What really bugs me is why Paramount hasn't worked a deal with one of the cell phone makers to issue a limited edition cell phone made to look like an original ST communicator. That flip up metal grill looks like almost like it is custom made to be a fractal antenna.
I know at least 2 people that would buy one instantly if they were available (and no I'm not one of them...)
Just goes to show you, Paramount is STILL clueless when it comes to the ST franchise.
So, was he going to build super-heavy launch systems or wasn't he?
He was. The engines worked great in the static test firings and they were within 6-12 months of a test launch. Again there were hundreds of engineers working on this (I knew a few at the time). The fact is he ran into some resistance from US suppliers (don't want to tick off Lockheed/Boeing/NASA/DOD), but mostly he couldn't get past the political roadblocks put up by NASA. Don't take my word for it, look it up. There is plenty of info on the web.
He seems to complain a lot about government-subsidized competition, but (as you alluded to) there is no government-subsidized super-heavy launch vehicles, foreign or domestic.
You would complain alot too if you had a great idea, the money to accomplish it, the talent to do it, and market to support it and you couldn't get out of the gate because a bunch of career government bureaucrats are standing in your way for no other reason than they can.
The government does have a heavy lift vehicle: the Space Shuttle. NASA has a strong interest in protecting its one major asset. The shuttle is the most heavily subsidized vehicle ever. The public numbers are that it costs about $1 Billion/launch. Industry analysts put the real number at somewhere closer to $3-5 Billion/launch. Beal's vehicle could have delivered larger payloads to higher/better orbits for a bare fraction ( less than $100 Million) of the cost per launch.
Beal isn't the only one to face such problems with starting commerical space enterprises in the U.S., his company was just one of the more dramatic examples. Again, don't take my word for it. There is plenty of information available. You just have to look for it.
These continued calls to abandon NASA and "let private enterprises take over" sicken me. If private enterprises want to take over they can do so, without the need to abandon NASA first. The simple fact is that private enterprises have done exactly *nothing* that could be called "space exploration" so far. There are no private space shuttles, nor any private expendable launchers that can take any meaningful payload to a meaningful orbit.
You can be sick as you want, but private enterprise has been trying to break the NASA/DOD barrier to space for YEARS. In every case, NASA management has taken specific and ruthless action to roadblock the commercial enterprises. Beal Aerospace is a great example. They were on a fast track to make an expendable heavy lift vehicle that would match what the old Saturn boosters could do (you know the ones we used to go to the Moon, the ones we can't build any more). Andrew Beal, a Texas oil/banking billionaire, was funding the whole thing out of his own pocket. He thought he could bring launch costs down to a fraction of what they are now AND launch much bigger and diverse payloads, including manned vehicles. He had several hundred engineers working for him. He had a working engine and was building a factory and launch area for his rockets. Everything was going as planned. Then NASA stepped in and effectively crowded him out of the market BEFORE he could make a successful test launch. Read Andrew Beal's shutdown letter below:
"Beal Aerospace regrets to announce that it is ceasing all business operations effective October 23, 2000.
Beal Aerospace has made significant advances in low cost hydrogen peroxide propulsion systems and continues to believe that low cost and reliable space launch systems are viable and producible by relatively small commercial companies. Despite our experience with cost overruns and schedule delays, we were confident of our ability to ultimately succeed in the development of our BA-2C rocket launch system. The BA-2C program was the largest privately funded program ever in existence to build a large capacity space launch system.
Unfortunately, development of a reliable low cost system is simply not enough to insure commercial viability. Several uncertainties remain that are totally beyond our control and put our entire business at risk. The most insurmountable risk is the desire of the U.S. government and NASA to subsidize competing launch systems. NASA has embarked on a plan to develop a "second generation" launch system that will be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers and that will compete directly with the private sector. In my capacity as founder and chairman of Beal Aerospace, I previously testified to a congressional subcommittee that government subsidies to competing launch providers constituted the private sectors biggest business risk. Nonetheless, NASA remains committed to such an effort, and congress last week approved an initial $290 million to begin an effort that NASA declares will result in the government funding of one or two human rated subsidized launch systems within 5 years. While Beal Aerospace recognizes the need for NASA to develop a human rated launch capability for space station and other human missions, we find it inexcusable and intolerable that NASA intends for these subsidized systems to additionally compete for non-human rated missions including cargo for the space station and commercial satellite missions.
