I was in my early teens. I went to the Rolling Meadows (Illinois) library, with my neighbor Jim, where we'd heard you used a phone to talk to the computer. Expecting something like Star Trek, we were rather disappointed that we had to use a typewriter and tv screen, and even then, the computer was *dumb!* We persevered, and learned to play all the games that out local HP2000E had to offer us.
My first personal machine was an Ohio Scientific trainer, with 256 whole bytes of ram and a 6502 cpu. Twas great fun trying to make music on such a limited toy:)
Things are generally better these days. Kids are far more computer savvy now than they were 30 years ago, so almost anything will do. Are you hoping to teach the child how to program, or just get used to how to use the machine?
Still waking up here, sorry. Anyhow, I forgot to mention that each dues-paying member of the repeater cabal had their own series of tones that identified them. The "social engineering" came from recording several different tone IDs, culminating with the repeater owner himself. Twas great fun as the owner tried to figure out a way that he and his clique could keep their private toy free of the riffraff *WEG*
Back in the McHenry, Ill, area, there's a closed repeater that, to unlock, you need to send a series of tones at the start of each transmission. It's run by a club whose "dues" go mainly into one guy's pocket, effectively making this system not legal (but hey, who really cares about legal, as long as he gets rich?).
Anyways, one local ham used to be part of that clique, until he managed to cheese off the repeater owner. He wanted to be able to use the system again.
I built a gadget that used one of the cool digital recorder chips you can get from Radio Shack. We digitally recorded the signal on the input frequency of the repeater, then sent these tones when the mic was keyed up.
Worked amazingly well, until the guy dropped the mic and the wire broke loose. Wheee, what fun his sudden re-appearance on the system caused!:)
OK, so it's not really software hacking, more of a hardware hack with some social engineering thrown in too, but hey, doing it was quite a blast. MUCH more amusing than Field Day.
Ahh, ok. Thanks. It would have been nice had the repair gotten at least some coverage here in the US, but that may be too much to ask for, given the proximity to elections:(
I was following the story of the malfunctioning oxygen generator, and how the ISS crew was working around it by using up the reserve O2 supply. Then, the story fell out of sight.
Did they ever fix it? Or at least discover why it wasn't working? Dunno 'bout you, but I'd sure feel less than safe going to a station with low reserves and no working air supply. I'd hate to be there, depending on NASA getting their act together for a replacement generator for my survival.
Years back, when I worked as an aide in the computer center at a junior college, I learned to type left-handed and upside-down, while checking the cables under the desks. I never thought that would be useful - I mean, who cares if you're a fast left-hand-only typist?
MS wiped out my right side. I now get plenty of chance to show off typing fast, left-handed-only.
Mind you, unless I get captured by terrorists and must signal to loved ones back home, during a taped "interview", I can think of few reasons why I'd be able to use both Morse code and wiggling my ears (both at once or independantly). Still, wiggling my ears can keep small children entertained while in the queue, and knowing Morse makes it amusing to know what that "mysterious" alien signal is actually saying on those old, schlocky sci-fi movies:)
While growing up, my mom used to tell me that I'd never learn any useful skills by playing video games. Now that I have multiple sclerosis, and cannot work, some of those skills are essential in my daily life.
What use is being proficient with a joystick? Well, when your main means of locomotion is a power wheelchair, being able to manoever sure helps. Being able to judge speed/distance relationships helps, too - both skills fine-tuned in video game parlours.
Life sometimes throws us a curveball, and there's no way to really predict exactly what skillset might be useful at every point in time. Video games are just another skill. Arguably more common than, say, brain surgery, but then, just how many brain surgeons does the world need?
It was (and still is) live on the Science Channel. Which would be great, if I had the Science Channel. I'm doing darned goo to afford basic cable. Disability checks don't go very far, you know.
I'm a night owl. I mean, a serious night owl. I rarely get to bed before 2AM, and tend to get up after 9 at the earliest. However, knowing that today's flight was to start at 7AM, I was up, ready and waiting, at 6:30.
I was bebopping from one news channel to another (no, I don't get CNN), looking for coverage of the flight. About 7:30-ish, NBC said they were going to have the seperation live in about ten minutes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Lots of blather about how Mt. St. Helens could erupt at any time, much blather about Hollywood news, politics, and/or both, but naft on Space Ship One.
