The original test of the hubble mirror - which would have caught the abberation - was scrapped for financial reasons. We could have tested it on the ground, but got talked out of it for a few tens of thousands of dollars.
FWIW, I worked with one of the engineers who did optics design and testing, and knew most of the team working at Perkin Elmer - what I know about Hubble is mostly second hand, but from a reliable source.
Trust me. It's not. Linux makes Windows look like a TV. A dysfunctional, expensive, TV that should be replaced every 6 to 12 months. Linux is that 3 CRT front projection TV you picked up by the side of the road during the town's spring clean up because it "just might work" and a couple of trips to the junk yard might just net you the four or five tubes you need to fire that baby up. Oh, sure, with a CS degree and a few hundred free hours to kill you might end up with a system that is pretty darned snazzy, but nobody else - like your mother, or the babysitter - can figure out how to work it, and when it breaks you'll be either scavenging junkyards for a part the might fit, or you'll have to make your own transistor in your basement.
I've played with linux, and it's a lot of fun. But even as a moderately competent computer user (learned assembly and machine code on a 6502 in the early 80s), I don't find linux TV-friendly, and I've tried some of the better load-and-go distros (ubuntu, which my 4 year old uses, and a couple flavors of knoppix).
It's more than that, though. Once you buy a TV, you're pretty much done for the next 10 years until you buy a new one. Sure, you can susbscribe to cable or satellite, but that's been a creeping cost that people have gently learned to accept.
With computers, everything is a la carte. Of course, MS and Apple have tried to add in everything you need, but the embedded programs are generally highly restricted. Sit down fanbois - show me an _embedded_ app that lets you rip and recode DVDs and BR/HD discs to your hard drive to access content like a juke box. Yeah, I thought so. And if you do go out into the field to get the most popular apps, you're looking at many times the purchase price of the computer for a set of the full versions, and they usually lower the overall system resposiveness - Yes, I'm looking at you Adobe; you, too, Peter Norton. While there are certainly parallels in the TV/telephone world, the fact remains that computers still don't "just work".
Computers are still the automobile of the 1920s, or the private aircraft of today. They work, but it's hardly something the average person can really understand and use without a significant investment in both time and money.
Actully, I find that on the major interstate near me, if I hop in the right lane and "drive gently" I tend to average about 60-62 mph. If I'm "on my game" and don't get caught by an actual traffic back-up, I can get darned close to 73-74 mph - the same speed I regularly travel (unless I hit a "fast" slug that I'll hide in the middle of - which does occur). 61mph*4hrs = 244 miles / 74mph = 3:29:45. Now, that's not exactly perfect, because the last portion of the trip is on back roads, where I make up more time than I do on the highway. If I coasted into every wind in the road instead of braking, I would save more gas but take much more time.
I agree that there's no free lunch, I'm just saying that I can make more than the cost of a sandwich if I pay extra for the meal to cut in front of the line.;-)
No, today's hybrids are actually hybrids - they combine an internal combustion engine with electric motors. I think the system is backwards, and ultimately we'll have electric motors powering the wheels and a small IC engine running a generator.
You are advocating a multi-fuel IC engine. Not a bad thing, as long as the source of the electricity to [charge your batteries/extract and store your hydrogen] is domestic and renewable. Running a LNG, coal, or oil-fired electric generation plant to provide the base energy does very little to relieve the economic pressure we're under, and is only marginally greener than burning fuel in an efficient IC engine (after transmission, battery, and conversion losses are figured in).
I drive a truck that gets 12mpg, but I only live a mile from work. In nice weather I can walk or ride my bike (and I do, though not too often as much of my work is "in the field").
Actually, my truck gets 12mpg _because_ I drive a mile to work, with 4 stopsigns, two speed bumps, and 4 (non-stopsign) 90 degree turns. My Honda only got 16mpg on the same track, and my wife's subaru managed a paltry 18 or 19. A hybrid would have been a big help, but there are few hybrids that can get me onto some of my job sites. *shrug*. An SVO/BioD version of the truck I drive would have cost me double (I have a good friend who has one). I like to be green, but I need to eat, too.
The "efficiency" of hybrids comes from two sources
- engine off while not producing power (no boost to hwy mileage, about 10-15% to city) - regenerative breaking
You'd get the former from a combo, but almost nothing from the latter. An intellegent car with almost no battery storage would result in the maximum bang-for-the-buck.
