Seriously, I have never understood the thing that IT people have for sucking down caffeine all day long. I don't drink coffee -- EVER -- and I rarely drink hot tea. Even when I do drink tea, it's decaffeinated (Tazo Passion is my favorite), or it's the once a week or so that I go to a restaurant and get iced tea. I drink maybe eight cans of soda per week, and that includes the five that I have with lunch, which are usually things like ginger ale. I'm cutting down even on that in favor of Gatorade that I buy in powdered format, mix up at night, and take cold to work in the morning in a Thermos. On random occasions, I'll have a Dr Pepper or a Coke, but by and large, from the time I leave my apartment to the time I leave for lunch, I don't drink anything. The same goes for the time from the end of lunch to about the time when I get home, around six hours later.
At one time, I drank a couple of cans a day per eight-hour shift, but then about five years ago, I just decided to not do it. That was it. Productivity isn't hurt, and I don't find myself needing another pickup later in the day (or in the morning, for that matter).
The TiVos don't work natively with digital cable, and that's the problem. The dual digital receive tuners (there is a third playback-only tuner) on the Moxi (or any DVR) are required for my roommate and me, as we have shows that air at the same time that we record for later viewing. We could set up a splitter, but with the associated costs (buying a TiVo, plus the monthly service, plus the new furniture to house it, plus the additional electricity when I'm trying to reduce my power usage) I just can't justify it.
This is somewhat worrying to me, as I've grown accustomed to the Moxi capabilities on the Motorola box that I lease from Adelphia. TW is due to take over the area in a few months, but there's been little word on what will be happening with the DVRs. I know that Moxi has a coming deal on a better device made by another company (Samsung?), but whether TW will pick up on it is a significant question.
I'd been hoping for TiVo to get on the Cablecard bandwagon until the clarifications were posted on ArsTechnica about the very limited capabilities of the CC spec; now I'm rather happy with the Moxi since the upgrade that included VOD, all things considered. I don't have to deal with the IR Blaster to change channels, and I can watch and record at the same time, which I understand is difficult at best with a TiVo.
I submit that this is not if, but when. Already China is outsourcing manufacturing jobs to other countries because they can lower costs that way. As China's society becomes more affluent, the employers are coming under increasing pressure to deliver at past prices, so low-skill manufacturing jobs, like textiles and simple machine implements, are ending up in even lower-wage countries. Kind of interesting to watch, in a twisted way.
Thank you. I'd love to have a plugin for any word processor (Word, KWrite, Writer, whatever) that could flag those, preferably during grammar checking. Unfortunately, I'm not especially good at development, so I end up having to rely on others for these things. (Maybe that's a hint that I should work on my meager skills.)
The best advice that ever provided to me for writing consisted of avoiding, as much as possible, all use of the word 'be' and its variants. Doing so forces the writer to utilize more interesting words and vary the sentence structure, which helps to keep the reader's attention. The following list contains all of the words to avoid:
am are is was were be being been
While not sorted alphabetically, my teacher at the time provided them in that order, so my recital follows the same.
Not at any of the game stores around me, who once sold them for about $4 or $5 each, and a couple of years ago when I last checked on it, they were no longer available to the local stores; a few online merchants were selling them, though at more than I was willing to pay for a single die of any sort.
That may well be, since I've not read anything especially detailed on the mechanism, and I'm not willing to pay the money required to see the actual draft. My knowledge comes from a combination of what I've read and something I heard from an engineer in the wireless industry (though he admittedly had not had hands-on experience in the spec at that point). However, it does nothing to ameliorate the effective three-channel selection (1, 6, 11) that we now have in place; all it does is preserve that space for now.
Note: Channels 12, 13, and 14 are illegal to use in the United States.
You're overlapping, then. Channels are 22MHz wide -- 11MHz on either side of the channel's frequency. Channel 1 is centered on 2.412GHz, channel 6 on 2.437 GHz, and channel 11 at 2.462GHz. Notice that the high end of channel 6 is 2.448GHz, and the low end of channel 11 is 2.451GHz -- a mere 3MHz apart, and subject to some overlap because the 22MHz spread isn't perfect, and bleedover is common.
