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So far it seems that the fastest AND most affordable internet (combo) here in the states is available in the Cincinnati area (that I've personally seen). It's got 3 major cities within about 1.5 hours, one of the busiest airports in the mid-west (I'm still EST time zone), a few major train rails and highways 70,71 and 75 all very near by. This makes it a prime location for major companies, except that there aren't THAT many (proctor and gamble is here for example).

I mention this because there aren't too many nerdy types like me out here.. except that they set up the broadband out here to handle major *potential* commercial needs.

So here I sit paying $50 a month for "20 meg download" (which is literally about 2.4-2.5 megabytes per second at maxed connection). That's the upgraded package. Normally it's $40 for "10 meg download"... but 10$ more for double the connection? Easy choice for me! What is interesting is that my speeds actually can hit that through usenet / bittorrents.

Just curious, do these speeds at that low of a price exist anywhere else out there for that cheap? I've not yet heard of that elsewhere. I use Insight Broadband. Note: Internet speeds are great, but the commercials and customer service / "pay-by-internet" really really suck.

Here's a link to mine: http://home.insightbb.com/~bmsims1/Scripts/Screenrc.html

I actually show you what the line noise does and
what it will look like.

Another picture.

Apparently they sounded like Brian Blessed.

Vitrite may be what you're looking for. It's a program that just sits in your taskbar and sets transparency for the active window by handy keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise a Google search for "window transparency" turns up quite a few alternatives.

My cable company just sent me a letter telling me that my broadband is being upgraded to 10Mb

Is this Insight?

I started watching the XGL videos. The first one was transparency. Funny: MS has had this capability since W2K--you just need Vitrite to activate it. Since I've never, ever, ever seen a really useful use of transparency* I'm glad they left this off by default.

* OS X's early use of semi-transparent title bars sucked when you had a bunch of windows in the same general area. Note that this is gone now. (On the other hand, they also got rid of tabs, and that totally sucks, so they're not exactly batting a thousand.) I've seen lots of people with semi-transparent terminal windows, but they're more in the "looks cool and doesn't hurt productivity much" camp, rather than being truly useful. Ditto for the transparent unused pallets in MS Office on OS X--I can't stand them, but they don't actually seem to hurt most people.

danw6144@insightbb.com

This page has an insightful article about the future of Flash, it seems pretty interesting.

I prefer this comparison of OS versions to women.

call me when i can get me a heighliner http://home.insightbb.com/~dallen88/images/heighli ner.jpg

How sad, considering you can already get this free utility for Win 2k/XP:

http://home.insightbb.com/~ryanvm/tinyutilities/vi trite/

Unfortunately, it doesn't work on console windows, but you can use this to change the transparency of any other type of window.

A couple of years ago, some friends and got together and built "The Boilercade". We got the cabinet together, and it now houses all of my video game equipment. I haven't put any of the finishing touches on it, like a marquee, coin door, or graphics... but it gets the job done.

One thing I've learned is that nostalgia wears off quick. We built the cab and were all excited about playing some older arcades, but other than centipede it hasn't seen any action in months. Still, the cabinet makes a nice entertainment center, and houses my receiver, DVD player, VCR, CD Jukebox, and PC. I've wired up consoles, but only the GameCube sees much action on it. I know I could probably wire the console controllers into the control panel, but I'm thinking it probably isn't worth it.

One thing that I know I wish I had planned for: A glass door. Since the cab is used like an entertainment center, I have to leave the door (where the coin door belongs) open all of the time so that the remotes work. If I had used some type of transaparent / translucent door, it wouldn't be a problem.

Have fun with your project, and good luck!

Since google pulled it, here is a download mirror http://home.insightbb.com/~google/

However, if you do like popovers, visit sites like this.

But, is there anyway to automate the brewing and bottling (kegging) processes that take so much of my time?

A typical brew day: http://home.insightbb.com/~bsenyart/brewday.html

DHS violated a writer's privacy just because of books she checked out from the library. Check it out here at the bottom of the page: http://home.insightbb.com/~d.lawson/Jungle_Beat.ht m

According to this article on rail guns, They can only get a 2kg projectile up to 4 km/s. Not nearly powerfull enough to launch me to mach 10! Next suggustion please!

I actually have a rubber stamp on my desk that stamps the phrase

THIS DOCUMENT OFFICIALLY
-------DOES NOT EXIST-------

See here for a scanned image of the impression.

