Its really worse than that. Of course all of my software is licensed but lets say that half of it is unlicensed. You have to take into account that I don't ever use over half of the programs installed on my computer so chances are if they were not pirated I would have used an open source option or not gotten it at all. But even assuming I bought the software, what if I bought it online? Who gets the tax money then? Of course I didn't sock the money away for a rainy day. I went out and bought a coffee with it at a non chain coffee shop or used it on a rainy day and paid tax then. People are not saving or making money by pirating software. At worst they are saving money on software and spending it on gas or groceries.
Further proving my point that "There is no reason why a song should make royalties 95 years after its released."
I am not oblivious to the fact that a song could make royalties. What I am saying is that the song should not make royalties 95 years after its released. 50 years after the song is created it should be fair game for anyone to use for whatever. You said it yourself. A company is not going to pay royalties to a starving artist to use their song. A company is going to buy the rights to the song for next to nothing and then use it and throw the rights to the song in thier pile.
I know something about the subject. Lets see I go to school like a good boy till I am 18 years old. It then come out with a hit song. I then somehow avoid loosing the rights to the song.
Fast forward 50 years. There are two possible situations here.
1. The song was such a hit that its still making tons in royalties, I am rich beyond measure.
2. The song was such a hit that its still making tons in royalties, I pissed insane amounts of money away and I am now poor.
3. The song faded away shortly after topping the charts and the royalties for the last 50 years have amounted to pretty much nothing.
So what does this extension due in these situations.
1. I get even more insanely rich, this is clearly what society needs...good law....nice job Europe.
2. Despite having been insanely stupid I get even more money and a great retirement...Way to reward the colossally stupid...great law.
3. Did I mention the song faded away. I still have no money.
There is no reason why a song should make royalties 95 years after its released. Sorry not going to convince me of this. The only people this law could possible help is a musician who is somehow smart enough to retain his rights to his work but dumb enough to piss away a fortune only to smarten up 50 years later. This person does not need laws to help them.
Remember that a G rating does not mean "Good for kids" it means "General Audiences". What this means parents is that not only do you have to check a rating out but you also have to look at the subject matter of the film. Most people will be happy to rest on the observed fact that if a Movie is intended for adults they will through in some sex and language inappropriate for children. Do yourself a favor and use the power of the internet or even a news paper to read a review before taking children to a movie. I can't personally smack your kids when they get bored and loud in a movie. In fact unless its a Disney movie showing before 5pm don't bring your kids. Put the movie on your blockbuster or netflixs queue and leave me in peace.
I read your whole post and got the opposite message you were trying to send. Its absolutely amazing what we have and what we take for granted. Flight, cell phones, and the internet are absolutely incredible inventions. I was thinking about it a few days ago. I have a treo 700wx in my pocket. Many people would consider this an antiquated phone. Lets says I get a 6gb SD card, an IR blaster, and a wifi card for it then jump in my way back machine and go back 10 years. Now what do I have. I have a device that has the specs of a new desktop pc but also has a built in digital camera with amazing resolution and video capture. It can communicate with wifi if you can find it. It works as an mp3 player for all those mp3's about to flood the market from Napster. Its a completely universal remote. Oh and it fits in my pocket with all the above peripherals for under 1000. This thing was science fiction 10 years ago. Hell look at Star Trek. Captain Kirks communicator has nothing on my treo. I mean sure it doesn't use sub space or anything but I can play solitaire and take pictures of the local flora and fauna while on an away mission.
Slashdot is giving us raw data, here is what is happening in our universities and labs. We can read this and literally see the future. Yeah we may have to watch things and see if they ramp up or fade away but there is value in seeing the future. We might not all invent something as mundane as the treo but you might just get a good stock tip out of it.
I am never ever going to be convinced of anything other than the ignorance of the average person when presented with poll results. Here is a relatively good example. In a recent geography poll of adults ages 18-24 (fresh out of school, that means many of them spend a large portion of their time learning) 1/3 could not find Louisiana on a map, nearly half could not find Mississippi, 6 in 10 could not find Iraq. You can't counter a statement of There is only a small few religions that take this stance with polls of average Americans. I wouldn't even except a poll of average members of a religion that take this stance. What the average American believes has nothing at all to do with what the religion believes much like the fact that the average American doesn't think Louisiana or Iraq are important enough to be able to point out on a map doesn't mean that our government doesn't think they are important.
