No, actually I live in Denver, but maybe it's the same guy!
This guy was going down I-70 eastbound, just past the edge of Commerce City (past the Purina plant, for anyone that drives this route),he was driving a light blue Honda civic hatchback--dunno what year the car was, but it was a boxy model. It's been at least 5 years ago. What's funny is that he actually seemed to be pretty well in control--at about 80mph, all things considered.
I'll have to agree, your story tops mine, a bit. One pothole, and you'd be scalped! I just don't know what would go through someone's mind to make them think that doing something like that is a good idea.
We've now got a guy that rides a motorcycle down the same stretch of road--doing stunts. So we're not without our entertainment:D
I can think of lots of Japanes companies that sell lots of stuff here, but I can't think of a single company selling a single product line that has a clear market advantage over any other company.
And I can't really say that Iv'e ever heard of say (for example) Sony using anti-competitive tactics against Toshiba in the US market. I wouldn't rule ot my own ignorance on the minor details of the issue, but my perception is that many US companies just don't play nice, and that most Japanese companies, though agressive, are at least (mostly) honorable.
While I don't think an entire movie without dialogue (or not actually seeing a characters face for a whole movie for that matter) would be very entertaining, it would be pretty kick-ass if they at least waited a little bit to reveal that Samus is female. Perhaps after a really big brawl in the beginning.
That said, inside me says it's gonna suck and be a lame combination of the Ghost Busters movies, Super Mario Brothers the movie, and the Tomb Raider movies--I think it's my colon.
Yeah, on the fly playlists would be killer. I've got to admit that. It's the one thing that I really like about iTunes.
I'm actually considering writing a script to generate.m3u playlists, ala the smart-playlist system in iTunes, so one could activate the playlist menu and have something very much like on-the-fly playlists, but the couldn't be smart, of course--there's a few things that would be required to do on the player like play counts, ratings and the like.
It's just that time thing, eh! Actually I haven't even considered looking to see if such a thing already exists (probably). D'oh!
The one thing I really would like to see outta the firmware is gapless playback. I have few albums that use that technique to good effect, same that the player can't reproduce it as well, but neither am I rushing to sell mine on eBay 'cause of it;)
No, it's not that the graphics weren't great. It's that the graphics were used in place of story line.
In TTT, Gandolf has good reason for falling down the chasm--afterall, it wasn't even his choice! I'm sure that he'd rather be doing other things.
Anakin diving off the speeder was just stupid. He did it with no clear reason for doing it, in the face of the great possibility he would become jedi-jelly. He used the special effect as a motivator in the movie, in place of inteligence. Futhermore, it was done with absolutely no suspense. We know he (Anakin) isn't going to die; Gandolf, on the other hand had the people that never read the book fooled--last thing they were expecting to see was Gandolf fighting and falling!
Yeah, I read many many posts like those. But their issues were non-issues to me.
Their bitches:
No database support for Oggs/wma--BFD. My entire collection is folder organized anyway, and it works wonderfully.
Battery life--I've no issues. I'm happily using Ogg at Q6, which is a very happy medium between quality and size (and hence refreshing of the player cache is minimized), I haven't fully discharged the player yet, even with playing it all damn day 8 hours+ (the one day it got down 1 bar, I forgot to turn the optical out off, but it still lasted 6 hours, even with lots of shuffling). Better than the competition, apparently.
Recording of FM--I didn't by it for the FM; it's nice that it's there, but I wouldn't record from FM anyway, unless it were perhaps some engaging talk show.
Non-support of DRM formats--This was a big factor in my decision to buy this thing. I have no use for DRM music, don't need any, and don't want any--absolutely don't need it on a portable player. Of course, I knew about this going in, and frankly I'm quite pleased. I'd rather rip my albums, so I can retain my organization anyway.
Other random issues/tapping/static. I haven't experienced this, and Iv'e got very good ears. I hear the flyback on pretty much all TVs, absolutely drives me insane. I can hear mt wrist watch (which I wear on my belt-strap if I ever wear it), ticking noises/water dropping likewise drives me nuts. If there were a problem, I'd have smashed it by now.
The one thing I really didn't like was the hat switch. I've just never cared for them. I have one on my Samsung TV remote, too. Same exaxc thing, infact. It was too easy to press it straight down, rather than in the D-Pad directions. I say didn't, because I've largely eliminated the problem. I cut out a circle of some 3M sidewalk graphic vinyl. It's serriously bumpy stuff, feels like rubber, and has the texture of concrete, with adhesive that's meant to grab onto concrete--it ain't going nowhere. It's solved that problem, it's now very easy to use the hat switch, and I put a piece on my TV remote while I was at it.
