I feel this is why you had to consider archiving them or not. They show our cultural history in a way, and are insightful (obviously not insightful for their moral content)
I had to consider archiving them because I had to ask my self two questions.
1. Would I ever watch these again
The jazz and skat ones actually are as you say part of our cultural history. They do actually show a very power influence in American music and are worth it on that note. There are a few in that batch that I would not enjoy watching.
2. Would I show them to someone else
There are a few in that batch that are down right rude as hell. And i'm not talking Tom and Jerry blackface rude which... well to me isn't offencive but apparently the censors are none to fond of it.
But needless to say they're getting burnt onto cd. Otherwise they could be lost.
Star Trek shouldn't be applauded because they unknowingly had a gay helmsman, they should be remember for the other civil rights movement, such as having a character Uhura on board.
What makes me sad is the fact the people have pointed this out... because I never gave it a second thought. I guess it's actually important... the simple fact that they bought all these people together in a situation where it simply was no big deal.
This is a tad off topic but I recently watched the Warner Brothers banned 11 cartoons. Some of these I actually saw as a kid living in the south... and at the time I would have seen them I had no idea they were attempting to poke fun at african americans... I just assumed there were cool cats and cool dogs in a city called Harlem who were big on skat and jazz. Watching them now makes me feel rather ill. I had to ask my self whether I wanted to archive them or not... but without things like this... big names in Warner Brother's animation... creating these strongly racist cartoons because it again was "no big deal"... without these things people like Martin Luther King, Jr. would have had nothing to complain about... and women like Whoopi Goldberg who grew up with Sherly Temple reruns wouldn't have been excited to see Star Trek and exclaim, "Momma, there's a black lady on tv... and she ain't no maid".
So yes... I feel ashamed when I have to think about the fact that "I love Lucy" of all things was groundbreaking... a mixed marriage between I presume an Irish Catholic and a Cuban-born musician. I feel even more ashamed when I have to think about the fact that Star Trek featured the first African American woman who wasn't a maid. But I can feel some pride in the fact that much was accomplished over a period of 40 years... though i'll be another 40 years before we as a people trully understand that we share a planet.
What if now that jerk is suddenly ten or twenty jerks yapping all around you in a confined space for several hours?
Put on some headphones. Listen to some music, watch the inflight movie, or better yet just put those ear buds in your ears without anything attached to it. Read a book...problem solved.
At least they are not trying to chat you up. I can tune out 20 or so people yapping about nothing, it's harder to tune out some yoyo sitting next to you wanting you to accept Jesus.
Not to nit pick but Toronto isn't in the states. It's in Canada. 8-D
Yes, it is. I was told that the medium Canadian accent sounded much like the American sports casters. I thought it was very strange as for the most part there are very few American sports casters the vast majority of them are imported, from Toronto.
That is one of the stupidest things I've ever read about terrorism. Do you pictures terrorists as running around screaming JIHAD ALLAH ACKBAR with bright red faces from all the blood pumping and emotion waving their arms around until they finally blow themselves up?
Well, I wouldn't say "jihad allah ackbar".... but basicly some exclamation depending on the background of the person and their reasons before promptly blowing them selves up. The might say "save the whales" before blowing them selves up... or "Accept Jesus"... or "freedom now"... or even "Damn Underpants gnomes". "Starbucks be damned" might be the exclamation.
You don't think they are capable of calming down from their religious driven rage long enough to plan an attack and have calm logical discussions where they work out intricate details?
Well I can't assume all terrorists are religious... but anyone with enough anger to want to blow up innocent lives simply is not operating on all 4 cylinders. I'm sorry. I'm sure you have a few smart people who take advantage of the rage invested jarheads giving them a wonderful outlet for their anger. But anyone "that" angry is going to end up spilling the beans to someone, either in person, by telephone, or PC... after all if it's important enough to blow people up over... your going to need to vent esp if as you say you're going to do some intricate planning. "Hey Billy Bob... you know that terrorism thing we were planning, well we better git our selves some scramblers because the *beast* has many heads and double the ears".
You show a serious lack of understanding of who the terrorists are and of course you show no understanding of Why they have a problem with us.
Actually you seem to be rather 9/11 obsessed. I wasn't speaking of middle eastern terrorism... I was rather speaking about anyone who *feels* blowing up people would be helpful. But yes... a luntic who blows something up only offering a 3 to 5 word exclamation i'm not going to understand their reasons... nor am I able to ask them. Well I could but I doubt any reply from little bits of person would be insightful. For the most part.. for the most part... anyone who does this is nuts. Perhaps if they were not nuts I might take the time to listen to their issues.
But yes, I imagine right before someone presses that button their heart is going super fast, and i'm sure their face would be beet red. The survival instinct is pretty strong and one simply has to do work to overcome that. I'm sure there are some disiplined people who could blow them selves up with calm face... but that I imagine would take work. It would be easier to find some jarhead jumping up and down with their exclamations to do it. No shortage of them.
