Other recent articles about counterfeiting have mentioned a proprietary chemical mixture that removes a vast majority of the ink from printed currency, yet leaves the security strip, watermark and colored fibres intact. Bills treated in this manner will fool those colored markers that most places uses for confirmation.
You get a stack of $5s, 'bleach' them and reprint them as $10s and you've doubled your money, print them as $20s and you're up to 4x, print them as $100s and you're at 20x.
If you take bills as part of your job, double check that the watermark image is the same as the face printed on the bill, and that the value in the security strip matches as well.
Sure, they're brittle, but that can easily be overcome by either dipping the magnets in PlastiDip or by sealing them in shrink-wrap tubing. Even wrapping them up in several thicknesses of surgical tape will work wonders for keeping them intact. A bundle of magnet fragments is almost as powerful as the original intact magnet.
Out of the more than 200 magnets I've ordered from WonderMagnets.com, only a few of the thinnest (the surplus hard drive ones) magnets have broken, and only when they were poorly handled (i.e., let someone else play with them and they want to see from how far apart they will still snap back together. The nickel or gold plating will flake off after extensive use, but that doesn't affect the magnet other than making it less attractive.
And the next time someone mentions 'Teflon Coated Cop Killer Bullets', feel free to laugh.
As stated in the previous post, the teflon coating acts as bullet lubricant to reduce the amount of wear and tear on the barrel. It also reduces lead dust which can be hazardous to people who spend long periods training at indoor shooting ranges (i.e. most police officers) and so in reality they help reduce the amount of poisonous heavy metals inhaled by police officers and so are actually 'Teflon Coated Cop "Don't Die From Poisoning" Bullets'.
The story's site is by someone who SELLS those kinds of magnets, which I'm sure you would have figured out if had only taken the time to read the entire article, or explore the other pages on his site.
I've purchased numerous magnets from the guy and they are a blast to play with. A stack of the small disc magnets can distort the image on your monitor from several feet away, and can seriously mess it up at closer range. If you get it close enough, you can actually see the shadow mask image on your monitor. Thankfully I have a degauss button on my monitor or it would be toast.
You didn't hear it from me, but a stack of the bigger disc magnets can distort the image on a monitor on the other side of a cubicle wall. Attaching them to a low RPM motor can cause your cube neighbor to make numerous, useless calls to IT about a faulty monitor that mysteriously clears up when they arrive. At least that's what I've heard...
SUVs are still sucking it down like -- well you know like what --
Puh-lease... I double-dog dare you to compare the mileage of my somewhat aged 1992 Isuzu Rodeo to that of a car with comparable seating and storage capacity.
When gas prices started exceeding $2.00/G 2 years ago, I purchased a used Honda Civic and decreased the amount of gas I had to buy each week... by about 2 gallons. I also lost the ability to carry 5 people comfortably and still have room for my briefcase, etc. The car was so small that if more than one person was going to lunch with me, they wouldn't ride in my car. That's probably why I saved most of those 2 gallons - I stopped driving everyone to lunch each day!
Once gas prices went back to realistic levels, I went back to driving my Rodeo and got rid of the Civic. The additional money I spent on insurance and everything was most likely less than the amount I saved on a more fuel efficient vehicle. I'd have to double-check the figures, but I feel pretty confident about that.
Are there SUVs out there that suck down gas? You betcha. Are there that exhibit behaviour? You betcha.
Any time you paint a picture with broad strokes, you lose little details like "there are SUVs that get good gas mileage" and "there are plenty of non-SUV vehicles that get absolutely horrid gas mileage". I have a friend with a 6 cylinder Mustang and watching the way he drives, I'd be willing to bet I get twice the mileage he does.
Radeon 9700 Pro on an AMD XP 2500+ (Barton) with 1 GB of RAM. In 640x480 mode the leaked alpha version was playable. Dark, dreary, pitch black in places, but playable.
There was an incident of a man being arrested in a Best Buy (for trespassing, I believe) after being asked to stop writing down prices for large screen TVs.
The irony of it, and I explained this in a post a long time ago, is that I used to work at Best Buy, and on weekends, we were asked to bring a non-blue shirt with us to work so that we could go incognito to the local electronics store (H.H. Greggs, before we had a Circuit City locally) and use a micro-cassette recorder to 'steal' all their prices so we could mark down the items in store to compete. Now they're telling people that they can't do what they themselves do (or did).
