I agree -- I want a micropayment style service. I would prefer to set up an account and not pay a subscription fee. Then, if I download 15 songs in a month, I'll get a one time charge of ~$15 at the end of the month.
I've been one of the people saying over and over that if I could reliably download a legal MP3 for $0.99, I would much prefer that over P2P. But, as a general rule, I would not pay $9.95 or $14.95 a month for the right to do so
I *might* consider it if I got 10 or 15 downloads "free" per month, but even then I don't want to enter into a commitment contract (not even a "cancel at any time" one).
Where the art and the science of algorithms diverge is in their implementation. Does a bubble sort in hand optimized assembly language on 3GHz machine beat a quicksort written in GW Basic running on an antique 386? What differences are there between data already stored in memory vs. sorting data that is on a remote server? What if two algorithms are both O(n), but one's "operations" involves multiple calls to slow libraries, the other one involves just two integer compares.
I know the question raised was on the correct analysis of the algorithm in question, but several of these postings have diverged into languages and types of data. This is good and it is the whole point of a well grounded CS education -- knowing all of the strengths and weaknesses of available algorithms so you can make the correct choices based on the size and type of the data and the language (and libraries of choice).
Large HDTV monitor: $3000 Progressive Scan DVD player: $300 Fairly good surround sound: $700 Total: $4000
Movie for 2: $20 (if you don't have to pay a babysitter)
So, assuming you've got the room and the money, a home theater breaks even at 200 trips to the theater. Before I had kids, we went to the movies twice a week sometimes, so that would be 2 years. Now, we go maybe once every two months (but sometimes with kids, so call it every month). At that rate, it would take 16 years to break even.
Of course, we watch plenty of movies at home now on DVD (on a 27" TV with a $300 surround sound system and a $100 DVD player).
What does this all mean? I have no idea, I just wanted to play with the numbers...
Attack of the Clones (which was, to me, much better than The Phantom Menace) is the only Star Wars film that I only saw once at the theatre. Back in my pre-college days, I saw A New Hope probably 20 times, Empire nearly as many, even Jedi got 5-10 movie tickets out me. I saw Phantom Menace 3 times in the theatre (once at the Midnight premier, once to see if I was too sleepy to really enjoy it -- naa, it was that bad), and once more with my Dad because he hadn't seen it and I had nothing better to do.
However, I will buy Clones on DVD -- probably on the day it comes out.
I did see Spiderman twice at the theater. I have a "home theater" of sorts, but I still prefer seeing them on the big screen (although I usually pick matinees or late features on weeknights to avoid the idiots).
1. The limited range is, evidently, intentional. The first generation cars had much higher range, but with only 2 or 4 channels (depending on your country), it was hard to run simultaneous races without interference, so they put limiters on the transmitters. My ZipZaps car has a range of about 10' max.
2. While proportional steering would be nice, the response time is fast enough to make fairly precision turns once you get the hang of it. Changing the gearing, tires, and suspension can also greatly affect your steering. With the fastest motor from Radio Shack and the slick tires, You can make drifting 180 degree spin turns, or tap the throttle and steering to make wider turns.
3. This is a marketing gimmick to a large extent. The stock starter kits have the slowest motor. You have to buy the performance kits to get the faster ones (more $$). I did find a few sites with pictures of tracks in Japan that concentrate on obstacles and steering, so there are reasons to use the slower motors and different gear ratios to optimize your car for different tracks. If you are just zipping around the kitchen floor annoying the cat, just put in the fastest one you can find.
Radio Shack -- you've got questions? we've got blank stares...
Well, I had been considering laser surgery for my vision, but since reading other/.ers posts about it has left me with severe nausea and the cold sweats, maybe I'm not cut out for it.
Reminds me of the time a friend drove me to have my vasectomy (which, by the way, should be done under general anesthesia, but isn't). On the way back, he asked me what the procedure was like. I told him. He had to pull over on the side of the road because he was afraid he was going to pass out. I didn't feel like driving, either, so we sat on the side of the road until he regained his composure.
First, an obligatory link to Robert Zubrin's books The Case For Mars and Entering Space. Sure, he has an agenda, but he presents some compelling facts about why the moon isn't that hot of an idea.
Secondly, I have, big surprise, lost faith with NASA (largely due to reading the above two books). The description of the cost plus accounting used by government contractors alone is enough to realize why we aren't, at least, watching The Mars Colony Channel on TV.
The best hope for opening up space is commercial exploitation or prize money. What if the government (any government) said, we have $20 billion sitting in a trust fund. The first company to send a manned crew to the moon (or mars) and back gets the money and an exclusive contract with the government?