Anyone thinking that a terrorist acts like a rabid dog just looking for infidels to kill is seriously underestimating the movitvations and mental state of the terrorist
If someone for example blew them selves up in a starbucks... I am going to think of them as a rabid loon and not listen to a damned thing they have to say. This isn't ignorance but a tactical solution. Any sort of act like that is going to have some sort of message attached to it... and the best defence is to ignore it... and only listen when they are not being a nutjob.
To borrow an idea from Thomas Paine... When terrorism becomes a pointless medium to spread a message... it's time to find a new medium. To quote Billy Bragg, "The revolution is just a t-shirt away".
Eccleston lends his own interpretation to the role, as have all the performers before him, but the resulting character is unmistakably The Doctor. Further, his companion, Rose, is not a ditz (don't let the peroxided hair fool you), but a very capable and driven person in her own right.
One thing I found interesting is a lack of RP (reserved pronunciation). Don't get me wrong I like the northern accents esp around Liverpool and Manchester. East-end is also not too bad. But the first episode I found I had to turn the subtitles on. "Joker sweet genius score on 'der de'sevens gymnastics team. I've got the bronze" threw me for a loop. I replayed this many times and heard the same bloody thing. It is for this reason, basicly a lack of annunciation that I find I miss RP. Just like in the states where the mid-west and Toronto are good places to get TV/radio announcers a standard for public speaking is a good idea... but I can see where it might be annoying to have the rest of the world assume everyone in that neighborhood uses RP.
Wouldn't real terrorists (y'know, the ones who actually pose a threat) use code? And you'd also think they'd be smart enough to use public telephones as well.
I don't know any terrorists real or otherwise, but I imagine anyone who's operating on pure emotion is going to be really stupid. I also imagine the pay sucks as well.
Public payphones where I live had a label on them stating that they were monitored. so I would think that a payphone would probally be a poor choice esp since it's not your property and there would be a record of the call somewhere. A pay as you go mobile would likely be a better choice. It's at least your property and you can pay cash for those suckers, but even then I'm sure there is a record of those people who don't claim the rebate but still pay as you go mobile to pay as you go mobile has got to be one of the more anonymous systems out there... well as long as you actually turn the sucker off.
Isn't the cost point close enough yet to just use hard drives instead for long term storage and not be too bad?
You can pick up OEM 250GB hard drives for around $100. Toss in a $50 USB case or a SATA case and you're looking at $1.67 a GB storage. Plus you're not limited to 4.5GB file size.
Fuji dvd-5 -r Prinables at newegg are $22 per 50 or 44cents each. That's under 10cents/gig for 235gigs. That's a factor of 16 difference. That's not a small number, that's a big number.
If talking DVD-9 8.5gigs well, those tend to be more costly, about $1.00 each for +r. But again that's 11cents/gig. Still a huge difference.
Physical space is a tad larger. Even in 4CD slim quad cases with the affixed label we're talking 56gig per 12 inches of shelf space, 102gigs if dvd-9.
It would be nice if some spiffy multidisc readers existed above and beyond tower duplicators. They did for CDs but they were none too popular. But unless you really need random access to more than 8.5gigs at a time sure. Otherwise I'd prefer not spending 16times as much for my storage needs.
While every culture has things in the past it's done it's not proud of, cannibalism may not be as horrid as it sounds.
You can dream up all sorts of spin (and you have), but that doesn't make it true. The fact is that healthy people were killed, butchered, and eaten regularly. It is horrid, and you should stop with the pathetic rationalization.
I should stop with the pathetic rationalization... with all due respect AC you are the one who dreamed up "if healthy people were killed, butchered, and eaten regularly... it is horrid...". Killing people it self is generally not the best thing to do but can be justified even by the morals of *most* people of today's age. The best and typicaly the only justification acceptable is a clear and present danger. Starving is hardly what one would call a pathetic rationalization. Sure there were cultures that practiced ritual sacrifice... the killing of healthy people... but it's the killing part that's horrid. I'd say it's just as bad to kill off 50 children and burn them so the sun will shine again than killing off 50 children and eating them. At least with eating them, though a very unhealthy habbit, it's something that will help you survive.
if an outcast would be provided with some basic weapon and tools, he might initially be off better during the bronze age, but as soon as his blade gets damaged he'll have to fall back on stone tools anyway, and may well lack the experience to make them efficiently.
I see where you are comming from, but you are not totally screwed with a broken blade. While it's true a single person would have a hard time finding the things needed to make copper or bronze, both stone and copper/bronze age people would have to find a nice quary to get good flint or rocks. But my vote would still be copper or bronze age... by this point we're talking animal husbandry and horseback riding. Look at the mongols for example. While i'm not sure if you could call them bronze age when they were riding cross eurasia they raided bronze age civilizations. An outcast at the very least could possibly find another settlement of people within a reasonable period of time, provided they didn't mind outsiders.
Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.
