Slashdot Mirror

What people don't realize is that there has been foundation research for almost 20 years now on this subject. Who can forget the Pioneering research put into the topic of 1-foot tall talking bears?

Teddy Ruxpin has for years been at the forefront of this field, dealing with human-talking-bear interaction.

This comment by Sancho is just begging for a reply, so here goes:

Of course, the copyright system itself is the reason we have book, media, etc.

I have been meaning to say this for a long time: People write books for other reasons than profit. The claim might even be made that works for hire are not art at all since profit is not a motivation for true art. Whether or not that is true, people write books for lots of reasons. Some people, on occasion (like thousands of Slashdotters, for instance) might actually have something to say to the world.

The system allows for the (supposedly limited) monopoly on ideas so that artists could make a living and produce their content.

Without such laws in the first place, it's unlikely that we'd have the variety and multitude of movies, books, television shows, etc. that are out there.

Some say it's a bad thing, some say it's a good thing, but in a free society that should be all about choice, it's pretty definitive of our ideals. Lots to choose from.

But I'm scared of my more technically naive mother getting zapped this way, so I will probably have to retire that address. I resent that very much.

The X developers should rewrite the server from scratch using the Aspect Oriented methodology and for example the AspectJ programming language. Many of the X extensions really touch all parts of the server which is exactly the kind of problem aspect oriented programming was designed to solve.

Using AspectJ, an extension such as the Damage extension could be written in a weekend.

Also rewriting the server in AspectJ would allow the developers to leverage the full power of the Java language. With Java reflection the core dispatch code in the server could be replaced by just a few lines of code. The RENDER extension could be completely removed from the server and replaced by using the delegate design pattern to forward X requests to Java2D

The Fresco project had huge potential, but never managed to escape the legacy language C++. It seems everybody working on window system is stuck in the software engineering practices of the seventies.

That would be have been Episode 821 - Time Chasers. A classic! Hardly the worst movie they ever featured though...

... in my very own personal Privacy Policy page.

The problem with this is you end up with horrible range that you can't do much with. Loud sounds end up clipped so that the softer sounds can sound 'louder'. Here's why it sucks: You lose a lot of the music's quality. When I turn up this song, my stereo dac becomes the limiting factor. When you turn up crap like this, the sound waves are already clipped. The jokes on them.

People like tube amps because they add a little bit of harmonics that sounds nicer to our ears. Tubes sound 'warm' and they fail gracefully when overdriven. It's an old battle that no one will win, but most muscians go with tube amps so they can't all be wrong

The problem with this is you end up with horrible range that you can't do much with. Loud sounds end up clipped so that the softer sounds can sound 'louder'. Here's why it sucks: You lose a lot of the music's quality. When I turn up this song, my stereo dac becomes the limiting factor. When you turn up crap like this, the sound waves are already clipped. The jokes on them.

People like tube amps because they add a little bit of harmonics that sounds nicer to our ears. Tubes sound 'warm' and they fail gracefully when overdriven. It's an old battle that no one will win, but most muscians go with tube amps so they can't all be wrong

The problem with this is you end up with horrible range that you can't do much with. Loud sounds end up clipped so that the softer sounds can sound 'louder'. Here's why it sucks: You lose a lot of the music's quality. When I turn up this song, my stereo dac becomes the limiting factor. When you turn up crap like this, the sound waves are already clipped. The jokes on them.

People like tube amps because they add a little bit of harmonics that sounds nicer to our ears. Tubes sound 'warm' and they fail gracefully when overdriven. It's an old battle that no one will win, but most muscians go with tube amps so they can't all be wrong

Quote from a spam advertising a 30 site: "Fell the heat ... Your will be amasing."

Oh, and AOL is sucks.

Quote from a spam advertising a 30 site: "Fell the heat ... Your will be amasing."

Oh, and AOL is sucks.

Perhaps you are talking about JOS. It was quite a happening project couple years back , and now seems to have splitted into couple of different projects.

-

First there are all the variants on cryptic crosswords. See The Atlantic Monthly for some very nice ones (and some very tough ones). If you look around a bit Stephen Sondheim (yup, the guy who writes Broadway Musicals) also published a book of fun (and challenging crosswords).

Then there are cross number puzzles - there are some simple ones, but I'm thinking of one like this . It is fairly small but very fun to solve. (This would probably be of most interest in a school with a distinct science/math orientation.)