The second best hope is that China, Japan, India, the EU, or any combination of the above starts kicking our butt and making money in space. They've already shown that they can launch satellites cheaper. When there is a Chinese space hotel or a Japanese moonbase (and especially if they are making money), there will be a new "space race". When someone makes a suborbital jet and FedEx realizes they can send packages from North America to China in a couple of hours and the Concorde crowd realizes that a few $K more will let them orbit around the earth on their business and pleasure trips (and each trip drops off a few rocket assisted satellites while they are 100 miles or so up), then we should be seeing some real effort being put into planetary exploration and colonization.
Actually, the best hope is that all of that Middle East oil money goes into the funding of the Islamic State of Luna. That would get the Americans off their ass and into space.
We are right at the 100 year anniversary of the first airplane flight and flying is now ubiquitous and commonplace. We are at the 40 year anniversary of manned space flight and there hasn't been that much improvement. Yeah, the shuttle is cool, but the fleet is old and it is waaay too expensive.
I was in Electronics Boutique scrouging through the cheap box and I overhead a salesman talking to a customer. The customer was trying to decide which system to buy. The salesman asked if he wanted to use it often as a DVD player. The customer said yes. The salesman said to buy an X-Box because the PS2 couldn't handle the constant reads from the DVD without overheating and beginning to have problems. He said they had several returns of PS2's because of drive problems, mostly related to heavy DVD watching. He thought the X-Box handled it better, even though he liked the PS2 better for games.
My daughter (11 years old, sixth grade) recently had to write an essay. They were to turn in a handwritten rough draft and a final copy. The final copy was, preferably, to be typed.
She wrote the rough draft and I edited it, including marking spelling mistakes even though I knew the word processor would find them. Then I had her type it. When she was finished, I looked over her shoulder and made her fix some formatting mistakes. She printed it out and turned it in.
Afterwords, I got to thinking. Back in the dark ages, when I was in school, papers weren't typed until we were a junior or senior in high school. As a result, even with a rough draft, edit, rewrite cycle, the handwritten papers we turned in were likely to be full of mistakes, but the teacher knew damned sure that we had written them (at least in the applying pen/pencil to paper sense). We typed them on typewriters, so even the typed ones were pretty bad at times (actually, by then *I* had a C64 and used SpeedScript, which I typed in out of Compute! magazine). Except for the rough draft, there was nothing in my daughter's paper that would possibly tell the teacher that she had written (or typed) it. This bothers me a bit.
On another project, for science class, I set up a template for her on Visio and showed her how to type and paste information and pictures into it and adjust the layout. The result was very professional, but, again, a bit too professional and perfect to actually assess her contributions to the project. I'm not sure how this does, or should, affect her grades.
BTW (I've been trying my best to avoid netspeak for this post, but I it was hard), the primary problem with spell checkers (even grammar checkers) is homophones and just plain wrong words. My personal pet peeve is 'loose' for 'lose' and 'looser' for 'loser'. I've seen this crop up way too often in "professional" documentation, such as the rules for a game I was reviewing a few weeks ago.
Before I get blasted for being completely off topic: As elitist as it sounds, I think all written assignments in school should be written and graded based on clearly defined standard English. Besides, you have to really fight your word processor to keep it from flagging l337, r, u, and ur, dont u?
My neighbor switched to a pushreel mower and she really likes it. I've borrowed it a few times and had the same problems you described. The standard answer is that you have to train yourself and your grass. She said the first 4-6 times she used it, it was frustrating and she wasn't happy with the results. Eventually, either she got the hang of it or the grass got to the right height and texture to handle it. It is a bit ragged and you have to go over some spots a few times from different directions. My biggest gripe was that we have ~10 large trees on our lot and I don't like picking up all of the small twigs before I mow. My horrible, loud, polluting gas mower just chews them up.
It hasn't been a problem this year because we haven't watered or fertilized and our grass (where there is grass) hasn't grown. I mowed once a week during the spring, twice in July, once in August, and its about time to mow again.
I think I would be happy with ivy, moss, and clover. I've seen yards that were all ivy and I don't like the effect, but I've got ivy and vinca growing around some of my trees and I don't try to fight it back too much.
Only peripherally related to this: Does anyone know what I can grow under some huge oak and hickory trees that doesn't require *any* sun (these spots just don't get any). I've thought of just giving up and using rocks and bark to landscape the area, but it gets covered with leaves in the fall and you can rake rocks too easily (and I hate leaf blowers).
Actually, I should have said "Lunch, for us" was salad or a sandwich, since we typically ate on the run and saved our money for dinner. I do understand that lunch is a major affair.