If there is something specific that you have an issue with, I'd be interested to hear about it, but I already knew about most of the issues that were present when I bought it, and I'm jim-dandy-happy with it so far (despite the few limitations it has, it's got more features than any player I know, and it's quite good at what it does, IMHO).
Battery life is excelent. It comes with a remote, which works well in a car--with shuffle mode, just hit one of the nobbers and it ffwds. It plays Vorbis files beautifully, and it has optical inputs and outputs--awesome to use with the home theatre system, voice recording capability (also works pretty damn good).
I just got one of these a couple weeks ago, and I'm very happy with it. I did my fair share of research, apparently Karmas' firmware was beta quality at best, and that's a big reason I went with the iRiver (and heck, for a gadget geek/wanna-be portable audiophile, it can't be beat)
You're confusing the right to free speech with the right to have people listen to you.
You can blather on and on about whatever you want, easily enough. Go stand on the corner of a street, or write your own publication, edit it on your own, print it on your own, and yor speech is as free as it can be, but nobody has to listen.
Just as you're handing out your newsletter, some people may take it and read it, and maybe take it to heart. Some might take it--take it home and use it to line their birdcage without giving the actual content a second thought. Some others may refuse to take the newsletter, and some might even get violent, take all of your papers and shove 'em down your throat...
Such is the same with speech. No one person has to listen to anyone else's insane ranting. They can choose to, but they can just as well choose to say NAAAAANAANAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!! whilst pluging their ears, or quietly nod (thinking that you're a dumbshit.)
That's what the corporations that run the TV do. If you're on their good side, and agree with their shareholders, chances are they'll let you say your piece. If they're honorable (or even just want to appear to be), they might even allow a minority to say something the corporation as a whole wouldn't agree with. Those are the breaks.
Such as it turns out, it's not that rich people and corporations speak louder (but perhaps they can speak more often), it's more that people in general are more inclined to listen to them.
But that too makes sense; they're successful as defined by our society. People would be inclined to listen to those that are successful, in hopes that some of that success would rub off on them--they might even be more inclined to agree--if for no other reason than they want to be on the bandwagon.
1) it evaporates eventually 2) it likes to eat o-rings and other rubbery bits 3) it's not as good at penetrating rust as many other oils
The real use for WD-40 is Water Displacement (duh-that's what it's really for, afterall), and for cleaning. I've found WD to be a superior solvent (especially for caked on grease), and it dosen't kill your hands too badly. It's also great for removing lables. It kills the adhesive very quickly.
But you're right about kroil. That's some impressive shit. Iv'e got an aerosol can that's still around from my late grandpa (it's gotta be 1940's vintage, but the lable looks damn near the same). The smell of it makes me want to wretch, but man does it work. Haven't used it in forever; honestly didn't know they still made it (and good news it is indeed)!
For once I just wish that Nokia would produce a phone *with Bluetooth*, and without all of the other shit... And make it so it could be dropped 5 feet without having to worry about breaking the damn thing. Hell, I'd be happy for Sony to do the same thing, I've got no bias, so long as it supports GSM.
If they could do that I'd be a happy man. I'd just love to keep my PDA stuff on my PDA (and fully functional as a PDA, and the PDA out of the phone.
It's great that they like to put all of that stuff into tah phone, but they never get it anywhere near the simplicity and usability that's been availabe since the first Palms came out, and likely never will.
Certianly, the variety of music influences me; fast punk rock gets me going, (some!)techno helps me concentrate for long periods of time, and most rap just about kills what little attention span I had (but most old-school rap I can live with).
I can't--ABSOLUTELY CANNOT--stand music that has very many repeated samples. The exactitude of the repetition and timing for whatever reason take my attention away near instantaenously (example: a sampled clap.)
Clapping ALWAYS sounds different. It's nigh impossible to make clapping sound the same EVERY time, but some musicians use this sampled clapping as a sort of metronome. It's too damned artificial--has no soul. This applies to repleated sampled voices, too... It's something that's plauged recent pop music; makes me sick (literally).
Huh? Which business? Are you actually trying to claim that voluntary trade is inherently evil?
How about all of the companies that dumped chemicals in the rivers in the 1800's-1950's, toxic dump sites, mine tailings, and other bullshit that companies could have done (ethically) right, had they spent the money and time to do so?
