+1 I got this device 2 weeks ago (the AT&T Tilt,) unlocked and loaded a non-bloated non-AT&T ROM in it (they mean the OS and programs, not the actual chip when they say this, so it.s more of a "ROM Load",) and find that it actually does what the HTC Wizard (AKA T-Mobile MDA II) was supposed to do. Quad band, SiRF GPS, 3Mp camera w/autofocus, I think this with a small laptop (Asus has one, not the EEE, that is cheap small and light and is a real laptop,) and you meet your (OPs) specified needs. It'll take up to a 32G SDHC Micro-SD card, although I keep reading that Windows Mobile 6 only supports up to 2G, but haven't substantiated that yet. T-Mobile is supposed to be getting this soon as the Vario III.
I purchased mine by noon on the first day. Paypal charged my amex the same day. Still no laptop. I emailed 2 weeks ago, got a bounce that said they'd get back to me in 3-5 days, and nothing else. I called yesterday, and they said my paypal address was wrong, which they corrected online, and said I'd get an email with tracking info once thay have it. It sounds like a programming error is messing up some addresses (I've bought at least 5 packages on ebay with the same paypal shipping address since November.) But the donation went through immediately. I'm not mad, I expect to really enjoy the device, and am glad that some kid got one too. But is it that hard to dump out a list of names and make some "we know it's not there yet" emails? I'm not that surprised by the delay, but am by the failure to address this proactively, and hope that these are only growing pains.
The federal rules of discovery haven't really changed - this is just a tweak to address the concerns of the digital era. The government does not want you to keep everything forever, in fact the government is not usually party to these civil suits - besides most corporations waive privilege in government investigations to show good faith. The primary goal of these changes are to get lawyers to talk about discovery in a meet-and-confer as early as possible. Too many judges were spending too much time dealing with lawyers that didnt know what they were talking about going back and forth about "it's in the metadata" or "it's in the RAM" or "it's on a sector". The judges want the lawyers to bring their geeks in, discuss what each side has and where, and decide on a good process for e-discovery. Then the courtroom is for arguments about merits, not about process. Unfortunately the perception is that you have to deliver tons of data, which means reviewing tons of data for privilege. Plaintiffs lawyers are using this as a method to pry large settlements out of defendants, who see this as cheaper than hundreds of hours of outside counsel review time. You do know that most civil cases settle before going to trial, right? That's not to say that e-discovery is not a fascinating and daunting challenge, it actually makes for an interesting career. But bringing a sound preservation scheme and reasonable search terms and methods to a meet and confer will help dramatically.
That sounds awesome! Many of us Houston Burners are hoping to hit some of the regionals that are astarting up. And if you're ever down in Texas, Flipside is the annual event in the Austin area. It's the largest burn outside of BRC, but still only 1700 last time, so much more manageable. Then there's "Log", our tiny little Houston event going on this weekend up around Huntsville for the second year. Pee Clear! wayne AKA ranger martha
In 2002 I had the distinct pleasure of attending both Siggraph in San Antonio and, about a month later, BurningMan. I found them both to be amazing examples of what the human mind can do. If you go to Siggraph just looking to see the people who made Spideman's butt look tight, that's all you'll see - but the hundreds of tiny forums and sessions with researchers exploring the edges of science is both enlightening and frightening. BurningMan may look like a big party in the desert, but unless you go, you just cant understand the experience. The most striking and important thing about BM is the "gift economy" - aside from ice and coffee, there is no money-based commerce. It's not even a barter economy - you can almost always find whatever you want or need, and quickly find yourself getting engaged in the societal lovefest. Even the law enforcement officers we met (and had to deal with after an assault in a neighbooring camp, a very unusal occurence there) were outstanding examples of restraint and respect. The only time Ive seen that level of public harmony and effort outside of BM has been in disasters, my personal experience being the volunteers for the Columbia Debris efforts and here at home on Houston, the Katrina relief efforts. That said, technologically, BM is a treasure trove of ideas and thoughts - there are many amazing technologies, it's many of the same people that I saw at Siggraph, but this time using their advanced knowledge and resources to delight and amaze their fellow citizens of Black Rock City. Siggraph and Burningman - I recommend both heartily and without reservation. Look for the beauty, it's not hiding at all.