I didn't expect to find large sizes at boutiques, but the tourist T-shirt stand thing really surprised me. We tried Tati, but it seem more just "Wal-Mart" type clothes and we were trying to find souvenirs for *ahem* larger relatives...
Finally, I agree about the exercise from walking. We didn't even consider driving and we used the Metro frequently, but I'll bet I still walked more in that week that I did in the previous 2 months.
At the supermarket, I definitely buy much more fresh produce than prepared foods. My undoing has nothing to do with my shopping/cooking habits and everything to do with inactivity, fast food, and soft drinks (all of which I am currently working on changing).
I don't eat ice cream, I don't eat potato chips, I don't eat candy bars (well, I do occasionally, but not daily or even weekly). I always cook healthy meals (which I sometimes overindulge in), but, as I said, it is the sodas, fast food, buffet places (which are easy if you are lazy about decided where to eat and you have dozens of things to do after work with kids and family), and eating out in general that put the weight on.
As other posters have noticed, food is relatively cheap in the U.S. and most chain restaurant try to impress you with quantity more than quality.
The most weight I ever lost was on a "low fat" diet, but, in retrospect, that was probably due to the fact that I decreased my overall caloric intake and, pretty much, only ate food that I prepared. If I was eating out, I pretty much stuck with salad, pasta, or grilled fish. That is pretty much the "diet" I am on now, with less emphasis on "fat grams" and more on portions, preparation, and calories (and exercise).
When I was on the low fat diet, I was reading Covert Bailey's book (I think Fit or Fat). I automatically think most diet book people are quacks, so I did some outside research. I was most impressed by his chapters on exercise. Specifically, that when you do aerobic exercise, you don't start burning fat reserves until your glucogen supply is depleted. This happens at the "second wind" stage, usually after about 20 minutues of exercise, so the first 20 are essentially wasted. Also, that weight and strength training are very important, not because they burn fat, but because if you have a large muscle mass, just walking up stairs burns more calories. This is contrary to the "I'm so fat that just walking up stairs is good exercise for me" idea.
He also pointed out some scary things about how you develop fat in your body. Once you are out of high school/college, you become more sedentary. Your muscles start weakening and are replaced with intramuscular fat. So, for 5 or 10 years, you keep your waistline and your clothes still fit, but your body fat ratio is increasing. Once you get saturated with intramuscular fat, it starts in on your gut and love handles. Then you say, I'm a little fat. If that goes unchecked, it moves on to your arms, legs, neck, back, and chest. At this point, it really starts putting a strain on your heart and lungs. When you start dieting and exercising, you lose it in reverse order, so when you can fit into your size 32 (or 28) jeans again, you still have a ways to go to get back into peak shape.
This may be BS, but it fits my pattern quite well and explains that nice feeling you have during your 20's when you think you can eat whatever you want and not gain weight.
"But to claim that restaurant portions in Europe are smaller? I don't buy it, not for a second."
I sorta buy it, judging from my recent trip to Paris. Breakfast is always bread and coffee. Lunches seems to be mostly salads and/or bread. Sandwiches were universally *big* breads with a little meat and cheese. Soda is more expensive than beer or (cheap) wine.
Dinners were long and complex. Never assume that dinner will take less than 1.5 hours. When you eat several courses over an hour or so, you get full way before you overeat. The largest portion we recieved (and the most horrifyingly unhealthy, but delicious thing we had) was a cassoulet with duck, several types of sausage, ham hocks, butterbeans, and God knows what else served in a crock. I swear this stuff had a 1/2" of fat on top and damn was it good.
Now, knowing all of this, you might be surprised that it was 100% completely impossible to find large clothing. Even in the most blatent "ripoff the tourist" shops, their selection of XL T-shirts was very small and they didn't get any bigger. If you are women, expect that you cannot buy clothes in Paris if you are larger than a 10. I'm not sure if this is cause or effect -- are people so thin that it is not economically sound to stock large sizes, or are people thin because, otherwise, they would have to go naked or wear togas?
Ditto on the richness (often due to fats) and overeating bit.
If I don't watch it, I will gorge myself on stir fry, pasta, red meat, etc. The other night I cooked Alton Brown's Beef Stroganoff recipe.
This was not a high fat recipe, but it did use a total of about 3-4 tablespoons of butter and a bit less oil and a lot of stew beef browned in seasoned flour. It develops a dark and very rich wine and beef broth sauce/gravy to which you stir in about 4 tablespoons of sour cream at the end. Plus about a pound of mushrooms and some garlic and onions. Yum.
