The blocks are as distinctive as all the non negative single digit numbers in the decimal system - actually, less so - there are 10 possible digits for the latter, whearas there are only 5 possible tetronimoes.
The Tetris blocks are based on the mathematical entities known as polyominos, specifically, the subgroup containing 5 orthogonally connected squares (not counting reflections and rotations).
It should be as patentable and copyright as PI - ie not at all, since it is strongly based on a branch of mathematics, specifically on the problem of how to tile such shapes, which has been the subject of a few papers, such as this and this
I'd be on to Google to claim they equally infringe YOUR game and Google them to drop their game too.
Oh so you watched the video too? First thing that popped into my mind when I saw it was that perhaps it's not such a bad thing having the school put a little control over diet - because her parents sure don't seem to care about how fat they get. A week's detention is a little harsh, IMHO, but at least there's a small chance she won't end up quite as big as her parents, with all the inherent potential health problems that entails.
I somehow managed to survive going though school without eating candies for lunch, but then again, my mum was a dentist, so candy was the last thing I'd be likely to find in my lunch box.
I personally think the best thing to do if someone is bagging some other guy on the team is to focus more on their positive traits. Everyone gets pissed off every one in a while with someone else, but if you are quick to join in dissing someone in the team, then it reflects poorly on you - after all - just starting in a place, you will have no idea what the internal politics or history of a particular situation is, and if you are quick to join in the sledging of someone else, your co workers will inevitably wonder what you might say about them when they are not around.
Another very important thing - if you see some code or a project that you are working on is a complete bug ridden poorly written piece of crap - don't say so - instead, make POSITIVE suggestions on how the system could be improved, rather than saying how bad the existing system is. You never know who might have originally worked on the code, or what influence they might now have in the company. If you start saying how crap something is, thn you might very well find yourself in the embarrassing situation of finding your boss did the coding or initial design, or making another member of the team pissed off at you for making them look bad.
Sometimes you might come across a system that is a bit of a cludge, because it was originally written in a short time for one very narrow purpose, then suffered ever expanding scope creep or was pushed far beyond what it was originally desinged for, leading to the current mess.
Above all, the best thing you can do as a co-worker is be supportive of others in your team and in the office in general. Don't hoard nowledge. If yo know a good way to solve a problem that someone else is struggling with, make positive suggestions and try to help out the other guy - without putting them down or making them feel inferior. After all, you never know when you are going to have a problem you are stuck on that you need help with too.
The basic rule of thumb I use is: If I can say something positive or helpful to help fix a situeation or help someone out - do so. If I can't say anything positive, I don't say anything at all. If you think hard enough, there is nearly always something good you can say about someone or a positive suggestion you can make on how to improve something, without making it sound like you think the thing that needs improving is a complete bucket of crap.
On the other hand, if you see a serious flaw with something or the way something is being done, again, try to draw attention to it in a sensitive way (ie. don't completely slate the design in front of everyone at the next group meeting - if possible, try to draw it to the attention of the guy who's able to fix it in a discreet way, so they aren't embarrassed in front of the rest of the team)
Do these things and you will quickly gain respect as someone who is serious about getting stuff done and helping out the team, rather than a born blower who loves to make himself look good at the expense of others.
I don't see the point of recording student attendances - if you are able to learn the subject well enough to pass (or hopefully get a distinction), then all well and good - you have learned the material, regardless of whether you had to attended every single lecture or not. On the other hand, if you are stupid enough not to attend lectures and fail, then you have no one to blame except yourself - the Uni still gets the fees for the course you have paid for, so no loss to them. Uni is not High school, and should not be treated as such - it is a place for people who want to learn, not for people that are being "forced" to learn.
I used to have one lecturer that would actually stop his lectures if there were people talking up the back, and offer the culprits 30 cents to go buy a coffee and stop bothering everyone else (few were cheap enough to actually take him up on his offer). He also provided pre-printed notes that were available from the start of his course (the subject was abstract algebra) - if you were so inclined you could just depend on those, but having the notes already written allowed us to focus much more on his explanations of the material instead of it being a frantic rush to scribble down everything he wrote on the board as well as try to understand it at the same time.
This sort of attendance system is simply a waste of money that could be better spent on improving other facilities at the university, and as pointed out elsewhere, is trivial to subvert for those that are serious about not attending lectures (they will have their buddies take in their card) , but punishes those who might miss a lecture or two because of say, missing a buss or something like that.
