You may laugh, but there's a logical reason for the name. The scandal's moniker stems from an attempted break-in by CCP developers into the DNC headquarters in the Jumpgate Hotel in Washington, D.C.
That said, I wish hotels would get more creative with their names. I mean, you've got the Irangate, the Monicagate, Whitewatergate, and the Watergate, just to name a few.
Anyone in the Seattle area know of any decent viewing areas within a few hours' driving radius? I've been checking the weather reports, and it seems I'll have to drive over the Cascades or as far south as Eugene, Oregon to get weather even just slightly less crappy than ours.
I've seen these machine guns in novelty catalogs a few years back. Sounds cool at first, but who wants to spend half an hour loading 144 flimsy, inaccurate, non-welt-inducing rubber bands for five seconds of totally harmless fun?
What you really want is the "Rubaser". (I think that's what it was called. Google had nothing on that name, though.) The Rubaser ("RUBber lASER"), sold in the late eighties in stores like The Sharper Image, was basically a glorified single-shot rubber band gun, but with some very cool differences:
It was black.
It was shiny.
It had a nice heft to it.
It fired loops of surgical tubing - much more fun than rubber bands
It was also quite expensive
This thing looked a lot like the Lazer Tag guns which were popular in that same period, but must have appealed to those who felt that blasting each other with infrared light was not physical enough. I never got to play with one of these, but judging from the manufacturer's warning labels and the welts the salesman showed me, it sounds a lot more fun than this "machine gun".
From the article: How did he manage with a computer whose memory could hold only 2,000 bits of information - about as much as a couple of e-mails?
Does "bit" here mean "binary digit" as we know it today, or does it mean a discrete piece of information, such as a character or opcode? How long were "words" then? 2000 bits won't even contain the headers of a "couple of e-mails". Did they mean "bytes", or did they mean this kind of e-mail:
Subject: [no subject]
Date: Sat, Dec 23 2000 22:30:01 -0600 (CST)
From: 1337h4xx0r15840924@aol.com
To: subscriptions@hotsluts4u.com
You are the Officer-In-Charge, giving orders to the gun crew, telling them the degrees of elevation you estimate will place the projectile on target. A hit within 100 yards of the target will destroy it. take more than 5 shots, and the enemy will destroy you!
MAXIMUM RANGE OF YOUR GUN IS 46500 YARDS.
DISTANCE TO THE TARGET IS 41757 YARDS.....
ELEVATION:? 35
OVER TARGET BY 1937 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 33
OVER TARGET BY 721 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 31.8
SHORT OF TARGET BY 108 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 31.9
***TARGET DESTROYED*** 4 ROUNDS OF AMMUNITION EXPENDED
THE FORWARD OBSERVER HAS SIGHTED MORE ENEMY ACTIVITY.
DISTANCE TO THE TARGET IS 21460 YARDS.....
Is there any way to override the "lameness filter" that won't allow this post to be displayed in its proper "look and feel" of all-caps? Sigh.
The headline testimonial in this ad refers to the May '83 issue of Byte Magazine, which, by odd coincidence, I had right in front of me in a little stack of obsolete literature keeping my monitor at a comfortable height. Curious, I turned to the referenced page 34 of the mag and found the glowing words of praise just as they appeared in the advertisement. This is not the interesting bit. What I found amusing was the closing paragraph of the article: "Radio Shack could probably make money issuing just a mediocre portable computer. Instead, it produced an exceptional machine. The designers of this machine--including Bill Walters of Radio Shack, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and several others at both companies--should be congratulated. And I have a feeling they will be--all the way to the bank."
It's past 4am and I'm kind of tired, so you'll have to add your own Microsoft/Bill Gates/Radio Shack joke here.
These two very different movies, if I remember correctly, were released together - as a double feature. I sure hope 'Totoro' came after 'Hotaru'. I wonder what the initial audience reception must have been like? What did the kids think? Think of it- The story of two young children sharing wonderful adventures with adorable, fuzzy woodland creatures in the idyllic setting of postwar rural Japan, contrasted with a look at the final days of two young children, newly orphaned by war, as they slowly starve to death alone in the aftermath of incendiary raids that destroy their city. Could Disney pull off something like this? Could they get away with it?
To get back on topic, I'll add that I'm glad to see that Disney/Miramax didn't quite succeed in screwing this one up all the way, and I hope to see a not-quite-completely-butchered DVD release of 'Laputa' (my favorite) in the near future.
NASA has made available flight data and radio exchange transcripts of previous space missions. I'd sure like to see what's in the logs in these latest missions.
This could serve as a complement to international shortwave broadcasts. Shortwave radio reception is affected by many factors- location, time of day, weather and other atmospheric fluctuations, sunspot activity, etc. Assuming the signals you want to hear even reach you, you may only be able to hear them at 3 in the morning, or only when it rains in Cleveland, or whatever. Satellite broadcasts have an obvious advantage here.
Of course, it can't replace the fun of messing around with frequency guides, propagation charts and sunspot reports in search of faint voices from the other side of the globe.
Universal Pictures and the creators of U-571 bring you "G312", the true story of the recovery of the stolen Enigma code machine by a heroic American force including the LA Times, the LAPD, and the FBI!
