I don't think that any drugs or genetic engineering should be tolorated AT ALL in amateur sports, including the olympics (which means making the olympics a venue for only amateur sports, which it most certainly is not right now...)
However, when it comes to professional sports, I'm all for it. These people compete for a living, and should be expected to perform at their highest possible levels. If this means drugs, then so be it. At least the drugs can be developed properly and used in a controlled fashion.
Pro athletes already push the limits beyond what any normal human could hope to accomplish. Pro athletes already use equipment and training techniques that no mere mortal could ever have access to. Why not put some well tested and safe drugs into that training regime?
I can't help but think this would be an awesome controller for pinball simulations. Sure, the keyboard is basically useless, but it is a good width and looks like it would be pretty comfortable to use.
Now if it had a couple of tilt/motion sensors in it...
I have an oollllddd (1980??) copy of Popular Electronics kicking around somewhere that shows you how to do this too. Maybe when big screen TVs were hard to come by and insanely expensive, this was a good idea...
Yeah, I received a 60GXP drive to replace my dead 75GXP. Problem is, the 75GXP was a 45Gig drive, and the 60GXP they gave me as a replacement is only a 40Gig drive. And they don't seem to care that I get 5Gig less either.
On the up-side, the 60GXP is a bit faster and a lot quiter than the 75GXP. Maybe it will last more than 10 months too...
I just had my 45Gig 75GXP replaced a few weeks ago. It was running fine for about 10 months, and then one day it just started making the worst noises. Luckily I was able to do a backup before it died.
The annoying part is that IBM would not replace it with another 45Gig drive. Instead, I got one of their new 40Gig drives (2 20-Gig platters instead of 3 15-Gig platters). On the upside, it's a bit faster and a LOT quieter. On the downside, I lose 5Gig of storage space, and IBM doesn't seem to give a rats ass.
One thing that has always driven my nuts with macro functions on any universal remote is the fact that the remote has no way of knowing what the current state of the components are.
For example, I have a macro for "DVD". Turn on the amp. Set amp to DVD input. Set surround to "theatre". Turn on the TV. Switch TV to DVD input. Turn on the DVD player.
Seems like a great idea. But some of the components (TV and DVD player) have a single button/signal for power on/off. So if my TV was already on, then this macro does everything right, but turns the TV off. Damn.
Or sometimes not all of the IR signals make it to all of the compnents. TV is on, DVD player is on, but the amp never switched to the DVD input. Damn.
I wish I could have all of my components share a simple communications channel (hmmm, or complex, like Bluetooth:-) so I could actually control what the devices are doing, instead of just blasting out pre-determined IR codes and hoping for the best.
Agreed, touch-screen remotes tend to be a pain to ust for casual TV/home theatre use.
What I would love to have is a standard-looking remote, with lots of buttons, nicely laid out, but each button has a tiny LCD (or some other tech) display on it. The best of both worlds! Now I can 'learn' my remote by feel, but when I need to do something unusual (like tweak the delay in my surround speakers), I can have labels on each button, instead of needing to go by trial-and-error, or dig out the original remote.
Hit the "DVD" button, and the "channel up" display changes to a "chapter skip" display. Hit the "Amp" button, and the "multi-angle" display changes to the "surround sound mode" display.
Hmmm, I wonder how much will 50+ tiny little display screens cost me? Actually, a single large display with a nicely textured/moulded button overlay would probably do the trick too. And you could change the button overlay to any button style/layout you want. Hmmmm...
This WinTV card would be great, if it were not for the fact that it is completely useless if you get your TV signal through a set-top box (satelite, microwave, digital cable).
For an extra $5, they could have added an "IR blaster" output that you could program to your set top box specs, and it could then change the channel on your box and actually become useful.
But like all TV cards on the market, they assume that you have old-fashioned analog cable service. Too bad.
You should hope and pray that the RIAA manages to get a "blank media tax" -exactly- like the one we have here in Canada. Why? Because for that extra $.20 per blank CD-R, you get the right to copy CDs. You can borrow a friends CD collection, and make copies of all of them, and it is legal.
No, this is not some sort of urban legend. Yes, this is for real. Read it for yourself. Section 80 is what you want to take a close look at.
