies.html
Instead of scrapping these projects, why not cut the US defense budget? At an excess of $419.3 billion for 2006, I'm sure even if only $20 billion (~10 B-2's or a few ICBM's) was shaved off that, a lot of the problems you describe could be taken care of. NASA's current budget is only $16.5 billion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/int
The War of 1812 was a war between now-Canada and the United States. Officially, the war ended a stalemate. The British colonies had in fact launched successful attacks against US soil, having burned the White House and treasury to the ground. They had also taken Detroit, though it was retaken before war's end. The Americans also caused a great amount of damage, but again, it all ended in stalemate.
All offensive action into Canada taken by the United States was successfully repelled, and so, too, was all retalliatory offensive action into the United States. The War of 1812 was a US military failure; Its main objective was to invade and seize Canada. To that end, it can be seen as a British victory, since their only initial objective was to repel the American advance.
I'm not very well-versed in how the legal system works, but one very obvious way to do this would be to require (and enforce) that any bills passing into law must use direct and solid speech, rather than leaving ubiquitous remarks such as "patently offensive". Require descriptions of what makes it offensive, describe what *exactly* it is that is being banned. Saying "Let's ban offensive material!" means nothing, since offensive material is subjective; It's different from one person to another.
If violent video games are to be banned from sale to minors with such penalties, they should at least describe what makes a video game violent in the first place (rather than simply "It's offensive") so that there's something to compare future cases to. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject itself, but the fact that the US legal system is currently accepting such silliness is simply outrageous.
Unfortunately, juries aren't involved in every case that gets presented to the court, so not every case gets the opportunity to get those neutral, rational minds to make the decision.
The main problem, though, is that even with juries and judges, this stuff shouldn't be allowed anyway; It's going through the courts, taking up valuable time and money, when it should never have been so in the first place because someone worded something in nonspecific language. Fact is, law is supposed to be law for a reason. There is a certain leeway for each different situation, but to word a law in such a way that it becomes subjective is nothing short of stupid. That allows near-infinite leeway.
At least we know the US judicial system isn't completely buggered yet. I can't imagine what the world would be like if any more of those fuzzy terms were introduced into law; It would make everything subjective, people could eventually be arrested for anything at all. Why this and other such stuff even got and continues to get passed is beyond me. I guess the courts and patent offices have a lineup at their door, so they have to rush things along. It's the only thing that makes sense, beyond bribery and blackmail, which I'm sure had a hand in it as well.
I quite enjoyed Indigo Prophecy. I thought it was a refreshing departure from the normal tedium of button-mashing action. Instead, there is button-mashing, but in the form of moving the analog-sticks to different thoughts and ideas, and in certain situations, to a Simon-like fast-reaction sequence. I found it kept me focused on everything that went on, and the fact that the game is nearly all story (it *does* say "Play Movie" at the start) made it, well, interactive. There isn't much freedom, and it is quite linear in its general storyline, but it doesn't stop the first playthrough from being great.
I guess it's the linearity that makes it more like a movie than a game, and therefore making it a rental. Now, if they managed to make an Indigo Prophecy style game with an entire city for you to walk around in, with multiple storylines to engage in that end in multiple ways and branch out in... Aw, why even bother asking for something like that? It won't happen unless Blu-Ray really takes off and they pack 33GB of data onto a PS3 disc; And spend three years developing it. The combination of all those things really doesn't add up to a plausible game idea. But what a game it would be.
Yep. EA has destroyed some good companies in their time. Jane's used to make the absolute best military simulations on the market (unless you count DID) before being sunk and long-forgotten by EA, and Westwood, well... Westwood doesn't even exist any more. At least with Red Alert 2, they let them keep the name. Now it's all EA. Maxis survived, I guess (their logo is plastered all over The Sims), but Bullfrog and Origin are, AFAIK, gone, too.
