One day at work I found an old pneumatic router that appeared unused. This thing was nothing more than a big aluminum casting around the bearings and turbine. At 120 psi, the thing took about 45 seconds to spool up to speed, which I'd estimate to be around 60,000 rpm. Imagine your drive spinning 4 times as fast with 10 times the mass!
I wish we had kept that thing- it sounded like an f-16 JFS spooling up.
I've actually found that those farm boys are the ones with the MOST broken bones and torn ligaments. They don't learn from the pain, they relish it. I work with many of these people, and they all have a perverse need to destroy their bodies over and over again. They then usually bitch about the effete, pretentious doctors who couldn't put them back together quite right.
But I guess if I need a titanium rod up my back to make me not be a creampuff, so be it.
I would like to add to your list of jobs that require prequalification:
-Day care provider -Nurse/Doctor/Pharmacist -Teacher -Police Officer -Psychologist/Psychiatrist -Most religious figures -Gun safety instructors
A parent is often required to be all of the above, in some capacity or another. A day care can be shut down because of one mild spanking, yet my neighbors retain all of their screaming, malnourished, and abused crotch fruit. And they get paid to not work. And yes, I'm bitter as hell because I get to come home to an apartment that reeks of pot because that is all they do.
>>You could say that the iPod Touch/iPhone is a better calculator than my old Casio FX-1200 (circa 1979) for the same reasons, except, of course, the core functionality of the calculator on the iPod touch isn't there and it's not scientific unlike the FX-1200.
Just FYI, the January update changed the calculator to a scientific version. I haven't used it yet; ymmv.
>>So there are known open vulnerabilities in IE7 and Firefox and no >>one wanted a free 10k in cash (20k in total) for just running them >>plus 2 expensive laptops? Are you kidding me?
I should point out to you that the contest disallowed previously-known exploits. The only hacks allowable in this contest were brand-new/zero-day.
I'm not sure if/how that changes your position at all, but I thought I'd mention it.
Imagine if you will that the seeds of life could be found, at one point in time, on millions of planets with drastically varying situations; e.g., very close to a star, very far away from a star, on a gas giant, on a planet like Venus, on a planet relatively close to a strong gamma-ray source, etc.
After a few billion years, you'd find that life as we know it had failed to exist on the planets that were not compatible with carbon-based life. The planets that were conducive to life, such as Earth, would be teaming with it. Some life might point to their very existence as proof of an intelligent design, but the more intellectually advanced members of the species might realize that the situation could be no different. A non-existent or dead observer cannot observe that "Hey, life really sucks here next to this quasar, why the hell would an intelligent designer put us here?"
The fact that we are here, and alive, tells us NOTHING about an intelligent designer. The fact that we are conveniently located has nothing to do with design- it has everything to do with necessary conditions for life (as we know it). If conditions were different, we wouldn't be here to comment on how crappy the conditions were.
This argument reminds me of an old Chick Tract that stated that since bananas were so delicious and convenient to eat, that it proved the existence of a kind and benevolent god. I noted with some interest that the Tract ignored things like walnuts, lactose intolerance, rhubarb leaves, salmonella, poi, and various other poisonous or troublesome foods. Fun.
>> long time ago (car analogy incoming) people used to work on their >>own vehicles much more so than today. The onboard computer stopped >>a lot of that, and general complexity stopped more.
I wonder if that was caused more by the generation gap than anything else. You'll notice that the onboard diagnostic computers were becoming widespread about the time the Me gen and Gen X were beginning to drive. The new paradigm affects everyone, of course, but the old-timers still retain at least part of that 'fix it' mentality while the 16-30 year-olds are used to things being replaceable.
"No user-serviceable parts inside": How often did you see that on stuff before the 80's?
I apologize if someone else has already pointed this out-
Ostensibly, the carbon for these balls would come from the atmosphere; therefore, releasing them back in to the atmosphere would not cause a net gain in CO2 levels. Unless we store these buckyballs for millions of years (like oil) thus allowing the planet to settle in to a carbon-sparse ecology, there really is no ill effect from this process.
