jsasomerville

Whoops... I forgot to argue kasm's reasons. 1) It's true what you are saying about numbers, but that still doesn't give a good reason to calculate such enormous numbers. 2) Encryption methods today, such as MD5 (using a lengthy password) and other one-way encryptions, would take countless years to complete, even with thousands and thousands of computers working on it. By the time the encryption is cracked, the information would be worth close to nothing. 3) In terms of testing processors, searching for prime numbers is a cool tool to measure speed. However, there are only a handful that are worth testing... for now. Once we have processors that can handle doing such computations, we should then approach the problem of finding the next few prime numbers. However, it's a waste of precious time to calculate them now when they are not needed. 4) I can't argue with that logic. They are also sending images depicting the anatomy of a male and a female. They should just dress them up in clothes with the symbol of the Target stores on them. Don't forget to include a small note saying "If you can read this, please take us over!"

It warms my heart good to see that people are using their spare computing power to do something completely useless... I wish they would spare their processing power to assist more pressing matters including tedious work needed to understand the physics of the universe or deciphering genetic code fragments. Oh well... maybe I don't understand the potential worth of knowing incredibly large prime numbers...

Yes. This "grey goo" is about the potential risk of nanobots with self-replicating ability. Let's take this scenario: You build a nanobot consisting of several parts in order to cure cancer. The several parts are derived directly from the components of the cancerous cell. You think that you have located several membrane proteins that you can use to identify the cell as cancerous. The nanobot should latch onto this protein in order to activate the nanobot. It will then change its conformation to puncture the cell. Then, while still holding this membrane protein, it should decompose particles within the cell for use as components for replicating itself so the cycle could continue again. Since nanobots can degenerate as time progresses, once the cancerous cells have all been destroyed, the nanobots should also become destroyed. This is of course, the best case scenario for this process. Let's say that the engineer designing this nanobot made a minor mistake. Let's say that the cell has a component that looks almost like the necessary nanobot component, but actually changes the conformation so that the nanobot becomes activated automatically. (You think this isn't possible? Think again! Diseases like sickle-cell anemia are caused by only a single amino-acid difference.) In this case, let's say 50% assuming it's a very close isomer. In this case, the nanobot would attempt to puncture any cell it could find and use the normal cell to create the nanobots again. The ones that can replicate using any cell would create many more bots because of the much higher probability to find a normal cell than a cancerous cell in an organism's body (where 50% of the nanomachines will be the problematic bots). All organisms are made up of cells. Thus, these bots would devour the organism alive, and turn them into a grey goo. Sure, some cells will be left over due to their special membrane structure like bones for example... but everything else would be susceptible. If someone comes in contact with even one from the previous host, it could spell big problems since it could begin its cycle again. Also, the immune system won't help... they can't target these particles!

Yea... I used it for a little while... and well... laziness set in. The only reason I used it was because I had some friends that also used it. It's kinda pointless though... but it's a nice way to kill some time. I was kinda creeped out when random people started leaving comments and such. That's when I thought that I shouldn't be posting on this too often... Sheesh... It's fun to use once in a while if you have friends on it too, then you can exchange comments. However, once you realize the whole world can read it... then you might want to protect your privacy and talk to your friends in person.

Hmmm... dial-up really isn't my thing... and I'm sure a lot of people want broadband anyways. I'd suggest Verizon DSL if it's available in your area. It's also only $15/month. It's slow compared to my 10mbps connection (this thing goes up to 768kbps), but it's DSL none-the-less. I'm not sure if you get email or an accelerator, but there're a lot of free alternatives: - gmail has around 2 GB of space - google also has a broadband accelerator http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

I hate to break it to ya, but the new Google pagerank system is showing signs of frowning upon reciprocal linking. The reason is simple: a lot of Black-hat SEOs are exploiting this by pushing the rank of some sites and using those to reciprocally link to other sites but having few enough links to not seem like a link farm. They make multiple chains of sites that would normally rise in rank from this system. In addition, some sites are using reciprocal linking to boost their rank leaving legitimate pages who don't play this game out in the cold. They are now putting a higher emphasis on one way linking, where a person will link to another site for the sole purpose of providing more information. The only case where one way linking can be exploited is by people who want to advertise on sites. I think there's something about some search engines black-listing sites they found that were selling links... I'm not too sure about that. Anyone wanna clarify?

I softmodded my xbox also. I'd say the really useful thing about a modded xbox is the media center. It's great if you want to stream some shows and such to it so you can watch them on TV instead of a computer. I still need to figure out how to set up Adult Swim's friday night fix onto my xbox... That'd be perfect. Also, you can pop an audio CD into the Xbox and watch some cool visualizations while listening to your favorite tunes. It's especially good if you have a laptop, but you want to listen to music with your surround sound TV speaker systems. Oh, and one disadvantage for Xbox 360's media center is that it doesn't support divx/xvid playback!!! XBMC (for xbox 1), however, plays it very well. I heard Microsoft decided not to support the formats because of potential piracy issues concerning downloaded movies and stuff, but it disables a lot of legitimate videos too... Oh well. Wait... it's illegal? I thought it just voids your warranty!! Since we're the end user, I was supposing that whatever we do to it, besides reverse engineering software on it, would be perfectly legal. I don't think they'd mind if I chopped it in half with an axe, but then again... it would be my loss.

That's a good idea! All they'd need is to make a character where each eye is a camera in the 3D space. Each camera will be outputted to a projector with a polarized lens (of course the polarizations will be perpendicular). The glasses have to also be polarized in the same way. Then, you'd have some 3D gaming! Another feature would be for it to watch where your eyes are located so the eyes can change accordingly to give the best 3D experience. However, you'd need to have some huge processing power I think to take care of all those operations... I still think it's a great idea if anyone's up to the task.

Hmm... I'm sure in knoppix, you can right-click on the desktop and choose to set up wireless internet. However, the drivers may not be available for linux (lazy bumbs). In such a case, you can use the ndiswrapper. https://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ That might help you configure the wireless card and such IF you can find the windows drivers for it. Good luck with this!

THere is everything special about them. With a nanomachine, you can do virtually anything in terms of manipulating small scale matter. Let's look at diamond. To make the strongest diamond, you must have a fully carbon substance where each carbon will bond in a very specific cubic formation. It's extremely rare to have this occur in nature. Also, it won't be very useful. Now imagine a series of nanomachines that can assemble each diamond element and form them together in long threads. You would have very light and incredibly powerful cables. This is just one of the applications. You can use it in biomedical applications for attaching to and breaking down cancerous cells. Or, it can be used to repare blood vessels in people suffering from cardiovascular disease. It's not just smaller versions of materials. This can revolutionize the world.

One game I really like is Shattered Galaxies. It's a strategy RPG game. Meaning that you have units like an RTS that you purchase and such, but they level and you can buy new weapons and armors for them. In addition, you as a commander level allowing you to move to different places and purchase better units/upgrades. Yes it is free, the proof is here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ They have a pay package with some extra features, but the free version is prefectly good too (especially since I've never tried the paid version...). Maplestory is an okay rpg. The community is horrible though. People kill steal very often and sometimes steal your stuff. There are very few friendly people. Most people just want stuff from you whether its levelling or items. If it weren't for the crappy community, this would definately be a great game. Survival Project is a fighting rpg. It's an interesting idea. However, it gets boring quickly. At least, it did for me. You basically go through levels fighting enemies in a quest-style fashion or duke it out against other players. You win money and elements, which you use to upgrade your weapons and such. There are quite a few characters to choose from. There are many unfriendly people here too, but there are quite a few friendly people too. You just need to find them... You can find out more about it here: http://www.survival.com.my/