You make a very short sited argument. This type of logic is how people justified the arms race. After all isn't it better to have more weapons that you never use. Here is the thing and feel free to flame me for saying this. If a croud of people is smashing your store front its better that you shoot them all in the face. That way people can tell there kids about how its wrong to loot cause you might get shot in the face. Pain guns are a really really bad idea on many levels. We talked a lot about the goverment misusing them and let me just say I agree 100% that misuse is a huge consideration but also consider the other side. When wieghing out the merits of robbing a bank I always say that the chances of not getting caught and making some easy money don't offset the chances of getting shot in the face with a deadly bullet. I might weigh those odds differently if it was on the one hand get away with a sack of cash or on the other hand feel some pain and go to jail. Well never mind I wouldn't but some people would. Jail is not as scary to a hardened criminal as is it to my pampered ass.
First of all the dropping of broadcast analog TV is going to affect about 5% of people so its time to do it. If you don't believe me walk into a room with 100 people and ask the people who only watch tv they get with bunny ears or a big antenna (not dish) on their roof to raise their hands. Now ask everyone with an HD TV to put their hands down. Thats how many people are even going to notice this switch. Tell those people to get a digital to analog converter if the don't like what they see next. Now invite them all to my house. Everyone who has ever come over to my house for the first time is confused as to how I get HD TV and don't pay anyone. I tell them all with bunny ears. After we pick the brains of the walls cause their head just exploded I explain to them the wonders of Digital Broadcast.
As for this new ruling by the FCC. Fine the cable companies have to give out free digital to analog set top converters for a while. Still no reason not to switch.
You may want to keep reading beyond what natural selection is and on to what the consequences of natural selection are. No one is saying that the extintion of elephants and the sucess of rats is a good thing, its just a fact.
As for your question
"according to you, Jews are humans?"
YES Jews are humans! What do you think they are Homo Jewish? I really don't know how we can continue this back and forth unless you except the fact that humans of Jewish decent are in fact still humans.
Yes thats correct. Maybe we are using different definitions for that natural selection is. I am saying that natural selection is the process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding generations. So the elephants are not doing well against thier predators aka humans. How is that not natural selection. The persecution of the Jews could be considered a form of natural selection but it certainly not analogus to the elephant example. Elephants are a species hunted to the edge of extinction where as Jews are humans and humans are doing just fine. Can you explain to me where the ambiguity is.
The Death of the dinosarus was due to natural selection in that there environement changed and they couldn't hack it and died. If you would calm down and think about it some furry little things did survive and so by natural selection we got lots more mammals and way less dinosaurs. As for Jews and Darfurians, last time I checked they were all homo sapians. Natural selection has been kind to homo sapians, just because other homo sapians haven't been kind to those homo sapians doesn't make thier situation at all related to natural selection. As for the seals and birds that die in an oil spill, guess what natural selection. Humans are part of nature too folks and dealing with the shit that the dominent species leaves lying around is key to survival. Pigeons for instance have learned to live with us quite well as have rats. Isn't natural selection fun.
Its possible that no one mentioned Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada because its not relevent. Just like I shouldn't mention that I am not a big fan of decorative pillows on beds. In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada the guy refused to give his name. Thats why he got arrested. In the situation we are talking about his name was clearly given and given that he paid for the power squid with his company card the store had already accepted that he was who he claimed to be. The point is that who you are is completely irrelivent to how wrong it is to be unlawfully detained. The cop could have very easily asked the store if they believed that this man was a shopplifter and if the store manager answered yes at that point the cop is acting within the bounds of the law to search him. Once its proven that he has committed no crime his identity becomes a moot point and the irate customer should blog about how much Circuit City sucks and move on with his life. But it turns out cops don't like to hear the word "No". I would lay even money that this cop will learn that its ok to say no.