You excrete CO2 all the time when you breathe. That carbon comes from recently-expired organic sources and is part of the current carbon cycle. Fossil fuels on the other hand essentially are causing a net increase in carbon because it had been sequestered long enough to not play a part in our ecology/climate.
You might want to try out Amazon's music download service. It sounds like it would work for you, at least for music that you can stand to listen to in 256kbs.
Their catalog used to be limited, but I'm finding more and more good stuff on there. Amazon is the best thing to ever happen to iTunes customers- not only is it a better deal in and of itself, it is also forcing Apple to improve its own service.
I know you're trolling, but still I thought I'd respond: You don't need an iPod to use iTunes or listen to music you bought from iTunes. And, AFAIK, the DRM-free iTunes tracks will play on other devices.
I'm just saying that we shouldn't cheapen actual spouse/child abuse by coming up with 'battered employees', 'battered students', etc. Being made to feel bad about yourself at work is a far cry from the helplessness and pain of being afraid of the person you live with.
I think you are overestimating the portion of their business that depends on the iPod. While the iPod did amazing things for their profits, they would still be a fairly healthy company without them. Your company doesn't need to be a multinational pseudomonopoly to be considered a success, IMO.
-Apple cannot be bought by MS afaik due to anti-trust laws.
-The iPod has been around for ages in terms of technology, and yet no one has topped it. Luck?
Look, I'm willing to point out the things that Apple does poorly (iWork, the new iMovie, NTFS support, stupid expresscard slot), but some products deserve the success that they achieve. Nike Air Force Ones do not deserve their popularity, for example (IMO). The iPod, the Walkman, bubblewrap, the Wii, MS Word- these are products that do deserve their popularity because of their utility and value.
I don't own any stock in Apple anymore, so I have to say: Amazon's music download service beats the pants off of iTunes. Very few of the tracks I want are in the iTunes Plus catalog, whereas EVERYTHING I want can be found DRM-free and high quality at Amazon. In the very beginning, Amazon's selection was wanting. Now that they are about equal (as far as I can tell), I almost always buy my music from Amazon.
And this is coming from someone who owns only Apple computers at home. Hopefully Apple will see where their customers are going and change to meet our needs.
I guess I just don't mind so much that some other company has asshole management. The employees are obviously getting something out of it, and I am getting something out of it, so I'm OK with it. This is not like 'battered' ANYTHING syndrome. No one is going home with broken arms.
But then I'm also not the kind of person to boycott companies with different political views from me. I judge people based on who they are, and I judge products based on what they are. I try to keep the two separate.
You may as well call the leader in any market 'lucky' by that logic. BMW sure is lucky that Ford doesn't make a competing car that comes even close; 3M is lucky that no one makes tape nearly as well as them...
>>While I personally cannot STAND Apple ads (and any ad targeted towards my age group in >>general, the 18-34s) they obviously have done something right
Yeah, I wish Apple would take some cues from jam and hard candy commercials.
"Do you miss the old-timey goodness of freeBSD computing? Apple does. Enjoy the smooth, creamy texture of Apple's Aqua interface- with just a pinch of Expose, our window manager is just right.
Slashdot Mirror
What about Pro-life vs. Pro-choice?
Here you have an example of the exact opposite, even if it simply a matter of semantics.
Pro-life vs anti-life
Pro-choice vs anti-choice
Of course, this illustrates the power of language over meaning.
-b
Perhaps there was a cloud of strontium, lithium, or potassium ions moving through the area....
-b
One day at work I found an old pneumatic router that appeared unused. This thing was nothing more than a big aluminum casting around the bearings and turbine. At 120 psi, the thing took about 45 seconds to spool up to speed, which I'd estimate to be around 60,000 rpm. Imagine your drive spinning 4 times as fast with 10 times the mass!
I wish we had kept that thing- it sounded like an f-16 JFS spooling up.