BTW - I think those types of vehicles are known as mild hybrids or some such. The Chevy 1500 pickup truck hybrid is one example, and is a pretty small cost increase over the non-hybrid version ($1500, iirc). And as a bonus, it's got a pair of 120V/20A AC outlets in it.
It depends on whether you want to get somewhere faster, or just get somewhere before someone else. If I drive quickly while everyone else drives efficiently, I can get ahead of other vehicles. This makes no difference on town, but on a freeway - especially a two( four) lane one - the ability to overtake a "platoon leader" as they aree called, can make a significant difference in the total travel time. I bill $120/hr when I'm on business, and on a fixed price job every 5 minutes I save in transportation allows me to spend $10 worth of time on another billable job. That may seem insignificant, but even moderate use of breaking platoons has saved me up to 30 minutes in a 4 hour trip, based on software estimates vs actual time-in-flight. The last time I did this, I arrived 30 minutes early and managed to complete a portion of a small project while waiting. (Yes, my computer is mounted in the car - thank's for asking). Was that $60 worth the extra gas I wasted? Financially, yes. At 16mpg instead of 18 (I'm guessing, but the EPA says my truck gets 18 and I get about 16.5 on the highway if I'm "in a hurry"), my 240 mile trip took me 1.2 gallons of gas extra, or about $3.25 in direct costs. Note that I generally do not travel above the threshold of enforcement (usu 7-9 mph above the posted limit), and I do not drive "agressively", and almost always maintain a 2 second distance when at speed. I also _always_ signal. It's a pet peeve of mine.
You're right that coasting is common sense, but only if (1) the extra time you might recoup is valuable (not true for some) and (2) you actually can reduce your time in transit, which is not always possible.
And you're not convinced that this strategic move wasn't actually inspired by the Verizon patent take-down of Vonage? I realize that this may a bit tinfoil-hatish, but why not move everybody back you your landlines. You'll probably make more money, and you'll avoid a court date with Verizon. Sounds like a win for AT&T. And in the game of corporations, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.
You must not remember $0.25/min long distance in 1980 dollars, with no alternative carriers and no other options. And if yo udon't remember that, you certainly don't remmeber having to lease a phone - never owning it - in perpetuity becuase if you didn't lesae one you didn't get service.
What they should have done - and what they should do with cable, power, and all public utility services which have installed infrastructure - is to require separation of physical plant from the actual data/power/other services. No company or conglomerate may own any part of both a plant and a service.
Don't feel too bad. I run my home network unencrypted so that I can use a 2005 iogear print server which cannot negotiate any tupe of wireless encryption. Luckily, I (a) don't live in a dense area and (b) have nothing of particular interest on my home network, which gets backed up remotely. Someday I'll get a new printserver - my epson actually doesn't work well with it, but I don't have space for a cheap computer - and fix it, but for now. I just walk around naked.
Exactly the reason for a law. Once you get to a position of power, your personal financial stake is such that proper implementation takes money out of your own pocket. You have an incentive to not implement expensive operations which have a realitvely low probably of occuring.
That's how it was done in the 1970s. Of course, it was tapes back then, but the same theory applies. Everybody in the group has a first generation copy, and with metal tape and a good dual deck, the copies were effectively identical. Oddly enough, the "popular" music is very susceptible to this type of piracy since there is such a limited amount to be pirated - and the "first push" is what pays off the recording. The big advantage of the internet for file-sharers is that the entire back-catalog (you know, where the production costs have been paid many times over already) is downloadable from "unknown friends."
Heck, if you're so hell-bent on getting cheap music for "free", don't bother to buy the retail CD, just go get one off ebay for a miniscule fraction of the new price. Then sell it back when you're done with it. I used Columbia House as a DVD rental store for years. I'd buy 6-8 DVDs at a time, watch them as I had the opportunity (sometimes over the course of 3-5 months), then resell them for nearly what I paid (~$7 ea). Since I keep the ones I will re-watch, there was no need to rip the discs, though I'll admit that I could have ripped then resold immediatly so as not to have the cash tied up (ooooh, $50, better wait an extra day on the rent, huh?).
But I digress. The internet does make copying music much easier, but you're right that it is merely a facilitator and there are other, practically undetectable ways of sharing should it become "necessary."