Check out the EPA's superfund EnviroMapper No doubt, some of those are sincere accidents, but most of those are there because of corporate neglect.
I live around 10 SuperFund cleanup sites that I could name--within 30 miles of my home. One's just down the way: a big arsenic (and other heavy metal) contamination site. The corporation is long gone, but we're still here to clean it up, and our great-great-grand children will be dealing with it too.
Some other examples: a big pile of radioactive uranium tailings spewing out Radon like you can't belive, a tunnel through a mountian that lets out about 100,000 gallons of highly acidic water (also containing huge amounts of heavy metals) a day, numerous smelting operations, mines, and even government operations (Military bases and weapons facilities). It's a hundred times worse back east.
The idealogoy back then was "Let's do anything in the name of progress. We'll progress so fast that our grandchildren will learn to clean up our mess in less time than it caused us to make it, and it'll cost less for our grandchildren down the line than for us to do it correctly right now."
Not only that, but you can ferment damn near anything and get ethanol out of it.
Think about it: if all of the readily fermentable waste that we don't use could be collected and mashed up, it would be huge.
Waste fruit from groceries, that bananna you didn't eat last week, etc. All ripe for being turned into alcohol. Bonus is, you can turn around and sell what's left as livestock feed. It still has all of the protien, fat and stuff, and maybe a little bit of the starch. Bonus.
If we could build a big enough solar distillery (I'm invisioning something like solar one, with a big condensor to keep up with the output) It would be practically maintainance free (compared to some things), as well.
Ethanol from our rubbish alone could make a huge difference.
Of course, with no psychological training, I'm unqualified to argue about it at that level.
However, I will politely disagree.
Legally, could someone with schizophrenia be found "unreasonable" or in other words "not guilty for reasons of insanity"? Absolutely. Hell, I'm sure that plenty of people that are reasonable, and generally considered "sane" have obtained the reasons of insanity verdict. What I'm saying is that metric alone dosen't mean they're insane, or unreasonable.
I submit that the lines between sane and insane, reasonable, and unreasonable, schizophrenic and schizotypal are a fair bit finer, and are not necessairly black and white than is usually accepted.
The real factor is the delusions and halucinations, and how long they last, whether there are manic episodes and negative symptoms after an active episode, and some other stuff.
But, wth do I know. Iv'e never even taken psychology.
Hrm, that's interesting. I can't say that Iv'e ever done much of anything with a 320 (did look at them though, never got the chance to really use it.) My impression from some people that had used it was that it just wasn't that special. But they probably were a bit MIPS biased. (admittedly, I am too, I guess)
I too keep a couple SGIs around. The brutal Indigo^2 (rackmount chassis no less--great space heater), and an O2. If I had more space I'd get an Octane as well--they're cheap enough nowadays.
I'll have to try your STL viewer when I get home. Looks interesting. 'Coulda used that a couple years or so ago;)
The SGI 320 and 540 are a joke, and any real SGI person could tell you that. When did they come out? Late '98 or Early '99?
The O2 had the same UMA design, and could address up to 1GB of texture memory, less what the OS and the apps were currently using. In 1996.
I mean, it was hardly revolutionary in 1999. Add to that the fact that an R10k O2 (operating in 32bit mode, mind you) of the period would readily trounce the pathetic 450-550Mhz PIII that came with the 320's and 540's, while still costing less. When I say pathetic, I say it because by the time that SGI got around to releasing these things, they were already behind the times. The XEON was just around the corner (at 600+Mhz), and it would have paired better with their hardware, and somewhat have justified the price.
The NT line of SGI machines were the unneceeary distraction that lost them a very huge chunk of the workstation market, which at the time they were retaining mostly because the tools people needed only existed on IRIX at the time. More cost effective workstations existed (Matrox's and ATI's workstation level cards could handle the geometry and such just as well as the 540 and Octane at this point, but were lacking in texture ability), but the application base just wasn't there.
Had they retained their concentration on MIPS development (or perhaps joined up with IBM, in the manner that Apple is just now doing), the enhancement of their older technologies (bringing the BIG IRON to the desktop, as they did with the Octane), and lowering their unnecessairly high prices to the point businesses (and pro-consumers) could actually afford to buy more than a few ($1500 for a 4X SCSI CD-ROM with some firmware mods? Gimme a break). They just like the profit margin, though unsustainable it was. In 1999, these were my exact thoughts.
Well, the story would have been a whole lot different. I suspect they'd be giving Intel and Microsoft a run for their money right now. But, hindsight is 20/20 they say.
