Why don't they just hold up the weather section of the local newspaper and point at it, like they do with the rest of the news? They seemed to really enjoy that format. Or have they modernized that too?
Purchases under $2500 are done by credit card, not contract. This includes most pc's.
Govt. agencies have 'preferred' pc providers with streamlined purchasing procedures. If the provider doesn't carry AMD, you won't see much of it at the agency.
If the person requesting the contract wants AMD, they can specify it (either directly or indirectly). It is not difficult to 'effectively' sole-source a contract.
Funny, I just saw a show about Three Mile Island today. It was a lot worse than I had previously thought. They were very close to a meltdown, and enough radiation escaped from the core into the adjoining building (I think it was a heat transfer station or something like that) that it was burning the shielding off the control lines. There was also concern about a buildup of hydrogen causing the reactor containment dome to blow up. Very Bad Situation. Hopefully they've learned from the mistakes made there, and modified other power plants (which, yes, are still better than coal plants).
Actually you can get liquid water below 0C by mixing in other chemicals, such as salt. That's why they put salt on the road in the winter when it snows- it causes the snow and ice to melt (by lowering the transition temperature). You are excused from knowing this if you are in high school or below, and living near the equator.
Two ways to check if it's really your monitor: 1- Do you see the same lag when you're entering text from the keyboard? If the text appears right away, you can't really blame the monitor. Do you have a USB mouse? I've seen USB mouse lag on my CRT. 2- Hook up a projector while the monitor is still attached. Are the two screens in sync?
Foo (Mr. Miester?)-
You should go to great pains to avoid purchasing a car with a bad ABS system, but a well designed one will almost always (the exception being in snow) stop you quicker. It's the difference between static fricton and dynamic friction. Dyamic friction is when your tire is skidding, and it is always less than when it is not skidding. ABS ideally keeps your tire braking at the point of maximum static friction. If the ABS system was designed by a moron (or maybe the designer had a pointy-haired moron for a boss) then it might suck in some situations. The (apparantly) well designed ABS system on my previous car (94 Saturn) saved me from crashes at least twice (although I never drove it in Poughtown, NY), and I would never buy a car without ABS.
I would also like to respectfully submit that aspects of the close call you describe are not the fault of the ABS system.
Would you really be better off flipping your SUV than smearing a deer? Besides, the stability control system, which will be standard on every car long before any 'smart car' technology, will prevent the rollover. And with the GPS-enabled communications systems, your car will order some buns from the nearest grocery store to go with your venison burgers! (how's that for your car learning your habits?)
If you shop carefully, you can save 15%-30% off of your total bill- not a tiny rebate (unless you only bought a pack of gum).
You don't have to give them anything close to your real info when you get a loyalty card. You can still use these cards and maintain complete privacy. Users of them can still complain about _real_ abuses of privacy.
If you're still worried that your grocery store cares about you personally, you can always swap loyalty cards with someone else, or just get another one (with no ID info given).
Must be quite a dilemma for some of you when aluminum foil goes on loyalty-card discount! (i.e. to make a new hat out of.)
Someone (i.e. not me) should put up a website featuring a collection of various 'this site is hosed' messages. They could start with a review of sites recently mentioned on Slashdot. The trouble, of course, is that you couldn't be sure if that site itself was hosed or if you were looking at the page you wanted.
Then you get into the question of powering the device...
It uses very little power- maybe a solar cell could be developed which could fit around it. When your eyes are closed, you probably aren't focusing much anyway. It could also give your eyes a very interesting appearance.
Here's my system for goverment tracking of money...
I would be surprised if they could track anything other than when a bill went out, and when it came back. They can't know where it was in between- it could have passed through any number of people's hands and they would have no way of knowing. Any other information collected would be useless.
Do all these people so afraid of having their financial transactions tracked never use credit or debit cards?
Nonsense. Without a atmospere, the projectile could be launched only a few meters above the surface of the moon and then for the last kilometer or so magnetic feilds could continue to aim the projectile just as they accelerated it in the main part of the launcher.
Ridiculous. Where are you getting this massive supply of magnetic moon rocks? And what if the incoming object is out of the plane of the earth and moon? You probably could hit any place in the solar system using multiple orbit trajectories, but not in the timeframe needed. Considering the massive quantity of projectiles needed, it would (maybe?) only be feasible to have small rockets capable of no more than minor course adjustments. Don't forget the control systems for these too. There is no way that this would be a more cost effective or efficient solution.
Seriously, that would present more problems. A large rail gun would be imossible to aim, and it would be nice to start moving the asteroid when it's really really far away- making aim an even more difficult issue.
DirecTV goes out all the time! Whenever we lose electricity, or if I forget to pay them, poof! it's gone! It's so upsetting.
Seriously (ok, less un-seriously) I used to have Comcast, now I have DirecTV, and I can't see why I would ever go back (although I only had analog Comcast, not digital). Maybe strong winds interfere with the picture occasionally, but the downtime I've experienced is miniscule compared with cable. Cable goes out when the cable gets cut (3 days downtime for cable in my neighberhood), when the satellite acts up you just have to wait for the wind gust to stop (1-10 seconds, usually).
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't they just hold up the weather section of the local newspaper and point at it, like they do with the rest of the news? They seemed to really enjoy that format. Or have they modernized that too?
Some items not considered by the article:
Purchases under $2500 are done by credit card, not contract. This includes most pc's.
Govt. agencies have 'preferred' pc providers with streamlined purchasing procedures. If the provider doesn't carry AMD, you won't see much of it at the agency.
