I have basically two circles of friends, intellectual geeks and sports geeks, with quite a bit of crossover between the two. Don't really see much difference, except that they geek out about different things.
has been morphed by technology to the point where it barely resembles the original sport. First came electrical scoring to increase accuracy in a sport that is often too fast to see. But this changed the goal from performing a correct touch (as judged by the officials) to depressing a switch on the end of the blade on your opponents body. With the heavier tip required by the scoring apparatus, a "flick" shot that resembles the cracking of a whip is now the primary offense in elite competition.
It is now to the point where a significant amount of the touches (esp. in foil) are actually scored on the opponents back as he faces you, by whipping the blade over his shoulder. Rather bizarre to the uninitiated, and a far cry from the sports origins.
The new(er) technology with a few exceptions (sticky boots) haven't made things doable that weren't in the past, just an awful lot safer
I think you undervalue exposure as a component of climb difficulty. Exposure being the general climbing term for the degree to which the climb exposes you to, or makes you aware of danger. The ratings on many climbs actually take this into account. While there are probably some climbers immune to the effect, I would say most climb at a somewhat lower level when under conditions of extreme exposure, due to factors such as muscle tension and unwillingness to trust marginal holds. When you add bolts to a previously runout climb, you effectively decrease the level of difficulty. The invention of the spring-loaded cam had the same effect for many of the classic Yosemite crack climbs.
Not that I'm complaining. I may be a "geek" but I've an extensive collection of sports injuries from a lifetime of extreme sports, and no desire to add to them.
Re:Climbing(i apoligize for not explaining jargon)
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Sports Technology?
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· Score: 1
The single biggest advance that made the decimal system seem cramped was the modern sticky rubber shoe that appeared in the 60's. At first it was also seen as cheating by some purists.
Once you learn to trust these shoes, just about anyone in great shape can follow 5.10, a rating that originally would have been off the scale.
Re:South Park episode display classic irony
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Isn't It Ironic?
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· Score: 1
I've gone to the trouble to do your thinking for you and looked up the definition
Cutting and pasting a definition doesn't really qualify as thinking either. Not an ironic comment though, just pompous and rude.
"The thing that amazes me is that people assume just because we make someone physically "better" than someone that they're going to be an olympic athelete. I just don't buy it. Most of those people work their as*es off to get there. Just because someone has a genetic pre-disposition to being an athelete doesn't make you one.
It's not that artificial advantages, such as doping, or potentially GM, are guarantees of success. It's that, in an environment where such augmentation is allowed, lack of this advantage becomes a nearly absolute barrier to entry.
In general, the differences in performance between elite athletes, become increasingly minute the further up the ladder you go. At World-Class levels, victory or defeat is a matter of microseconds. For every competitor that worked their ass off to get there, there are a host of others who also devoted their life but fell short by a tiny bit. If you picture athletic performance as a graph where x represents the investment of resources and y represents the performance achieved, you will see a limit to y as x approaches infinity, with a
large group of competitors all clustered just below y. Over time, changes to f will occur due to new discoveries and techniques, resulting in a shifting of y. If a competitor does not adopt the new f, he will be stuck at the old limit of y.
This is all just a long-winded way of saying that, for these elite athletes, the adoption of any new technique that significantly enhances performance is not optional. The question is, do we want to make doping, steroids, or GM a requirement to compete at an elite level.
And don't forget all the fence-sitter's that voted for Nader, and those who perpetuated the meme that there is no demonstrable difference between the two main parties.
I got in on the HSN deal and picked up a couple Zaurii? for me and a buddy. I'm absolutely thrilled with it. Currently working my way through this excellent guide (key tip: pipe is shift-enter).
Back in my day, my 8086-based dual floppy pc was a cutting edge microcomputer. The Zaurus I just ordered from HSN certainly has more computingpower. Now if I could just hook some terminals to it...
I care, esp. if it affects my attempts to retrieve information. Corporate censorship can be harmful too, and the way to combat it is by exposing it, and letting it affect customer patronage.
No, but if by your rhetoric you mean to imply that it is acceptable to censor such topics in electronic form, then I beg to differ.
Like it or not, the internet is rapidly replacing (has replaced?) older forms of disseminating information. The protections of freedom we enjoy in the use of such media must be extended to the internet or we risk allowing a social agenda forced on us by the peddlers of these filters.
