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In Mountain View, a 2 br, 1 ba would cost:

funny ... I'm now doing an apartment/home search and we're starting out from mtn view and slowly moving 10, 20, 30mi away in our daily searches.

I saw this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3192/2796221986_d76ae43a95.jpg

I believe that was a $2000/month place, or very close to that range. 2 or 3 br, 2flr, 2car garage, middle unit. but, well, I *guess* you could get all the 'internets' and free cable/phone service you wanted. not hard at all. maybe this was a hidden benefit?

THIS is what I'm seeing, or stuff close to this, in my apt search. the bay area is *tough* right now on rent prices since everyone is afraid to buy and the housing market is on the downward spiral. the fact that places with 'junky exposed wiring' (the house, inside, was close to the outside condition) are going for about $2k/mo in the bay area.

If your "communications" could be data instead of voice, then I have an example of exactly how small a network could be, with existing wireless sensor nodes. That one is on a USB for a "base station", and is normally powered by 2 AAs, with the whole computer being the size of the back of the AA battery pack. The range on the radios there are about 100 meters.

If the AA batteries aren't needed, like if the plane is going to provide power, that is a very small and lightweight network.

Still alive, yet he still has a tombstone in a cemetery in L.A. The same cemetery were Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin are buried. Strange, but true.

Even some of the restaurants have them, "WARNING: Chemicals Known to the State of California to cause cancer, or birth defects, or other reproductive harm may be present in food or beverages sold here or served here"

In my neighborhood, AT&T disguises their equipment as pioneer churches: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lectroidmarc/372609722/

Yah, too much time-wasting.

Ants, termites, swallows, various corals, all build cities.

Birds and various apes use tools.

I can put a dollop of whipped cream on my cat's head, and when she gets on the washstand and looks in the mirror and sees it, she immediately licks her paw, reaches up to the top of her head, and wipes it off (and eats it.) She always gets it all, and turns her head this way and that while watching the mirror to make sure.

I taught her to do that. You know how? Trivial:

I put it on, used *my* finger to gets some off her head while she was watching in the mirror, and put it on her lips. I did this exactly once. Consequently, it is perfectly evident that she knows what she sees in the mirror perfectly well. It's just that she had no reason to care about what she saw until I gave her one.

If you have a cat, please try this; takes no special equipment other than whipped cream and a mirror, and I very much suspect there's nothing special about my cat as compared to yours; mine's a neutered female "snowshoe" meezer, just for reference. Here she is.

My experience with cats (I've always had at least one, and I'm 52) leads me to think they're the same as we are, they just tend to be similar to children in their mental capacities, except where they're neurologically better than we are (athletic abilities, predation, faster processing of threats and faster reactions, different set of vision compromises...) I've not had nearly as many dogs, but even so, I'm very comfortable saying they're like children with a different set of limits than cats. In turn, I strongly suspect that the rest of the animal kingdom follows in like fashion.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, the entire "we're superior to animals" meme is a consequence of hubris, thousands of years of religious nonsense, a lack of a decent way to really measure, quantify, and compare either us or them, and a baseline resistance because they're trivially easy to enslave and worse, plus they can't argue about it effectively, unlike humans.

IMHO, as a race, we have a long way to go. I don't see much hope for change, either. The citizens of my country (USA) are still convinced for the most part that they're the specially cared for children of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent creator, who "made" animals for their convenience. Which would be pitiful, if the consequences weren't so outright savage for animals and people.

Here's a place where you can support victimless animal meat research; please consider donating. I do.

New Harvest - Non-profit

Some of us do protest torture. Generally the US media do not cover protests, except to point out that protesters are hippies and extremists. The media are by-and-large owned by big corporate conglomerates, who in turn see long-term economic benefit in US involvement in resource wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Torture==profits, for them.

Some of us do protest torture. Generally the US media do not cover protests, except to point out that protesters are hippies and extremists. The media are by-and-large owned by big corporate conglomerates, who in turn see long-term economic benefit in US involvement in resource wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Torture==profits, for them.

Some of us do protest torture. Generally the US media do not cover protests, except to point out that protesters are hippies and extremists. The media are by-and-large owned by big corporate conglomerates, who in turn see long-term economic benefit in US involvement in resource wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Torture==profits, for them.

I think you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare. As for Gorilla Warfare, I am sure you can excuse the poor gorillas for fighting the good fight

Sailor Moon crossplayers?