Reminds me of a local story about a guy who was wearing one of those fancy NASCAR leather jackets with either Home Depot or Menards as the sponsor of the team going into the store that wasn't the sponsor and who was celebrating their grand opening (i.e., wore a Menards jacket into a Home Depot, or maybe it was the other way around) and was asked by management to leave because they thought he was a spy from the other company. Made the local paper when it happened...
And it was only a few months ago that it transpired that you could burn out the laser in a LOT of DVD-RW drives simply by inserting a new kind of medium
Actually it was the drive motor, not the laser.
And wasn't it HP that promised that their DVD-RW drives would be compatible with DVD+RW media via a firmware upgrade... and then reneged on the promise?
Yes, and that's what you get for buying a drive that uses a standard that wasn't approved by the DVD Forum. That's why I went with a DVD-R/RW drive and have been extremely happy with it.
Perhaps we might eventually see this sort of self-serve stuff at regular retail outlets?
Not until they can figure out how to make the user interface tell you about all the great features of the optional product protection plan that can be yours for such a low low price, because you know the %device_purchased% you have selected is known to have a %random_negative_adjective% %random_part_name% which tends to go bad in %random_time_interval% and if you don't purchase one of our completely optional (no obligation to buy but I'll continue to drone on and on until you buy one or make me stop) product protection plans then you'll have to send it off to one of their repair sites located in %random_third_world_country% and it usually takes %random_long_length_of_time% and costs %price_times_two% so you're really better off paying the small amount, only %price_over_3% now because you'll save money in the long run.
I've got the new nForce2 chipset in my new system (Asus A7N8X mobo) and it's cohabitating quite well with my new ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. It's a great chipset and makes for a very fast machine.
For the money, the 9700 Pro was a better deal than the various nVidia video cards I looked at, and since I've been using ATI for the past year plus, I felt good about their driver situation and they kept my business.
At the grocery store where I shop, they put removable UPC codes on the large items like 25# bags of dog food so that you can peel it off to hand the cashier, rather than loading it on the conveyor and watching them try to flop it around to get the UPC side facing the laser and then dragging it quickly enough over the sensor to register.
You could theoretically peel the lablel off of the generic dog food and load your cart up with Alpo, but that would be illegal.
It was in the form of a post card, one of those little 4" x 5" junk mail kind of post cards that did *not* look like a check and it almost got tossed out with the rest of the junk mail.
That is the *only* rebate I've ever received from the numerous ones I've sent out. I wonder how many other postcard checks I might have received that just ended up in the trash because they didn't look like a rebate...
New SPAMmer to abuse
on
FTC vs Spammers
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Feel free to make this guys life hell. I've received over 100 of his mortgage offers in the past two weeks and asking to be removed from his mailing list has done no good.
Here is the raw output for domain n0hastlem0rtgage.com:
Organization:
none
Mike Stone
12345 Stone rd
Stoneville, CA 92504
US
Phone: 916.123.4567
Email: vialead@yahoo.com
Amazingly enough, his yahoo account has already been terminated.
Actually it's closer to a 9x difference, so a 2x DVD-R drive is equivalent to an 18x CD burner (as far as data rate goes).
My Pioneer DVR-104 drive is a 2x DVD-R, 1x DVD-RW, 8x CD-R and 4x CD-RW drive.
It takes roughly 9 minutes to burn a full CD at 8x (including file buffering, lead in and lead out) and take about 28 minutes to write a full DVD-R disc at 2x speed.
A DVD-R holds ~4,700,000,000 bits which to marketing people is 4.7 GB, but to anyone with more than 12 brain cells, is 4.3 GB of usable data. Same problem you see with hard drive manufacturers claiming their drives are bigger than they actually are.
What this boils down to is that a DVD-R disc holds ~6.71x the data that a CD-R does (assuming you're using 80min CD-R) which works out to roughly 1.5 hours of Mpeg2 video with full audio quality or a heck of a lot of pr0n...
Slashdot Mirror
Other recent articles about counterfeiting have mentioned a proprietary chemical mixture that removes a vast majority of the ink from printed currency, yet leaves the security strip, watermark and colored fibres intact. Bills treated in this manner will fool those colored markers that most places uses for confirmation. You get a stack of $5s, 'bleach' them and reprint them as $10s and you've doubled your money, print them as $20s and you're up to 4x, print them as $100s and you're at 20x. If you take bills as part of your job, double check that the watermark image is the same as the face printed on the bill, and that the value in the security strip matches as well.
