this is cool, but... I always loved those pool cleaner bots that drive around the pool bottom and pick up debris. Could we get a rediculously complicated computer controlled one? let it be run by perl scripts and have a mysql database to log the ammount leaves picked up and ammount of urine in the pool. This will be served from the pool robot itself running a custom apache rig via an 802.11 underwater access point:)
While I agree the guy is, um, strange... its not the presence of a EM field thats dangerous... its more like being exposed to changes in flux thats a problem... Either by moving *your* body through the field, or the field changing somehow, IE alternatic current:)
You have to recall the universe is all about motion... the reason the earths field dosen't bother is us, because relative to us it is stationary.
The problem isn't of course any individual spammer but the problem as a whole... I think in any given day I recieve between 15 and 25 spams either via email or messenger, this is between quite a few accounts (10 email accounts, maybe 6 messenger accounts). Where do my rights not to be bothered with this bullshit start, and "free speech" begin... Im sure I spend (just) 5 mins a day deleting spams or closing AOL/ICQ spam windows... Thats 12 seconds per spam if I recieve 25 a day. Do the math, thats 30 *hours* a year dealing with spam.
Im sure you'll have lots of trollish responses, but one had best not be "then don't use email."
I was in your shoes to... I had been programming *seriously* since the age of 12 and set about getting a degree in my early 20s (I was writing videogames at age 13 with *my own* graphics libraries, accounting software for charaties at 15)...
I *thought* at the time I knew damn near everything there was to know and I could walk through the degree like I did my other educations (I was an extremely bright child).
Nothing could be further from the truth:) A good CS program is going to show you the *theoretical* side of computing -- and thats something your not often exposed to as a self taught man. After my ass kicking by the University of California Riverside (which has an extremly rigerous CS program) I have become a *much* better programmer -- hey, those stuffy edumacation types might know something after all!
this is true... however I look at the waters ability to wash things out of your body as an opertunity to put the *correct* things in:) Still one must be carefull and yours is good advice.
Hey, cute girls are exempt from all your complaints.
Never have truer words been spoken!
Water and foods that inhibit weight loss
on
Geeks and Weight-loss?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Water is *the single* most important dieting device for several reasons...
1: Breaking a fat molecule off of a lipid chain is a hydration reaction (I don't recall much more then that cuz its been years since I read that). The more water you have around, the more likely a reaction can occur:)
2: Its just good for you. Its almost impossible to drink too much water, it washes away all the shit you put in your body (however this includes nutrients so take vitamins).
3: It helps you loose weight because, if your drinking alot of water -- your not going to be very hungry very often..
Ive lost 30 pounds this year upping my water intake to around 2 gallons/day. At first this sounds like self abuse, but very strangely I *enjoy* drinking this much water. However, I can get up to use the restroom anytime Id like at work:)
If you want to seriously diet you must limit your intake of caffine, and of nitrates (hot dogs, baccon, processed/packaged meat etc), both which inhibit your bodies ability to loose weight. Also some compound in bananas does this as well, I dont what or why but my mother told me "at weight watchers they told us if you eat a banana, expect to loose no weight for two days"
the only other diet I've ever had any luck on is the atkins diet (protiend diet) but these diets are very dangerous and you shouldn't do it unless you've exhausted other options.
btw, IANAD (dietician), but these are my personal experiences
I have a buddy at my university whose constitution is similiar, hes only jewish when theres something to be offended by. The rest of the time is a heathen like the rest of us.
Lemme ask with your gal though, is there any work to be done *on* christmas ? My employer is shut down the 25th - 2nd so no work could be done if I wanted to go in, and we're about 90% Asian/hindu religions.
