Try to get the other occupants to set the alarm when you are away. Get an alarm that has the ability to set it via a cell phone. Keep your bushes and shrubs cut back and don't give would be thieves a place to hide. Also choose prickly bushes up close to the house. Good out door lighting. Motion detector activated lights are good as it won't piss off the neighbors as much and save electricity. Also make sure the lights are high enough that someone can't just unplug or disable them.
Don't put stickers on your house advertising you have guns, or what brand alarm you are using. Guns are a popular theft item. More so than your computers I would guess. Having an ADT sticker (or what ever brand alarm) simply tells a good thief what they need to do to circumvent your alarm. Most ADT alarms can be defeated by simply cutting the phone line. Almost none have a cellular card in them.
I don't know if you or your family are dog people, but dobermans are fantastic family dogs. I have one who is very well trained. He's very friendly to people when I tell him it's OK. But Allah, God, Buda, Eris, Xenu help you if you come in the house uninvited. I also have two other dobermans who are not as well trained as he is, but they follow his lead. When he doesn't like something, they don't either.
It's Comcast. You can have the month that's right after December and right before January. We'll call it Comcastuary. It lasts one femtosecond. It's a short month, but you can download as much as you want while it lasts. No bandwidth cap.
I've been playing video/computer games for a ridiculously long time now. In the past if a game was released before it was thoroughly tested, it flopped. Even if it was patched later.
Battlecruiser 3000AD being one example. The first studio that released it ran into financial trouble and rushed it out the door before it was ready. Patches were eventually released and development continues still, at least the last time I looked It's had a somewhat cult following, but never attained the status it probably could have.
I don't have the time to play games I used to. But most are in even worse shape than BC3KAD was at it's release. I have no desire to do free beta testing for something that I already paid $60 for. And now most games have downloadable content that I have to pay for too. Sometimes on the day of release. If I wait a year or two, I can usually pick up the game in patched form with several, if not all, add-ons for $30.
Temperature? Peace of cake! Nasty insect born diseases and drastically reduced supply of food and fresh water? There will be a much less than 6 billion of us left after it all goes down.
Meh, so we will have to reevaluate the toxicity of DDT again.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that useless land and useful land switch places in a 1:1 ratio.
That still leaves one big problem: what do you do with all the people and infrastructure that are in the new desert?
It's a problem whose only solutions are extremely expensive.
Well if all of the populated areas suddenly become deserts solar suddenly becomes more viable as you don't have the issue with transmission lines over long distances.
How far back do you want to go? On higher end sports cars it has been around since the late 50s with things like the BMW 507, MB 300SL (aluminum body was an option), and AC Ace. The light weight aluminum body of AC ace is one of the reasons that Carol Shelby used it as a platform for the Shelby Cobra. There are probably others from the late 50s and early 60s but those are the ones I know of.
Yes, of course there have been cars made of aluminum, for at least 6 decades now. My entire point was that aluminum bodied cars are not mainstream and that carbon fiber is probably more common already.
There were a total of 252 BMW 507's produced. The Mercedes 300SL had a total production run of 3258 units over an 11 year period. Of which 29 were ordered with an all aluminum body. I don't know the numbers for how may AC Aces' were built, but judging by what they sell for, not many. The Cobras were even less so.
Back in the early 1990's Carol Shelby had somewhere around 100 Cobra frames that were registered. You could buy a brand new 1960-something Cobra starting at $750K and up, depending on what options you wanted. The way the racing rules worked back then there had to be a set number of registered frames in order to race a car as production. Since there were very few people buying Cobras, there was no need to finish the cars. The aluminum was so thin on those cars that stones that got kicked up by other cars would go right through the body. Several racers joked that the body was made from aluminum foil. Again, this is not a mainstream car.
My entire point was not that there have never been cars that had aluminum bodies. It was that aluminum is not all that mainstream in car bodies and that carbon fiber is, probably, already as prevalent as aluminum currently, if not more so.
I read about the Ford's. I know they've been replacing parts with aluminum for a few years on the F series. But the all aluminum one isn't out quite yet is it? I thought that was for the 2015 model year. The XJ also based at around $70K and went up from there. About the same as a Z06. I think the NSX was around $80K. My point was that all aluminum bodied cars are not that mainstream. While Jaguar makes some beautiful looking cars, you can barely keep them out of the shop mechanically. And lets face it, Corvettes and the NSX are expensive toys. Not mainstream. My entire point was that Carbon fiber is already as mainstream as aluminum in car bodies.
Now the only question is how long before carbon fiber vehicle construction becomes as common as aluminum?