We wonder where the computer industry would be today if the U.S. government had selected and subsidized one or two personal computer systems when Microsoft, Inc. or Compaq, Inc. were in their infancy.
Other significant and uncontrollable risks we face include (1) federal laws mandating our potential liability for pre-existing environmental contamination at the only available cape canaveral launch pads, and (2) uncertainty over U.S. government state department approval to launch from our own launch facilities in the foreign country of Guyana. In spite of these add
Re:No Overtime No Vacation
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
The educations of an entire generation are being destroyed in the rush to below-average mediocrity.
Only the very few companies actually accomplish anything truly innovative. The rest simply exist, like tree moss, consuming resources and producing very little. This better get fixed, because this process is called "eating your own seedcorn."
When I read your comment, I immediately thought of one of my favorite Robert Heinlein quotes:
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.' " -- The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
It seems to be in our nature as a species to not leave a good thing alone.
...they will have to reveal in court, in public, all duplicated code in question.
Not by a long shot. Courts can and do have evidence presented 'under seal' to protect private/proprietary/sensitive information. If I were the SCO lawyers, that would be one of the first motions I put before the bench. They would stand a good chance of the motion being granted, too.
There are very few "game over" scenarios in any court case./.ers need to remember that. This is a dance, not a boxing match.
Great movie btw. To me it seems more like the technology called Focus in Vernor Vinge's
A Deepness In The Sky. Focus was created using a biological agent (fungus?) and conditioning to amplify a person's natural or developed skills: an average person would turn into a genius, a genius would be something much more.
The nasty side effect was that Focused individuals were no longer capable of dealing with anything outside of their Focus area. Consequently, the Focused were slaves of their society. They weren't even capable of understanding that they were slaves. Very powerful and very nasty.
Now consider this: this technology sounds like a very simple form of Focus. What if it is developed and some nefarious individuals/groups/governments implants pacemaker-like TMS units which allow them to Focus the person at will (or constantly). Now someone has access to highly talented, possibly genius plus slaves. Far fetched? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
(providing you your chilling conspiracy theory of the day...)
I'm truly amazed that Charter and the FBI blew you off like this.
Don't be. Serious threats get blown-off all the time by law enforcement and business. Sad, but true
You need to read Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. It is an amazing account of how he helped track down the Hanover Hacker (a paid Soviet spy).
The FBI blew him off too, at first. He discovered a hacker was moving through the UC Berkley computer systems at will and using it to crack other systems. He discovered this when he was investigating a 75 cent discrepancy in the departmental billing for computer time. The FBI told him: "don't call us unless it is at least $1 million in damages". Eventually he convinced one agent of the seriousness of the problem (HH was using Berkley and other systems to try to crack DoD systems). Over the course of 3 years, Stoll was instrumental in helping the FBI/CIA and others crack one of the biggest international computer spy rings ever. Stoll was a grad student in astronomy at the time. Great book. Oh and he threw in a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe too.
Is it just me, or is there something scary about a judge, who may or may not use his/her computer for anything other than e-mail and word processing, trying to interpret two snippets of source code to determine if one uses the other in an illegal way?
I heard a lawyer commenting on this problem recently. Apparently courts all over the US are seeing a huge upsurge in technology cases. The courts have been able to handle this sort of thing in the past by using expert witnesses, friends of the court, etc. However due to the pace of change and the inherent complexity, specialization, and sometimes cross-pollenation between the major technological domains (biology, computing, electronics, etc), the courts and the American Bar Association are starting to realize the judges just don't have the background to adequately adjudicate many of the cases.
The lawyer indicated that one of the best proposals is that the Federal Courts (where most of these tech cases end up)create seperate "technology courts". These courts would be run by judges with training and background in specific technological knowledge areas. This would be similar to the way that patent disputes are currently handled by the courts.
I think it is an interesting idea. I just think it will take 10-20 years of demonstrably bad rulings for the system to catch up and address the issue.
The Star Wars MMORPG will be very successful. Count on it. It's just silly that some people are claiming that only sword and scorcery style games can be popular as MMOGs.