I recall once seeing a show about italy -- where they don't have alot of money to spend on water testing -- in a particular water facility, they have a plastic pipe that siphons some of the water coming into the system, and a trout that swims in the pipe (trout like to swim against the flow of the water IIRC?) and if the trout gets sick this is some indicator:)
Amen brother! What disgusted me about LOTR was they *completley* skipped the sound. There was *no* sound design in the movie (similar to art direction), no sound enviornments, and the score sucked! *I* have written better music then was in that movie on rainy days when I was bored.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is too long, and has no plot (running around the woods is *not* a plot), and you've got a real dog of a movie. I will give credit where it is due, almost all the actors gave an incredible performance, and it certainly *looked* amazing. But this movie is the pretty girl with nothing in her head.
I think people dont want to admit it wasn't that good.
I've been using computers, since, the mid 80's, granted we didnt have much cause to talk about a megabyte back then;), but we've *always* called a megabyte a megabyte and a decimal megabyte, "million bytes" [at first it seems too large, but its the same number of syllables as "megabyte"]. Its simple and self explanitory:) It works for other things two [pun intended], "thousand bytes", "billion bytes":)
This aside, powers of 2 is the only metric that is usefull (IMHO) on computers -- and if it weren't for HD manufacturers thinking they are tricking people (I wager they're just pissing people off), we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I think we're largely in agreement, save for that, I dont think your father *should* be using linux. If dosen't have the time to invest or the ability to learn, then its just not for him:)
With linux and the rest of the unixes, the buck stops with you, not bill, not best buy tech support:) I agree its unfourtanate that linux is difficult to use, but in the case of linux its no ones responsibility to make it easy to use:)
Microsoft has made tons of money selling an OS thats "easy to use". They've sold the line that computers should be easy to use:) I have a studio, and in that studio about a half dozen synthesizers... these puppies are *very* complicated machines, but when I buy them I don't expect them to be easy to use because by their very deffinition they are complicated:)
I believe what people think of as "easy to use" is not "easy to use" but "how much can I do without reading the manual." The answer for linux is "almost nothing", windows "a few things" and a korg triton rack "you may get some sounds out of it but you'll never figure out how to edit the effects.":)
Your almost on to something here:) Nobody wants to be *responsible* for anything -- this is the problem. The OEM dosen't want to provide tech support, the reseller (best buys etc.) dosen't want to provide support -- and lastly, the *USER* himself dosen't want to be responsible for learning anything. He'd rather just call someone to hold his hand through the problem... Everyone is actively trying to pass the buck
The most influence MS has had on the industry is changing the attitude of users, "If I don't understand this it's YOUR fault, I shouldn't have to learn anything." This is the legacy of bill.
People are completley content to use what they are comfortable with.
Funny anticdote to support my point: I work in a research lab as a sysadmin... a few years ago when I had just gotten the job, my boss comes up to me and asks,
"What do people use to read their email?"
"Umm, im not sure I understand the question?"
"You know, what would a CEO use to read his email"
... he then explains to me that for the last 9 years hes been using "tail" to read his mail and he dosen't much like the program...
"Hmmm, I've never heard of that email program before"
"no, its the unix command tail"
at this point I realized that he'd been running tail on his mail spool to read it for the last 9 years... (for the non-unix users, tail is a command which displays the last n lines of a file, in this case, his mail spool)... took about everything I had to not laugh:)
Ehh I've been programming in assembley for, 11 years now, so I think Im quite familiar with what it would take to implement space invaders on a 4 bit cpu, infact, I've *designed* 4 bit cpus...
So let me clarify my statement for every space monkey that thinks his perl scripts should be in the louvre:
Atari 2600 games don't have any art in them, by art I mean pictures/animations/full screen videos/detailed characters. No art direction, no concept art (save for the box). I would wager *most* of the sprites were made with the time honored method of drawing them on graph paper and then translating the shaded in boxes into bit maps.
By no music, I mean, The thing didn't make anything more then bleeps -- no sound designers were ever hired to make an atari2600 game, no composers, no studio ever recorded music for a 2600 game... (Unless you count those awfull atari music records:)
My point was and is that designing a 2600 game was attaniable by one industrious person. And this is why *development costs* were low.
This is not that unusual of a thing really... Professors need to engage students. Having a class about a subject they are interested in is ceartinily a way to do this...