As someone directly involved with this effort (as a member of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service), I can assure my fellow slashdotters that this is simply not an issue, much less worthy of a slashdot story. Although this sounds like a great idea on the surface, I can understand where the JIC or for that matter the Incident Commander would chose to deny this request. What is not apparent to anyone outside Reliant City (as the astrodomain is now being called) is that it is utter CHAOS in there. It's not that the guests are anything but orderly, that the volunteers are anything but helpful, or that the involved agencies dont care, but there just isnt time for the responsible parties to even think very hard about it. Keep in mind that this is a gargantuan effort on the part of almost everybody involved - every agency I've come in contact with has expressed amazement at the vastness of the task and the speed with which it is being accomplished. And by now they are all pretty much exhausted. Sunday there were 25,000 guests on the ground - today it's far less than half of that. Meeting immediate needs is pretty much all that they can do. I alone have worked over 40 hours on this event since last wednesday, in addition to my regular full-time job. It would certainly be wonderful if the guests were being entertained, or even efficiently informed. And when I first heard about this effort I thought it was a great idea. But providing a communications channel without professional guidance as to content and application could just as easily cause more harm then good. After the event there will be a great deal of effort to review procedures and decide what went right and what went wrong, and I really hope that this specific option is included in future plans. I think it is awesome that the organizers of this effort did so much, this option has a great deal of potential. But please dont assume that some "lower-level official" just decided to be mean or felt power-hungry - it is just as likley that they thought it was a good idea, but just didnt have the time to give it a chance or make sure it was done right.
Wayne Barker AD8A Amateur Radio Emergency Service Emergency Coordinator, SouthWest Harris County, Houston, TX
Lets look at this without trying real hard to be special.
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
once again
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer
for providing strength
in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
for providing strength. Doesnt say it cured her. Could easily mean it proveded strength to THEM, as a family. Because, as you might know, prayer is a very emotional thing, something that can fill one with hope. I doubt they are unaware or unnapreciative of the medical treatment, and certainly seemed to indulge the medical communities likley expensive and thankfully succesful attempt.
for providing strength.
If you're going to vociferously beat a dead horse, you could at least make sure it's a horse...
I too was in the beta, and really really liked it. It was very playable (not like Absolute Failure Online) and there was a real joy in jumping to another starsystem and finding giant nebulae. It was a suprisingly pretty game, and had a nice balance. I mainly didnt join up for the pay version because I had just got laid off, that and I like Morrowind enough to not need a MMORPG right now. Still, E&B was very well done, and I am saddened to see it pass. It would be nice to see an effort to open up the server option like the Myst folks did, if nothing else in respect to those that invested time/money in a character.
This is a common task for law firms. typically in the discovery process you get tons of documents, and it is becoming more and more common to send those out to a vendor to get imaged as 300dpi type 4 tiffs. there should be some vendors in your area that can do this, and provide OCR services (IF it's machine-generated text, handwriting doesnt ocr.) Look for firms advertising litigation support. It's also common to number each page for future reference, the vendor can do this and it can make it a lot easier to find things. iPro is a popular scanning software, and Ricoh's are popular scanners. Tell the vendor you just want.pdfs, that should be easy for them.
Did someone get rid of the latent heat of vaporization?
it's a fixed amount when you boil a liquid - it may take a lower temperature to get there at a lower pressure, but it's still the amount of energy needed to break the bonds. less energy = cooling.
