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Stories and comments across the archive that link to geocities.com.
Comments · 8,978
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Sonic shock waves (lithotripsy)
"Exactly how the system works is shrouded in military secrecy." Its simple: lithotripsy. Its a non-invasive treatment used to remove Gallstones.
Check out: http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Villa/5556/
Quote: "Shock waves are produced by a sophistiated machine called Lithotripter by passing a high voltage electrical discharge through a spark gap under water. The shock waves thus produced are focussed on the stone inside the patients body, which is localised with the help of a machine called C-Arm Image Intensifier. The shock waves produce a compressive force and the brittle stones start to crumble into small sand like particles which are passed out in urine."
Beef up the size of the machine 50 or 60 fold and you have a nice underwater weapon.
I actually thought of this idea ages ago. Should have patented it, ohh well.... back to writing my Formal Test Plan. -
Re:let me get this straight ...
seems like "delegates" are little more than function pointers, of a sort.
Basically true, they are like a strongly typed function pointer. The only benefit they really have over the Java way of doing things is they require quite a bit less code to make use of them. They are less "correct" than the normal Java way of doing it, but they serve in most of the cases where the correct way is overkill. When you need to wire up dozens of events, the approved Java method for wiring each event gets cumbersome. You can read about Sun's and Microsoft's view on delegates for a great deal of information on this (this was one of the many reasons behind Sun's lawsuit against Microsoft for their Java VM incompatibilities).Personally, I find delegates useful, although I'm not fond of the fact they introduce a large amount of separation between the object and the event handler. It's far too easy to rename an object in VS.Net, and start having delegates that have function names that don't reflect the object they're handling (Button1_Click() anyone?).
Properties seem to be an interesting syntactic sugar on private member vars and public getter/setters.
Again, basically true. In fact, internally, properties are generated in nearly the same way a Java programmer would write a set of getter/setter functions. One of the biggest benefits I've found for them is the fact they keep your set/get functions in the same spot in your source code, and add a bit of structure to them (so you can see if a given property is read-only at a glance). It also keeps the namespace a little less cluttered, and for RAD GUI development, it lets you have something that operates like a field, but is handled by code in your class like a function.There are some critiques of these features and other C# features at this page, but author writes like he has an axe to grind against C#, and most of the dangers of the features are quite overstated. In the example of delegates, he badly misuses them to show the dangers of them (but he is correct that they are not as type-safe as they should be). In the rant against properties, indexers, etc, he overstates the performance impact of them by ignoring the fact the optimizer is capable of inlining such function calls during JIT just as Java VMs are. And the user-defined implicit type conversions rant largely consists of telling the story about how VB4's preset type conversions caused havoc, therefore it must suck in C#, too. I would have to agree with him on structs (nearly useless and endlessly confusing on what the proper use for them is) and the problems with unchecked exceptions (which makes programming initially easier until you actually need some exception handling), though.
Do take an evening to back through the newer features added to java lately.
I've been meaning to, just haven't had the chance. I'm glad that a 'native' look to swing is finally getting the attention it deserves by Sun in Java 6. I hate odd-ball apps on my desktop, regardless of platform. -
Re:Interesting article, but...
He also quotes Steve Sailer.
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The Mac Plus with INTERNAL hard driveWell, I bought a Mac Plus at educational discount as soon as the prices went down (equivalent to about $500-600 at today's value I guess) because of SE's and II's introduction in 1987.
That was almost 20 years ago, now that I think of it.True, the Plus did not have an internal hard drive... originally. It came with 1MB RAM and one internal 800k floppy. But... I installed an INTERNAL 20MB 5.25" ST-225N Seagate hard drive into it, by mounting it diagonally to the CRT, and soldering the SCSI connections directly to the motherboard. It was great!
Performance-wise it was OK (my previous machine was an Atari ST), but the thing had a great GUI for its OS, and with Lightspeed Pascal graphics was easily accessible.
When I think about those years, I stop even considering complaining about my PBG4 not being fast enough
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Phone as bluetooth remote
Check out the bluetooth remote program I wrote:
http://www.geocities.com/saravkrish/progs/bluemote /
You don't need to install anything on your phone. The program resides on your PC.