At my university, (UC Riverside) there is a course on Star Trek! I think it focuses on ethinc issues or something.
In the world of atari the development costs were almost 0, so the only real risk was manufacturing cartridges that wouldn't sell -- thus it was somewhat common for games to be made but unreleased.
From what I know, usually 1 person was contracted to write the game, usually for a few thousand dollars... Remember there was no art to be done, no music to be written... just 4k of code:)
There was also lots of money to be made for a good game. Rick Mauer, was paid 11,000$ to make Space Invaders for the 2600. The game grossed over 100 million dollars! (source: despair 2000 calander:)
Re:"And we shall call it the 'Alan Parson's Projec
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 2
"Grand funk Railroad paived the way for Jefferson Airplane which paved the way for Jefferson Starship which in turn paved the way for The Alan Parsons Project which I think was some kind of hovercraft."
Steinberg Wavelab can automate by automatically finding track boundaries, your choice of plugins to clean it up is up to you... Arboretum Ray Gun, DART, Sound Forge Noise Reduction, all would be acceptable choices. I've had fairly good luck with the sond forge noise reduction plugin, but like all SF products its 16 bit.
However, a shitty sound card is going to do far more damage to the recording then the noise from the turn table. I would recommend an m-audio delta44 as probably the cheapest sound card that would fit the bill. You'll get a 97db DNR (in 24 bit mode) which is just better then the 96 db a cd can represent. The delta44 can be had for 270$ at 8thstreet.com...
If your not going to buy a professional (read: outboard) sound card for the job -- then don't bother with noise reduction and such because the EMI generated by your computer will end up in your recording and make taking a noise-print impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Can someone explain what the DiVX codec is if its not mpeg4? I was told it was a modified mpeg4 codec?
or is this just a myth ?
this is cool, but ... I always loved those pool cleaner bots that drive around the pool bottom and pick up debris. Could we get a rediculously complicated computer controlled one? let it be run by perl scripts and have a mysql database to log the ammount leaves picked up and ammount of urine in the pool. This will be served from the pool robot itself running a custom apache rig via an 802.11 underwater access point :)
this would be a proper geek project
While I agree the guy is, um, strange ... its not the presence of a EM field thats dangerous ... its more like being exposed to changes in flux thats a problem ... Either by moving *your* body through the field, or the field changing somehow, IE alternatic current :)
... the reason the earths field dosen't bother is us, because relative to us it is stationary.
You have to recall the universe is all about motion
Your a troll but not a good one :)
... I think in any given day I recieve between 15 and 25 spams either via email or messenger, this is between quite a few accounts (10 email accounts, maybe 6 messenger accounts). Where do my rights not to be bothered with this bullshit start, and "free speech" begin ... Im sure I spend (just) 5 mins a day deleting spams or closing AOL/ICQ spam windows ... Thats 12 seconds per spam if I recieve 25 a day. Do the math, thats 30 *hours* a year dealing with spam.
The problem isn't of course any individual spammer but the problem as a whole
Im sure you'll have lots of trollish responses, but one had best not be "then don't use email."
I was in your shoes to ... I had been programming *seriously* since the age of 12 and set about getting a degree in my early 20s (I was writing videogames at age 13 with *my own* graphics libraries, accounting software for charaties at 15) ...
:) A good CS program is going to show you the *theoretical* side of computing -- and thats something your not often exposed to as a self taught man. After my ass kicking by the University of California Riverside (which has an extremly rigerous CS program) I have become a *much* better programmer -- hey, those stuffy edumacation types might know something after all!
I *thought* at the time I knew damn near everything there was to know and I could walk through the degree like I did my other educations (I was an extremely bright child).
Nothing could be further from the truth
how long before the FCC declares itself the guardian of the gravtational frequency band and starts selling portions to the highest bidder? :)
this is true ... however I look at the waters ability to wash things out of your body as an opertunity to put the *correct* things in :) Still one must be carefull and yours is good advice.
as for the banana, your guess is as good as mine.