Yes Star Wars Galaxies(SWG) will be very successful right out of the gate (once they get past The-Never-Ending Beta). However, it won't be successful IN SPITE of being a Sword & Sorcery game. SWG IS a sword (lightsaber) and sorcery (The Force) game. If anything, its success will build on that sword and sorcery foundation.
Star Wars is very much in the Science Fantasy genre, with heavy emphasis on the Fantasy side. (Most 'space opera' stories are...) Change the starships to sailing ships and you could set it in any pre-industrial epoch.
Regardless, it will be fun to run around dodging Bounty Hunters, fixing droids, and so on when SWG comes out.
It is apparently quite easy to tell these diamonds from natural diamonds. I saw a program on this not that long ago. Any competent jeweler could easily tell the difference:
1) Man-made gem-stone quality diamonds are generally too perfect. 2) These diamonds generally have non-natural coloring. Some are actually artificially colored (sky blue diamonds anyone?) 3) These diamonds fluorese under UV "Black" light.
As I understand it, one of the big goals for these guys (besides breaking the DeBeers distribution barrier) is to make the diamonds as 'real' as possible. So, they are working on ways to introduce flaws and color variations into the stones. I got the feeling from the program, they aren't that far away from their goal of manufacturing a 'natural' diamond.
DeBeers is so worried about the whole situation they are now micro-etching the DeBeers logo onto all their diamonds. This essentially means that anyone who buys a DeBeers natural diamond will be paying a premium for... a corporate logo.
Good movie with a great message: "You are who you choose to be."
I keep an Iron Giant toy on my desk as a reminder.
I wish they would re-make it as a live-action movie, particularly if they could get Harry Connick Jr. to play Dean again (who else could play a beatnik junkyard owner) and Vin Diesel to do the Iron Giant's voice again: "HoooooGarrrrrrth!"
It has more than a slight resemblance to a rocket engine. It is basically a tuned rocket engine with an extremely laminar flow field going through a resonance chamber.
I can't remember what combustion gases are used in the Airbourne Laser, but the big daddy of chemical lasers is at HELSTF is very powerful (megawatt range - actual number is of course classified). It is a Deuterium-Floride (DF) laser, called MIRCL.
I have good friends that worked at HELSTF for years. They tell some pretty interesting stories. Some are funny (the local ducks liked the 'heavy water' storage pond - they floated higher), to scary (during one test firing, a moth was accidentally caught in a side-lobe of the beam - the resulting plasma ball blew a hole through a big instrumentation rack).
You are right that a solid state laser would be a better deal. There is at least one, named SSHCL, under research now for the US Army. It is a baby compared to MIRCL though. It is only a 10 kilowatt laser. Just big enough to punch holes in light armor at short distances.
The type of laser I think that has the most promise is a Free Electron Laser (FEL). It is all electric, tunable, doesn't require environmentally iffy fuels, and should be scalable up to really high powers. Back around 1989, the government was going to build a BIG ground based FEL at White Sands Missile Range near HELSTF. It would have dwarfed MIRCL in power output. It is shame. Had they built it, we would now have all sorts of interesting high-energy laser research and applications, including a possible cheaper and more reliable means of space access.
"A security vulnerability in the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) has been identified by ISS."
Wow! So the three guys stuck up in the Internation Space Station found a Sendmail vulnerability. Just more proof that we should support manned space flight. Spin-offs!
Yes DAoC is a much more polite game than EQ, but it is still an addictive trap for many.
I know, I have a member of my family who is addicted to DAoC. She makes almost no time for anything else in her life (including her kids). At least she can still pull herself away from it for 40 hours a week to work.
I don't WANT more on DVDs. I want bigger HARD DRIVES.
Don't worry too much about it. Hard Drive capacity seems to be doubling approximately every 12 months, while the price seems to be holding constant.
If that holds true, then when the new 1.5TB MegaDVDs are released, you should be able to pick up a 10TB hard drive for around $100 retail. (Calculation: 2^7=128, 128*80GB=10TB. $80GB HD today costs about $100).
A bit below the 50,000TB you want, but you will only need to wait another 12 years for that. Perhaps sooner, since all these doubling trends seem to be accelerating.
