The tones at the end of Sgt. Pepper's are at 15 kHz - within the range of hearing of many humans, and certainly within the range of CD frequency response.
At least, 15 kHz is where the BBC says those tones sit. I do know, however, that last time I checked they were audible on my CD copy, despite my loud-guitar-damaged ears.
That's not true. Ardour may not be DP4, but it certainly is acceptable for certain recording situations. Less-than-optimal, yes. Certainly. Less-than-user-friendly, yeah. Undoubtedly. And, as you said, it is showing a lot of promise. But utterly unacceptable? No. I've used it and a whole slew of LADSPA plugins to do some nice remixes of material I recorded for a personal album about 10 years ago. Sounds fine, works well enough. I gotta tell you, it's amazing how many tracks and plugins you can get operating on an Athlon 64 without even approaching cpu overload. And for me, in my situation, Ardour is much more useful than GarageBand, even if GarageBand is easier to use.
I'm not disagreeing with your basic premise that Linux music production has a long way to go. I'm simply disagreeing with your statement that all Linux audio software is utterly unacceptable for any type of music recording, and I base that on my experience. YMMV.
Wow. You find a 1.25 W hairdryer usable? It may be worth trying Rogaine.
For the rest of us, with more than three hairs on our heads, the average USABLE hairdryer uses upwards of a kilowatt. One thousand hairdryers would use a MEGAWATT.
The day approaches, though, when I'll be able to use that 1.25 W hairdryer. My wife says it makes me look distinguished, but it makes me feel like Krusty the Klown. Just in case you wondered...
I third that. Writing my thesis or any of the articles I've had published in scientific journals would have driven me absolutely batshit had I tried it in Word. LyX is my favorite WP for scientific and engineering work, hands down.
As an undergrad, I used Word with MathCAD for equations, Excel for some graphing, etc. It was kludgy, but I could make it all work. But LyX, almost from the beginning, allowed me to ignore the formatting and work on the content and everything went smoothly. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Yeah, that's what I thought too. But think of this: suppose that you have a shuttle in an exactly perfectly equatorial orbit - meaning that the path is directly above the earth's equator at all times.
Now imagine that some lump of debris got ejected from some orbiting object in that path, but had a sideways vector. Eventually, that object will be in an orbit which is at the same altitude, the same speed, but which is tilted relative to the equatorial; sometimes it's north of the equator, sometimes it's south. It'll intersect that equatorial orbit at two points. If you happen to be at that intersection point and time, you get smacked. The velocity of the smack is proportional to the sine of the angle between the orbits, and maxes out at the orbital velocity if the lump of debris is in an orbit which passes over the North and South poles. That's a lot of velocity.
This is a simple example, and the actual orbits get much more complicated. Suffice it to say that your first approximation is correct as far as it goes, but woefully incomplete when the overall picture is considered. Like I said, I made the same mistake. That's why I'm an EE, not an orbital mechanic.
So.... we can either use an OS that we KNOW has security problems, or we can use one that MIGHT have security problems. We can use an OS famous for crashes and instability (BMW's iDrive?) and limited platform availability, or one which runs solidly and reliably on damn near any hardware we want. We can use an OS whose source code is a secret and which we cannot review or analyze, or we can use an OS whose source code is completely open and available for review. We can use an OS who has lost a major IP lawsuit and is hoping to win on appeal (EOLAS v. Microsoft, which I frankly hope MS wins) or an OS which is on the verge of winning a major IP lawsuit and crushing the litigious bastards who filed it out of existence (SCO). Or we could use a BSD.
In any case, it's hard to justify the use of any flavor of Windows on technical grounds. Not when security is a primary concern, which it is if the ATMs are handling MY money. But when were technical issues ever the deciding factor? No, it'll some PHB who doesn't understand or care about the tech who makes the decision based on some saleshole stroking him/her just right...