A good place to begin familiarising yourself with the limitations of these filters is The Blocked Site of the Day.
I suspect that reproductive health is actually targetted for blocking rather than an accidental victim of imprecise technology, but the net effect is the same.
ACLU has no problem with the CIPA in regards to public schools, it is obvious they see something wrong with preventing Tom the Bum from jacking off in the back corner of the library.
I think it more likely that the ACLU (and myself) have a problem with Joe (or Jane) Average being able to access reproductive health information (among other things blocked by so-called smart filters) at a public library.
This sort of legislation is sold to us as protection from smut, but in reality it results in censorship of legitimate topics. The problem is analagous to that of protecting against piracy while allowing all forms of fair use. The technology simply is not capable of distinguishing between the two, and shows no sign of becoming so in the near future.
I hear ya. Don't know a smoker myself that doesn't wish he/she could quit, at least part of the time. Myself, I smoked over a pack a day from about 14 to 21 years of age. It took about 2.5 years to kick it altogether. Seriously the best thing I ever did for quality of life.
Here are some simple tips that make a big difference:
-Temporarily avoid activities that formerly involved smoking (drinking, clubhopping, etc).
-Temporarily avoid smokers
-Substitute sugarless gum when you get a craving
-Brush your teeth after eating to avoid the post-meal craving. It works!
-Eat bran and exercise in the morning to overcome the effects of nicotine withdrawal on your digestion (constipation)
-Take up a fun aerobic sport and measure your progress. Mountainbiking is a good one. Fencing, basketball, and surfing are my favorites.
This is the big one:
-Don't get discouraged with lapses. Just throw the pack away when you come to your senses and keep going. In the long run you are reducing your dependency and are that much closer to freedom.
I've still got three of these babies running on a spare and relative's machines. Two of them with the stock fan. All rock-solid, no crashes I attribute to cpu-failure (Linux stays up, win98 requiring periodic reboots).
I agree that a lot of overclocking being done these days is just for bragging rights, but, with all the crippling of higher-end components, just to create artificial price tiers, there are definitely opportunities to get that free upgrade with a little tinkering.
I thought the stories weakness was the drastic oversimplification of a brain-computer link. There are baby steps occurring now (things like light detection for the blind and that Warwick guy.
But I agree that this sort of thing is coming at some point, and it better damn well be open. Because, when the technology matures, you won't have a choice. You'll need your own connection just to compete. Like developers today need the Internet, only exponentially greater.
The idea of controlling autonomic functions of the body with a computer was new to me, though, and was where I really thought the story shone. Also the mention of "Trusted Computing" and its relevance. I shudder to think of the consequences if the day comes when we are forced to accept a brain-computer connection, and we don't own root.
" Yes, you can read an entry from a book each day, but for many people these days, who read a number of sites (like/.) every day, it's easier to slot another website into that routine."
In other words, most of us don't get paid for time spent reading nontechnical books. Websites on the other hand...
"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both." - Zen Buddhist Text
When they say "secure the internet" they mean seizing the opportunity to harvest all of the intelligence available through eavesdropping. The internet is a national security risk just by existing, being such a powerful tool for organizing people. They want to balance that risk by using the vast surveillance capability afforded as more and more communication converges on the net.
This is as insightful a comment as I've read for this article. As I was reading the Brin article I was put in mind of Tolkien's response when asked if LoTR was allegory:
"No. I dislike allegory whenever I smell it."
Tolkien is not advocating some social agenda, and is more of an objective observer, noting both the potential for good and evil in technology, and progress, indeed in all things.
The one sentiment that stands clear throughout the work is an environmentalist ethic of appreciation and preservation of nature. Not opposition to progress, but a caution to proceed without destroying more than we gain. Gimli's desire to develop Aglarond being a case in point.
Well, I'm with you in your irritation, but you are about as off on details as Brin:
"The older state of affairs is that Elves and Men were born on a paradisiac earth, and there was no Evil"
Actually, evil was introduced from the first, with Morgoth putting forth his own themes in discord with those of Illuvatar. Indeed, Tolkien was making the point that in all things there exists the potential for good and evil, a common theme in religious works.