While every culture has things in the past it's done it's not proud of, cannibalism may not be as horrid as it sounds. If for example the society becomes sustainable it would make sence that something would need be done about it. Could be no more than self-sacrifice, some form of lottery, or simply the need to waste nothing. Or it could be one fell on a tribal hunt, the beast got away, and the wish of the fallen comrade was for the tribe to survive the winter. You might think it would be less cruel to for example eject individuals from your tribe for the sake of the whole, you would have to know the conditions of the outside enviroment and their perception of it to judge whether they were being cruel or kind. If we are talking a pre-copper age culture, I think I would rather die at home quickly than being left half eaten beign picked apart by the crows. If we are talking the copper/bronze ages expelsion might have been a kinder solution. At least a person could have some basic armor and a weapon, even a horse. It's silly to put things into moral context when no one needs morality when there isn't enough to eat.
Cannibalism is a total taboo today, we are wise enough to understand it's not a typicaly healthy habbit. But in it self it's neither evil or immoral. We probally get this belief from those who discovered this age old taboo was simply unhealthy and assumed some sky-god / earth-god was punishing us.
They come with software... they are I presume taxed when you purchase. Further they are already property. That makes it easy.
I'm sure you mean the software you can download to the phones, software that unless you are using pc to phone transfer isn't going to be on a physical disc. That would be harder... and that's the thing people, ordinary joes, think of software as that disc you bought in a store in a box.
the theory that it will "help kids learns" is bull. It might help grandma learn, but a normal kid will pickup any keyboard layout.
I remember being a kid and having to put up with the switch from kids computers to qwerty and well... I can tell you from my own memory that alphabetical is faster to pickup and type at a semi-reasonable speed. With all due respect to grandma, typewriters have been around longer than she has... and odds are she's at least used one even if she's hunting and pecking one can clearn hunt and peck and type at 20-35/words per min. Same with alphabetical, only with alphabetical your jamming along at 5wpm pretty much from day one so long as you know the abc song.
I'm not saying alphabetical is good... it's rather horrid... but it's consistent with the standard we are taught as children. I infact disagree with the idea of giving these blasted things to kids as it only leads to confusion... having to switch between adult and kids styles when it's painfully obvious that as adults it's qwerty that is the must useful.
Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him.
From time to time I can see my neighbors wireless connection. If I so desired I imagine I could mount an antenna and use it with with great reliability... granted that would be wrong but the fact of the matter is it's possible. In fact I just had a call last week about a friend setting up a new laptop and boom... instent wireless access... and was asking about the morality. As I couldn't see anything in jiwire on the subject, given the name is something like "linksys" or "dlink" or something generic I had to say it was probally not a free hotspot but some joker that didn't know any better. The moral thing to do would be to inform them of the condition and tell them to call technical support.
My point is, while I think this sort of think carries with it some bad mojo, and isn't quite ethical.... there are others who'd spy a unsecured connection, or even hack a secured one, for the obvious benifit of tapping someone else's bandwith with pretty much no accountability and very little risk.
Say you're driving along a two lane road (1 lane in both directions) stuck behind a slow truck. Cars are piled up behind you. I'm sure most drivers have been in this situation before. When you overtake the car behind you will move up to your old position stopping you from going back.
Not to speak of the simple fact that it's in your best interest on a staightway to be in the oncomming lane for as little as possible. In fact I was taught in driving school that +15mph over either the posted limit is acceptable. While I'm sure such a system would take this into account I prefer having the control my self... being able to make my choice for the given situation. Though I would not object to a GPS based cruse control that would offer me a reccomended speed given the traffic conditions and my option to use it or not.
This is the same thing as suing Coors or Budwiser for DUI deaths, or liver disease... addiction comes in all sorts of forms. You can't sue the maker of a legitimate product just because the person using said product has an addictive personality.
Actually... I seem to recall that there was one person who successfully sued some mfg. of spirits when her child was born with birth defects. Since then I there is a nice spiffy little warning label. And alcohol is not exactly the catagory of "legitimate" product... not like Methamphetamines which were onces prescribed like candy.
Not that I disagree with you. There is that film "Mazes and Monsters" staring a young Tom Hanks that revolves around a character who's so obsessed with a D&D style game after the death of his sibling IIRC he honestly believes that jumping off a skyscraper will result in some form of magical intervention that would reunite him with lost family. But as with this case of fiction it's generally accepted that anyone who can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy is well nuts... including the parents who showed this to their kids trying to get them to stop playing D&D.
To me, free music downloads from Usenet mean I get to preview my music before I buy it, no different to test driving a car before I buy it. When all said and done, if I download some music and don't like it, it's not even worth the waste of disk space keeping it and if it's a good piece of music then I want it in the clearest format possible to play on my nice shiny hi-fi.
To me... free music should be a vehicel to sell licensed CD cases, covers, bumperstickers and the like. I "could" pirate using an inkjet based printer but paper and ink would run me over $3.00. Publishers get their money, fans get that warm golden feeling from supporting the artists, inkjet mfgs are no longer exploiting this piracy cash cow, everyone is happy.