Thanks,
Sarav -
Re:not all iPods play all mp3s
"The files play fine in Winamp and every other media player I have ever used. If an mp3 only has a problem in one of the dozens of programs which play it is that a flaw in the file or a flaw in the program which fails to propperly play it?"
Computers have a MUCH greater tolerance in software/hardware for corrupt MP3s than any dedicated DAPs.
I'd suggest scanning your files with http://www.geocities.com/mp3utility/ or a similar app. -
Re:Simple solutionAs I said, if you were captured out of uniform doing terrorist stuff, they were'nt considered prisoners. E.g. http://www.geocities.com/fort_tilden/uboats.html. And people attacking their own countries was treason too. Hell the British executed people for broadcasting for the enemy, it's safe to say that the British citizens captured fighting for the Taliban would have been dead. Ditto the American ones. And I guess most of the people in gitmo would be caught by either the fighting out of uninform, or treason or both.
You are right, although the conditions were quite different in Afghanistan, where nobody was fighting in uniform. That was more similar to a colonial conquest in many ways.
So the levelling Dresden means that the Allies were no less evil than the Nazis? This is really my point, you need to be able to support the less evil side. Of course that doesn't stop you pushing for a rethink on things like gitmo, or Dresden for that matter.
Well, Robert McNanamara once said that if we did not win the war, we would be tried for war crimes. I am not at all sure that the conduct of the war by the Allies was any better than by Germany and Japan. Firebombing of Tokyo, for example, was the biggest slaughter of civilians in WWII.
While Hitler is a monster, who exterminated millions of innocent people before and during the war, US and Britain were allied with Stalin, whose track record is hardly better.
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Re:Simple solution
Come on, Mao's China and modern China are not anywhere comparable in terms of the scale of human rights violations.
There's a "Greater than" sign between Mao and present china, and a much greater than sign between present China and America. I meant "Mao was more evil than presnent China, which was much more evil than present America". Or more to the point, my threshold for unacceptability requires behaviour worse than the US. I reckon China either now or under Mao would exceed it though.
Why would war prisoners be executed? I don't think that was common in WWII. The Allies did some pretty terrible things in WWII, but attacking Iraq and levelling Baghdad without provokation would be pretty unprecedented for a modern democracy.
As I said, if you were captured out of uniform doing terrorist stuff, they were'nt considered prisoners. E.g. http://www.geocities.com/fort_tilden/uboats.html. And people attacking their own countries was treason too. Hell the British executed people for broadcasting for the enemy, it's safe to say that the British citizens captured fighting for the Taliban would have been dead. Ditto the American ones. And I guess most of the people in gitmo would be caught by either the fighting out of uninform, or treason or both.
And if you look at the the way WWII was fought, it's safe to say that the allies weren't particular concerned with civillian casualties, especially late in the war. E.g. in Band of Brothers, they end up levelling some town in Netherlands while they liberate it from the Germans. Partly it's a technological thing, but I think it's also a moral improvement - the technology wouldn't have improved if it wasn't for widespread revulsion at WWII style tactics in Vietnam.
The problem is that the "good guys" do some pretty bad things. Some of them can be justified and some cannot, but I am very skeptical about attributing "goodness" to the government of any major power.
So the levelling Dresden means that the Allies were no less evil than the Nazis? This is really my point, you need to be able to support the less evil side. Of course that doesn't stop you pushing for a rethink on things like gitmo, or Dresden for that matter. -
You need more for survival than a USB drive...
The information that they recommended you store is important, but not the most important. You also need to:
1) Create an emergency checklist (do it today). A good example of what to include can be found here; http://www.geocities.com/survival_planning/emergen cy_checklist.html
2) Put together a couple of emergency survival kits. Again, some of the items to include can be found here; http://www.geocities.com/survival_planning/surviva l_kit.html
3) Read and learn as much as you can about survival. Knowledge is key and you can buy books like the SAS survival guides or one of many Survival CDs like the one found here; http://www.militaryebooks.com/survival.php
Good luck and Semper Fi! -
You need more for survival than a USB drive...