Not really copyright, since it is simply a number - and not a particularly unique one at that. But perhaps if they trademarked the key(s). Then they probably could exert some control.
That's great, except that Philips does not - to my knowledge - make a 300+ DVD changer, much less a BR/HD version of such a beast. Sony is one of the very few that actually makes a jukebox for video formats which does not have a 4 or 5 digit price tag.
Have you seen the mortgages these people have? They're probably 2 months from being broke the way they live. I left the rat race, but most everyone I know who is a company boy would be in deep trouble if they missed more than 3-4 paychecks. 4 years ago I would have, too.
Actually, around me that would be about $325 since the rates have gone up, and about $250 before the rate hikes of the last two years. In comparison, my "worst" mosth for electricity was close to $300 this winter. So, in fact, I do need 6kw on an average basis in the coldest month. If you do anuual averaging, I would probably only need 3-3.5kW, but you'd need one heck of a storage system to power average over a 12 month period (yes, I know, it's called selling back to the grid...but that's far less sensational than saying I'd need a pump, generation turbines and a 5 acre lake).
As for why, the answer is that I have a 1960s home with the entire lower level made of panelling over uninsulated concrete masonry, which has an R value of about 4 to 5, including the panels, brick, and airspace. There is no cost effective way to insulate it, and to do a good job even with cost-ineffective ways would require tearing out the entire finished wall system. The heat in the lower level is also primarily electric resistance, which is not very efficient. Of course, it's still more efficient than the old oil-fired boiler that was there when we bought the place - that took ~700 gallons of oil to heat the house in the winter - about 1200 three years ago, and fully double the cost of the electric system which replaced it.
And that article is a good reason why popular mechanics is a lousy publication. The answer to how good the light is is relative to how close the lamp's color is to blackbody radiation. We've evolved to accept that as correct - or at least I have - some Christians apparently haven't, and it looks like their fucking up the science at PM.
The color of a non-corrected lamp (no true-life shit - pinkish blue incadescents suck) is, by definition, an A+. Blackbody radiation, or very close. Flourescents will never actually be close, as they use a discrete spectrum from multiple components. Much as an LCD projector cannot produce a perfect light, even when calibrated, as the gamut is not as wide as continuous illumination. But I digress...
There's not a single measure of CRI in that article. What good is 2800K if it's nowhere near the color balance of a 2800K blackbody?
Re:How long must a number be to be copyrightable?
on
Censoring a Number
·
· Score: 1
That's not copyrightable - I'll bet you just found that number on a wall!
I'll admit I haven't used shrink in a while. I use slysoft, now. Last I used it, a commercially encrypted DVD had to be decryped before DVD shrink could drop it to DVD5 size for burning. I ripped and re-burned all the disney stuff we have for my 4 year old this way. She can't damage the originals, and as a bonus there's no enforced commercials.
Seriously, I've been looking at CFLs for serveral years, and I have yet to find a package which lists both the color temperature in Kelvin and CRI (color rendering index, or how close the spectrum comes to mimicing blackbody radiation at the defined color temperature), plus the time to 90% brightness. I'd like to see an EMI/RFI rating (one of mine floods my IR system with EMI and makes it unusable for about 2 minutes after startup), as well as a dB rating - but that's probably asking too much.
Those seem like pretty good measures of how "good" a lamp color and performace will be, but nobody puts them on their lables. Without spending a boatload on "test lamps" there's no way to tell - and even if you do find a "good" brand there's no guarantee that the next time you need a lamp you can get one which matches the others in your house. And yes, they burn out before 14 years is up - simple probability states that it will happen eventually, experience suggests it happens quite a bit more often due to power issues, etc.
Anybody can use DVD shrink to rip (okay, you can't - you need a deccrypter like dvd decrypter, but play along) discs you own for personal use. It's right in the DMCA - your fair use rights have never technically been diminished.
What you can't do is rip for someone else, or help anyone to rip. The distribution of DVDdecrypter is illegal (per the DMCA), but it's okay to write the software, posess the software, and use the software to decrypt for personal reasons. That's the fucked-up catch - you can do anything you want, but you can't help anybody else do it.
I know that this is hard to understand, but I figured I'd post it anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
The original test of the hubble mirror - which would have caught the abberation - was scrapped for financial reasons. We could have tested it on the ground, but got talked out of it for a few tens of thousands of dollars.