Now, in your case (channel 9), you're operating 11MHz left and right of 2.452GHz. Your bottom range (2.441GHz) is just above the middle of channel 6 and your top range (2.463GHz) is actually above the center of channel 11. In addition, channel 9 is also right about the frequency used by microwave ovens, according to Joshua Wright (whose name you'll see on plenty of wireless security tools), and many inexpensive microwave ovens leak enough radiation to poison connections.
This is all on top of the change coming with 802.11n, which uses 40MHz ranges, many of which may default to channel 6 out of habit, though 3 and 9 will be better selections based on legal bandwidth, and their use of channel 9 will probably swamp your little 11g unit.
Basically, you're using possibly the worst frequency set you can possibly select.
That's my reading as well. The telco has its cabinets here for the SONET connections, which is a pretty clear delineation of where their edge of the network sits. I read it as placing our infrastructure squarely into the realm of the private network, but the ambiguity is really thick here.
I went looking into it recently for clarifications based on planned upgrades to our phone system, which is for a county government. The wording of the ruling (actually First Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rule Making, Document FCC 05-153) regarding universities is located in footnote 100 on page 19:
To the extent that EDUCAUSE members (or similar organizations) are engaged in the provision of facilities-based private broadband networks or intranets that enable members to communicate with one another and/or retrieve information from shared data libraries not available to the general public, these networks appear to be private networks for purposes of CALEA. Indeed, DOJ states that the three networks specifically discussed by EDUCAUSE qualify as private networks under CALEA's section 103(b)(2)(B). DOJ Reply at 19. We therefore make clear that providers of these networks are not included as "telecommunications carriers" under the SRP [Substantial Replacement Provision] with respect to these networks. To the extent, however, that these private networks are interconnected with a public network, either the PSTN or the Internet, providers of the facilities that support the connection of the private network to a public network are subject to CALEA under the SRP.
So... Are they or aren't they handled as private networks under CALEA? That looks fairly ambiguous to me.
There's legal right of way, and there's practical right of way. If it can squish me, it has practical right of way. Using this rule has kept me safe from most accidents for some time (aside from two minor fender-benders that were entirely my fault, one about six years ago and one about 12 years ago).
My current phone is nearing two years old with no signs of slowing (though I think I will replace the battery soon), and the last phone lasted four years. I don't coddle them, either -- plenty of scrapes and scratches on them. I've always found phones kind of hard to destroy.
Maryann left Palladium sometime before the divorce, so that's not an issue. Whether Kevin has them is another story. I suspect you're right in that the reason that they haven't gone after them is solely because they don't have the Robotech licenses anymore.
The Rifts world is fantastic, but the system has to get cleaned up. First of all, there are continuity errors about some significant areas (major human settlements existing where Xiticix have allegedly swept the area clean), and second, the combat system itself has to get fixed.
Palladium isn't the only RPG company to get hit with embezzlement issues. As I understand it from a friend that used to do freelance art for SJGames, that company nearly went under a while back due to embezzlement. Not sure what all went down, but his contract was terminated as part of a rapid cost-cutting move made in order to save the company.
Chaos Earth was only published a few years ago, unless I missed something way back when. It does tell the tale of pre-Rifts Earth as it goes through the transformation, but Rifts came first by many years.
You weren't playing Glitter Boys properly, then. The Glitter Boy cannot fire the Boom Gun unless it's locked into place -- which prevents it from moving for at least that attack. This makes it a sitting duck for incoming fire. Rifts is full of munchkins (like basically everything in South America 1), but there are ways of counteracting most of them. The easiest way is for the GM to say, "No." Anyone who can't live with that decision can leave. (This goes for every RPG out there with something that could be a munchkin.)
I have every book in the Rifts line save for a few of the newest. They published two index books, both of which were in the 92-128 page range, and that was in the late 1990s. What you may be thinking of is the GM's guide, which was a godsend for gamemasters because it pulled together 15 years of rules scattered over dozens of books, but it was hardly just an index.
Oddly enough, my last gaming group was that way -- only it was the players. The only girl was a lesbian, and all of the males in the group hetero and wishing strongly that she'd look over the fence.
