Whilst I've been using PayPal for about 8 years now and find it's very useful for paying seller, one fact irks me somewhat, with a premier account they skim money off ALL transactions you receive even if the sender is using funds held in their PayPal account.
So basically they can charge a lot of money just to make one person's account balance go down and another go up - that's never happened when I've done a bank transfer within the UK.
I absolutely DETEST flashing lights on bikes, I once almost ran over some twunt because I couldn't tell that it was a cyclist or even how far away he was, going to pull out onto a road I checked my mirrors and saw a blinking light (night time, countryside - no streetlights) which I thought was one of those warning lights on skips so started to pull out but luckily my passenger alerted me to the fact it was a cyclist moments before I would have run him over.
You won't have that problem when I'm out cycling at night, 60 LED front light (mostly dipped to 18 LEDs when other road users are around), 8 bright rear red LEDs embedded behind the reflector so car drivers don't get dazzled (another thing I hate about shitty bike back lights - either they want to blind anyone behind them or they're just pathetic) but the piece-de-resistance are the red(back) & white(front) side LEDs; in the end caps that go on the axles I embedded single bright LEDs which have been shaved down so the light is spread almost 180 degrees meaning at night I am visable from ALL angles.
LED lighting on bikes when done right is very good, recently I did my own LED bike lighting setup which is built-into the reflectors, on the back are a couple of oblong red reflectors with 8 red LEDs mounted behind the clear plastic (works suprisingly well as the light is spread out though around 180 degrees), but the front light is something special as I drilled 60 3mm holes in a standard CatEye white reflector and embedded 60 bright 3mm LEDs into it.
The 60 LEDs are split into two (wiring wise), 18 in the middle and the other 42 around them, the end result is that with a switch on the handlebars I can flick between low/off/high with an extra momentary button for hi-beaming cars/people. Cycling along unlit roads/cycle paths is amazing, you can see *everything* when all 60 front LEDs are on, what helps is that the 3mm LEDs produce a very nice beam spread - the brightness gradient from the center outwards is very smooth, far better than most 5mm LEDs.
I've been lent a Chumby for a while, you're right they do currently insert 3rd party advertisment widgets into your own channels you can't remove, but that's only half the annoyance because the other half is I'm not in America and the adverts are currently targeted at Americans.
One would hope eventually you could pay for a widget subscription that stops any 3rd party advertisment widgets from being inserted into your channels - this would be especially useful for companies who want the content on Chumby's they sell to be wholly controlled by them, ie you buy a Chumby from company X who are using it's capabilities to display information from company X so they don't want you seeing adverts popping up from company Y & Z etc.
Has anyone else watched the 1st season of Burn Notice? The main character is almost like a modern-day MacGyver, especially with his use of on-hand materials and with the voice-over narration of his MacGyveresque antics like RDA did in MacGyver. And just how many times can I say MacGyver in this MacGyver related post?
I think Jeffrey Donovan would make a half-decent MacGyver (damnit, I said it again).
If you add "127.0.0.1 rds.yahoo.com" into your hosts file to stop these miscreants from potentially screwing with your computer if you accidentally click on an rds.yahoo.com link, will it have any detremental effect to using any of Yahoo's other services?
In the UK the manufacturer can be liable for repairs/replacment for up to 6 years, depending on various factors like what kind of product and how much you spent on it - for example you'd expect a fridge freezer, washing machine or cooker to last for many years, but not a laptop or PC.
Check out the Sale of Goods Act 1979: http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/wirral/Consnews09.htm
"$100 doesnt buy much these days...there is a reason that laptops dont sell for under $450...they cost money"
My 4gb Asus Eee cost me £240 (about $490), I've been using it regularly for over 5 months now and it's still going strong, several scratches on the outside because I've not felt the need to be gentle with it because there's no spinning disc inside that's suseptable to shock damage, I find the keyboard absolutely fine to touch-type with and some of the keys are getting more shiny as they're used.
If the trend of manufacturers to keep coming up with the next best "Eee killer" is anything to go by then the prices will over time drop and one day you will be able to buy a brand new $100 laptop that performs as well as the Eee but I can't see that happening anytime within the next year or so.
Has anyone else seen the "Masters of Science Fiction" episode "Watchbird"? If you haven't, do.
Avoiding the technical issues of having an autonomus flying robot that can stun & kill people, the actual story of how politicians would use something developed for military use decide that a modified version could work just as well for domestic use, isn't far from the truth as has been shown here in the UK when a council used the RIPA to spy on a family for a month (including watching them in their house and following them in their car) because they applied for their 3-year old to go to a primary school and the council wanted to make sure the family wasn't cheating the system.
It proves that is the powers are there for the people in charge to use then there's no way in hell they won't eventually (ab)use those powers.
I keep finding out famous people died or tragic events happen through b3ta because suddenly everyone's photoshopping pics of the people/event, then I pop over to news.bbc.co.uk to find out what really happened.