Well, then, Anonymous Brave Guy, allow me to rebut a few specific points. Apologies if I have misconstrued or misquoted any.
1) People who enforce laws shouldn't be required to have all of them memorized.
Well, I'm going to agree that the average street cop doesn't need to know tax law. But I assert that someone who enforces one very small specific subset of laws, e.g. TSA law enforcement, should in fact have a VERY thorough understanding of what is and is not illegal within the purview of those laws. That IS their job. Otherwise, that person may enforce personal preference or prejudice rather than the laws, or allow illegal activity to continue and thus endanger the lives of passengers. I'll go further and suggest that there should be on duty at all times some TSA enforcement person who has a written copy of such laws available for public perusal and for agent reference. This is my opinion, of course, not fact. I'd like to go on record as vigorously disagreeing with both your opinion and the factual basis underlying it.
2. Common sense suggests that a law requiring ID to board a commercial airliner exists and is reasonable.
Common sense is neither.
More specifically, I would assert that common sense suggests that if there is a law requiring you to show said ID, it can be found without having to break it first. That wasn't the case. The author might have tried to find such a law (the fine article doesn't say), perhaps in reaction to a previous TSA enforcer's actions*, or out of a desire not to have to tell every random stranger in a uniform that he was an epileptic, and couldn't. (*Having flown several times in the last year, I can relate from experience that TSA people can often be rude, unpleasant, and leave one with a sense that one's privacy and dignity has been invaded unnecessarily. ) Common sense suggests that if one searches diligently to find a law prohibiting or requiring some pattern of behavior, and can't, then that law doesn't exist. That wasn't the case.
3. Making the scene that he did was unnecessary.
How else do you find out about secret laws, other than breaking them? Clearly we can't trust our lawmakers to be open about what's illegal. Applying common sense, as we've seen above, won't do either.
As mentioned previously, he may have had perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to show his papers - excuse me, for not wanting to show or have a TSA-approved photo ID.
Turning this around, common sense suggests that hiring a lawyer to file a court case to ask the government whether a specific law exists is unnecessary. However, this is what you said was "the correct answer." I'm thinking that perhaps common sense means something else when you say it. Maybe that's why we have laws instead of asking everyone to rely on their common sense...?
4. The TSA enforcement people reacted appropriately to this incident, as they would to a threat against the President.
I didn't really understand this - I'm hoping this was you being unclear in your phrasing, rather than as simple-minded as it appeared. Joking about assassinating the President is not a particularly parallel case. It's explicitly illegal, a Federal crime, and the law is readily available for citizens to read. Moreover, the foreigner who jokingly makes such a threat will quickly meet some nice Treasury Agents, probably members of the Secret Service, each of whom is perfectly capable of telling him exactly which laws he has broken. They will be polite, knowledgeable, and very serious.
TSA agents pulling a man out of line without being able to cite the relevant law is not reasonable or appropriate. This is NOT a personal fiefdom for agents to throw around personal power; this is a sensitive position in which agents are tasked with enforcing laws to protect "transportation"**. The agent's responses, FTFA, suggested that he pulled Gilmour at least in part because he
The no load loss in the transformer is probably due mostly to hysteresis loss in the core, and so you're probably right - that loss is probably much greater at idle. Might even be the same total power loss as in the full power case, which is about a half watt. I'd still like to see measurements with an actual power meter.
DC wiring? Voltage dividers at each location? Are you nuts?
This is poor advice.
1) Well-designed wall warts are not that inefficient. Some geek with an ammeter who doesn't know the difference between real power and complex power may suggest otherwise, but he's wrong.
2) Resistive voltage dividers are either a) mind-bogglingly poor regulators or b) mind-boggingly inefficient or c) both. Add in the fact that the resistors tend to get HOT, and you're got a recipe for unhappiness.