I've thought a couple of times about building a crossword that would translate letters into differently colored squares (using only a couple of colors and simple patterns) so that the correctly solved problem would make a picture but ended up trying to find a fun program that would take a completed crossword and an image and find a decent mapping to make the crossword look like the image. (There are some interesting ways to fiddle this idea - the checked lights might only match in shape/color,letters might map to multiple shapes, you might have to determine the mapping of letters to shapes (perhaps matching lines/colors in adjacent squares as clues) ....)

It's not bad if it'd done right. I ran the aux cable from the back of my stereo to a 1/8in jack mounted in my center console.

picture

When I'm not using the iPod, I put the cable away and the only thing visible is the little jack next to the gearshift.

beautiful!

Very few audio head units have a front jack for aux input. You can dangle an adapter cable out the back (on most models this means you can't use a CD changer), but that's butt-ugly.

It's not so bad if you set it up right, with the adaptor cable going to a 3.5mm jack mounted in the dash or center console. The jack is almost unnoticable when the iPod isn't plugged in. I just did this in my car. While it's not as nice as the set up in this story, it doesn't look too bad and works great.

I've done something similar with mine. The aux jack on the back of the stereo is run to an adaptor with a 3.5mm jack mounted in the center console, where I run a line to the headphone jack on the iPod. The line is plenty long enough for either me or a passenger to hold the iPod while selecting music.

http://www.mindspring.com/~elemental23/lj/ipod_aux .jpg

(note: the position of the iPod in the picture is just to show it, it usually rests in the space next to the parking brake when I'm driving)

To charge it in the car, I still need to use the cigarette lighter adaptor, but I get around this by charging it at home overnight when it needs it.

Either way you still have to deal with the BXA. The main advantage of other countries is to get closer to the equator so it'll take less energy to get into geosynchronous orbit.

That, and ocean and Siberian launches let you get really far away from people for safety.

Second, hollowpoints are *more* destructive, not less

Of course- I thought everybody knew that. Normal high velocity bullets have a mild all-or-nothing effect, where if a person isn't killed outright by cardiovascular or neural damage, he may recover fully. A pass-through "flesh wound" to muscular tissue might be patched up in a few days. Hollowpoints (or fragmented, or spinning) bullets tend to tear open non-vital organs, leading to bleeding (often internal) that might not be fatal for an hour, or (if treated) leave chronic disabilities.

(I shouldn't make it sound like there is a tremendous difference between kinds of bullets- if you get shot, you won't notice or care what kind of round hit you. But in war, every little edge might count)

My point is that for many tactical situations (such as sniping), hollowpoint ammo would be preferred ("more destructive"). It should be up to the officers on the field to decide which to shoot- not some parchment approved in a far-off conference.

But with the arms conventions starting in the 1800s, the ruling class decided they didn't want their soldiers coming home with wounds from fragmented bullets, so they wrote-off a whole class of munition from consideration.

The 5.56mm is most dangerous due to the incredible *velocity*

Actually, part of the reason the US chose smaller than 7.62mm rounds is to work around the Geneva Convention. By using a small bullet, the tumbling can do damage resembling the effect of a hollowpoint. An M16 has only slightly more velocity than an AK-47 (and much less total kinetic energy), but leaves a bigger hole because it's path through a soft target is less straight.

When hitting a solid body, a hypersonic shock wave follows the projectile, creating damage far removed from the actual path of the projectile.

Haha. You had me going there for a minute, with the comment about "several courses on wound ballistics". But if you actually believe there's such a thing as a "hypersonic shock wound", then... well. The entire concept is a fantasy. It apparently spread from tall-tales spun by marksmen in the Korean/Vietnam wars.

No comment on the lasers, that's out of my area of expertise.

Anti-munition laser batteries have already been deployed defensively by modern armies. It would be easy to target piloted aircraft with these, or create smaller versions that can give infantry 3rd degree burns from a 6km range. But no research has been permitted (or at least admitted).

According to the article,
"REXX is a procedural language that allows programs and algorithms to be written in a clear and structured way."

At least one of the implementations has been ported to tons of platforms and, to me, it doesn't seem to be dead.

Limitations: You may only file one claim per PayPal payment

Claims must be filed within 30 days of the PayPal payment

Does not cover cases where you are disappointed with the item you have received

You are limited to two PayPal Buyer Protection refunds per calendar year. If this limit is exceeded, there is no guarantee for full recovery. You will be awarded only what can be recovered from the seller. However, it is possible that the claim can be resolved through the Buyer Complaint Process.

