Um, is it just me, or are all MMORPGs actually centrally administered, with a set of rules that could be arbitrarily changed by the host company?
Gee, sounds like an authoritarian setup to me.
Oh, but within the (possibily labile) boundaries of the rules, you're able to do as you like. Or, as the imprisoned freedom fighters are so often quoted as saying "within the confines of my prison cell, I am absolutely free."
I supposed you could argue that the world is like that too (especially if you believe in a Supreme Being), and that we are free within the constraints of the rules... but the whole idea seems like the author trying to take a phenomenon, and force it to prove a point that he wants to make.
... of Rube Waddell, San Francisco's premiere Blues-cabaret-folk-country-punk-Gospel-vaudeville band.
They create many of their own instruments out of random detritus.
Also, gotta give a shout out to my former compatriot and his band Ballyrag. Check out pictures of The Thing (a unique bass / keyboard combo that Dan built).
And hey, while I type this, I've been tapping a foot against my Tower PC, thumping it into the wall, which makes for a good bass line rhythm. Careful, or I'll start singing...
I've never done anagama, but I have done pit firing, which satisfies the pyromaniac in me... even if we are burning cow chips.
But these days, I've been using a dark, black cone-10 clay (Laguna's "Dark Brown") that doesn't really need much in the way of glaze, especially if you fire in a strong reduction. I'd hate to think what rare-earth isotopes are floating around in it, though.
And hey, I don't do particularly functional ware anyway.
Hey, as a potter, you're probably getting a few handfuls more radiation than the general populace just by virtue of your glaze materials.
But then, if you do exclusively anagama, that's not a problem.
I had a high school physics prof bring in some happy yellow Fiestaware bowls that she bought in New Mexico when she was working on the bomb. That yellow was from the Uranium Oxide in the glaze. Those things got the Geiger counter screaming, I can tell you. "How'd you like to eat your Wheaties from that?" she'd ask.
I often wonder what isotopes my cobalt carbonate or manganese have in 'em...
Why would you speak English? After all, America isn't England.
And hey, the word "Dictionary" comes from Latin, and America's not Italian. "Speak" comes from Old English (see above note on U.S. not being England). Hell, even the name "America" comes from an Italian guy's name.
Guys at the computer lab used to print females all the time, even way back in the early '90s. Especially when they got that alt.binaries feed.
Or does this one actually print real females?
Re:It goes deeper than that
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It was someone.
Ah, the sorry state of education in this country. I'm gonna start sounding like one of those bitter old men always talking about how the world's going to hell in a handbasket. Oh. Wait. I *am* a bitter old man, always talking about how the world's going to hell in a handbasket.
For your edification, Werner Heisenberg stated that "the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa" (when observing particles). This, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, is an English translation of a German rephrasing of an equasion, originating in Quantum physics.
In any case, it is often applied more generally to observation having an effect on the thing being observed, but is not a general rule outside of the Quantum realm. For example, I don't materially alter a building by taking its picture. There are passive sensors that, macroscopically, at least, have no significant effect.
The Hyperion Sewage Treatment facility, down over Dockweiler Beach, dumps out sewage-related gasses to the Scattergood Power Station.
The best document I can find online today suggests that Scattergood generates 50 Megawatts. I seem to recall having seen other online documents that provided a lot more detail -- it's possible that those documents have been taken down for "security" reasons.
In any case, it's converting one set of pollutants (sewer gas, methane, etc) into another (CO2, NOx), and generating power in the meantime. Without knowing all the details, it seems like a pretty good idea to me; there are probably aspects that I don't understand that might change my views.
Howsabout the Kyocera 7135? It doesn't have the memory built-in (it takes an SD/MMC card to supplement the 16M built-in). Serves as a PDA, tri-band phone, and MP3 player.
It's nominally $500 (but you can get 'em for easily $100 less), and a 256M memory card would set you back $70-$100 or so. Call the whole thing $500. I guess that's higher than the threshold you set, but it's getting close.
This supports my pet theory, that cows are actually from outer space.
They created humanity in order to tend the fields for them, but somewhere along the line, the plan went horribly, terriby wrong for the ruminants.
O'Leary's cow was trying to call in some airstrikes to inspire the resistance. Yet another dismal failure for the Glorious Extraterrestrial Cow Revolution...
Re:Other mappable relationship environments?
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I've seen it demonstrated... maybe.
I worked in the Aerospace industry, in a building that handled classified info, and, not surprisingly, was also a Faraday cage.
Vans would sit in the parking lot and point big antennas at the building. We were informed that these were security audits by "some three letter agency" (which, in this case, would probably be DIA, not NSA, but who knows... coulda been KGB for all I know).