About a year and a half ago I bought a Casio Sea Pathfinder, which is very similar to the Suuntos. It has a thermometer, barometer and compass. The thermometer is not that useful, as you have to take it off for 30 minutes to get a reading not influenced by your heat. The barometer is ok, it has a little graph at the top of the large LCD that tracks the last 48 hours, but I work on the 18th floor so its not to keen - good for camping though. The compass works fine, when I was hiking last year I found it as useful as most of the camping compasses my friends had. It supposedly shows you the tide, but that doesnt work as advertised. It has 5 alarms, which is decent, and a countdown/lap timer, but the stop watch stoopidly only measures in 1/2 second intervals. If I were to do it again Id look at the Suuntos harder, this is a nice big heavy durable watch, but misses out on being the end-all. On a related note, Ive noticed several of the oilfield people Ive run into recently favor the dual analog and digital watches. I used to use those in the navy and loved them. Casio could reprogram this watch easily into something with selectable analog and digital indicators, but then, with as few geeks as there are, why would they?
I have an Alinco handheld ham radio (2m) that offers this feature. I cant imagine running the battery down for a dubious effect, when I can get backwoods Off(tm) (100% DEET) or that military cream, and really keep them off. Yes, it's nasty smelly and possibly cancerous, but Houston (like most of the country apparently) has West Nile in a BROAD spectrum of the mosquito population (we used to just have to avoid the culex mosquitos, small dusk-time ones that carried St. Louis Encephalitis.)
BTW, Cowboy neals boy band mp3s repel pests because likes repel, opposites attract (which is why Cdr. Taco likes them soo much...)
You must be kidding me - SIGGRAPH was MUCH more...
on
Virtual Sword Fighting
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This wasnt even close to the coolest thing at SIGGRAPH! Takeo Igarashi's work on predictive interfacing making easier 2d and 3d drawing tools was cooler. Digiplasty , a kind of 3d exquisite corpse as shown by Stewart and Makai was cooler. (For that matter the Studio, manned by Makai, Stewart, Scott and many others, where you could create 2d and 3d art and print 2d and 3d was AWESOME - you could work in there for hours, vs. the few seconds of playing with a silly virtual sword.) Scotts Dodecahedron was a wonderful example of taking something abstract and virtual and making it real and usable. Isa's overview of wearable tech and cyberfashion (she took out the notes, dammit!) was refreshing, if not so new to a frequent slashdotter. (She's a burner too!) Some of the mixed reality work being done at the University of Singapore was really neat. (This is an example of some of the most exciting stuff there. Several researchers showed some great work being done in augmented reality, and combining that with some of the reasonable priced wearable and wirelessable computing, we can see some real headway being made. One researcher even composites a virtual face back onto a fellow participant in the augemented reality environment, masking the HMD, even going so far as to track the eyes and simulate the gaze.) The results of last years meditation chamber research installation was an interesting and possibly VERY useful application of VR technology. W. Bradford Paley's work on applying alternative interfaces to explore other media was fascinating, where you can use this LARGE java tool named TextArc to examine graphically over 400 literary works. The Web3D Consortium's release of the final working draft of X3D (with tools) could end up being much more important than the newest video card from ATI. Dietmar Offenhuber's work on non-isotropic spaces at wegzeit was an interesting approach to mapping and representing real places. Zachary Simpson et al's delightfully simple shadow interactivity was many times more fun than the virtual swordfight. Fabric.ch'sknowscape was also exciting, both for the viewers and the presenter, as he would find additions from his European counterparts each morning when he logged on to the shared 3d space. Kenneth Huff's beautiful art using maya was just one example of some wonderful digital work being done. Lastly, Michael J. Lyons soon-to-be-published research on the aesthetics of Tokyo's Kyoto Gardens was both informative and inspiring. And this is just a TINY PART of what happened there!