The information that they recommended you store is important, but not the most important. You also need to:
1) Create an emergency checklist (do it today). A good example of what to include can be found here; http://www.geocities.com/survival_planning/emergen cy_checklist.html
2) Put together a couple of emergency survival kits. Again, some of the items to include can be found here; http://www.geocities.com/survival_planning/surviva l_kit.html
3) Read and learn as much as you can about survival. Knowledge is key and you can buy books like the SAS survival guides or one of many Survival CDs like the one found here; http://www.militaryebooks.com/survival.php
Good luck and Semper Fi! -
Re:Religion?just because they tried to justify it by saying God said to do it, doesn't mean that God actually said to do it
After 9/11, The Onion put out a terrific item on this. It's for subscribers only, but here's a copy.
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What type of publishing?
If you mean purely online, you missed photo streams (aka: blogging with pictures), video blogging and game publishing - not to mention the completely obvious (and so last-decade) free web sites. For simply distributing content, there's always BitTorrent and - my favorite underexploited - "magnet://" style links which can point to content on Peer 2 Peer networks.
On the live front, there's also the whole webcam thing which gave rise to the camwhore movement. Shoutcast type things for "internet broadcasting" your own radio station. You can also creat your own internet television station if you want.
The very latest cutting edge variant on this is peer to peer streaming video, often refered to as CoolStreaming. There's maybe a 2 to 5 minute delay in the stream as it takes a little while to patch together the video before it's decodable. While so far it's popularity seems to be limited to China (where it's used to pirate / rebroadcast regular TV channels), the main advantage is that you should be able to establish your own streaming P2P television channel with an almost unlimited number of viewers - from your existing broadband internet connection.
And finally, where the online world meets the offline, physical items are designed and sold online in virtual stores, then physically published and shipped on demand. Like Cafe Press for stuff with logos - and Lulu for things like books and CDs. -
poor treatment?Last year an Austrian judge imposed an unusual gag order on Mangan, seeking to stop him from talking about the case.
Boo hoo, poor guy. At least, he is not in danger of facing the American way of dealing with some foreigners...
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Why I Support Big ScienceBack in 1993, I had just come through a period of being one of the most visible opponents of NASA's big programs and determined that political activism was a losing battle for technologists. That's when I wrote the following, "modest proposal" defense of big science programs and which Griffin now admits were a big mistake:
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
Local: Tues, Jun 29 1993 12:16 am
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big ScienceThere have been some questions about who I am and what my positions are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, I have, over the last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the 1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn Reynolds, then chairman of the legislative committee of the National Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA. Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS. This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer 1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion), NSF and DARPA. In so doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development -- inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to fill with technical advances of great economic and social import. The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against individuals within or funded by NASA.
This is only one story and I wasn't even inv
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Why I Support Big ScienceBack in 1993, I had just come through a period of being one of the most visible opponents of NASA's big programs and determined that political activism was a losing battle for technologists. That's when I wrote the following, "modest proposal" defense of big science programs and which Griffin now admits were a big mistake:
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
Local: Tues, Jun 29 1993 12:16 am
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big ScienceThere have been some questions about who I am and what my positions are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, I have, over the last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the 1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn Reynolds, then chairman of the legislative committee of the National Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA. Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS. This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer 1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion), NSF and DARPA. In so doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development -- inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to fill with technical advances of great economic and social import. The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against individuals within or funded by NASA.
This is only one story and I wasn't even inv
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Re:The Square Grid
parent: Rectangles are more simple natural shaps, hexagons just look wrong.
Dude. Hexagons are everywhere in nature. Moreso than squares, certainly.
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Re:... didn't Disney ...
I think you're talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360, http://www.geocities.com/oooketchup/CV.htm
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Spaceballs
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Re:What are you going to do about it?
http://www.geocities.com/theseconddarkage/letters
. html
I for one, and for starters, will write some letters to my senators and congressmen telling them I don't want them voting for this and why. You can expect me to post my letter here within a day or 2.