3) Linear regulators, such as the venerable 7805, provide good regulation but the efficiency drops as the input voltage rises. Delivering 1 watt of power from a 5-volt regulator connected to a 24-volt supply is only 21% efficient - it wastes 4 watts to deliver 1! It also uses about 1/4 watt at idle (no load).
4) AC transformers can easily be greater than 90% efficient. Choosing a secondary and rectifier to give you a 7.2 volt unregulated supply and then regulating it down to 5 V with a 7805 will deliver 5 watts with about 52% efficiency, and will draw around 65 mW with no load - far less than the 1-5 watts you've claimed. I'm curious to know exactly what sort of wall-wart is being described there.
5) That 65 mW I calculated will cost (around here) far less than $1 per year. There are 8,760 hours in a year, which is 8.76 kilohours. A constant drain of 1 watt will result in an annual energy use of 8.76 kWh. Electricity at $0.114/kWh would result in an annual cost of exactly $1 for a constant ** 1 watt ** drain. You'd have to have a LOT of really inefficient wall-warts to justify running a complete secondary DC supply system, even if its efficiency were as good as you think it would be.
6) Switching-supply wall warts can be much more efficient than linear regulators, and run cooler. 80%-90% under full load is common, although quiescent efficiency can be much less.
In summary, anyone who suggests using high voltage DC and dividers to increase efficiency clearly knows nothing about power conversion OR efficiency. If you REALLY want to save power used by wall warts, don't listen to parent. Use switching-based wall warts and disconnect them when not using them. If you are really worried about saving $1/year, running a (thousand dollar or more) auxiliary power system is penny wise and pound foolish.
"42,443 deaths in USA 2001 (CDC); 42,401 deaths reported in USA 1999 for "motor vehicle accidents" (NVSR Sep 2001); 41,804 deaths in 2000 (CDC)" Deaths from Automobile Accidents
Clearly, your chances of being killed by a car are enormously larger than your chances of being killed by a terrorist. Bush would do a better job of protecting americans by removing automobiles than countering terrorism.
Technically, I live in the Bible Belt. I don't own a gun. Never have. Never shot anyone, never been shot. Don't know anyone who has been killed by a gun. Therefore, I can be certain that your statement about the Bible Belt is not only inaccurate but wildly so.
Can you perhaps point us to the statistics which show the percentage of those violent gun deaths committed with legally-registered weapons? How many were violent attacks, how many were self-defense? How many of the triggers were pulled by police, and how many by ne'er-do-wells bent on havoc and mischief?
The story you cited also showed that (e.g.) Great Britain experienced a significantly non-zero number of gun deaths, even though guns are outlawed there. Could you explain that for me?
This is a very complex subject, with many more factors involved than you've covered. Making blanket statements based on a few convenient facts and factoids weakens your argument rather than strengthening it.
"The 2nd Amendment says that you can have a gun to support the Militia....If you are in the military you get to have a gun..."
That's not what it says, though. It doesn't say that if you are in the military OR a militia (which are two different things, I'm afraid) THEN you are allowed to have a gun; it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED, because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a FREE state.
There's no 'if' in the 2nd Amendment. There is a written justification, but not a restriction. If you choose to interpret a restriction from that, go ahead - but that's not what's written there.
The only problem with your angry rant is that Blender has a very usable interface. Yes, it requires learning. But it's faster and more powerful than that of other 3D apps which implement the same basic feature set.
So what defines a good interface? Easy to learn? More familiar to users of other packages? Faster and more powerful once it has been learned?
I submit, sir, that the latter is a perfectly valid definition of a good interface, and that Blender succeeds in that area admirably. There are, as others have stated, some tasks that simply require a level of complexity in the user interface which inhibits ease of learning. Blender allows the experienced user to perform tasks very quickly and comfortably, despite their extreme complexity. While it is true that a Buick and a BMW are essentially as easy to drive (the godawful iDrive system notwithstanding), try applying the same skillset to a Formula One car. Don't forget your helmet and Nomex underwear.