Then I caught mention that it had hit the mark, and would soon be landing. Again, live coverage of the landing coming up on MSNBC. Again, nothing. Nothing. More Mount St. Helens blather, more Hollywood, more people selling unsound "treatments" for non-existant "diseases",, then, finally, on Fox, a shot of SS1 landing.
Total coverage, from 6 different networks' news shows? Under a minute. For an event that could well have a major impact on humanity for generations to come. Not even 60 whole seconds of air time. Compare this to Lindberg's landing, and the hullabaloo that caused.
I'm steamed. As NBC claimed they were going to have live coverage, and didn't, and NBC is now MSNBC, I really hope that Paul Allen will raise the roof about this. After CBS' fake memos, and NBC dropping the ball here, I REALLY hate to point out that the place that had the most coverage, and the timeliest, was Fox News.
Is this road anywhere near Darl McBride's home? Maybe this wasn't really a failure, but God's way of telling Darl that he should drop his frivolous lawsuit?
I've taken Shuttle Express before, while I was still mobile. A hella long time delivering everybody else. As for parking "my" vehicle, ever hear of being dropped off? Far faster, and far less expensive, if it's available. Heck, I haven't checked, but Access might be able to take me there, and they'll only cost me 75 cents each way.
My defeatist attitude? Geez, that's the first time I've heard of it. I do NOT let MS ruin my life. I have had to change, to adapt to my new limitations, true. I've learned how to type fairly well, left-hand-only. I can still cook, and even clean most of the time. Laundry? Takes longer, but I still do it. Signing my name? Left-handed, these days. Sure, I can't dance for squat these days - my balance was the first thing that went - but in its place, I've learned other ways to enjoy life. Lapidary occupies much of my time.
What kills me worst is the fatigue. Even just going shopping can wear m out for the rest of the day, and I'm not talking a major trip, either, just a short hop to get tonight's dinner. Even so, I've still done it, even in a major downpour like a few weeks back. Driving my electric wheelchair through water that was up past the motors was maybe not bright, but everything worked out well.
So don't tell me that I'm "littering"/. with my "defeatist" attitude. That's a major load of horse hooey. What I did was comment on how things are harder, today, for me to go flying anywhere, thanks in part to how the TSA screenings would impact me personally. How you decided that I was "littering" is beyond me, and how you got modded "interesting" instead of "troll" is utterly absurd.
My mom is in no danger of dying. She's 61, and unless a miracle happens and a job opens up for a sweet, clueless older lady who has no real work skills, she's likely to "retire" early. She'll likely last another five or ten years. With luck, I'll be able to get there, somehow, by then.
As to the delays at SeaTac, the news keeps talking about waits being measured in hours, plural. Add that to the hour-long bus trip, and you can see that I'd need to be fully dehydrated to even think about it.
I can't drive - I have no vehicle that can take me and my Jazzy 1113 chair. Plus, I cannot drive, as my whole right side is about useless. No use of my right foot makes accelerating hard, and the stress from driving would bring on yet another attack, making my situation far worse.
A diaper? That'll hold me for, hmm, three, maybe four bladdersfull? Remember, I'm disabled, and changing my diaper would take a whole lot more ability than I have, even now. I think I'll save that option for when my mom IS dying.
I haven't seen my mother in well over ten years. She lives in Dayton, Ohio, and I live in Seattle, Washington. I'd love to see her at least once more, before she finally kicks the bucket, but...
See, I'm disabled. I'm stuck in a wheelchair. At the moment, I can still stand by myself, for short periods, I can even put my shoes on (Velcro is my bestest friend), I cannot, however, spend multiple hours waiting in line to be screened - MS has left my bladder very functional, but taken away my ability to sense "fullness" (and no, the drug that's advertised will not help. Tried that. Nada).
So, flying is out. Greyhound is even worse - those toilets are *not* very handicapped accessible. Amtrack? They keep cutting off routes because Congress won't give them adequate funding for anything but the East coast corridor. Driving? Ha! Got no vehicle that can carry my power chair, and I for sure can't drive myself any more.