Sorry to hear that. Mine used to be too - then I started using QT and QtCreator for my main project. Bliss! Finally I am able to easily write apps that will run on multiple platforms, but still has a rich library of UI controls ( widgets) and plenty of abstract data types. I really cant see me going back to C# - I just don't see a need for it any more, now it is so easy to write GUI intensive apps in C++. I have been working on my current project for a couple of years in C#, but it has only taken me a few months to get a C++/QT equivalent up and running - I was able to even ditch a lot of the code I had written in C# (eg. a docking panel interface, a MVC for treeviews, etc) because QT already provided those. In addition I have been able to completely ditch the third party control I was using for opengl too, since again, there's already an opengl widget in QT. (I'm writing a sort of Quantity surveying system / scriptable 3d CAD / quoting database thing for a construction company) Only down side I had initially to moving to QT was getting my head around how QT form designs and widget layouts work compared to how forms work in C# (ie. using anchoring/docking for sizable forms), but I have pretty much nailed that now.
My biggest bitch with C# and Visual Studio Professional 2005 was the Complete lack of a profiler - I mean - WTF! I'm not forking out $15,000 for the team edition to get a profiler.
If you really want to be able to monitor what your kids are up to just install VNC, with the options set to allow remote connections without confirmation. Then make the rule in your house be "if I cant connect via VNC at any particular time, you are off the computer for a week". Then you can easily remotely see what your kids are up to at any time, with no warning whatsoever - if you really think you need that kind of control. Jusk knowing they may be monitored at any time (even when you are at work) should instill a healthy level of paranoia that will keep them using their computers for how you see fit.
I hate to say it, but I actually enjoyed the original book (I was aboit 15 at the time). No, I am most definitely not into Scientology, (or any other religion for that matter) but I do think the original book is worth a second look.
Sure, it was before I had ever heard of Scientology, and had no idea that the author was a complete kook who started his own religion and apparently completely lied about everything in the "about the athor" section. It wasn't until years later, while wandering around the city that some guy stopped me and asked me if I'd mind doing a survey. They asked me if I'd ever heard of L. Ron Hubbard & said sure, I'd read one of his books. You should have seen the guy's eyes light up - though that dimmed a bit once I told him which book I had read. The survey was in a nearby office, which was practically wallpapered with copies of the "Dianetics" book - and the survey was a whole bunch of "moral dilemma" questions - a bit like the gypsie's questions in the beginning of Ultima IV (if any of you can remember that far back) After the first page of 30 or so questions, I realised there was still another 4 or 5 pages of questions to answer so decided to bail while I still could - all in all it was a slightly creepy experience.
The original book was basically just pulp Sci fi - a hero that was a hero's hero - morally and physically perfect, fearless, etc. and taking on the big bad aliens at their own game after learning their own technology as a slave. The book also had a bunch of ( fairly stereotyped) Scots who made the guys in Braveheart look like whimps - those guys ere amongst my favourite characters in the book and completely missing from the movie. The book also had two main parts - beating the aliens (by eventually shipping a whole bunch of nukes vis their teleporter rig back to the home planet) , then dealing with the resulting power vacuum and problems after the galactic bank shows up and declares the Earth bankrupt, and therefore due for repo and resale to the next several bunch of aliens that show up.
All in all, if you can forget that the author actually has anything to do with Scientology and just read the book, it's actually not a bad read. You might want to cover it in brown paper or something though if you intend to read it on the train - just to avoid the embarrasing stares of incredulity that anyone's actually reading the book after such a bad movie. Sure, it's a bit over the top and the characters are a little too comic book like in their goodness and badness, but the technology ideas are interesting, and the story of the much besieged humans eventually overcoming the aliens by leveraging their greed and technology against them, plus overcoming a whole bunch of internal and external problems, both technologically and politically after the main battle is won was quite entertaining.
If you want to make sure you arent funding the Church of Scientology, borrow it from the library or pick it up from a second hand book shop.
I have alogitech keyboard & mouse that wirks just fine - I had to look around a bit & read the specs but eventually found one that has a 33 foot range - it works from further back than is actually possible to read the screen - I usually use it from about 5 meters away, with a 42" plasma HD TV. I had to use a USB cable extender so that the USB transmitter dongle was on the front of the PC instead of behind it, as the metal case seemed to interfere with the signal, but other than that small hitch it works fine. I use the mouse/keybard on it mabey 8 - 16 hours a week and havent had to replace the batteries since I got it July last year.