And just how mainstream are all aluminum bodied cars? There are several that have hoods and trunks that are. But for the most part only higher end cars make use of it. The Z06 corvette uses an aluminum frame with some carbon fiber body panels. The ZR1 also uses an aluminum frame with more carbon fiber. Nissan NSX used aluminum bodies. As far as I know , those are the cheapest cars you can get that are aluminum. Carbon fiber after market parts are very mainstream already. I see all kinds of cars that people replaced the stock hoods and front, rear bumper covers with carbon fiber.
While not main stream, the Consulier GTP was the first production carbon fiber car. Actually it was a carbon fiber monocoque body. ANd built in the late 1980's/early 1990's. It was panned as being one the the ugliest cars built. But I would have loved to have owned one.
Who in their right mind would make a deep sea research submarine out of wood, which has holes in it! I mean we are in the 21st century. We rarely make boats out of wood anymore, We defiantly don't make million dollar research devices out of wood, and if they did, they would use high quality wood, not ones with holes in it!
The holes are in it to keep the pressure equalized. Duh.
Researchers then woke the participants and asked them to detail any dreams they could remember. People who had received 40 Hz of current
Of which 70% dreamt they were Ted Bundy at his execution. Another 10% thought they were they were Horace Pinker from Shocker. , and 5% thought they were Michael Clark Duncan in the Green Mile
The US also has a bunch of commissioned diesel-powered ships that can carry and operate aircraft (Osprey-class). They are called amphibious transport warships, and have a displacement similar to that of WWII carriers. So the sarcasm is a little over the top.
No. It is not. An aircraft carrier is a very specific type of ship and the US has none that are not nuclear powered. You don't call a Coast Guard ship that has a helicopter on it an aircraft carrier. Nor would you call a private yacht or corporate vessel with a helicopter an aircraft carrier. You said it yourself, the diesel ships with Osprey's are amphibious transports.
Exactly. Bush wrote his Executive Orders in such a way that subsequent Presidents cannot undo them. This is 100% his fault and until Congress acts with a 2/3 majority, the NSA cannot stop it. Blaming Obama, who did not create this can cannot stop it, is unproductive. He has said many times that he does not support this. Why include him in your scorn when he agrees with the public that it should be stopped? That is unless you're a Republican, and you're trying to irrationally blame him.
It's very easy to include the president in anyone's scorn on this subject. One of the topics he campaigned under was the premise that EO abuse must be stopped. And yet if things aren't going the way he wants, or as quickly as he would like them to, all of the sudden use of the executive power is somehow warranted.
Like most/all politicians (both democrats and republicans) he agrees with the public when it's convenient. People in this country really need to get over this "us vs. them" mentality. It doesn't matter if you are a democrat or a republican. Black, white, yellow, red or purple. Gay, hetero, both, or neither. We are all americans. It's really sad to see us all at each others throats. We have been comfortable, and extremely safe (barring a few blips) for so long that we have started turning on each other. And our "leaders" have not helped the situation for quite some time now.
Right. I continue to be baffled by people that will buy crappy headphones with some random musicians name on them and think they'll in any way sound good.
Agreed.
In speakers, size matters. Yes, you can get big crappy sounding speakers. But the one thing you'll never get small good sounding speakers. Laws of physics and all. This is also why Bose sucks and have been conning guys that watch infomercials for decades.
Again, I agree. Bose takes it to a whole new level of suck though. They never post specs, and have sued enough reviewers over the years that most won't even mention them. There have been people who posted specs on their systems from time to time and they are astonishingly bad. I read somewhere that a replacement paper cone "woofer" in their satellite systems will set you back $12. Quality stuff that is.
If you want affordable, good sounding speakers, you have to build them yourself. Get one of versions of these:
https://sites.google.com/site/...
I suppose it depends on your definition of affordable. But building the cabinets yourself is by no means a guarantee that they will sound good, or even better than commercially available loudspeakers. It doesn't take master carpenter skills, but you certainly need a decent tool set and be at least somewhat competent. I've built some pretty nice cabinets in the past. But they can take a lot of time to do correctly and I value my time a bit more than when I was younger. I've also heard some pretty awful sounding home built cabinets too.
They don't have a huge amount of bass, but I'm betting they will be the best speaker most slashdotters have ever heard. And you can put them together with wood glue, scotch tape and a soldering iron.
I needed a small 5.1 system for our living-room that needed to pass the wife approval factor. It's made by Martin Logan and I'd guess it would give your speakers run for their money. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but I needed a small foot print. and since I needed 5 speakers plus a sub,I was able to pick it up on clearance for $300. No assembly required.