So I'm stuck here in Seattle, likely until I die. Thank you, TSA, and your over-zealous "screeners" who really can't stop a determined terrorist (or even a half-determined amateur who wants to demonstrate gow ludicrous the "Homeland Security" really is).
I'll agree, that list given has some stinkers on it. Case in point: Grease. How could Olivia Neutron-Bomb go from pristine and pure, to a total sleazebucket, just so she could date John Revolting? Get real! Grease 2 had a better story line, at least, and the acting wasn't much worse.
However, the list doesn't cover my two worst-ever movies. I'm sorry to say that I paid to see both of them, and felt terribly cheated both times.
The first one is Caligula. Drawn to it by the photo spread in Penthouse (yes, lesbians do read that stuff), I later found out that the whole lesbian scene was added after the movie was finished, essentially over the director's dead body. If you saw the magazine spread, you saw nearly every frame of film. The rest of the movie was gross and nauseating. A total waste of ten bucks, and a trip into Chicago to the "art" theater at which it was shown. Very definately NOT a good date flick.:(
For many years, Caligula was tops... until I saw Dune. See, Caligula at least had some thirty seconds of redeeming value in it. Dune had none. Dune was just plain gross and nauseating, for the sheer joy of being gross and nauseating. The book was pretty good, but the film sucked huge, diseased donkey schlongs. Ick.
Thankfully, by that time, I had no grrlfriend, so at least I was spared the devastation of being dumped as we left the theater.
Maybe all those senseless vandals out there will now think twice in future before scrawling 'Clean Me' on the back of vehicles overdue for a wash...
I did that to the hood of my dad's old '63 Pontiac, which hadn't been washed in ages. Being a clever grrl, I used a rag dipped in Turtle Wax, so as not to be destructive.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the Turtle Wax would actually remove the dull surface of the paint, leaving the car forevermore to bear a (slightly bright) sign, quite legible from above, that read, "Wash me!"
My dad didn't kill me, obviously, nor did he take the hint. I guess I knew it was a forlorn hope, when he epoxied a chunk of plywood to replace the rusted-out floor in the front passenger seat.
He sure got his money's worth out of that car, though.
Hi folks. I used to work at Sun Electric, before Snap-On bought them out. I helped build the engine testers - I worked on all the PC-based units, under Radski (sp) and Bahnick, then Schaeffer.
Part of what I did was the interface to the car's computer, to be able to read these codes. We ***ALWAYS*** had a hella hard time getting this info from the auto makers. They even had an explanation for this - they kept it a secret, to keep people from damaging their cars while under warrantee.
Makes sense to me. The car dies, people get hurt or killed, and the blame goes to the car manufacturers first. They MUST be very careful of this, not only to protect the general public, but to protect their shareholders.
We did get the codes, eventually, though it usually took years. By then, the warrantees had expired anyways, and the cars were showing up at third-party repair shops, the kind that often bought our equipment. I guess the "system" worked, though it really ticks off backyard mechanics everywhere.
Cheap, as in sub-twenty dollars for the smaller capacity chips. To my mind, that's far cheaper than the cost of a cd-player, plus a cd-recorder, plus butchering the player so it can be controlled by a small PIC processor. Besides, the unit I made for the repeater defeater fit inside the guy's microphone, with battery. Hard to do that any other way:)
A few years ago, Vikki was tagged to create the animatronics control for our gem club's display case. Besides running the various pieces of equipment, it had to run in synch with the audio track. To minimize the possibility of breakage, she used a pair of inexpensive amplified speakers, driven by a PIC-based microcontroller, with the audio being handled by one of the solid-state programmable "tape recorder" chips.
It was fairly simple. The only moving parts, aside from the displays, was the "start" switch. Nothing to break, no motors to worry over, no lenses to fret about. Radio Shack has these chips, too, so you can get them fairly cheaply, and they work quite well (years ago, I used one of these to "hack" into a "closed" 440mhz repeater near McHenry, by digitally recording the "activation" sequence on the input side, and wiring the playback through the microphone of the "pirate" radio. Pretty slick, if I must say so myself;) ).