No matter which way you cut it, the moment you introduce a variable into the equation it's going to raise the costs. Assuming even the copyright holders were not bastards, which they are... you gotta employ people to keep track of the market value of tracks and makes bookkeeping more tedius. 99c each would actually encourage artists to actually produce songs worth paying for as opposed to the system of one or two singles and a bunch of filler crap which no one would pay for, but switching to variable pricing they can continue with one or two singles and a bunch of fillers that no bugger would buy anyway.
Re:There was a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit
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You must be referring to the 130XEP (?). It wasn't s***canned because of portability issues. It was canned because the Tramiel crew could not figure out the AMY sound chip coding. Tramiel had fired the majority of the Atari engineers after he purchased the company, and only they knew how to get the chip to function. Its a shame; the Atari 7800 could've really used the AMY sound chip added to a lot of its titles just as the POKEY (you may correct me if I am wrong - the standard soundchip of the 400/800/XL/XE computers) chip was added in game titles like *BallBlazer* to improve the sound capabilities. Hell, the ST computer line could've used the AMY chip as well.
This is where I get confused... I think it was the 65-XEM (M for Music) that was going to have the AMY chip. The 65-XEP (P for portable) would have been a luggable like the Commodore 64-sx and would have also sported a 3.5inch drive. Both protoypes, near as I'm aware only one of each was ever built. I'm sure there might have been a 130 version of these planned... just the only ones that existed were the 65.
All very good ideas... but what did atari produce last? The XE game system! Basicly the same bloody thing at the XE except with a detachable keyboard and huge pastel colored buttons. I have no clue what the hell Trammel was thinking... because this thing was released in 1987... carried a heavy price tag... and the library of games they re-released for the sucker were circa 1981-1983... games you could run on an atari 800... then there was Nintendo actually creating NEW games. It would have been spiffy keen in 1985... but this was 1987 and cartridges were that annoying overpriced technology that took up way too much space.
I think "that other odd ball disk drive that had the nice smoked plastic dust lid that foled down over the slot" was the Indus GT. I remember seeing it in Antic Magazine and wishing I had one... Ended up with a 1050 floppy drive in the end for my Atari 400... better than the 410 tape unit I had to endure for a few years.
That was it. I do remember having a bit of drive envy. Reality was you could get by with just a 810 as everything that was worth talking about was released on single density disk, much to everyone's annoyance. While I was pleased to have full 360k.... no bugger had the ability to read the disks.
There were some others too the ASTRA 1620 double drive springs to mind, a bargan costing only a little more than a single 1050.
There was a divide in the late 90's when older users felt the need to print out material in order to study it. Remember the huge dead tree weight that came in the form of manuals in the 80/90s? My dad couldn't properly study new material unless he first printed it out.
Personally I think printers at home are pretty much an extravagance.
That's true... totally an extravagance! I don't need to use my printer to do envelopes. I don't need word processing to type up my letters, I could use a pen. I don't need to label my CDs with an inkjet... I could use a sharpy. I don't need to make fancy full color covers, the jewel case is transparent I can see what's inside.
-But I gotta admit the printer comes in real handy- It's legible, unlike my handwriting, all the way down to 6points... 4points in a pinch. You try writing with a sharpy, at anything below 18point... or a felt tip at 8point. It for the most part is faster than handwriting, at least for letters and anything above and beyond 5 lines. Barcodes... barcodes... barcodes...
While I'm sure those of us who print almost exclusively in black and white are a minority, I will say that Epson inkjets (2200 and now 2400 as well as the more expensive 4800 and up) are phenomenal at producing both neutral or toned b&w prints on a huge range of matte (or glossy) archival paper stocks.
If B&W is really your bag... I mean really really your bag... you can get scaled black inks for many photo printers via third parties such as mediastreet or lyson.
Don't get me wrong... epson does a fab job in B&W... so does HP with their 8150 and 8750... the ones that have the optional #100 multi level grey cartridge IIRC. But... a 6 tank printer filled with various levels of black ink is going to have a bit of an edge over 2 or 3 tones of black.
Another important specification for inkjet printers is ink drop size, typically measured in picoliters. The smaller the number, the more ink per square inch can be placed on the paper. The more ink, the more accurate and lifelike the color of the print.
The above makes no sense to me.
The smaller the drop size, the more ink can be placed on the paper? So I can make a floor wetter with a small bucket than with a big one?
The artical in many ways is well crap... They are buying into this whole marketing business of smaller picoliters is better. And it's true 1pl is the smallest drop size that i'm aware brought to us by Canon first with the ip5000... the next smallest being the Epson r800 and r1800 at 1.5pl IIRC. But... here's the kicker... you could spend $550 for the r1800 with 1.5pl or $850 for the r2400 with 3.5pl.... both rated at 5760 x 1440 dpi... and anyone that has ever used the r2400 knows that it is an inkhog... a beautiful inkhog with very little notisable grain, but regardless an inkhog.
What they are not explaining is these printers with the ultra small dot size can get away with having just the primary colors through dithering than printers with larger dot size. But the reverse can be said as well... use of light primary inks and secondary colors means you can get away with dithering less.
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I feel this is why you had to consider archiving them or not. They show our cultural history in a way, and are insightful (obviously not insightful for their moral content)
I had to consider archiving them because I had to ask my self two questions.
