But it's not. From TFA:
By measuring its line-of-sight velocity, it suggests that the star is moving almost directly away from the galactic center. "It's like standing curbside watching a baseball fly out of the park," said Brown.
So everything around it isn't moving at the same speed; it's moving 1.5 million MPH away from the center of the galaxy.
I thought I'd put together a site full of funny web commercials similar to what Ad Critic was a few years ago before they went out of business. This is a bit of a rough draft. The site interface still needs some work, and I plan to add a voting/rating script as well as a discussion script for each ad.
I'm also going to record the entire Superbowl on Sunday and hope to have all of those ads up by the following Monday. The ones I have up right now were recorded from a TV show (silly overlay graphics and all) that TBS aired a few weeks ago called "The funniest commercials of 2004." Several of the commercials weren't actually from 2004, though.
Anyway if you like funny commercials, it's probably worth checking out because some of them are really funny.
I'd be a lot more inclined to laugh if this weren't so serious. The financial security of our country is at serious risk given the astonishing rate of decline in the dollar since the election. With the Chinese selling off dollars like hotcakes, costs of toys made in the Orient, such as DVD players, PDAs, and iPods, will be just a little higher this year and the trend will only continue.
Wow, that would be great. All the crap Americans buy from China would be expensive. Over time, this would make manufacturing our goods in China look less profitable. Factories would move back to the USA. Joe Factoryworker could go back to work making the ipods his friends buy their children. Once again the American blue-collar worker would have a chance! Oh, wait. I forgot, China's Yuan is directly linked to the US Dollar and doesn't fluctuate relative to our currency. So the dollar can tank as much as it wants, and Chinese goods remain a bargain. Damn.
Speaking anecdotally, I know many people who used to purchase several CDs every month and haven't purchased a single one since P2P came about. I bet you do, too.
Argue that the RIAA should've made it easier for us to download music legally earlier. Argue that they've alienated their customers through threats and lawsuits. But you cannot ignore the fact that P2P has had a negative impact on the industry.
Movie trading is a relatively new phenomenon. I think they've seen what P2P has done to the music industry, and they're taking pre-emptive action. Those who download MP3s are addicted to it. It may be too late for the RIAA. But if the MPAA can nip movie downloading in the bud before it starts, they may greatly delay their demise.
The amount of disturbance to the industry caused or even potentially caused by Div-X converting and downloading is so tiny compared to the amount of resources and ill-will generated by their heavy-handed response to this so-called threat that one must come to the conclusion that the MPAA leadership is mentally unbalanced.
Ten years ago, you could say this about the RIAA. Everyone was on dialup, and it took hours to download a single album. Fast forward to now and you can get a whole album in minutes. In 5 or ten years, Joe Downloader will be able to get movies as fast.
Why are they so obsessed with ten thousand or so people sharing rotgut quality Div-X copies?
I well-ripped XVID or DIVX movie looks almost identical to a DVD at bitrates that allow it to fit onto a CD. They're even being distributed with 5.1 surround sound AC3 audio. If your DIVX movies look "rotgut," you're downloading the wrong ones.
Even at minimum wage the wages for the amount of time spent downloading a stupid DivX is more than the price of a pristine DVD of the same title.
Not true at all. One can search for movies with Kazaa or load a torrent from a web site in the morning, and by the time one returns from work, the download is finsihed, happily awaiting my watchful eyes. Total time invested: 5 minutes. Sure the computer downloaded for hours, but the user can be away doing his own thing.
It will probably just fade as embarrassment when the MPAA actually examines the real numbers involved and comes to its senses.
It's not the numbers they should examine, it's the trends. What is a small problem for them today can blossom into a huge one in a few years.
Don't get me wrong. I think that the MPAA is doing some really terrible things. I don't want to get sued for downloading a movie that I own a license for but is damaged. And I don't think that suing a customer base is a good way to engender good-will. But the consituent corporations of the MPAA are only interested in profit. And intimidating those who use their products without paying for them may actually be a smart strategy to protect those profits.
-InsectMuffin
Everyone should be asked to read the whole act at least once in their lives. Most people would be surprised how much stuff the government *couldn't* do that just made sense before hand.
