Comment Re: Shouldn't they be... (Score 1) 283
You suck as Batman, Ben.
Comment Re:Iceland: KEEP JEWS OUT, you'll be fine (Score 1) 71
I see someone forgot to take their meds this morning.
Comment Re:Intel Pentium with MMX from 1993 (Score 1) 319
And it only took 5 hours ;)
Comment Re:HALOPERIDOL (Score 1) 384
QuantumApostrophe, is that you?
Comment Re:oblig (Score 1) 766
To defend my 7 digit ID brethren he may have been a lurker like me and relatively recently registered. I have been reading this website since late 2001 and only registered when they changed the layout so I could switch to the old one.
Homebrew Cray-1 140
egil writes "Chris Fenton built his own fully functional 1/10 scale Cray-1 supercomputer. True to the original, it includes the couch-seat, but is also binary compatible with the original. Instead of the power-hungry ECL technology, however, the scale model is built around a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. All software is available if you want to build one for your own living room. The largest obstacle in the project is to find original software."
Comment Re:How does it compare to a vending machine? (Score 3, Informative) 123
Back in the 90's I worked for a company that built coin changers and acceptors. Even back then they were using a more advanced method than the one you describe. The acceptor was actually the part that determined what type of coin was inserted and would reject it if it was a slug. The acceptor worked on the same principle as a metal detector. Since coins are made up of a unique mix of metals the acceptors could be "tuned" to accept a certain coin by dropping versions of that kind from different years and differing conditions. This would create a range of values for each coin. When a coin is dropped into the acceptor it gets a reading of the coin. If it is in the range of one of the coins the acceptor is programmed to accept then the coin is routed to the proper coin tube or the cash box if the tube is full. Otherwise it will be rejected as a slug. The acceptor is actually plugged into the top of the changer as a complete unit. For what it's worth I did see an acceptor there one day that worked similar to the way you described, but I believe it was from the 70's or early 80's.
Comment Re:It's a black hole! (Score 1) 234
Catcher in the what!?
Finnish Guy Gets Prosthetic USB Finger Storage 113
An anonymous reader writes "Jerry had a motorcycle accident last May and lost a finger. When the doctor working on the artificial finger heard he is a hacker, the immediate suggestion was to embed a USB 'finger drive' to the design. Now he carries a Billix Linux distribution as part of his hand."
Comment Re:White House website (Score 1) 398
How about "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it".
Comment Re:Not just the wrong band, the wrong everything (Score 1) 159
I agree.
Of course there is also the possibility that they never developed radio communications to begin with. They could have developed a completely different technology for long range communications.
I do believe it is likely there is life elsewhere in the universe, but if they never developed radio, or stopped using it eons ago, we will never detect them this way.
Of course there is also the possibility that they never developed radio communications to begin with. They could have developed a completely different technology for long range communications.
I do believe it is likely there is life elsewhere in the universe, but if they never developed radio, or stopped using it eons ago, we will never detect them this way.