How they lit the thing. I doubt you had that in your Death Star kit.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3230/2703630055_73d0919442.jpg

It's already been done.

Cravath is impressive. I remember one argument where they gave the judge five reasons they were right. If any of the five were accepted, then they won their argument. They always addressed SCO's every point while SCO at times failed to address IBM's points. There was a few episodes where IBM pointed out the SCO didn't address their points at all but used a maze of circular cross references that led nowhere. (See Arg 233 -> See Arg 228 -> See Arg 27 -> See Arg 187 -> See Arg 27 -> infinity)

Get it here founder of Groklw

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/vespasiennes/
Self-cleaning every time it rains.

Why not link to the Flickr page for the photo?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64795408@N00/2771811957/

More importantly, why doesn't my solar cell have wheels on it yet?

It already does:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_wong/2070720968/

...what do you mean you want a bigger one??

That's still scripting. You're just using the script to drive a character-driven story instead of a plot-driven story.

I've seen several attempts to emulate person-to-person interactions in games, and I've always thought the results were pretty lame. You can always see the gimmicks behind the facade: the decision tree, the storing keywords to throw back at you later. I suppose it could be done right if the design team had a lot of creativity, imagination, and psychological insight — not to mention some advanced skills in creating pattern-matching software. Not a lot of motivation to make it happen in id-driven games like GTA.

Read the links. It was a year.

What about T-shirt instant-ninjas? ref evidence.

You can easily fashion a T-shirt into an identity concealing weapon of terror! Think of the children; there are billions of children living near people that could at any given instant turn into lethal instant-ninjas with a mere twist of fabric.

The blog is slashdotted, but the pictures are all on Flickr and can be seen here: http://flickr.com/photos/segaamerica/

I would call a down cleavage photograph sexual harassment.

I would too. But that's completely off-topic for this discussion.

My God, did you at least try to look at the photo in question? Or do you truly prefer spouting venom and ignorance?

Here, click. Educate yourself a little.

And other comments on this thread also show Hawk as not quite the virtuous freedom fighter that he presents

And apparently you believe all of those fine /. comments, just like you seem to believe the ignorant horse hockey about a non-existent blouse-shot.

I've read Hawk's own words. My opinion? He's arrogant, confrontational, bull-headed, and nonetheless basically right. His detractors, on the other hand, seem to suffer from the same arrogance, confrontationalism, and bull-headedness without the redeeming virtue of being right.

Again: you and many like you are letting the man interfere with the message. The message is: For causes neither rational nor reasonable, people in positions of trivial power are attempting to limit your rights. You have a moral obligation not to let them.

You don't even know what you're talking about. He wasn't taking pictures of an employee. (I'd post an actual picture of the employee, but like I said, that picture doesn't exist because he wasn't taking any. I'm pretty sure she's in that picture, though, somewhere.)

incorrectly identified the lens as a "telephoto"

This is the downblouse picture. Don't worry, it's entirely SFW. Hint: the lens was wide-angle, not telephoto, and I'm hard-pressed to tell whether the people are male or female much less see some cleavage.

So, how do you feel about building owners capturing images of you and your kids as they walk around in public, or inside their building?

Why is a photographer with a "big evil lens" so bad when a CCTV camera is fine?

A telephoto lens for a CCTV type camera is much smaller, so it might not be obvious, especially if a CCTV pinhole lens(a CCTV pinhole lens isn't an actual pinhole lens) is being used.

Wouldn't that be even worse, since the pictures could be going online right away, just like my webcams below in my sig?

I really don't get why people think of photographers holding cameras and CCTV type cameras with a pan, tilt, and zoom mounts as being so completely different.

He definitely was not taking pictures of people in an inappropriate and harassing manner. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2751554048/ As you can see it's definitely taking pictures of people in an inappropriate manner right? He tried to convey that to the director, but the director refused to view his pictures.

See point #3 on the 10 Tips for a Successful Wiki poster from gdc;

Invest in your wiki

Nothing is perfect off the shelf and your wiki will be no different. Most wiki packages are designed to be customized and extended, so take advantage of that by investing in a few days of developer time to modify it to suit your needs. Re-evaluate wiki usage at regular intervals to gather feedback on the most common gripes and dedicate resources to adjusting the wiki accordingly. The few hours or days spent tweaking it will come back tenfold in time saved by users.