Paul confirms rumors circulating in Washington that this sweeping new law, with serious implications for each and every American, was not made available to members of Congress for review before the vote. "It's my understanding the bill wasn't printed before the vote -- at least I couldn't get it. They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote."
Posted by: Evan Hansen CNET
Posted on: October 12, 2004, 2:54 PM PDT
Story: Virgin takes on iPod
Thanks for pointing this out. We've fixed the mistake in the story. Microsoft's WMA, like MP3 and Apple Computer's FairPlay DRM, is a proprietary format. Ogg Vorbis is a rare example of an open audio standard, but as others have pointed out, few products support it.
So that still leaves one question unanswered: They say they "fixed the mistake in the story." Does that mean they removed the quote by Virgin, or does that mean that Virgin never said that in the first place?
Interestingly, the article doesn't have that quote at all. But if you read the comments below the article, it looks like it might have at some point, and then have been changed. In fact, if you search for the work "open" on the page, the first hit it is a reader comment saying that WMA is not an open standard.
Perhpas the biggest misconception is that multiple shots of espresso will really light you up. Wrong. All you are getting is a very concentrated flavor not a super boost of caffiene. That is cuz by the time it gets in to your latte the beans have been deeply roasted (to an espresso roast) and then 'super brewed' (as compared to traditional drip coffee)in the espresso maker. So if you are thinking that the quad shot Americano (espresso and water) you get to impress you buddies is some superdrink then just put on a dress and change you name to Sally. That is about as far removed from the 'manly' coffee my dad drank in the navy that you can get and still call it the same drink.
I've heard this common misconception that espresso doesn't have very much caffeine repeatedly, even from those I would expect to know better. Can you point me to some supporting evidence that espresso isn't high in caffeine?
According to the Coffee Faq, a 7 oz serving of drip coffee has 115-175 mg of caffeine, while a 1.5-2 oz. shot of espresso has about 100 mg. So while drip coffee may indeed have more caffeine per serving than espresso (and that's if your "serving" is a single shot), espresso has dramatically more caffeine per volume.
In fact, if we average the ranges given above, a 7 oz. serving of drip coffee has (115 + 175) / 2 = 145 mg, or (145/7) 21 mg per onuce.
A 1.75 oz. shot espresso would have 100 mg, or (100 / 1.75 ) 57 mg per ounce.
That means that, on average, espresso will have about three times as much caffeine per volume as drip coffee per volume.
If you're in a hurry and want lots of caffeine, a quad-shot Americano would in fact be essentially straight caffeine: 1.75 oz X 4 = 7 oz. of espesso. That doesn't leave much room for the water, does it? And it'll pack a punch of 400 mg of caffeine.
I live in central Texas, and it gets HOT here. In fact, it's 98 degrees right now, and it'll be worse next month. Because of the heat and my natural desire to drink, some time ago I decided to always have a glass of water handy.
Paying $1 at the vending machine several times a day got really old, though, and the tap water where I work is less than ideal (I admit I'm rather picky - I hate the taste of chlorine).
Then I picked up a water pitcher filter. It is one of the best investments I even made! I fill it with water from the tap at the end of the day, put it in the refrigerator in my office, and the next day I have cool, fresh, clean-tasting water. Companies like Pur and Brita make these things and sell them at the grocery store. Overall, it's a helluva lot cheaper than bottled water at a fraction of the price.
Sprint PCS vision was the first to offer unlimited data, but now TMobile has joined in, offering unlimited GPRS for $20/month. See story on TreoCentral.
Since I was paying $20 a month for 10 megs, and I use the GPRS on my Treo 180g as a modem for my laptop, I was quite happy to see the change. But you have to call and ask for it.
Details on the new Treo - the Treo 600 - are starting to leak out, and it looks like a pretty major improvement. The photo from the merger even gave us a decent Hi-res photo of the new Treo. I think it looks pretty cool, but the obvious lacking feature is a higher-resolution screen. I wonder if the coolness factor of the Treo 600 helped encourage Palm to make the merger?
they say that intra-ISP and intra-country bandwidth is the most expensive and is what must be kept under control.