BASED ON A TRUE STORY! ACTION! SUSPENSE! FULL FRONTAL NUDITY! Rated R.
I'm surprised the Douglas Adams fans here haven't jumped all over this one.
The obvious choice is 'Rupert'.
Okay, it's not beyond the orbit of Pluto, but it's close enough, give or take a few zillion miles.
Slashdot Mirror
That's easy. You know how to hum, right? Just keep lowering your pitch until you can't hear yourself and start to feel nervous.
With a name like that, it's got to be good.
You may laugh, but there's a logical reason for the name.
The scandal's moniker stems from an attempted break-in by CCP developers into the DNC headquarters in the Jumpgate Hotel in Washington, D.C.
That said, I wish hotels would get more creative with their names. I mean, you've got the Irangate, the Monicagate, Whitewatergate, and the Watergate, just to name a few.
I think the NRA has just found their newest bumper sticker slogan:
"Guns don't kill people. Video games kill people."
Anyone in the Seattle area know of any decent viewing areas within a few hours' driving radius? I've been checking the weather reports, and it seems I'll have to drive over the Cascades or as far south as Eugene, Oregon to get weather even just slightly less crappy than ours.
"Tempest"
What's next from these geniuses, the Wi-fi keyboard?
One night a few days ago near rainy Seattle, I was blessed with: clear skies, a new moon, and a neighborhood power outage.
Thanks anyway, God. Right month, wrong date.
What you really want is the "Rubaser". (I think that's what it was called. Google had nothing on that name, though.) The Rubaser ("RUBber lASER"), sold in the late eighties in stores like The Sharper Image, was basically a glorified single-shot rubber band gun, but with some very cool differences:
This thing looked a lot like the Lazer Tag guns which were popular in that same period, but must have appealed to those who felt that blasting each other with infrared light was not physical enough. I never got to play with one of these, but judging from the manufacturer's warning labels and the welts the salesman showed me, it sounds a lot more fun than this "machine gun".
"more evil than satan himself"
darn.
How did he manage with a computer whose memory could hold only 2,000 bits of information - about as much as a couple of e-mails?
Does "bit" here mean "binary digit" as we know it today, or does it mean a discrete piece of information, such as a character or opcode? How long were "words" then? 2000 bits won't even contain the headers of a "couple of e-mails". Did they mean "bytes", or did they mean this kind of e-mail:
Subject: [no subject]
Date: Sat, Dec 23 2000 22:30:01 -0600 (CST)
From: 1337h4xx0r15840924@aol.com
To: subscriptions@hotsluts4u.com
Mee to!
According to the Washington State Attorney General's Office homepage, it is the year '100.
I wonder what it'll say come Y19.101K?
MAXIMUM RANGE OF YOUR GUN IS 46500 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 35
OVER TARGET BY 1937 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 33
OVER TARGET BY 721 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 31.8
SHORT OF TARGET BY 108 YARDS.
ELEVATION:? 31.9
***TARGET DESTROYED*** 4 ROUNDS OF AMMUNITION EXPENDED
THE FORWARD OBSERVER HAS SIGHTED MORE ENEMY ACTIVITY.
Is there any way to override the "lameness filter" that won't allow this post to be displayed in its proper "look and feel" of all-caps? Sigh.
Mostly cloudy with scattered showers.
Bah! Humbug!
The headline testimonial in this ad refers to the May '83 issue of Byte Magazine, which, by odd coincidence, I had right in front of me in a little stack of obsolete literature keeping my monitor at a comfortable height. Curious, I turned to the referenced page 34 of the mag and found the glowing words of praise just as they appeared in the advertisement. This is not the interesting bit. What I found amusing was the closing paragraph of the article:
"Radio Shack could probably make money issuing just a mediocre portable computer. Instead, it produced an exceptional machine. The designers of this machine--including Bill Walters of Radio Shack, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and several others at both companies--should be congratulated. And I have a feeling they will be--all the way to the bank."
It's past 4am and I'm kind of tired, so you'll have to add your own Microsoft/Bill Gates/Radio Shack joke here.
To get back on topic, I'll add that I'm glad to see that Disney/Miramax didn't quite succeed in screwing this one up all the way, and I hope to see a not-quite-completely-butchered DVD release of 'Laputa' (my favorite) in the near future.
NASA has made available flight data and radio exchange transcripts of previous space missions. I'd sure like to see what's in the logs in these latest missions.
Of course, it can't replace the fun of messing around with frequency guides, propagation charts and sunspot reports in search of faint voices from the other side of the globe.
On the other hand, they (along with Microsoft and direct-marketing groups) opposed anti-spam legislation in Washington State not too long ago.
amazon.com
Universal Pictures and the creators of U-571 bring you "G312", the true story of the recovery of the stolen Enigma code machine by a heroic American force including the LA Times, the LAPD, and the FBI!
BASED ON A TRUE STORY! ACTION! SUSPENSE! FULL FRONTAL NUDITY! Rated R.
Given an infinite number of monkey brains and an infinite number of robotic arms, could GM finally build a decent automobile?
I'm surprised the Douglas Adams fans here haven't jumped all over this one. The obvious choice is 'Rupert'. Okay, it's not beyond the orbit of Pluto, but it's close enough, give or take a few zillion miles.