The reason you can't get electric power from different companies than your local utility is because, in order for another company to provide power to your house, they'd have to run a wire to your house or lease the line going to your house from whomever the rightful owner of that line is. For various practical reasons (i.e. limited amount of property available for easements for power lines, the desire to not have our neighborhoods look like this, etc.), it was decided that it would be much better to tolerate well regulated monopolies that provided basic services (water, power, etc.) instead of letting anybody and everybody run water lines under everybody's property, run electrical lines all over the place, and so on. It's not a perfect system, but it beats the heck out of the alternatives.

As for the rest of your points, yes, government-backed corporate power is insidious. However, there's a big difference between "government recognized entity" and "government recognized entity that can do things like take tax money from private citizens and get them redistributed to corporate entities under ridiculous premises like, say, turning food into fuel" - it's the latter sort of thing that people get upset about. That said, competing against corporations is fairly easy - take your example of Ubuntu. With Ubuntu, Canonical was able to repackage something that was swimming around (Linux) into something a little more desirable to the masses (Ubuntu) and sell support for it. Microsoft cannot shut down Canonical, as much as they might want to, nor can Microsoft legally prevent OEMs from pre-installing Ubuntu if they feel there's a market for it (Dell, among others). Microsoft cannot prevent you from acquiring Ubuntu using any method you choose to acquire it.

Competing against government, on the other hand, is a little more difficult - take drugs, for example. The government has decided to ban drugs. If you choose to "compete" against this ban and provide the market what it desires, you run the risk of jail time, no-knock raids by SWAT teams, and the confiscation of all of your private property. Using Ubuntu, conversely, does not run the risk that Microsoft will put you in jail, throw a paramilitary at you, nor seize all of your assets.

Most importantly, corporations are not just subject to upper management - they're also subject to their customers. IBM's market share used to be near 100%. It's not anymore. Microsoft's market share used to be nearly 100% - it's not anymore, and it's decreasing by the day. GM's market share in cars was nearly 60% after World War 2 - now they're near the verge of bankruptcy because they failed to take into account the needs of the markets they sold in. Meanwhile, governments don't always gain their power by the consent of the governed - sometimes it just takes some well applied firepower and the fear of the governed.

http://flickr.com/photos/gilgongo/752902874/

3 bars, any position, paid 12 pence. Magic.

As someone who's switched away from PC games to XBox 360 games, I can say two things that might shake your criticisms:

1) A lot of the time, I only play one game at a time for weeks on end. Not too much disc swapping required for that on a console, unlike a PC where other work might require you to insert a CD or something unrelated to gaming. Additionally, a lot of games can be played without a disc at all - specifically, XBLA games, and less-specifically, downloaded demos.

2) Because of the way I have my gaming system set up, it's actually a whole lot easier to change discs on my XBox than it is for my PC - I'm probably unique in this situation, though, since I don't play from my couch. I actually play on my secondary PC monitor, which has dual inputs - my XBox is far easier to access than my "desktop" tower. It could be that the GP has a similar setup, or that he changed to portable gaming with a DS or a PSP, which would provide the benefits he seems to be looking for.

And no, my XBox isn't modded. Only Hitler mods an XBox. ;-)

No to all your questions (although for the reasons you outlined, toilets are commonly confined to bathrooms.) That's a ludicrus(sic) strawman of my position.

Confining toilets to bathrooms doesn't stop me from using materials brewed therein against you. The Chemist confined his work to his house, wasn't hurting anyone either; so the comparison is quite apt. The man wasn't doing anything that harmed anyone else, so he should have been left alone.

And, for the record, your hands cannot tear off my head.

For the record, unless you're in the habit of wearing chain mail or have a neck like an elephant, they almost certainly can. However, if that's impossible for you to admit, let's just say that my fingers can poke your eyes out, and then follow up with, do you want to outlaw fingers?

Insurance is the antithesis of gambling.

Nonsense. Insurance is precisely the definition of gambling. Gambling is defined by taking a position of risk against an unknown outcome in order to benefit if you predict correctly. In the specific case of insurance, if you pay premiums all your life against fire, for instance, and your home never burns, then you predicted incorrectly and lost your bet, and the "house", that is, the insurance company, wins. They take all your bet money and return absolutely nothing of value to you. If, on the other hand, you've paid three premiums, and your house does burn, then the house (insurance company) pays off and you win. As is the case with all formalized gambling operations, the house knows the odds very well and has arranged things so that the bets -- the premium rates -- will cover them even though there are sure to be a few winners.