They still are like this. They have a good crew, and the writing overall is good (though everytime I bought a book I felt like getting a red pen to tag all of the errors and sending it to them for corrections in the next printing), but Kevin's insistence on keeping 100% control over everything really hurt. Want to make a character generator? Sorry. Can't do that. Want to mention core characters (Erin Tarn, Emperor Prosek, etc)? You're treading a fine line. Want to even discuss a method to port to another system (D20, GURPS, Interlock)? Expect a nasty letter. Meanwhile, the one character generator that they did release was crappy and limited (based on Microsoft Access), and while they did eventually kick it out to the public, releasing new files for it was a risky business at best, IIRC. Their website has always been a storefront, with token game support at best.
The Palladium combat system was his baby, and it worked well enough in the SDC/AR days, but when it came to MDC, it started to lose something. (Mind you, I continued playing Rifts up until a couple of years ago, when player schedules just got too inconsistent, but it was hard to run a game and keep it balanced and fun.) But he couldn't let it go and modernize the system. It took more than a decade just to get a "final" and unified set of combat rules out the door.
If it comes to it, Palladium will need to do what Talsorian Games did -- pack everything into boxes, rent some storage/warehouse space, and continue as a mom and pop shop until they can get something better together. There's no sense, in my mind, of Kevin sacrificing everything he owns in order to stave off what may be inevitable. I realize that this has been his dream for the better part of three decades, but it doesn't often make sense to have a dream kill you.
Re:The problem of temp regulation
on
An Alternate Human
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember reading years ago about limited experiments suggesting that people that wore special caps that circulated cool water through them performed better on intelligence tests than those that didn't. Those first tested without the cap saw their test scores improve when tested with the cap. I wonder if this was ever expanded upon; if it's true, it wouldn't be that hard to build something like that.
They do when the tide of public opinion turns overwhelmingly against them. Zarqawi has reportedly been facing this because of his targeting of Shi'ites rather than the Coalition. Various groups in Saudi Arabia and Jordan have run into this through their activities that have targeted Muslims instead of foreigners, leading to more civilians providing intelligence to the police.
If you use one-time pads, and you use them only one time, then they are unbreakable. One-time pads that were used more than once caused the NSA to be able to decrypt a number of Soviet messages at critical times during the Cold War.
Not arguing with you -- just being pedantic on a point that some people miss.
Slashdot Mirror
How bout... nothing?
Seriously, I have never understood the thing that IT people have for sucking down caffeine all day long. I don't drink coffee -- EVER -- and I rarely drink hot tea. Even when I do drink tea, it's decaffeinated (Tazo Passion is my favorite), or it's the once a week or so that I go to a restaurant and get iced tea. I drink maybe eight cans of soda per week, and that includes the five that I have with lunch, which are usually things like ginger ale. I'm cutting down even on that in favor of Gatorade that I buy in powdered format, mix up at night, and take cold to work in the morning in a Thermos. On random occasions, I'll have a Dr Pepper or a Coke, but by and large, from the time I leave my apartment to the time I leave for lunch, I don't drink anything. The same goes for the time from the end of lunch to about the time when I get home, around six hours later.
At one time, I drank a couple of cans a day per eight-hour shift, but then about five years ago, I just decided to not do it. That was it. Productivity isn't hurt, and I don't find myself needing another pickup later in the day (or in the morning, for that matter).
The TiVos don't work natively with digital cable, and that's the problem. The dual digital receive tuners (there is a third playback-only tuner) on the Moxi (or any DVR) are required for my roommate and me, as we have shows that air at the same time that we record for later viewing. We could set up a splitter, but with the associated costs (buying a TiVo, plus the monthly service, plus the new furniture to house it, plus the additional electricity when I'm trying to reduce my power usage) I just can't justify it.
This is somewhat worrying to me, as I've grown accustomed to the Moxi capabilities on the Motorola box that I lease from Adelphia. TW is due to take over the area in a few months, but there's been little word on what will be happening with the DVRs. I know that Moxi has a coming deal on a better device made by another company (Samsung?), but whether TW will pick up on it is a significant question.