Perhaps the Gimp interface is not to your liking; this is fine. It may even be that you are correct in your assertion that the Gimp interface is inherently flawed; I have no opinion. However, your own words suggest that your dislikes remain influenced by your prejudices, such as liking Firefox's interface because it "is so identical to Internet Explorer that I often forgot that I was using Firefox". In other words, for you GOOD=FAMILIAR.
I look forward to your analysis of the UI flaws of the Gimp, with specifics, and your suggestions for improving them.
No, part of the money I pay for the car is to cover the damage that assholes like that cause and don't have to directly pay for "because it's insured."
But insurance companies don't lose money, they just spread the losses around to other customers - which, in this case, is everyone else who rents a car. IOW, me.
tpconfig solved my problem for months - years? But then, when I upgraded to a 2.6 kernel, tpconfig no longer turned off the click. The machine became almost unusable, because there just wasn't anywhere to put my thumbs that wouldn't click and have me typing in the middle of the previous paragraph... arg!
I wound up having to use the other one - the synaptics driver? - and the event interface just to turn off mouse tapping. Yes, I DO have a GlidePoint, but the synaptics driver also supports it.
I see that the tpconfig has apparently been updated to work again, but I haven't tried it yet. I hope it does.
Of course I considered it. Considered it carefully, in fact, both before and after I submitted the comment. However, my overall conclusion (and clearly that of others here) is that it was (at the very least) marginally funny, and that you simply didn't get it. [shrug] Sorry.
I realize that it's never fun to be the only one to not get the joke, and so you have my sympathies. You might avoid responses like mine in the future if you aren't in quite such a hurry to assume idiocy or ignorance on the part of others, and aren't as quick to respond brusquely and impolitely. Flies, honey, shit, and all that - you know?
I might suggest that looking on Slashdot for idiots to correct is a Sisyphean task. Instead, you might try ignoring the chaff (unless they persist in nipping at your e-heels) and trying to find interesting people with whom to converse. Of course, here on Slashdot that's more of a needle/haystack problem than a wheat/chaff problem.
While I'm at it, shall I look up pedantic, obtuse, and naive for you?
See, there's this thing called humor, and it isn't always accompanied by the use of numbers as letters... I'm sorry that you didn't get it, but if I'd just said "LOLOLO!!!11!!! homophonia 50u|\|d5 1ik3 |-|0m0p|-|0bi4 !!!11!!!" it just wouldn't have been funny AT ALL.
But I appreciate the effort. It's nice to see the new folks chiming in around here.
It's not so much that trolling is lame (although it generally is), but that this particular troll is OLD, TIRED, and lame. This is like trying to pick the perfect booger. Nobody's ever going to be impressed.
Seriously - don't you have something better to do? Anything?
Hmm... perhaps 90% energy transfer efficiency is a bit optimistic. However, I'm not willing to takethe numbers quoted by the page you cited at face value, based on the fact that 1) I saw 55%, not 65% and 2) the exact nature of that percentage wasn't discussed and 3) that site is a joke - literally.
However, my point was that the 3% suggested by grandparent is ludicrous. Your estimate supports that point.
Might I take a moment to express appreciation for rational discussion? It's really rather refreshing.
Hm. Well, generally, the room is the superior entity to the bed. This is true. However, my bed is a king-sized waterbed and really dominates the bedroom. Besides, the verbal flow is better this way.
Then again, I'm married (to a female, yes), and we have found things to do in the bedroom - we're past the
./configure
and well into
make
which should take a total of about 9 months - we expect to
make install
sometime in August so that.sig isn't really applicable to me anyhow.
Slashdot Mirror
The tones at the end of Sgt. Pepper's are at 15 kHz - within the range of hearing of many humans, and certainly within the range of CD frequency response.
At least, 15 kHz is where the BBC says those tones sit. I do know, however, that last time I checked they were audible on my CD copy, despite my loud-guitar-damaged ears.