THe exact model I have is Pro 2400 cordless desktop Keyboard/mouse. Note that this is not bluetooth - it uses it's own proprietary wireless dongle that is in a similar 2,4 Ghz range.
The biggest problem I encountered with my set up is that I couldn't actually use the screen very effectively at 1920x1040 resolution - fonts etc were too small. My elderly 5 year old PC with 1G ram and an ATI 7600 that I had hooked up to it works ok with it though - but you will definitely want to scale your desktop fonts up.
Also VGA will not go to the full res if you do want to use 1920x1040 - you need to use an HDMI cable.
Did you look at the article? That's one ugly ass yard they have. I don't have a blade of grass in my yard either - and at first when I just read the summary I thoght these guys were being hard done by - but from the photo, it looks like they have only planted 4 or 5 miserable little plants inside their fence, each of which is about half a foot high.
My yard has trees, covering about 1/3 of it, with low shrubs and ferns, bird of paradise plants, hibiscus, and other interesting stuff like that. Around 1/4 of it is covered in paving, with some pathways and "stepping stones" between trees. I let the leaves lay where they drop, and every now and then just sweep off the "stepping stone" areas. The trees are evergreens so they are always dropping leaves all year round but don't do a sudden big autumn dump of leaves.I cover areas like around the clothesline and small open areas with a local native small leaf ground cover that needs clipping back about every 4 months and flowers fairly often with bright yellow flowers, and handles the conditions here well. The shade under the trees naturally prevents grass being able to grow there anyway, so the shrubs/ferns under there are ones that like shade, and I hardly ever have to do any weeding.
The only grass I have to mow is the stuff outside my fence. Low maintenance, almost no watering needed, and the trees also help keep my house cool in summer, which is just as well because I don't have aircon. I live in the Gold Coast, so we do get some pretty serious heat here in the summer - avg 28 C (82.4 F) and gets up to 40 C (104 F) occasionally in the summer (climate chart here) , but a fan does the job as the place is well ventilated and double brick, so naturally keeps most of the heat out.
Grass yards are boring as hell in my opinion - and a pain in the arse to maintain. These guys are taking the piss thogh if they think that their yard is landscaped. I am all for getting rid of grass, but you have to replace it with something or it really is an eyesore and obviously in complete conflict with the existing laws.
Obviously trees take a while to grow, but they should have a few saplings growing for their future trees and definitely a lot of shrubs/bushes/ferns etc already in the ground. it doesnt have to be expensive to do a great yard, but it does take a lot of effort to get it started. Once established though, you can kick back sucking down a beer from your hammock (if you plan well you should have a couple of trees at just the right spacing in a few years time) and laugh at your neighbors who are sweating it out with the lawnmower every weekend.
Oh it's an old "vi vs emacs" type argument in the motorcycle world. Shaft driven bike riders spout how they are so much easier to maintain, because there is no chain you have to lube on a regular basis. Chain driven bike riders generaly retort something about not being able to wheelie a shaft driven bike - because they aren't quite as efficient (there are more drive losses going through a shaft vs a chain) but mostly because the shaft is spinning in line with the bike, it's moment of inertia supposedly stops you being able to wheelie it, or makes it tilt sideways if you do. BMW bikes are nearly all shaft driven.
Exactly - weakest excuse ever. there were a lot of IT people that fell on hard times in 2002 - I spend 4 months looking for a contract in the financial sector (with no success) after the dot com bomb before trying a completely different line of work. There is always work of some sort available, if you aren't too particular - and you can still keep them fresh working on open source projects or your own project for a while until in your spare time until the good times roll again.
Gotomos the place were they send Grammar Nazis, bad spellars and people that use the B word in and around aircraft. Iv managed to avoid there clutches so far but I expect a raid any day now where no doubt I'll get my just deserts.
OMG he said the B word in the same sentence as mentioning an aircraft. He must be planning to bow something up. Quick - arrest him & throw him in Gotmo!
Is it just me or has our society reached an unprecedented level of paranoia? with a 1 in 28 million chance of being on a flight with an exploding battery, does that mean there are more than 28 million flights since we started flying with these batteries, and in all that time there has been only one incident? Seems like a hell of a lot of flights - there's probably a better chance of someone tripping over carrying a cup of water and causing a short in some wiring or something.