-b
Wow, that brought back some memories... Same here, except it was Diablo, not warcraft.
:)
I still have the 9-foot long cable, and nothing to plug it in to
-b
I've actually found that those farm boys are the ones with the MOST broken bones and torn ligaments. They don't learn from the pain, they relish it. I work with many of these people, and they all have a perverse need to destroy their bodies over and over again. They then usually bitch about the effete, pretentious doctors who couldn't put them back together quite right.
But I guess if I need a titanium rod up my back to make me not be a creampuff, so be it.
-b
>>People like risk because the thrill of danger followed by the realization of success pushes our pleasure buttons.
I like Risk for the thrill of taking Africa and then Asia. I'm coming for you, Europe!
-b
I would like to add to your list of jobs that require prequalification:
-Day care provider
-Nurse/Doctor/Pharmacist
-Teacher
-Police Officer
-Psychologist/Psychiatrist
-Most religious figures
-Gun safety instructors
A parent is often required to be all of the above, in some capacity or another. A day care can be shut down because of one mild spanking, yet my neighbors retain all of their screaming, malnourished, and abused crotch fruit. And they get paid to not work. And yes, I'm bitter as hell because I get to come home to an apartment that reeks of pot because that is all they do.
-b
>>You could say that the iPod Touch/iPhone is a better calculator than my old Casio FX-1200 (circa 1979) for the same reasons, except, of course, the core functionality of the calculator on the iPod touch isn't there and it's not scientific unlike the FX-1200.
Just FYI, the January update changed the calculator to a scientific version. I haven't used it yet; ymmv.
-b
>>So there are known open vulnerabilities in IE7 and Firefox and no
>>one wanted a free 10k in cash (20k in total) for just running them
>>plus 2 expensive laptops? Are you kidding me?
I should point out to you that the contest disallowed previously-known exploits. The only hacks allowable in this contest were brand-new/zero-day.
I'm not sure if/how that changes your position at all, but I thought I'd mention it.
-b
Imagine if you will that the seeds of life could be found, at one point in time, on millions of planets with drastically varying situations; e.g., very close to a star, very far away from a star, on a gas giant, on a planet like Venus, on a planet relatively close to a strong gamma-ray source, etc.
After a few billion years, you'd find that life as we know it had failed to exist on the planets that were not compatible with carbon-based life. The planets that were conducive to life, such as Earth, would be teaming with it. Some life might point to their very existence as proof of an intelligent design, but the more intellectually advanced members of the species might realize that the situation could be no different. A non-existent or dead observer cannot observe that "Hey, life really sucks here next to this quasar, why the hell would an intelligent designer put us here?"
The fact that we are here, and alive, tells us NOTHING about an intelligent designer. The fact that we are conveniently located has nothing to do with design- it has everything to do with necessary conditions for life (as we know it). If conditions were different, we wouldn't be here to comment on how crappy the conditions were.
This argument reminds me of an old Chick Tract that stated that since bananas were so delicious and convenient to eat, that it proved the existence of a kind and benevolent god. I noted with some interest that the Tract ignored things like walnuts, lactose intolerance, rhubarb leaves, salmonella, poi, and various other poisonous or troublesome foods. Fun.
This idea is know as the anthropic principle. It makes for interesting reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic
-b
And you shall receive...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare#Works
>> long time ago (car analogy incoming) people used to work on their
>>own vehicles much more so than today. The onboard computer stopped
>>a lot of that, and general complexity stopped more.
I wonder if that was caused more by the generation gap than anything else. You'll notice that the onboard diagnostic computers were becoming widespread about the time the Me gen and Gen X were beginning to drive. The new paradigm affects everyone, of course, but the old-timers still retain at least part of that 'fix it' mentality while the 16-30 year-olds are used to things being replaceable.
"No user-serviceable parts inside": How often did you see that on stuff before the 80's?
-b
What would happen if the US simply didn't honor the debt they owed to China? Besides the possibility of all-out war, that is.