Of course, some of us don't want TB class DVDs or HDs... we want terabytes of solid-state memory. Holographic storage crystals would fit the bill nicely.
Or the USS Archer could be named after Cpt. Archer's father, Dr. Archer. ST:TNG had a habit of naming ships after famous Scientists.
Of course all of this is moot. The whole ST universe is one big temporal mess. No wonder there are so many inconsistencies. Now if we could just discover the true origin of the "particle of the week", all of it would make sense!
Cheers, I.V.
Re:It all went downhill when Gene died
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Have you paid any attention? I mean, you'd think that the fact that the NX-01 wasn't hanging on the wall in the Enterprise's ready room next to the space shuttle and aircraft carrier would be a big clue as to what's going on: The time line has been tampered with.
Since the premier episode of Enterprise ("Broken Bow"?), it has struck me that their is one really elegant way that they could explain the continuity differences between the original Star Trek and Enterprise:
Let the series run its x number of years, occasionally building and developing the Suliban/Temporal Cold War story arc. At the end, have Cpt. Sam Becket, er Archer face the decision to wipe out the current time-line, including the development of his Enterprise, in favor of a timeline without the Suliban and the Temporal Cold War. If he doesn't, then the Suliban win and everyone suffers. Archer chooses to sacrifice his own existence and the existence of everyone he loves to safeguard humanity. His actions set up the Federation timeline which eventually spits out the Enterprise NC1701 captained by our favorite over-actor and his crew on a five year mission to "seek out new life and new civilizations...".
It resolves all the "hey they are messing up the timeline" griping using Star Trek's favorite plot device: mucking around with the time continum. It also lets Archer and company make the ultimate heroic sacrifice - to be completely eliminated from existence so that the essence of what they love will survive.
Do that and title the two part series closer "For the Greater Good" and you have a good ending to an average series.
Wow, a point by point rebuttal of my reasons for choosing ReplayTV over Tivo. I must have hit a nerve...
Yes Tivo can match all the features I value in my ReplayTV... if I hack it and/or buy extra stuff.
I wanted an appliance with certain features available right out of the box. In this case, ReplayTV had the features I most wanted and the Series2 Tivo did not. Next time around, it may be Tivo or some other brand. Like any other purchasing choice, what you buy depends on what you value.
You are right, I do like my ReplayTV. It is a good appliance that does what I want it to do for a good value. I am sure if I had bought a Tivo instead, I would feel similarly. It too is a good product. In this case, for my particular circumstances and desires, ReplayTV is the superior product.
Oh, and one more thing. Apparently the ReplayTV has a nice healthy hacker community too. I am sure if I get the urge to tinker, lots of hacking opportunities will be available.
I caught the Tivo profiling article from another source. I didn't see it on Slashdot. Not surprised it made it here.
As I recall, the article wasn't presented as being particularly humorous. I do remember the bit in the article about a couple of comedy shows picking up the idea as a funny episode premise.
The end of the article also talked about online profiling in general, not just Tivo profiling. If memory serves, they gave some similar profiling-snafu examples from Amazon and other e-tailers.
I don't think the article (or my post for that matter) particularly indicated a "don't buy Tivo" stance. I think the article was reporting an interesting and infrequent side-effect of the technology.
Lastly, I think most slashdotters have a good sense of humor... you just don't see it because this really isn't a humor site.
Slashdot Mirror
... which is business doublespeak for 'Cover Your A$$'. In business, extortion isn't a crime its an accepted business practice. Sigh.
I.V.
What really bugs me is why Paramount hasn't worked a deal with one of the cell phone makers to issue a limited edition cell phone made to look like an original ST communicator. That flip up metal grill looks like almost like it is custom made to be a fractal antenna.
I know at least 2 people that would buy one instantly if they were available (and no I'm not one of them...)
Just goes to show you, Paramount is STILL clueless when it comes to the ST franchise.
I.V.
Every time I hear how upset they are getting, I think about a great quote Spider Robinson had about librarians in The Callahan Touch:
There are some other great quotes for/about librarians at Lib.SigsI.V.
Reminds me of an OLD joke:
"What's the only problem with running a Bill Gates personality simulator on a TRS-80 Model I w/ 4k?"
"Don't know, what?"
"What do you do with the other 3K?"
Cheers,
I.V.
