I'll admit I'm wrong on one count: The picture wasn't staged. I knew there were two flags, that part of my post was a typographical error more than anything. Not the number of flags matters much.
But, I did do my faithful Slashdotter duty and ran a Google search, and the top link did not contradict the information I had.
Like the historic photo of the soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Turns out, they'd already put up a flag earlier in the day, but the photographer missed it. So he convinced them to raise it again, and posed six soldiers so he could get a good shot. The battle for Iwo Jima continued for a while after that, and three of the six were later killed in action in that battle. One of them became a drunk, and as far as I know the other two lived relatively normal lives. (The longest surviving one died in 1994.)
I'm gonna go ahead and say that Fox makes more selling advertising than Cartoon Network. If Futurama's ratings can't bring in the advertising dollar to justify new episodes on Fox, I don't think they'll do it on Cartoon Network. What does make money on Cartoon Network, however, are reruns. They're cheap and they bring in ratings that are excellent for cable.
Even cheaply made shows like ATHF only warrant a handful of episodes a year. You just can't cut Futurama to ATHF's level. And if Fox couldn't make it profitable, why can CN?
Humans should be celebrated for their uniqueness and creativity.
Specifically speaking of films and television, I always thought it was weird that directors seem to get more credit than the writers. Sure, a director shapes the vision of the movie and guides the performance of the actors, but the writer defines the movie in the broad sense. The director takes a script and turns it into a movie, but without the script, they don't have a vision to refine.
Of course, what creativity do actors add to a movie? Vin Diesel's part in xXx could have been played by nearly anyone else, but he's the one doing the talk show rounds. 'Course, why anyone would want to take credit for that movie is beyond me.
Flashing is one thing. Going out and buying a whole new piece of hardware is another. If they come out with a new DVD writable standard that's incompatible with both, I doubt you'll be able to flash your drive to get it to work.
there is a stalemate, followed by negotations and the development of a third "fusion" standard that is incompatible with either side so neither side can get an advantage over the other. This is what happened to the original DVD standard, or for 56K modems between USR's x2 (leading in modems) and Lucent/Rockwell's K56flex (leading in ISP dial-up ports), leading to V.90 which was incompatible with either.
I dunno about K56Flex modems, but I flash upgraded my x2 modem to be V.90 compatible. It's still around here somewhere, and I think it still works.
A little bit of Googling suggests Minidiscs hold somewhere around 120mb, and that Minidisc data drives do exist, but they're a bit pricey.
For myself, I'd rather buy one of the Mini-CD MP3 players that can hold 200mb of MP3s. The discs are cheaper and compatible with every burner and CD-ROM out there. 'Course, I'd probably rather go for a full size MP3-CD player (and I have), or if I had a little more money, a hard disk player like the Nomad, Riot, or Ipod. Even Sony now has an MP3-CD player, something I never thought I'd see.
When I'm driving my car about town, I have a reasonable expectation of privacy that included that my movements are not being tracked, that the passenger compartment is not bugged, and so on.
I doubt bugging your car would fly, but I could certainly hire a private investigator to follow you without your knowledge. I could put recording devices in public places that you're known to frequent that would pick up your 3am chat. The guy a table over at McDonald's just might be a cop eavesdropping on your conversation (and recording it). Whatever expectation you have about your privacy in these circumstances, the courts will probably tell you that you're wrong and need to rethink your definition of "reasonable" before you go outside again.
Everyone seems to forget that hiring a private investigator to tail you night and day is perfectly legal, and far more effective than some toll tracker.
If someone wanted to make your life hell or violate your rights, they don't need this system to do it. Prosecutors busting a defendant's alibi -- or defense attorneys confirming it -- do need it, however. City governments need it to ease traffic congestion and save money. Commuters need it to get to their destination quickly.
And get this: If you don't like it, you don't have to use it!
Name: Fred Ferrigno Email: slashdot at spamcheck.bizland.com
I've been doing exactly this for quite some time. I don't tend to run into this problem so much with friends and family, simply because my friends and family have other ways of getting ahold of me than email. Like swinging by my room, for example. That, or there's the trusty telephone, or even IM. When real people ask for my email, I typically give them my school address, and they promptly forget it anyway.
Of course, I could always tell people to use fred@spamcheck.bizland.com, and they would think it's my 'actual' address.
In a new development near me, they built an Imax theater and a traditional right next to each other. After a year or so, the Imax theater is closed and the traditional theater makes money hand over foot. I never went there in the time it was open, because the movies I wanted to see were right next door.