The law only applies to companies with 15 or more employees. I doubt that he has that many.
1-2 percent on penis enlargement - and knock off Viagra offers?
Pardon my SPAM results ignorance, but is that unbelievable because it's too high or too low?
Sure, they're brittle, but that can easily be overcome by either dipping the magnets in PlastiDip or by sealing them in shrink-wrap tubing. Even wrapping them up in several thicknesses of surgical tape will work wonders for keeping them intact. A bundle of magnet fragments is almost as powerful as the original intact magnet.
Out of the more than 200 magnets I've ordered from WonderMagnets.com, only a few of the thinnest (the surplus hard drive ones) magnets have broken, and only when they were poorly handled (i.e., let someone else play with them and they want to see from how far apart they will still snap back together. The nickel or gold plating will flake off after extensive use, but that doesn't affect the magnet other than making it less attractive.
And the next time someone mentions 'Teflon Coated Cop Killer Bullets', feel free to laugh. As stated in the previous post, the teflon coating acts as bullet lubricant to reduce the amount of wear and tear on the barrel. It also reduces lead dust which can be hazardous to people who spend long periods training at indoor shooting ranges (i.e. most police officers) and so in reality they help reduce the amount of poisonous heavy metals inhaled by police officers and so are actually 'Teflon Coated Cop "Don't Die From Poisoning" Bullets'.
The story's site is by someone who SELLS those kinds of magnets, which I'm sure you would have figured out if had only taken the time to read the entire article, or explore the other pages on his site.
He has a lot of VERY POWERFUL magnets that he sells, some of which are too powerful for most people to play with
I've purchased numerous magnets from the guy and they are a blast to play with. A stack of the small disc magnets can distort the image on your monitor from several feet away, and can seriously mess it up at closer range. If you get it close enough, you can actually see the shadow mask image on your monitor. Thankfully I have a degauss button on my monitor or it would be toast.
You didn't hear it from me, but a stack of the bigger disc magnets can distort the image on a monitor on the other side of a cubicle wall. Attaching them to a low RPM motor can cause your cube neighbor to make numerous, useless calls to IT about a faulty monitor that mysteriously clears up when they arrive. At least that's what I've heard...
SUVs are still sucking it down like -- well you know like what --
Puh-lease... I double-dog dare you to compare the mileage of my somewhat aged 1992 Isuzu Rodeo to that of a car with comparable seating and storage capacity.
When gas prices started exceeding $2.00/G 2 years ago, I purchased a used Honda Civic and decreased the amount of gas I had to buy each week... by about 2 gallons. I also lost the ability to carry 5 people comfortably and still have room for my briefcase, etc. The car was so small that if more than one person was going to lunch with me, they wouldn't ride in my car. That's probably why I saved most of those 2 gallons - I stopped driving everyone to lunch each day!
Once gas prices went back to realistic levels, I went back to driving my Rodeo and got rid of the Civic. The additional money I spent on insurance and everything was most likely less than the amount I saved on a more fuel efficient vehicle. I'd have to double-check the figures, but I feel pretty confident about that.
Are there SUVs out there that suck down gas? You betcha. Are there that exhibit behaviour? You betcha.
Any time you paint a picture with broad strokes, you lose little details like "there are SUVs that get good gas mileage" and "there are plenty of non-SUV vehicles that get absolutely horrid gas mileage". I have a friend with a 6 cylinder Mustang and watching the way he drives, I'd be willing to bet I get twice the mileage he does.
You were going to have to upgrade for Unreal Tournament 2004 any ways, so what's the big deal?
Radeon 9700 Pro on an AMD XP 2500+ (Barton) with 1 GB of RAM. In 640x480 mode the leaked alpha version was playable. Dark, dreary, pitch black in places, but playable.
There was an incident of a man being arrested in a Best Buy (for trespassing, I believe) after being asked to stop writing down prices for large screen TVs. The irony of it, and I explained this in a post a long time ago, is that I used to work at Best Buy, and on weekends, we were asked to bring a non-blue shirt with us to work so that we could go incognito to the local electronics store (H.H. Greggs, before we had a Circuit City locally) and use a micro-cassette recorder to 'steal' all their prices so we could mark down the items in store to compete. Now they're telling people that they can't do what they themselves do (or did). Reminds me of a local story about a guy who was wearing one of those fancy NASCAR leather jackets with either Home Depot or Menards as the sponsor of the team going into the store that wasn't the sponsor and who was celebrating their grand opening (i.e., wore a Menards jacket into a Home Depot, or maybe it was the other way around) and was asked by management to leave because they thought he was a spy from the other company. Made the local paper when it happened...