80 mile round trip? each day? If your typical, no wonder there's so much whining by the rest of the world about US energy usage and greenhouse gas production. Can you seriously not find a closer job, or move closer to your work? Apart from anything else, you'd have an extra couple of hours a day to read slashdot if you weren't spending all that time on a road.
...sive waist sizes usually associated with them, as gamers will start actually getting out there and experiencing the joys of the real world. Of course there will always be a need for mas...
I dont eat dog, so I am not worried about any genetic modifications made to those.
The big problem with GM technology is not the actual technology - it is how it is being used. I would have no problem eating GM foods if they were only modified to add say, additional vitamins, grow with salter water, or endure harsher environments, but the problem is they are making changes that do things like add pesticides into the food its self, or enable much higher levels of herbicides and insecticides to be used on crops without killing the plants (eg, "round up ready" strains)- so there are many more toxins actually in the food, or used on the food we eat.
The other big evil with GM crops is that it promotes monocultures, which puts all your eggs in one basket geneticalyl speaking - if there is then something that badly affects that strain of crops, it can have a devestating effect as entire harvests can be wiped out due to there being no natural bio diversity which would otherwise have allowed some plants to survive. On top of that, the way that GM crops are licensed, so that often they are engineered to only produce a single generation from the seeds and can not breed true is just a disaster waiting to happen.
One good and relatively safe use of gene technology would be to use it to precisely Analise the natural variations produced by crossbreeding several different strains of the same type of crop, then selecting those that had the ideal characteristics.
we need to start cracking down on inappropriate genetic modifications to our food, and only allow modifications that enhance the flavour or health benefits of the food, or make it able to grow in harsher climates or with less water - not introduce genes which produce toxins or are designed to enable use of much higher concentrations of poisons.
Actually electronic systems can indeed have randomness - it's called noise. There's a lot of effort put into designing existing logic gates etc in computers to ensure that they are not switched off/on from noise, and this gets harder and harder as the designs get smaller - because our current designs depend on say, A & B always generating exactly the same result. This also means that the logic circuits have to use higher voltages, use more power to get above the noise threshold.
A different approach would be to have multiple gates all doing the same computation, but working much more closely to the noise threshold, and thus using much less power - each individual gate might be much less reliable (say, 70% accurate), but if you averaged hundreds of them, the accuracy can be improved. This is exactly the approach that is being taken by some dude from africa who has been trying to create new neural network chips that use way less power, with much more speed, than a conventional CPU trying to implement a neural network in software. More info here: here
I stayed in a 4.5 Jo room (6.9 Square meters) in a Riyokan (traditional japanese hotel with lots of wood, paper screens, tea room, etc) which was about 7 min walk from Ikebukero station for about 3 months, in 1994. I was paying 2300 yen per day, daily - I was expecting to get my own place or find a share house any day, so I didn't negotiate a monthly deal - so I was paying about 69958 yen a month (USD $761) , with a pretty well maintained shared bathroom (big soak tub etc) and common shared areas where you could hang out. Overall, the experience wasn't too bad - and certainly better than a lot of the Gaijin houses I went to check out, which were mostly complete dumps. If I was ever going to Tokyo again for only a few weeks or months, and on a budget, that's how I would be doing it.
The drinking laws in the US are moronic. If you are old enough to go and shoot someone in a war, or get killed defending your country, you should certainly be considered old enough to drink. The US should either raise the age of entry into the army to 21 or lower the drinking age to 18, like most of the rest of the world.
I would turn down an applicant if they HADN'T drunk at least one beer at college. Seriously - would you really want someone on your team that was obviously so self righteous and prissy as to never have cut loose a bit at one time or another?
Alternatively you could actually not be an asshat, get on with your neighbour and negotiate with them (over a 6 pack of beer) to allow legal access in the event of an outage.
I don't know what your local free papers are like, but the ones over here are very light on news - usually something about a new stopsign being erected, council member's opening of a mall or something of equal significance - and about 80% advertisements. Do you really want a game like that?
Slashdot Mirror
The blocks are as distinctive as all the non negative single digit numbers in the decimal system - actually, less so - there are 10 possible digits for the latter, whearas there are only 5 possible tetronimoes.