You are missing the whole point. If you throw a ball into the air it falls to the ground right. Thats gravity. So if you have a massive amound of well mass then you will get a massive amount of gravity. A black hole is not a quatative thing. Its not either there or not. It forms from compact matter with some serious gravity. So imagine something is so heavy that if you add one more atom, it will form a black hole. Now stand very far away and watch as the atom falls in toward the object. It will get closer and closer slower and slower but never reach it. Thats becuase gravity warps space time. Just because something isn't yet a black hole doesn't mean it doesn't look a hell of a lot like one. And besides remember that time is just a preception of simple beings like us. If you could step back from our limited perspective and see all of time you would see the black hole at the end but being mere humans all we get to see is something thats getting closer to being one.
Guys I think we are going to get our floating city soon. We take a few of these reactionless drives and hook them up the the free energy from these guys http://www.steorn.net/ and we are good to go.
THE FRENCH....the french have more bandwidth. Its just not right I tell you. I want fiber to the home. Oh and I want a cooler cell phone like the Japanese. How come the terrorist are after us. All we have is crappy phones that have been out for like a year or more other places and a few Mb of bandwidth.
Say it with me people Default Deny, Say it louder now so that Microsoft can here it. Operating systems need to by default deny the right to execute. This whole let anything run unless it looks like a virus crap is not working. Oh and Microsoft that doesn't mean make a pop up so that someone can click "Yeah run it already." Every program shipped with the OS gets to run, every program you add to the list gets to run, maybe every program on a white list maintained by a person or company you trust gets to run, and thats it.
Now before you all freak out and starting talking about linux and how you can already do this let you remind you that, everyone switch to linux, is not a valid solutions because its not going to happen anytime soon. Sure it works on a case by case basis but I still need to go in to work and be able to keep 30 or 40 computers safe and clean that are going to run on windows because thats what our software will run on.
So Microsoft do you let anyone into every room in every building you own unless security sees them on a list or do you determine who can go where and then keep everyone one else out?
Why is it that we are forced to use security that anyone can see hasn't worked in the past and has no hope of work in the future?
Thats a load of crap. Do you really think that people are going to change for the better in the next 100 years? A world wide disease that culls millions is far more likely. That will give more space and materials for the remaining population to polute and consume for the next 100 years.
I am suprised at the number of people talking about how hard this would be to do. Its actually pretty easy. Hitting the print screen button is calling an operating system feature that can easily be called with another program. The whole thing could be autimated with a program pretty easily.
The real issue here is that no matter how hard you try at some point the DVD has to show up on a screen. That means pixel 1,1 is going to be blue and pixel 1,2 is going to be green. There has to be a point where the image is not incrypted and thats the point at wich "hackers" will capture it. The same is true for Audio. At some point it has to go to the speaker. The only way to stop this effect is to require tv/monitors to recieve an encrypted signal. Before you start yelling I know that this is already happening but whats also happening is that people aren't adopting it because they don't see a point. You loose a big demographic if you tell people there old equipment won't work with there new equipment.
The point is that not only are things spelled wierd but also that there are multiple words that sound the same and have differnt meanings so what people should say is "In which manner would you determine the effect of gravity upon watery milk byproducts?", cause then they are saying what they mean and not some confusing crap. But while we are at it lets get rid of standard weights an messures so that they can just say, "How did you determine the mass of the whey."
The concept that titanium fused with bone was discovered years ago when doctors thought "Hey lets use titanium cause its stronger then other materials and then went to remove it and found that the bone had fused with the titanium at a molecular level. In europe they have been doing this for years now but the FDA is slow to approve new technology and of course there is the problem with infection but what they don't tell you is that the risk of infection with a titanium graft that protrudes from the skin is more managable then the infection from the sores that develope where a traditional prosthetic is attached. Now it will be interesting when we replace fingers buy just puting a titanium piece in place of the bone and graft the muscle directly to it.
