About a dozen years ago, a partner and I were in the process of setting up a recording studio. We planned our "go live" horizon, and ordered a business phone line. In the meantime, since we had already publicized our existence, I began answering my home phone with the name of the studio.
One night (I don't recall if it was dark and stormy) the phone rang, and I answered with the business name. I then was launched into a conversation with a US Worst droid who read me the riot act and informed me that by using a residential line for business purposes I was violating their tariffs. I told him that we had ordered a biz circuit, and it was to be turned up at such-and-such date. He basically gave us a verbal cease and desist, threatening Bad Things(tm).
We modified our phone answering practice in the interim, always phrasing the business name in the hypothetical sense.
I heard about the PawSense award on the radio yesterday, and between snickers I discerned Chris Niswander's name. I used to work with him at (of all places) a medical imaging software shop -- nice tie-in to the MRI/coitus award.
That said, I'm not at all surprised that Chris would invent something like this. It's right up his alley. Now, if he'd come up with a device to stop my superannuated (19 years) feline from sitting downstairs and emitting piercing yowls that wake the dead at 3 am....
Would you mind checking your facts before posting?
Moron. Antarctic ice fields are shrinking and calving at an unprecedented rate. Just like the Arctic sea ice, the ice cap of Greenland, and nearly every single high-latitude glacier that is monitored.
Building a long-lived, reliable turbine with modern ceramics is possible. It ain't cheap yet, but if crude goes over $30 a barrel for any long time I bet the auto manufacturers will find a way.
I want to drive one when it comes out. Can you say kick-ass, seat-of-the-pants acceleration? I knew you could....
I think the kid had the right intention, but he wasn't anywhere near subversive enough - now, maybe an RC Cola shirt would have sent a message.
Frankly, I would like nothing more than to hunt down and cause excruciatingly slow, painful death to the people who started the trend of brand placement in public schools. This feature alone would get my kids home-schooled, if I ever have any.
ps -- what if Bill Gates had a nickel for every time a Windows box crashed...oh, never mind....
And where does the local M&P shop source its parts? Motherboards, CPUs, RAM, cases, power supplies, you get it....
I'm all for localizing one's economic impact, but face it, most of these bits are made in pretty depressing conditions. All you're doing is giving the last little markup to the dude on the corner, who may not be in business next week because Gateway just opened up a sparkly store two blocks away.
And hundreds of defense contractors will agree with you wholeheartedly. Except they might not even call war a "negative side of capitalism."
BTW, a successful capitalist model is predicated on the growth of markets. Remove growth from the equation and the whole thing starts to look pretty bleak. Of course, when the culture in the Petri dish suffocates on its own waste products at the same time it runs out of food, that could be construed as bleak, too.
I haven't played with any Linux sound editing apps yet. I use Cool Edit Pro on Windoze because Linux doesn't yet support any digital-only IO devices (please, someone correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, in CEP there is an amplify preset that does just that: turns an MS pair into a stereo mix. My gut tells me that any decent DAW app should be able to do that. It's as simple as doing a sum of the M and S, then reversing the phase of S and doing a second sum.
It's pretty trivial for a DAW to do this. All you need is to produce a sum of the M (omni) signal and the S (figure eight with null axis directed at the source) signal. That's one channel. Now do a difference of the two signals, and that's the other channel. Voila, M-S stereo.
OTOH, I've been using a Jecklin Disc for recording orchestras and chamber ensembles for a couple of years. I like the sound, and it was easy to make. Mono compatibility is superb, and there are no weird comb-filtering artifacts like you get with XY and ORTF pairs of cardioids.
...so screw 'em. What started out as a cool little proof-of-concept has turned into ugly, intrusive bloatware laden with Windows feature creep. And it still sounds like butt!
I committed the error of installing RealPlayer G2 on a W95 box a while back. Now, if I want to hear a.ra file, I am always treated to an "upgrade notification" when the player starts up - and the choices in the dialog box are "learn more" and "remind me later." No "go away and never come back" option to be found - and it still sounds like canine flatulence on a good day.
I would much prefer that efforts be directed toward producing lightweight MPEG codecs to enable streaming. Face it, at low bitrates nothing is going to sound much better than AM radio bounced off the E-layer.
As a native of this sometimes-benighted state, I can say (tactfully) that this McGrath character is the archetype of the clueless, flat-earth troglodyte fuckwit that inhabits the Arizona Legislature in staggering numbers.