He was. The engines worked great in the static test firings and they were within 6-12 months of a test launch. Again there were hundreds of engineers working on this (I knew a few at the time). The fact is he ran into some resistance from US suppliers (don't want to tick off Lockheed/Boeing/NASA/DOD), but mostly he couldn't get past the political roadblocks put up by NASA. Don't take my word for it, look it up. There is plenty of info on the web.
He seems to complain a lot about government-subsidized competition, but (as you alluded to) there is no government-subsidized super-heavy launch vehicles, foreign or domestic.
You would complain alot too if you had a great idea, the money to accomplish it, the talent to do it, and market to support it and you couldn't get out of the gate because a bunch of career government bureaucrats are standing in your way for no other reason than they can.
The government does have a heavy lift vehicle: the Space Shuttle. NASA has a strong interest in protecting its one major asset. The shuttle is the most heavily subsidized vehicle ever. The public numbers are that it costs about $1 Billion/launch. Industry analysts put the real number at somewhere closer to $3-5 Billion/launch. Beal's vehicle could have delivered larger payloads to higher/better orbits for a bare fraction ( less than $100 Million) of the cost per launch.
Beal isn't the only one to face such problems with starting commerical space enterprises in the U.S., his company was just one of the more dramatic examples. Again, don't take my word for it. There is plenty of information available. You just have to look for it.
I.V.
You can be sick as you want, but private enterprise has been trying to break the NASA/DOD barrier to space for YEARS. In every case, NASA management has taken specific and ruthless action to roadblock the commercial enterprises. Beal Aerospace is a great example. They were on a fast track to make an expendable heavy lift vehicle that would match what the old Saturn boosters could do (you know the ones we used to go to the Moon, the ones we can't build any more). Andrew Beal, a Texas oil/banking billionaire, was funding the whole thing out of his own pocket. He thought he could bring launch costs down to a fraction of what they are now AND launch much bigger and diverse payloads, including manned vehicles. He had several hundred engineers working for him. He had a working engine and was building a factory and launch area for his rockets. Everything was going as planned. Then NASA stepped in and effectively crowded him out of the market BEFORE he could make a successful test launch. Read Andrew Beal's shutdown letter below:
When I read your comment, I immediately thought of one of my favorite Robert Heinlein quotes:
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.' " -- The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
It seems to be in our nature as a species to not leave a good thing alone.
I.V.
Not by a long shot. Courts can and do have evidence presented 'under seal' to protect private/proprietary/sensitive information. If I were the SCO lawyers, that would be one of the first motions I put before the bench. They would stand a good chance of the motion being granted, too.
There are very few "game over" scenarios in any court case. /.ers need to remember that. This is a dance, not a boxing match.
Cheers,
I.V.
The nasty side effect was that Focused individuals were no longer capable of dealing with anything outside of their Focus area. Consequently, the Focused were slaves of their society. They weren't even capable of understanding that they were slaves. Very powerful and very nasty.
Now consider this: this technology sounds like a very simple form of Focus. What if it is developed and some nefarious individuals/groups/governments implants pacemaker-like TMS units which allow them to Focus the person at will (or constantly). Now someone has access to highly talented, possibly genius plus slaves. Far fetched? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
(providing you your chilling conspiracy theory of the day...)
Cheers,
I.V.
Don't be. Serious threats get blown-off all the time by law enforcement and business. Sad, but true
You need to read Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. It is an amazing account of how he helped track down the Hanover Hacker (a paid Soviet spy).
The FBI blew him off too, at first. He discovered a hacker was moving through the UC Berkley computer systems at will and using it to crack other systems. He discovered this when he was investigating a 75 cent discrepancy in the departmental billing for computer time. The FBI told him: "don't call us unless it is at least $1 million in damages". Eventually he convinced one agent of the seriousness of the problem (HH was using Berkley and other systems to try to crack DoD systems). Over the course of 3 years, Stoll was instrumental in helping the FBI/CIA and others crack one of the biggest international computer spy rings ever. Stoll was a grad student in astronomy at the time. Great book. Oh and he threw in a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe too.
Get the book, you won't regret it.
I.V.