There's a subtle yet apt irony about that era. Remember Lost in Space, and the SGI add? If memory serves me, Will Robinson kind of laughed at it, as if he took SGI as a joke. Clearly, SGI's leaders felt the same way about their company.
SGI in their hayday was a very cool company. That's what the sad part about it is. They've given so much to the computer industry that if there were to be saints of the computer world, SGI would surely be the biggest patron saint.
I realized they were going down some time in 1998. This realization came when a spokesman for DeVry came to my high school. Apparently, SGI had partnered with them. The people in their introductional video were clearly idiots... These were the people that wanted to work in IT because they wanted the money, not because they love computers or technology. The moths to the dotcom flame, you might say.
It was somewhat depressing, as I wanted to go work for them at some point, just to be immersed in the creative genius SGI housed. The DeVry thing to me was the totem above their grave.
Of course, around this time SGI started pushing their NT machines. That only confirmed the direction they were going. Too bad.
Nor am I a psychiatrist, but I have had quite a lot of contact with mentally different-and ill people. I grew up with several such people; my grandmother was a contractor to a local mental hospital to give outside care.
Really, most schizophrenics are not that extraordinarily weird. It's a poorly understood disorder. Most schizophrenics are what you'd classify as shy (or to the extreme--reclusive). They have a hard time with their emotions, and aren't comfortable in large groups, have disorganized speech and thought patterns. Schizophrenia IS NOT mutiple personality disorder, mind you.
Not all schizophrenics have wild hallucinations, but most do have a vivid imagination, and that can keep them occupied. When they're staring off into space, they're in their own world. Sometimes it's difficult to get them out, and they don't respond to communication, or say something that has nothing to do with anything. They're just concentrating on something in there. I imagine that you'd be amazed at what's going on inside of their mind sometimes, if only they had the capacity to reliably communicate it.
Paranoid schizophrenics you gotta watch out for, though. They're far more likely to do strange / violent stuff. And even then they're more likely to do damage to themselves.
But, I'd say that most schizophrenics certianly have the capacity to be "reasonable persons", if they're on the right medication, or if they can reliably control it themselves. The latter (control it themselves) is the better option if they can get away with it. While the medication might help the delusions, I understand that it has a very bad numbing effect. Like anesthesia for the mind; it slows down and dulls all of the senses, and what little emotion they had before is likely to be all but gone.
Anyway... Chances are good that you know a person or two that can be classified as schizophrenic. It might affect about 1% of the people in the world at one point in their lives. It's notably more common in people of Norweigen and Irish decent (for better or for worse, I'm decended from both Irish and Norweigen ancestors, among others).
But you can say "It is my opinion (from experience) that professor Such and Such is a schizophrenic manic depressive wackjob", and get away with it, no?
Iv'e had professors like this (that even fit my prior description); even the staff knew they were off their rocker. Luckily, they were all reasonable people (for the most part), and they were even brilliant--even though they were loonier than a pair of Mexican jumping beans on a hot tin roof. I would have appreciated knowing this beforehand, and probably would have taken the courses with those professors anyway.
If this guy really is a nutball, or even eccentric, then people should know it.
Of course, I can't have had any experience with this nutjob of a professor. Likewise, neither could the operator of a teacher review site have enough experience with the thousands of professors nationwide to say anything positive or negative about any given professor.
Obviously, there needs to be an accountability system, whereby the person whom entered the review can be tracked. Or something. I dunno.
Except that in the Denver area, the real-estate market has tanked horribly the last two years; prices before that (during the dotcom boom) were regullarly in the 250,000s for a small (maybe 1000-1200 sqft), home in a relatively good state of repair (and I say that as one that has worked on many houses in the area). It's down to 190,000 - 210,000 for the same place today, and they hang around on the market for many weeks or months, whereas they sold overnight for 250k just a few years ago.
Most homes here are made from whatever the builder could scrape together 60-80 years ago; the electricity and plumbing is a must to redo in basically every home, and sometimes it's even necessary to retap the water main to get enough flow to take a shower. The home I live in ran on two 20Amp fuses in series, was built in 1923, had about 1/16" of an inch for the water to squeeze through... And it's one of the better examples of a well-to-do home from that period that I've ever seen.
Expect to pay an additional 15-30K (if you're going to do some of the work, and more if not) to get a neglected home back into livable condition.
Oh probably 2 or 3 years ago we felt a huge influx of Californians. Then they all moved to Boulder. Or at least it seemed that way. I remember the news was telling newcomers to change their liscense plates as soon as possilbe to avoid problems in traffic.