You must be willing to provide information during the investigation process. If we cannot obtain the necessary information the case may be cancelled without a refund.

This is a great reference site for Pay Pal, Ebay and transactions in general.

Not saying Pay Pal is safe, it's dangerous as fuck, but wanted to correct the above "informative" posts timeline.

Radar Secret Service springs into action!

There's no denying that games can invoke an emotional response from the player, but they're typically limited to a very small set. Games are fantastic at fear, excitement and victory, but there's very little else.

There are exceptions, obviously. The article hypothesises about a failed military mission in which you fail to save your teammates and feel sad for them in your defeat. I'd say Operation Flashpoint achieved this a long time ago, and along with Halo and several other games, managed to create a very convincing sense of cameraderie.

Online competitive games are another area where genuine emotion can run high, but again the range is limited to a small set of extremes - a notable exception being PSO, which (if you played with the right people) offered a huge amount of kindness and cooperation. The kind of thing Facade seems to be aiming for is a lot more interesting, though it could very easily go horribly wrong. The only similar game I know of is Galatea.

I've just remembered what my favourite gaming-invoked emotion is, actually: wonder. Set a game in the right kind of world, pull it off well, and simple exploration can be astonishing. A good example is Noctis, where exploration and discovery is the entire point of the game. It pulls it off marvellously, and is a refreshing antithesis to conventional gaming wisdom on almost every front.

squeak is nice, but the interface is nothing short of horrendous. a limited set of fonts, all ugly as sin, and tiny widgets that require precise aim, combined with a focus model nothing short of schizophrenic -- some places it's click, other places it's hover.

Indeed, the default look of Squeak is pretty bad. But the issues you mention are fixable, and fixed pretty easily in SqueakMap. Anti-aliased true-type fonts, loaded from .ttf files. Or, another package will allow you to hook into the Windows font system directly, making any font you can use in Windows accessable in Squeak.

You can use IceWM themes in Squeak. Nothing special- just load the packages, tell it where your IceWM themes folder is, and load.

Widgets have gotten a lot better, now that people aren't using the MVC backwards compatibility ones. You could always make them bigger, in your own apps or the built-in ones- even for those old-school MVC widgets.

The focus model has become less schizophrenic, as you put it, a few years ago. You can switch between click to focus and focus follows mouse. Even so, with focus follows mouse, you still have to *click* on a window to switch to it, to raise it; but if you want the window to pop up when you have the mouse pointer within the window's area, that is easy as well. Not a built-in preference, but literally something you can add with one line of code. I've shown folks on the Squeak IRC channel how to do it a couple times (#squeak on irc.freenode.net), it makes a neat demo. With what other windowing system could you claim that?

Once you get past the "look i can drag widgets in and tweak their properties" playground, squeak leaves you absolutely aimless and adrift, with an absolute lack of any API documentation whatsoever on real applications.

As I said, documentation isn't great. It isn't as bad as you're saying; perhaps you were forced to use an old version 5 year back at GA Tech or something. I learned Smalltalk and Squeak quite easily years ago without one book or formal API reference. There are countless examples on how to do stuff, within the image and outside of it.

And frankly the squeak object browser is not all that hot -- I'll take the tree-based browser view that modern C++ and Java IDE's like eclipse provide over the dated and klunky listbox-based smalltalk browser any day.

Yeah, you must've been stuck with Squeak 2.6 at GA Tech. Probably mad that the prof made you use Squeak rather than C++ or Java for learning OOP, too.

There are tree-based browsers for any Smalltalk implementation, with the exception of GNU Smalltalk. There are object and class browsers that take it far beyond the standard class browser of Smalltalk-80 or the Eclipse IDE. These include the Whisker Browser, the Star Browser, the Refactoring Browser and others. I personally really like the Whisker Browser and use it about half of the time, with the old school browser the rest.

Even with more advanced tools, it is hard to dis the standard Class Browser in Squeak. It was a tool created in the late 1970s, and still kicked the asses of most tools for C++ and Java until Eclipse. Even something so simple as the default class browser can be a very powerful tool. Far more useful than a flat file.

You're right.. it's an elaborate publicity stunt.

All will be revealed on SUNDAY!, SUNDAY!, SUNDAY!!!!!

