I would not accept any superpowers that rendered me so stupid as to forget that there are an infinite number of ways to achieve sexual satisfaction without risking pregnancy.
Superman didn't "accept" any superpowers, it just so happens that on Earth, he has them. What if "Clark Kent" hadn't been picked up by those nice midwestern family folk, and instead he had been picked up by carnies? He would be the strongman in a freak show and banging a different girl in every town, with no regard as to the consequences.
I though superheros generally had superpowers thrust upon them, they didn't sign up for them or earn them by mail in a correspondence course. Falling into radioactive goo, genetic mutation, etc. Batman was the closest thing to trying to sign up for superpowers, as he has none, just really cool toys.
Reminds me of the OOOOLD Johnny Carson skit, where Superman jumps into bed with his new wife, turns the light off for 1 second, then back on smoking a cigarette. Then she says "Wow, you really ARE faster than a speeding bullet!". Classic.:)
In other words, to change the world you need to think big. Hancock failed at that.
Which made him human, like us. It is easy to say "think big" until you are overburdened with all the people who want cats rescued from trees, and want you to save them from the small stuff. It would seem you would get bogged down with minutia with no time to actually think big. "What good are you as a super hero if you can't even save us from the bank robber that shot two people!" kind of things. I dunno, it is an interesting thought game, but that is about it.
:Give me superman-like powers and I'd be trying to drastically change the world, not protect it.
Ever see the movie "Hancock" with Will Smith? Or for that matter, "The Incredibles". Both show how easy it is to fall out of favor when you have superpowers. Another good example is "Team America World Police", and while they weren't superhuman, they had super powerful weapons, and their attempt to "save" Paris from terrorists pretty much sums it up. The problem isn't about "doing good deads", it is about all the collateral damage you cause while doing those very deeds. And the fact that it is pretty hard to apprehend and detain you for that damage.
That said, hell yes I would love superpowers, and yes, I would want to do nothing but good. The problem is the other damage, and resisting the temptation of all the Lois Lane types throwing their bodies at you. You would have super babies all over the planet.
When I say a hybrid gets lower MPG on the highway, I am going by the actual published MPG claims by the manufacturer, it isn't an opinion as I don't own a hybrid. For example, the Prius gets 51 city, and 48 highway, per Toyota.
That is a decent point, but then, the majority of people buying $40,000 cars are likely home owners instead of apartment dwellers, and half if not most of them would have the room to setup the power. I think he was saying that ONE car of two could be electric, and typically one of two married people will have a job close by. (ie: I drive 100 miles a day, the wife drives 24)
Still, it would make more sense to make a purely electric car and put an extra battery where you would have the engine. People who drive long distances are not going to benefit from hybrids anyway, as they offer lower mileage on the highway than they do in town. I think they are trying to hard to make them "one size fits all", instead of targeting their marketing effort by providing 100% clean and easy to maintain but shorter range, say 100 miles. That would have to make the car lighter, simpler, roomier and cheaper. Of course, A/C and heat are always the issue with an all electric.
Correct. And more importantly, it was accurate enough in the context of a joke. Reading the replies in the thread, including everyone taking "$400 hammers" as a serious claim, demonstrates that people on/. are losing their sense of humor. And their common sense to boot. This place used to be fun, back when the internet was hard to use.
Look, the government actually owns GM - Government Motors. The same guys that buy $400 hammers. The fact that the government can produce ANY motor vehicle for under $100,000 is a fucking miracle.
Windows 7 and Vista support faux DOS just as XP does. Easier to just use a Cygwin bash shell most of the time, however, as the commands available are still quite limited.
This is surprising to nobody who understands how this shit works.
True, but to the average consumer (this included pointy haired bosses) the upgrades for their home computer cost $0, the software came with it new, or was a one time purchase and the updates are either free or simply not done (or both), and every few years you just buy another one and give the old one to a friend or Goodwill with all your personal information still on it.
In the home consumer world, software IS only a one time expense for most people. Unless you are the guy who is having to get permission for upgrades, and patch all the servers in a commercial environment, this is your world view because it is your reality. It is not so shocking that average Joes and bosses don't know this.