I'd been hoping for TiVo to get on the Cablecard bandwagon until the clarifications were posted on ArsTechnica about the very limited capabilities of the CC spec; now I'm rather happy with the Moxi since the upgrade that included VOD, all things considered. I don't have to deal with the IR Blaster to change channels, and I can watch and record at the same time, which I understand is difficult at best with a TiVo.
If the economic worm turned
I submit that this is not if, but when. Already China is outsourcing manufacturing jobs to other countries because they can lower costs that way. As China's society becomes more affluent, the employers are coming under increasing pressure to deliver at past prices, so low-skill manufacturing jobs, like textiles and simple machine implements, are ending up in even lower-wage countries. Kind of interesting to watch, in a twisted way.
Thank you. I'd love to have a plugin for any word processor (Word, KWrite, Writer, whatever) that could flag those, preferably during grammar checking. Unfortunately, I'm not especially good at development, so I end up having to rely on others for these things. (Maybe that's a hint that I should work on my meager skills.)
The best advice that ever provided to me for writing consisted of avoiding, as much as possible, all use of the word 'be' and its variants. Doing so forces the writer to utilize more interesting words and vary the sentence structure, which helps to keep the reader's attention. The following list contains all of the words to avoid:
am
are
is
was
were
be
being
been
While not sorted alphabetically, my teacher at the time provided them in that order, so my recital follows the same.
Not at any of the game stores around me, who once sold them for about $4 or $5 each, and a couple of years ago when I last checked on it, they were no longer available to the local stores; a few online merchants were selling them, though at more than I was willing to pay for a single die of any sort.
I still regret not buying a Zocchihedron when I had the chance. :-P
That may well be, since I've not read anything especially detailed on the mechanism, and I'm not willing to pay the money required to see the actual draft. My knowledge comes from a combination of what I've read and something I heard from an engineer in the wireless industry (though he admittedly had not had hands-on experience in the spec at that point). However, it does nothing to ameliorate the effective three-channel selection (1, 6, 11) that we now have in place; all it does is preserve that space for now.
Note: Channels 12, 13, and 14 are illegal to use in the United States.
You're overlapping, then. Channels are 22MHz wide -- 11MHz on either side of the channel's frequency. Channel 1 is centered on 2.412GHz, channel 6 on 2.437 GHz, and channel 11 at 2.462GHz. Notice that the high end of channel 6 is 2.448GHz, and the low end of channel 11 is 2.451GHz -- a mere 3MHz apart, and subject to some overlap because the 22MHz spread isn't perfect, and bleedover is common.
Now, in your case (channel 9), you're operating 11MHz left and right of 2.452GHz. Your bottom range (2.441GHz) is just above the middle of channel 6 and your top range (2.463GHz) is actually above the center of channel 11. In addition, channel 9 is also right about the frequency used by microwave ovens, according to Joshua Wright (whose name you'll see on plenty of wireless security tools), and many inexpensive microwave ovens leak enough radiation to poison connections.
This is all on top of the change coming with 802.11n, which uses 40MHz ranges, many of which may default to channel 6 out of habit, though 3 and 9 will be better selections based on legal bandwidth, and their use of channel 9 will probably swamp your little 11g unit.
Basically, you're using possibly the worst frequency set you can possibly select.
That's my reading as well. The telco has its cabinets here for the SONET connections, which is a pretty clear delineation of where their edge of the network sits. I read it as placing our infrastructure squarely into the realm of the private network, but the ambiguity is really thick here.
So... Are they or aren't they handled as private networks under CALEA? That looks fairly ambiguous to me.
There's legal right of way, and there's practical right of way. If it can squish me, it has practical right of way. Using this rule has kept me safe from most accidents for some time (aside from two minor fender-benders that were entirely my fault, one about six years ago and one about 12 years ago).
My current phone is nearing two years old with no signs of slowing (though I think I will replace the battery soon), and the last phone lasted four years. I don't coddle them, either -- plenty of scrapes and scratches on them. I've always found phones kind of hard to destroy.