Anyway, on one security day, they did a demo. I mean, really, they could have been playing us a video tape and we wouldn't have known, but it seemed pretty convincing. They pointed the antenna at a nearby unshielded building, and brought up someone's screen (they were doing a powerpoint on department budgets). It was pretty hard to read, but you could do it.
There are anti-TEMPEST fonts available that, evidently, are much harder to capture using this technique. There are background static programs that render the technique useless, but also give the user a whanging headache...
Bat-Boy has been photographed out on the town with Lisa-Marie!
Hm.
Well, two-headed snakes are not all that exceedingly rare. I've not heard of three-headed reptiles or amphibians, but I have seen frogs with six or more legs, had a friend who was born with a six fingers on each hand, and once had a pet cat with three extra paws. The system seems pretty well written, but there are still some bugs.
And among those 37% of non-voters too cynical to bitch, 4% are too bitchy to be truly cynical, 12% are only cynical in a post-ironic, postmodern sort of way, and 18% are prone to state that 94.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Meanwhile, among the bright, shiny, freshly scrubbed faces of the kids who vote and think it counts for something, 12% didn't know how to use the damn poll equipment, 32.5% accidentally voted for the wrong candidate, and 74% had their votes electronically altered by a compromised Diebold machine to vote for Dick Cheney.
While I don't know about this particular case, and haven't researched it, I can say that Safire really lacks credibility.
For the most public example, he published a column where he took Bush to task for not returning directly to the White House on September 11th. Obviously, the administration put pressure on him, and he published a follow-up column where he claimed to have been shown "conclusive" evidence that the terrorists had special codes that indicated they knew where Air Force 1 was (see this teaser. Regardless of the wisdom of Bush going directly back to the White House that day, I don't believe for a minute that al Queda had transponder frequencies to contact AF1.
So you might ask yourself why Safire is talking about how glorious and clever the CIA was "back in the day," particularly when the administration is claiming that the agency is responsible for the whole Iraq mess...
I know that one of the experiments that was done involved trying to get bacteria to lay down magnetite to manufacture a higher-quality audio recording tape in the late 70s. I don't know if it was successful.
I know there was speculation that some of the silicon-fixing bacteria could be used for making better silicon wafers. Again, this was in the early 80s, so I suspect that other technologies have improved so quickly that it's never been really seriously considered.
Crazy stuff, though.
OT: Heinz Lowenstam used to show people a demo, where he'd hold a magnet under a clear plastic box of diatomaceous earth, scraps of coral, shells, and chiton teeth. It was amazing to watch the teeth skitter out from the other debris.
At one point, several creatures whose teeth he'd test showed iron crystals. So he tried human baby teeth (specifically mine). I'm sorry to say that I have no magnetite in my teeth, or, at least, that I didn't when I was a kid.
There are a lot of biomineralization processes out there at the microscopic level.
Chitons (a sea creature that looks like the ancient Trilobytes and/or women's shavers from the 70s) have iron-plated teeth: they have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that lay down magnetite crystals very precisely.
Actually, magnetite's a big one for micoscopic biomineralization. Lots of animals have it in their brains, and use it for navigation.
For more information on cool biomineralization, do a google search on Heinz Lowenstam's groundbreaking work, or research done by Steve Weiner, and Joe Kirschvink (this list is nothing like an exhaustive one: they just happen to be three people I knew/know who research the subject).
There's some amazing stuff out there. Even many species of rat have iron crystals strengthening the surface of their teeth.
Perhaps he meant "wallah" or "walla," the Hindi suffix for "one who does" or "one who deals with." Its' a good suffix for creating descriptive terms: the taxiwallah is a synonym for "cabbie," the rickshawwallah is the poor guy who carries the rickshaw, while the datawallah is the guy who flips bits for you when you write code.
Perhaps the grandparent reference is to the "platterwallah," who spins up hard drives for the upper castes. Incidentally, while they may sound similar, the platterwallahs don't like being confused for dishwallahs, as they don't clean dishes.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, is it just me, or are all MMORPGs actually centrally administered, with a set of rules that could be arbitrarily changed by the host company?
Gee, sounds like an authoritarian setup to me.
Oh, but within the (possibily labile) boundaries of the rules, you're able to do as you like. Or, as the imprisoned freedom fighters are so often quoted as saying "within the confines of my prison cell, I am absolutely free."
I supposed you could argue that the world is like that too (especially if you believe in a Supreme Being), and that we are free within the constraints of the rules... but the whole idea seems like the author trying to take a phenomenon, and force it to prove a point that he wants to make.
... of Rube Waddell, San Francisco's premiere Blues-cabaret-folk-country-punk-Gospel-vaudeville band.