I agree with your logic, but understand that many people ARE dropping the traditional phone companies. I haven't had a land line in a few years, and just switched my office from POTS to Time Warner Biz Cable. Dropping two T1s for data and 12 phones, and picking up two 5/1.5 data lines and 12 phone lines with UNLIMITED nationwide LD (and very low overseas rates) will save our small company $30,000+ this year, and our bill will be the same every month (excepting a small amount of European calls). A direct quote: POTS = $50 line + $15 for rolloever service + usage. TWC costs $39.99 including rollover and LD. We switched a month ago. Our system was down for 10 minutes during the change, and has worked flawlessly ever since.
Half the people I know (mainly younger) don't have land lines. Mainly small businesses are changing to cable solutions (ours was said to be one of the larger ones). The traditional phone companies are soon to be hurting, give it 2 or 3 years. This is why they are making hay while they can, and expanding into other markets.
Have you ever been to a tea party rally? I have, just to see who was there (I'm more of a Libertarian) and actually spend time TALKING to them. It was about 80% white, 20% hispanic/black/asian mix. A disproportionate amount were small biz owners. (from self employed plumbers/carpenters/contractors to small shop owners). It was easy to see that most were above average income and had an above average amount of education. Most are over 40, and likely 99.9999% of them were Christian. This is pretty far from the "beer drinking, nascar loving" crowd that many describe. They are not all poor, ignorant trailer trash. They are more rural, more independent, more white, more self employed, spanning every economic income level (the ones at the rallies tend to be more upper middle class). Not saying it is good or bad, just what it is. My point was simple: you are quick to make judgments on things right before you admit you don't have any evidence, then you tell someone to go fuck themselves. Classic and typical American politics.
I understand what you are saying, but most URBAN lots are closer to the 1/4 acre size or often smaller. I have three houses, on 1.05 (3100 sqft), 1.48 (1700 sqft) and.28 acres (1300 sqft), and the lots over 1 acre I can subdivide into smaller lots if I wanted (I don't). In Guilford County NC, for instance (largest of a 1.5mil metro area) the required size for a lot IF THERE IS NO SEWER SERVICE is only.67 acres. Some upscale residential areas have their own requirements, but general code is must less than these HOAs.
The required lot size has more to do with how the land percs more than anything else. Available well water is sometimes a consideration as well. In some areas of the state, they require much less, some areas more. This is tobacco land, with clay soil that percs quite well, thus the smaller minimums. We have lots of water 20ft to 150ft in most areas, although some is only at 650ft+.
No I mean almost every professional guitarist I have seen on stage. From Stevie Ray Vaughn to Junior Brown, Eddie Van Halen to Chet Atkins. Literally every serious professional guitarist, with very few exceptions. So they are all idiots?
It helps to actually understand what you are talking about if you are going to compare guitar amp technology, or call tube amps "snake oil". Every once in a while, I hear someone say exactly what you are saying, which I find humorous since it is always from someone who is not an experienced musician. Me, I only spent 30 years on small stages, and own both kinds of amps. You?
To add some additional clarity: One acre = 220 feet x 220 feet (67 meters x 67 meters). This comes out to 48,400 square feet, or 4489 square meters. Not a huge amount of land, enough for one really nice lot for a home, or 3 to 4 average smaller city home lots here in the US.
You do realize this is the first election that the Tea Party has even existed right? I mean, I don't want that to get in the way of your politically biased rant, and self-admitted ignorance of the actual Congressman. As for the rest of the country, there is enough distrust of China for both parties, and I would say with at least some valid reasons.
Is there really some effect that you couldn't replicate with 192 kHz sampling and a digital effect? Really? That people can actually hear in blind tests?
Yes. And I notice that it is never musicians who actually question this, only those with no experience. It has nothing to do with sampling rate. It isn't clarity, or any of those things that "on paper" would mean "better". It has nothing to do with fidelity. If you don't understand what tube pump and compression are, you will never get it. It has to do with the amp responding to your input in less of a linear and more of an intuitive fashion. It is being able to work the imperfections in the name of tone. Again, if you don't play, you don't get it. There is a reason that the vast majority of professional guitarists use tubes. Even if laymen don't understand it.
As far as guitar amps is concerned, semiconductor circuits can be made to perform in the manner that tubes do, and more reliably, but there's just too much myth and momentum for tubes for them to be obsoleted as they should be.