OK, so I'm dating myself, bigtime, but years ago, before there were CDs and DVDs, there was this great video storage medium called a "Laserdisc." You couldn't record on them, and they'd hold, at best, an hour on each side (less in CAV format), but they were decent for keeping movies and concerts around - they had fairly good audio quality, for the time.
I bought a player, and a bunch of discs. After a few years, I noticed that the discs were starting to crap out, going staticy and noisy. Inspection shows that the aluminum inner layer, upon which the data was recorded, was deteriorating, turning to aluminum oxide. Seems the plastic wasn't really able to keep all the oxygen away, as claimed.
Net effect is that I have a player that may be usable, but darned few discs that are still playable. I've long since recorded all the discs onto VHS tape. I had hoped to be able to watch the movies, and concerts, time and again, from purchase through retirement. Fat chance:( The first discs to die were my ABBA videos, and the Linda Ronstadt concert. Thankfully, I can still watch at least most of Xanadu, the ONJ "Physical" concert and Tank Girl.
Don't believe a word about CD's longevity. Even if treated with the utmost care, they are not likely to last ten years, and five years from home-recordable media would be pretty good.
Actually, as a child I recall reading that the noxious weed, goldenrod, also accumulates gold in its leaves. I didn't read anything about how successful this was, and never thought more about it till this article, but I suppose it could work. I'm sure, though, that hay fever victims would really hate this:-/
Then again, a large field of goldenrod would also be changing CO2 into O2, stopping soil erosion, and locking up carbon, at least until harvest. It might be worth investigating, as a way to put otherwise-polluted fields to productive use and eventually return the land to a habitable status.
OK, after reading the blurbs about the batteries and the wheel-motors, it looks good to me. Lithium Ion batteries look like a better match, but that's just the current (pun not intentional) version versus the current version of the other battery, the new technology will surely improve given time.
My personal take on this is - when can I get the same technology in a power wheelchair? My Jazzy 1113's nice, but those sealed lead-acid batteries just suck. Very much short-range:( I'd really like these newer batteries to put inside my chair:) The wheel-motors would be nice, too, I'm sure, but the batteries are a must-have.
Not only didn't this cot the recording industry nearly as much as a real anti-trust suit would have cost, but now that they've managed to delay it for this long, I'd bet many of those checks will be returned to sender, as the people who should have gotten them have moved already. I did, and it's now long past when the post office will foreward mail.
So they skate again, by abusing our legal system. Yeah, I know, it wasn't a huge check, but as Geddy Lee said in "Take off to the Great White North,", "Hey, ten bucks is ten bucks, eh?"
"Morphing" code is not new. Heck, Alan Turing thought being able to have code modify itself was a *good* thing, as do. Back in the early days of DOS for the PC, I ran into many programs that "morphed," some to cram more code into the limited RAM (which was then called "overlaying"), and some to hide what went on inside as a copy protection mechanism.
As a high school student, back about 1977-ish, I even concocted a self-modifying program, in HP 2000 Access BASIC, long before I heard that it wasn't new. Trying to think parallel, to be able to design it, was most entertaining, and it later served me very well, both in optimising overlays for a communications program for DOS ("Backcomm", anyone?) and in removing the copy protection from games I bought.
Maybe with protected mode, C++, and nobody being taught that code space is really data space too, this technique appears to be new. *sigh* Guess again. It's been around, in one form or another, for decades.
Actually, I'm a damyankee. My dad's from Hager Hill, Kentucky, a "suburb" of Paintsville;)
I'm not *quite* old enough to know the Marvellettes' version of the song, but I do recall, in grade school, reading about Karen Carpenter in our "Weekly Reader" magazine.
Do you like her remake of Klaatu's "Calling occupants"? The intro to that was an old radio DJ call-in section. I thought it rather clever, and a great lead-in to the song.
As for Karen's alto, I especially enjoyed hearing her range on the Christmas album - "Ave Maria", where she takes it from a pure, strong high to an incredible low, and back again. In-fscking-credible. I really do miss her songs.
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I was in my early teens. I went to the Rolling Meadows (Illinois) library, with my neighbor Jim, where we'd heard you used a phone to talk to the computer. Expecting something like Star Trek, we were rather disappointed that we had to use a typewriter and tv screen, and even then, the computer was *dumb!* We persevered, and learned to play all the games that out local HP2000E had to offer us.