-b
I apologize if someone else has already pointed this out-
Ostensibly, the carbon for these balls would come from the atmosphere; therefore, releasing them back in to the atmosphere would not cause a net gain in CO2 levels. Unless we store these buckyballs for millions of years (like oil) thus allowing the planet to settle in to a carbon-sparse ecology, there really is no ill effect from this process.
You excrete CO2 all the time when you breathe. That carbon comes from recently-expired organic sources and is part of the current carbon cycle. Fossil fuels on the other hand essentially are causing a net increase in carbon because it had been sequestered long enough to not play a part in our ecology/climate.
-b
I personally just used MPlayer or VLC for most things. I still do.
VLC FTW!
-b
That changed in the last version of quicktime. Update your program and full-screen viewing can be yours.
-b
Someone should tell him that a- many of those features are now standard (free) and b- all of those features can be found in other, free software.
Or someone could point out the difference between pro applications and OSes. But that's splitting hairs.
-b
You might want to try out Amazon's music download service. It sounds like it would work for you, at least for music that you can stand to listen to in 256kbs.
Their catalog used to be limited, but I'm finding more and more good stuff on there. Amazon is the best thing to ever happen to iTunes customers- not only is it a better deal in and of itself, it is also forcing Apple to improve its own service.
-b
I know you're trolling, but still I thought I'd respond: You don't need an iPod to use iTunes or listen to music you bought from iTunes. And, AFAIK, the DRM-free iTunes tracks will play on other devices.
Bye now,
b
I'm just saying that we shouldn't cheapen actual spouse/child abuse by coming up with 'battered employees', 'battered students', etc. Being made to feel bad about yourself at work is a far cry from the helplessness and pain of being afraid of the person you live with.
-b
I think you are overestimating the portion of their business that depends on the iPod. While the iPod did amazing things for their profits, they would still be a fairly healthy company without them. Your company doesn't need to be a multinational pseudomonopoly to be considered a success, IMO.
-Apple cannot be bought by MS afaik due to anti-trust laws.
-The iPod has been around for ages in terms of technology, and yet no one has topped it. Luck?
Look, I'm willing to point out the things that Apple does poorly (iWork, the new iMovie, NTFS support, stupid expresscard slot), but some products deserve the success that they achieve. Nike Air Force Ones do not deserve their popularity, for example (IMO). The iPod, the Walkman, bubblewrap, the Wii, MS Word- these are products that do deserve their popularity because of their utility and value.
-b
I don't own any stock in Apple anymore, so I have to say: Amazon's music download service beats the pants off of iTunes. Very few of the tracks I want are in the iTunes Plus catalog, whereas EVERYTHING I want can be found DRM-free and high quality at Amazon. In the very beginning, Amazon's selection was wanting. Now that they are about equal (as far as I can tell), I almost always buy my music from Amazon.
And this is coming from someone who owns only Apple computers at home. Hopefully Apple will see where their customers are going and change to meet our needs.
-b
I guess I just don't mind so much that some other company has asshole management. The employees are obviously getting something out of it, and I am getting something out of it, so I'm OK with it. This is not like 'battered' ANYTHING syndrome. No one is going home with broken arms.
But then I'm also not the kind of person to boycott companies with different political views from me. I judge people based on who they are, and I judge products based on what they are. I try to keep the two separate.
-b
You may as well call the leader in any market 'lucky' by that logic. BMW sure is lucky that Ford doesn't make a competing car that comes even close; 3M is lucky that no one makes tape nearly as well as them...
-b
>>While I personally cannot STAND Apple ads (and any ad targeted towards my age group in
>>general, the 18-34s) they obviously have done something right
Yeah, I wish Apple would take some cues from jam and hard candy commercials.
"Do you miss the old-timey goodness of freeBSD computing? Apple does. Enjoy the smooth, creamy texture of Apple's Aqua interface- with just a pinch of Expose, our window manager is just right.
"Apple Inc. remembers."
-b