That's not true. Ardour may not be DP4, but it certainly is acceptable for certain recording situations. Less-than-optimal, yes. Certainly. Less-than-user-friendly, yeah. Undoubtedly. And, as you said, it is showing a lot of promise. But utterly unacceptable? No. I've used it and a whole slew of LADSPA plugins to do some nice remixes of material I recorded for a personal album about 10 years ago. Sounds fine, works well enough. I gotta tell you, it's amazing how many tracks and plugins you can get operating on an Athlon 64 without even approaching cpu overload. And for me, in my situation, Ardour is much more useful than GarageBand, even if GarageBand is easier to use.
I'm not disagreeing with your basic premise that Linux music production has a long way to go. I'm simply disagreeing with your statement that all Linux audio software is utterly unacceptable for any type of music recording, and I base that on my experience. YMMV.
Wow. You find a 1.25 W hairdryer usable? It may be worth trying Rogaine.
For the rest of us, with more than three hairs on our heads, the average USABLE hairdryer uses upwards of a kilowatt. One thousand hairdryers would use a MEGAWATT.
The day approaches, though, when I'll be able to use that 1.25 W hairdryer. My wife says it makes me look distinguished, but it makes me feel like Krusty the Klown. Just in case you wondered...
DAMN! and me with no mod points!
Very nice, sir. Very nice.
I third that. Writing my thesis or any of the articles I've had published in scientific journals would have driven me absolutely batshit had I tried it in Word. LyX is my favorite WP for scientific and engineering work, hands down.
As an undergrad, I used Word with MathCAD for equations, Excel for some graphing, etc. It was kludgy, but I could make it all work. But LyX, almost from the beginning, allowed me to ignore the formatting and work on the content and everything went smoothly. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Yeah, that's what I thought too. But think of this: suppose that you have a shuttle in an exactly perfectly equatorial orbit - meaning that the path is directly above the earth's equator at all times.
Now imagine that some lump of debris got ejected from some orbiting object in that path, but had a sideways vector. Eventually, that object will be in an orbit which is at the same altitude, the same speed, but which is tilted relative to the equatorial; sometimes it's north of the equator, sometimes it's south. It'll intersect that equatorial orbit at two points. If you happen to be at that intersection point and time, you get smacked. The velocity of the smack is proportional to the sine of the angle between the orbits, and maxes out at the orbital velocity if the lump of debris is in an orbit which passes over the North and South poles. That's a lot of velocity.
This is a simple example, and the actual orbits get much more complicated. Suffice it to say that your first approximation is correct as far as it goes, but woefully incomplete when the overall picture is considered. Like I said, I made the same mistake. That's why I'm an EE, not an orbital mechanic.
So.... we can either use an OS that we KNOW has security problems, or we can use one that MIGHT have security problems. We can use an OS famous for crashes and instability (BMW's iDrive?) and limited platform availability, or one which runs solidly and reliably on damn near any hardware we want. We can use an OS whose source code is a secret and which we cannot review or analyze, or we can use an OS whose source code is completely open and available for review. We can use an OS who has lost a major IP lawsuit and is hoping to win on appeal (EOLAS v. Microsoft, which I frankly hope MS wins) or an OS which is on the verge of winning a major IP lawsuit and crushing the litigious bastards who filed it out of existence (SCO). Or we could use a BSD.
In any case, it's hard to justify the use of any flavor of Windows on technical grounds. Not when security is a primary concern, which it is if the ATMs are handling MY money. But when were technical issues ever the deciding factor? No, it'll some PHB who doesn't understand or care about the tech who makes the decision based on some saleshole stroking him/her just right...
Of course, that's just my opinion.
Sorry sir, no mod points today - but that was funny. Obvious in retrospect, but still funny.
Well, then, Anonymous Brave Guy, allow me to rebut a few specific points. Apologies if I have misconstrued or misquoted any.