1. Would I ever watch these again
The jazz and skat ones actually are as you say part of our cultural history. They do actually show a very power influence in American music and are worth it on that note. There are a few in that batch that I would not enjoy watching.
2. Would I show them to someone else
There are a few in that batch that are down right rude as hell. And i'm not talking Tom and Jerry blackface rude which... well to me isn't offencive but apparently the censors are none to fond of it.
But needless to say they're getting burnt onto cd. Otherwise they could be lost.
Star Trek shouldn't be applauded because they unknowingly had a gay helmsman, they should be remember for the other civil rights movement, such as having a character Uhura on board.
What makes me sad is the fact the people have pointed this out... because I never gave it a second thought. I guess it's actually important... the simple fact that they bought all these people together in a situation where it simply was no big deal.
This is a tad off topic but I recently watched the Warner Brothers banned 11 cartoons. Some of these I actually saw as a kid living in the south... and at the time I would have seen them I had no idea they were attempting to poke fun at african americans... I just assumed there were cool cats and cool dogs in a city called Harlem who were big on skat and jazz. Watching them now makes me feel rather ill. I had to ask my self whether I wanted to archive them or not... but without things like this... big names in Warner Brother's animation... creating these strongly racist cartoons because it again was "no big deal"... without these things people like Martin Luther King, Jr. would have had nothing to complain about... and women like Whoopi Goldberg who grew up with Sherly Temple reruns wouldn't have been excited to see Star Trek and exclaim, "Momma, there's a black lady on tv... and she ain't no maid".
So yes... I feel ashamed when I have to think about the fact that "I love Lucy" of all things was groundbreaking... a mixed marriage between I presume an Irish Catholic and a Cuban-born musician. I feel even more ashamed when I have to think about the fact that Star Trek featured the first African American woman who wasn't a maid. But I can feel some pride in the fact that much was accomplished over a period of 40 years... though i'll be another 40 years before we as a people trully understand that we share a planet.
why not just use a laptop with a internet connection to send email instead?
The battery life on a mobile phone with e-mail is a heck of alot longer than your typical laptop.
What if now that jerk is suddenly ten or twenty jerks yapping all around you in a confined space for several hours?
Put on some headphones. Listen to some music, watch the inflight movie, or better yet just put those ear buds in your ears without anything attached to it. Read a book...problem solved.
At least they are not trying to chat you up. I can tune out 20 or so people yapping about nothing, it's harder to tune out some yoyo sitting next to you wanting you to accept Jesus.
Not to nit pick but Toronto isn't in the states. It's in Canada. 8-D
Yes, it is. I was told that the medium Canadian accent sounded much like the American sports casters. I thought it was very strange as for the most part there are very few American sports casters the vast majority of them are imported, from Toronto.
That is one of the stupidest things I've ever read about terrorism. Do you pictures terrorists as running around screaming JIHAD ALLAH ACKBAR with bright red faces from all the blood pumping and emotion waving their arms around until they finally blow themselves up?
Well, I wouldn't say "jihad allah ackbar".... but basicly some exclamation depending on the background of the person and their reasons before promptly blowing them selves up. The might say "save the whales" before blowing them selves up... or "Accept Jesus"... or "freedom now"... or even "Damn Underpants gnomes". "Starbucks be damned" might be the exclamation.
You don't think they are capable of calming down from their religious driven rage long enough to plan an attack and have calm logical discussions where they work out intricate details?
Well I can't assume all terrorists are religious... but anyone with enough anger to want to blow up innocent lives simply is not operating on all 4 cylinders. I'm sorry. I'm sure you have a few smart people who take advantage of the rage invested jarheads giving them a wonderful outlet for their anger. But anyone "that" angry is going to end up spilling the beans to someone, either in person, by telephone, or PC... after all if it's important enough to blow people up over... your going to need to vent esp if as you say you're going to do some intricate planning. "Hey Billy Bob... you know that terrorism thing we were planning, well we better git our selves some scramblers because the *beast* has many heads and double the ears".
You show a serious lack of understanding of who the terrorists are and of course you show no understanding of Why they have a problem with us.
Actually you seem to be rather 9/11 obsessed. I wasn't speaking of middle eastern terrorism... I was rather speaking about anyone who *feels* blowing up people would be helpful. But yes... a luntic who blows something up only offering a 3 to 5 word exclamation i'm not going to understand their reasons... nor am I able to ask them. Well I could but I doubt any reply from little bits of person would be insightful. For the most part.. for the most part... anyone who does this is nuts. Perhaps if they were not nuts I might take the time to listen to their issues.
But yes, I imagine right before someone presses that button their heart is going super fast, and i'm sure their face would be beet red. The survival instinct is pretty strong and one simply has to do work to overcome that. I'm sure there are some disiplined people who could blow them selves up with calm face... but that I imagine would take work. It would be easier to find some jarhead jumping up and down with their exclamations to do it. No shortage of them.