All in all, this was one of the best meals I have ever cooked and my family agreed. As good as it was, I barely finished one plate of it (but that was fine, I had plenty of leftovers). I've never been so full from a meal.
Of the last 10 CD's I have bought, 8 of them have been because I had picked up MP3's of songs off them by swapping files with coworkers. I don't have broadband at home, so I haven't done much file sharing.
CD sales are slumping because a lot of things in the economy are slumping. I don't listen to commercial radio much since I don't like commercials and I can't stand listening to the morning DJ's, so, aside from MP3 swapping, I hear most new music by occasionally (and vainly) trying to watch videos on MTV/VH1 (don't have MTV2). Maybe CD sales are slumping since the music video channels don't show videos anymore.
Next, I find it annoying that most record store chains have higher prices than discount stores. I know it is a chicken and egg problem based on supply and demand, but I'm talking about nationwide chains, in every mall in America. This goes for movies, too. Why would I go to Suncoast and pay $5 more for a movie?
Finally, if a CD of ~12 songs costs ~$12 and I can obviously rip it as soon as I get it, why can't I just go to the record companies site and buy the MP3 for a song for $1? I would pay, they would get a lot more money per song, and I would be no more or no less likely to share the song as I would if I bought the CD (except that I might not bother buying the CD if I only wanted one song and my buddy has it).
I am actually glad that the studios are at least experimenting with other distribution formats, but I wholeheartedly agree that, Harry Potter and a few other blockbusters aside, $1.99-$3.99 for a medium quality digital copy that I can keep and watch as many times as I want would make a whole lot more sense.
Most of the titles in their list I might watch once or twice, then delete. Why would I want to pay $1.99 for Blood Sucking Chainsaw Junkies IV, spend my time downloading it, then rip them off by turning around and uploading it to a newsgroup? If I was looking for that film, why would I bother getting it off a newsgroup if I could pay $1.99 to download a known good copy from a legitimate source?
Even for things like Harry Potter, I would essentially be paying $3.99 for a copy that looked like it was recorded on an old VHS tape. If I really liked the movie, I would buy the DVD.
The fact is that there are tons of movies out there that people would pay a small amount to watch/own, but wouldn't even consider paying >$10 to buy on new media.
I think its too bad about Lance getting bumped. I figured the publicity would help the space program. As a matter of fact, I was all for all of N*Sync to be the crew of the first Mars mission.
My house is wired horribly, but all of my outlets are installed upside down. I asked an electrician friend about it and he said that it was a safe way to install them and he always did them that way in garages and workshops, where there is a good chance of tools falling on them.
The problem with the ones in my house is that they are old and a bit sprung, so you can't plug transformers (chargers and such) into them because the top heavy weight pulls them out of the wall.
I am assuming from reading the article (*gasp*, yes I read it) and the comments that this is basically a EE degree with a high degree of specialization.
My Computer Engineering degree from Auburn is similar. Where at most schools, Computer Engineering is a EE with a specialization in Computer Science, at Auburn it is essentially a CS degree with a EE minor. I had to take the basic engineering courses, the bulk of the CS major courses, and the EE courses in digital electronics and computers. I thought (and still think) this combination is cool, but I found out later (when looking at graduate school) that it is kind of screwy. Basically, my credits didn't qualify me for admission to masters programs in CSE/EE in most schools without taking a few more undergraduate classes in analog electronics/powers/etc.
People taking the wireless major may have the same problem, but you can probably take most of the wireless classes as tech electives in a EE program and have the same result with a "standard" engineering degree.
I know that HR people at companies I've worked for (and interviewed with) *do* look at what school you went to. Sometimes, its because a current good (or bad) employee went to the same school. Sometimes its because a manager went to the same school. Sometimes, it is just a local school with a bad reputation in a certain field.
What surprises me is how many companies still request (and look at) college transcripts after you have an established professional career. This falls into the category of bureaucratic policies that have overextended their usefulness.
A friend of mine had an associates degree in CS from some DeVry type place that has since gone out of business. He has 20+ years of experience and is one of the best programmers I know. Currently, he is out of work. Several companies here in Huntsville will not hire anyone without a degree, no matter what the qualifications. A few that would accept his associates degree won't hire him because he cannot furnish official transcripts.
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Just reading the book gave us not only insights into new methods but also terminology to talk about what we had been doing all along.
Our company does a lot of development in VB (boo hiss? bite me, we like it) and we consciously apply many Design Patterns in our software.
I agree -- I want a micropayment style service. I would prefer to set up an account and not pay a subscription fee. Then, if I download 15 songs in a month, I'll get a one time charge of ~$15 at the end of the month.