But honestly, I think we've got more texans than Californians recently.
Slashdot Mirror
I belive it. Iv'e seen it before...
:P
She dosen't happen to look like this, does she?
No, actually I live in Denver, but maybe it's the same guy!
:D
This guy was going down I-70 eastbound, just past the edge of Commerce City (past the Purina plant, for anyone that drives this route),he was driving a light blue Honda civic hatchback--dunno what year the car was, but it was a boxy model. It's been at least 5 years ago. What's funny is that he actually seemed to be pretty well in control--at about 80mph, all things considered.
I'll have to agree, your story tops mine, a bit. One pothole, and you'd be scalped! I just don't know what would go through someone's mind to make them think that doing something like that is a good idea.
We've now got a guy that rides a motorcycle down the same stretch of road--doing stunts. So we're not without our entertainment
You've not seen anything till you've seen a guy steering with one knee, other foot on the gas...Playing a FLUTE...passing you on the shoulder.
Kid you not.
Care to give an example?
I can think of lots of Japanes companies that sell lots of stuff here, but I can't think of a single company selling a single product line that has a clear market advantage over any other company.
And I can't really say that Iv'e ever heard of say (for example) Sony using anti-competitive tactics against Toshiba in the US market. I wouldn't rule ot my own ignorance on the minor details of the issue, but my perception is that many US companies just don't play nice, and that most Japanese companies, though agressive, are at least (mostly) honorable.
While I don't think an entire movie without dialogue (or not actually seeing a characters face for a whole movie for that matter) would be very entertaining, it would be pretty kick-ass if they at least waited a little bit to reveal that Samus is female. Perhaps after a really big brawl in the beginning.
That said, inside me says it's gonna suck and be a lame combination of the Ghost Busters movies, Super Mario Brothers the movie, and the Tomb Raider movies--I think it's my colon.
Trivia time! What substance was Han Solo frozen in? Carbonite? No, I'm sorry. The correct answer is: Who gives a shit?
Yeah, on the fly playlists would be killer. I've got to admit that. It's the one thing that I really like about iTunes.
.m3u playlists, ala the smart-playlist system in iTunes, so one could activate the playlist menu and have something very much like on-the-fly playlists, but the couldn't be smart, of course--there's a few things that would be required to do on the player like play counts, ratings and the like.
;)
I'm actually considering writing a script to generate
It's just that time thing, eh! Actually I haven't even considered looking to see if such a thing already exists (probably). D'oh!
The one thing I really would like to see outta the firmware is gapless playback. I have few albums that use that technique to good effect, same that the player can't reproduce it as well, but neither am I rushing to sell mine on eBay 'cause of it
No, it's not that the graphics weren't great. It's that the graphics were used in place of story line.
In TTT, Gandolf has good reason for falling down the chasm--afterall, it wasn't even his choice! I'm sure that he'd rather be doing other things.
Anakin diving off the speeder was just stupid. He did it with no clear reason for doing it, in the face of the great possibility he would become jedi-jelly. He used the special effect as a motivator in the movie, in place of inteligence. Futhermore, it was done with absolutely no suspense. We know he (Anakin) isn't going to die; Gandolf, on the other hand had the people that never read the book fooled--last thing they were expecting to see was Gandolf fighting and falling!
Their bitches:
Other random issues/tapping/static. I haven't experienced this, and Iv'e got very good ears. I hear the flyback on pretty much all TVs, absolutely drives me insane. I can hear mt wrist watch (which I wear on my belt-strap if I ever wear it), ticking noises/water dropping likewise drives me nuts. If there were a problem, I'd have smashed it by now.
The one thing I really didn't like was the hat switch. I've just never cared for them. I have one on my Samsung TV remote, too. Same exaxc thing, infact. It was too easy to press it straight down, rather than in the D-Pad directions. I say didn't, because I've largely eliminated the problem. I cut out a circle of some 3M sidewalk graphic vinyl. It's serriously bumpy stuff, feels like rubber, and has the texture of concrete, with adhesive that's meant to grab onto concrete--it ain't going nowhere. It's solved that problem, it's now very easy to use the hat switch, and I put a piece on my TV remote while I was at it.
If there is something specific that you have an issue with, I'd be interested to hear about it, but I already knew about most of the issues that were present when I bought it, and I'm jim-dandy-happy with it so far (despite the few limitations it has, it's got more features than any player I know, and it's quite good at what it does, IMHO).
