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For God's sake, I had to get through 3/4 of the page before I finally found a post that was on-topic. :P

One should note that there are higher organisms that are parthenogenic as well -- for example, some species of whiptail lizards. Interestingly enough, they often still have to "mate" (even though they're all females) in order to induce ovulation and thus pregnancy. As for the dominant theories considering them:

"One suggestion is that the parthenogenic species are newcomers on the scene, having existed for only hundreds of years, rather than the hundreds of thousands or millions of years of most reptile species (Wright, 1993). It is noted that the geographic ranges of parthenogenic whiptails is significantly less than that of bisexual species (Schall, 1993). Perhaps the parthenogens haven't been around long enough to displace their bisexual competitors.

Another suggestion is that the parthenogenic species are opportunistic 'weeds,' adaptable enough to quickly exploit new or disturbed ecosystems. In support of this hypothesis is the fact that the reproductive capacity per generation for an all female population is (nominally) double that of a population comprising half males. The studies reported in the present work were not of long enough duration to convincingly confirm or refute this notion. The issue remains unresolved. "

(from http://home.pcisys.net/~dlblanc/articles/whiptail. php)
I don't know how long it's been since they diverged, though. Sexual selection and the horizontal genetic drift it allows is an "aid" to evolution, but it's not necessary.

Sales is about conning people, gaining their confidence, getting them to like you. Any con man knows that the pitch for every mark is different. The first step to conning someone is figuring out who they are. When you know who you're selling to, then you know how to sell to them. A good con man can size a mark up in under 5 seconds and have him eating out of their hand in less than a minute.

But you don't have to be a master con artist to appreciate how this works. The best example is a job interview. How would you dress if you were going to work for IBM? What sort of body language would you employ? What pseudo-persona would you invent to best match your understanding of the kind of person they are looking for? How would you alter these things in response to your perception of the individuals conducting the interview? How would these things differ if you were looking for a job at Amazon? At Google? As a construction worker? Or as a fry cook at the local Bob's Big Boy?

Most people understand these things intuitively. The need to alter your presentation of yourself to fit your audience is something most discover when they're still toddlers. Unfortunately most hackers (!cracker) are addled with "the knack" http://home.pcisys.net/~tbc/sounds/dilknack.wav and as a result just don't understand why the middle aged man in the nice suit reacted negatively to their Hooters T-shirt, greasy hair, and 5-day shadow -- not to mention their personality quirks.

Selling ANYTHING is 50% selling yourself, and that means understanding your target audience and being able to manipulate them.

Another example of this is picking up girls. What do you do? You show the girl what she's looking for. Figuring out what she's looking for is easy, all you have to do is study her for a few minutes, even less if she's with her friends. Assume the persona that is going to pique her interest, and go in for the kill. Dishonest? You bet, but it sure beats lame pick-up lines, unless of course pick-up likes are part of your schtick.

Lee

This article, like most articles of its type, contains misleading generalities and outright factual errors.

1) Apache was NOT the first free web server. Both CERN httpd and NCSA's httpd predate it, and both were free.
2) Netscape and Spyglass's version of Mosaic were the first commercial WEB BROWSERS. The article states that both were the first commercial GUI's. Last time I checked the first commercial GUI was to be found on the Xerox Star circa 1981. Terminology matters, when you do not use a term correctly you create confusion and/or make yourself look like an arse.

The problem with these sorts of articles, and the magazines in which they appear, is that they're being written by journalists. I can't tell you the number of times over the years that I've had the misfortune of reading something computer related in a magazine or newspaper and discovered multiple serious factual errors. I've come to accept this from periodicals that don't normally deal with computers or technology, but I'm pretty much fed up with finding errors in PC magazine on a regular ongoing basis.

Who are the people who write these articles? There are some people who are interested in computers but aren't quite there yet in terms of their understanding. Many are not blessed with "the knack" (http://home.pcisys.net/~tbc/sounds/dilknack.wav) Others are so blessed, but are still neophytes. Either way they're very good at creating and passing on erroneous information about computers and technology.