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Does this apply to downloaded music? It's not certain. I'm sure that the new copyright reforms that are going on right now will address that (for better or for worse!)
Does this help out the "little guys" who don't get their fair share from that tax? Nope. But it does allow me to make perfectly legal copies of any CDs I can borrow.
The IOC has completely screwed up their own definition of "sports" vs. "games". Chess? Not a sport. Curling? Not a sport. Bridge? Not a sport.
Personally, I don't like to call anything a "sport" if the outcome completely relies on the opinion of judges to assign a score, or does not involve some sort of athletic effort. This gets rid of everything from figure skating to olympic snowboard half-pipe. To be a sport, there has to be some physical measure of a win vs. loss (time, score, etc.), and it has to involve athletacisim of some sort (oops, there goes curling! Bye-bye baseball!)
The Olympics isn't about sport, it's about TV ratings. They will include anything as an event if they think they can make money doing it.
The.ca domain has recently undergone a LOT of admin changes. Check out www.cira.ca for the low-down.
Cities can register their names now (like calgary.ca). I know this for a fact since I have been trying to register parkhill.ca for about 6 years now, and the rules just changed again so that some dinky little town of 50 people in Ontario named "Parkhill" gets that domain, and no-one else is allowed to touch it. Same for all cities, landmarks, parks, provinces, etc.
The.ca TLD is now open to just about anyone, and teh squatters are already moving in.
The first 'commercial' word processor for NeXTstep was WordPerfect. Want to see what happens when you take the code for another platform, and mung it enough so that it kind-of works on an elegant system like NeXTstep? Then you want to see WordPerfect.
I'd really hate to see that happen on MacOS X too...
A big problem is that many people assume that if the site is SSL protected, then your data is secure. This is far from the truth! SSL is only a tiny part of the solution for creating a secure web site.
For example, imagine you are entering your credit card info for your favorite online retailer. You see the little lock in the corner of your browser. Maybe you are one of the very few people who actually double-clicks on that lock to view the information about your SSL session and the servers certificates. Heck, maybe you're really smart and even have server certificate revocation checking enabled (assuming your browser supports it.) You're happy that your credit card information is being encrypted and is safe as can be.
But in reality, that credit card number is only encrypted as it travels from your web browser to the web server. As soon as it hits the web server, it is decrypted. And of course, no ecommerce site uses single webserver for its entire operation. So now your unencrypted credit card number is sent over a network to a datbase. And then it's extracted and sent over the network for validation. And then it's sent over the network to generate your confirmation email (but they nicely X out the last 16 digits to make you feel safe.)
SSL was a nice, easy little system to make people feel secure, but it's time has come and gone. We need a system that will allow -persistant- encrypted data. I want to be able to encrypt data on my web browser, and have it stay encrypted all the way to that back-end database. The web server has no need to decrypt it.
Disclaimer: I work for Entrust. We work on this stuff.
It should be noted that the $349 cert is NOT a 40-bit crypto cert. It is a full-strength 128-bit cert, no matter what Verisign claims. This cert will support both 40-bit and 128-bit crypto. The rub is that older 'export' browsers, which only have 40-bit crypto, will not be able to use the 128-bit crypto when they encounter one of these certs.
The $895 cert is a "server gated crypto" cert. This means that those old 40-bit browsers will actually use 128-bit crypto when they encounter one of these certs.
These certs are mostly sold to banks, etc. And since all 'export' browsers are allowed to have 128-bit crypto now, they are becoming obsolete. Verisign is just trying to upsell customers by scaring them into thinking that the $349 cert isn't as secure.
The "study [of] the branch of mathematics dealing with computation" is 'computational science', not 'computer science'.
This is something that seems to be lost on a lot of people. I received my BSc. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, and it was definately not simply the study of mathematics, although that was a big part of it.
While I was at the UofC, it seemed that the department was moving more and more towards the 'theoretical' aspects of CompSci, but it still wasn't focusing exclusively on mathematics.
Just because some mathematician specializing in computation calls himself a 'computer scientist' (to raise some extra funding perhaps?) doesn't make it true.
Re:Who's their targetted audience?
on
Paper Phones
·
· Score: 1
My GF has one of those pre-paid cell phone plans. It actually costs her -less- than a standard monthly plan would. Sure, the per-minute cost is higher, but she does not have to pay extra for license fees or 911 service, and she only pays for the minutes she uses.