I heard a lawyer commenting on this problem recently. Apparently courts all over the US are seeing a huge upsurge in technology cases. The courts have been able to handle this sort of thing in the past by using expert witnesses, friends of the court, etc. However due to the pace of change and the inherent complexity, specialization, and sometimes cross-pollenation between the major technological domains (biology, computing, electronics, etc), the courts and the American Bar Association are starting to realize the judges just don't have the background to adequately adjudicate many of the cases.
The lawyer indicated that one of the best proposals is that the Federal Courts (where most of these tech cases end up)create seperate "technology courts". These courts would be run by judges with training and background in specific technological knowledge areas. This would be similar to the way that patent disputes are currently handled by the courts.
I think it is an interesting idea. I just think it will take 10-20 years of demonstrably bad rulings for the system to catch up and address the issue.
I.V.
The patent wouldn't hold. Too much prior art.
Cheers,
I.V.
The Star Wars MMORPG will be very successful. Count on it. It's just silly that some people are claiming that only sword and scorcery style games can be popular as MMOGs.
Yes Star Wars Galaxies(SWG) will be very successful right out of the gate (once they get past The-Never-Ending Beta). However, it won't be successful IN SPITE of being a Sword & Sorcery game. SWG IS a sword (lightsaber) and sorcery (The Force) game. If anything, its success will build on that sword and sorcery foundation.
Star Wars is very much in the Science Fantasy genre, with heavy emphasis on the Fantasy side. (Most 'space opera' stories are...) Change the starships to sailing ships and you could set it in any pre-industrial epoch.
Regardless, it will be fun to run around dodging Bounty Hunters, fixing droids, and so on when SWG comes out.
Cheers,
I.V.
It is apparently quite easy to tell these diamonds from natural diamonds. I saw a program on this not that long ago. Any competent jeweler could easily tell the difference:
1) Man-made gem-stone quality diamonds are generally too perfect.
2) These diamonds generally have non-natural coloring. Some are actually artificially colored (sky blue diamonds anyone?)
3) These diamonds fluorese under UV "Black" light.
As I understand it, one of the big goals for these guys (besides breaking the DeBeers distribution barrier) is to make the diamonds as 'real' as possible. So, they are working on ways to introduce flaws and color variations into the stones. I got the feeling from the program, they aren't that far away from their goal of manufacturing a 'natural' diamond.
DeBeers is so worried about the whole situation they are now micro-etching the DeBeers logo onto all their diamonds. This essentially means that anyone who buys a DeBeers natural diamond will be paying a premium for... a corporate logo.
DeBeers is aparently trying to become Nike.
I.V.
I agree its great as is and I love animated movies.
It just struck me that Iron Giant would make an incredible live-action film. Maybe make a live-action sequel or TV series?
Cheers,
I.V.
Good movie with a great message: "You are who you choose to be."
I keep an Iron Giant toy on my desk as a reminder.
I wish they would re-make it as a live-action movie, particularly if they could get Harry Connick Jr. to play Dean again (who else could play a beatnik junkyard owner) and Vin Diesel to do the Iron Giant's voice again: "HoooooGarrrrrrth!"
I.V.
I can't remember what combustion gases are used in the Airbourne Laser, but the big daddy of chemical lasers is at HELSTF is very powerful (megawatt range - actual number is of course classified). It is a Deuterium-Floride (DF) laser, called MIRCL.
I have good friends that worked at HELSTF for years. They tell some pretty interesting stories. Some are funny (the local ducks liked the 'heavy water' storage pond - they floated higher), to scary (during one test firing, a moth was accidentally caught in a side-lobe of the beam - the resulting plasma ball blew a hole through a big instrumentation rack).
You are right that a solid state laser would be a better deal. There is at least one, named SSHCL, under research now for the US Army. It is a baby compared to MIRCL though. It is only a 10 kilowatt laser. Just big enough to punch holes in light armor at short distances.
The type of laser I think that has the most promise is a Free Electron Laser (FEL). It is all electric, tunable, doesn't require environmentally iffy fuels, and should be scalable up to really high powers. Back around 1989, the government was going to build a BIG ground based FEL at White Sands Missile Range near HELSTF. It would have dwarfed MIRCL in power output. It is shame. Had they built it, we would now have all sorts of interesting high-energy laser research and applications, including a possible cheaper and more reliable means of space access.