Some of her past accomplishments include bills to exempt the state from the global phaseout of CFC refrigerants, and an effort to reduce the elk population in the mountains, citing the hazard to motorists. (NB: No fatalities on the books for elk/car collision, but dozens involving cattle. But McGrath said the elk ate all the grass, forcing the cows to go looking....)
I haven't checked yet, but she may also be a cosponsor for colleague Karen Johnson's latest push to require the teaching of creationism in the public schools.
In a state where the Wild West mentality still pervades far too much of public life, the government is a real dog and pony show. Out of the last four governors, one was impeached and another left office under the cloud of an ugly S&L scandal.
There are many of us who would like to pay a realistic salary for our lawmakers (currently they get 15K plus a per diem for those from the remote counties), in the hopes of attracting at least a few capable of rational thought.
The presence of dark matter can be explained in very simple terms, and can be demonstrated on an everyday basis: it is the observation of stupidity in its physical manifestation. Sort of like "potential stupidity" as opposed to the "kinetic stupidity" that we see around us.
Some scientists say that the major building block of the universe is hydrogen because it's the most plentiful element, but my theory is that the universe is made out of stupidity, because it is more plentiful than hydrogen. -- Frank Zappa
Here are some I thought of rather quickly (by no means an exhaustive roster):
Alan Turing. No explanation necessary. Isaac Asimov. His love of science infused his non-fiction and fiction writing, and he showed millions of readers many possible futures. Charles Babbage. The Difference Engine was a real feat in its day, and still impressive now. Johannes Gutenberg. I don't know if he qualifies as a geek, but he started the Information Age rolling. Nikola Tesla. He had a superior technology for electrical transmission, but was relentlessly out-marketed by Edison's well-financed FUD machine. Galileo Galilei. His views were grounded in bleeding-edge science, but he was hounded and marginalized because they ran counter to the establishment religion. Leonardo da Vinci. The Renaissance Man made flesh. Marie Curie. In an age where women scientists were deemed hobbyists and strictly relegated to the fringes, she managed to actually get credit for her work.
I have a feeling I'll spend the rest of today thinking about additions to this list. What a great way to commemorate this arbitrary division of time....
Instead of getting worked up into a lather over an application of multicast, try this:
Turn off your monitor. Get off your ass. Go outside. Let your eyes adjust to the dark. Look up.
IOW, see the real thing and bugger the idea that it would be better in SVGA. The only way you're going to get a decent capture of a meteor storm is with IMAX. A multicast MPEG or (gods forbid) RealVideo playing over a 30-40K connect? I'd rather watch my screensaver.
Of course, if your locale is swaddled in clouds, you're SOL. Try again Thursday....or next year, or 2001, both of which should be as good or better.
Bollocks. Just because it's institutionalized doesn't make it right. Point by point:
Monsanto has engineered traits into crop plants using, in many cases, germplasm taken from indigenous seedstocks in Third World countries. They did not pay for those seedstocks, yet under GATT they are able to patent "creations" using the genetic material in those indigenous varieties (which are themselves the results of centuries of careful selection via open-pollinated culture).
The people who created the strains that Monsanto used to create their GM seeds did not get a dime.
Since the genetic information in the parent strains was not created by Monsanto, how can they claim it? If they claim IP, then don't they also have to credit prior art?
Fair only if you grant them ownership to begin with....
Unfortunately, the data are already coming in proving that transgenes are being expressed in non-GM planted crops and even in wild plants. Monsanto could conceivably sue the bejeezus out of a farmer whose non-GM crop had been contaminated by wind drift from a neighboring field.
The agribiz industry giants of today are the chemical industry. Monsanto wants to sell seeds tailored to its brands of chemicals, because that's where it really makes its money. So we're supposed to feel sympathy for them because they have to cover their butts?
The worst part of the whole treadmill-like scenario is that it does nothing to address the root issue: Large-scale, petrochemical based crop production has been in a spiral of decreasing yields for two decades plus. Throwing more chemicals, gene splicing, and lawyers at the problem isn't helping. It has, on the other hand, led to new poison-resistant pests, eroded topsoil, contaminated water and bankrupt farmers.
And, AC, you should go out and meet a few farmers. There are still a lot of them who are not large conglomerates - they just have to dance to the tune that ADM plays if they want a market for their crops.
I have to disagree big time with the first two assessments:
Lame HTML rendering. Umm, ever hear of the W3C? The HTML spec? The reason a lot of pages look screwy in Opera is because of buggered HTML, caused by two things in particular: Brain-dead point'n'drool WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage, and lazy "webmasters" who never bother to check their markups for compliance and portability.