:)
My first personal machine was an Ohio Scientific trainer, with 256 whole bytes of ram and a 6502 cpu. Twas great fun trying to make music on such a limited toy
Things are generally better these days. Kids are far more computer savvy now than they were 30 years ago, so almost anything will do. Are you hoping to teach the child how to program, or just get used to how to use the machine?
Still waking up here, sorry. Anyhow, I forgot to mention that each dues-paying member of the repeater cabal had their own series of tones that identified them. The "social engineering" came from recording several different tone IDs, culminating with the repeater owner himself. Twas great fun as the owner tried to figure out a way that he and his clique could keep their private toy free of the riffraff *WEG*
:)
Ahh, the joys of using in-band signaling
Back in the McHenry, Ill, area, there's a closed repeater that, to unlock, you need to send a series of tones at the start of each transmission. It's run by a club whose "dues" go mainly into one guy's pocket, effectively making this system not legal (but hey, who really cares about legal, as long as he gets rich?).
:)
Anyways, one local ham used to be part of that clique, until he managed to cheese off the repeater owner. He wanted to be able to use the system again.
I built a gadget that used one of the cool digital recorder chips you can get from Radio Shack. We digitally recorded the signal on the input frequency of the repeater, then sent these tones when the mic was keyed up.
Worked amazingly well, until the guy dropped the mic and the wire broke loose. Wheee, what fun his sudden re-appearance on the system caused!
OK, so it's not really software hacking, more of a hardware hack with some social engineering thrown in too, but hey, doing it was quite a blast. MUCH more amusing than Field Day.
de N9JZW
Ahh, ok. Thanks. It would have been nice had the repair gotten at least some coverage here in the US, but that may be too much to ask for, given the proximity to elections :(
I was following the story of the malfunctioning oxygen generator, and how the ISS crew was working around it by using up the reserve O2 supply. Then, the story fell out of sight.
Did they ever fix it? Or at least discover why it wasn't working? Dunno 'bout you, but I'd sure feel less than safe going to a station with low reserves and no working air supply. I'd hate to be there, depending on NASA getting their act together for a replacement generator for my survival.
Years back, when I worked as an aide in the computer center at a junior college, I learned to type left-handed and upside-down, while checking the cables under the desks. I never thought that would be useful - I mean, who cares if you're a fast left-hand-only typist?
:)
MS wiped out my right side. I now get plenty of chance to show off typing fast, left-handed-only.
Mind you, unless I get captured by terrorists and must signal to loved ones back home, during a taped "interview", I can think of few reasons why I'd be able to use both Morse code and wiggling my ears (both at once or independantly). Still, wiggling my ears can keep small children entertained while in the queue, and knowing Morse makes it amusing to know what that "mysterious" alien signal is actually saying on those old, schlocky sci-fi movies
While growing up, my mom used to tell me that I'd never learn any useful skills by playing video games. Now that I have multiple sclerosis, and cannot work, some of those skills are essential in my daily life.
What use is being proficient with a joystick? Well, when your main means of locomotion is a power wheelchair, being able to manoever sure helps. Being able to judge speed/distance relationships helps, too - both skills fine-tuned in video game parlours.
Life sometimes throws us a curveball, and there's no way to really predict exactly what skillset might be useful at every point in time. Video games are just another skill. Arguably more common than, say, brain surgery, but then, just how many brain surgeons does the world need?
It was (and still is) live on the Science Channel.
Which would be great, if I had the Science Channel. I'm doing darned goo to afford basic cable. Disability checks don't go very far, you know.
I'm a night owl. I mean, a serious night owl. I rarely get to bed before 2AM, and tend to get up after 9 at the earliest. However, knowing that today's flight was to start at 7AM, I was up, ready and waiting, at 6:30.
I was bebopping from one news channel to another (no, I don't get CNN), looking for coverage of the flight. About 7:30-ish, NBC said they were going to have the seperation live in about ten minutes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Lots of blather about how Mt. St. Helens could erupt at any time, much blather about Hollywood news, politics, and/or both, but naft on Space Ship One.