Anyone and everyone please join me in participating in our (U.S. Citizens) government -
Suggestion!
Hey! My web-site ( http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002 ) contains an unproduced series of anime-inspired TV scripts which has a plot about space-tourism, mentions mars a few times, and contains a lot of unique names! If anyone who can name places on Mars reads this, go to my web-site ( http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002/ ) and please name places on mars after characters from my story! Please!
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Suggestion!
Hey! My web-site ( http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002 ) contains an unproduced series of anime-inspired TV scripts which has a plot about space-tourism, mentions mars a few times, and contains a lot of unique names! If anyone who can name places on Mars reads this, go to my web-site ( http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002/ ) and please name places on mars after characters from my story! Please!
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Salvage 1
A lot of the shows on the list aren't science fiction. I'm glad to see Star Trek as the number one show though.
Here's one they missed. It was far ahead of its time, and a lot of people still remember it, even though they never reran it!
Salvage One - Its about a salvage company that launched rockets into space to salvage old satelightes, and they always broke into NASA computers with a modem before launch to get the data they needed - which may be the first depiction of online hacking - security cracking on TV. It starred Andy Griffith and was made in the late 70s.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/9 782/salvage1.html -
Obvious omissions:
Deep Space 9 and Farscape, but also The Prisoner and Sapphire and Steel.
Also, I suppose it was unavoidable to have a list focuse on English-language productions, but I would NEVER leave out Raumpatrouille, a superb German series from the sixties.
I would also remember Star Maidens, although I might not put it among the best 50... -
Re:End of the World
It is good to see end-of-the-world issues get some attention. If "organized mass-murder" can be prevented by increasing the "quality of life" of the desperate, then all we have to do is keep growing the economy worldwide. "Smart growth", of course. If we want exponential growth to continue forever on a finite sphere, we'll have to be smart. Oh, wait. This is important: http://www.dieoff.org/ This is interesting: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=
4 0432&highlight=linkola This is brutal: http://www.geocities.com/mahabala_awake/baron.html -
The Fusion Prize LegislationBack in 1992 I worked with a number of hot fusion (and "cold fusion") energy entrepreneurs to come up with a set of prizes that they considered a fair contest -- each for a major milestone toward environmentally benign and cheap energy. Although I submitted it to Congress that year and sought the support of a variety of people who had been active in legislation to reform NASA, I didn't have the political traction to make much headway. Robert W. Bussard, one of the founders of the US Tokamak program, submitted this legislation to Congress a few years later along with a letter detailing some rather astounding admissions of subterfuge during the founding of the Tokamak program.
The fair contest idea seems to have been picked up around that time by the X-Prize guys and taken to resounding success, for which we should all be grateful. The need for fusion prizes remains.
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The Fusion Prize LegislationBack in 1992 I worked with a number of hot fusion (and "cold fusion") energy entrepreneurs to come up with a set of prizes that they considered a fair contest -- each for a major milestone toward environmentally benign and cheap energy. Although I submitted it to Congress that year and sought the support of a variety of people who had been active in legislation to reform NASA, I didn't have the political traction to make much headway. Robert W. Bussard, one of the founders of the US Tokamak program, submitted this legislation to Congress a few years later along with a letter detailing some rather astounding admissions of subterfuge during the founding of the Tokamak program.
The fair contest idea seems to have been picked up around that time by the X-Prize guys and taken to resounding success, for which we should all be grateful. The need for fusion prizes remains.
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Where have I seen this before?
Another program, called the Global Intellectual Property Rights Academy, would train foreign judges, enforcement officials and other stakeholders in international intellectual property obligations and best practices
Hmmm... it sounds like the "judicial version" of the School of the Americas. -
Way to go, Dunya.
This sounds like the biggest wankfest ever. We're sending over advisors??? Exactly what good does the administration think this is going to do? Hey George, if you're gonna send in the Planeteers, don't forget Ma-ti...he's got the power of Heart, after all...
I'm so glad my tax money is being squandered on this joke, rather than going to something worthwhile, like...say...Katrina relief. -
Re:Did a bunch of research on this in 2003 - moreHave to reply to myself here -
DIY links for building your own system
- WinLIRC - open source IR receiver/decoder software.