Anyone thinking that a terrorist acts like a rabid dog just looking for infidels to kill is seriously underestimating the movitvations and mental state of the terrorist
If someone for example blew them selves up in a starbucks... I am going to think of them as a rabid loon and not listen to a damned thing they have to say. This isn't ignorance but a tactical solution. Any sort of act like that is going to have some sort of message attached to it... and the best defence is to ignore it... and only listen when they are not being a nutjob.
To borrow an idea from Thomas Paine... When terrorism becomes a pointless medium to spread a message... it's time to find a new medium. To quote Billy Bragg, "The revolution is just a t-shirt away".
Eccleston lends his own interpretation to the role, as have all the performers before him, but the resulting character is unmistakably The Doctor. Further, his companion, Rose, is not a ditz (don't let the peroxided hair fool you), but a very capable and driven person in her own right.
One thing I found interesting is a lack of RP (reserved pronunciation). Don't get me wrong I like the northern accents esp around Liverpool and Manchester. East-end is also not too bad. But the first episode I found I had to turn the subtitles on. "Joker sweet genius score on 'der de'sevens gymnastics team. I've got the bronze" threw me for a loop. I replayed this many times and heard the same bloody thing. It is for this reason, basicly a lack of annunciation that I find I miss RP. Just like in the states where the mid-west and Toronto are good places to get TV/radio announcers a standard for public speaking is a good idea... but I can see where it might be annoying to have the rest of the world assume everyone in that neighborhood uses RP.
> Australia, you insensitive clod!
Could be worse, could have been Olivia Newton John singing it. There are few things worse than Olivia Newton John.
Wouldn't real terrorists (y'know, the ones who actually pose a threat) use code? And you'd also think they'd be smart enough to use public telephones as well.
I don't know any terrorists real or otherwise, but I imagine anyone who's operating on pure emotion is going to be really stupid. I also imagine the pay sucks as well.
Public payphones where I live had a label on them stating that they were monitored. so I would think that a payphone would probally be a poor choice esp since it's not your property and there would be a record of the call somewhere. A pay as you go mobile would likely be a better choice. It's at least your property and you can pay cash for those suckers, but even then I'm sure there is a record of those people who don't claim the rebate but still pay as you go mobile to pay as you go mobile has got to be one of the more anonymous systems out there... well as long as you actually turn the sucker off.
Isn't the cost point close enough yet to just use hard drives instead for long term storage and not be too bad?
You can pick up OEM 250GB hard drives for around $100. Toss in a $50 USB case or a SATA case and you're looking at $1.67 a GB storage. Plus you're not limited to 4.5GB file size.
Fuji dvd-5 -r Prinables at newegg are $22 per 50 or 44cents each. That's under 10cents/gig for 235gigs. That's a factor of 16 difference. That's not a small number, that's a big number.
If talking DVD-9 8.5gigs well, those tend to be more costly, about $1.00 each for +r. But again that's 11cents/gig. Still a huge difference.
Physical space is a tad larger. Even in 4CD slim quad cases with the affixed label we're talking 56gig per 12 inches of shelf space, 102gigs if dvd-9.
It would be nice if some spiffy multidisc readers existed above and beyond tower duplicators. They did for CDs but they were none too popular. But unless you really need random access to more than 8.5gigs at a time sure. Otherwise I'd prefer not spending 16times as much for my storage needs.
You can dream up all sorts of spin (and you have), but that doesn't make it true. The fact is that healthy people were killed, butchered, and eaten regularly. It is horrid, and you should stop with the pathetic rationalization.
I should stop with the pathetic rationalization... with all due respect AC you are the one who dreamed up "if healthy people were killed, butchered, and eaten regularly... it is horrid...". Killing people it self is generally not the best thing to do but can be justified even by the morals of *most* people of today's age. The best and typicaly the only justification acceptable is a clear and present danger. Starving is hardly what one would call a pathetic rationalization. Sure there were cultures that practiced ritual sacrifice... the killing of healthy people... but it's the killing part that's horrid. I'd say it's just as bad to kill off 50 children and burn them so the sun will shine again than killing off 50 children and eating them. At least with eating them, though a very unhealthy habbit, it's something that will help you survive.
if an outcast would be provided with some basic weapon and tools, he might initially be off better during the bronze age, but as soon as his blade gets damaged he'll have to fall back on stone tools anyway, and may well lack the experience to make them efficiently.
I see where you are comming from, but you are not totally screwed with a broken blade. While it's true a single person would have a hard time finding the things needed to make copper or bronze, both stone and copper/bronze age people would have to find a nice quary to get good flint or rocks. But my vote would still be copper or bronze age... by this point we're talking animal husbandry and horseback riding. Look at the mongols for example. While i'm not sure if you could call them bronze age when they were riding cross eurasia they raided bronze age civilizations. An outcast at the very least could possibly find another settlement of people within a reasonable period of time, provided they didn't mind outsiders.
Every culture used to do some weird/nasty/mean things at some point.