They create many of their own instruments out of random detritus.
Also, gotta give a shout out to my former compatriot and his band Ballyrag. Check out pictures of The Thing (a unique bass / keyboard combo that Dan built).
And hey, while I type this, I've been tapping a foot against my Tower PC, thumping it into the wall, which makes for a good bass line rhythm. Careful, or I'll start singing...
I ruin more pieces by glazing...
... even if we are burning cow chips.
I've never done anagama, but I have done pit firing, which satisfies the pyromaniac in me
But these days, I've been using a dark, black cone-10 clay (Laguna's "Dark Brown") that doesn't really need much in the way of glaze, especially if you fire in a strong reduction. I'd hate to think what rare-earth isotopes are floating around in it, though.
And hey, I don't do particularly functional ware anyway.
Hey, as a potter, you're probably getting a few handfuls more radiation than the general populace just by virtue of your glaze materials.
But then, if you do exclusively anagama, that's not a problem.
I had a high school physics prof bring in some happy yellow Fiestaware bowls that she bought in New Mexico when she was working on the bomb. That yellow was from the Uranium Oxide in the glaze. Those things got the Geiger counter screaming, I can tell you. "How'd you like to eat your Wheaties from that?" she'd ask.
I often wonder what isotopes my cobalt carbonate or manganese have in 'em...
Ah, yes.
I've heard of rumors of the giant, self-cooking Chicken Kiev...
Damn. You beat me to it!
Oh, about $35k on artists who created "screen shots," plus about $300k in PR and taking game magazine columnists out for lunch, booze, & hookers.
They haven't actually spent anything on development yet. They're just waiting for the time to be right.
Why would you speak English? After all, America isn't England.
And hey, the word "Dictionary" comes from Latin, and America's not Italian. "Speak" comes from Old English (see above note on U.S. not being England). Hell, even the name "America" comes from an Italian guy's name.
Perhaps if you looked in a good dictionary you'd find it.
For the record, the word's Yiddish in this context. Literally, it means "penis," but is used as a synonym for "asshole."
Oddly, in German, it means "jewelry." One could draw some odd conclusions on etymology, were one so inclined.
You're right, actually. City of Los Angeles owns the harbor.
That narrow strip of land is owned by LA because powerful interests didn't want San Pedro to own the harbor. I think it dates back to the 1920s...
Dockside in Los Angeles?
Perhaps you mean the Port of Los Angeles, down in San Pedro? Or Marina del Rey? Hm...
Anyway, to answer your question, it would make a Big Fucking Mess.
Guys at the computer lab used to print females all the time, even way back in the early '90s. Especially when they got that alt.binaries feed.
Or does this one actually print real females?
It was someone.
Ah, the sorry state of education in this country. I'm gonna start sounding like one of those bitter old men always talking about how the world's going to hell in a handbasket. Oh. Wait. I *am* a bitter old man, always talking about how the world's going to hell in a handbasket.
For your edification, Werner Heisenberg stated that "the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa" (when observing particles). This, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, is an English translation of a German rephrasing of an equasion, originating in Quantum physics.
In any case, it is often applied more generally to observation having an effect on the thing being observed, but is not a general rule outside of the Quantum realm. For example, I don't materially alter a building by taking its picture. There are passive sensors that, macroscopically, at least, have no significant effect.
The Hyperion Sewage Treatment facility, down over Dockweiler Beach, dumps out sewage-related gasses to the Scattergood Power Station.
The best document I can find online today suggests that Scattergood generates 50 Megawatts. I seem to recall having seen other online documents that provided a lot more detail -- it's possible that those documents have been taken down for "security" reasons.
In any case, it's converting one set of pollutants (sewer gas, methane, etc) into another (CO2, NOx), and generating power in the meantime.
Without knowing all the details, it seems like a pretty good idea to me; there are probably aspects that I don't understand that might change my views.
Forgot to add in a good reference page:
http://mp3.about.com/cs/buymp3music/
They list a lot of places where you can buy music in MP3 format.
I know they're questionable due to privacy and patent concerns, but they have a lot of music you can buy for download.
What's more, they have a lot of music you can legally download for free.
You're not going to find Top-10 and latest releases there, but there's at least a start...
Howsabout the Kyocera 7135? It doesn't have the memory built-in (it takes an SD/MMC card to supplement the 16M built-in). Serves as a PDA, tri-band phone, and MP3 player.
It's nominally $500 (but you can get 'em for easily $100 less), and a 256M memory card would set you back $70-$100 or so. Call the whole thing $500. I guess that's higher than the threshold you set, but it's getting close.