Then I caught mention that it had hit the mark, and would soon be landing. Again, live coverage of the landing coming up on MSNBC. Again, nothing. Nothing. More Mount St. Helens blather, more Hollywood, more people selling unsound "treatments" for non-existant "diseases",, then, finally, on Fox, a shot of SS1 landing.
Total coverage, from 6 different networks' news shows? Under a minute. For an event that could well have a major impact on humanity for generations to come. Not even 60 whole seconds of air time. Compare this to Lindberg's landing, and the hullabaloo that caused.
I'm steamed. As NBC claimed they were going to have live coverage, and didn't, and NBC is now MSNBC, I really hope that Paul Allen will raise the roof about this. After CBS' fake memos, and NBC dropping the ball here, I REALLY hate to point out that the place that had the most coverage, and the timeliest, was Fox News.
Scary.
Is this road anywhere near Darl McBride's home? Maybe this wasn't really a failure, but God's way of telling Darl that he should drop his frivolous lawsuit?
I've taken Shuttle Express before, while I was still mobile. A hella long time delivering everybody else. As for parking "my" vehicle, ever hear of being dropped off? Far faster, and far less expensive, if it's available. Heck, I haven't checked, but Access might be able to take me there, and they'll only cost me 75 cents each way.
/. with my "defeatist" attitude. That's a major load of horse hooey. What I did was comment on how things are harder, today, for me to go flying anywhere, thanks in part to how the TSA screenings would impact me personally. How you decided that I was "littering" is beyond me, and how you got modded "interesting" instead of "troll" is utterly absurd.
My defeatist attitude? Geez, that's the first time I've heard of it. I do NOT let MS ruin my life. I have had to change, to adapt to my new limitations, true. I've learned how to type fairly well, left-hand-only. I can still cook, and even clean most of the time. Laundry? Takes longer, but I still do it. Signing my name? Left-handed, these days. Sure, I can't dance for squat these days - my balance was the first thing that went - but in its place, I've learned other ways to enjoy life. Lapidary occupies much of my time.
What kills me worst is the fatigue. Even just going shopping can wear m out for the rest of the day, and I'm not talking a major trip, either, just a short hop to get tonight's dinner. Even so, I've still done it, even in a major downpour like a few weeks back. Driving my electric wheelchair through water that was up past the motors was maybe not bright, but everything worked out well.
So don't tell me that I'm "littering"
My mom is in no danger of dying. She's 61, and unless a miracle happens and a job opens up for a sweet, clueless older lady who has no real work skills, she's likely to "retire" early. She'll likely last another five or ten years. With luck, I'll be able to get there, somehow, by then.
As to the delays at SeaTac, the news keeps talking about waits being measured in hours, plural. Add that to the hour-long bus trip, and you can see that I'd need to be fully dehydrated to even think about it.
I can't drive - I have no vehicle that can take me and my Jazzy 1113 chair. Plus, I cannot drive, as my whole right side is about useless. No use of my right foot makes accelerating hard, and the stress from driving would bring on yet another attack, making my situation far worse.
A diaper? That'll hold me for, hmm, three, maybe four bladdersfull? Remember, I'm disabled, and changing my diaper would take a whole lot more ability than I have, even now. I think I'll save that option for when my mom IS dying.
I haven't seen my mother in well over ten years. She lives in Dayton, Ohio, and I live in Seattle, Washington. I'd love to see her at least once more, before she finally kicks the bucket, but ...
See, I'm disabled. I'm stuck in a wheelchair. At the moment, I can still stand by myself, for short periods, I can even put my shoes on (Velcro is my bestest friend), I cannot, however, spend multiple hours waiting in line to be screened - MS has left my bladder very functional, but taken away my ability to sense "fullness" (and no, the drug that's advertised will not help. Tried that. Nada).
So, flying is out. Greyhound is even worse - those toilets are *not* very handicapped accessible. Amtrack? They keep cutting off routes because Congress won't give them adequate funding for anything but the East coast corridor. Driving? Ha! Got no vehicle that can carry my power chair, and I for sure can't drive myself any more.