I had a pentium 2 233 with 64 megs of ram and a 6 gig harddrive. I primarily used my computer to run windows, ms office, diablo, IE and Netscape, winamp, and an antivirus program. Today I have a brand new computer and do almost the same thing. I run a "better" version of windows and office, I have a "better" video game or two, I run a newer improved IE and Firefox, still have winamp but its "better" than the v2 I had, and I have antivirus from the same company. The only thing new is a divx player.
So how come with 10 times the processing power and 8 times the memory and 50 times the harddrive space its not really all that much faster and in some ways it slower. Could it be how things are coded these days. No that can't be. Newer is better.
"Interestingly, the new Momentus 5400 PSD has also exceeded earlier estimates of hybrid hard-drive performance, which said that such drives would add an extra hour to the typical battery life of a notebook PC."
Read carefully people. The article says that seagate excpected a 9% reduction in overall power use. They then said that what was observed was a 50% reduction in harddrive power use. Unless they specifically compare hardrive power use to overall power use all we can infer from this is that a 50% reduction in harddrive power use reduces the total use of the system by 9%. Lets not forget the bright shiny candy like screen and whirly DVD rom and flashing lights and sounds that laptops make.
Glad you asked. Well first, I started playing D&D in 6th grade played sporatically through college and am currently involved in "getting the group back together."
Step 1
Get a group. Try to find people you know or at least are friends of friends. Don't play with people that you or another player are romantically involved. D&D like poker is best played unfettered.
Step 2
Buy the books. Pick a person in your group who likes planning and creating more then actually playing. Give that person the books and have him/her read the players, DM, monstermanual in that order. Once he/she is done with the players pass it around till all players have read it.
Step 3
Have a meeting where people discuss what classes they want to play, what they expect from playing, when they will play, and if you can decide how much dues will be. Setting a definet time and collecting dues helps to keep people from not showing and allows you to have money to buy new books and maybe minatures without one person paying for everything (at this point or prior you should have or plan on buying another players guide, more then one is handy, and everyone should have there own dice or at least a few sets to share).
Step 4
Everyone create characters and the DM starts creating an adventure. Once character are made submit them to the DM for review and be prepared to make changes. Sometimes you need to change your character some to make it fit in the DM's vision and make the game more fun for everyone (this can all be done in either the first meeting or at another meeting if time allows)
Step 5
Dive in.
My group is somewhere between step 4 and 5 right now. Luckily I have all the books we need plus most of the D&D Library if we decide we want them. (the three core books are all you really need) I also have a decent collection of minatures and we are collecting 5 bucks per person per adventure to buy more. We have set the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month as times to play with the possibility of using the 2nd or 4th if people have conflicts with the established times. We plan to start at noon and be finished by 7 the latest. The DM will start looking for a convient place to stop if we have not finished the adventure by 5. That allows till 5:30 or 6 to actually finish playing and the last hour to debrief. We are encouraging players to keep diarys of what happened including specific details that they don't want to forget. This allows them to review before the next adventure to keep things fresh in there minds. We are computer users all and so have a mailing list that the DM uses to inform us of any changes or provide us with info pefore a game if need be.
Photo realism is not the key to imerision and never has been. Games that are truley great make you feel like you are in the game. The characters acomplishments become your own. Its kinda sick when you think of it that way but its true. Anyway the key is in better interfaces. Pressing keys doesn't make me feel like I am in the game. The paddle vibrating is a start but we need to improve on the interface not how it looks. Personally if I could feel like I am walking around in a virtual world then I could live with the graphics as they are today.
Take some of your own advice and think about it. Why did you write the program? If its for your own use then it doesn't need to be on the list. If its for someone else then they trust you and use the program even though its not on the list. Once they have been using it with no adverse side effects then they can recommend that it be added to the list. If we could do this think about how much time could be saved not cleaning up infected computers. The only possible down side is if you are trying to market your program and its not on the list. But if the process where as easy as get someone who didn't write it with you to nominate it and we will evaluate it for the list, then that should be manigable. The internet is becomming more dangerous to be connected to at the same pace that its becoming more useful to be connected to. We as an industry/community/society need to rethink our old ways and start using a plan that has a chance to suceed. Like Default deny.