The Tetris blocks are based on the mathematical entities known as polyominos, specifically, the subgroup containing 5 orthogonally connected squares (not counting reflections and rotations).
It should be as patentable and copyright as PI - ie not at all, since it is strongly based on a branch of mathematics, specifically on the problem of how to tile such shapes, which has been the subject of a few papers, such as this and this
I'd be on to Google to claim they equally infringe YOUR game and Google them to drop their game too.
Oh so you watched the video too? First thing that popped into my mind when I saw it was that perhaps it's not such a bad thing having the school put a little control over diet - because her parents sure don't seem to care about how fat they get. A week's detention is a little harsh, IMHO, but at least there's a small chance she won't end up quite as big as her parents, with all the inherent potential health problems that entails.
I somehow managed to survive going though school without eating candies for lunch, but then again, my mum was a dentist, so candy was the last thing I'd be likely to find in my lunch box.
I personally think the best thing to do if someone is bagging some other guy on the team is to focus more on their positive traits. Everyone gets pissed off every one in a while with someone else, but if you are quick to join in dissing someone in the team, then it reflects poorly on you - after all - just starting in a place, you will have no idea what the internal politics or history of a particular situation is, and if you are quick to join in the sledging of someone else, your co workers will inevitably wonder what you might say about them when they are not around.
Another very important thing - if you see some code or a project that you are working on is a complete bug ridden poorly written piece of crap - don't say so - instead, make POSITIVE suggestions on how the system could be improved, rather than saying how bad the existing system is. You never know who might have originally worked on the code, or what influence they might now have in the company. If you start saying how crap something is, thn you might very well find yourself in the embarrassing situation of finding your boss did the coding or initial design, or making another member of the team pissed off at you for making them look bad.
Sometimes you might come across a system that is a bit of a cludge, because it was originally written in a short time for one very narrow purpose, then suffered ever expanding scope creep or was pushed far beyond what it was originally desinged for, leading to the current mess.
Above all, the best thing you can do as a co-worker is be supportive of others in your team and in the office in general. Don't hoard nowledge. If yo know a good way to solve a problem that someone else is struggling with, make positive suggestions and try to help out the other guy - without putting them down or making them feel inferior. After all, you never know when you are going to have a problem you are stuck on that you need help with too.
The basic rule of thumb I use is: If I can say something positive or helpful to help fix a situeation or help someone out - do so. If I can't say anything positive, I don't say anything at all. If you think hard enough, there is nearly always something good you can say about someone or a positive suggestion you can make on how to improve something, without making it sound like you think the thing that needs improving is a complete bucket of crap.
On the other hand, if you see a serious flaw with something or the way something is being done, again, try to draw attention to it in a sensitive way (ie. don't completely slate the design in front of everyone at the next group meeting - if possible, try to draw it to the attention of the guy who's able to fix it in a discreet way, so they aren't embarrassed in front of the rest of the team)
Do these things and you will quickly gain respect as someone who is serious about getting stuff done and helping out the team, rather than a born blower who loves to make himself look good at the expense of others.
I don't see the point of recording student attendances - if you are able to learn the subject well enough to pass (or hopefully get a distinction), then all well and good - you have learned the material, regardless of whether you had to attended every single lecture or not.
On the other hand, if you are stupid enough not to attend lectures and fail, then you have no one to blame except yourself - the Uni still gets the fees for the course you have paid for, so no loss to them. Uni is not High school, and should not be treated as such - it is a place for people who want to learn, not for people that are being "forced" to learn.
I used to have one lecturer that would actually stop his lectures if there were people talking up the back, and offer the culprits 30 cents to go buy a coffee and stop bothering everyone else (few were cheap enough to actually take him up on his offer). He also provided pre-printed notes that were available from the start of his course (the subject was abstract algebra) - if you were so inclined you could just depend on those, but having the notes already written allowed us to focus much more on his explanations of the material instead of it being a frantic rush to scribble down everything he wrote on the board as well as try to understand it at the same time.
This sort of attendance system is simply a waste of money that could be better spent on improving other facilities at the university, and as pointed out elsewhere, is trivial to subvert for those that are serious about not attending lectures (they will have their buddies take in their card) , but punishes those who might miss a lecture or two because of say, missing a buss or something like that.