Seriously. Imagine you die, and then you wake up in a totally immersive VR world that doesn't have to obey the laws of physics. How easy would it be to convice people that they're in heaven? (Or hell...) Still, without a physical form or any attachment to the "real world" I think I might just get bored after a while and put myself back in statis until they've built me a robot body.
(Of course, none of this takes into the count the massive damage freezing does to human tissue on a cellular level, especially the extremely delicate stuff that makes up your brain.)
Well, a good friend of mine works at Sizzler, and is constantly telling me about the latest happenings, you might say I've got Sizzler on the brain. Strangely enough, I haven't been to Sizzler myself in several years.
California charges sales tax on soda. (About 1.08%) So 85 cents for a 2 liter becomes 92 cents after tax. That's 46 cents a liter. A Double Gulp is 1.89 liters for 85 cents after tax. Comes out to 45 cents a liter. Not that my brother looked that closely into it, and I'm sure if he went to Walmart or some bulk-buying store, he could find 2 liters for even cheaper. But 7-11's convenient and cold, so it works for him.
My brother is a Double Gulp addict, so I should know this. At least here in California, the Double Gulps are regular plastic cups with separate lids like all the others. I do remember a time when they were paper cartons like you describe, but I haven't seen them in years.
As someone else mentioned, they don't fit in normal cup holders. My brother's got an automatic so he manages to drive with one hand on the wheel and one hand resting the cup on his knee. He even managed to drive while holding two Double Gulps once. (One was for me. I had a three hour class and the instructor let us bring in a drink. The drink lasted quite a while and during the break halfway through the class I made a bee-line for the bathroom.)
Sounds like he went to Sizzler. Sizzler's trying to revamp their image into a higher-class steak house that doesn't fit the whole buffet thing, which what people mostly come in for. Basically, if you're going to Sizzler, get the buffet and don't bother with the stuff on the menu.
As for drinks, 20oz (590ml) is pretty much the default you get with a "meal" in a fast food place. Then super-sizing will get you 32oz (nearly a liter), and you can usually get 44oz (1.3L) or even 64oz (1.89L) depending on the place. If you order a soda in a normal sit-down restaurant, you'll get a 12-20oz glass and refills as often as you can flag someone down, so during a meal you might end up refilling a couple times and getting a good deal of soda.
My brother is what I'd call a caffeine addict. He's also a cheap SOB like myself, so when it comes to soda, he did some research to find the best price-to-volume ratio. His findings? Buy a 64oz Double Gulp from 7-11 once, save the cup and refill it for 85 cents a pop. Only problem is he's forgets the cup quite often, so empty Double Gulps litter his desk.
More relevant to the article, 7-11 charges the same price to refill any fountain soda, so there's no cost benefit for showing restraint.
Incidentally, it was the government's stated goal during the Gulf War to eliminate Iraq as a threat in the Middle East for at least 10 years. The Gulf War was in 1991. Iraq's a little overdue for an ass-whooping.
I think surprise could be very important to the outcome in the (probably) upcoming war against Iraq.
Think about what you just said. If it occurs to you that a war against Iraq is probable, maybe the same thought occurs to the Iraqis? Kinda ruins the whole surprise aspect when the Washington Post publishes your battle plans. Congress is already holding hearings about how to set up our puppet government in Baghdad once we've done away with Saddam.
They know we're coming. We just don't know it yet.
A while ago I was contacted by Nielsen//NetRatings to allow them to monitor my Internet use. They gave me a $50 savings bond that I can't cash in for some time and so I think I lost it. Their software was basically an open proxy server that sat on the host machine. That was probably a security risk for people not behind firewalls, and I told them so. I don't know if they ever did anything about it because their members website was basically just a place to download the software. It lagged my net connections considerably and I routinely turned it off. At the time, I was also a bit of a BeOS fanatic and they only had a Windows version, so a lot of my browsing went undetected when I booted into BeOS.
You've probably noticed all the past tense I've been using. I could only endure their annoying software for so long, so I quit before they could give me another savings bond I would probably lose too.
Ever played Wolfenstein 3D? Despite the name, Wolf 3D is actually 2D world. You can go around objects but not over them. But Wolf 3D still had the illusion of distance and depth perception. Objects far away appear smaller than closer ones. If you had two eyes on the plane, the difference between their linear views could be used to estimate distance, the same as in our world.
Just look at a frisbee from the side and see if you can still tell it's round.
Sagan's quote refers more to human nature than scientific reasoning. If you're trying to convince me of something that contradicts my previously held beliefs, you're going to need some rock-solid evidence, especially if it's a matter as important as extra-terrestrial life.
