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Some airplanes can be remotely flown as discussed in this link!

Note: Lufthansa spent billions of dollars designing their OWN computers, as discussed in the article so that their airplanes can't be remotely flown by U.S. authorities!

The point of the original article is that the Taiwanese insist that Taiwan, Tibet, and mainland China are all part of one nation. The Taiwanese constitution, the highest law in Taiwan, says that Tibet is part of China. It is also clear that the Taiwanese support all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. (reference: "Facts about Taiwan"

The partner that you find in ICQ is not a reliable source. If you want some facts about China, try here: Facts About Taiwan and China.

Please read "Facts About Taiwan" to get a better understanding of why "Made in Taiwan" = "Made in China". Just say "NO!" to notebook computers made in Taiwan or China.

How about bushorchimp?

Like this guy?

One comic is scanned into jpeg, page by page usually, sometimes a couple of full spreads are scanned also, if the format requires it.

A one page scan is around 700x1064 and a spread around 1400x1064. These jpegs are of course full-color and compressed to be around 130-600KiB -- usually higher res/less compression is used for covers.

The individual files are then archived using rar or pkzip (simply to keep them all in one place) together with an optional NFO file with metadata. This package, name something like "New X-men 114.cbz" where .cbz is a pkzip archive and .cbr is a rar archive can then be read directly using the "CDisplay Comic Reader".

Depending on the number of pages, a full scanned issue can be anywhere from 2.5MB to 10MB or more. Around 5-6MB/issue seems typical. Specials can be around 20MB.

Ha-Ooooo!

Too late. Andy Griffith already did it in 1979.

Shay's Rebellion was a call to end the current anarchy that was being permitted by a lack of will in the newly formed (not yet complete) government of the United States. The courts and local governments were permitting business owners and large land owners to act as defacto tyrannical governments. Large landowners and companies were issuing thier own currencies and hiring thier own "police forces" in disregard to the good of other citizens, but in keeping with the current attitude against centralized regulation of law enforcement and the government. Small farmers and factory workers wanted a consistant, strong currency backed by gold that would be honored as equal to the boulion that was being used by the large land owners and companies. Local courts ignored the pleas of the farmers and workers, mostly because they were being paid by the people who benefitted most from the inequality. The rebellion was crushed and the surviving rebels were sentanced to death for treason, but later pardoned because of the justness of thier cause. Look here for more info.

The Haymarket Massacre occured after a peaceful labor rally at the Haymarket in Chicago was attacked by the police after the mayor of Chicago had given instructions for the police to stand down. The police captain on duty dissobeyed orders and instructed his men to disperse the crowd of 2500 people, and then to attack the men who refused to leave. There was one bomb thrown after the force of 176 armed police attacked the remaining crowd of 200 people. The bomb thrower was never identified. The police shot four protestors and six of thier own. Eight were arrested and tried, seven were sentanced to death, one of whom commited suicide, two were pardoned and four were executed. Read more here.

The Kent State Massacre occured at a peace rally of at least 2000 people on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio after a group of protesters shouted insults and threw stones at National Guardsmen (no bombs were thrown or found). The guardsmen responded to the stones by marching on the crowd with bayonettes. The crowd was in full retreat when the guardsmen began firing on the fleeing protestors. Four were killed, nine were injured. Follow this link for an account of the events.

You are right to counsel that bombs are bad tactics in a protest, I would go further and state that bombs have crossed the line beyond protest into guerilla warfare. But the allegations of bombs at Kent State have never been proven and have been disputed by several men who served with the National Guard on that day. The single bomb thrown at the Haymarket was the act of either a lone individual, or a small group of radically violent nihilists. In all of these cases the causes of the protesters were just.

At the Haymarket it was the police disobeying orders that led to the massacre. At Kent State the Guardsmen shot people in thier backs.

What is needed in these causes is well reasoned people to push forth the argument and to restrain the more unpredictable elements. The bombs need to be put away until it is clear that Democracy is lost.