Really, SIGGRAPH was NOT just an exhibition floor with cheesey swag (although the little green LED lights were very nice) and some cool new toys. It was presentation after presentation by resesarchers, some barely able to speak engrish, but all excited about their work and open to collaboration. It was hours and hours of animation, some (Like Allain Escalle's "Le Conte du monde flottant") were so stunning as to make you forget where animation ended and life began. Disney's work on replacing one actors face with another, retaining ALL facial expression, was downright scary. And the Spiderman gag footage, his spidey-suit oddly replaced with a fully reflective silver surface, like most of the rest of SIGGRAPH'S less entertaining presentations, were surely an indication of things to come. Take the time to go to SIGGRAPH2002 and look around. If you find something interesting, write the author. This is where the new VR and AR comes from - not ATI!
A couple of days ago I heard a report about a Palistinian village. Israel had suspected that terrorists were there, so Israeli tanks surrounded the village, bombarded it, and left. It was a small report, almost an aside to the main news, which was lots of talk about the U.S. economy, and how not EVERYONE had a job.
I kept thinking about that village. I wondered what it would feel like, to feel afraid for your life, to not know where they might strike next.
Now I know. Today at work I kept looking out the window, reassured to see the un-marred Houston skyline. I thought of the many possible stategic sites that could be hit in Houston, of refineries that could spew poisens for days, of skyscrapers here full of people.
And I thought of that Palistinian village. They've been living with this kind of terror for months, even years.
This attack did not occur in a vacuum. Certainly those responsible committed a horrible act. But responding with another horrible act wouldn't help. Do we blow up Afghanni families, just in case it was Osama Bin Laden? Do we push the Israelis to attack large Palistinian areas, only to find it was another Timothy McVey?
Regardless of whether one agrees with the current administrations foreign policies, it would be reasonable to recognize a very real arrogance in the dispensation of those policies. The United States acts like it is the invulnerable master, the king of the hill, casting justice and consensus aside. Just this week the US refused to participate in a UN conference on racism. We do anything we want, and dare anyone to try and do anything about it.
Someone did. It would only make things worse to react in an agressive military fashion. Certainly justice must be served, but it should be measured, accurate and appropriate.
America is a special place, luckier than most humans have ever seen. We spend most of our time planning parties and designing toys. When something like this happens we should step back, look at the BIG picture, and reflect - what have we done to help? Has any one of us written to a congressman, expressing concern over continued financial support of the heavy-handed Israelis? How many of us even NOTICE what our foreign policy is?
Several media reports have referred to this as a second Pearl Harbour. We would be wise to recall that our enemies in that conflict are now some of our staunchest allies. Also forgotten was the American blockade of fuel oil to Japan, precipitating the attack.
This morning the first person I talked to after I heard the news was a black man in an auto parts store. He was lamenting the fighting in the middle east, pointing out that here in Houston such strife is all but unthinkable. The Hispanic parts salesman and I agreed.
The United States is a unique culture, made up of disparate cultures themselves sometimes at odds with each other in their respective homelands. Now one of these conflicts has struck our home. A strong response is appropriate, but we should also look at our actions and attitudes, and take what measure of responsibility is ours. Then, maybe instead of dealing with a symptom, we can address a cause - perhaps even right a wrong.
Yes! I can't get mail for my.cx domain. What can you do when your TLD goes down? grrr....
Final Fantasy REALLY blows this away...
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 1
I completely agree. The trailer for FF was the best special effects I've seen in years - maybe ever. Just the trailer. It may not be linux, but it's gorgeous.
Not to disagree with the whole linux thing, I'm all for it. That thing. Any "Non-M$" thing.
OH yes there is. Try movielink. Friday night it was at the Edwards on I-10, and I saw it at the 30-screen ludicrous-plex on Dunvale off Westheimer.
As for the movie - anyone who has exposed themselves to traditional chinese literature will recognize common themes such as unrequited love, honor over happiness, many many characters, and a comon end result - tragedy.
I thought this was a incredibly moving film, only lessened by the often ridiculous wirework. Had they LEPT from roof to roof it would have seemed superhuman. FLYING from roof to roof kicking their legs looked silly, even if it is the traditional asian movie way. When the wirework was used for the fighting it was often incredible, far exceeding it's use in Matrix.