I've been one of the people saying over and over that if I could reliably download a legal MP3 for $0.99, I would much prefer that over P2P. But, as a general rule, I would not pay $9.95 or $14.95 a month for the right to do so
I *might* consider it if I got 10 or 15 downloads "free" per month, but even then I don't want to enter into a commitment contract (not even a "cancel at any time" one).
Where the art and the science of algorithms diverge is in their implementation. Does a bubble sort in hand optimized assembly language on 3GHz machine beat a quicksort written in GW Basic running on an antique 386? What differences are there between data already stored in memory vs. sorting data that is on a remote server? What if two algorithms are both O(n), but one's "operations" involves multiple calls to slow libraries, the other one involves just two integer compares.
I know the question raised was on the correct analysis of the algorithm in question, but several of these postings have diverged into languages and types of data. This is good and it is the whole point of a well grounded CS education -- knowing all of the strengths and weaknesses of available algorithms so you can make the correct choices based on the size and type of the data and the language (and libraries of choice).
Let's see:
Large HDTV monitor: $3000
Progressive Scan DVD player: $300
Fairly good surround sound: $700
Total: $4000
Movie for 2: $20
(if you don't have to pay a babysitter)
So, assuming you've got the room and the money,
a home theater breaks even at 200 trips to the
theater. Before I had kids, we went to the movies
twice a week sometimes, so that would be 2 years.
Now, we go maybe once every two months (but sometimes with kids, so call it every month). At that rate, it would take 16 years to break even.
Of course, we watch plenty of movies at home now on DVD (on a 27" TV with a $300 surround sound system and a $100 DVD player).
What does this all mean? I have no idea, I just wanted to play with the numbers...
This is absolutely true.
Attack of the Clones (which was, to me, much better than The Phantom Menace) is the only Star Wars film that I only saw once at the theatre. Back in my pre-college days, I saw A New Hope probably 20 times, Empire nearly as many, even Jedi got 5-10 movie tickets out me. I saw Phantom Menace 3 times in the theatre (once at the Midnight premier, once to see if I was too sleepy to really enjoy it -- naa, it was that bad), and once more with my Dad because he hadn't seen it and I had nothing better to do.
However, I will buy Clones on DVD -- probably on the day it comes out.
I did see Spiderman twice at the theater. I have a "home theater" of sorts, but I still prefer seeing them on the big screen (although I usually pick matinees or late features on weeknights to avoid the idiots).
1. The limited range is, evidently, intentional. The first generation cars had much higher range, but with only 2 or 4 channels (depending on your country), it was hard to run simultaneous races without interference, so they put limiters on the transmitters. My ZipZaps car has a range of about 10' max.
2. While proportional steering would be nice, the response time is fast enough to make fairly precision turns once you get the hang of it. Changing the gearing, tires, and suspension can also greatly affect your steering. With the fastest motor from Radio Shack and the slick tires, You can make drifting 180 degree spin turns, or tap the throttle and steering to make wider turns.
3. This is a marketing gimmick to a large extent. The stock starter kits have the slowest motor. You have to buy the performance kits to get the faster ones (more $$). I did find a few sites with pictures of tracks in Japan that concentrate on obstacles and steering, so there are reasons to use the slower motors and different gear ratios to optimize your car for different tracks. If you are just zipping around the kitchen floor annoying the cat, just put in the fastest one you can find.
Radio Shack -- you've got questions? we've got blank stares...
The funny thing about this was that everyone on AICN was *sure* that Lucasfilm deliberately "leaked" the Clones preview to Harry to stir up good buzz.
Well, I had been considering laser surgery for my vision, but since reading other /.ers posts about it has left me with severe nausea and the cold sweats, maybe I'm not cut out for it.
Reminds me of the time a friend drove me to have my vasectomy (which, by the way, should be done under general anesthesia, but isn't). On the way back, he asked me what the procedure was like. I told him. He had to pull over on the side of the road because he was afraid he was going to pass out. I didn't feel like driving, either, so we sat on the side of the road until he regained his composure.
First, an obligatory link to Robert Zubrin's books The Case For Mars and Entering Space. Sure, he has an agenda, but he presents some compelling facts about why the moon isn't that hot of an idea.
Secondly, I have, big surprise, lost faith with NASA (largely due to reading the above two books). The description of the cost plus accounting used by government contractors alone is enough to realize why we aren't, at least, watching The Mars Colony Channel on TV.
The best hope for opening up space is commercial exploitation or prize money. What if the government (any government) said, we have $20 billion sitting in a trust fund. The first company to send a manned crew to the moon (or mars) and back gets the money and an exclusive contract with the government?