Don't you mean inter-ISP and international? I don't mean to be nit-picky, but intra means the opposite of inter and as such dramatically changes the meaning of your sentence.
Imagine the horror I faced the other day. As I approached my computer, I saw a co-worker sitting at my desk, his finger on the left-mouse button. Eyeing the screen, I screamed "NOOOOOOOoooooo!" as I ran to take control of the mouse. But it was too late - the button was already pressed down, and he - like a suicide bomber waiting to blow up - had only to release his finger. It was a hopeless situation, and my computer was doomed.
While it's true that you cannot burn a double-layer disc, you may not necessarily need to. These double layer discs contain the movie, as well as subtitles in different languages, audio tracks in different languages *and* different formats, and various extras. If you strip out the stuff you find unnecessary, you may very well find that you can fit an entire movie on a single-layer DVD.
If not, a recompression at something like 90% of the original bitrate will probably yield a video of nearly imperceptible quality loss, but the recompression itself is very expensive timewise.
Dell's support sites (support.dell.com or "support" link from Dell's home page) seems to be dead due to what looks like a database error. I wonder if they had to kill all their database servers, or if they had to block them internally?
I really like FastCPU for PalmOS. I run it on my Treo. Its great to be able to overclock slow apps from 33 MHz to 66 - it makes a helluva difference, and, it doesn't lock up all that often.
The other cool thing about it is that I can underclock things like notepad or "to-do list" so they use less battery power while running.
Don't forget the upstream bandwidth! It's probably mostly unused. Bring your webcam and stream the movie to all your friends so they can watch the movie simultaneously. You can really make the FIRST DivX of that new release!
The coolest thing I ever did was make a taco-bell sign more accurate. The sign outside their store read, "Hiring Closers." I only had to remove the C and take a picture. The best part is, it stayed that way for weeks!
The low-battery warning comes on fairly consistently after about 2 hours of call time. Since I spend a lot of time on the road, I tend to carry my charger in my briefcase, and charge when I am at my desk. This works well for me because the charger works quite rapidly, but some people will be disappointed by the relatively limited capacity of the Treo battery.
This is true- the battery life is pretty much unacceptable on the Treo. However, the new firmware shipping on newer units is supposed to dramatically improve the battery life. Supposedly, Handspring will make this downloadable soon.
Yes, you can make data calls to an ISP and this works well, but call setup time is still at least 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity to me.
This doesn't have to be the case. If you dial into your own ISP, it will take quite a while to negotiate the connection - but if you are using voicestream, you can call into their ISDN enabled number. It's quite reliable and connects in about 6 seconds. When I switched from my standard ISP to dialing into voicesteam's (which is free, BTW) it made all the difference in the world as far as usability of the internet features.
Ad-aware is a free program that searches and destroys crapware. It's automatic and seems to do a great job.
If it misses something, Zonealarm will let me know before the crapware calls home.
I once installed Kazaa. It installed and worked fine... And then, about three days later some Gator agent tried to access the 'net to download and install Gator. It even waited a few days so I'd be less likely to suspect Kazaa as the culprit!
This has become a huge industry. According to some published reports, this has become the third largest industry in Nigeria. During the last thirteen years, there are estimates that the scam has taken in $5,000,000,000 in total, and hundreds of millions of dollars every year. These estimates may be underreported, as many victims may not wish to admit that they have been defrauded.
If taking money from gullible people can net you that much, well... More power to them!
I really like Vindingo. I ran across it a week ago while searching for software to fill up the seemingly vast 16 megs on my treo.
You choose specific cities to download - they have most metropolitan areas covered - and then when you sync your handheld, the software checks on the web for updates.
To use the software, you tell it what neighborhood your in, and then what intersection you are nearest. It lists restaurants (with reviews), movie theatres (with showtimes and reviews), and shops, sorted by distance from your current location. It will also generate walking/driving directions from your current location - all while offline!
It also has a wireless sync option so I can sync using the modem in my treo and never have to hook it to a desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's not. From TFA: By measuring its line-of-sight velocity, it suggests that the star is moving almost directly away from the galactic center. "It's like standing curbside watching a baseball fly out of the park," said Brown.