Overall this is the best movie of 2000, close to 1999's Magnolia in the sheer volume of great acting. And it was a nice touch to have some of the music provided by yo-yo ma. And one of the most moving facets of the experience was to see a large commercial theater filled with "normals" engrossed by such a thouroughly "foreign" artwork. Hopefully Hollywood will notice this and other successes this season, and start giving us works, and not just commercial marketing vehicles.
These ask you detailed questions about your intended use, then suggest the best rates in your area. I would try all of them, think about my actual/possible use, find a good plan, then look at the phones, and decide what you must have, and if that plan can provide it. I ended up with a Nokia 6161, which is a triple mode (both digitals and analog) with a long battery life, but also look at the nokia 6185 (also triple mode) which can attach with a special serial cable to your cpu/palm.
Who shot J.R.? Where's the Beef? Did Martha Washington have splinters on her ass? Just what IS Chemical X? Can you canoe? Is there REALLY urine in Mountain Dew? Who made-a the salad? Was Paul really the walrus? Who farted!?! Is Goku REALLY a super-sayen? Did Clinton inhale? Did George W. snort? Is Peekachoo a mutant smurf? Are BigMacs really made of worms? Is KFC really vat-grown chicken flesh? Just what IS a Scooby-snack?
And lastly of course, is Bill Gates REALLY an alien, and if so can we autopsy him for the discovery channel?
Instead of knowing something about a lot of things
on
Wired on Slashdot
·
· Score: 1
I too noticed the audio seemed wrong, until I was reminded: Mike had the little video camera, AND the DAT. - it was the audio used for the 16mm. When he drops his video camera he also drops the DAT - when the view switches to her (up the stairs) the audio is still from his location , and you hear her screaming as she runs towards you, while seeing her running down to him. This, along with noting that Mike was "standing in the corner" was an awesome and unerving touch.
I moved into a house with a DirecTV dish, which I kept paying for for a year. Then the tuner (a VERY old one) went bad, and I switched to Dish network. I switched to Dish for 2 main reasons: 1. Quality looked much better on screen. I could always see a pixelation with DirecTV, not so with Dish. 2. Dish had BBC, which I really wanted.
But theres a lot going on in this field.
When I called to cancel DirecTV after I bought the Dish solution, they asked me why. they said that they had just bought Primestar, and would be bringing more international choices from that. This, in combination with their purchase of USSB, gives DirecTv MANY more choices of channels. Dish does have a wide variety of international channels, but they are ala cart, and often expensive, and require a second dish. the dish unit I bought (an older one, even though its just a few months old it was an "old" type) has some awesome features compared to the Diretv unit. All Dish units update their software automatically from the sattelite, which should be good, but reading the newsgroups you can see a flurry of "hell, what did they do?" messages after upgrades sometimes. The dish unit I have uses a UHF remote but also supports IR TV, VCR, and another one (I forgot.) When looking through the guide for shows, if you pick one that isnt on yet it gives you a choice of programming both the satelite receiver and the vcr to record it, automatically doing the start stop times. This is great (at least the 90% of the times that the guide is correct.) Just make sure the remote is pointing at the vcr and it has a blank tape and is ON. To me a major benefit over DirecTV. DirecTV has MUCH Music, the canadian MTV type thing which is much much better. Do miss that. A recent satllite deal gave DirecTV more satelite transponders I think, but Id check that first. Could affect future expansion.
Overall, I like the hell out of my Dish unit, and only miss one or two channels from DirecTV. Cost is virtually identical. I live 2 miles from most of the broadcast antennas in Houston so get local reception at least as good as I care for. My new 19" Hansol monitor keeps knocking channels off (interferes somehow with the receiver) but is not that big a deal. (havent really troubleshot this yet.)If DirecTV gets a butload of international stuff at a reasonable price I would want that, as I care more for that than movies or sports. Havent heard the best about the internet access, heard it was very expensive and still uses 56K modem to upload.