I don't consider myself an audiophile, but I do have good ears for my age. Probably (in part) from playing various instruments starting with the violin when I was five years old. Fortunately my wife had no say in what I put in my media room. Between the sub (HSU VTF3) and Infinity beta floor standers (50), center (360)and surrounds (ES250)I have in there my system goes from 16 Hz to 20Khz (+/-3) and 12Hz to 40Khz (-6). The upper limit of what I can hear at the high end has fallen off, but I can still clearly hear a little past 22KHz. My setup works very well for both 7.1 channel video and 2 channel music listening. I'd guess it would be considered a high end consumer grade system. Most audiophiles would probably not care for it as they are not boutique speakers. But it's also by no means the best sounding system I've ever heard. So no, I doubt those "overnight sensations" are anywhere near the best sounding speaker I've heard.
That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.
Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?
Probably all of us would receive it.
After all, they would understand our limitations, by virtue of examining our transmissions, and adjust their
transmissions accordingly.
You're assuming they would want to talk to us at all. Perhaps we are too backward to even bother saying hello to. Or perhaps they are preparing a sneak attack. Granted, we have little that could harm an advanced race, but why give us a couple of decades to prepare. If they've been watching us, they would certainly have figured out that humans are pretty good at finding creative ways of killing things when threatened.
According to the BBC summary they also orient according to the sun and stars. This disrupts one of three systems.
Except the sun and stars are not both visible at the same time. So it disrupts one of two systems effectively. How many birds of you see flying at night anyhow?
Slashdot Mirror
Try to get the other occupants to set the alarm when you are away. Get an alarm that has the ability to set it via a cell phone. Keep your bushes and shrubs cut back and don't give would be thieves a place to hide. Also choose prickly bushes up close to the house. Good out door lighting. Motion detector activated lights are good as it won't piss off the neighbors as much and save electricity. Also make sure the lights are high enough that someone can't just unplug or disable them.
Don't put stickers on your house advertising you have guns, or what brand alarm you are using. Guns are a popular theft item. More so than your computers I would guess. Having an ADT sticker (or what ever brand alarm) simply tells a good thief what they need to do to circumvent your alarm. Most ADT alarms can be defeated by simply cutting the phone line. Almost none have a cellular card in them.
I don't know if you or your family are dog people, but dobermans are fantastic family dogs. I have one who is very well trained. He's very friendly to people when I tell him it's OK. But Allah, God, Buda, Eris, Xenu help you if you come in the house uninvited. I also have two other dobermans who are not as well trained as he is, but they follow his lead. When he doesn't like something, they don't either.
That comma is not needed, and the magazine title should be italicized at least.
That comma is not needed.
Which month are they going to give us?
It's Comcast. You can have the month that's right after December and right before January. We'll call it Comcastuary. It lasts one femtosecond. It's a short month, but you can download as much as you want while it lasts. No bandwidth cap.
You do realise solar power comes from the sun right? not from the desert.
You do realize that clouds and rain will hamper solar panel power output and that deserts have very little rain or clouds, right?
I've been playing video/computer games for a ridiculously long time now. In the past if a game was released before it was thoroughly tested, it flopped. Even if it was patched later.
Battlecruiser 3000AD being one example. The first studio that released it ran into financial trouble and rushed it out the door before it was ready. Patches were eventually released and development continues still, at least the last time I looked It's had a somewhat cult following, but never attained the status it probably could have.
I don't have the time to play games I used to. But most are in even worse shape than BC3KAD was at it's release. I have no desire to do free beta testing for something that I already paid $60 for. And now most games have downloadable content that I have to pay for too. Sometimes on the day of release. If I wait a year or two, I can usually pick up the game in patched form with several, if not all, add-ons for $30.
Temperature? Peace of cake! Nasty insect born diseases and drastically reduced supply of food and fresh water? There will be a much less than 6 billion of us left after it all goes down.
Meh, so we will have to reevaluate the toxicity of DDT again.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that useless land and useful land switch places in a 1:1 ratio. That still leaves one big problem: what do you do with all the people and infrastructure that are in the new desert? It's a problem whose only solutions are extremely expensive.
Well if all of the populated areas suddenly become deserts solar suddenly becomes more viable as you don't have the issue with transmission lines over long distances.
How far back do you want to go? On higher end sports cars it has been around since the late 50s with things like the BMW 507, MB 300SL (aluminum body was an option), and AC Ace. The light weight aluminum body of AC ace is one of the reasons that Carol Shelby used it as a platform for the Shelby Cobra. There are probably others from the late 50s and early 60s but those are the ones I know of.
Yes, of course there have been cars made of aluminum, for at least 6 decades now. My entire point was that aluminum bodied cars are not mainstream and that carbon fiber is probably more common already.