1) People who enforce laws shouldn't be required to have all of them memorized.
Well, I'm going to agree that the average street cop doesn't need to know tax law. But I assert that someone who enforces one very small specific subset of laws, e.g. TSA law enforcement, should in fact have a VERY thorough understanding of what is and is not illegal within the purview of those laws. That IS their job. Otherwise, that person may enforce personal preference or prejudice rather than the laws, or allow illegal activity to continue and thus endanger the lives of passengers. I'll go further and suggest that there should be on duty at all times some TSA enforcement person who has a written copy of such laws available for public perusal and for agent reference. This is my opinion, of course, not fact. I'd like to go on record as vigorously disagreeing with both your opinion and the factual basis underlying it.
2. Common sense suggests that a law requiring ID to board a commercial airliner exists and is reasonable.
Common sense is neither.
More specifically, I would assert that common sense suggests that if there is a law requiring you to show said ID, it can be found without having to break it first. That wasn't the case. The author might have tried to find such a law (the fine article doesn't say), perhaps in reaction to a previous TSA enforcer's actions*, or out of a desire not to have to tell every random stranger in a uniform that he was an epileptic, and couldn't.
(*Having flown several times in the last year, I can relate from experience that TSA people can often be rude, unpleasant, and leave one with a sense that one's privacy and dignity has been invaded unnecessarily. )
Common sense suggests that if one searches diligently to find a law prohibiting or requiring some pattern of behavior, and can't, then that law doesn't exist. That wasn't the case.
3. Making the scene that he did was unnecessary.
How else do you find out about secret laws, other than breaking them? Clearly we can't trust our lawmakers to be open about what's illegal. Applying common sense, as we've seen above, won't do either.
As mentioned previously, he may have had perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to show his papers - excuse me, for not wanting to show or have a TSA-approved photo ID.
Turning this around, common sense suggests that hiring a lawyer to file a court case to ask the government whether a specific law exists is unnecessary. However, this is what you said was "the correct answer." I'm thinking that perhaps common sense means something else when you say it. Maybe that's why we have laws instead of asking everyone to rely on their common sense...?
4. The TSA enforcement people reacted appropriately to this incident, as they would to a threat against the President.
I didn't really understand this - I'm hoping this was you being unclear in your phrasing, rather than as simple-minded as it appeared. Joking about assassinating the President is not a particularly parallel case. It's explicitly illegal, a Federal crime, and the law is readily available for citizens to read. Moreover, the foreigner who jokingly makes such a threat will quickly meet some nice Treasury Agents, probably members of the Secret Service, each of whom is perfectly capable of telling him exactly which laws he has broken. They will be polite, knowledgeable, and very serious.
TSA agents pulling a man out of line without being able to cite the relevant law is not reasonable or appropriate. This is NOT a personal fiefdom for agents to throw around personal power; this is a sensitive position in which agents are tasked with enforcing laws to protect "transportation"**. The agent's responses, FTFA, suggested that he pulled Gilmour at least in part because he
The United States Attorney General is dumbass Alberto Gonzales?
Are we yet sure that Gozales is a dumbass?
The no load loss in the transformer is probably due mostly to hysteresis loss in the core, and so you're probably right - that loss is probably much greater at idle. Might even be the same total power loss as in the full power case, which is about a half watt. I'd still like to see measurements with an actual power meter.
Thanks for pointing that out.
DC wiring? Voltage dividers at each location? Are you nuts?
This is poor advice.
1) Well-designed wall warts are not that inefficient. Some geek with an ammeter who doesn't know the difference between real power and complex power may suggest otherwise, but he's wrong.
2) Resistive voltage dividers are either a) mind-bogglingly poor regulators or b) mind-boggingly inefficient or c) both. Add in the fact that the resistors tend to get HOT, and you're got a recipe for unhappiness.