So I'm stuck here in Seattle, likely until I die. Thank you, TSA, and your over-zealous "screeners" who really can't stop a determined terrorist (or even a half-determined amateur who wants to demonstrate gow ludicrous the "Homeland Security" really is).
Bah. A pox on all their houses.
I'll agree, that list given has some stinkers on it. Case in point: Grease. How could Olivia Neutron-Bomb go from pristine and pure, to a total sleazebucket, just so she could date John Revolting? Get real! Grease 2 had a better story line, at least, and the acting wasn't much worse.
:(
... until I saw Dune. See, Caligula at least had some thirty seconds of redeeming value in it. Dune had none. Dune was just plain gross and nauseating, for the sheer joy of being gross and nauseating. The book was pretty good, but the film sucked huge, diseased donkey schlongs. Ick.
However, the list doesn't cover my two worst-ever movies. I'm sorry to say that I paid to see both of them, and felt terribly cheated both times.
The first one is Caligula. Drawn to it by the photo spread in Penthouse (yes, lesbians do read that stuff), I later found out that the whole lesbian scene was added after the movie was finished, essentially over the director's dead body. If you saw the magazine spread, you saw nearly every frame of film. The rest of the movie was gross and nauseating. A total waste of ten bucks, and a trip into Chicago to the "art" theater at which it was shown. Very definately NOT a good date flick.
For many years, Caligula was tops
Thankfully, by that time, I had no grrlfriend, so at least I was spared the devastation of being dumped as we left the theater.
Maybe all those senseless vandals out there will now think twice in future before scrawling 'Clean Me' on the back of vehicles overdue for a wash...
I did that to the hood of my dad's old '63 Pontiac, which hadn't been washed in ages. Being a clever grrl, I used a rag dipped in Turtle Wax, so as not to be destructive.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the Turtle Wax would actually remove the dull surface of the paint, leaving the car forevermore to bear a (slightly bright) sign, quite legible from above, that read, "Wash me!"
My dad didn't kill me, obviously, nor did he take the hint. I guess I knew it was a forlorn hope, when he epoxied a chunk of plywood to replace the rusted-out floor in the front passenger seat.
He sure got his money's worth out of that car, though.
Hi folks. I used to work at Sun Electric, before Snap-On bought them out. I helped build the engine testers - I worked on all the PC-based units, under Radski (sp) and Bahnick, then Schaeffer.
Part of what I did was the interface to the car's computer, to be able to read these codes. We ***ALWAYS*** had a hella hard time getting this info from the auto makers. They even had an explanation for this - they kept it a secret, to keep people from damaging their cars while under warrantee.
Makes sense to me. The car dies, people get hurt or killed, and the blame goes to the car manufacturers first. They MUST be very careful of this, not only to protect the general public, but to protect their shareholders.
We did get the codes, eventually, though it usually took years. By then, the warrantees had expired anyways, and the cars were showing up at third-party repair shops, the kind that often bought our equipment. I guess the "system" worked, though it really ticks off backyard mechanics everywhere.
Cheap, as in sub-twenty dollars for the smaller capacity chips. To my mind, that's far cheaper than the cost of a cd-player, plus a cd-recorder, plus butchering the player so it can be controlled by a small PIC processor. Besides, the unit I made for the repeater defeater fit inside the guy's microphone, with battery. Hard to do that any other way :)
A few years ago, Vikki was tagged to create the animatronics control for our gem club's display case. Besides running the various pieces of equipment, it had to run in synch with the audio track. To minimize the possibility of breakage, she used a pair of inexpensive amplified speakers, driven by a PIC-based microcontroller, with the audio being handled by one of the solid-state programmable "tape recorder" chips.
;) ).
It was fairly simple. The only moving parts, aside from the displays, was the "start" switch. Nothing to break, no motors to worry over, no lenses to fret about. Radio Shack has these chips, too, so you can get them fairly cheaply, and they work quite well (years ago, I used one of these to "hack" into a "closed" 440mhz repeater near McHenry, by digitally recording the "activation" sequence on the input side, and wiring the playback through the microphone of the "pirate" radio. Pretty slick, if I must say so myself
OK, so I'm dating myself, bigtime, but years ago, before there were CDs and DVDs, there was this great video storage medium called a "Laserdisc." You couldn't record on them, and they'd hold, at best, an hour on each side (less in CAV format), but they were decent for keeping movies and concerts around - they had fairly good audio quality, for the time.