WHATEVER YOU DO go to the newsgroups and read a butload. There are web pages (tagged at home of course) that compare the nearly identical channel offerings (except the movies on USSB of course.) But the newsgroups have a tremendous wealth of info, and some very real experts. You will learn far more there than you really want to know (although the satelite launch and tracking page is sweet. I love the track for the recent one that splashed after launch, it's listed as "below horizon".)
Here on Ghost Plant we've heard rumours that apple is going to come out with a decent consumer portable later this year. Supposed to have a G3 processor. OS 8.6 even has enablers for it (or is somehow engineered to run on it.) Could one of the PPC liuxs (just what is the plural of linux? Linii?) run on this platform? OF course, its going to have weird everything (display, interactivity, possible radio communications, etc.) Sigh. Sometimes I think apple is too smart for their own good...
I totaly agree. This kind of site, with thoughtful not-very-arrogant-at-all commentary, run by someone who either gives a damn or fakes it really good - this IS the net as far as I'm concerned. In fact, here on Ghost Planet we've built a large shrine to Bob. We call it "Bob Rocks Our World At Least This Little Part Of It Right Here." Now if I just knew how to log in and make some of this stuff work. Maybe someone (anyone who knows, not necessaarily he-who-knows-all-and-needs-beer) could write a moving FAQ. We could call it Shirly.
wait a minute... who's Rob? What did he do to Bob? I'm going to count to ten, and if Bobs not back...
That sounds all fine and good, but most of us have enough trouble stopping ourselves from SAYING something stoopid, all we need is: "in the I-did-it-already-dont-ask-me-again department, this story on OH SHIT THAT COFFEES HOT... damn, my favorite sailor moon shirt too... what was I doing?..." Really, we'll need some kind of filtering before we could implement that. We'va all seen the various sci-fi permutations, lots of authors have looked at that scenario, we'll have to do some real work on MENTAL discipline before we can do anything like that sucessfully. Keep trying for the T1 though...
Slashdot Mirror
+1
I got this device 2 weeks ago (the AT&T Tilt,) unlocked and loaded a non-bloated non-AT&T ROM in it (they mean the OS and programs, not the actual chip when they say this, so it.s more of a "ROM Load",) and find that it actually does what the HTC Wizard (AKA T-Mobile MDA II) was supposed to do. Quad band, SiRF GPS, 3Mp camera w/autofocus, I think this with a small laptop (Asus has one, not the EEE, that is cheap small and light and is a real laptop,) and you meet your (OPs) specified needs. It'll take up to a 32G SDHC Micro-SD card, although I keep reading that Windows Mobile 6 only supports up to 2G, but haven't substantiated that yet.
T-Mobile is supposed to be getting this soon as the Vario III.
I purchased mine by noon on the first day. Paypal charged my amex the same day. Still no laptop. I emailed 2 weeks ago, got a bounce that said they'd get back to me in 3-5 days, and nothing else. I called yesterday, and they said my paypal address was wrong, which they corrected online, and said I'd get an email with tracking info once thay have it.
It sounds like a programming error is messing up some addresses (I've bought at least 5 packages on ebay with the same paypal shipping address since November.) But the donation went through immediately.
I'm not mad, I expect to really enjoy the device, and am glad that some kid got one too. But is it that hard to dump out a list of names and make some "we know it's not there yet" emails? I'm not that surprised by the delay, but am by the failure to address this proactively, and hope that these are only growing pains.
The federal rules of discovery haven't really changed - this is just a tweak to address the concerns of the digital era. The government does not want you to keep everything forever, in fact the government is not usually party to these civil suits - besides most corporations waive privilege in government investigations to show good faith.