There is a lot more to guitar tone than clarity. I have tested more than a few dozen digital solutions and while it might be hard to quantify the difference to someone who hasn't spent 40 years playing, it is easy to pick in a blind test. It isn't about fidelity (where tubes come up short), it is about the characteristics. You can make tubes pump, change how they break tone, and get certain nuances that I personally haven't seen transistors produce. Perhaps the audience can't tell the difference, but if you are in the driver's seat, there is a difference. Same reason some people (including me) prefer analog effects, for the rare times I use any. Or live music over recorded. Imperfections are character.
As for audiophiles, while your comment is harsh, I can't argue as I wouldn't know from personal experience. Keep in mind there is a big difference in producing full band audio and a relatively narrow band guitar.
Come on... exactly *what* would you be transmitting during a nuclear blast? Except possibly "Ouch. Bye."
"Roger, right on target, returning to base. Over". is one example.
Also, if you are the one being bombed, you might want to actually tell someone from inside your deep earth bunker, since the hardwire has now been cut.
And historically, totalitarian governments have been obsessed with compiling, storing, and organizing information. The internet, you may have noticed, is very good for this.
The internet is good for storing information? Since when? It is great for DISPLAYING information, and sharing it, and for finding videos of nut shots, but it doesn't actually "store" anything. When a site goes down permanantly, so does all the information unless archive.org has a copy, and if they go down, no one has a copy.
The internet is a transient medium, just as a telephone lets you talk to someone now but doesn't by itself "remember" the conversation, the internet is only valid as a medium to see what is online NOW. This is why archive.org and the waybackmachine exist in the first place, to try to find a way to store the internet. It isn't a great system, although it is the best system we have and no one else seems interested in long term storage. I don't think that even Google is storing their cache for very long.
Slashdot Mirror
I would not accept any superpowers that rendered me so stupid as to forget that there are an infinite number of ways to achieve sexual satisfaction without risking pregnancy.
Superman didn't "accept" any superpowers, it just so happens that on Earth, he has them. What if "Clark Kent" hadn't been picked up by those nice midwestern family folk, and instead he had been picked up by carnies? He would be the strongman in a freak show and banging a different girl in every town, with no regard as to the consequences.
I though superheros generally had superpowers thrust upon them, they didn't sign up for them or earn them by mail in a correspondence course. Falling into radioactive goo, genetic mutation, etc. Batman was the closest thing to trying to sign up for superpowers, as he has none, just really cool toys.
Reminds me of the OOOOLD Johnny Carson skit, where Superman jumps into bed with his new wife, turns the light off for 1 second, then back on smoking a cigarette. Then she says "Wow, you really ARE faster than a speeding bullet!". Classic. :)
Head to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the other places OBLaden is supposed to be hiding,
What if the superhero is a Muslim? Or Atheist? Or Communist?
In other words, to change the world you need to think big. Hancock failed at that.
Which made him human, like us. It is easy to say "think big" until you are overburdened with all the people who want cats rescued from trees, and want you to save them from the small stuff. It would seem you would get bogged down with minutia with no time to actually think big. "What good are you as a super hero if you can't even save us from the bank robber that shot two people!" kind of things. I dunno, it is an interesting thought game, but that is about it.
:Give me superman-like powers and I'd be trying to drastically change the world, not protect it.
Ever see the movie "Hancock" with Will Smith? Or for that matter, "The Incredibles". Both show how easy it is to fall out of favor when you have superpowers. Another good example is "Team America World Police", and while they weren't superhuman, they had super powerful weapons, and their attempt to "save" Paris from terrorists pretty much sums it up. The problem isn't about "doing good deads", it is about all the collateral damage you cause while doing those very deeds. And the fact that it is pretty hard to apprehend and detain you for that damage.
That said, hell yes I would love superpowers, and yes, I would want to do nothing but good. The problem is the other damage, and resisting the temptation of all the Lois Lane types throwing their bodies at you. You would have super babies all over the planet.
When I say a hybrid gets lower MPG on the highway, I am going by the actual published MPG claims by the manufacturer, it isn't an opinion as I don't own a hybrid. For example, the Prius gets 51 city, and 48 highway, per Toyota.