There were a total of 252 BMW 507's produced. The Mercedes 300SL had a total production run of 3258 units over an 11 year period. Of which 29 were ordered with an all aluminum body. I don't know the numbers for how may AC Aces' were built, but judging by what they sell for, not many. The Cobras were even less so.
Back in the early 1990's Carol Shelby had somewhere around 100 Cobra frames that were registered. You could buy a brand new 1960-something Cobra starting at $750K and up, depending on what options you wanted. The way the racing rules worked back then there had to be a set number of registered frames in order to race a car as production. Since there were very few people buying Cobras, there was no need to finish the cars. The aluminum was so thin on those cars that stones that got kicked up by other cars would go right through the body. Several racers joked that the body was made from aluminum foil. Again, this is not a mainstream car.
My entire point was not that there have never been cars that had aluminum bodies. It was that aluminum is not all that mainstream in car bodies and that carbon fiber is, probably, already as prevalent as aluminum currently, if not more so.
The new Ford F-150 is aluminum bodied, and the 2003 Jaguar XJ (made by Ford) also had one.
Matter of fact, Ford has been experimenting with aluminum car bodies since the 1990's.
I read about the Ford's. I know they've been replacing parts with aluminum for a few years on the F series. But the all aluminum one isn't out quite yet is it? I thought that was for the 2015 model year. The XJ also based at around $70K and went up from there. About the same as a Z06. I think the NSX was around $80K. My point was that all aluminum bodied cars are not that mainstream. While Jaguar makes some beautiful looking cars, you can barely keep them out of the shop mechanically. And lets face it, Corvettes and the NSX are expensive toys. Not mainstream. My entire point was that Carbon fiber is already as mainstream as aluminum in car bodies.
Now the only question is how long before carbon fiber vehicle construction becomes as common as aluminum?
And just how mainstream are all aluminum bodied cars? There are several that have hoods and trunks that are. But for the most part only higher end cars make use of it. The Z06 corvette uses an aluminum frame with some carbon fiber body panels. The ZR1 also uses an aluminum frame with more carbon fiber. Nissan NSX used aluminum bodies. As far as I know , those are the cheapest cars you can get that are aluminum. Carbon fiber after market parts are very mainstream already. I see all kinds of cars that people replaced the stock hoods and front, rear bumper covers with carbon fiber.
While not main stream, the Consulier GTP was the first production carbon fiber car. Actually it was a carbon fiber monocoque body. ANd built in the late 1980's/early 1990's. It was panned as being one the the ugliest cars built. But I would have loved to have owned one.
Who in their right mind would make a deep sea research submarine out of wood, which has holes in it! I mean we are in the 21st century. We rarely make boats out of wood anymore, We defiantly don't make million dollar research devices out of wood, and if they did, they would use high quality wood, not ones with holes in it!
The holes are in it to keep the pressure equalized. Duh.
Researchers then woke the participants and asked them to detail any dreams they could remember. People who had received 40 Hz of current
Of which 70% dreamt they were Ted Bundy at his execution. Another 10% thought they were they were Horace Pinker from Shocker. , and 5% thought they were Michael Clark Duncan in the Green Mile
I was going to say you're wrong, but the John F. Kennedy's been mothballed. I must have slept through that.
Meh. It's only been 7 years since it was decommissioned.
The US also has a bunch of commissioned diesel-powered ships that can carry and operate aircraft (Osprey-class). They are called amphibious transport warships, and have a displacement similar to that of WWII carriers. So the sarcasm is a little over the top.
No. It is not. An aircraft carrier is a very specific type of ship and the US has none that are not nuclear powered. You don't call a Coast Guard ship that has a helicopter on it an aircraft carrier. Nor would you call a private yacht or corporate vessel with a helicopter an aircraft carrier. You said it yourself, the diesel ships with Osprey's are amphibious transports.
Let's see how many times we can use this word in the headline and summary to get people all riled up.
The fnords are strong with this one.
You get that he's being paid to pollute this forum with this type of confusion, right? This is his 9-5 job.
So you think that this is two different ACs? I was kinda leaning toward it being one with multiple personality disorder.
Exactly. Bush wrote his Executive Orders in such a way that subsequent Presidents cannot undo them. This is 100% his fault and until Congress acts with a 2/3 majority, the NSA cannot stop it. Blaming Obama, who did not create this can cannot stop it, is unproductive. He has said many times that he does not support this. Why include him in your scorn when he agrees with the public that it should be stopped? That is unless you're a Republican, and you're trying to irrationally blame him.