The interface is foreign to someone who accepts the Netscape/M$ paradigm for how a browser should look and feel. If you use it for a few days (and play around with customization) you will really appreciate a lot of its features. Especially the fact that you don't have to spawn a dozen instances of the browser in order to have a dozen different pages all viewable in switchable, full-size windows.
It does cost money (I still think it's worth it). However, I wish Opera would revisit their strategy for marketing to the Linux crowd. We've been hearing about this mythical port for far too long, and it's smelling vaporous. And if they really want the good will and support of the OSS world, they should go open source as well.
Opera and Cool Edit are the only reasons I still have a Windoze box. Even if your main reason for getting it is to have a pretty HTML validator, it's a worthwhile thing to have.
Post as HTML. Use non-breaking space tag in the textarea input. Hit Preview.
The preview page will show the nbsp tags as literals, but you'll notice that they're gone from the textarea. Hit Submit.
I think we should let 5-year-olds drive
on
ISP Sues Spammer
·
· Score: 1
and simply put enormous inflatable bumpers on all of our cars, telephone poles, buildings and anything else they might run into.
C'mon, Rob. I'm sure you can see why it's insane to allow the purveyors of snake oil, pyramid scams, and recursive address extractor apps to keep on dumping out terabytes of content that nobody wants to read about, let alone buy. By the time your procmail script puts spam in the bitbucket, the network resources have already been consumed.
Slashdot Mirror
About a dozen years ago, a partner and I were in the process of setting up a recording studio. We planned our "go live" horizon, and ordered a business phone line. In the meantime, since we had already publicized our existence, I began answering my home phone with the name of the studio.
One night (I don't recall if it was dark and stormy) the phone rang, and I answered with the business name. I then was launched into a conversation with a US Worst droid who read me the riot act and informed me that by using a residential line for business purposes I was violating their tariffs. I told him that we had ordered a biz circuit, and it was to be turned up at such-and-such date. He basically gave us a verbal cease and desist, threatening Bad Things(tm).
We modified our phone answering practice in the interim, always phrasing the business name in the hypothetical sense.
That said, I'm not at all surprised that Chris would invent something like this. It's right up his alley. Now, if he'd come up with a device to stop my superannuated (19 years) feline from sitting downstairs and emitting piercing yowls that wake the dead at 3 am....
ps
ps
-- In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Moron. Antarctic ice fields are shrinking and calving at an unprecedented rate. Just like the Arctic sea ice, the ice cap of Greenland, and nearly every single high-latitude glacier that is monitored.
BSD > BSOD
Building a long-lived, reliable turbine with modern ceramics is possible. It ain't cheap yet, but if crude goes over $30 a barrel for any long time I bet the auto manufacturers will find a way.
I want to drive one when it comes out. Can you say kick-ass, seat-of-the-pants acceleration? I knew you could....
ps
Frankly, I would like nothing more than to hunt down and cause excruciatingly slow, painful death to the people who started the trend of brand placement in public schools. This feature alone would get my kids home-schooled, if I ever have any.
ps
--
what if Bill Gates had a nickel for every time
a Windows box crashed...oh, never mind....
I'm all for localizing one's economic impact, but face it, most of these bits are made in pretty depressing conditions. All you're doing is giving the last little markup to the dude on the corner, who may not be in business next week because Gateway just opened up a sparkly store two blocks away.
BTW, a successful capitalist model is predicated on the growth of markets. Remove growth from the equation and the whole thing starts to look pretty bleak. Of course, when the culture in the Petri dish suffocates on its own waste products at the same time it runs out of food, that could be construed as bleak, too.
I haven't played with any Linux sound editing apps yet. I use Cool Edit Pro on Windoze because Linux doesn't yet support any digital-only IO devices (please, someone correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, in CEP there is an amplify preset that does just that: turns an MS pair into a stereo mix. My gut tells me that any decent DAW app should be able to do that. It's as simple as doing a sum of the M and S, then reversing the phase of S and doing a second sum.
HTH,
ps
OTOH, I've been using a Jecklin Disc for recording orchestras and chamber ensembles for a couple of years. I like the sound, and it was easy to make. Mono compatibility is superb, and there are no weird comb-filtering artifacts like you get with XY and ORTF pairs of cardioids.
ps
I committed the error of installing RealPlayer G2 on a W95 box a while back. Now, if I want to hear a .ra file, I am always treated to an "upgrade notification" when the player starts up - and the choices in the dialog box are "learn more" and "remind me later." No "go away and never come back" option to be found - and it still sounds like canine flatulence on a good day.