The second best hope is that China, Japan, India, the EU, or any combination of the above starts kicking our butt and making money in space. They've already shown that they can launch satellites cheaper. When there is a Chinese space hotel or a Japanese moonbase (and especially if they are making money), there will be a new "space race". When someone makes a suborbital jet and FedEx realizes they can send packages from North America to China in a couple of hours and the Concorde crowd realizes that a few $K more will let them orbit around the earth on their business and pleasure trips (and each trip drops off a few rocket assisted satellites while they are 100 miles or so up), then we should be seeing some real effort being put into planetary exploration and colonization.
Actually, the best hope is that all of that Middle East oil money goes into the funding of the Islamic State of Luna. That would get the Americans off their ass and into space.
We are right at the 100 year anniversary of the first airplane flight and flying is now ubiquitous and commonplace. We are at the 40 year anniversary of manned space flight and there hasn't been that much improvement. Yeah, the shuttle is cool, but the fleet is old and it is waaay too expensive.
since I don't have an X-Box or a PS2...
I was in Electronics Boutique scrouging through the cheap box and I overhead a salesman talking to a customer. The customer was trying to decide which system to buy. The salesman asked if he wanted to use it often as a DVD player. The customer said yes. The salesman said to buy an X-Box because the PS2 couldn't handle the constant reads from the DVD without overheating and beginning to have problems. He said they had several returns of PS2's because of drive problems, mostly related to heavy DVD watching. He thought the X-Box handled it better, even though he liked the PS2 better for games.
My daughter (11 years old, sixth grade) recently had to write an essay. They were to turn in a handwritten rough draft and a final copy. The final copy was, preferably, to be typed.
She wrote the rough draft and I edited it, including marking spelling mistakes even though I knew the word processor would find them. Then I had her type it. When she was finished, I looked over her shoulder and made her fix some formatting mistakes. She printed it out and turned it in.
Afterwords, I got to thinking. Back in the dark ages, when I was in school, papers weren't typed until we were a junior or senior in high school. As a result, even with a rough draft, edit, rewrite cycle, the handwritten papers we turned in were likely to be full of mistakes, but the teacher knew damned sure that we had written them (at least in the applying pen/pencil to paper sense). We typed them on typewriters, so even the typed ones were pretty bad at times (actually, by then *I* had a C64 and used SpeedScript, which I typed in out of Compute! magazine). Except for the rough draft, there was nothing in my daughter's paper that would possibly tell the teacher that she had written (or typed) it. This bothers me a bit.
On another project, for science class, I set up a template for her on Visio and showed her how to type and paste information and pictures into it and adjust the layout. The result was very professional, but, again, a bit too professional and perfect to actually assess her contributions to the project. I'm not sure how this does, or should, affect her grades.
BTW (I've been trying my best to avoid netspeak for this post, but I it was hard), the primary problem with spell checkers (even grammar checkers) is homophones and just plain wrong words. My personal pet peeve is 'loose' for 'lose' and 'looser' for 'loser'. I've seen this crop up way too often in "professional" documentation, such as the rules for a game I was reviewing a few weeks ago.
Before I get blasted for being completely off topic: As elitist as it sounds, I think all written assignments in school should be written and graded based on clearly defined standard English. Besides, you have to really fight your word processor to keep it from flagging l337, r, u, and ur, dont u?
My neighbor switched to a pushreel mower and she really likes it. I've borrowed it a few times and had the same problems you described. The standard answer is that you have to train yourself and your grass. She said the first 4-6 times she used it, it was frustrating and she wasn't happy with the results. Eventually, either she got the hang of it or the grass got to the right height and texture to handle it. It is a bit ragged and you have to go over some spots a few times from different directions. My biggest gripe was that we have ~10 large trees on our lot and I don't like picking up all of the small twigs before I mow. My horrible, loud, polluting gas mower just chews them up.
It hasn't been a problem this year because we haven't watered or fertilized and our grass (where there is grass) hasn't grown. I mowed once a week during the spring, twice in July, once in August, and its about time to mow again.
I think I would be happy with ivy, moss, and clover. I've seen yards that were all ivy and I don't like the effect, but I've got ivy and vinca growing around some of my trees and I don't try to fight it back too much.
Only peripherally related to this: Does anyone know what I can grow under some huge oak and hickory trees that doesn't require *any* sun (these spots just don't get any). I've thought of just giving up and using rocks and bark to landscape the area, but it gets covered with leaves in the fall and you can rake rocks too easily (and I hate leaf blowers).
Yeah, we had the same problem with the sour cream. Adding it early makes it a bit cloudy, since the heat breaks it down. Great dish, though...