I remember when EA used to present these brands and logos with pride, as though it were simply a representative of them. That was a long, long time ago. I think I was still using my P166 back then, and Jane's Combat.net was still up. Those were the days.
The nuclear stockpile in the United States needs to be reduced for a whole other reason than "it's old". It needs to be reduced because there's not a single nuclear threat to the United States today that isn't kept in check by every other nation in the world, or that wouldn't be kept in check with maybe a dozen nukes, versus the number of ICBM's currently stockpiled in the USA. You can't use nukes in a war on terror (unless you're a complete idiot and decided to blow away every country that "could" harbour terrorists), and most nuclear-capable nations are either friendly or so new into the "nuclear community" that it really doesn't matter, since they don't have the capability to actually deliver the payload. The only way it could possibly happen is through black-market sales of some sort, and even then, the USA nuclear stockpile doesn't exactly deter a terrorist organization.
The United States should be more focused on fighting 'conventional' (specifically urban and desert) warfare than nuclear warfare. The fact that there is currently no superpower poised to take over the world makes these relics of the Cold War era obsolete both in technology and in practice. They simply aren't needed. If even half of the USA nuclear stockpile were to be dismantled tomorrow, there would still be more than enough deterrent to wipe out any prospective enemy that might arise in the foreseeable future. As it stands, America has the power to blow most all countries on the planet to kingdom come and have some left over for the Martians, too.
Nuclear weapons have their purpose, but to have so many is insane. Deterrence is fine; Hell, even tactical nuclear weapons are fine, but why so many? And why bother researching more into the subject? The only possible plus I can see to research into new nuclear weaponry is to reduce the amount of radioactivity left over from the blast (or to increase the rate at which it dissipates or decays). Aside from that, it's still just new technology to do the same thing.
I say that if keeping the stockpile is that important, then just dismantle the ones that are ready to fall apart, and upgrade/repair the newer ones. Saves a lot of time, effort, and money.
People keep saying that the human race is fundamentally evil, is doomed to annihilate itself, all those lovely things, and yet the human race has thrived and advanced so far in such a short amount of time (even just one hundred years ago, things like cathode ray tubes, plastics, and any number of modern-day polymers were unthinkable). The very fact that people are aware of the problems we as a species have created means that humanity, at its very core, is not entirely as bad as some of its members make it out to be. It's inevitable, however, that something will happen someday that will threaten the existence of mankind - It happened with the dinosaurs, unless you're one of those people who believe the Earth is 4,000 years old.
Maybe it isn't feasible to go to space now, but if we, as a species, come together to pool our resources to create interstellar travel or indeed any kind of feasible, long-term space flight, we could just pull it off in a few generations. Things like cancer research, AIDS research, and research into creating more efficient and environmentally-friendly ways of life would all continue on while the project is underway; The world wouldn't stand still for a few centuries while such a project is put in motion. In fact, it could be considered as top priority in the research required for such a thing, since in order for a colony to be sustainable, it must have a higher standard of health than we've ever known, and it must be composed almost entirely of renewable resources. It would require a renewable source of food, a renewable power source, renewable water sources, a renewable source of oxygen, a renewable crew (both robotic and human), military/policing forces, skilled workers, a large surplus of parts and materials to fashion new parts, sufficient fuel to reach its projected destination (preferably with excess), medical services, entertainment services, and so on. It would have to be, in and of itself, capable of functioning as a country on Earth might, with the added disadvantage of the inability to perform trade (and so requiring a mass surplus of supplies).
I think Hawking is one of the greatest people of our time, and I also think that he's dead-on about this particular issue. However, I also think that wider-scale marine colonization would probably be a better place to start this venture than the Moon or Mars. If we can successfully live day-to-day life in an underwater environment for extended periods of time, with high degrees of external pressure, then it's entirely possible to live in space, where the opposite is true. The preparations for such space travel are right here on Earth; We just need to use it, and I'm sure the extra habitable space wouldn't go unused.