Never have truer words been spoken!
Water is *the single* most important dieting device for several reasons ...
:)
..
:)
1: Breaking a fat molecule off of a lipid chain is a hydration reaction (I don't recall much more then that cuz its been years since I read that). The more water you have around, the more likely a reaction can occur
2: Its just good for you. Its almost impossible to drink too much water, it washes away all the shit you put in your body (however this includes nutrients so take vitamins).
3: It helps you loose weight because, if your drinking alot of water -- your not going to be very hungry very often
Ive lost 30 pounds this year upping my water intake to around 2 gallons/day. At first this sounds like self abuse, but very strangely I *enjoy* drinking this much water. However, I can get up to use the restroom anytime Id like at work
If you want to seriously diet you must limit your intake of caffine, and of nitrates (hot dogs, baccon, processed/packaged meat etc), both which inhibit your bodies ability to loose weight. Also some compound in bananas does this as well, I dont what or why but my mother told me "at weight watchers they told us if you eat a banana, expect to loose no weight for two days"
the only other diet I've ever had any luck on is the atkins diet (protiend diet) but these diets are very dangerous and you shouldn't do it unless you've exhausted other options.
btw, IANAD (dietician), but these are my personal experiences
I have a buddy at my university whose constitution is similiar, hes only jewish when theres something to be offended by. The rest of the time is a heathen like the rest of us.
;-)
Lemme ask with your gal though, is there any work to be done *on* christmas ? My employer is shut down the 25th - 2nd so no work could be done if I wanted to go in, and we're about 90% Asian/hindu religions.
and is she cute?
dan
I recall once seeing a show about italy -- where they don't have alot of money to spend on water testing -- in a particular water facility, they have a plastic pipe that siphons some of the water coming into the system, and a trout that swims in the pipe (trout like to swim against the flow of the water IIRC?) and if the trout gets sick this is some indicator :)
point taken :)
Amen brother! What disgusted me about LOTR was they *completley* skipped the sound. There was *no* sound design in the movie (similar to art direction), no sound enviornments, and the score sucked! *I* have written better music then was in that movie on rainy days when I was bored.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is too long, and has no plot (running around the woods is *not* a plot), and you've got a real dog of a movie. I will give credit where it is due, almost all the actors gave an incredible performance, and it certainly *looked* amazing. But this movie is the pretty girl with nothing in her head.
I think people dont want to admit it wasn't that good.
I've been using computers, since, the mid 80's, granted we didnt have much cause to talk about a megabyte back then ;), but we've *always* called a megabyte a megabyte and a decimal megabyte, "million bytes" [at first it seems too large, but its the same number of syllables as "megabyte"]. Its simple and self explanitory :) It works for other things two [pun intended], "thousand bytes", "billion bytes" :)
This aside, powers of 2 is the only metric that is usefull (IMHO) on computers -- and if it weren't for HD manufacturers thinking they are tricking people (I wager they're just pissing people off), we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I think we're largely in agreement, save for that, I dont think your father *should* be using linux. If dosen't have the time to invest or the ability to learn, then its just not for him :)
:) I agree its unfourtanate that linux is difficult to use, but in the case of linux its no ones responsibility to make it easy to use :)
:) I have a studio, and in that studio about a half dozen synthesizers ... these puppies are *very* complicated machines, but when I buy them I don't expect them to be easy to use because by their very deffinition they are complicated :)
:)
With linux and the rest of the unixes, the buck stops with you, not bill, not best buy tech support
Microsoft has made tons of money selling an OS thats "easy to use". They've sold the line that computers should be easy to use
I believe what people think of as "easy to use" is not "easy to use" but "how much can I do without reading the manual." The answer for linux is "almost nothing", windows "a few things" and a korg triton rack "you may get some sounds out of it but you'll never figure out how to edit the effects."