I have yet to see it held up in court, but any time I print a document I don't want to have to worry about, I smack it with the stamp and put it in a file drawer.

I keep it right next to my What the *#*$# were you thinking? rubber stamp that I had custom made. That one seems to be getting an awful lot of use recently...

There was also some small freeware utility to set window transparency

You mean Vitrite

Here it is - Vitrite

This isn't time-dependent, but it is very handy.

Others have done it... here's a 3-way speaker reported on /. years ago, and here's another.

Why are all these people suddenly making projects that have been done over and over, and reporting them as "new ideas"? Just like the jet engine made out of a turbo-charger the other day... that's been done hundreds of times! Heck, it's even been done on Junkyard Wars!

Vitrite: Giving you useless window transparency since 2002:

Vitrite

Ricardo

Shoot, I hate to repost, but it's more appropriate here than in the other topic. I just had a C-64 revival of my own the past week. I wanted to see how fast 1 MHz was, so I wrote a little sin graphing program in BASIC.

It sucked; 7 hours for a bitmap picture.

But my friend was not to be outdone, he went and optimized the thing, getting it down to 74 minutes.

And now he wants to know what program we'll be doing next. =^/

Slow version is on line, I'll put the fast version up soon. (Really! I promise!)

-B

I love my Commodore, but good l0rd was that thing slow. I just benched it with a sin(sqr()) function plotter, and it took 7 hours. Tabulating the sin(sqr()) function got that down to 74 minutes, but it's still sad.

You can see the picture and slow source code here: please slashdot me

I'll update with the fast code shortly.

"Isn't that shuttle-jet craft we see in the intro going to be built?"

Venture Star

(offtopic--if this doesn't interest you, move along...)

Want transparent windows in Win 2K/XP?

You know, that's pretty cool, but what I'd really like to see is transparent windows with opaque text and other foreground elements. For instance, I think you'll find the shell in that screenshot there would be a little more legible if the text were opaque white instead of translucent.

You mention on your webpage window transparency is a feature of 2000/XP. I don't know anything about those OSes, but I'm just curious--is it possible using the system window manager to make the text opaque and keep the background transparent?

yours

generally, if i haven't reloaded the file or quit vim, i'll do a 20u and playback changes with ctrl-r. with screen and vim's split windows i can generally keep nearly every file open that i was working on before i went home.

one screen window for model, one for view, one for controller, one for unit tests, one for templates, etc... then another putty multitailing logs, set transparent and on top with vitrite.

then i hope and pray that i don't get laid off.

The cable company is clueless. (It's Insight BB, which owns a few small cable systems in the midwestern US.) Tier I tech support doesn't know what an IP address is. Tier II tech support can't figure out which of their cable systems has that mail server. Mailing to their abuse address gets an autoreply, with no ticket number. The next step is sending a cease and desist notice by registered mail to their corporate headquarters, but it's too soon for that. Next week.

Here are the addresses involved, in case anybody wants to blacklist them.

• Client: 12-222-122-76.client.insightbb.com [12.222.122.76])
• Mail server: sccimhc01.insightbb.com [63.240.76.163]
• Mail server: sccimhc02.insightbb.com [63.240.76.164]

Maybe there should be a minimum qualification level to become a broadband ISP.

The real benefit is that (at least the way I use it), you start a somewhat long running job in a window in the background (file download, build on a remote system, etc). Bring something you want to work on to the foreground, and set about a 10% transparency to the window. Now, when you want to, you can quickly focus your attention to the background task, without switching windows, then return your attention to what you're working on.

If you have Win2K, or WinXP, vitrite for Windows is a great utility to provide this transparency. And you can select which window and how transparent each window is. Very cool.

Translucency in win2k? You want this. The author of this software posts on /. sometimes.

railguns are just as real as crossbows or rifles.

I wrote a little utility that allows you to have window transparency under Windows 2000 and XP. It's called Vitrite, and it's licensed under the GPL.

It certainly isn't in the same league as Mozilla and OpenOffice, but you'll definately have room for it on your CD (only 85 KB).

And yes it's the same utility I've been pimping in my sig for months now.

Anyway, I'm sure this is going to be modded as a troll or flamebait. Whatever. I just fail to see why one person's pet show (which has abysmal ratings, btw) not getting a nomination for an award makes front-page news.

-B

...and in no time at all, we will see all these japanese nerds having fun with gint custom made rail guns utilizing the train track and it's magnetic field.