- Girder - freeware that controls you PC - will work with winLIRC to control any program
- IR2PC - some guy in Germany who sells an IR receiver for RS232 for $20
- IRTrans - another guy in Germany who designed a high performance IR transmitter/receiver.
- www.evation.com - make an IR software system for controlling WinAMP, but looks configurable.
- www.mp3remote.com - the whole package for $14
- software for talking to your serial port
- Epanoramana - excellent collection of links
- Another useful collection of links
- IRAssistant - free software
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Gmail doesn't work properly
This is a screenshot from FF, everything is normal. Notice the "Rich Formatting" link is present
This is a screenshot from Opera, where is the rich formatting?
I've always liked Opera, and they definitely deserve credit form creating ideas like tabbed browsing or a mail client with labels instead of folders. Problem is, I feel like there is always a site you want to visit that won't work on Opera, but I don't know to what extent it's their fault.
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Gmail doesn't work properly
This is a screenshot from FF, everything is normal. Notice the "Rich Formatting" link is present
This is a screenshot from Opera, where is the rich formatting?
I've always liked Opera, and they definitely deserve credit form creating ideas like tabbed browsing or a mail client with labels instead of folders. Problem is, I feel like there is always a site you want to visit that won't work on Opera, but I don't know to what extent it's their fault.
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How to privatize the manned spaceIt used to be that NASA would excuse its competition with private sector launch services by pointing to its manned space missions as an example of what it was doing that couldn't be done by purchasing a launch service. However, now that manned space missions are receiving all this attention from space tourism investors, NASA is increasingly standing in naked competition with the private sector.
This is all quite unnecessary. The private sector is already chomping at the bit to invest in manned space. Griffin says $100M over 13 years is going to be spent within the existing NASA budget for this initiative but if that $100M were simply available as incentives, be they prizes, tax credits for manned space transport and habitation, there would be an explosion of alternatives in a highly competitive environment that would yeild results in a short time.
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Re:Eat Your Cake
I thought it was the sound Ewoks make.
http://www.geocities.com/woodpush85/EwokDictionary .txt -
Quarter-inch positional accuracy, 4 bits of rollI'm sure the Revolution controller will be much more sophisticated and smooth than the PowerGlove, but according to this site the PowerGlove had multi-bit precision on most of its axes. I wonder if they had a "1-bit compatibility mode" to work with existing games built for the standard controller. I've also heard of people hacking the PowerGlove to use on their PC as a cheap VR device. Caveat: I have never used one myself.
Inspired by the success of the VPL DataGlove, the Mattel toy company manufactured in 1989 a low-cost glove as a controller for Nintendo home vidco games. The Power Glove is a flexible molded plasticgauntlet with a Lycra palm. Embedded in the plastic on the backs of the fingers are resistive-ink flex sensors that register overall bending of the thumb and index, middle, and ring fingers with two bits of precision per finger. (This is a limitation of the A/D converters used, not the sensors themselves.) Mounted on the back of the hand are acoustic trackers that locate the glove accurately in space (to one-fourth inch) with respect to a companion unit mounted on the television monitor. The trackers also provide four bits of roll orientation for the hand (rotation of the wrist). Although the least accurate of the whole-hand input devices the Power Glove is also the cheapest by a factor of 100. It works with several Nintendo games, such as one where punching motions control the swing of an on-screen boxer. Some games have been especiallv designed for the Power Glove. One allows a player to "hit" or "grab and throw" a ball against tiles in a hand-ball-like court imaged on the screen.
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Re:I think it's a great idea
You really should try gimp. Running on a linux platform, it really does have some power. I use it all the time on a box with dual 200 MMX processors, and it is hard to kill. I just upgraded to Gimp 2.2 in my knoppix remaster (see screenshots). The top left screenshot shows Gimp 2.0 in action. Have not tried 2.2 in the remaster yet, have some more tweaks to make before going to press. Hope I did the right thing, I did not uninstall 2.0 first, but I'll soon know if all is well. With Gimp on a live cd , one can use any computer and do some work, upload the finished product to the server.