3) Linear regulators, such as the venerable 7805, provide good regulation but the efficiency drops as the input voltage rises. Delivering 1 watt of power from a 5-volt regulator connected to a 24-volt supply is only 21% efficient - it wastes 4 watts to deliver 1! It also uses about 1/4 watt at idle (no load).
4) AC transformers can easily be greater than 90% efficient. Choosing a secondary and rectifier to give you a 7.2 volt unregulated supply and then regulating it down to 5 V with a 7805 will deliver 5 watts with about 52% efficiency, and will draw around 65 mW with no load - far less than the 1-5 watts you've claimed. I'm curious to know exactly what sort of wall-wart is being described there.
5) That 65 mW I calculated will cost (around here) far less than $1 per year. There are 8,760 hours in a year, which is 8.76 kilohours. A constant drain of 1 watt will result in an annual energy use of 8.76 kWh. Electricity at $0.114/kWh would result in an annual cost of exactly $1 for a constant ** 1 watt ** drain. You'd have to have a LOT of really inefficient wall-warts to justify running a complete secondary DC supply system, even if its efficiency were as good as you think it would be.
6) Switching-supply wall warts can be much more efficient than linear regulators, and run cooler. 80%-90% under full load is common, although quiescent efficiency can be much less.
In summary, anyone who suggests using high voltage DC and dividers to increase efficiency clearly knows nothing about power conversion OR efficiency. If you REALLY want to save power used by wall warts, don't listen to parent. Use switching-based wall warts and disconnect them when not using them. If you are really worried about saving $1/year, running a (thousand dollar or more) auxiliary power system is penny wise and pound foolish.
"42,443 deaths in USA 2001 (CDC); 42,401 deaths reported in USA 1999 for "motor vehicle accidents" (NVSR Sep 2001); 41,804 deaths in 2000 (CDC)" Deaths from Automobile Accidents
Clearly, your chances of being killed by a car are enormously larger than your chances of being killed by a terrorist. Bush would do a better job of protecting americans by removing automobiles than countering terrorism.
Technically, I live in the Bible Belt. I don't own a gun. Never have. Never shot anyone, never been shot. Don't know anyone who has been killed by a gun. Therefore, I can be certain that your statement about the Bible Belt is not only inaccurate but wildly so.
Can you perhaps point us to the statistics which show the percentage of those violent gun deaths committed with legally-registered weapons? How many were violent attacks, how many were self-defense? How many of the triggers were pulled by police, and how many by ne'er-do-wells bent on havoc and mischief?
The story you cited also showed that (e.g.) Great Britain experienced a significantly non-zero number of gun deaths, even though guns are outlawed there. Could you explain that for me?
This is a very complex subject, with many more factors involved than you've covered. Making blanket statements based on a few convenient facts and factoids weakens your argument rather than strengthening it.
"The 2nd Amendment says that you can have a gun to support the Militia....If you are in the military you get to have a gun..."
That's not what it says, though. It doesn't say that if you are in the military OR a militia (which are two different things, I'm afraid) THEN you are allowed to have a gun; it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED, because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a FREE state.
There's no 'if' in the 2nd Amendment. There is a written justification, but not a restriction. If you choose to interpret a restriction from that, go ahead - but that's not what's written there.
The only problem with your angry rant is that Blender has a very usable interface. Yes, it requires learning. But it's faster and more powerful than that of other 3D apps which implement the same basic feature set.
So what defines a good interface? Easy to learn? More familiar to users of other packages? Faster and more powerful once it has been learned?
I submit, sir, that the latter is a perfectly valid definition of a good interface, and that Blender succeeds in that area admirably. There are, as others have stated, some tasks that simply require a level of complexity in the user interface which inhibits ease of learning. Blender allows the experienced user to perform tasks very quickly and comfortably, despite their extreme complexity. While it is true that a Buick and a BMW are essentially as easy to drive (the godawful iDrive system notwithstanding), try applying the same skillset to a Formula One car. Don't forget your helmet and Nomex underwear.