Actually, I should have said "Lunch, for us" was salad or a sandwich, since we typically ate on the run and saved our money for dinner. I do understand that lunch is a major affair.
I didn't expect to find large sizes at boutiques, but the tourist T-shirt stand thing really surprised me. We tried Tati, but it seem more just "Wal-Mart" type clothes and we were trying to find souvenirs for *ahem* larger relatives...
Finally, I agree about the exercise from walking. We didn't even consider driving and we used the Metro frequently, but I'll bet I still walked more in that week that I did in the previous 2 months.
At the supermarket, I definitely buy much more fresh produce than prepared foods. My undoing has nothing to do with my shopping/cooking habits and everything to do with inactivity, fast food, and soft drinks (all of which I am currently working on changing).
I don't eat ice cream, I don't eat potato chips, I don't eat candy bars (well, I do occasionally, but not daily or even weekly). I always cook healthy meals (which I sometimes overindulge in), but, as I said, it is the sodas, fast food, buffet places (which are easy if you are lazy about decided where to eat and you have dozens of things to do after work with kids and family), and eating out in general that put the weight on.
As other posters have noticed, food is relatively cheap in the U.S. and most chain restaurant try to impress you with quantity more than quality.
The most weight I ever lost was on a "low fat" diet, but, in retrospect, that was probably due to the fact that I decreased my overall caloric intake and, pretty much, only ate food that I prepared. If I was eating out, I pretty much stuck with salad, pasta, or grilled fish. That is pretty much the "diet" I am on now, with less emphasis on "fat grams" and more on portions, preparation, and calories (and exercise).
When I was on the low fat diet, I was reading Covert Bailey's book (I think Fit or Fat). I automatically think most diet book people are quacks, so I did some outside research. I was most impressed by his chapters on exercise. Specifically, that when you do aerobic exercise, you don't start burning fat reserves until your glucogen supply is depleted. This happens at the "second wind" stage, usually after about 20 minutues of exercise, so the first 20 are essentially wasted. Also, that weight and strength training are very important, not because they burn fat, but because if you have a large muscle mass, just walking up stairs burns more calories. This is contrary to the "I'm so fat that just walking up stairs is good exercise for me" idea.
He also pointed out some scary things about how you develop fat in your body. Once you are out of high school/college, you become more sedentary. Your muscles start weakening and are replaced with intramuscular fat. So, for 5 or 10 years, you keep your waistline and your clothes still fit, but your body fat ratio is increasing. Once you get saturated with intramuscular fat, it starts in on your gut and love handles. Then you say, I'm a little fat. If that goes unchecked, it moves on to your arms, legs, neck, back, and chest. At this point, it really starts putting a strain on your heart and lungs. When you start dieting and exercising, you lose it in reverse order, so when you can fit into your size 32 (or 28) jeans again, you still have a ways to go to get back into peak shape.
This may be BS, but it fits my pattern quite well and explains that nice feeling you have during your 20's when you think you can eat whatever you want and not gain weight.
Sorry this is so long...
"Not once did I see a fat person buying fresh vegetables."
:-)
Unfortunately, you must never had seen me check out
"But to claim that restaurant portions in Europe are smaller? I don't buy it, not for a second."
I sorta buy it, judging from my recent trip to Paris. Breakfast is always bread and coffee. Lunches seems to be mostly salads and/or bread. Sandwiches were universally *big* breads with a little meat and cheese. Soda is more expensive than beer or (cheap) wine.
Dinners were long and complex. Never assume that dinner will take less than 1.5 hours. When you eat several courses over an hour or so, you get full way before you overeat. The largest portion we recieved (and the most horrifyingly unhealthy, but delicious thing we had) was a cassoulet with duck, several types of sausage, ham hocks, butterbeans, and God knows what else served in a crock. I swear this stuff had a 1/2" of fat on top and damn was it good.
Now, knowing all of this, you might be surprised that it was 100% completely impossible to find large clothing. Even in the most blatent "ripoff the tourist" shops, their selection of XL T-shirts was very small and they didn't get any bigger. If you are women, expect that you cannot buy clothes in Paris if you are larger than a 10. I'm not sure if this is cause or effect -- are people so thin that it is not economically sound to stock large sizes, or are people thin because, otherwise, they would have to go naked or wear togas?
Ditto on the richness (often due to fats) and overeating bit.
If I don't watch it, I will gorge myself on stir fry, pasta, red meat, etc. The other night I cooked Alton Brown's Beef Stroganoff recipe.