I would also reccomend the iRiver 20GB equivalent
Battery life is excelent. It comes with a remote, which works well in a car--with shuffle mode, just hit one of the nobbers and it ffwds. It plays Vorbis files beautifully, and it has optical inputs and outputs--awesome to use with the home theatre system, voice recording capability (also works pretty damn good).
I just got one of these a couple weeks ago, and I'm very happy with it. I did my fair share of research, apparently Karmas' firmware was beta quality at best, and that's a big reason I went with the iRiver (and heck, for a gadget geek/wanna-be portable audiophile, it can't be beat)
You're confusing the right to free speech with the right to have people listen to you.
You can blather on and on about whatever you want, easily enough. Go stand on the corner of a street, or write your own publication, edit it on your own, print it on your own, and yor speech is as free as it can be, but nobody has to listen.
Just as you're handing out your newsletter, some people may take it and read it, and maybe take it to heart. Some might take it--take it home and use it to line their birdcage without giving the actual content a second thought. Some others may refuse to take the newsletter, and some might even get violent, take all of your papers and shove 'em down your throat...
Such is the same with speech. No one person has to listen to anyone else's insane ranting. They can choose to, but they can just as well choose to say NAAAAANAANAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!! whilst pluging their ears, or quietly nod (thinking that you're a dumbshit.)
That's what the corporations that run the TV do. If you're on their good side, and agree with their shareholders, chances are they'll let you say your piece. If they're honorable (or even just want to appear to be), they might even allow a minority to say something the corporation as a whole wouldn't agree with. Those are the breaks.
Such as it turns out, it's not that rich people and corporations speak louder (but perhaps they can speak more often), it's more that people in general are more inclined to listen to them.
But that too makes sense; they're successful as defined by our society. People would be inclined to listen to those that are successful, in hopes that some of that success would rub off on them--they might even be more inclined to agree--if for no other reason than they want to be on the bandwagon.
Bah, I never use WD-40 for lubricating.
1) it evaporates eventually
2) it likes to eat o-rings and other rubbery bits
3) it's not as good at penetrating rust as many other oils
The real use for WD-40 is Water Displacement (duh-that's what it's really for, afterall), and for cleaning. I've found WD to be a superior solvent (especially for caked on grease), and it dosen't kill your hands too badly. It's also great for removing lables. It kills the adhesive very quickly.
But you're right about kroil. That's some impressive shit. Iv'e got an aerosol can that's still around from my late grandpa (it's gotta be 1940's vintage, but the lable looks damn near the same). The smell of it makes me want to wretch, but man does it work. Haven't used it in forever; honestly didn't know they still made it (and good news it is indeed)!
For once I just wish that Nokia would produce a phone *with Bluetooth*, and without all of the other shit... And make it so it could be dropped 5 feet without having to worry about breaking the damn thing. Hell, I'd be happy for Sony to do the same thing, I've got no bias, so long as it supports GSM.
If they could do that I'd be a happy man. I'd just love to keep my PDA stuff on my PDA (and fully functional as a PDA, and the PDA out of the phone.
It's great that they like to put all of that stuff into tah phone, but they never get it anywhere near the simplicity and usability that's been availabe since the first Palms came out, and likely never will.
$400 4gb Hitachi CF microdrive
;)
But in all fairness, you can Strip the CF drive from the mini-iPod, for the low, low price of $250!
Just saved yourself $150! Sounds like a great deal to me!
I'm with both of ya.
Certianly, the variety of music influences me; fast punk rock gets me going, (some!)techno helps me concentrate for long periods of time, and most rap just about kills what little attention span I had (but most old-school rap I can live with).
I can't--ABSOLUTELY CANNOT--stand music that has very many repeated samples. The exactitude of the repetition and timing for whatever reason take my attention away near instantaenously (example: a sampled clap.)
Clapping ALWAYS sounds different. It's nigh impossible to make clapping sound the same EVERY time, but some musicians use this sampled clapping as a sort of metronome. It's too damned artificial--has no soul. This applies to repleated sampled voices, too... It's something that's plauged recent pop music; makes me sick (literally).
Huh? Which business? Are you actually trying to claim that voluntary trade is inherently evil?
How about all of the companies that dumped chemicals in the rivers in the 1800's-1950's, toxic dump sites, mine tailings, and other bullshit that companies could have done (ethically) right, had they spent the money and time to do so?
Check out the EPA's superfund EnviroMapper No doubt, some of those are sincere accidents, but most of those are there because of corporate neglect.