So everything around it isn't moving at the same speed; it's moving 1.5 million MPH away from the center of the galaxy.
---
watch funny commercials
I thought I'd put together a site full of funny web commercials similar to what Ad Critic was a few years ago before they went out of business. This is a bit of a rough draft. The site interface still needs some work, and I plan to add a voting/rating script as well as a discussion script for each ad.
I'm also going to record the entire Superbowl on Sunday and hope to have all of those ads up by the following Monday. The ones I have up right now were recorded from a TV show (silly overlay graphics and all) that TBS aired a few weeks ago called "The funniest commercials of 2004." Several of the commercials weren't actually from 2004, though.
Anyway if you like funny commercials, it's probably worth checking out because some of them are really funny.
Philosophy.
I'd be a lot more inclined to laugh if this weren't so serious. The financial security of our country is at serious risk given the astonishing rate of decline in the dollar since the election. With the Chinese selling off dollars like hotcakes, costs of toys made in the Orient, such as DVD players, PDAs, and iPods, will be just a little higher this year and the trend will only continue.
Wow, that would be great. All the crap Americans buy from China would be expensive. Over time, this would make manufacturing our goods in China look less profitable. Factories would move back to the USA. Joe Factoryworker could go back to work making the ipods his friends buy their children. Once again the American blue-collar worker would have a chance!
Oh, wait. I forgot, China's Yuan is directly linked to the US Dollar and doesn't fluctuate relative to our currency. So the dollar can tank as much as it wants, and Chinese goods remain a bargain. Damn.
Speaking in numbers, I'd like to point out that most Americans' incomes haven't changed during the recession (no, really;look at the last paragraph) while music sales have dropped 6-9% for a couple of years.
Speaking anecdotally, I know many people who used to purchase several CDs every month and haven't purchased a single one since P2P came about. I bet you do, too.
Argue that the RIAA should've made it easier for us to download music legally earlier. Argue that they've alienated their customers through threats and lawsuits. But you cannot ignore the fact that P2P has had a negative impact on the industry.
-Insectmuffin
The amount of disturbance to the industry caused or even potentially caused by Div-X converting and downloading is so tiny compared to the amount of resources and ill-will generated by their heavy-handed response to this so-called threat that one must come to the conclusion that the MPAA leadership is mentally unbalanced.
Ten years ago, you could say this about the RIAA. Everyone was on dialup, and it took hours to download a single album. Fast forward to now and you can get a whole album in minutes. In 5 or ten years, Joe Downloader will be able to get movies as fast.
Why are they so obsessed with ten thousand or so people sharing rotgut quality Div-X copies?
I well-ripped XVID or DIVX movie looks almost identical to a DVD at bitrates that allow it to fit onto a CD. They're even being distributed with 5.1 surround sound AC3 audio. If your DIVX movies look "rotgut," you're downloading the wrong ones.
Even at minimum wage the wages for the amount of time spent downloading a stupid DivX is more than the price of a pristine DVD of the same title.
Not true at all. One can search for movies with Kazaa or load a torrent from a web site in the morning, and by the time one returns from work, the download is finsihed, happily awaiting my watchful eyes. Total time invested: 5 minutes. Sure the computer downloaded for hours, but the user can be away doing his own thing.
It will probably just fade as embarrassment when the MPAA actually examines the real numbers involved and comes to its senses.
It's not the numbers they should examine, it's the trends. What is a small problem for them today can blossom into a huge one in a few years.
Don't get me wrong. I think that the MPAA is doing some really terrible things. I don't want to get sued for downloading a movie that I own a license for but is damaged. And I don't think that suing a customer base is a good way to engender good-will. But the consituent corporations of the MPAA are only interested in profit. And intimidating those who use their products without paying for them may actually be a smart strategy to protect those profits. -InsectMuffin
Everyone should be asked to read the whole act at least once in their lives. Most people would be surprised how much stuff the government *couldn't* do that just made sense before hand.
Well, according to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the members of congress weren't even allowed to read the PATRIOT act before voting on it.
From the article:
Paul confirms rumors circulating in Washington that this sweeping new law, with serious implications for each and every American, was not made available to members of Congress for review before the vote. "It's my understanding the bill wasn't printed before the vote -- at least I couldn't get it. They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote."