Maryann left Palladium sometime before the divorce, so that's not an issue. Whether Kevin has them is another story. I suspect you're right in that the reason that they haven't gone after them is solely because they don't have the Robotech licenses anymore.
The Rifts world is fantastic, but the system has to get cleaned up. First of all, there are continuity errors about some significant areas (major human settlements existing where Xiticix have allegedly swept the area clean), and second, the combat system itself has to get fixed.
Palladium isn't the only RPG company to get hit with embezzlement issues. As I understand it from a friend that used to do freelance art for SJGames, that company nearly went under a while back due to embezzlement. Not sure what all went down, but his contract was terminated as part of a rapid cost-cutting move made in order to save the company.
Chaos Earth was only published a few years ago, unless I missed something way back when. It does tell the tale of pre-Rifts Earth as it goes through the transformation, but Rifts came first by many years.
You weren't playing Glitter Boys properly, then. The Glitter Boy cannot fire the Boom Gun unless it's locked into place -- which prevents it from moving for at least that attack. This makes it a sitting duck for incoming fire. Rifts is full of munchkins (like basically everything in South America 1), but there are ways of counteracting most of them. The easiest way is for the GM to say, "No." Anyone who can't live with that decision can leave. (This goes for every RPG out there with something that could be a munchkin.)
I have every book in the Rifts line save for a few of the newest. They published two index books, both of which were in the 92-128 page range, and that was in the late 1990s. What you may be thinking of is the GM's guide, which was a godsend for gamemasters because it pulled together 15 years of rules scattered over dozens of books, but it was hardly just an index.
Oddly enough, my last gaming group was that way -- only it was the players. The only girl was a lesbian, and all of the males in the group hetero and wishing strongly that she'd look over the fence.
They still are like this. They have a good crew, and the writing overall is good (though everytime I bought a book I felt like getting a red pen to tag all of the errors and sending it to them for corrections in the next printing), but Kevin's insistence on keeping 100% control over everything really hurt. Want to make a character generator? Sorry. Can't do that. Want to mention core characters (Erin Tarn, Emperor Prosek, etc)? You're treading a fine line. Want to even discuss a method to port to another system (D20, GURPS, Interlock)? Expect a nasty letter. Meanwhile, the one character generator that they did release was crappy and limited (based on Microsoft Access), and while they did eventually kick it out to the public, releasing new files for it was a risky business at best, IIRC. Their website has always been a storefront, with token game support at best.
The Palladium combat system was his baby, and it worked well enough in the SDC/AR days, but when it came to MDC, it started to lose something. (Mind you, I continued playing Rifts up until a couple of years ago, when player schedules just got too inconsistent, but it was hard to run a game and keep it balanced and fun.) But he couldn't let it go and modernize the system. It took more than a decade just to get a "final" and unified set of combat rules out the door.
If it comes to it, Palladium will need to do what Talsorian Games did -- pack everything into boxes, rent some storage/warehouse space, and continue as a mom and pop shop until they can get something better together. There's no sense, in my mind, of Kevin sacrificing everything he owns in order to stave off what may be inevitable. I realize that this has been his dream for the better part of three decades, but it doesn't often make sense to have a dream kill you.
I remember reading years ago about limited experiments suggesting that people that wore special caps that circulated cool water through them performed better on intelligence tests than those that didn't. Those first tested without the cap saw their test scores improve when tested with the cap. I wonder if this was ever expanded upon; if it's true, it wouldn't be that hard to build something like that.
They do when the tide of public opinion turns overwhelmingly against them. Zarqawi has reportedly been facing this because of his targeting of Shi'ites rather than the Coalition. Various groups in Saudi Arabia and Jordan have run into this through their activities that have targeted Muslims instead of foreigners, leading to more civilians providing intelligence to the police.
Brief addendum:
If you use one-time pads, and you use them only one time, then they are unbreakable. One-time pads that were used more than once caused the NSA to be able to decrypt a number of Soviet messages at critical times during the Cold War.
Not arguing with you -- just being pedantic on a point that some people miss.
That could result in a lot of unexpected collateral damage if stores and other businesses outside of the West start using RFID in large volumes.