I live around 10 SuperFund cleanup sites that I could name--within 30 miles of my home. One's just down the way: a big arsenic (and other heavy metal) contamination site. The corporation is long gone, but we're still here to clean it up, and our great-great-grand children will be dealing with it too.
Some other examples: a big pile of radioactive uranium tailings spewing out Radon like you can't belive, a tunnel through a mountian that lets out about 100,000 gallons of highly acidic water (also containing huge amounts of heavy metals) a day, numerous smelting operations, mines, and even government operations (Military bases and weapons facilities). It's a hundred times worse back east.
The idealogoy back then was "Let's do anything in the name of progress. We'll progress so fast that our grandchildren will learn to clean up our mess in less time than it caused us to make it, and it'll cost less for our grandchildren down the line than for us to do it correctly right now."
Corporations are not our friends.
Not only that, but you can ferment damn near anything and get ethanol out of it.
Think about it: if all of the readily fermentable waste that we don't use could be collected and mashed up, it would be huge.
Waste fruit from groceries, that bananna you didn't eat last week, etc. All ripe for being turned into alcohol. Bonus is, you can turn around and sell what's left as livestock feed. It still has all of the protien, fat and stuff, and maybe a little bit of the starch. Bonus.
If we could build a big enough solar distillery (I'm invisioning something like solar one, with a big condensor to keep up with the output) It would be practically maintainance free (compared to some things), as well.
Ethanol from our rubbish alone could make a huge difference.
Of course, with no psychological training, I'm unqualified to argue about it at that level.
However, I will politely disagree.
Legally, could someone with schizophrenia be found "unreasonable" or in other words "not guilty for reasons of insanity"? Absolutely. Hell, I'm sure that plenty of people that are reasonable, and generally considered "sane" have obtained the reasons of insanity verdict. What I'm saying is that metric alone dosen't mean they're insane, or unreasonable.
I submit that the lines between sane and insane, reasonable, and unreasonable, schizophrenic and schizotypal are a fair bit finer, and are not necessairly black and white than is usually accepted.
The real factor is the delusions and halucinations, and how long they last, whether there are manic episodes and negative symptoms after an active episode, and some other stuff.
But, wth do I know. Iv'e never even taken psychology.
Hrm, that's interesting. I can't say that Iv'e ever done much of anything with a 320 (did look at them though, never got the chance to really use it.) My impression from some people that had used it was that it just wasn't that special. But they probably were a bit MIPS biased. (admittedly, I am too, I guess)
;)
I too keep a couple SGIs around. The brutal Indigo^2 (rackmount chassis no less--great space heater), and an O2. If I had more space I'd get an Octane as well--they're cheap enough nowadays.
I'll have to try your STL viewer when I get home. Looks interesting. 'Coulda used that a couple years or so ago
The SGI 320 and 540 are a joke, and any real SGI person could tell you that. When did they come out? Late '98 or Early '99?
The O2 had the same UMA design, and could address up to 1GB of texture memory, less what the OS and the apps were currently using. In 1996.
I mean, it was hardly revolutionary in 1999. Add to that the fact that an R10k O2 (operating in 32bit mode, mind you) of the period would readily trounce the pathetic 450-550Mhz PIII that came with the 320's and 540's, while still costing less. When I say pathetic, I say it because by the time that SGI got around to releasing these things, they were already behind the times. The XEON was just around the corner (at 600+Mhz), and it would have paired better with their hardware, and somewhat have justified the price.
The NT line of SGI machines were the unneceeary distraction that lost them a very huge chunk of the workstation market, which at the time they were retaining mostly because the tools people needed only existed on IRIX at the time. More cost effective workstations existed (Matrox's and ATI's workstation level cards could handle the geometry and such just as well as the 540 and Octane at this point, but were lacking in texture ability), but the application base just wasn't there.
Had they retained their concentration on MIPS development (or perhaps joined up with IBM, in the manner that Apple is just now doing), the enhancement of their older technologies (bringing the BIG IRON to the desktop, as they did with the Octane), and lowering their unnecessairly high prices to the point businesses (and pro-consumers) could actually afford to buy more than a few ($1500 for a 4X SCSI CD-ROM with some firmware mods? Gimme a break). They just like the profit margin, though unsustainable it was. In 1999, these were my exact thoughts.
Well, the story would have been a whole lot different. I suspect they'd be giving Intel and Microsoft a run for their money right now. But, hindsight is 20/20 they say.
There's a subtle yet apt irony about that era. Remember Lost in Space, and the SGI add? If memory serves me, Will Robinson kind of laughed at it, as if he took SGI as a joke. Clearly, SGI's leaders felt the same way about their company.