Posted by: Evan Hansen CNET
Posted on: October 12, 2004, 2:54 PM PDT
Story: Virgin takes on iPod
Thanks for pointing this out. We've fixed the mistake in the story. Microsoft's WMA, like MP3 and Apple Computer's FairPlay DRM, is a proprietary format. Ogg Vorbis is a rare example of an open audio standard, but as others have pointed out, few products support it.
So that still leaves one question unanswered: They say they "fixed the mistake in the story." Does that mean they removed the quote by Virgin, or does that mean that Virgin never said that in the first place?
And here. And here.
Could the author have realized how insipid of a quote that was and erased it from the story?
Perhpas the biggest misconception is that multiple shots of espresso will really light you up. Wrong. All you are getting is a very concentrated flavor not a super boost of caffiene. That is cuz by the time it gets in to your latte the beans have been deeply roasted (to an espresso roast) and then 'super brewed' (as compared to traditional drip coffee)in the espresso maker. So if you are thinking that the quad shot Americano (espresso and water) you get to impress you buddies is some superdrink then just put on a dress and change you name to Sally. That is about as far removed from the 'manly' coffee my dad drank in the navy that you can get and still call it the same drink.
I've heard this common misconception that espresso doesn't have very much caffeine repeatedly, even from those I would expect to know better. Can you point me to some supporting evidence that espresso isn't high in caffeine?
According to the Coffee Faq, a 7 oz serving of drip coffee has 115-175 mg of caffeine, while a 1.5-2 oz. shot of espresso has about 100 mg. So while drip coffee may indeed have more caffeine per serving than espresso (and that's if your "serving" is a single shot), espresso has dramatically more caffeine per volume.
In fact, if we average the ranges given above, a 7 oz. serving of drip coffee has (115 + 175) / 2 = 145 mg, or (145/7) 21 mg per onuce.
A 1.75 oz. shot espresso would have 100 mg, or (100 / 1.75 ) 57 mg per ounce.
That means that, on average, espresso will have about three times as much caffeine per volume as drip coffee per volume.
If you're in a hurry and want lots of caffeine, a quad-shot Americano would in fact be essentially straight caffeine: 1.75 oz X 4 = 7 oz. of espesso. That doesn't leave much room for the water, does it? And it'll pack a punch of 400 mg of caffeine.
Am I the only one who's really annoyed by people using the word "video" to describe VHS tapes and specifically exluding DVDs?
A DVD with a movie on it is a video. Can we start saying "Available now on DVD and VHS," or is that just too confusing?
I live in central Texas, and it gets HOT here. In fact, it's 98 degrees right now, and it'll be worse next month. Because of the heat and my natural desire to drink, some time ago I decided to always have a glass of water handy.
Paying $1 at the vending machine several times a day got really old, though, and the tap water where I work is less than ideal (I admit I'm rather picky - I hate the taste of chlorine).
Then I picked up a water pitcher filter. It is one of the best investments I even made! I fill it with water from the tap at the end of the day, put it in the refrigerator in my office, and the next day I have cool, fresh, clean-tasting water. Companies like Pur and Brita make these things and sell them at the grocery store. Overall, it's a helluva lot cheaper than bottled water at a fraction of the price.
Sprint PCS vision was the first to offer unlimited data, but now TMobile has joined in, offering unlimited GPRS for $20/month. See story on TreoCentral.
Since I was paying $20 a month for 10 megs, and I use the GPRS on my Treo 180g as a modem for my laptop, I was quite happy to see the change. But you have to call and ask for it.
Details on the new Treo - the Treo 600 - are starting to leak out, and it looks like a pretty major improvement. The photo from the merger even gave us a decent Hi-res photo of the new Treo. I think it looks pretty cool, but the obvious lacking feature is a higher-resolution screen. I wonder if the coolness factor of the Treo 600 helped encourage Palm to make the merger?
they say that intra-ISP and intra-country bandwidth is the most expensive and is what must be kept under control.
Don't you mean inter-ISP and international? I don't mean to be nit-picky, but intra means the opposite of inter and as such dramatically changes the meaning of your sentence.