Give it a chance, only 3 episodes have so far been aired, the first two I admit weren't up to their usual par but the third was great, although I expect my friends and most people's reaction to be a resounding "huh?" because they haven't seen Heavy Metal.
"It's only a matter of time until some demented furrie uses tux's "talk" feature for the purpose of fellation."
Tuxjob?
oh my admin that feels so good
oh yeah, oh oh slow down, oh yeah
oohh yeah!
who's your data! who's your daataa!
oh my admin
oh now play with my tarball, play with my tarball
ohhh that feels so good
now just compress them into a gzip
ohhhh my admin I love it when you
uh-oh slow down
I absolutely loved Robot Wars when it was shown here in the UK, one of the tv hilights of the week for me, seeing machines bash the shit out of each other is much more entertaining than any boxing match or wrestling match.
I'd heard about Battle Bots in the midst of watching Robot Wars and eventually one of the tv stations here aired a few shows, what a complete let down it was! there was some serious hostility of the opponents being portrayed on screen, wether it was real or staged it just felt nasty compared to the UK's Robot Wars where the teams would help each other out because they were mainly there for the whole entertainment & experience, not to gloat over their wins.
I would hope there's more friendly rivalry in the upcoming Battle Bots instead of nasty "I'm better than you" type taunts & attitude, but being an American show I don't hold out much hope, except perhaps that someone will torrent the shows because I really miss seeing robots beat the crap out of each other, half because of the fights and strategy involved and half because I love seeing the ingenuity and designs of the robots.
"but they are even going after iPods and cell-phone data - going as far as to copy all of your contacts, call history, and take the SIM chip out of your phone."
I'd love to see them try and take the SIM chip out of my phone, the manufacturer glued it in with epoxy!
It's not just camera batteries, the lithium-ion on my electric bike really suffers in the cold during the winter, it's very noticable how quickly the capacity drops when charged and/or used in near freezing conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst I've been using PayPal for about 8 years now and find it's very useful for paying seller, one fact irks me somewhat, with a premier account they skim money off ALL transactions you receive even if the sender is using funds held in their PayPal account.
So basically they can charge a lot of money just to make one person's account balance go down and another go up - that's never happened when I've done a bank transfer within the UK.
Daylight fucking robbery.
"Let's stop piddlefucking around and admit that planes are now airborne maximum security prisons."
I hope I never get on a plane and see Nicholas Cage, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Dave Chappelle & Danny Trejo on it.
If there's an emergency meeting will one of those come and find you wherever you are? even if you're on the toilet?
"Ahh! I told you never to call me on this wall! This is an unlisted wall!" - President Skroob, Spaceballs
I absolutely DETEST flashing lights on bikes, I once almost ran over some twunt because I couldn't tell that it was a cyclist or even how far away he was, going to pull out onto a road I checked my mirrors and saw a blinking light (night time, countryside - no streetlights) which I thought was one of those warning lights on skips so started to pull out but luckily my passenger alerted me to the fact it was a cyclist moments before I would have run him over.
You won't have that problem when I'm out cycling at night, 60 LED front light (mostly dipped to 18 LEDs when other road users are around), 8 bright rear red LEDs embedded behind the reflector so car drivers don't get dazzled (another thing I hate about shitty bike back lights - either they want to blind anyone behind them or they're just pathetic) but the piece-de-resistance are the red(back) & white(front) side LEDs; in the end caps that go on the axles I embedded single bright LEDs which have been shaved down so the light is spread almost 180 degrees meaning at night I am visable from ALL angles.
LED lighting on bikes when done right is very good, recently I did my own LED bike lighting setup which is built-into the reflectors, on the back are a couple of oblong red reflectors with 8 red LEDs mounted behind the clear plastic (works suprisingly well as the light is spread out though around 180 degrees), but the front light is something special as I drilled 60 3mm holes in a standard CatEye white reflector and embedded 60 bright 3mm LEDs into it.
The 60 LEDs are split into two (wiring wise), 18 in the middle and the other 42 around them, the end result is that with a switch on the handlebars I can flick between low/off/high with an extra momentary button for hi-beaming cars/people. Cycling along unlit roads/cycle paths is amazing, you can see *everything* when all 60 front LEDs are on, what helps is that the 3mm LEDs produce a very nice beam spread - the brightness gradient from the center outwards is very smooth, far better than most 5mm LEDs.
What's with the HTML on this "story"? it's totally fucked up!
"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy."
I've been lent a Chumby for a while, you're right they do currently insert 3rd party advertisment widgets into your own channels you can't remove, but that's only half the annoyance because the other half is I'm not in America and the adverts are currently targeted at Americans.
One would hope eventually you could pay for a widget subscription that stops any 3rd party advertisment widgets from being inserted into your channels - this would be especially useful for companies who want the content on Chumby's they sell to be wholly controlled by them, ie you buy a Chumby from company X who are using it's capabilities to display information from company X so they don't want you seeing adverts popping up from company Y & Z etc.