My "day job" is C#
Sorry to hear that. Mine used to be too - then I started using QT and QtCreator for my main project. Bliss! Finally I am able to easily write apps that will run on multiple platforms, but still has a rich library of UI controls ( widgets) and plenty of abstract data types.
I really cant see me going back to C# - I just don't see a need for it any more, now it is so easy to write GUI intensive apps in C++. I have been working on my current project for a couple of years in C#, but it has only taken me a few months to get a C++/QT equivalent up and running - I was able to even ditch a lot of the code I had written in C# (eg. a docking panel interface, a MVC for treeviews, etc) because QT already provided those. In addition I have been able to completely ditch the third party control I was using for opengl too, since again, there's already an opengl widget in QT. (I'm writing a sort of Quantity surveying system / scriptable 3d CAD / quoting database thing for a construction company)
Only down side I had initially to moving to QT was getting my head around how QT form designs and widget layouts work compared to how forms work in C# (ie. using anchoring/docking for sizable forms), but I have pretty much nailed that now.
My biggest bitch with C# and Visual Studio Professional 2005 was the Complete lack of a profiler - I mean - WTF! I'm not forking out $15,000 for the team edition to get a profiler.
If you really want to be able to monitor what your kids are up to just install VNC, with the options set to allow remote connections without confirmation. Then make the rule in your house be "if I cant connect via VNC at any particular time, you are off the computer for a week". Then you can easily remotely see what your kids are up to at any time, with no warning whatsoever - if you really think you need that kind of control. Jusk knowing they may be monitored at any time (even when you are at work) should instill a healthy level of paranoia that will keep them using their computers for how you see fit.
I hate to say it, but I actually enjoyed the original book (I was aboit 15 at the time).
No, I am most definitely not into Scientology, (or any other religion for that matter) but I do think the original book is worth a second look.
Sure, it was before I had ever heard of Scientology, and had no idea that the author was a complete kook who started his own religion and apparently completely lied about everything in the "about the athor" section. It wasn't until years later, while wandering around the city that some guy stopped me and asked me if I'd mind doing a survey. They asked me if I'd ever heard of L. Ron Hubbard & said sure, I'd read one of his books. You should have seen the guy's eyes light up - though that dimmed a bit once I told him which book I had read. The survey was in a nearby office, which was practically wallpapered with copies of the "Dianetics" book - and the survey was a whole bunch of "moral dilemma" questions - a bit like the gypsie's questions in the beginning of Ultima IV (if any of you can remember that far back) After the first page of 30 or so questions, I realised there was still another 4 or 5 pages of questions to answer so decided to bail while I still could - all in all it was a slightly creepy experience.
The original book was basically just pulp Sci fi - a hero that was a hero's hero - morally and physically perfect, fearless, etc. and taking on the big bad aliens at their own game after learning their own technology as a slave.
The book also had a bunch of ( fairly stereotyped) Scots who made the guys in Braveheart look like whimps - those guys ere amongst my favourite characters in the book and completely missing from the movie. The book also had two main parts - beating the aliens (by eventually shipping a whole bunch of nukes vis their teleporter rig back to the home planet) , then dealing with the resulting power vacuum and problems after the galactic bank shows up and declares the Earth bankrupt, and therefore due for repo and resale to the next several bunch of aliens that show up.
All in all, if you can forget that the author actually has anything to do with Scientology and just read the book, it's actually not a bad read. You might want to cover it in brown paper or something though if you intend to read it on the train - just to avoid the embarrasing stares of incredulity that anyone's actually reading the book after such a bad movie. Sure, it's a bit over the top and the characters are a little too comic book like in their goodness and badness, but the technology ideas are interesting, and the story of the much besieged humans eventually overcoming the aliens by leveraging their greed and technology against them, plus overcoming a whole bunch of internal and external problems, both technologically and politically after the main battle is won was quite entertaining.
If you want to make sure you arent funding the Church of Scientology, borrow it from the library or pick it up from a second hand book shop.
I have alogitech keyboard & mouse that wirks just fine - I had to look around a bit & read the specs but eventually found one that has a 33 foot range - it works from further back than is actually possible to read the screen - I usually use it from about 5 meters away, with a 42" plasma HD TV. I had to use a USB cable extender so that the USB transmitter dongle was on the front of the PC instead of behind it, as the metal case seemed to interfere with the signal, but other than that small hitch it works fine. I use the mouse/keybard on it mabey 8 - 16 hours a week and havent had to replace the batteries since I got it July last year.