Okay, now replace band with reactor. I don't particularly want to insulate it; I have lead shielding. You should get some too. And a suit to go outside with. I just sit inside and watch TV, so I'm fine.

Radiation will do harm; the correct analogy would be to bullets flying across your property, not to music. Fail.

Yup, I jave(sic) a tiny patch of land in a subdivision. And yup, when it was all one big plot, limitations were placed on what you could do, what color you could paint your house, etc. And then my neighbors bought their house. They should live with those conditions that were on the property when they bought it, or go elsewhere, right?

If there is a signed covenant between the neighbors that must be executed in order to buy, then yes, certainly. The sellers can ensure this is the case. That's a consensual agreement between informed, competent adults.

If the means of control is coercive, however, then we have a different situation. So if your neighbor moved in and then a zoning law is passed that says (for instance) that they cannot display a flag or raise a horse in the back yard, this is not reasonable. If you, on the other hand, go to your neighbor on the east and hand them a document that says "All homeowners signatory to this document agree not to permit or cause the display of flags on their property, and to require the signature of this document if the property is sold, and that displaying a flag will incur the following penalty to the homeowner", and they sign it, and you sign it, then you're on solid ground. If your neighbor to the west doesn't choose to sign, though, that's where your flag-free zone ends.

Your last statement brings up the question of what makes it "your" property. I never agreed to any private ownership of land on your part. Why should I be bound by it? Why should I be bound in what I claim as my property by what you or the government says I can or cannot do on it because "you own it"?

It is my opinion -

I've haven't seen anyone wearing glasses with frames this thick for around 60 years. On the other hand the modern smaller square framed glasses are quite popular.

To me, the LCD should fill the entire lid area minus a half inch frame. Anything else greater than that, and they should be using a larger LCD.

Etc etc. I mean, come on. Everyone thinks flames and blowing stuff up is cool. I suppose if I was a kid today I'd get sent to a psychologist.

That is one reason I love my part-time job as a wildland firefighter:
I get paid to travel and then sometimes burn up the areas I travel to.
The main downside is that someone has to clean up, and cleaning up a 90,000 fire, like I recently did in California can be a little boring.

My normal job is a Ruby on Rails developer, so it really seems like Peter Gibbons is my role model, except that I am not ripping off banks.

I have a very similar theory about the origin of dragon stories.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/74/194918330_04379bc98e.jpg

A) I spent $3500 on that display, total, considerably less than most people spend on beer in their younger years, also less than many spend on plasma and large-screen LCDs.

B) Considering that I don't drink beer, I don't think I'm any sillier than anyone else, plus I have something to show for my investment.

C), if you'd really like to have a go at slapping the shit out of me, you're cordially invited to my private fighting gym and by all means, lets have a little fun. :-)

DVD appeared to be pushed on us as well. But ... at least it had some merit to it!

Blue-ray has plenty of honest, actual merit; it is capable of about six times the visual detail, higher frame rates (so considerably better motion depiction) and a larger color space as compared to a DVD; in fact, it is so good that just as compact disks did for audio, a Blue-ray version of a film often reveals limitations of the original recording.

The summary has it at least partially right: The problem isn't that Blue-ray isn't better, the problem is that without good source material, a large hi-def TV and a viewing arrangement where you can actually make out the additional detail, it is difficult or even impossible for a viewer to appreciate the extra capability. With the economy tanking, I rather doubt the first thing on everyone's list is to go out and get an HDTV.

For those of us who do have them, though, and where the viewing arrangement is large enough to see all the detail, Blue-ray is not just "better", but far, far better and definitely the format of choice. I went extreme with my setup, and I don't regret it even a little bit. People who see movies and HD games on my system never leave thinking HD is a marketing scam.

I am almost certain that HD and Blue-ray will do just fine; it's just that there's a ton of legacy hardware that people already like, and it'll have to get old and crufty in their sight before they upgrade, and the economy has slowed down what wouldn't have been all that quick a process anyway.