The primary goal of these changes are to get lawyers to talk about discovery in a meet-and-confer as early as possible. Too many judges were spending too much time dealing with lawyers that didnt know what they were talking about going back and forth about "it's in the metadata" or "it's in the RAM" or "it's on a sector". The judges want the lawyers to bring their geeks in, discuss what each side has and where, and decide on a good process for e-discovery. Then the courtroom is for arguments about merits, not about process.
Unfortunately the perception is that you have to deliver tons of data, which means reviewing tons of data for privilege. Plaintiffs lawyers are using this as a method to pry large settlements out of defendants, who see this as cheaper than hundreds of hours of outside counsel review time. You do know that most civil cases settle before going to trial, right?
That's not to say that e-discovery is not a fascinating and daunting challenge, it actually makes for an interesting career. But bringing a sound preservation scheme and reasonable search terms and methods to a meet and confer will help dramatically.
That sounds awesome! Many of us Houston Burners are hoping to hit some of the regionals that are astarting up.
And if you're ever down in Texas, Flipside is the annual event in the Austin area. It's the largest burn outside of BRC, but still only 1700 last time, so much more manageable. Then there's "Log", our tiny little Houston event going on this weekend up around Huntsville for the second year.
Pee Clear!
wayne AKA ranger martha
In 2002 I had the distinct pleasure of attending both Siggraph in San Antonio and, about a month later, BurningMan. I found them both to be amazing examples of what the human mind can do.
If you go to Siggraph just looking to see the people who made Spideman's butt look tight, that's all you'll see - but the hundreds of tiny forums and sessions with researchers exploring the edges of science is both enlightening and frightening.
BurningMan may look like a big party in the desert, but unless you go, you just cant understand the experience. The most striking and important thing about BM is the "gift economy" - aside from ice and coffee, there is no money-based commerce. It's not even a barter economy - you can almost always find whatever you want or need, and quickly find yourself getting engaged in the societal lovefest. Even the law enforcement officers we met (and had to deal with after an assault in a neighbooring camp, a very unusal occurence there) were outstanding examples of restraint and respect. The only time Ive seen that level of public harmony and effort outside of BM has been in disasters, my personal experience being the volunteers for the Columbia Debris efforts and here at home on Houston, the Katrina relief efforts.
That said, technologically, BM is a treasure trove of ideas and thoughts - there are many amazing technologies, it's many of the same people that I saw at Siggraph, but this time using their advanced knowledge and resources to delight and amaze their fellow citizens of Black Rock City.
Siggraph and Burningman - I recommend both heartily and without reservation. Look for the beauty, it's not hiding at all.
As someone directly involved with this effort (as a member of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service), I can assure my fellow slashdotters that this is simply not an issue, much less worthy of a slashdot story. Although this sounds like a great idea on the surface, I can understand where the JIC or for that matter the Incident Commander would chose to deny this request.
What is not apparent to anyone outside Reliant City (as the astrodomain is now being called) is that it is utter CHAOS in there. It's not that the guests are anything but orderly, that the volunteers are anything but helpful, or that the involved agencies dont care, but there just isnt time for the responsible parties to even think very hard about it. Keep in mind that this is a gargantuan effort on the part of almost everybody involved - every agency I've come in contact with has expressed amazement at the vastness of the task and the speed with which it is being accomplished. And by now they are all pretty much exhausted. Sunday there were 25,000 guests on the ground - today it's far less than half of that. Meeting immediate needs is pretty much all that they can do. I alone have worked over 40 hours on this event since last wednesday, in addition to my regular full-time job.
It would certainly be wonderful if the guests were being entertained, or even efficiently informed. And when I first heard about this effort I thought it was a great idea. But providing a communications channel without professional guidance as to content and application could just as easily cause more harm then good. After the event there will be a great deal of effort to review procedures and decide what went right and what went wrong, and I really hope that this specific option is included in future plans. I think it is awesome that the organizers of this effort did so much, this option has a great deal of potential. But please dont assume that some "lower-level official" just decided to be mean or felt power-hungry - it is just as likley that they thought it was a good idea, but just didnt have the time to give it a chance or make sure it was done right.