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Its really worse than that. Of course all of my software is licensed but lets say that half of it is unlicensed. You have to take into account that I don't ever use over half of the programs installed on my computer so chances are if they were not pirated I would have used an open source option or not gotten it at all. But even assuming I bought the software, what if I bought it online? Who gets the tax money then? Of course I didn't sock the money away for a rainy day. I went out and bought a coffee with it at a non chain coffee shop or used it on a rainy day and paid tax then. People are not saving or making money by pirating software. At worst they are saving money on software and spending it on gas or groceries.
Further proving my point that "There is no reason why a song should make royalties 95 years after its released."
I am not oblivious to the fact that a song could make royalties. What I am saying is that the song should not make royalties 95 years after its released. 50 years after the song is created it should be fair game for anyone to use for whatever. You said it yourself. A company is not going to pay royalties to a starving artist to use their song. A company is going to buy the rights to the song for next to nothing and then use it and throw the rights to the song in thier pile.
I know something about the subject. Lets see I go to school like a good boy till I am 18 years old. It then come out with a hit song. I then somehow avoid loosing the rights to the song. Fast forward 50 years. There are two possible situations here. 1. The song was such a hit that its still making tons in royalties, I am rich beyond measure. 2. The song was such a hit that its still making tons in royalties, I pissed insane amounts of money away and I am now poor. 3. The song faded away shortly after topping the charts and the royalties for the last 50 years have amounted to pretty much nothing. So what does this extension due in these situations. 1. I get even more insanely rich, this is clearly what society needs...good law....nice job Europe. 2. Despite having been insanely stupid I get even more money and a great retirement...Way to reward the colossally stupid...great law. 3. Did I mention the song faded away. I still have no money. There is no reason why a song should make royalties 95 years after its released. Sorry not going to convince me of this. The only people this law could possible help is a musician who is somehow smart enough to retain his rights to his work but dumb enough to piss away a fortune only to smarten up 50 years later. This person does not need laws to help them.
Remember that a G rating does not mean "Good for kids" it means "General Audiences". What this means parents is that not only do you have to check a rating out but you also have to look at the subject matter of the film. Most people will be happy to rest on the observed fact that if a Movie is intended for adults they will through in some sex and language inappropriate for children. Do yourself a favor and use the power of the internet or even a news paper to read a review before taking children to a movie. I can't personally smack your kids when they get bored and loud in a movie. In fact unless its a Disney movie showing before 5pm don't bring your kids. Put the movie on your blockbuster or netflixs queue and leave me in peace.
I read your whole post and got the opposite message you were trying to send. Its absolutely amazing what we have and what we take for granted. Flight, cell phones, and the internet are absolutely incredible inventions. I was thinking about it a few days ago. I have a treo 700wx in my pocket. Many people would consider this an antiquated phone. Lets says I get a 6gb SD card, an IR blaster, and a wifi card for it then jump in my way back machine and go back 10 years. Now what do I have. I have a device that has the specs of a new desktop pc but also has a built in digital camera with amazing resolution and video capture. It can communicate with wifi if you can find it. It works as an mp3 player for all those mp3's about to flood the market from Napster. Its a completely universal remote. Oh and it fits in my pocket with all the above peripherals for under 1000. This thing was science fiction 10 years ago. Hell look at Star Trek. Captain Kirks communicator has nothing on my treo. I mean sure it doesn't use sub space or anything but I can play solitaire and take pictures of the local flora and fauna while on an away mission.
Slashdot is giving us raw data, here is what is happening in our universities and labs. We can read this and literally see the future. Yeah we may have to watch things and see if they ramp up or fade away but there is value in seeing the future. We might not all invent something as mundane as the treo but you might just get a good stock tip out of it.