I keep thinking, what's the point? Once you get used to a grainy monocolour TV, a HD tv offers alittle beyond the initial WoW-experience and/or bragging rights. No, learn to prioritize with your money. You can for example buy a lovely mail-order bride from russia instead of a home theatre and they are even cheaper to maintain. That's sound economic sense.

DVD appeared to be pushed on us as well. But ... at least it had some merit to it!

Blue-ray has plenty of honest, actual merit; it is capable of about six times the visual detail, higher frame rates (so considerably better motion depiction) and a larger color space as compared to a DVD; in fact, it is so good that just as compact disks did for audio, a Blue-ray version of a film often reveals limitations of the original recording.

The summary has it at least partially right: The problem isn't that Blue-ray isn't better, the problem is that without good source material, a large hi-def TV and a viewing arrangement where you can actually make out the additional detail, it is difficult or even impossible for a viewer to appreciate the extra capability. With the economy tanking, I rather doubt the first thing on everyone's list is to go out and get an HDTV.

For those of us who do have them, though, and where the viewing arrangement is large enough to see all the detail, Blue-ray is not just "better", but far, far better and definitely the format of choice. I went extreme with my setup, and I don't regret it even a little bit. People who see movies and HD games on my system never leave thinking HD is a marketing scam.

I am almost certain that HD and Blue-ray will do just fine; it's just that there's a ton of legacy hardware that people already like, and it'll have to get old and crufty in their sight before they upgrade, and the economy has slowed down what wouldn't have been all that quick a process anyway.

All aboard the FailPlane!

With Pic!

Extinguish

With all that said, what I find interesting is that you quote passage after passage in the Bible, condemning Christians (and religions) about not being perfect, yet you forget one passage... Matthew 7:5 - You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye. I challenge you that, instead of complaining about how others are not doing the right thing, go out and do the right thing yourself. How much better would that make the world?

Just because he quotes from a religious text doesn't mean he either a) believes in it, or b) has to follow suggestions from it.

I only responded to this because I remembered the story from 25'ish years ago in a religous class from when I was around 8 or 9 I think. Except in my version it was to do with planks and splinters, not beams and specks... I did a bit of research and found the following:

• Matthew 7:5
• Luke 6:42

The above links further led me to wonder about this mythical book called "The Bible". There's been so many variations and translations of it within, and across languages that they all have to have some serious problems somewhere, and there is no official/correct version. Even within a single version there's a large amount of inconsistency. (E.g. The four gospels don't agree on which Mary was where/when during the death and resurrection of J.C.).

BTW, not trying to be a hypocrite... I'm just a 'tooth fairy agnostic' trying to get people to critically think about what they're reading...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginepaolo/2691795861/in/pool-badtranslations/ This is all so funny. :D

You think that's bad, I passed a Carl's Jr. truck (Hardees to you east of the Mississippi) that said "It's Rude To Stare" next to a picture of their burger, and they had apparently trademarked the phrase, as it had a "TM" after it. And it was to the left of the burger, so it's not like they were trademarking the burger itself.

I even found a picture of the truck (the TM isn't visible, but it's there, just to the upper-right of the "It's Rude To Stare"). Is there something I'm missing, or is the trademark world just that ridiculous?

I've seen this somewhere before.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/147/422144736_d397bfd80d.jpg?v=0

Here's her Flickr account. I assume the ceiling tiles are from the Galveston research center. I have to say, in general, the food sure doesn't look terribly appetizing, but for some reason, food rarely looks appetizing in photos (which is why lots of marketing photos for food are actually photos of non-food things that look like food, like painted paste, wax, etc).

I have a power logo on my back. Well, technically it's a "standby" logo. This shot has a lot of blood in it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thechrisproject/2717988863/

I don't see penguin logos on boxes, and not everybody has a working printer and enough paper to print out a distribution's hardware compatibility list and carry it into a local computer store.

1. I don't see how a penquin logo is any different from an apple logo or an intel logo or an AMD logo. That's not holding adoption back on the hardware front. Besides Linux Compatible logos do exist and I have seen them on a number of hardware boxes. Here's an example of one on a Brother printer box ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmalonzo/1154495353/ )

2. That's the beauty of Linux Live CD's. You don't have to print out the documentation of hardware compatibility. Just burn a CD and take it into your local big-box electronics store and see what works and what doesn't. Booting into a live Linux system from a CD goes a long way towards figuring out if the system is compatible or not. That's how I bought my last two computers.