I.V.
Obviously the $4k unit price includes a substantial copyright "fee" for all those movies you are going to steal from the poor MPAA.
I.V.
Wow! So the three guys stuck up in the Internation Space Station found a Sendmail vulnerability. Just more proof that we should support manned space flight. Spin-offs!
I.V.
Yes DAoC is a much more polite game than EQ, but it is still an addictive trap for many.
I know, I have a member of my family who is addicted to DAoC. She makes almost no time for anything else in her life (including her kids). At least she can still pull herself away from it for 40 hours a week to work.
All in all, its a sad situation.
Don't worry too much about it. Hard Drive capacity seems to be doubling approximately every 12 months, while the price seems to be holding constant.
If that holds true, then when the new 1.5TB MegaDVDs are released, you should be able to pick up a 10TB hard drive for around $100 retail. (Calculation: 2^7=128, 128*80GB=10TB. $80GB HD today costs about $100).
A bit below the 50,000TB you want, but you will only need to wait another 12 years for that. Perhaps sooner, since all these doubling trends seem to be accelerating.
Of course, some of us don't want TB class DVDs or HDs... we want terabytes of solid-state memory. Holographic storage crystals would fit the bill nicely.
I.V.
Or the USS Archer could be named after Cpt. Archer's father, Dr. Archer. ST:TNG had a habit of naming ships after famous Scientists.
Of course all of this is moot. The whole ST universe is one big temporal mess. No wonder there are so many inconsistencies. Now if we could just discover the true origin of the "particle of the week", all of it would make sense!
Cheers,
I.V.
Since the premier episode of Enterprise ("Broken Bow"?), it has struck me that their is one really elegant way that they could explain the continuity differences between the original Star Trek and Enterprise:
Let the series run its x number of years, occasionally building and developing the Suliban/Temporal Cold War story arc. At the end, have Cpt. Sam Becket, er Archer face the decision to wipe out the current time-line, including the development of his Enterprise, in favor of a timeline without the Suliban and the Temporal Cold War. If he doesn't, then the Suliban win and everyone suffers. Archer chooses to sacrifice his own existence and the existence of everyone he loves to safeguard humanity. His actions set up the Federation timeline which eventually spits out the Enterprise NC1701 captained by our favorite over-actor and his crew on a five year mission to "seek out new life and new civilizations...".
It resolves all the "hey they are messing up the timeline" griping using Star Trek's favorite plot device: mucking around with the time continum. It also lets Archer and company make the ultimate heroic sacrifice - to be completely eliminated from existence so that the essence of what they love will survive.
Do that and title the two part series closer "For the Greater Good" and you have a good ending to an average series.
I.V.
Wow, a point by point rebuttal of my reasons for choosing ReplayTV over Tivo. I must have hit a nerve...
Yes Tivo can match all the features I value in my ReplayTV... if I hack it and/or buy extra stuff.
I wanted an appliance with certain features available right out of the box. In this case, ReplayTV had the features I most wanted and the Series2 Tivo did not. Next time around, it may be Tivo or some other brand. Like any other purchasing choice, what you buy depends on what you value.
You are right, I do like my ReplayTV. It is a good appliance that does what I want it to do for a good value. I am sure if I had bought a Tivo instead, I would feel similarly. It too is a good product. In this case, for my particular circumstances and desires, ReplayTV is the superior product.
Oh, and one more thing. Apparently the ReplayTV has a nice healthy hacker community too. I am sure if I get the urge to tinker, lots of hacking opportunities will be available.
Cheers,
I.V.
I caught the Tivo profiling article from another source. I didn't see it on Slashdot. Not surprised it made it here.
As I recall, the article wasn't presented as being particularly humorous. I do remember the bit in the article about a couple of comedy shows picking up the idea as a funny episode premise.
The end of the article also talked about online profiling in general, not just Tivo profiling. If memory serves, they gave some similar profiling-snafu examples from Amazon and other e-tailers.
I don't think the article (or my post for that matter) particularly indicated a "don't buy Tivo" stance. I think the article was reporting an interesting and infrequent side-effect of the technology.
Lastly, I think most slashdotters have a good sense of humor... you just don't see it because this really isn't a humor site.
Cheers,
I.V.