SGI in their hayday was a very cool company. That's what the sad part about it is. They've given so much to the computer industry that if there were to be saints of the computer world, SGI would surely be the biggest patron saint.
I realized they were going down some time in 1998. This realization came when a spokesman for DeVry came to my high school. Apparently, SGI had partnered with them. The people in their introductional video were clearly idiots... These were the people that wanted to work in IT because they wanted the money, not because they love computers or technology. The moths to the dotcom flame, you might say.
It was somewhat depressing, as I wanted to go work for them at some point, just to be immersed in the creative genius SGI housed. The DeVry thing to me was the totem above their grave.
Of course, around this time SGI started pushing their NT machines. That only confirmed the direction they were going. Too bad.
Nor am I a psychiatrist, but I have had quite a lot of contact with mentally different-and ill people. I grew up with several such people; my grandmother was a contractor to a local mental hospital to give outside care.
Really, most schizophrenics are not that extraordinarily weird. It's a poorly understood disorder. Most schizophrenics are what you'd classify as shy (or to the extreme--reclusive). They have a hard time with their emotions, and aren't comfortable in large groups, have disorganized speech and thought patterns. Schizophrenia IS NOT mutiple personality disorder, mind you.
Not all schizophrenics have wild hallucinations, but most do have a vivid imagination, and that can keep them occupied. When they're staring off into space, they're in their own world. Sometimes it's difficult to get them out, and they don't respond to communication, or say something that has nothing to do with anything. They're just concentrating on something in there. I imagine that you'd be amazed at what's going on inside of their mind sometimes, if only they had the capacity to reliably communicate it.
Paranoid schizophrenics you gotta watch out for, though. They're far more likely to do strange / violent stuff. And even then they're more likely to do damage to themselves.
But, I'd say that most schizophrenics certianly have the capacity to be "reasonable persons", if they're on the right medication, or if they can reliably control it themselves. The latter (control it themselves) is the better option if they can get away with it. While the medication might help the delusions, I understand that it has a very bad numbing effect. Like anesthesia for the mind; it slows down and dulls all of the senses, and what little emotion they had before is likely to be all but gone.
Anyway... Chances are good that you know a person or two that can be classified as schizophrenic. It might affect about 1% of the people in the world at one point in their lives. It's notably more common in people of Norweigen and Irish decent (for better or for worse, I'm decended from both Irish and Norweigen ancestors, among others).
But you can say "It is my opinion (from experience) that professor Such and Such is a schizophrenic manic depressive wackjob", and get away with it, no?
Iv'e had professors like this (that even fit my prior description); even the staff knew they were off their rocker. Luckily, they were all reasonable people (for the most part), and they were even brilliant--even though they were loonier than a pair of Mexican jumping beans on a hot tin roof. I would have appreciated knowing this beforehand, and probably would have taken the courses with those professors anyway.
If this guy really is a nutball, or even eccentric, then people should know it.
Of course, I can't have had any experience with this nutjob of a professor. Likewise, neither could the operator of a teacher review site have enough experience with the thousands of professors nationwide to say anything positive or negative about any given professor.
Obviously, there needs to be an accountability system, whereby the person whom entered the review can be tracked. Or something. I dunno.
That about sums it up. Pretty well, in fact.
Except that in the Denver area, the real-estate market has tanked horribly the last two years; prices before that (during the dotcom boom) were regullarly in the 250,000s for a small (maybe 1000-1200 sqft), home in a relatively good state of repair (and I say that as one that has worked on many houses in the area). It's down to 190,000 - 210,000 for the same place today, and they hang around on the market for many weeks or months, whereas they sold overnight for 250k just a few years ago.
Most homes here are made from whatever the builder could scrape together 60-80 years ago; the electricity and plumbing is a must to redo in basically every home, and sometimes it's even necessary to retap the water main to get enough flow to take a shower. The home I live in ran on two 20Amp fuses in series, was built in 1923, had about 1/16" of an inch for the water to squeeze through... And it's one of the better examples of a well-to-do home from that period that I've ever seen.
Expect to pay an additional 15-30K (if you're going to do some of the work, and more if not) to get a neglected home back into livable condition.
Oh probably 2 or 3 years ago we felt a huge influx of Californians. Then they all moved to Boulder. Or at least it seemed that way. I remember the news was telling newcomers to change their liscense plates as soon as possilbe to avoid problems in traffic.
But honestly, I think we've got more texans than Californians recently.