I am never ever going to be convinced of anything other than the ignorance of the average person when presented with poll results. Here is a relatively good example. In a recent geography poll of adults ages 18-24 (fresh out of school, that means many of them spend a large portion of their time learning) 1/3 could not find Louisiana on a map, nearly half could not find Mississippi, 6 in 10 could not find Iraq. You can't counter a statement of There is only a small few religions that take this stance with polls of average Americans. I wouldn't even except a poll of average members of a religion that take this stance. What the average American believes has nothing at all to do with what the religion believes much like the fact that the average American doesn't think Louisiana or Iraq are important enough to be able to point out on a map doesn't mean that our government doesn't think they are important.
You make a very short sited argument. This type of logic is how people justified the arms race. After all isn't it better to have more weapons that you never use. Here is the thing and feel free to flame me for saying this. If a croud of people is smashing your store front its better that you shoot them all in the face. That way people can tell there kids about how its wrong to loot cause you might get shot in the face. Pain guns are a really really bad idea on many levels. We talked a lot about the goverment misusing them and let me just say I agree 100% that misuse is a huge consideration but also consider the other side. When wieghing out the merits of robbing a bank I always say that the chances of not getting caught and making some easy money don't offset the chances of getting shot in the face with a deadly bullet. I might weigh those odds differently if it was on the one hand get away with a sack of cash or on the other hand feel some pain and go to jail. Well never mind I wouldn't but some people would. Jail is not as scary to a hardened criminal as is it to my pampered ass.
First of all the dropping of broadcast analog TV is going to affect about 5% of people so its time to do it. If you don't believe me walk into a room with 100 people and ask the people who only watch tv they get with bunny ears or a big antenna (not dish) on their roof to raise their hands. Now ask everyone with an HD TV to put their hands down. Thats how many people are even going to notice this switch. Tell those people to get a digital to analog converter if the don't like what they see next. Now invite them all to my house. Everyone who has ever come over to my house for the first time is confused as to how I get HD TV and don't pay anyone. I tell them all with bunny ears. After we pick the brains of the walls cause their head just exploded I explain to them the wonders of Digital Broadcast. As for this new ruling by the FCC. Fine the cable companies have to give out free digital to analog set top converters for a while. Still no reason not to switch.
You may want to keep reading beyond what natural selection is and on to what the consequences of natural selection are. No one is saying that the extintion of elephants and the sucess of rats is a good thing, its just a fact.
As for your question
"according to you, Jews are humans?"
YES Jews are humans! What do you think they are Homo Jewish? I really don't know how we can continue this back and forth unless you except the fact that humans of Jewish decent are in fact still humans.
Yes thats correct. Maybe we are using different definitions for that natural selection is. I am saying that natural selection is the process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding generations. So the elephants are not doing well against thier predators aka humans. How is that not natural selection. The persecution of the Jews could be considered a form of natural selection but it certainly not analogus to the elephant example. Elephants are a species hunted to the edge of extinction where as Jews are humans and humans are doing just fine. Can you explain to me where the ambiguity is.
The Death of the dinosarus was due to natural selection in that there environement changed and they couldn't hack it and died. If you would calm down and think about it some furry little things did survive and so by natural selection we got lots more mammals and way less dinosaurs. As for Jews and Darfurians, last time I checked they were all homo sapians. Natural selection has been kind to homo sapians, just because other homo sapians haven't been kind to those homo sapians doesn't make thier situation at all related to natural selection. As for the seals and birds that die in an oil spill, guess what natural selection. Humans are part of nature too folks and dealing with the shit that the dominent species leaves lying around is key to survival. Pigeons for instance have learned to live with us quite well as have rats. Isn't natural selection fun.
Its possible that no one mentioned Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada because its not relevent. Just like I shouldn't mention that I am not a big fan of decorative pillows on beds. In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada the guy refused to give his name. Thats why he got arrested. In the situation we are talking about his name was clearly given and given that he paid for the power squid with his company card the store had already accepted that he was who he claimed to be. The point is that who you are is completely irrelivent to how wrong it is to be unlawfully detained. The cop could have very easily asked the store if they believed that this man was a shopplifter and if the store manager answered yes at that point the cop is acting within the bounds of the law to search him. Once its proven that he has committed no crime his identity becomes a moot point and the irate customer should blog about how much Circuit City sucks and move on with his life. But it turns out cops don't like to hear the word "No". I would lay even money that this cop will learn that its ok to say no.