This supports my pet theory, that cows are actually from outer space.
They created humanity in order to tend the fields for them, but somewhere along the line, the plan went horribly, terriby wrong for the ruminants.
O'Leary's cow was trying to call in some airstrikes to inspire the resistance. Yet another dismal failure for the Glorious Extraterrestrial Cow Revolution...
I've seen it demonstrated ... maybe.
I worked in the Aerospace industry, in a building that handled classified info, and, not surprisingly, was also a Faraday cage.
Vans would sit in the parking lot and point big antennas at the building. We were informed that these were security audits by "some three letter agency" (which, in this case, would probably be DIA, not NSA, but who knows... coulda been KGB for all I know).
Anyway, on one security day, they did a demo. I mean, really, they could have been playing us a video tape and we wouldn't have known, but it seemed pretty convincing. They pointed the antenna at a nearby unshielded building, and brought up someone's screen (they were doing a powerpoint on department budgets). It was pretty hard to read, but you could do it.
There are anti-TEMPEST fonts available that, evidently, are much harder to capture using this technique. There are background static programs that render the technique useless, but also give the user a whanging headache...
Bat-Boy has been photographed out on the town with Lisa-Marie!
Hm.
Well, two-headed snakes are not all that exceedingly rare. I've not heard of three-headed reptiles or amphibians, but I have seen frogs with six or more legs, had a friend who was born with a six fingers on each hand, and once had a pet cat with three extra paws. The system seems pretty well written, but there are still some bugs.
And among those 37% of non-voters too cynical to bitch, 4% are too bitchy to be truly cynical, 12% are only cynical in a post-ironic, postmodern sort of way, and 18% are prone to state that 94.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Meanwhile, among the bright, shiny, freshly scrubbed faces of the kids who vote and think it counts for something, 12% didn't know how to use the damn poll equipment, 32.5% accidentally voted for the wrong candidate, and 74% had their votes electronically altered by a compromised Diebold machine to vote for Dick Cheney.
While I don't know about this particular case, and haven't researched it, I can say that Safire really lacks credibility.
For the most public example, he published a column where he took Bush to task for not returning directly to the White House on September 11th. Obviously, the administration put pressure on him, and he published a follow-up column where he claimed to have been shown "conclusive" evidence that the terrorists had special codes that indicated they knew where Air Force 1 was (see this teaser. Regardless of the wisdom of Bush going directly back to the White House that day, I don't believe for a minute that al Queda had transponder frequencies to contact AF1.
So you might ask yourself why Safire is talking about how glorious and clever the CIA was "back in the day," particularly when the administration is claiming that the agency is responsible for the whole Iraq mess...
I know that one of the experiments that was done involved trying to get bacteria to lay down magnetite to manufacture a higher-quality audio recording tape in the late 70s. I don't know if it was successful.
I know there was speculation that some of the silicon-fixing bacteria could be used for making better silicon wafers. Again, this was in the early 80s, so I suspect that other technologies have improved so quickly that it's never been really seriously considered.
Crazy stuff, though.
OT:
Heinz Lowenstam used to show people a demo, where he'd hold a magnet under a clear plastic box of diatomaceous earth, scraps of coral, shells, and chiton teeth. It was amazing to watch the teeth skitter out from the other debris.
At one point, several creatures whose teeth he'd test showed iron crystals. So he tried human baby teeth (specifically mine). I'm sorry to say that I have no magnetite in my teeth, or, at least, that I didn't when I was a kid.
There are a lot of biomineralization processes out there at the microscopic level.
Chitons (a sea creature that looks like the ancient Trilobytes and/or women's shavers from the 70s) have iron-plated teeth: they have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that lay down magnetite crystals very precisely.
Actually, magnetite's a big one for micoscopic biomineralization. Lots of animals have it in their brains, and use it for navigation.
For more information on cool biomineralization, do a google search on Heinz Lowenstam's groundbreaking work, or research done by Steve Weiner, and Joe Kirschvink (this list is nothing like an exhaustive one: they just happen to be three people I knew/know who research the subject).
There's some amazing stuff out there. Even many species of rat have iron crystals strengthening the surface of their teeth.
Perhaps he meant "wallah" or "walla," the Hindi suffix for "one who does" or "one who deals with." Its' a good suffix for creating descriptive terms: the taxiwallah is a synonym for "cabbie," the rickshawwallah is the poor guy who carries the rickshaw, while the datawallah is the guy who flips bits for you when you write code.
Perhaps the grandparent reference is to the "platterwallah," who spins up hard drives for the upper castes. Incidentally, while they may sound similar, the platterwallahs don't like being confused for dishwallahs, as they don't clean dishes.