THe exact model I have is Pro 2400 cordless desktop Keyboard/mouse. Note that this is not bluetooth - it uses it's own proprietary wireless dongle that is in a similar 2,4 Ghz range.
The biggest problem I encountered with my set up is that I couldn't actually use the screen very effectively at 1920x1040 resolution - fonts etc were too small. My elderly 5 year old PC with 1G ram and an ATI 7600 that I had hooked up to it works ok with it though - but you will definitely want to scale your desktop fonts up.
Also VGA will not go to the full res if you do want to use 1920x1040 - you need to use an HDMI cable.
Did you look at the article? That's one ugly ass yard they have.
I don't have a blade of grass in my yard either - and at first when I just read the summary I thoght these guys were being hard done by - but from the photo, it looks like they have only planted 4 or 5 miserable little plants inside their fence, each of which is about half a foot high.
My yard has trees, covering about 1/3 of it, with low shrubs and ferns, bird of paradise plants, hibiscus, and other interesting stuff like that. Around 1/4 of it is covered in paving, with some pathways and "stepping stones" between trees. I let the leaves lay where they drop, and every now and then just sweep off the "stepping stone" areas. The trees are evergreens so they are always dropping leaves all year round but don't do a sudden big autumn dump of leaves.I cover areas like around the clothesline and small open areas with a local native small leaf ground cover that needs clipping back about every 4 months and flowers fairly often with bright yellow flowers, and handles the conditions here well. The shade under the trees naturally prevents grass being able to grow there anyway, so the shrubs/ferns under there are ones that like shade, and I hardly ever have to do any weeding.
The only grass I have to mow is the stuff outside my fence. Low maintenance, almost no watering needed, and the trees also help keep my house cool in summer, which is just as well because I don't have aircon. I live in the Gold Coast, so we do get some pretty serious heat here in the summer - avg 28 C (82.4 F) and gets up to 40 C (104 F) occasionally in the summer (climate chart here) , but a fan does the job as the place is well ventilated and double brick, so naturally keeps most of the heat out.
Grass yards are boring as hell in my opinion - and a pain in the arse to maintain. These guys are taking the piss thogh if they think that their yard is landscaped. I am all for getting rid of grass, but you have to replace it with something or it really is an eyesore and obviously in complete conflict with the existing laws.
Obviously trees take a while to grow, but they should have a few saplings growing for their future trees and definitely a lot of shrubs/bushes/ferns etc already in the ground. it doesnt have to be expensive to do a great yard, but it does take a lot of effort to get it started. Once established though, you can kick back sucking down a beer from your hammock (if you plan well you should have a couple of trees at just the right spacing in a few years time) and laugh at your neighbors who are sweating it out with the lawnmower every weekend.
Hey thats almost the same diet I am on - except I soak my sugar cube in coffee first.
Oh it's an old "vi vs emacs" type argument in the motorcycle world. Shaft driven bike riders spout how they are so much easier to maintain, because there is no chain you have to lube on a regular basis. Chain driven bike riders generaly retort something about not being able to wheelie a shaft driven bike - because they aren't quite as efficient (there are more drive losses going through a shaft vs a chain) but mostly because the shaft is spinning in line with the bike, it's moment of inertia supposedly stops you being able to wheelie it, or makes it tilt sideways if you do. BMW bikes are nearly all shaft driven.
Exactly - weakest excuse ever. there were a lot of IT people that fell on hard times in 2002 - I spend 4 months looking for a contract in the financial sector (with no success) after the dot com bomb before trying a completely different line of work. There is always work of some sort available, if you aren't too particular - and you can still keep them fresh working on open source projects or your own project for a while until in your spare time until the good times roll again.
No because they were shaft driven. "Everyone knows" you cant wheelie a BMW - because they use a shaft instead of a chain :p
Gotomos the place were they send Grammar Nazis, bad spellars and people that use the B word in and around aircraft. Iv managed to avoid there clutches so far but I expect a raid any day now where no doubt I'll get my just deserts.
OMG he said the B word in the same sentence as mentioning an aircraft. He must be planning to bow something up. Quick - arrest him & throw him in Gotmo!
Is it just me or has our society reached an unprecedented level of paranoia? with a 1 in 28 million chance of being on a flight with an exploding battery, does that mean there are more than 28 million flights since we started flying with these batteries, and in all that time there has been only one incident? Seems like a hell of a lot of flights - there's probably a better chance of someone tripping over carrying a cup of water and causing a short in some wiring or something.