I also know these D&D manuals; there are insane amounts of RPG books available on IRC, and the most common ones use to appear on Kazaa. As far as I know they're not directly from the source, but either simply scanned in (the most common) or scanned in with the text transformed to actual text with an OCR program, then using the proper D&D manual fonts to create a very high quality digital copy of a book. If done by a skilled person with a decent scanner, the copy should be almost indistinguishable from the original. The fonts that are used by Wizards of the Coast are well-known. So it's basically a matter of someone scanning the art at high quality, removing the text and applying the OCR'ed text using proper fonts.

The first personality test I remember ever doing was something in high school designed to determine what kind of career would be good for me. I can't rememeber the results precisely, but I scored high on maths/science based careers. Computers are close, I suppose. But that test wasn't really designed to find out about me, just what I'd be good at.

A little while later I tried the Myer Briggs personality test, which is quite a common one. It has 16 possible outcomes. You answer a series of questions, and add up the values from the answers to come up with your personality type. I was INTP. You can find out about the other types there also.
After completing this test, I thought that it described me perfectly. An introverted thinker who was far from loving order. The description on this website seems to fit me pretty well. However, I later discovered the Chinese personality types which transformed my understanding of myself, and the Myer Briggs type is no longer adequate... The Chinese talk about five personality types, and everyone is one of these types. It may sound small, like little variety, but you should be surprised by how accurately these describe the variety of human responses. The five types go in a circle, and beginning at an arbitrary point the order is wood, fire, earth, metal , water. There is so much to say about each type, and I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It describes each type well, and so much of it was me. I will give you a quick rundown anyway. You can find out a very brief and undetailed introduction of the types here. Wood, which is my type, are opionated, stubborn pioneers who are always moving to something new. Fire is one of the most common types. These are the passionate, talkative people who love to be with others. Earth are the most common type and value loyalty, don't much like change and provide the foundation for our society. Metal are organised people everywhere, they tend to be leaders inside an existing structure, often musically talented. Water are the introverted philosophers who don't much like human contact like everyone else.
Now the interesting thing here is that you express characteristics of the two types next to your own. Since I am a wood, I have fire on my left and water on my right, so I can often show traits from both of these. And here is why I was unsatisfied with Myer Briggs. It described me as an introvert, and that I believed. Chinese personality types showed me that wood is stuck between the most introverted and extroverted types - water and fire. And this rang true more for me than anything else. There are times when I just have to be with people, and there are other times when I just have to get away. It described me more fully than Myer Briggs could even come close to. Going around the circle clockwise (wood->fire->earth->metal->water->wood ) each type feed another. Wood feeds fire, giving fire people energy, rejuvinating them. Fire feeds earth, earth feeds metal and so on.
Take a look at this image. You can visually see the place of each personality type to another. You will see from wood an arrow going to earth, and from metal an arrow to wood. Every time oppresses another type, and is oppressed by a type. Wood people tend to oppress earth. Wood yearn for change and novelty, to upset the old, while earth thrives on stability and loyalty and don't much like change. Wood also hates authority and longs to break free, while metal loves authority and structure, and so restricts wood. There is so much to learn about each type. To find out what you are, look at the types I described above. You will probably find three

If you're going to do that, at least get it right.

If you're going to do that, at least get it right.

Another score for the AAHAA (The Anti Andrew Huard Association of America).

I just got a some links and a few words together about the internals of these cameras. I think that it won't be long before they are fully deciphered, so I don't plan on investing much time. If you would like to see what's available and contribute, please visit http://www.geocities.com/q_128

I recently purchased at a flea market an unopened Infocom collection on CD-ROM. But dang it, the installer wouldn't work under Win98!

I'm sorry, I know this is offtopic, but...

All you need (at least, for everything except the graphics titles like Arthur and Journey) is the .z5 files (probably named with a .dat extension on the CD).

Just copy them somewhere and find a .z5 interpreter (like Frotz). You'll find interpreters for more platforms than you'd expect, including Palm, Psion, Amiga, Acorn riscOS...

I think he may be talking about supermount

It is nice, I'd be willing to bet it does make it into the mainstream kernel eventually. I think maybe even Red Hat 9 might have it now.

There is only one reason you guys are all a bunch of introverts as opposed to being extroverts.

"on things we need less than more prisons and better schools."

really?