The Rings were forged by Sauron
No, the rings, with the exception of the one ring, were forged by the elf-smiths of Eregion. Under Sauron's tutelage.
Another point: the high elves were banished from 'valinor' the land of bliss because after Morgoth came, they tried to overtake the land for themselves, and in their arrogance, they were exiled
Wrong again, the Noldor (a subset of the high elves) exiled themselves by their oath and the slaying of their own kin. Their disobedience was in following Morgoth to Middle-earth, not an attempt to "overtake" Valinor.
I use Total Recorder to capture the audio, which is the only method I've found. Unfortunately, quality is lost in the conversion, and its one of the few programs that keeps me booting windows. Here's hoping someone uses the recently release realaudio source to come up with a better Linux solution.
All these shows take up a lot of space though. The Bantam BA350 holds 128mb + a 128mb flash card. Recharges from the USB port and works well. My favorite MP3 player to date, though it has a windows only interface.
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I have basically two circles of friends, intellectual geeks and sports geeks, with quite a bit of crossover between the two. Don't really see much difference, except that they geek out about different things.
It is now to the point where a significant amount of the touches (esp. in foil) are actually scored on the opponents back as he faces you, by whipping the blade over his shoulder. Rather bizarre to the uninitiated, and a far cry from the sports origins.
I think you undervalue exposure as a component of climb difficulty. Exposure being the general climbing term for the degree to which the climb exposes you to, or makes you aware of danger. The ratings on many climbs actually take this into account. While there are probably some climbers immune to the effect, I would say most climb at a somewhat lower level when under conditions of extreme exposure, due to factors such as muscle tension and unwillingness to trust marginal holds. When you add bolts to a previously runout climb, you effectively decrease the level of difficulty. The invention of the spring-loaded cam had the same effect for many of the classic Yosemite crack climbs.
Not that I'm complaining. I may be a "geek" but I've an extensive collection of sports injuries from a lifetime of extreme sports, and no desire to add to them.
The single biggest advance that made the decimal system seem cramped was the modern sticky rubber shoe that appeared in the 60's. At first it was also seen as cheating by some purists.
Once you learn to trust these shoes, just about anyone in great shape can follow 5.10, a rating that originally would have been off the scale.
Cutting and pasting a definition doesn't really qualify as thinking either. Not an ironic comment though, just pompous and rude.
Makes sense. If mother's milk is inedible to all but the infant, its a lot more likely the infant will get fed when the parents are hungry.
It's not that artificial advantages, such as doping, or potentially GM, are guarantees of success. It's that, in an environment where such augmentation is allowed, lack of this advantage becomes a nearly absolute barrier to entry.
In general, the differences in performance between elite athletes, become increasingly minute the further up the ladder you go. At World-Class levels, victory or defeat is a matter of microseconds. For every competitor that worked their ass off to get there, there are a host of others who also devoted their life but fell short by a tiny bit. If you picture athletic performance as a graph where x represents the investment of resources and y represents the performance achieved, you will see a limit to y as x approaches infinity, with a large group of competitors all clustered just below y. Over time, changes to f will occur due to new discoveries and techniques, resulting in a shifting of y. If a competitor does not adopt the new f, he will be stuck at the old limit of y.
This is all just a long-winded way of saying that, for these elite athletes, the adoption of any new technique that significantly enhances performance is not optional. The question is, do we want to make doping, steroids, or GM a requirement to compete at an elite level.
And don't forget all the fence-sitter's that voted for Nader, and those who perpetuated the meme that there is no demonstrable difference between the two main parties.
Some more useful links:
Zaurus DevNet forums
The Zaurus Notebook (tips and tricks)
Zaurus Loves Linux
Now what I really want, is a portable device to connect the usb cable from the phone described in this article to the Zaurus dataport.
Back in my day, my 8086-based dual floppy pc was a cutting edge microcomputer. The Zaurus I just ordered from HSN certainly has more computingpower. Now if I could just hook some terminals to it...
I care, esp. if it affects my attempts to retrieve information. Corporate censorship can be harmful too, and the way to combat it is by exposing it, and letting it affect customer patronage.
No downloads yet, but there are screenshots of the models up here.