Best reply so far :) Thanks for making my day!
Yes, because everyone knows that AOL in 1997 was exactly the internet.
That is a decent point, but then, the majority of people buying $40,000 cars are likely home owners instead of apartment dwellers, and half if not most of them would have the room to setup the power. I think he was saying that ONE car of two could be electric, and typically one of two married people will have a job close by. (ie: I drive 100 miles a day, the wife drives 24)
Still, it would make more sense to make a purely electric car and put an extra battery where you would have the engine. People who drive long distances are not going to benefit from hybrids anyway, as they offer lower mileage on the highway than they do in town. I think they are trying to hard to make them "one size fits all", instead of targeting their marketing effort by providing 100% clean and easy to maintain but shorter range, say 100 miles. That would have to make the car lighter, simpler, roomier and cheaper. Of course, A/C and heat are always the issue with an all electric.
Correct. And more importantly, it was accurate enough in the context of a joke. Reading the replies in the thread, including everyone taking "$400 hammers" as a serious claim, demonstrates that people on /. are losing their sense of humor. And their common sense to boot. This place used to be fun, back when the internet was hard to use.
Look, the government actually owns GM - Government Motors. The same guys that buy $400 hammers. The fact that the government can produce ANY motor vehicle for under $100,000 is a fucking miracle.
Windows 7 and Vista support faux DOS just as XP does. Easier to just use a Cygwin bash shell most of the time, however, as the commands available are still quite limited.
This is surprising to nobody who understands how this shit works.
True, but to the average consumer (this included pointy haired bosses) the upgrades for their home computer cost $0, the software came with it new, or was a one time purchase and the updates are either free or simply not done (or both), and every few years you just buy another one and give the old one to a friend or Goodwill with all your personal information still on it.
In the home consumer world, software IS only a one time expense for most people. Unless you are the guy who is having to get permission for upgrades, and patch all the servers in a commercial environment, this is your world view because it is your reality. It is not so shocking that average Joes and bosses don't know this.
I agree with your logic, but understand that many people ARE dropping the traditional phone companies. I haven't had a land line in a few years, and just switched my office from POTS to Time Warner Biz Cable. Dropping two T1s for data and 12 phones, and picking up two 5/1.5 data lines and 12 phone lines with UNLIMITED nationwide LD (and very low overseas rates) will save our small company $30,000+ this year, and our bill will be the same every month (excepting a small amount of European calls). A direct quote: POTS = $50 line + $15 for rolloever service + usage. TWC costs $39.99 including rollover and LD. We switched a month ago. Our system was down for 10 minutes during the change, and has worked flawlessly ever since.
Half the people I know (mainly younger) don't have land lines. Mainly small businesses are changing to cable solutions (ours was said to be one of the larger ones). The traditional phone companies are soon to be hurting, give it 2 or 3 years. This is why they are making hay while they can, and expanding into other markets.
Slashdot has outlived it's usefulness.
That statement is simply not true. Slashdot used to be entertaining, but I don't know that it ever was useful.
Have you ever been to a tea party rally? I have, just to see who was there (I'm more of a Libertarian) and actually spend time TALKING to them. It was about 80% white, 20% hispanic/black/asian mix. A disproportionate amount were small biz owners. (from self employed plumbers/carpenters/contractors to small shop owners). It was easy to see that most were above average income and had an above average amount of education. Most are over 40, and likely 99.9999% of them were Christian. This is pretty far from the "beer drinking, nascar loving" crowd that many describe. They are not all poor, ignorant trailer trash. They are more rural, more independent, more white, more self employed, spanning every economic income level (the ones at the rallies tend to be more upper middle class). Not saying it is good or bad, just what it is. My point was simple: you are quick to make judgments on things right before you admit you don't have any evidence, then you tell someone to go fuck themselves. Classic and typical American politics.
I understand what you are saying, but most URBAN lots are closer to the 1/4 acre size or often smaller. I have three houses, on 1.05 (3100 sqft), 1.48 (1700 sqft) and .28 acres (1300 sqft), and the lots over 1 acre I can subdivide into smaller lots if I wanted (I don't). In Guilford County NC, for instance (largest of a 1.5mil metro area) the required size for a lot IF THERE IS NO SEWER SERVICE is only .67 acres. Some upscale residential areas have their own requirements, but general code is must less than these HOAs.