So here are some pictures I leeched before it was Slashdotted:

Picture 1 Pretty Self Explanitory
Picture 2 Photo from the Viking missions
Picture 3 Color corrected photo from the Pathfinder lander
Picture 4 Original image from the Pathfinder

So here are some pictures I leeched before it was Slashdotted:

Picture 1 Pretty Self Explanitory
Picture 2 Photo from the Viking missions
Picture 3 Color corrected photo from the Pathfinder lander
Picture 4 Original image from the Pathfinder

So here are some pictures I leeched before it was Slashdotted:

Picture 1 Pretty Self Explanitory
Picture 2 Photo from the Viking missions
Picture 3 Color corrected photo from the Pathfinder lander
Picture 4 Original image from the Pathfinder

So here are some pictures I leeched before it was Slashdotted:

Picture 1 Pretty Self Explanitory
Picture 2 Photo from the Viking missions
Picture 3 Color corrected photo from the Pathfinder lander
Picture 4 Original image from the Pathfinder

NASA is indeed hiding something. Check out the original photo, before NASA photoshopped it.

http://j.bruce.home.mindspring.com/realmars.jpg

credit goes to "madmikee" on corvetteforum.com for this

Does anybody remember doing this with model rockets? There was one model that came with a Plexiglas payload and a specially fitted camera. The camera took 110 film (I think), and snapped a single shot at the moment when the engine's ejection charge blew off the nose cone.

See, e.g., here.

Inevitably, everyone I knew would pull out the camera and launch lizards (frogs, bugs, etc.) instead.

"For 2003, his display sports over 200,000 lights, each string is controlled by computer to light to the tune of a Radio Station playing christmas music..."

So what happens when you stop feeding in traditional Christmas stuff and pipe something like Bob Rivers 'Twisted Christmas' into it?

I wonder if it would act anything like a Teddy Ruxpin with a 'Metallica' tape (appropriately encoded on the animation data track, of course) installed?

And here are the jpgs conveniently tar.gz'ed:

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/qrio.jpg.tar.gz

(No need to mirror these. Thanks!)

I presume you've got the other files. If you can host them all, then here's the 6th vid.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony6.wmv

The other links are now broken. Sorry.

gah..

So my links were poor and didn't include the br tags, and slashdot won't just let me post the links, so I need to say something, thereby wasting space and bandwidth all around. How is this helpful!?

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

gah..

So my links were poor and didn't include the br tags, and slashdot won't just let me post the links, so I need to say something, thereby wasting space and bandwidth all around. How is this helpful!?

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

gah..

So my links were poor and didn't include the br tags, and slashdot won't just let me post the links, so I need to say something, thereby wasting space and bandwidth all around. How is this helpful!?

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

gah..

So my links were poor and didn't include the br tags, and slashdot won't just let me post the links, so I need to say something, thereby wasting space and bandwidth all around. How is this helpful!?

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

gah..

So my links were poor and didn't include the br tags, and slashdot won't just let me post the links, so I need to say something, thereby wasting space and bandwidth all around. How is this helpful!?

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv
http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

Try this next one, then.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/

The images are displayed there (from my end, anyway). Here are five of the videos (there is a sixth larger one for which I haven't the space.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

Try this next one, then.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/

The images are displayed there (from my end, anyway). Here are five of the videos (there is a sixth larger one for which I haven't the space.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

Try this next one, then.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/

The images are displayed there (from my end, anyway). Here are five of the videos (there is a sixth larger one for which I haven't the space.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

Try this next one, then.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/

The images are displayed there (from my end, anyway). Here are five of the videos (there is a sixth larger one for which I haven't the space.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

Try this next one, then.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/

The images are displayed there (from my end, anyway). Here are five of the videos (there is a sixth larger one for which I haven't the space.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

Try this next one, then.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/

The images are displayed there (from my end, anyway). Here are five of the videos (there is a sixth larger one for which I haven't the space.)

http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony1.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony2.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony3.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony4.wmv http://www.mindspring.com/~ahaning/sony5.wmv

(those vector graphics displays they used were, for the time, amazing)

Not only did the movie blow chunks, it used "borrowed" footage to boot!

...a nation full of people with a) no patience and b) a very short attention span

Aren't you being redundantly repetitive with that statement?

Oh, sorry, I thought you wanted an argument

In the Operating Systems Comparison section, ESR fails to take note of the Lisp Machine. It's instructive to note that Lisp Machine hackers were the main contributors to the Unix-Haters Handbook and the Unix-Haters mailing list.

They also killed a friend of mine's brother.