Lee

It's known to happen in Snakes too. The general theory is that if a female is approaching the end of her reproductive stage, and she can't find a mate, it's more beneficial to the species for her to clone her own offspring, than to not have any offspring at all.

On eBay, these cameras range from $50 to $100 with a 50mm f/1.7 lens.

The meter battery is very, very hard to find, as it is a 1.35v mercury cell (which is now banned - too many ended up in landfills). Several options exist to work around this. Zinc-air (Wein) cells work at almost the same voltage (1.4v), but wear out after six months of use. The meter system can be recalibrated by a relatively lightly skilled electronics geek to work with 1.5v silver cells. And there is a product that encapsulates the v76 series silver cells and which drops the voltage of the 1.5v cell to the mercury's 1.35v.

This line of Minolta works with the MC or MD series lenses, the latter ("Metered Diaphram") required for full automatic operation with the XD and X series (e.g. XD-5, XD-11, XG, X-700, etc.) bodies. Look for Minolta Rokkor lenses -- they are very high quality lenses. A 28mm, 50mm and 135mm will provide a great range of lenses for an amateur photographer.

The only major problem with older Minolta cameras is the light seals decay and become sticky over the years. It costs around $40 to have them replaced by a competent camera repair store, but they are harder and harder to find. Check out Garry's repair site for help.

And for all the people who will post about "I want this on my car" - no, you don't. Many municipalities have a legal limit of about 90% on car windows - pass less than this and the nice police officer can ticket you. Since 50% < 90%, if the cop wants to give you grief he can.

Depends on where you live: assuming you're talking about the U.S., tint laws vary from state to state. Many states will allow you to pass much less than 90% through your windows -- often 50% or less, for which this material would be suited just fine. Also, regulations tend to be more lenient if you're talking about side/back windows rather than front.

This guy has a summary of the limits from each state, or you can just google "tint laws" in the state of your choice.

Alan Moon's Gathering of Friends is going on right now too. It is a 10-day board gaming event. Personal invitation from Moon only. Check out Terminal City Gamers and Plenary Games for "live" reports from the event.

Quote: Posted 12/14/02 06:37:02 (GMT) by Kwalish
It looks like our fearless BioDevs have their work cut out for them when it comes to Bink. I mean, they have to either convince Rad Game Tools to port Bink to Linux, which is a possibilty, however that might take too long (if such a qualifier exists at this point in the game ). One option, if it is possible from a legal standpoint, would be to recode all of the video using MPEG and release it with the client download and when it installs that, replace all of the video content then. However this could be a problem in the future for the expansion packs, as the video would have to be recoded in those as well. Another option is to see if a bink-to-whatever conversion program exists for Linux (I highly doubt this) and convert the videos during the install. [ Edited By Kwalish: Saturday, 14 December 06:44AM (GMT) ]

OK, guys, maybe this is somewhere we can do something practical to help.

I am a good general purpose geek, and I expect a lot of the rest of us here are. I've never actually written a CODEC, and while i've reverese engineered file formats before I've never tackled a compressed video stream. However, it can't be impossible.

How many people would be up for setting up a sourceforge project for either an open source BINK player or an open source BINK2mpeg converter (actually both would use most of the same components). This way we could make an actual positive contribution to getting games onto Linux. We probably would not be finished quick enough to make a real difference for NWN - three months is damn tight for such a project - but it might help BioWare and other companies with future cross-platform games.

We've also all got sample BINK files to analyse, and a google search for 'bink file format' found me a useful text from someone (Mike Melanson) who has already started to analyse the format.

So, come on, who's in?

I hope they are going to do it with humans, since for some species, parthenogenesis is the normal way to reproduce.

But let's be honest. We always knew it: Sex is best.

I talked my boss into letting us take on 1 or 2 small sites that were hosted free on Linuxbox. We are a startup hosting service, so right now we can't take more than 2, but I really wanted to help out in any way possible (to give back to the community that has given so much.)

Email me at extremeforce@pcisys.net if your site just lost free hosting on linuxbox. (This is my personal email. We are not pcisys.net)