Has anyone else watched the 1st season of Burn Notice? The main character is almost like a modern-day MacGyver, especially with his use of on-hand materials and with the voice-over narration of his MacGyveresque antics like RDA did in MacGyver. And just how many times can I say MacGyver in this MacGyver related post?
I think Jeffrey Donovan would make a half-decent MacGyver (damnit, I said it again).
If you add "127.0.0.1 rds.yahoo.com" into your hosts file to stop these miscreants from potentially screwing with your computer if you accidentally click on an rds.yahoo.com link, will it have any detremental effect to using any of Yahoo's other services?
/Comicbook store guy
In the UK the manufacturer can be liable for repairs/replacment for up to 6 years, depending on various factors like what kind of product and how much you spent on it - for example you'd expect a fridge freezer, washing machine or cooker to last for many years, but not a laptop or PC.
Check out the Sale of Goods Act 1979: http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/wirral/Consnews09.htm
"$100 doesnt buy much these days...there is a reason that laptops dont sell for under $450...they cost money" My 4gb Asus Eee cost me £240 (about $490), I've been using it regularly for over 5 months now and it's still going strong, several scratches on the outside because I've not felt the need to be gentle with it because there's no spinning disc inside that's suseptable to shock damage, I find the keyboard absolutely fine to touch-type with and some of the keys are getting more shiny as they're used.
If the trend of manufacturers to keep coming up with the next best "Eee killer" is anything to go by then the prices will over time drop and one day you will be able to buy a brand new $100 laptop that performs as well as the Eee but I can't see that happening anytime within the next year or so.
"Do you have a source for this?"
At the time of posting this the story about the UK council using RIPA to spy on a family is at the top of The Register's news items: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/11/poole_council_ripa/
Has anyone else seen the "Masters of Science Fiction" episode "Watchbird"? If you haven't, do.
Avoiding the technical issues of having an autonomus flying robot that can stun & kill people, the actual story of how politicians would use something developed for military use decide that a modified version could work just as well for domestic use, isn't far from the truth as has been shown here in the UK when a council used the RIPA to spy on a family for a month (including watching them in their house and following them in their car) because they applied for their 3-year old to go to a primary school and the council wanted to make sure the family wasn't cheating the system.
It proves that is the powers are there for the people in charge to use then there's no way in hell they won't eventually (ab)use those powers.
Improved sound quality? What for? I've got tinnitus you insensitive clod.
Engadget should just reply saying "We respect your trademark for the color Magenta, however, we are using the colour Magenta."
I keep finding out famous people died or tragic events happen through b3ta because suddenly everyone's photoshopping pics of the people/event, then I pop over to news.bbc.co.uk to find out what really happened.
Give it a chance, only 3 episodes have so far been aired, the first two I admit weren't up to their usual par but the third was great, although I expect my friends and most people's reaction to be a resounding "huh?" because they haven't seen Heavy Metal.
Top posting?
"... the same netkops that get after everyone for misspellings and top posting?"
"It's only a matter of time until some demented furrie uses tux's "talk" feature for the purpose of fellation."
Tuxjob?
oh my admin that feels so good
oh yeah, oh oh slow down, oh yeah
oohh yeah!
who's your data! who's your daataa!
oh my admin
oh now play with my tarball, play with my tarball
ohhh that feels so good
now just compress them into a gzip
ohhhh my admin I love it when you
uh-oh slow down
u.. u.. ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh
don't mv
I'll go get you an fsck
I absolutely loved Robot Wars when it was shown here in the UK, one of the tv hilights of the week for me, seeing machines bash the shit out of each other is much more entertaining than any boxing match or wrestling match.
I'd heard about Battle Bots in the midst of watching Robot Wars and eventually one of the tv stations here aired a few shows, what a complete let down it was! there was some serious hostility of the opponents being portrayed on screen, wether it was real or staged it just felt nasty compared to the UK's Robot Wars where the teams would help each other out because they were mainly there for the whole entertainment & experience, not to gloat over their wins.
I would hope there's more friendly rivalry in the upcoming Battle Bots instead of nasty "I'm better than you" type taunts & attitude, but being an American show I don't hold out much hope, except perhaps that someone will torrent the shows because I really miss seeing robots beat the crap out of each other, half because of the fights and strategy involved and half because I love seeing the ingenuity and designs of the robots.
"but they are even going after iPods and cell-phone data - going as far as to copy all of your contacts, call history, and take the SIM chip out of your phone."
I'd love to see them try and take the SIM chip out of my phone, the manufacturer glued it in with epoxy!
It's not just camera batteries, the lithium-ion on my electric bike really suffers in the cold during the winter, it's very noticable how quickly the capacity drops when charged and/or used in near freezing conditions.
Actually the details and link to the users wiki was posted by himself to http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=6380