In Canada, we already pay a "music" tax on CD-Rs (and DAT, and audio cassettes, and MD, and...) The money is supposed to go to Canadian artists who's music we are so obviously making copies of.
Never mind that most of the music that gets copied isn't Canadian. Never mind that 19 out of 20 CD-Rs that I burn contain no music at all. There is a tax on each and every CD-R that I purchase, and that money is going straight into the pockets of Brian Adams and Celine Dion (or their labels, actually.)
The system doesn't work to compensate artists, but it does keep a whole lot of government employees busy and well paid.
One thing that makes a huge difference in a Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 surround system are matched speakers. Think about it, each channel has the ability to cover the full range of sound. For some movies, this can be important. If you have a wired little centre channel speaker (most are lame, since they have tiny magnets so as not to screw up your TV), and some little speakers in the back, you won't get consitent sound.
Best bet is to get 5 identical speakers. Of course, that usually means buying 6 speakers, since they come in sets of two.
I have 5 (plus one in storage!) Mission 700's right now. Not huge speakers my any means, but more than good enough for my small living room.
The whole surround-sound effect is -greatly- enhanced when the sound coming from all 5 speakers is matched. The sound from a jet engine flying past your head doesn't change when you move from the front to the rear speakers. The low-note rumbling from a Harley doesn't become a high-pitched whine as the sound passes through teh centre channel.
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Yesiree, I'm waiting on delivery of my Hurricane right now. Joy of joys.
I don't think that any drugs or genetic engineering should be tolorated AT ALL in amateur sports, including the olympics (which means making the olympics a venue for only amateur sports, which it most certainly is not right now...)
However, when it comes to professional sports, I'm all for it. These people compete for a living, and should be expected to perform at their highest possible levels. If this means drugs, then so be it. At least the drugs can be developed properly and used in a controlled fashion.
Pro athletes already push the limits beyond what any normal human could hope to accomplish. Pro athletes already use equipment and training techniques that no mere mortal could ever have access to. Why not put some well tested and safe drugs into that training regime?
Come on, everyone knows that a modern desktop needs to have excessive animation. I want a parade of dancing midgets everytime I iconify emacs!
Oh wait, these are just screenshots. Perhaps I just can't see all of the glorious animation? That must be it.
This is brilliant. Finally, a watchable version of "Titanic". A quick bit of nudity, and then 20 minutes of the ship sinking. I like it.
Not one of those four points is even in the Excite article. And this get's mod'ed up to a 5? Yeesh!
.us registry. No mention of pricing, timelines, or partnerships are even mentioned.
All the article says is that NueStar will be running the
You want an SSL cert on the cheap? Go see the folks over at TuCows.
That's about as cheap as it gets for an SSL cert from a CA with it's root cert in most browsers.
Disclaimer: I work for Entrust.
I can't help but think this would be an awesome controller for pinball simulations. Sure, the keyboard is basically useless, but it is a good width and looks like it would be pretty comfortable to use.
Now if it had a couple of tilt/motion sensors in it...
I have an oollllddd (1980??) copy of Popular Electronics kicking around somewhere that shows you how to do this too. Maybe when big screen TVs were hard to come by and insanely expensive, this was a good idea...
>...mp3s will still have hisses and skips that can
>be dangerous to powerful, quality audio setups.
If -any- audio source is "dangerous" to your equipment, then you don't exactly have a "quality" audio setup. Sorry.
Yeah, I received a 60GXP drive to replace my dead 75GXP. Problem is, the 75GXP was a 45Gig drive, and the 60GXP they gave me as a replacement is only a 40Gig drive. And they don't seem to care that I get 5Gig less either.
On the up-side, the 60GXP is a bit faster and a lot quiter than the 75GXP. Maybe it will last more than 10 months too...
I just had my 45Gig 75GXP replaced a few weeks ago. It was running fine for about 10 months, and then one day it just started making the worst noises. Luckily I was able to do a backup before it died.