:( The first discs to die were my ABBA videos, and the Linda Ronstadt concert. Thankfully, I can still watch at least most of Xanadu, the ONJ "Physical" concert and Tank Girl.
I bought a player, and a bunch of discs. After a few years, I noticed that the discs were starting to crap out, going staticy and noisy. Inspection shows that the aluminum inner layer, upon which the data was recorded, was deteriorating, turning to aluminum oxide. Seems the plastic wasn't really able to keep all the oxygen away, as claimed.
Net effect is that I have a player that may be usable, but darned few discs that are still playable. I've long since recorded all the discs onto VHS tape. I had hoped to be able to watch the movies, and concerts, time and again, from purchase through retirement. Fat chance
Don't believe a word about CD's longevity. Even if treated with the utmost care, they are not likely to last ten years, and five years from home-recordable media would be pretty good.
Actually, as a child I recall reading that the noxious weed, goldenrod, also accumulates gold in its leaves. I didn't read anything about how successful this was, and never thought more about it till this article, but I suppose it could work. I'm sure, though, that hay fever victims would really hate this :-/
Then again, a large field of goldenrod would also be changing CO2 into O2, stopping soil erosion, and locking up carbon, at least until harvest. It might be worth investigating, as a way to put otherwise-polluted fields to productive use and eventually return the land to a habitable status.
OK, after reading the blurbs about the batteries and the wheel-motors, it looks good to me. Lithium Ion batteries look like a better match, but that's just the current (pun not intentional) version versus the current version of the other battery, the new technology will surely improve given time.
:( I'd really like these newer batteries to put inside my chair :) The wheel-motors would be nice, too, I'm sure, but the batteries are a must-have.
My personal take on this is - when can I get the same technology in a power wheelchair? My Jazzy 1113's nice, but those sealed lead-acid batteries just suck. Very much short-range
Not only didn't this cot the recording industry nearly as much as a real anti-trust suit would have cost, but now that they've managed to delay it for this long, I'd bet many of those checks will be returned to sender, as the people who should have gotten them have moved already. I did, and it's now long past when the post office will foreward mail.
So they skate again, by abusing our legal system. Yeah, I know, it wasn't a huge check, but as Geddy Lee said in "Take off to the Great White North,", "Hey, ten bucks is ten bucks, eh?"
Bah.
"Morphing" code is not new. Heck, Alan Turing thought being able to have code modify itself was a *good* thing, as do. Back in the early days of DOS for the PC, I ran into many programs that "morphed," some to cram more code into the limited RAM (which was then called "overlaying"), and some to hide what went on inside as a copy protection mechanism.
As a high school student, back about 1977-ish, I even concocted a self-modifying program, in HP 2000 Access BASIC, long before I heard that it wasn't new. Trying to think parallel, to be able to design it, was most entertaining, and it later served me very well, both in optimising overlays for a communications program for DOS ("Backcomm", anyone?) and in removing the copy protection from games I bought.
Maybe with protected mode, C++, and nobody being taught that code space is really data space too, this technique appears to be new. *sigh* Guess again. It's been around, in one form or another, for decades.
Actually, I'm a damyankee. My dad's from Hager Hill, Kentucky, a "suburb" of Paintsville ;)
I'm not *quite* old enough to know the Marvellettes' version of the song, but I do recall, in grade school, reading about Karen Carpenter in our "Weekly Reader" magazine.
Do you like her remake of Klaatu's "Calling occupants"? The intro to that was an old radio DJ call-in section. I thought it rather clever, and a great lead-in to the song.
As for Karen's alto, I especially enjoyed hearing her range on the Christmas album - "Ave Maria", where she takes it from a pure, strong high to an incredible low, and back again. In-fscking-credible. I really do miss her songs.
I forgot another famous one, PEnnsylvania 6-5000, and that lead me to a web site with a whole bunch of referrences, here.
I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, "Telstar" should count, in some strange way. I recall this song, and the film, way back in grade school. Wheee!