If all I had one bare-recognizable fossilized skeleton and made the conclusion that some long extinct species of sloth only had 3 toes, would you question my research so closely?
Slashdot Mirror
I'll admit I'm wrong on one count: The picture wasn't staged. I knew there were two flags, that part of my post was a typographical error more than anything. Not the number of flags matters much.
But, I did do my faithful Slashdotter duty and ran a Google search, and the top link did not contradict the information I had.
Like the historic photo of the soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Turns out, they'd already put up a flag earlier in the day, but the photographer missed it. So he convinced them to raise it again, and posed six soldiers so he could get a good shot. The battle for Iwo Jima continued for a while after that, and three of the six were later killed in action in that battle. One of them became a drunk, and as far as I know the other two lived relatively normal lives. (The longest surviving one died in 1994.)
I'm gonna go ahead and say that Fox makes more selling advertising than Cartoon Network. If Futurama's ratings can't bring in the advertising dollar to justify new episodes on Fox, I don't think they'll do it on Cartoon Network. What does make money on Cartoon Network, however, are reruns. They're cheap and they bring in ratings that are excellent for cable.
Even cheaply made shows like ATHF only warrant a handful of episodes a year. You just can't cut Futurama to ATHF's level. And if Fox couldn't make it profitable, why can CN?
Humans should be celebrated for their uniqueness and creativity.
Specifically speaking of films and television, I always thought it was weird that directors seem to get more credit than the writers. Sure, a director shapes the vision of the movie and guides the performance of the actors, but the writer defines the movie in the broad sense. The director takes a script and turns it into a movie, but without the script, they don't have a vision to refine.
Of course, what creativity do actors add to a movie? Vin Diesel's part in xXx could have been played by nearly anyone else, but he's the one doing the talk show rounds. 'Course, why anyone would want to take credit for that movie is beyond me.
Flashing is one thing. Going out and buying a whole new piece of hardware is another. If they come out with a new DVD writable standard that's incompatible with both, I doubt you'll be able to flash your drive to get it to work.
there is a stalemate, followed by negotations and the development of a third "fusion" standard that is incompatible with either side so neither side can get an advantage over the other. This is what happened to the original DVD standard, or for 56K modems between USR's x2 (leading in modems) and Lucent/Rockwell's K56flex (leading in ISP dial-up ports), leading to V.90 which was incompatible with either.
I dunno about K56Flex modems, but I flash upgraded my x2 modem to be V.90 compatible. It's still around here somewhere, and I think it still works.
A little bit of Googling suggests Minidiscs hold somewhere around 120mb, and that Minidisc data drives do exist, but they're a bit pricey.
For myself, I'd rather buy one of the Mini-CD MP3 players that can hold 200mb of MP3s. The discs are cheaper and compatible with every burner and CD-ROM out there. 'Course, I'd probably rather go for a full size MP3-CD player (and I have), or if I had a little more money, a hard disk player like the Nomad, Riot, or Ipod. Even Sony now has an MP3-CD player, something I never thought I'd see.
When I'm driving my car about town, I have a reasonable expectation of privacy that included that my movements are not being tracked, that the passenger compartment is not bugged, and so on.
I doubt bugging your car would fly, but I could certainly hire a private investigator to follow you without your knowledge. I could put recording devices in public places that you're known to frequent that would pick up your 3am chat. The guy a table over at McDonald's just might be a cop eavesdropping on your conversation (and recording it). Whatever expectation you have about your privacy in these circumstances, the courts will probably tell you that you're wrong and need to rethink your definition of "reasonable" before you go outside again.
Everyone seems to forget that hiring a private investigator to tail you night and day is perfectly legal, and far more effective than some toll tracker.
If someone wanted to make your life hell or violate your rights, they don't need this system to do it. Prosecutors busting a defendant's alibi -- or defense attorneys confirming it -- do need it, however. City governments need it to ease traffic congestion and save money. Commuters need it to get to their destination quickly.
And get this: If you don't like it, you don't have to use it!
Of course, I could always tell people to use fred@spamcheck.bizland.com, and they would think it's my 'actual' address.
In a new development near me, they built an Imax theater and a traditional right next to each other. After a year or so, the Imax theater is closed and the traditional theater makes money hand over foot. I never went there in the time it was open, because the movies I wanted to see were right next door.
Seriously. Imagine you die, and then you wake up in a totally immersive VR world that doesn't have to obey the laws of physics. How easy would it be to convice people that they're in heaven? (Or hell...) Still, without a physical form or any attachment to the "real world" I think I might just get bored after a while and put myself back in statis until they've built me a robot body.