You are missing the whole point. If you throw a ball into the air it falls to the ground right. Thats gravity. So if you have a massive amound of well mass then you will get a massive amount of gravity. A black hole is not a quatative thing. Its not either there or not. It forms from compact matter with some serious gravity. So imagine something is so heavy that if you add one more atom, it will form a black hole. Now stand very far away and watch as the atom falls in toward the object. It will get closer and closer slower and slower but never reach it. Thats becuase gravity warps space time. Just because something isn't yet a black hole doesn't mean it doesn't look a hell of a lot like one. And besides remember that time is just a preception of simple beings like us. If you could step back from our limited perspective and see all of time you would see the black hole at the end but being mere humans all we get to see is something thats getting closer to being one.
Guys I think we are going to get our floating city soon. We take a few of these reactionless drives and hook them up the the free energy from these guys http://www.steorn.net/ and we are good to go.
THE FRENCH....the french have more bandwidth. Its just not right I tell you. I want fiber to the home. Oh and I want a cooler cell phone like the Japanese. How come the terrorist are after us. All we have is crappy phones that have been out for like a year or more other places and a few Mb of bandwidth.
Say it with me people Default Deny, Say it louder now so that Microsoft can here it. Operating systems need to by default deny the right to execute. This whole let anything run unless it looks like a virus crap is not working. Oh and Microsoft that doesn't mean make a pop up so that someone can click "Yeah run it already." Every program shipped with the OS gets to run, every program you add to the list gets to run, maybe every program on a white list maintained by a person or company you trust gets to run, and thats it. Now before you all freak out and starting talking about linux and how you can already do this let you remind you that, everyone switch to linux, is not a valid solutions because its not going to happen anytime soon. Sure it works on a case by case basis but I still need to go in to work and be able to keep 30 or 40 computers safe and clean that are going to run on windows because thats what our software will run on. So Microsoft do you let anyone into every room in every building you own unless security sees them on a list or do you determine who can go where and then keep everyone one else out? Why is it that we are forced to use security that anyone can see hasn't worked in the past and has no hope of work in the future?
Thats a load of crap. Do you really think that people are going to change for the better in the next 100 years? A world wide disease that culls millions is far more likely. That will give more space and materials for the remaining population to polute and consume for the next 100 years.
I am suprised at the number of people talking about how hard this would be to do. Its actually pretty easy. Hitting the print screen button is calling an operating system feature that can easily be called with another program. The whole thing could be autimated with a program pretty easily. The real issue here is that no matter how hard you try at some point the DVD has to show up on a screen. That means pixel 1,1 is going to be blue and pixel 1,2 is going to be green. There has to be a point where the image is not incrypted and thats the point at wich "hackers" will capture it. The same is true for Audio. At some point it has to go to the speaker. The only way to stop this effect is to require tv/monitors to recieve an encrypted signal. Before you start yelling I know that this is already happening but whats also happening is that people aren't adopting it because they don't see a point. You loose a big demographic if you tell people there old equipment won't work with there new equipment.
The point is that not only are things spelled wierd but also that there are multiple words that sound the same and have differnt meanings so what people should say is "In which manner would you determine the effect of gravity upon watery milk byproducts?", cause then they are saying what they mean and not some confusing crap. But while we are at it lets get rid of standard weights an messures so that they can just say, "How did you determine the mass of the whey."
The concept that titanium fused with bone was discovered years ago when doctors thought "Hey lets use titanium cause its stronger then other materials and then went to remove it and found that the bone had fused with the titanium at a molecular level. In europe they have been doing this for years now but the FDA is slow to approve new technology and of course there is the problem with infection but what they don't tell you is that the risk of infection with a titanium graft that protrudes from the skin is more managable then the infection from the sores that develope where a traditional prosthetic is attached. Now it will be interesting when we replace fingers buy just puting a titanium piece in place of the bone and graft the muscle directly to it.