The annoying part is that IBM would not replace it with another 45Gig drive. Instead, I got one of their new 40Gig drives (2 20-Gig platters instead of 3 15-Gig platters). On the upside, it's a bit faster and a LOT quieter. On the downside, I lose 5Gig of storage space, and IBM doesn't seem to give a rats ass.
One thing that has always driven my nuts with macro functions on any universal remote is the fact that the remote has no way of knowing what the current state of the components are.
:-) so I could actually control what the devices are doing, instead of just blasting out pre-determined IR codes and hoping for the best.
For example, I have a macro for "DVD". Turn on the amp. Set amp to DVD input. Set surround to "theatre". Turn on the TV. Switch TV to DVD input. Turn on the DVD player.
Seems like a great idea. But some of the components (TV and DVD player) have a single button/signal for power on/off. So if my TV was already on, then this macro does everything right, but turns the TV off. Damn.
Or sometimes not all of the IR signals make it to all of the compnents. TV is on, DVD player is on, but the amp never switched to the DVD input. Damn.
I wish I could have all of my components share a simple communications channel (hmmm, or complex, like Bluetooth
Agreed, touch-screen remotes tend to be a pain to ust for casual TV/home theatre use.
What I would love to have is a standard-looking remote, with lots of buttons, nicely laid out, but each button has a tiny LCD (or some other tech) display on it. The best of both worlds! Now I can 'learn' my remote by feel, but when I need to do something unusual (like tweak the delay in my surround speakers), I can have labels on each button, instead of needing to go by trial-and-error, or dig out the original remote.
Hit the "DVD" button, and the "channel up" display changes to a "chapter skip" display. Hit the "Amp" button, and the "multi-angle" display changes to the "surround sound mode" display.
Hmmm, I wonder how much will 50+ tiny little display screens cost me? Actually, a single large display with a nicely textured/moulded button overlay would probably do the trick too. And you could change the button overlay to any button style/layout you want. Hmmmm...
This WinTV card would be great, if it were not for the fact that it is completely useless if you get your TV signal through a set-top box (satelite, microwave, digital cable).
For an extra $5, they could have added an "IR blaster" output that you could program to your set top box specs, and it could then change the channel on your box and actually become useful.
But like all TV cards on the market, they assume that you have old-fashioned analog cable service. Too bad.
Morpheus (musiccity.com) does this now. It's very, very slick. They have abandoned the gnutella protocol, however.
I also think they are licensing a patented system to do this. More info at their website if you care to research it.
You should hope and pray that the RIAA manages to get a "blank media tax" -exactly- like the one we have here in Canada. Why? Because for that extra $.20 per blank CD-R, you get the right to copy CDs. You can borrow a friends CD collection, and make copies of all of them, and it is legal.
No, this is not some sort of urban legend. Yes, this is for real. Read it for yourself. Section 80 is what you want to take a close look at.
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Does this apply to downloaded music? It's not certain. I'm sure that the new copyright reforms that are going on right now will address that (for better or for worse!)
Does this help out the "little guys" who don't get their fair share from that tax? Nope. But it does allow me to make perfectly legal copies of any CDs I can borrow.
The IOC has completely screwed up their own definition of "sports" vs. "games". Chess? Not a sport. Curling? Not a sport. Bridge? Not a sport.
Personally, I don't like to call anything a "sport" if the outcome completely relies on the opinion of judges to assign a score, or does not involve some sort of athletic effort. This gets rid of everything from figure skating to olympic snowboard half-pipe. To be a sport, there has to be some physical measure of a win vs. loss (time, score, etc.), and it has to involve athletacisim of some sort (oops, there goes curling! Bye-bye baseball!)
The Olympics isn't about sport, it's about TV ratings. They will include anything as an event if they think they can make money doing it.
The .ca domain has recently undergone a LOT of admin changes. Check out www.cira.ca for the low-down.
.ca TLD is now open to just about anyone, and teh squatters are already moving in.
Cities can register their names now (like calgary.ca). I know this for a fact since I have been trying to register parkhill.ca for about 6 years now, and the rules just changed again so that some dinky little town of 50 people in Ontario named "Parkhill" gets that domain, and no-one else is allowed to touch it. Same for all cities, landmarks, parks, provinces, etc.
The
The first 'commercial' word processor for NeXTstep was WordPerfect. Want to see what happens when you take the code for another platform, and mung it enough so that it kind-of works on an elegant system like NeXTstep? Then you want to see WordPerfect.