For instance, the main top image (showing the building) on this site was cleaned up using Gimp. There was a bunch of old chairs on the right side of the building that were replaced with some grass and trees. -
The Ballad of the Skeletons
its funny because a few years ago i found a song done by i believe ginsberg that listed every possible way of being, and then summurized it in a phrase. really well done
something like
" the nancy regan skeleton says just say no,
the rastaman skeleton say blow nancy blow!"
anyways, i would never have found that and thus got a small pang of enjoyment from it, without p2p.
what happened to the time when all artists wanted you to hear their music? now they want you to buy it, in preference to just hearing it. what a wonderful world.
*addition, the lyrics to the song are located here -
Re:but is there an On-Star 'do no harm clause'?"However, the doctors oath says "do no harm", so you trust that he/she is always doing what is in your best interests"
That's not in the hypocratic oath or any other oath doctors take. Reference
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Re:This is going to confuse the hell out of people
No, that would be Jesux.
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Re:What about Quetzlcoatlus?
Ornithocheirus was also one of the biggest.
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Somewhat old news
Saw an article some months ago in Popular Science about cars may eventually be made of this stuff so that when they get in a fender bender the "dent" in the car pops back out saving insurance companies millions of dollars currently going towards minor repairs. Also found an old article from 2001 here and here on the same subject.
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Re:this reminds me...
I think the svg/canvas support could quickly become a reason.
Check this out for a simplistic demo of canvas support. (Must have Deer Park Beta 1 or greater)
Check the source code. Everything is written in javascript. Security doesn't sell browsers to non tech people. Cool widgets sells browsers to people.
The insecurity of the extensions can be fixed. Even right now firefox has a "OMG WTF THIS COULD BE BAD!!!" screen when you are installing an extension from a new site. You have to go through 3 pages to add that site to your allowed list. -
Re:Top TenUnfortunately I don't think there's anywhere you can buy those oldschool spring / mechanical keyboards "new" anymore.
Yes there is. See Dan's Data which links to a few, such as Unicomp. I've got an original Model M, but you may need to modify it for recent mobos.
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Re:iPod audio out...
Have you considered a job with Deutche Gramophon?
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Re:American citizens must use windows...
"[...] if you want to go to McDonalds drive-thru you need to have a car."
I'm not sure if this is off-topic or not, but it reminded me of something that happened once.
Back in 1985, as Hurricane Gloria was bearing down on Long Island, I decided it might not be a bad idea to head to the bank, get some cash, and lay in supplies for the day. I was tasked with keeping an eye on our network hubs which were located in a potentially leaky basement.
In any event, I figured I'd make an early start of it. So I wandered down to the bank. This was before ATMs were particularly widespread, but the drive-thru tellers were in at 7:30. I figured I'd just walk up to the drive-thru teller, since I didn't have a car.
No dice. I was refused service. Even when the cars had left, the teller refused to even go over to walk-up window. I would have to wait until the bank opened at 9:00AM.
So I did. I waited until 9:00AM, got my money, made a bee-line to the store for food, etc. and got into work just as the storm started to hit in earnest.
That weekend, I went into the bank, closed my account, and let them know exactly how I felt about being discriminated against.
Part of my annoyance, of course, came from the fact that we have a hurricane bearing down on us and I have to stand around and wait while others are allowed to go, simply because the bank had some rule. Actually, the person at the bank I talked to agreed with me and the teller was reprimanded. -
Re:How does it come out?
Close to the bottom of the page, a conservative figure...
Also here in the first paragraph...from this estimate, 27 years x 365 days = 9,855 times as much energy as we currently use.
Also here, here, and here.
Bottom line is that solar is possible today if we can ever wean ourselves off of oil (and keep the oil dependent businesses from buying off congress). (a lot of tree hugging rhetoric here but they have a point none-the-less...search for "oil lobby" to find relevant comments) -
Re:Let's don't get ahead of ourselves
Trolltech's only product is C++, and their Qt libraries. Qt is only half the cake.. KDE is the other.. Trolltech got C++ as little assinine as possible, and turned it into something that "makes sense", however there is a whole lot that comes with KDE that isn't packaged in Qt.. how do you IPO KDE when it's free? Where is the cash?