While every culture has things in the past it's done it's not proud of, cannibalism may not be as horrid as it sounds. If for example the society becomes sustainable it would make sence that something would need be done about it. Could be no more than self-sacrifice, some form of lottery, or simply the need to waste nothing. Or it could be one fell on a tribal hunt, the beast got away, and the wish of the fallen comrade was for the tribe to survive the winter. You might think it would be less cruel to for example eject individuals from your tribe for the sake of the whole, you would have to know the conditions of the outside enviroment and their perception of it to judge whether they were being cruel or kind. If we are talking a pre-copper age culture, I think I would rather die at home quickly than being left half eaten beign picked apart by the crows. If we are talking the copper/bronze ages expelsion might have been a kinder solution. At least a person could have some basic armor and a weapon, even a horse. It's silly to put things into moral context when no one needs morality when there isn't enough to eat.
Cannibalism is a total taboo today, we are wise enough to understand it's not a typicaly healthy habbit. But in it self it's neither evil or immoral. We probally get this belief from those who discovered this age old taboo was simply unhealthy and assumed some sky-god / earth-god was punishing us.
> What about PDAs? Or mobile phones?
They come with software... they are I presume taxed when you purchase. Further they are already property. That makes it easy.
I'm sure you mean the software you can download to the phones, software that unless you are using pc to phone transfer isn't going to be on a physical disc. That would be harder... and that's the thing people, ordinary joes, think of software as that disc you bought in a store in a box.
the theory that it will "help kids learns" is bull. It might help grandma learn, but a normal kid will pickup any keyboard layout.
I remember being a kid and having to put up with the switch from kids computers to qwerty and well... I can tell you from my own memory that alphabetical is faster to pickup and type at a semi-reasonable speed. With all due respect to grandma, typewriters have been around longer than she has... and odds are she's at least used one even if she's hunting and pecking one can clearn hunt and peck and type at 20-35/words per min. Same with alphabetical, only with alphabetical your jamming along at 5wpm pretty much from day one so long as you know the abc song.
I'm not saying alphabetical is good... it's rather horrid... but it's consistent with the standard we are taught as children. I infact disagree with the idea of giving these blasted things to kids as it only leads to confusion... having to switch between adult and kids styles when it's painfully obvious that as adults it's qwerty that is the must useful.
Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him.
From time to time I can see my neighbors wireless connection. If I so desired I imagine I could mount an antenna and use it with with great reliability... granted that would be wrong but the fact of the matter is it's possible. In fact I just had a call last week about a friend setting up a new laptop and boom... instent wireless access... and was asking about the morality. As I couldn't see anything in jiwire on the subject, given the name is something like "linksys" or "dlink" or something generic I had to say it was probally not a free hotspot but some joker that didn't know any better. The moral thing to do would be to inform them of the condition and tell them to call technical support.
My point is, while I think this sort of think carries with it some bad mojo, and isn't quite ethical.... there are others who'd spy a unsecured connection, or even hack a secured one, for the obvious benifit of tapping someone else's bandwith with pretty much no accountability and very little risk.
Say you're driving along a two lane road (1 lane in both directions) stuck behind a slow truck. Cars are piled up behind you. I'm sure most drivers have been in this situation before. When you overtake the car behind you will move up to your old position stopping you from going back.
Not to speak of the simple fact that it's in your best interest on a staightway to be in the oncomming lane for as little as possible. In fact I was taught in driving school that +15mph over either the posted limit is acceptable. While I'm sure such a system would take this into account I prefer having the control my self... being able to make my choice for the given situation. Though I would not object to a GPS based cruse control that would offer me a reccomended speed given the traffic conditions and my option to use it or not.
This is the same thing as suing Coors or Budwiser for DUI deaths, or liver disease... addiction comes in all sorts of forms. You can't sue the maker of a legitimate product just because the person using said product has an addictive personality.
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Actually... I seem to recall that there was one person who successfully sued some mfg. of spirits when her child was born with birth defects. Since then I there is a nice spiffy little warning label. And alcohol is not exactly the catagory of "legitimate" product... not like Methamphetamines which were onces prescribed like candy.
http://print.injury.findlaw.com/accutane/articles
Not that I disagree with you. There is that film "Mazes and Monsters" staring a young Tom Hanks that revolves around a character who's so obsessed with a D&D style game after the death of his sibling IIRC he honestly believes that jumping off a skyscraper will result in some form of magical intervention that would reunite him with lost family. But as with this case of fiction it's generally accepted that anyone who can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy is well nuts... including the parents who showed this to their kids trying to get them to stop playing D&D.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/
To me, free music downloads from Usenet mean I get to preview my music before I buy it, no different to test driving a car before I buy it. When all said and done, if I download some music and don't like it, it's not even worth the waste of disk space keeping it and if it's a good piece of music then I want it in the clearest format possible to play on my nice shiny hi-fi.
To me... free music should be a vehicel to sell licensed CD cases, covers, bumperstickers and the like. I "could" pirate using an inkjet based printer but paper and ink would run me over $3.00. Publishers get their money, fans get that warm golden feeling from supporting the artists, inkjet mfgs are no longer exploiting this piracy cash cow, everyone is happy.