What the hell are you talking about? President Obama nullified Executive Order 13,233 He also reversed GWB's policy on stem cell research And he reversed E.O. 13201 Which was also an EO signed by GWB. I could go on, but it would be pointless, I'm sure
It's very easy to include the president in anyone's scorn on this subject. One of the topics he campaigned under was the premise that EO abuse must be stopped. And yet if things aren't going the way he wants, or as quickly as he would like them to, all of the sudden use of the executive power is somehow warranted.
Like most/all politicians (both democrats and republicans) he agrees with the public when it's convenient. People in this country really need to get over this "us vs. them" mentality. It doesn't matter if you are a democrat or a republican. Black, white, yellow, red or purple. Gay, hetero, both, or neither. We are all americans. It's really sad to see us all at each others throats. We have been comfortable, and extremely safe (barring a few blips) for so long that we have started turning on each other. And our "leaders" have not helped the situation for quite some time now.
How much will it cost? Six million dollars perhaps?
Six million will get you a matching pair of legs and an eye to go with the arm.
Marvell was a Marvel character, though ;P
That's Captain to you.
Right. I continue to be baffled by people that will buy crappy headphones with some random musicians name on them and think they'll in any way sound good.
Agreed.
In speakers, size matters. Yes, you can get big crappy sounding speakers. But the one thing you'll never get small good sounding speakers. Laws of physics and all. This is also why Bose sucks and have been conning guys that watch infomercials for decades.
Again, I agree. Bose takes it to a whole new level of suck though. They never post specs, and have sued enough reviewers over the years that most won't even mention them. There have been people who posted specs on their systems from time to time and they are astonishingly bad. I read somewhere that a replacement paper cone "woofer" in their satellite systems will set you back $12. Quality stuff that is.
If you want affordable, good sounding speakers, you have to build them yourself. Get one of versions of these: https://sites.google.com/site/...
I suppose it depends on your definition of affordable. But building the cabinets yourself is by no means a guarantee that they will sound good, or even better than commercially available loudspeakers. It doesn't take master carpenter skills, but you certainly need a decent tool set and be at least somewhat competent. I've built some pretty nice cabinets in the past. But they can take a lot of time to do correctly and I value my time a bit more than when I was younger. I've also heard some pretty awful sounding home built cabinets too.
They don't have a huge amount of bass, but I'm betting they will be the best speaker most slashdotters have ever heard. And you can put them together with wood glue, scotch tape and a soldering iron.
I needed a small 5.1 system for our living-room that needed to pass the wife approval factor. It's made by Martin Logan and I'd guess it would give your speakers run for their money. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but I needed a small foot print. and since I needed 5 speakers plus a sub,I was able to pick it up on clearance for $300. No assembly required.
I don't consider myself an audiophile, but I do have good ears for my age. Probably (in part) from playing various instruments starting with the violin when I was five years old. Fortunately my wife had no say in what I put in my media room. Between the sub (HSU VTF3) and Infinity beta floor standers (50), center (360)and surrounds (ES250)I have in there my system goes from 16 Hz to 20Khz (+/-3) and 12Hz to 40Khz (-6). The upper limit of what I can hear at the high end has fallen off, but I can still clearly hear a little past 22KHz. My setup works very well for both 7.1 channel video and 2 channel music listening. I'd guess it would be considered a high end consumer grade system. Most audiophiles would probably not care for it as they are not boutique speakers. But it's also by no means the best sounding system I've ever heard. So no, I doubt those "overnight sensations" are anywhere near the best sounding speaker I've heard.
I agree ET would have similar behavior... if they are technically advanced they would most certainly be social, curious and have empathy.
And if they evolved from something analogous to ants, how much empathy do you think they will have?
If you knew the natives only spoke smoke signals you would have to be even less educated than the natives to respond with radio.
The more capable civilization adjusts communication means to fit the capabilities of less capable.
How'd that work out for the native americans? Or the Mayans?
That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.
Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?
Probably all of us would receive it.
After all, they would understand our limitations, by virtue of examining our transmissions, and adjust their transmissions accordingly.
You're assuming they would want to talk to us at all. Perhaps we are too backward to even bother saying hello to. Or perhaps they are preparing a sneak attack. Granted, we have little that could harm an advanced race, but why give us a couple of decades to prepare. If they've been watching us, they would certainly have figured out that humans are pretty good at finding creative ways of killing things when threatened.
This is exactly why they crap on our cars, picnic tables, and heads. It's retaliation, pure and simple. :)
That's why they need to be fitted with these.
According to the BBC summary they also orient according to the sun and stars. This disrupts one of three systems.
Except the sun and stars are not both visible at the same time. So it disrupts one of two systems effectively. How many birds of you see flying at night anyhow?