FWIW, I worked with one of the engineers who did optics design and testing, and knew most of the team working at Perkin Elmer - what I know about Hubble is mostly second hand, but from a reliable source.
And the answer to this problem is ... Linux!
Trust me. It's not. Linux makes Windows look like a TV. A dysfunctional, expensive, TV that should be replaced every 6 to 12 months. Linux is that 3 CRT front projection TV you picked up by the side of the road during the town's spring clean up because it "just might work" and a couple of trips to the junk yard might just net you the four or five tubes you need to fire that baby up. Oh, sure, with a CS degree and a few hundred free hours to kill you might end up with a system that is pretty darned snazzy, but nobody else - like your mother, or the babysitter - can figure out how to work it, and when it breaks you'll be either scavenging junkyards for a part the might fit, or you'll have to make your own transistor in your basement.
I've played with linux, and it's a lot of fun. But even as a moderately competent computer user (learned assembly and machine code on a 6502 in the early 80s), I don't find linux TV-friendly, and I've tried some of the better load-and-go distros (ubuntu, which my 4 year old uses, and a couple flavors of knoppix).
Oh, to have my mod points back for you.
/telephone world, the fact remains that computers still don't "just work".
It's more than that, though. Once you buy a TV, you're pretty much done for the next 10 years until you buy a new one. Sure, you can susbscribe to cable or satellite, but that's been a creeping cost that people have gently learned to accept.
With computers, everything is a la carte. Of course, MS and Apple have tried to add in everything you need, but the embedded programs are generally highly restricted. Sit down fanbois - show me an _embedded_ app that lets you rip and recode DVDs and BR/HD discs to your hard drive to access content like a juke box. Yeah, I thought so. And if you do go out into the field to get the most popular apps, you're looking at many times the purchase price of the computer for a set of the full versions, and they usually lower the overall system resposiveness - Yes, I'm looking at you Adobe; you, too, Peter Norton. While there are certainly parallels in the TV
Computers are still the automobile of the 1920s, or the private aircraft of today. They work, but it's hardly something the average person can really understand and use without a significant investment in both time and money.
Driving and talking is bad enough.
Actully, I find that on the major interstate near me, if I hop in the right lane and "drive gently" I tend to average about 60-62 mph. If I'm "on my game" and don't get caught by an actual traffic back-up, I can get darned close to 73-74 mph - the same speed I regularly travel (unless I hit a "fast" slug that I'll hide in the middle of - which does occur). 61mph*4hrs = 244 miles / 74mph = 3:29:45. Now, that's not exactly perfect, because the last portion of the trip is on back roads, where I make up more time than I do on the highway. If I coasted into every wind in the road instead of braking, I would save more gas but take much more time.
;-)
I agree that there's no free lunch, I'm just saying that I can make more than the cost of a sandwich if I pay extra for the meal to cut in front of the line.
No, today's hybrids are actually hybrids - they combine an internal combustion engine with electric motors. I think the system is backwards, and ultimately we'll have electric motors powering the wheels and a small IC engine running a generator.
You are advocating a multi-fuel IC engine. Not a bad thing, as long as the source of the electricity to [charge your batteries/extract and store your hydrogen] is domestic and renewable. Running a LNG, coal, or oil-fired electric generation plant to provide the base energy does very little to relieve the economic pressure we're under, and is only marginally greener than burning fuel in an efficient IC engine (after transmission, battery, and conversion losses are figured in).
I drive a truck that gets 12mpg, but I only live a mile from work. In nice weather I can walk or ride my bike (and I do, though not too often as much of my work is "in the field").
Actually, my truck gets 12mpg _because_ I drive a mile to work, with 4 stopsigns, two speed bumps, and 4 (non-stopsign) 90 degree turns. My Honda only got 16mpg on the same track, and my wife's subaru managed a paltry 18 or 19. A hybrid would have been a big help, but there are few hybrids that can get me onto some of my job sites. *shrug*. An SVO/BioD version of the truck I drive would have cost me double (I have a good friend who has one). I like to be green, but I need to eat, too.
The "efficiency" of hybrids comes from two sources
- engine off while not producing power (no boost to hwy mileage, about 10-15% to city)
- regenerative breaking
You'd get the former from a combo, but almost nothing from the latter. An intellegent car with almost no battery storage would result in the maximum bang-for-the-buck.