Imagine the horror I faced the other day. As I approached my computer, I saw a co-worker sitting at my desk, his finger on the left-mouse button. Eyeing the screen, I screamed "NOOOOOOOoooooo!" as I ran to take control of the mouse. But it was too late - the button was already pressed down, and he - like a suicide bomber waiting to blow up - had only to release his finger. It was a hopeless situation, and my computer was doomed.
While it's true that you cannot burn a double-layer disc, you may not necessarily need to. These double layer discs contain the movie, as well as subtitles in different languages, audio tracks in different languages *and* different formats, and various extras. If you strip out the stuff you find unnecessary, you may very well find that you can fit an entire movie on a single-layer DVD.
If not, a recompression at something like 90% of the original bitrate will probably yield a video of nearly imperceptible quality loss, but the recompression itself is very expensive timewise.
Dell's support sites (support.dell.com or "support" link from Dell's home page) seems to be dead due to what looks like a database error. I wonder if they had to kill all their database servers, or if they had to block them internally?
Can anyone else get to them?
I really like FastCPU for PalmOS. I run it on my Treo. Its great to be able to overclock slow apps from 33 MHz to 66 - it makes a helluva difference, and, it doesn't lock up all that often.
The other cool thing about it is that I can underclock things like notepad or "to-do list" so they use less battery power while running.
Don't forget the upstream bandwidth! It's probably mostly unused. Bring your webcam and stream the movie to all your friends so they can watch the movie simultaneously. You can really make the FIRST DivX of that new release!
As long as we're off topic...
The coolest thing I ever did was make a taco-bell sign more accurate. The sign outside their store read, "Hiring Closers." I only had to remove the C and take a picture. The best part is, it stayed that way for weeks!
The low-battery warning comes on fairly consistently after about 2 hours of call time. Since I spend a lot of time on the road, I tend to carry my charger in my briefcase, and charge when I am at my desk. This works well for me because the charger works quite rapidly, but some people will be disappointed by the relatively limited capacity of the Treo battery.
This is true- the battery life is pretty much unacceptable on the Treo. However, the new firmware shipping on newer units is supposed to dramatically improve the battery life. Supposedly, Handspring will make this downloadable soon.
Yes, you can make data calls to an ISP and this works well, but call setup time is still at least 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity to me.
This doesn't have to be the case. If you dial into your own ISP, it will take quite a while to negotiate the connection - but if you are using voicestream, you can call into their ISDN enabled number. It's quite reliable and connects in about 6 seconds. When I switched from my standard ISP to dialing into voicesteam's (which is free, BTW) it made all the difference in the world as far as usability of the internet features.
Two Words: Ad-aware and Zone Alarm. Ok, i guess that's three words.
Ad-aware is a free program that searches and destroys crapware. It's automatic and seems to do a great job.
If it misses something, Zonealarm will let me know before the crapware calls home.
I once installed Kazaa. It installed and worked fine... And then, about three days later some Gator agent tried to access the 'net to download and install Gator. It even waited a few days so I'd be less likely to suspect Kazaa as the culprit!
I think this is awesome. From http://www.ift.org/extra/scam.shtml:
This has become a huge industry. According to some published reports, this has become the third largest industry in Nigeria. During the last thirteen years, there are estimates that the scam has taken in $5,000,000,000 in total, and hundreds of millions of dollars every year. These estimates may be underreported, as many victims may not wish to admit that they have been defrauded.
If taking money from gullible people can net you that much, well... More power to them!
I really like Vindingo. I ran across it a week ago while searching for software to fill up the seemingly vast 16 megs on my treo.
You choose specific cities to download - they have most metropolitan areas covered - and then when you sync your handheld, the software checks on the web for updates.
To use the software, you tell it what neighborhood your in, and then what intersection you are nearest. It lists restaurants (with reviews), movie theatres (with showtimes and reviews), and shops, sorted by distance from your current location. It will also generate walking/driving directions from your current location - all while offline!
It also has a wireless sync option so I can sync using the modem in my treo and never have to hook it to a desktop.
Overall, I think it's pretty damn cool.