This was not a high fat recipe, but it did use a total of about 3-4 tablespoons of butter and a bit less oil and a lot of stew beef browned in seasoned flour. It develops a dark and very rich wine and beef broth sauce/gravy to which you stir in about 4 tablespoons of sour cream at the end. Plus about a pound of mushrooms and some garlic and onions. Yum.
All in all, this was one of the best meals I have ever cooked and my family agreed. As good as it was, I barely finished one plate of it (but that was fine, I had plenty of leftovers). I've never been so full from a meal.
Of the last 10 CD's I have bought, 8 of them have been because I had picked up MP3's of songs off them by swapping files with coworkers. I don't have broadband at home, so I haven't done much file sharing.
CD sales are slumping because a lot of things in the economy are slumping. I don't listen to commercial radio much since I don't like commercials and I can't stand listening to the morning DJ's, so, aside from MP3 swapping, I hear most new music by occasionally (and vainly) trying to watch videos on MTV/VH1 (don't have MTV2). Maybe CD sales are slumping since the music video channels don't show videos anymore.
Next, I find it annoying that most record store chains have higher prices than discount stores. I know it is a chicken and egg problem based on supply and demand, but I'm talking about nationwide chains, in every mall in America. This goes for movies, too. Why would I go to Suncoast and pay $5 more for a movie?
Finally, if a CD of ~12 songs costs ~$12 and I can obviously rip it as soon as I get it, why can't I just go to the record companies site and buy the MP3 for a song for $1? I would pay, they would get a lot more money per song, and I would be no more or no less likely to share the song as I would if I bought the CD (except that I might not bother buying the CD if I only wanted one song and my buddy has it).
Forget the flux capacitor, this baby must also have an oscillation overthruster...
I am actually glad that the studios are at least experimenting with other distribution formats, but I wholeheartedly agree that, Harry Potter and a few other blockbusters aside, $1.99-$3.99 for a medium quality digital copy that I can keep and watch as many times as I want would make a whole lot more sense.
Most of the titles in their list I might watch once or twice, then delete. Why would I want to pay $1.99 for Blood Sucking Chainsaw Junkies IV, spend my time downloading it, then rip them off by turning around and uploading it to a newsgroup? If I was looking for that film, why would I bother getting it off a newsgroup if I could pay $1.99 to download a known good copy from a legitimate source?
Even for things like Harry Potter, I would essentially be paying $3.99 for a copy that looked like it was recorded on an old VHS tape. If I really liked the movie, I would buy the DVD.
The fact is that there are tons of movies out there that people would pay a small amount to watch/own, but wouldn't even consider paying >$10 to buy on new media.
I think its too bad about Lance getting bumped. I figured the publicity would help the space program. As a matter of fact, I was all for all of N*Sync to be the crew of the first Mars mission.
My house is wired horribly, but all of my outlets are installed upside down. I asked an electrician friend about it and he said that it was a safe way to install them and he always did them that way in garages and workshops, where there is a good chance of tools falling on them.
The problem with the ones in my house is that they are old and a bit sprung, so you can't plug transformers (chargers and such) into them because the top heavy weight pulls them out of the wall.
I am assuming from reading the article (*gasp*, yes I read it) and the comments that this is basically a EE degree with a high degree of specialization.
My Computer Engineering degree from Auburn is similar. Where at most schools, Computer Engineering is a EE with a specialization in Computer Science, at Auburn it is essentially a CS degree with a EE minor. I had to take the basic engineering courses, the bulk of the CS major courses, and the EE courses in digital electronics and computers. I thought (and still think) this combination is cool, but I found out later (when looking at graduate school) that it is kind of screwy. Basically, my credits didn't qualify me for admission to masters programs in CSE/EE in most schools without taking a few more undergraduate classes in analog electronics/powers/etc.
People taking the wireless major may have the same problem, but you can probably take most of the wireless classes as tech electives in a EE program and have the same result with a "standard" engineering degree.
As to why they did it, they wanted the money...
I know that HR people at companies I've worked for (and interviewed with) *do* look at what school you went to. Sometimes, its because a current good (or bad) employee went to the same school. Sometimes its because a manager went to the same school. Sometimes, it is just a local school with a bad reputation in a certain field.
What surprises me is how many companies still request (and look at) college transcripts after you have an established professional career. This falls into the category of bureaucratic policies that have overextended their usefulness.
A friend of mine had an associates degree in CS from some DeVry type place that has since gone out of business. He has 20+ years of experience and is one of the best programmers I know. Currently, he is out of work. Several companies here in Huntsville will not hire anyone without a degree, no matter what the qualifications. A few that would accept his associates degree won't hire him because he cannot furnish official transcripts.