No matter which way you cut it, the moment you introduce a variable into the equation it's going to raise the costs. Assuming even the copyright holders were not bastards, which they are... you gotta employ people to keep track of the market value of tracks and makes bookkeeping more tedius. 99c each would actually encourage artists to actually produce songs worth paying for as opposed to the system of one or two singles and a bunch of filler crap which no one would pay for, but switching to variable pricing they can continue with one or two singles and a bunch of fillers that no bugger would buy anyway.
You must be referring to the 130XEP (?). It wasn't s***canned because of portability issues. It was canned because the Tramiel crew could not figure out the AMY sound chip coding. Tramiel had fired the majority of the Atari engineers after he purchased the company, and only they knew how to get the chip to function. Its a shame; the Atari 7800 could've really used the AMY sound chip added to a lot of its titles just as the POKEY (you may correct me if I am wrong - the standard soundchip of the 400/800/XL/XE computers) chip was added in game titles like *BallBlazer* to improve the sound capabilities. Hell, the ST computer line could've used the AMY chip as well.
p df/computers/8bits/amy1.pdf
This is where I get confused... I think it was the 65-XEM (M for Music) that was going to have the AMY chip. The 65-XEP (P for portable) would have been a luggable like the Commodore 64-sx and would have also sported a 3.5inch drive. Both protoypes, near as I'm aware only one of each was ever built. I'm sure there might have been a 130 version of these planned... just the only ones that existed were the 65.
http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/
All very good ideas... but what did atari produce last? The XE game system! Basicly the same bloody thing at the XE except with a detachable keyboard and huge pastel colored buttons. I have no clue what the hell Trammel was thinking... because this thing was released in 1987... carried a heavy price tag... and the library of games they re-released for the sucker were circa 1981-1983... games you could run on an atari 800... then there was Nintendo actually creating NEW games. It would have been spiffy keen in 1985... but this was 1987 and cartridges were that annoying overpriced technology that took up way too much space.
I think "that other odd ball disk drive that had the nice smoked plastic dust lid that foled down over the slot" was the Indus GT. I remember seeing it in Antic Magazine and wishing I had one... Ended up with a 1050 floppy drive in the end for my Atari 400... better than the 410 tape unit I had to endure for a few years.
That was it. I do remember having a bit of drive envy. Reality was you could get by with just a 810 as everything that was worth talking about was released on single density disk, much to everyone's annoyance. While I was pleased to have full 360k.... no bugger had the ability to read the disks.
There were some others too the ASTRA 1620 double drive springs to mind, a bargan costing only a little more than a single 1050.
There was a divide in the late 90's when older users felt the need to print out material in order to study it. Remember the huge dead tree weight that came in the form of manuals in the 80/90s? My dad couldn't properly study new material unless he first printed it out.
Personally I think printers at home are pretty much an extravagance.
That's true... totally an extravagance!
I don't need to use my printer to do envelopes. I don't need word processing to type up my letters, I could use a pen.
I don't need to label my CDs with an inkjet... I could use a sharpy.
I don't need to make fancy full color covers, the jewel case is transparent I can see what's inside.
-But I gotta admit the printer comes in real handy-
It's legible, unlike my handwriting, all the way down to 6points... 4points in a pinch. You try writing with a sharpy, at anything below 18point... or a felt tip at 8point.
It for the most part is faster than handwriting, at least for letters and anything above and beyond 5 lines.
Barcodes... barcodes... barcodes...
While I'm sure those of us who print almost exclusively in black and white are a minority, I will say that Epson inkjets (2200 and now 2400 as well as the more expensive 4800 and up) are phenomenal at producing both neutral or toned b&w prints on a huge range of matte (or glossy) archival paper stocks.
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If B&W is really your bag... I mean really really your bag... you can get scaled black inks for many photo printers via third parties such as mediastreet or lyson.
http://www.mediastreet.com/site/generations_gq.ht
http://www.lyson.com/quad-black-tone.html
Don't get me wrong... epson does a fab job in B&W... so does HP with their 8150 and 8750... the ones that have the optional #100 multi level grey cartridge IIRC. But... a 6 tank printer filled with various levels of black ink is going to have a bit of an edge over 2 or 3 tones of black.
The above makes no sense to me.
The smaller the drop size, the more ink can be placed on the paper? So I can make a floor wetter with a small bucket than with a big one?
The artical in many ways is well crap... They are buying into this whole marketing business of smaller picoliters is better. And it's true 1pl is the smallest drop size that i'm aware brought to us by Canon first with the ip5000... the next smallest being the Epson r800 and r1800 at 1.5pl IIRC. But... here's the kicker... you could spend $550 for the r1800 with 1.5pl or $850 for the r2400 with 3.5pl.... both rated at 5760 x 1440 dpi... and anyone that has ever used the r2400 knows that it is an inkhog... a beautiful inkhog with very little notisable grain, but regardless an inkhog.
What they are not explaining is these printers with the ultra small dot size can get away with having just the primary colors through dithering than printers with larger dot size. But the reverse can be said as well... use of light primary inks and secondary colors means you can get away with dithering less.