(Of course, none of this takes into the count the massive damage freezing does to human tissue on a cellular level, especially the extremely delicate stuff that makes up your brain.)
Well, a good friend of mine works at Sizzler, and is constantly telling me about the latest happenings, you might say I've got Sizzler on the brain. Strangely enough, I haven't been to Sizzler myself in several years.
California charges sales tax on soda. (About 1.08%) So 85 cents for a 2 liter becomes 92 cents after tax. That's 46 cents a liter. A Double Gulp is 1.89 liters for 85 cents after tax. Comes out to 45 cents a liter. Not that my brother looked that closely into it, and I'm sure if he went to Walmart or some bulk-buying store, he could find 2 liters for even cheaper. But 7-11's convenient and cold, so it works for him.
My brother is a Double Gulp addict, so I should know this. At least here in California, the Double Gulps are regular plastic cups with separate lids like all the others. I do remember a time when they were paper cartons like you describe, but I haven't seen them in years.
As someone else mentioned, they don't fit in normal cup holders. My brother's got an automatic so he manages to drive with one hand on the wheel and one hand resting the cup on his knee. He even managed to drive while holding two Double Gulps once. (One was for me. I had a three hour class and the instructor let us bring in a drink. The drink lasted quite a while and during the break halfway through the class I made a bee-line for the bathroom.)
Sounds like he went to Sizzler. Sizzler's trying to revamp their image into a higher-class steak house that doesn't fit the whole buffet thing, which what people mostly come in for. Basically, if you're going to Sizzler, get the buffet and don't bother with the stuff on the menu.
As for drinks, 20oz (590ml) is pretty much the default you get with a "meal" in a fast food place. Then super-sizing will get you 32oz (nearly a liter), and you can usually get 44oz (1.3L) or even 64oz (1.89L) depending on the place. If you order a soda in a normal sit-down restaurant, you'll get a 12-20oz glass and refills as often as you can flag someone down, so during a meal you might end up refilling a couple times and getting a good deal of soda.
My brother is what I'd call a caffeine addict. He's also a cheap SOB like myself, so when it comes to soda, he did some research to find the best price-to-volume ratio. His findings? Buy a 64oz Double Gulp from 7-11 once, save the cup and refill it for 85 cents a pop. Only problem is he's forgets the cup quite often, so empty Double Gulps litter his desk.
More relevant to the article, 7-11 charges the same price to refill any fountain soda, so there's no cost benefit for showing restraint.
Incidentally, it was the government's stated goal during the Gulf War to eliminate Iraq as a threat in the Middle East for at least 10 years. The Gulf War was in 1991. Iraq's a little overdue for an ass-whooping.
I think surprise could be very important to the outcome in the (probably) upcoming war against Iraq.
Think about what you just said. If it occurs to you that a war against Iraq is probable, maybe the same thought occurs to the Iraqis? Kinda ruins the whole surprise aspect when the Washington Post publishes your battle plans. Congress is already holding hearings about how to set up our puppet government in Baghdad once we've done away with Saddam.
They know we're coming. We just don't know it yet.
A while ago I was contacted by Nielsen//NetRatings to allow them to monitor my Internet use. They gave me a $50 savings bond that I can't cash in for some time and so I think I lost it. Their software was basically an open proxy server that sat on the host machine. That was probably a security risk for people not behind firewalls, and I told them so. I don't know if they ever did anything about it because their members website was basically just a place to download the software. It lagged my net connections considerably and I routinely turned it off. At the time, I was also a bit of a BeOS fanatic and they only had a Windows version, so a lot of my browsing went undetected when I booted into BeOS.
You've probably noticed all the past tense I've been using. I could only endure their annoying software for so long, so I quit before they could give me another savings bond I would probably lose too.
Ever played Wolfenstein 3D? Despite the name, Wolf 3D is actually 2D world. You can go around objects but not over them. But Wolf 3D still had the illusion of distance and depth perception. Objects far away appear smaller than closer ones. If you had two eyes on the plane, the difference between their linear views could be used to estimate distance, the same as in our world.
Just look at a frisbee from the side and see if you can still tell it's round.
Sagan's quote refers more to human nature than scientific reasoning. If you're trying to convince me of something that contradicts my previously held beliefs, you're going to need some rock-solid evidence, especially if it's a matter as important as extra-terrestrial life.
If all I had one bare-recognizable fossilized skeleton and made the conclusion that some long extinct species of sloth only had 3 toes, would you question my research so closely?
The trojan could be easily modified to connect over port 80, and what firewall is going to block that?
The Indians wouldn't be able to bid.
Lower your threshold and read the AC post he was actually replying too...