80 mile round trip? each day?
If your typical, no wonder there's so much whining by the rest of the world about US energy usage and greenhouse gas production.
Can you seriously not find a closer job, or move closer to your work? Apart from anything else, you'd have an extra couple of hours a day to read slashdot if you weren't spending all that time on a road.
...sive waist sizes usually associated with them, as gamers will start actually getting out there and experiencing the joys of the real world.
Of course there will always be a need for mas...
I dont eat dog, so I am not worried about any genetic modifications made to those.
The big problem with GM technology is not the actual technology - it is how it is being used.
I would have no problem eating GM foods if they were only modified to add say, additional vitamins, grow with salter water, or endure harsher environments, but the problem is they are making changes that do things like add pesticides into the food its self, or enable much higher levels of herbicides and insecticides to be used on crops without killing the plants (eg, "round up ready" strains)- so there are many more toxins actually in the food, or used on the food we eat.
The other big evil with GM crops is that it promotes monocultures, which puts all your eggs in one basket geneticalyl speaking - if there is then something that badly affects that strain of crops, it can have a devestating effect as entire harvests can be wiped out due to there being no natural bio diversity which would otherwise have allowed some plants to survive.
On top of that, the way that GM crops are licensed, so that often they are engineered to only produce a single generation from the seeds and can not breed true is just a disaster waiting to happen.
One good and relatively safe use of gene technology would be to use it to precisely Analise the natural variations produced by crossbreeding several different strains of the same type of crop, then selecting those that had the ideal characteristics.
we need to start cracking down on inappropriate genetic modifications to our food, and only allow modifications that enhance the flavour or health benefits of the food, or make it able to grow in harsher climates or with less water - not introduce genes which produce toxins or are designed to enable use of much higher concentrations of poisons.
Actually electronic systems can indeed have randomness - it's called noise.
There's a lot of effort put into designing existing logic gates etc in computers to ensure that they are not switched off/on from noise, and this gets harder and harder as the designs get smaller - because our current designs depend on say, A & B always generating exactly the same result. This also means that the logic circuits have to use higher voltages, use more power to get above the noise threshold.
A different approach would be to have multiple gates all doing the same computation, but working much more closely to the noise threshold, and thus using much less power - each individual gate might be much less reliable (say, 70% accurate), but if you averaged hundreds of them, the accuracy can be improved. This is exactly the approach that is being taken by some dude from africa who has been trying to create new neural network chips that use way less power, with much more speed, than a conventional CPU trying to implement a neural network in software. More info here: here
I stayed in a 4.5 Jo room (6.9 Square meters) in a Riyokan (traditional japanese hotel with lots of wood, paper screens, tea room, etc) which was about 7 min walk from Ikebukero station for about 3 months, in 1994. I was paying 2300 yen per day, daily - I was expecting to get my own place or find a share house any day, so I didn't negotiate a monthly deal - so I was paying about 69958 yen a month (USD $761) , with a pretty well maintained shared bathroom (big soak tub etc) and common shared areas where you could hang out. Overall, the experience wasn't too bad - and certainly better than a lot of the Gaijin houses I went to check out, which were mostly complete dumps. If I was ever going to Tokyo again for only a few weeks or months, and on a budget, that's how I would be doing it.
as far as I know being able to launch a missile while the sub is submerged would be a huge leap forward in the nuclear arms race.
This video seems to show underwater missile launches have been done for quite a while now...
The drinking laws in the US are moronic.
If you are old enough to go and shoot someone in a war, or get killed defending your country, you should certainly be considered old enough to drink.
The US should either raise the age of entry into the army to 21 or lower the drinking age to 18, like most of the rest of the world.
I would turn down an applicant if they HADN'T drunk at least one beer at college. Seriously - would you really want someone on your team that was obviously so self righteous and prissy as to never have cut loose a bit at one time or another?
Alternatively you could actually not be an asshat, get on with your neighbour and negotiate with them (over a 6 pack of beer) to allow legal access in the event of an outage.
I don't know what your local free papers are like, but the ones over here are very light on news - usually something about a new stopsign being erected, council member's opening of a mall or something of equal significance - and about 80% advertisements. Do you really want a game like that?