Perhaps the Gimp interface is not to your liking; this is fine. It may even be that you are correct in your assertion that the Gimp interface is inherently flawed; I have no opinion. However, your own words suggest that your dislikes remain influenced by your prejudices, such as liking Firefox's interface because it "is so identical to Internet Explorer that I often forgot that I was using Firefox". In other words, for you GOOD=FAMILIAR.
I look forward to your analysis of the UI flaws of the Gimp, with specifics, and your suggestions for improving them.
Thanks.
No, part of the money I pay for the car is to cover the damage that assholes like that cause and don't have to directly pay for "because it's insured."
But insurance companies don't lose money, they just spread the losses around to other customers - which, in this case, is everyone else who rents a car. IOW, me.
what does your oscilloscope need a D/A converter for? Do you mean an A/D converter? And why 1,024 bits? That's 128 channels worth of 8-bit A/D.
What scope is this?
tpconfig solved my problem for months - years? But then, when I upgraded to a 2.6 kernel, tpconfig no longer turned off the click. The machine became almost unusable, because there just wasn't anywhere to put my thumbs that wouldn't click and have me typing in the middle of the previous paragraph... arg!
I wound up having to use the other one - the synaptics driver? - and the event interface just to turn off mouse tapping. Yes, I DO have a GlidePoint, but the synaptics driver also supports it.
I see that the tpconfig has apparently been updated to work again, but I haven't tried it yet. I hope it does.
No, you made 'A' joke. I made another. Clearly, you STILL haven't gotten it. That's cool.
See you around.
Of course I considered it. Considered it carefully, in fact, both before and after I submitted the comment. However, my overall conclusion (and clearly that of others here) is that it was (at the very least) marginally funny, and that you simply didn't get it. [shrug] Sorry.
I realize that it's never fun to be the only one to not get the joke, and so you have my sympathies. You might avoid responses like mine in the future if you aren't in quite such a hurry to assume idiocy or ignorance on the part of others, and aren't as quick to respond brusquely and impolitely. Flies, honey, shit, and all that - you know?
I might suggest that looking on Slashdot for idiots to correct is a Sisyphean task. Instead, you might try ignoring the chaff (unless they persist in nipping at your e-heels) and trying to find interesting people with whom to converse. Of course, here on Slashdot that's more of a needle/haystack problem than a wheat/chaff problem.
Have a good day, sir.
[sigh] Yes.
While I'm at it, shall I look up pedantic, obtuse, and naive for you?
See, there's this thing called humor, and it isn't always accompanied by the use of numbers as letters... I'm sorry that you didn't get it, but if I'd just said "LOLOLO!!!11!!! homophonia 50u|\|d5 1ik3 |-|0m0p|-|0bi4 !!!11!!!" it just wouldn't have been funny AT ALL.
But I appreciate the effort. It's nice to see the new folks chiming in around here.
"i wasn't the intended recipient, but i was still amused by your homophonia."
I didn't see anything in his post about not liking gay people; are you sure?
It's not so much that trolling is lame (although it generally is), but that this particular troll is OLD, TIRED, and lame. This is like trying to pick the perfect booger. Nobody's ever going to be impressed.
Seriously - don't you have something better to do? Anything?
[yawn]
Hmm... perhaps 90% energy transfer efficiency is a bit optimistic. However, I'm not willing to takethe numbers quoted by the page you cited at face value, based on the fact that 1) I saw 55%, not 65% and 2) the exact nature of that percentage wasn't discussed and 3) that site is a joke - literally.
However, my point was that the 3% suggested by grandparent is ludicrous. Your estimate supports that point.
Might I take a moment to express appreciation for rational discussion? It's really rather refreshing.
Then again, I'm married (to a female, yes), and we have found things to do in the bedroom - we're past the and well into which should take a total of about 9 months - we expect to sometime in August so that
You think I should change it?