Is it normal to consider imprisonment as one of the primary industries in a country? Perhaps if people weren't put into prison for 3 counts of jaywalking, there'd be enough money left over for schools to afford curriculums not provided by McDonalds?

I don't mean this as a personal rebuff, but the US has better things to spend its money on than lining the pockets of prison contractors.

Seems you beat me to it. However, I prepared a LINK!

Seriously though, they totally stole the idea from Roy Scheider (Schneider?)...

I wonder how well a laminar flow smoke curtain would do with images projected on BOTH sides? The cool effect I imagine is walking down a corridor with several of these screens crossing it. As you walk through the image of a wall with a door in it, you turn around and see the image of the other side of the "wall". Look forward again and you see the next "wall", which you can also walk through to see what's on the other side. The series of images could give a tourist a walk right through a virtual pryramid, or some other interesting tour, like the entrance hall in the opening sequence of 'Get Smart' or MST3K.

...think of a sig, quick! Oh no! Too late... arrrrrgh!!!

Thinking about what he'd like to do in Redmond just brings out the American Psycho in him...

Here is the real Heat Miser link for the parent.

I want my two dollars!

Support the GNAA!

Support the GNAA!

Support the GNAA!

Luke 1:30-33

And the angel said unto her, "Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."

If Mary intended to have a normal marriage, including sexual intercourse, one would have expected her to react in the following manner: "How wonderful! Joseph and I will be the parents of the Messiah!" But instead, what she said is:

Luke 1:34

How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

If Mary had intended to have sexual intercourse with Joseph, what she says here makes no sense at all. Thus, she intended to remain a virgin even in marriage.

"Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit...'"

How does the fact that Joseph thought Mary was a loose woman imply that he will eventually have sex with her?

It would be no wife if he could not do that which God put in us.

Among the Jews in that time, people were already considered husband and wife while they were engaged (i.e. before they even had sex with each other). So in Mary and Joseph's case, it would merely be a life-long extension of that state. It is not the most common form of marriage, of course, but it's not completely unknown. Gandhi, for instance, lived with his wife without sex for the last several decades of their married life.

The disciples when Jesus told them that they shouldn't divorce said it is better then that a man not get married. Jesus said that it

One of you is obviously thinking of Sisqo.

Some day when I get bored, I'll build myself an STM...

You mean like here?

Sadly, no cirth numerals (.pdf) have yet been published, although their existence is rumored. (See this list of yet unpublished works.)

So, we must await the whim of the Elfconners to discover whether canonical Dwarvish l33t is possible.

Sadly, no cirth numerals (.pdf) have yet been published, although their existence is rumored. (See this list of yet unpublished works.)

So, we must await the whim of the Elfconners to discover whether canonical Dwarvish l33t is possible.

Well, this blows the myth of unearthly elven beauty right out of the water.

Graphics on the Sorcerer sound impressive, with a resolution of 512 x 240, when most machines of the era supported a maximum of 320 x 200.
...
The Sorcerer instead chose another method entirely, which was to not really to have graphics at all. Instead they allowed the user to re-define the character set (the shapes of the letters on screen) and used these in lieu of pixel-addressable graphics.

A more surprising limitation, given the machine's genesis, is the lack of sound output. Enterprising developers then standardized on attaching a speaker to two pins of the parallel port

If you want to understand the invented languages of Tolkien, a good place to start is with a meetup group.

Some people take their Elvishness pretty sillyessny...erm meant to say seriously... :)

I wouldn't have minded a T shirt with a filled in version of Timothy's Slashdot crossword puzzle on it.

Better than that, though, would be if the white and dark squares of the puzzle formed some kind of crude image.

Ah, the history. You'd get all kinds of puzzled looks from non-readers looking at answers like "Natalie Portman", "karma whore", "goatse.cx", "Troll", "BSD is dead", etc..

Here's the whole line in case anyone's interested.I got it from this site.

Praline: It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.

The theaters are so filthy, we go there early to find a clean seat. We used to be able to hold a conversation before the movie. While the theater showed a slideshow accompanied by music, it was quiet. Now, there's 20 minutes of commercials, followed by 10-15 minutes of trailers before the movie, and it's so loud you can't talk over it.