I'd really hate to see that happen on MacOS X too...
A big problem is that many people assume that if the site is SSL protected, then your data is secure. This is far from the truth! SSL is only a tiny part of the solution for creating a secure web site.
For example, imagine you are entering your credit card info for your favorite online retailer. You see the little lock in the corner of your browser. Maybe you are one of the very few people who actually double-clicks on that lock to view the information about your SSL session and the servers certificates. Heck, maybe you're really smart and even have server certificate revocation checking enabled (assuming your browser supports it.) You're happy that your credit card information is being encrypted and is safe as can be.
But in reality, that credit card number is only encrypted as it travels from your web browser to the web server. As soon as it hits the web server, it is decrypted. And of course, no ecommerce site uses single webserver for its entire operation. So now your unencrypted credit card number is sent over a network to a datbase. And then it's extracted and sent over the network for validation. And then it's sent over the network to generate your confirmation email (but they nicely X out the last 16 digits to make you feel safe.)
SSL was a nice, easy little system to make people feel secure, but it's time has come and gone. We need a system that will allow -persistant- encrypted data. I want to be able to encrypt data on my web browser, and have it stay encrypted all the way to that back-end database. The web server has no need to decrypt it.
Disclaimer: I work for Entrust. We work on this stuff.
It should be noted that the $349 cert is NOT a 40-bit crypto cert. It is a full-strength 128-bit cert, no matter what Verisign claims. This cert will support both 40-bit and 128-bit crypto. The rub is that older 'export' browsers, which only have 40-bit crypto, will not be able to use the 128-bit crypto when they encounter one of these certs.
The $895 cert is a "server gated crypto" cert. This means that those old 40-bit browsers will actually use 128-bit crypto when they encounter one of these certs.
These certs are mostly sold to banks, etc. And since all 'export' browsers are allowed to have 128-bit crypto now, they are becoming obsolete. Verisign is just trying to upsell customers by scaring them into thinking that the $349 cert isn't as secure.
The "study [of] the branch of mathematics dealing with computation" is 'computational science', not 'computer science'.
This is something that seems to be lost on a lot of people. I received my BSc. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, and it was definately not simply the study of mathematics, although that was a big part of it.
While I was at the UofC, it seemed that the department was moving more and more towards the 'theoretical' aspects of CompSci, but it still wasn't focusing exclusively on mathematics.
Just because some mathematician specializing in computation calls himself a 'computer scientist' (to raise some extra funding perhaps?) doesn't make it true.
My GF has one of those pre-paid cell phone plans. It actually costs her -less- than a standard monthly plan would. Sure, the per-minute cost is higher, but she does not have to pay extra for license fees or 911 service, and she only pays for the minutes she uses.
It all depends on your usage patterns.
In Canada, we already pay a "music" tax on CD-Rs (and DAT, and audio cassettes, and MD, and...) The money is supposed to go to Canadian artists who's music we are so obviously making copies of.
Never mind that most of the music that gets copied isn't Canadian. Never mind that 19 out of 20 CD-Rs that I burn contain no music at all. There is a tax on each and every CD-R that I purchase, and that money is going straight into the pockets of Brian Adams and Celine Dion (or their labels, actually.)
The system doesn't work to compensate artists, but it does keep a whole lot of government employees busy and well paid.
One thing that makes a huge difference in a Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 surround system are matched speakers. Think about it, each channel has the ability to cover the full range of sound. For some movies, this can be important. If you have a wired little centre channel speaker (most are lame, since they have tiny magnets so as not to screw up your TV), and some little speakers in the back, you won't get consitent sound.
Best bet is to get 5 identical speakers. Of course, that usually means buying 6 speakers, since they come in sets of two.
I have 5 (plus one in storage!) Mission 700's right now. Not huge speakers my any means, but more than good enough for my small living room.
The whole surround-sound effect is -greatly- enhanced when the sound coming from all 5 speakers is matched. The sound from a jet engine flying past your head doesn't change when you move from the front to the rear speakers. The low-note rumbling from a Harley doesn't become a high-pitched whine as the sound passes through teh centre channel.
Try it, you'll like it.