Like it or not, the internet is rapidly replacing (has replaced?) older forms of disseminating information. The protections of freedom we enjoy in the use of such media must be extended to the internet or we risk allowing a social agenda forced on us by the peddlers of these filters.
A good place to begin familiarising yourself with the limitations of these filters is The Blocked Site of the Day. I suspect that reproductive health is actually targetted for blocking rather than an accidental victim of imprecise technology, but the net effect is the same.
I think it more likely that the ACLU (and myself) have a problem with Joe (or Jane) Average being able to access reproductive health information (among other things blocked by so-called smart filters) at a public library.
This sort of legislation is sold to us as protection from smut, but in reality it results in censorship of legitimate topics. The problem is analagous to that of protecting against piracy while allowing all forms of fair use. The technology simply is not capable of distinguishing between the two, and shows no sign of becoming so in the near future.
Here are some simple tips that make a big difference:
-Temporarily avoid activities that formerly involved smoking (drinking, clubhopping, etc).
-Temporarily avoid smokers
-Substitute sugarless gum when you get a craving -Brush your teeth after eating to avoid the post-meal craving. It works!
-Eat bran and exercise in the morning to overcome the effects of nicotine withdrawal on your digestion (constipation) -Take up a fun aerobic sport and measure your progress. Mountainbiking is a good one. Fencing, basketball, and surfing are my favorites.
This is the big one: -Don't get discouraged with lapses. Just throw the pack away when you come to your senses and keep going. In the long run you are reducing your dependency and are that much closer to freedom.
Good luck!
tilting a laptop causing hangs could be anything but a hardware problem? Get a clue please.
I agree that a lot of overclocking being done these days is just for bragging rights, but, with all the crippling of higher-end components, just to create artificial price tiers, there are definitely opportunities to get that free upgrade with a little tinkering.
But I agree that this sort of thing is coming at some point, and it better damn well be open. Because, when the technology matures, you won't have a choice. You'll need your own connection just to compete. Like developers today need the Internet, only exponentially greater. The idea of controlling autonomic functions of the body with a computer was new to me, though, and was where I really thought the story shone. Also the mention of "Trusted Computing" and its relevance. I shudder to think of the consequences if the day comes when we are forced to accept a brain-computer connection, and we don't own root.
In other words, most of us don't get paid for time spent reading nontechnical books. Websites on the other hand...
When they say "secure the internet" they mean seizing the opportunity to harvest all of the intelligence available through eavesdropping. The internet is a national security risk just by existing, being such a powerful tool for organizing people. They want to balance that risk by using the vast surveillance capability afforded as more and more communication converges on the net.
"No. I dislike allegory whenever I smell it."
Tolkien is not advocating some social agenda, and is more of an objective observer, noting both the potential for good and evil in technology, and progress, indeed in all things.
The one sentiment that stands clear throughout the work is an environmentalist ethic of appreciation and preservation of nature. Not opposition to progress, but a caution to proceed without destroying more than we gain. Gimli's desire to develop Aglarond being a case in point.
"The older state of affairs is that Elves and Men were born on a paradisiac earth, and there was no Evil"
Actually, evil was introduced from the first, with Morgoth putting forth his own themes in discord with those of Illuvatar. Indeed, Tolkien was making the point that in all things there exists the potential for good and evil, a common theme in religious works.
The Rings were forged by Sauron
No, the rings, with the exception of the one ring, were forged by the elf-smiths of Eregion. Under Sauron's tutelage.
Another point: the high elves were banished from 'valinor' the land of bliss because after Morgoth came, they tried to overtake the land for themselves, and in their arrogance, they were exiled
Wrong again, the Noldor (a subset of the high elves) exiled themselves by their oath and the slaying of their own kin. Their disobedience was in following Morgoth to Middle-earth, not an attempt to "overtake" Valinor.
I use Total Recorder to capture the audio, which is the only method I've found. Unfortunately, quality is lost in the conversion, and its one of the few programs that keeps me booting windows. Here's hoping someone uses the recently release realaudio source to come up with a better Linux solution.
All these shows take up a lot of space though. The Bantam BA350 holds 128mb + a 128mb flash card. Recharges from the USB port and works well. My favorite MP3 player to date, though it has a windows only interface.
What age group are BMX games targeted at? Now add the porn...see the problem?