As far as C++ goes, let me grab the opportunity to bitch about it. C++ and Qt C++ is comparable to java and dotnet in terms of bloat and raw speed. Why isn't everything written in java or dotnet? Cuz they suck! You can just feel the object oriented speed penalty in both kde and trolltech windows, compared gtk or win32 api c.
C++ is a nice idea for very complex designs, and it stays somewhat close to the bare metal, compared to higher level dotNet, Java, Basic, Pyhton and the other interpreted bunch, but not close enough compared to C. You neither get the superb speed and control over what the cpu does that you get with C, nor the ease of use and fluency that Basic provides. Object oriented people tend to come up with overly complex designs, and it's a source of endless nightmares and bugs. Even visual C++ is called C++, because it's capable of compiling and using C++, but most of windows is still C, the interfaces are C, and the C++ promise hasn't materialized. We're currently in an anti-Java frenzy by Microsoft who got scared of college professors liking the abstract concepts that Java provides, and universities basically becoming java-programmer tradeschools, so in fear of this Microsoft released their own java-monstrosity, labeled dotNet. But they dare not eat their own dogfood, their own cake. You could argue and operating system will always stay assembler/C mix, but on the application front, neither Internet Explorer, nor MSOffice is written in dotnet. We'll just end up in a world where MSOffice and IE are rewritten in dotnet, for the sake of intellectual property, and watch them lose their flare, their speed, their pizzazz. As far as C++ goes, at least Trolltech made the best of it that was possible, even if you can still feel the speed penalties in KDE, but at least Trolltech made it easy on the programmers. Just because gtk is c, try looking at the monstrous gtk c api compared to a qt c++ source file. Elegance and simplicity in complex designs is very important. Still, citing http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/oopbad.htm
OOP is the greatest boon for those who like to write bloated code. I am not saying that all OOP code is bloated. But, something or someone is encouraging the practice of taking the most amount of code to do the fewest things. Further, OOP has added new ways to write bloated code that procedural has a hard time competing with. Hypothetical example for adding two numbers:
NORMAL
print(a + b)
BLOATED
am = new math.ArithmeticManager()
opA = new math.Operand((float) a)
opB = new math.Operand((float) b)
am.addOperand(opA)
am.addOperand(opB)
am.operator = new math.operators.Addition()
am.executeMathOperation()
system.io.output.print(am.mathOperationResult())
I'd much rather see good old Basic as something to start learning programming in, and get fluent in, with a very clear way of how Basic gets first compiled to C instructions, that are very clean and human readable and optimizable, and then C to assembler instructions. Every programming package should come with a code analyzer. Just because C or C++ compile programs that run faster than say Python or Basic, it doesn't mean everything should be done in it. Instead, you should be able to put together your code in Basic, look at the speed analyzer highlighting you the slow code, pop and open up that code in the c translation, and optimize it there, with the Basic code turning color and letting you edit only the hand optimized C portion. Same with C to -
My experience...
MySQL is best used when you need speed, compatability, and reliabilty.
MySQL supports load balancing, PostgreSQL doesn't.
MySQL supports multiple table formats, PostgreSQL doesn't.
MySQL stays faster on larger databases than PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL is best used when you want more features at the expense of everything listed above...
The choice is really a case-by-case question.
These are confirmed by this table.
With MySQL 5.0 close to a "stable" release, all of this will go out the window as MySQL will gain many of the features of PostgreSQL. -
Re:Didn't Ayn Rand write about this?
(See also the post Ayn Rand was right! by Stormwatch (Score:2) Sunday September 04, @09:39AM)
Yup; the name of the character was Ellis Wyatt.
Detailed table of contents to "Atlas Shrugged":
http://www.geocities.com/forpropertyrights/AtlasSh rugged.htm
(thoroughly gives away the story) -
Re:Oblig.
-
Re:One can dream