BTW - I think those types of vehicles are known as mild hybrids or some such. The Chevy 1500 pickup truck hybrid is one example, and is a pretty small cost increase over the non-hybrid version ($1500, iirc). And as a bonus, it's got a pair of 120V/20A AC outlets in it.
It depends on whether you want to get somewhere faster, or just get somewhere before someone else. If I drive quickly while everyone else drives efficiently, I can get ahead of other vehicles. This makes no difference on town, but on a freeway - especially a two( four) lane one - the ability to overtake a "platoon leader" as they aree called, can make a significant difference in the total travel time. I bill $120/hr when I'm on business, and on a fixed price job every 5 minutes I save in transportation allows me to spend $10 worth of time on another billable job. That may seem insignificant, but even moderate use of breaking platoons has saved me up to 30 minutes in a 4 hour trip, based on software estimates vs actual time-in-flight. The last time I did this, I arrived 30 minutes early and managed to complete a portion of a small project while waiting. (Yes, my computer is mounted in the car - thank's for asking). Was that $60 worth the extra gas I wasted? Financially, yes. At 16mpg instead of 18 (I'm guessing, but the EPA says my truck gets 18 and I get about 16.5 on the highway if I'm "in a hurry"), my 240 mile trip took me 1.2 gallons of gas extra, or about $3.25 in direct costs. Note that I generally do not travel above the threshold of enforcement (usu 7-9 mph above the posted limit), and I do not drive "agressively", and almost always maintain a 2 second distance when at speed. I also _always_ signal. It's a pet peeve of mine.
You're right that coasting is common sense, but only if (1) the extra time you might recoup is valuable (not true for some) and (2) you actually can reduce your time in transit, which is not always possible.
Sorry, brain fart. Meant pots, not landlines. You're right...it might push more people to cell-only.
And you're not convinced that this strategic move wasn't actually inspired by the Verizon patent take-down of Vonage? I realize that this may a bit tinfoil-hatish, but why not move everybody back you your landlines. You'll probably make more money, and you'll avoid a court date with Verizon. Sounds like a win for AT&T. And in the game of corporations, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.
You must not remember $0.25/min long distance in 1980 dollars, with no alternative carriers and no other options. And if yo udon't remember that, you certainly don't remmeber having to lease a phone - never owning it - in perpetuity becuase if you didn't lesae one you didn't get service.
What they should have done - and what they should do with cable, power, and all public utility services which have installed infrastructure - is to require separation of physical plant from the actual data/power/other services. No company or conglomerate may own any part of both a plant and a service.
Don't feel too bad. I run my home network unencrypted so that I can use a 2005 iogear print server which cannot negotiate any tupe of wireless encryption. Luckily, I (a) don't live in a dense area and (b) have nothing of particular interest on my home network, which gets backed up remotely. Someday I'll get a new printserver - my epson actually doesn't work well with it, but I don't have space for a cheap computer - and fix it, but for now. I just walk around naked.
Exactly the reason for a law. Once you get to a position of power, your personal financial stake is such that proper implementation takes money out of your own pocket. You have an incentive to not implement expensive operations which have a realitvely low probably of occuring.
That's how it was done in the 1970s. Of course, it was tapes back then, but the same theory applies. Everybody in the group has a first generation copy, and with metal tape and a good dual deck, the copies were effectively identical. Oddly enough, the "popular" music is very susceptible to this type of piracy since there is such a limited amount to be pirated - and the "first push" is what pays off the recording. The big advantage of the internet for file-sharers is that the entire back-catalog (you know, where the production costs have been paid many times over already) is downloadable from "unknown friends."
Heck, if you're so hell-bent on getting cheap music for "free", don't bother to buy the retail CD, just go get one off ebay for a miniscule fraction of the new price. Then sell it back when you're done with it. I used Columbia House as a DVD rental store for years. I'd buy 6-8 DVDs at a time, watch them as I had the opportunity (sometimes over the course of 3-5 months), then resell them for nearly what I paid (~$7 ea). Since I keep the ones I will re-watch, there was no need to rip the discs, though I'll admit that I could have ripped then resold immediatly so as not to have the cash tied up (ooooh, $50, better wait an extra day on the rent, huh?).