If the person requesting the contract wants AMD, they can specify it (either directly or indirectly). It is not difficult to 'effectively' sole-source a contract.
He didn't choose the playlist, but there's only one mp3 on it anyway. It goes:
..." ..." ..." ..."
"Breathe in
"Breathe out
"Breathe in
"Breathe out
I hope they remembered to have it loop...
Funny, I just saw a show about Three Mile Island today. It was a lot worse than I had previously thought. They were very close to a meltdown, and enough radiation escaped from the core into the adjoining building (I think it was a heat transfer station or something like that) that it was burning the shielding off the control lines. There was also concern about a buildup of hydrogen causing the reactor containment dome to blow up. Very Bad Situation. Hopefully they've learned from the mistakes made there, and modified other power plants (which, yes, are still better than coal plants).
Actually you can get liquid water below 0C by mixing in other chemicals, such as salt. That's why they put salt on the road in the winter when it snows- it causes the snow and ice to melt (by lowering the transition temperature).
You are excused from knowing this if you are in high school or below, and living near the equator.
The requirements for this list a 1.4 Ghz P4. Can this dual setup match that? Do these requirements really mean anything?
Don't you mean they will be posted on DEC 25? Or will we have to wait until Hextember 19?
Two ways to check if it's really your monitor:
1- Do you see the same lag when you're entering text from the keyboard? If the text appears right away, you can't really blame the monitor. Do you have a USB mouse? I've seen USB mouse lag on my CRT.
2- Hook up a projector while the monitor is still attached. Are the two screens in sync?
-M
Imagine what the Gateway ads will look like after this comes out...
You should go to great pains to avoid purchasing a car with a bad ABS system, but a well designed one will almost always (the exception being in snow) stop you quicker. It's the difference between static fricton and dynamic friction. Dyamic friction is when your tire is skidding, and it is always less than when it is not skidding. ABS ideally keeps your tire braking at the point of maximum static friction. If the ABS system was designed by a moron (or maybe the designer had a pointy-haired moron for a boss) then it might suck in some situations. The (apparantly) well designed ABS system on my previous car (94 Saturn) saved me from crashes at least twice (although I never drove it in Poughtown, NY), and I would never buy a car without ABS.
I would also like to respectfully submit that aspects of the close call you describe are not the fault of the ABS system.
Would you really be better off flipping your SUV than smearing a deer? Besides, the stability control system, which will be standard on every car long before any 'smart car' technology, will prevent the rollover. And with the GPS-enabled communications systems, your car will order some buns from the nearest grocery store to go with your venison burgers! (how's that for your car learning your habits?)
There's now no excuse if the mailman delivers this to the wrong house.
I suppose this might also help with collecting overdue payments (we know _exactly_ where you live...).
(I know they obviously have the address, but it's different when they also have a picture.)
- If you shop carefully, you can save 15%-30% off of your total bill- not a tiny rebate (unless you only bought a pack of gum).
- You don't have to give them anything close to your real info when you get a loyalty card. You can still use these cards and maintain complete privacy. Users of them can still complain about _real_ abuses of privacy.
If you're still worried that your grocery store cares about you personally, you can always swap loyalty cards with someone else, or just get another one (with no ID info given).Must be quite a dilemma for some of you when aluminum foil goes on loyalty-card discount! (i.e. to make a new hat out of.)
Someone (i.e. not me) should put up a website featuring a collection of various 'this site is hosed' messages. They could start with a review of sites recently mentioned on Slashdot. The trouble, of course, is that you couldn't be sure if that site itself was hosed or if you were looking at the page you wanted.
-M
Will this mean no more 'first posts'?
I just posted a very insightful comment, but it got attached to the wrong story! How far does this scandal go!?!?
It uses very little power- maybe a solar cell could be developed which could fit around it. When your eyes are closed, you probably aren't focusing much anyway. It could also give your eyes a very interesting appearance.
I would be surprised if they could track anything other than when a bill went out, and when it came back. They can't know where it was in between- it could have passed through any number of people's hands and they would have no way of knowing. Any other information collected would be useless.
Do all these people so afraid of having their financial transactions tracked never use credit or debit cards?
Ridiculous. Where are you getting this massive supply of magnetic moon rocks? And what if the incoming object is out of the plane of the earth and moon? You probably could hit any place in the solar system using multiple orbit trajectories, but not in the timeframe needed. Considering the massive quantity of projectiles needed, it would (maybe?) only be feasible to have small rockets capable of no more than minor course adjustments. Don't forget the control systems for these too. There is no way that this would be a more cost effective or efficient solution.
What, and throw the moon off course?!?!
Seriously, that would present more problems. A large rail gun would be imossible to aim, and it would be nice to start moving the asteroid when it's really really far away- making aim an even more difficult issue.
Large areas of the Earth obliterated by swarms of very small asteroids!
Read the article. The rangefinder only works up to 100 yards.
I bet there are moderators who would label this whole story as flamebait...
DirecTV goes out all the time! Whenever we lose electricity, or if I forget to pay them, poof! it's gone! It's so upsetting.
Seriously (ok, less un-seriously) I used to have Comcast, now I have DirecTV, and I can't see why I would ever go back (although I only had analog Comcast, not digital). Maybe strong winds interfere with the picture occasionally, but the downtime I've experienced is miniscule compared with cable. Cable goes out when the cable gets cut (3 days downtime for cable in my neighberhood), when the satellite acts up you just have to wait for the wind gust to stop (1-10 seconds, usually).
They must have planted an agent inside Microsoft...