The required lot size has more to do with how the land percs more than anything else. Available well water is sometimes a consideration as well. In some areas of the state, they require much less, some areas more. This is tobacco land, with clay soil that percs quite well, thus the smaller minimums. We have lots of water 20ft to 150ft in most areas, although some is only at 650ft+.
No I mean almost every professional guitarist I have seen on stage. From Stevie Ray Vaughn to Junior Brown, Eddie Van Halen to Chet Atkins. Literally every serious professional guitarist, with very few exceptions. So they are all idiots?
It helps to actually understand what you are talking about if you are going to compare guitar amp technology, or call tube amps "snake oil". Every once in a while, I hear someone say exactly what you are saying, which I find humorous since it is always from someone who is not an experienced musician. Me, I only spent 30 years on small stages, and own both kinds of amps. You?
To add some additional clarity: One acre = 220 feet x 220 feet (67 meters x 67 meters). This comes out to 48,400 square feet, or 4489 square meters. Not a huge amount of land, enough for one really nice lot for a home, or 3 to 4 average smaller city home lots here in the US.
You do realize this is the first election that the Tea Party has even existed right? I mean, I don't want that to get in the way of your politically biased rant, and self-admitted ignorance of the actual Congressman. As for the rest of the country, there is enough distrust of China for both parties, and I would say with at least some valid reasons.
Is there really some effect that you couldn't replicate with 192 kHz sampling and a digital effect? Really? That people can actually hear in blind tests?
Yes. And I notice that it is never musicians who actually question this, only those with no experience. It has nothing to do with sampling rate. It isn't clarity, or any of those things that "on paper" would mean "better". It has nothing to do with fidelity. If you don't understand what tube pump and compression are, you will never get it. It has to do with the amp responding to your input in less of a linear and more of an intuitive fashion. It is being able to work the imperfections in the name of tone. Again, if you don't play, you don't get it. There is a reason that the vast majority of professional guitarists use tubes. Even if laymen don't understand it.
So, you've never read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" then?
Watching the butchered 2005 US movie version absolutely doesn't count. The BBC mini-series version does.
As far as guitar amps is concerned, semiconductor circuits can be made to perform in the manner that tubes do, and more reliably, but there's just too much myth and momentum for tubes for them to be obsoleted as they should be.
There is a lot more to guitar tone than clarity. I have tested more than a few dozen digital solutions and while it might be hard to quantify the difference to someone who hasn't spent 40 years playing, it is easy to pick in a blind test. It isn't about fidelity (where tubes come up short), it is about the characteristics. You can make tubes pump, change how they break tone, and get certain nuances that I personally haven't seen transistors produce. Perhaps the audience can't tell the difference, but if you are in the driver's seat, there is a difference. Same reason some people (including me) prefer analog effects, for the rare times I use any. Or live music over recorded. Imperfections are character.
As for audiophiles, while your comment is harsh, I can't argue as I wouldn't know from personal experience. Keep in mind there is a big difference in producing full band audio and a relatively narrow band guitar.
Come on... exactly *what* would you be transmitting during a nuclear blast? Except possibly "Ouch. Bye."
"Roger, right on target, returning to base. Over". is one example.
Also, if you are the one being bombed, you might want to actually tell someone from inside your deep earth bunker, since the hardwire has now been cut.
And historically, totalitarian governments have been obsessed with compiling, storing, and organizing information. The internet, you may have noticed, is very good for this.
The internet is good for storing information? Since when? It is great for DISPLAYING information, and sharing it, and for finding videos of nut shots, but it doesn't actually "store" anything. When a site goes down permanantly, so does all the information unless archive.org has a copy, and if they go down, no one has a copy.
The internet is a transient medium, just as a telephone lets you talk to someone now but doesn't by itself "remember" the conversation, the internet is only valid as a medium to see what is online NOW. This is why archive.org and the waybackmachine exist in the first place, to try to find a way to store the internet. It isn't a great system, although it is the best system we have and no one else seems interested in long term storage. I don't think that even Google is storing their cache for very long.