I would much prefer that efforts be directed toward producing lightweight MPEG codecs to enable streaming. Face it, at low bitrates nothing is going to sound much better than AM radio bounced off the E-layer.
Some of her past accomplishments include bills to exempt the state from the global phaseout of CFC refrigerants, and an effort to reduce the elk population in the mountains, citing the hazard to motorists. (NB: No fatalities on the books for elk/car collision, but dozens involving cattle. But McGrath said the elk ate all the grass, forcing the cows to go looking....)
I haven't checked yet, but she may also be a cosponsor for colleague Karen Johnson's latest push to require the teaching of creationism in the public schools.
In a state where the Wild West mentality still pervades far too much of public life, the government is a real dog and pony show. Out of the last four governors, one was impeached and another left office under the cloud of an ugly S&L scandal.
There are many of us who would like to pay a realistic salary for our lawmakers (currently they get 15K plus a per diem for those from the remote counties), in the hopes of attracting at least a few capable of rational thought.
Of course, if your locale is swaddled in clouds, you're SOL. Try again Thursday....or next year, or 2001, both of which should be as good or better.
- Monsanto has engineered traits into crop plants using, in many cases, germplasm taken from indigenous seedstocks in Third World countries. They did not pay for those seedstocks, yet under GATT they are able to patent "creations" using the genetic material in those indigenous varieties (which are themselves the results of centuries of careful selection via open-pollinated culture).
- The people who created the strains that Monsanto used to create their GM seeds did not get a dime.
- Since the genetic information in the parent strains was not created by Monsanto, how can they claim it? If they claim IP, then don't they also have to credit prior art?
- Fair only if you grant them ownership to begin with....
- Unfortunately, the data are already coming in proving that transgenes are being expressed in non-GM planted crops and even in wild plants. Monsanto could conceivably sue the bejeezus out of a farmer whose non-GM crop had been contaminated by wind drift from a neighboring field.
- The agribiz industry giants of today are the chemical industry. Monsanto wants to sell seeds tailored to its brands of chemicals, because that's where it really makes its money. So we're supposed to feel sympathy for them because they have to cover their butts?
The worst part of the whole treadmill-like scenario is that it does nothing to address the root issue: Large-scale, petrochemical based crop production has been in a spiral of decreasing yields for two decades plus. Throwing more chemicals, gene splicing, and lawyers at the problem isn't helping. It has, on the other hand, led to new poison-resistant pests, eroded topsoil, contaminated water and bankrupt farmers.And, AC, you should go out and meet a few farmers. There are still a lot of them who are not large conglomerates - they just have to dance to the tune that ADM plays if they want a market for their crops.
- Lame HTML rendering. Umm, ever hear of the W3C? The HTML spec? The reason a lot of pages look screwy in Opera is because of buggered HTML, caused by two things in particular: Brain-dead point'n'drool WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage, and lazy "webmasters" who never bother to check their markups for compliance and portability.
- The interface is foreign to someone who accepts the Netscape/M$ paradigm for how a browser should look and feel. If you use it for a few days (and play around with customization) you will really appreciate a lot of its features. Especially the fact that you don't have to spawn a dozen instances of the browser in order to have a dozen different pages all viewable in switchable, full-size windows.
- It does cost money (I still think it's worth it). However, I wish Opera would revisit their strategy for marketing to the Linux crowd. We've been hearing about this mythical port for far too long, and it's smelling vaporous. And if they really want the good will and support of the OSS world, they should go open source as well.
Opera and Cool Edit are the only reasons I still have a Windoze box. Even if your main reason for getting it is to have a pretty HTML validator, it's a worthwhile thing to have.You did mean Tucson, right? ;-)
The preview page will show the nbsp tags as literals, but you'll notice that they're gone from the textarea. Hit Submit.
C'mon, Rob. I'm sure you can see why it's insane to allow the purveyors of snake oil, pyramid scams, and recursive address extractor apps to keep on dumping out terabytes of content that nobody wants to read about, let alone buy. By the time your procmail script puts spam in the bitbucket, the network resources have already been consumed.
if (not $horse) {
closebarndoor($dontbother);}
Moore's law does not apply to net bandwidth.
Any email client that keeps messages in an Access database gets crossed off my list before it gets installed.
Please elaborate on how you think the Bible constitutes an important part of American history.
CSS1 isn't worth supporting.
Someday we'll exact revenge on the ones who perpetrated the war on standards in the first place.