I had a pentium 2 233 with 64 megs of ram and a 6 gig harddrive. I primarily used my computer to run windows, ms office, diablo, IE and Netscape, winamp, and an antivirus program. Today I have a brand new computer and do almost the same thing. I run a "better" version of windows and office, I have a "better" video game or two, I run a newer improved IE and Firefox, still have winamp but its "better" than the v2 I had, and I have antivirus from the same company. The only thing new is a divx player. So how come with 10 times the processing power and 8 times the memory and 50 times the harddrive space its not really all that much faster and in some ways it slower. Could it be how things are coded these days. No that can't be. Newer is better.
"Interestingly, the new Momentus 5400 PSD has also exceeded earlier estimates of hybrid hard-drive performance, which said that such drives would add an extra hour to the typical battery life of a notebook PC." Read carefully people. The article says that seagate excpected a 9% reduction in overall power use. They then said that what was observed was a 50% reduction in harddrive power use. Unless they specifically compare hardrive power use to overall power use all we can infer from this is that a 50% reduction in harddrive power use reduces the total use of the system by 9%. Lets not forget the bright shiny candy like screen and whirly DVD rom and flashing lights and sounds that laptops make.
Glad you asked. Well first, I started playing D&D in 6th grade played sporatically through college and am currently involved in "getting the group back together." Step 1 Get a group. Try to find people you know or at least are friends of friends. Don't play with people that you or another player are romantically involved. D&D like poker is best played unfettered. Step 2 Buy the books. Pick a person in your group who likes planning and creating more then actually playing. Give that person the books and have him/her read the players, DM, monstermanual in that order. Once he/she is done with the players pass it around till all players have read it. Step 3 Have a meeting where people discuss what classes they want to play, what they expect from playing, when they will play, and if you can decide how much dues will be. Setting a definet time and collecting dues helps to keep people from not showing and allows you to have money to buy new books and maybe minatures without one person paying for everything (at this point or prior you should have or plan on buying another players guide, more then one is handy, and everyone should have there own dice or at least a few sets to share). Step 4 Everyone create characters and the DM starts creating an adventure. Once character are made submit them to the DM for review and be prepared to make changes. Sometimes you need to change your character some to make it fit in the DM's vision and make the game more fun for everyone (this can all be done in either the first meeting or at another meeting if time allows) Step 5 Dive in. My group is somewhere between step 4 and 5 right now. Luckily I have all the books we need plus most of the D&D Library if we decide we want them. (the three core books are all you really need) I also have a decent collection of minatures and we are collecting 5 bucks per person per adventure to buy more. We have set the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month as times to play with the possibility of using the 2nd or 4th if people have conflicts with the established times. We plan to start at noon and be finished by 7 the latest. The DM will start looking for a convient place to stop if we have not finished the adventure by 5. That allows till 5:30 or 6 to actually finish playing and the last hour to debrief. We are encouraging players to keep diarys of what happened including specific details that they don't want to forget. This allows them to review before the next adventure to keep things fresh in there minds. We are computer users all and so have a mailing list that the DM uses to inform us of any changes or provide us with info pefore a game if need be.
Photo realism is not the key to imerision and never has been. Games that are truley great make you feel like you are in the game. The characters acomplishments become your own. Its kinda sick when you think of it that way but its true. Anyway the key is in better interfaces. Pressing keys doesn't make me feel like I am in the game. The paddle vibrating is a start but we need to improve on the interface not how it looks. Personally if I could feel like I am walking around in a virtual world then I could live with the graphics as they are today.
Take some of your own advice and think about it. Why did you write the program? If its for your own use then it doesn't need to be on the list. If its for someone else then they trust you and use the program even though its not on the list. Once they have been using it with no adverse side effects then they can recommend that it be added to the list. If we could do this think about how much time could be saved not cleaning up infected computers. The only possible down side is if you are trying to market your program and its not on the list. But if the process where as easy as get someone who didn't write it with you to nominate it and we will evaluate it for the list, then that should be manigable. The internet is becomming more dangerous to be connected to at the same pace that its becoming more useful to be connected to. We as an industry/community/society need to rethink our old ways and start using a plan that has a chance to suceed. Like Default deny.