In the business world, you do not want to piss off you *entire customer base* like this!
Have you considered sharing this particular bit of news with the MPAA/RIAA/TV Studios and anyone else accusing their customers of being thieves?
And it was only a few months ago that it transpired that you could burn out the laser in a LOT of DVD-RW drives simply by inserting a new kind of medium
Actually it was the drive motor, not the laser.
And wasn't it HP that promised that their DVD-RW drives would be compatible with DVD+RW media via a firmware upgrade... and then reneged on the promise?
Yes, and that's what you get for buying a drive that uses a standard that wasn't approved by the DVD Forum. That's why I went with a DVD-R/RW drive and have been extremely happy with it.
Wow, I'm sure this posting violates the Patriot Act. Better pack your bags and pick your favorite pair of clean underwear.
A photo of an actual working prototype that is flexible?
which would be a great idea, except DVD is mpeg2...
Damn, how come I never had mod points when I really need them! +1 FUNNY!
But if you pick an evil number like 6.66, then the RIAA will feel obligated to be part of it...
Perhaps we might eventually see this sort of self-serve stuff at regular retail outlets?
Not until they can figure out how to make the user interface tell you about all the great features of the optional product protection plan that can be yours for such a low low price, because you know the %device_purchased% you have selected is known to have a %random_negative_adjective% %random_part_name% which tends to go bad in %random_time_interval% and if you don't purchase one of our completely optional (no obligation to buy but I'll continue to drone on and on until you buy one or make me stop) product protection plans then you'll have to send it off to one of their repair sites located in %random_third_world_country% and it usually takes %random_long_length_of_time% and costs %price_times_two% so you're really better off paying the small amount, only %price_over_3% now because you'll save money in the long run.
I've got the new nForce2 chipset in my new system (Asus A7N8X mobo) and it's cohabitating quite well with my new ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. It's a great chipset and makes for a very fast machine. For the money, the 9700 Pro was a better deal than the various nVidia video cards I looked at, and since I've been using ATI for the past year plus, I felt good about their driver situation and they kept my business.
At the grocery store where I shop, they put removable UPC codes on the large items like 25# bags of dog food so that you can peel it off to hand the cashier, rather than loading it on the conveyor and watching them try to flop it around to get the UPC side facing the laser and then dragging it quickly enough over the sensor to register. You could theoretically peel the lablel off of the generic dog food and load your cart up with Alpo, but that would be illegal.
RFQ: Can we plase add a "-1: Fargin' Icehole" moderation?
It was in the form of a post card, one of those little 4" x 5" junk mail kind of post cards that did *not* look like a check and it almost got tossed out with the rest of the junk mail.
That is the *only* rebate I've ever received from the numerous ones I've sent out. I wonder how many other postcard checks I might have received that just ended up in the trash because they didn't look like a rebate...
Feel free to make this guys life hell. I've received over 100 of his mortgage offers in the past two weeks and asking to be removed from his mailing list has done no good.
Here is the raw output for domain n0hastlem0rtgage.com:
Organization:
none
Mike Stone
12345 Stone rd
Stoneville, CA 92504
US
Phone: 916.123.4567
Email: vialead@yahoo.com
Amazingly enough, his yahoo account has already been terminated.
Bow Chicka Ckicha Bow Wow.
Isn't that the theme music to Forest Hump?
Actually it's closer to a 9x difference, so a 2x DVD-R drive is equivalent to an 18x CD burner (as far as data rate goes).
My Pioneer DVR-104 drive is a 2x DVD-R, 1x DVD-RW, 8x CD-R and 4x CD-RW drive.
It takes roughly 9 minutes to burn a full CD at 8x (including file buffering, lead in and lead out) and take about 28 minutes to write a full DVD-R disc at 2x speed.
A DVD-R holds ~4,700,000,000 bits which to marketing people is 4.7 GB, but to anyone with more than 12 brain cells, is 4.3 GB of usable data. Same problem you see with hard drive manufacturers claiming their drives are bigger than they actually are.
What this boils down to is that a DVD-R disc holds ~6.71x the data that a CD-R does (assuming you're using 80min CD-R) which works out to roughly 1.5 hours of Mpeg2 video with full audio quality or a heck of a lot of pr0n...