But I digress. The internet does make copying music much easier, but you're right that it is merely a facilitator and there are other, practically undetectable ways of sharing should it become "necessary."
Not really copyright, since it is simply a number - and not a particularly unique one at that. But perhaps if they trademarked the key(s). Then they probably could exert some control.
That's great, except that Philips does not - to my knowledge - make a 300+ DVD changer, much less a BR/HD version of such a beast. Sony is one of the very few that actually makes a jukebox for video formats which does not have a 4 or 5 digit price tag.
Have you seen the mortgages these people have? They're probably 2 months from being broke the way they live. I left the rat race, but most everyone I know who is a company boy would be in deep trouble if they missed more than 3-4 paychecks. 4 years ago I would have, too.
then he's got my vote.
Actually, around me that would be about $325 since the rates have gone up, and about $250 before the rate hikes of the last two years. In comparison, my "worst" mosth for electricity was close to $300 this winter. So, in fact, I do need 6kw on an average basis in the coldest month. If you do anuual averaging, I would probably only need 3-3.5kW, but you'd need one heck of a storage system to power average over a 12 month period (yes, I know, it's called selling back to the grid...but that's far less sensational than saying I'd need a pump, generation turbines and a 5 acre lake).
As for why, the answer is that I have a 1960s home with the entire lower level made of panelling over uninsulated concrete masonry, which has an R value of about 4 to 5, including the panels, brick, and airspace. There is no cost effective way to insulate it, and to do a good job even with cost-ineffective ways would require tearing out the entire finished wall system. The heat in the lower level is also primarily electric resistance, which is not very efficient. Of course, it's still more efficient than the old oil-fired boiler that was there when we bought the place - that took ~700 gallons of oil to heat the house in the winter - about 1200 three years ago, and fully double the cost of the electric system which replaced it.
And that article is a good reason why popular mechanics is a lousy publication. The answer to how good the light is is relative to how close the lamp's color is to blackbody radiation. We've evolved to accept that as correct - or at least I have - some Christians apparently haven't, and it looks like their fucking up the science at PM.
The color of a non-corrected lamp (no true-life shit - pinkish blue incadescents suck) is, by definition, an A+. Blackbody radiation, or very close. Flourescents will never actually be close, as they use a discrete spectrum from multiple components. Much as an LCD projector cannot produce a perfect light, even when calibrated, as the gamut is not as wide as continuous illumination. But I digress...
There's not a single measure of CRI in that article. What good is 2800K if it's nowhere near the color balance of a 2800K blackbody?
That's not copyrightable - I'll bet you just found that number on a wall!
I'll admit I haven't used shrink in a while. I use slysoft, now. Last I used it, a commercially encrypted DVD had to be decryped before DVD shrink could drop it to DVD5 size for burning. I ripped and re-burned all the disney stuff we have for my 4 year old this way. She can't damage the originals, and as a bonus there's no enforced commercials.
Seriously, I've been looking at CFLs for serveral years, and I have yet to find a package which lists both the color temperature in Kelvin and CRI (color rendering index, or how close the spectrum comes to mimicing blackbody radiation at the defined color temperature), plus the time to 90% brightness. I'd like to see an EMI/RFI rating (one of mine floods my IR system with EMI and makes it unusable for about 2 minutes after startup), as well as a dB rating - but that's probably asking too much.
Those seem like pretty good measures of how "good" a lamp color and performace will be, but nobody puts them on their lables. Without spending a boatload on "test lamps" there's no way to tell - and even if you do find a "good" brand there's no guarantee that the next time you need a lamp you can get one which matches the others in your house. And yes, they burn out before 14 years is up - simple probability states that it will happen eventually, experience suggests it happens quite a bit more often due to power issues, etc.
Anybody can use DVD shrink to rip (okay, you can't - you need a deccrypter like dvd decrypter, but play along) discs you own for personal use. It's right in the DMCA - your fair use rights have never technically been diminished.
What you can't do is rip for someone else, or help anyone to rip. The distribution of DVDdecrypter is illegal (per the DMCA), but it's okay to write the software, posess the software, and use the software to decrypt for personal reasons. That's the fucked-up catch - you can do anything you want, but you can't help anybody else do it.
I know that this is hard to understand, but I figured I'd post it anyway.