The sound systems are always broken or set improperly (front speakers only). The movie is never in sharp focus (no, it's not my eyes). If there's a problem, you have to wait 15 minutes for the projectionist to show up. We recently watched part of a film burn up, because there was no one in the booth. When there is a problem, they skip ahead to keep the movie on schedule, so you miss part. Sure, if you complain they will give you another ticket, but that's two hours of your time.

I've called the THX number and emailed the theaters to complain, but nothing is improving. Of course, the admission price is going up. It now costs less to buy the DVD than it costs for my wife and I to see the movie in the theater, and we get several hours of extras on the disk.

We obviously loved going to the movies, but with the increasing cost and reduction in quality, it's hard to justify. I can see why people are bootlegging the movies.

If the MPAA wants to stop the bootlegging, they should just release the DVD at the same time as the movie is in the theaters. Let the market decide how they want to see the film.

Just because I can't resist, have you seen this?

Weaselmancer

Competitors include:

XWT

XUL

SCGUI (my pet)

It's a good thing this guy didn't break any patents on roller coasters. Although to be fair, most of those have expired, and patents on actual physical machines are palatable.

Oh, does this remind anybody else of the Cartmanland episode of South Park where Cartman owns his own theme park?

I found a great freeware program called MP3Gain, that will adjust the level of ....wait for it....MP3's. Now I am no audiophile, so this may be heresy to some, but it works great in getting all your MP3's to the same volume. I have also salvaged several songs that had obviously been ripped at too high a volume level, so maybe this could help for this too. In the docs it says it doesn't just do "normalization", it puts each frame through an algorithm and does it lossless. Anyway, Download it here.
And yes, I understand that the article is pointing out defects in engineeering, I did read it. This is just a possible band-aid. *groan*

Instead of spouting accusations, I suggest you research things a bit more. You can start here as an example.

For his next feat he's going to eat Chichester Cathedral.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to imagine a regime so brutal it would have troops open fire on defenseless student protestors

Microsoft, thou art truly stupid. Robie is the name of a crappy old robot made by Tandy. Or at least sold by them. It was a moderately fun little toy, though. His big brother, Robie Sr., is a little more powerful; rather than being basically a fancy radio controlled car with move forward and turn in reverse control, you can actually program moves into him, and he's got half a walkie talkie built into him/the controller so you can speak through him.

I have been in a jillion language and paradigm wars over the years, (Itsa hobby of mine :-) I have come to conclude that many aspects of programming and languages are purely subjective. What floats your boat may sink mine and visa versa. People process symbols and patterns differently in their head. There is no one right language.

It also seems that committee-designed languages usually fail because they compromise so much that they don't "sing" to any one group. You need a fan-base to get a language to take off. But, this also means catering it to specific mental types.

That being said, I have documented a bunch of potential scripting language features and give justification for my favorites in the list:


http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/langopts.htm

You may not agree with my decisions, but there is plenty food for thought for anybody researching and collecting lists of language options and alternatives. (I don't cover staticly-typed languages because I don't really like them.)

I'd have to suggest against getting that surgery for anyone with HH (hyperhidrosis). I myself have HH, and looked into the surgery extensively. The surgery causes compensatory sweating on your upper body and it seems that many (though not all) report that the compensatory sweating is just as bad - if not worse - than the palmar HH.

That said, there is something you can do that is cheaper, less risky, and more effective. Check out drionic, which is a device you can use that will stop sweating for up to 6 weeks at a time. I've used it for over 3 months now and I'm happy as can be. Stopped the excessive sweat on my hands and my feet.

Also of interest for those of us who like to hack at things, is this site which shows you how to mod your drionic units to use a 9V wall adapter instead of their expensive proprietary batteries.

I thought those ideas were a bit lame. I know the mouse fan was a joke, but I wouldnt want the fan generating all sorts of harmonics on the 5v power line anyway. Screw all the signals up I reckon. Especially on the optical variety which uses signal processing.
A Peltier cooling device on the 'other hand' (no pun intended) would be ideal and it can be molded to almost any shape mouse, and it uses constant current. Utilised in this project