Your almost on to something here :) Nobody wants to be *responsible* for anything -- this is the problem. The OEM dosen't want to provide tech support, the reseller (best buys etc.) dosen't want to provide support -- and lastly, the *USER* himself dosen't want to be responsible for learning anything. He'd rather just call someone to hold his hand through the problem ... Everyone is actively trying to pass the buck
... a few years ago when I had just gotten the job, my boss comes up to me and asks,
...
... (for the non-unix users, tail is a command which displays the last n lines of a file, in this case, his mail spool) ... took about everything I had to not laugh :)
The most influence MS has had on the industry is changing the attitude of users, "If I don't understand this it's YOUR fault, I shouldn't have to learn anything." This is the legacy of bill.
People are completley content to use what they are comfortable with.
Funny anticdote to support my point: I work in a research lab as a sysadmin
"What do people use to read their email?"
"Umm, im not sure I understand the question?"
"You know, what would a CEO use to read his email"
... he then explains to me that for the last 9 years hes been using "tail" to read his mail and he dosen't much like the program
"Hmmm, I've never heard of that email program before"
"no, its the unix command tail"
at this point I realized that he'd been running tail on his mail spool to read it for the last 9 years
Ehh I've been programming in assembley for, 11 years now, so I think Im quite familiar with what it would take to implement space invaders on a 4 bit cpu, infact, I've *designed* 4 bit cpus...
:)
So let me clarify my statement for every space monkey that thinks his perl scripts should be in the louvre:
Atari 2600 games don't have any art in them, by art I mean pictures/animations/full screen videos/detailed characters. No art direction, no concept art (save for the box). I would wager *most* of the sprites were made with the time honored method of drawing them on graph paper and then translating the shaded in boxes into bit maps.
By no music, I mean, The thing didn't make anything more then bleeps -- no sound designers were ever hired to make an atari2600 game, no composers, no studio ever recorded music for a 2600 game... (Unless you count those awfull atari music records
My point was and is that designing a 2600 game was attaniable by one industrious person. And this is why *development costs* were low.
This is not that unusual of a thing really ... Professors need to engage students. Having a class about a subject they are interested in is ceartinily a way to do this ...
At my university, (UC Riverside) there is a course on Star Trek! I think it focuses on ethinc issues or something.
In the world of atari the development costs were almost 0, so the only real risk was manufacturing cartridges that wouldn't sell -- thus it was somewhat common for games to be made but unreleased.
... Remember there was no art to be done, no music to be written ... just 4k of code :)
From what I know, usually 1 person was contracted to write the game, usually for a few thousand dollars
There was also lots of money to be made for a good game. Rick Mauer, was paid 11,000$ to make Space Invaders for the 2600. The game grossed over 100 million dollars! (source: despair 2000 calander:)
"Grand funk Railroad paived the way for Jefferson Airplane which paved the way for Jefferson Starship which in turn paved the way for The Alan Parsons Project which I think was some kind of hovercraft."
(homer):)
Yes, if only being slapped by them counted! :)
I think the RIAA just sacrifices more virgins per year then we do :)
You screwed up the bit --
:)
its, "What kind of music do you listen to here?"
"Oh we have both kinds, country and western"
get your blues brothers right if your gonna tell their jokes
Steinberg Wavelab can automate by automatically finding track boundaries, your choice of plugins to clean it up is up to you... Arboretum Ray Gun, DART, Sound Forge Noise Reduction, all would be acceptable choices. I've had fairly good luck with the sond forge noise reduction plugin, but like all SF products its 16 bit.
...
However, a shitty sound card is going to do far more damage to the recording then the noise from the turn table. I would recommend an m-audio delta44 as probably the cheapest sound card that would fit the bill. You'll get a 97db DNR (in 24 bit mode) which is just better then the 96 db a cd can represent. The delta44 can be had for 270$ at 8thstreet.com
If your not going to buy a professional (read: outboard) sound card for the job -- then don't bother with noise reduction and such because the EMI generated by your computer will end up in your recording and make taking a noise-print impossible.
I tell ya what I'd do ... Get your hot horny 18 year olds, increase their bust size, and then boom with the viagra! 99$ well spent :)