Wayne Barker AD8A
Amateur Radio Emergency Service
Emergency Coordinator, SouthWest Harris County, Houston, TX
Lets look at this without trying real hard to be special.
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
once again
"Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer
for providing strength
in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."
for providing strength.
Doesnt say it cured her.
Could easily mean it proveded strength to THEM, as a family. Because, as you might know, prayer is a very emotional thing, something that can fill one with hope. I doubt they are unaware or unnapreciative of the medical treatment, and certainly seemed to indulge the medical communities likley expensive and thankfully succesful attempt.
for providing strength.
If you're going to vociferously beat a dead horse, you could at least make sure it's a horse...
I too was in the beta, and really really liked it. It was very playable (not like Absolute Failure Online) and there was a real joy in jumping to another starsystem and finding giant nebulae. It was a suprisingly pretty game, and had a nice balance. I mainly didnt join up for the pay version because I had just got laid off, that and I like Morrowind enough to not need a MMORPG right now.
Still, E&B was very well done, and I am saddened to see it pass. It would be nice to see an effort to open up the server option like the Myst folks did, if nothing else in respect to those that invested time/money in a character.
This is a common task for law firms. typically in the discovery process you get tons of documents, and it is becoming more and more common to send those out to a vendor to get imaged as 300dpi type 4 tiffs. there should be some vendors in your area that can do this, and provide OCR services (IF it's machine-generated text, handwriting doesnt ocr.) Look for firms advertising litigation support. It's also common to number each page for future reference, the vendor can do this and it can make it a lot easier to find things. iPro is a popular scanning software, and Ricoh's are popular scanners. Tell the vendor you just want .pdfs, that should be easy for them.
Did someone get rid of the latent heat of vaporization?
it's a fixed amount when you boil a liquid - it may take a lower temperature to get there at a lower pressure, but it's still the amount of energy needed to break the bonds. less energy = cooling.
About a year and a half ago I bought a Casio Sea Pathfinder, which is very similar to the Suuntos. It has a thermometer, barometer and compass. The thermometer is not that useful, as you have to take it off for 30 minutes to get a reading not influenced by your heat. The barometer is ok, it has a little graph at the top of the large LCD that tracks the last 48 hours, but I work on the 18th floor so its not to keen - good for camping though. The compass works fine, when I was hiking last year I found it as useful as most of the camping compasses my friends had. It supposedly shows you the tide, but that doesnt work as advertised. It has 5 alarms, which is decent, and a countdown/lap timer, but the stop watch stoopidly only measures in 1/2 second intervals. If I were to do it again Id look at the Suuntos harder, this is a nice big heavy durable watch, but misses out on being the end-all.
On a related note, Ive noticed several of the oilfield people Ive run into recently favor the dual analog and digital watches. I used to use those in the navy and loved them. Casio could reprogram this watch easily into something with selectable analog and digital indicators, but then, with as few geeks as there are, why would they?
I have an Alinco handheld ham radio (2m) that offers this feature. I cant imagine running the battery down for a dubious effect, when I can get backwoods Off(tm) (100% DEET) or that military cream, and really keep them off. Yes, it's nasty smelly and possibly cancerous, but Houston (like most of the country apparently) has West Nile in a BROAD spectrum of the mosquito population (we used to just have to avoid the culex mosquitos, small dusk-time ones that carried St. Louis Encephalitis.)
BTW, Cowboy neals boy band mp3s repel pests because likes repel, opposites attract (which is why Cdr. Taco likes them soo much...)
This wasnt even close to the coolest thing at SIGGRAPH! Takeo Igarashi's work on predictive interfacing making easier 2d and 3d drawing tools was cooler. Digiplasty , a kind of 3d exquisite corpse as shown by Stewart and Makai was cooler. (For that matter the Studio, manned by Makai, Stewart, Scott and many others, where you could create 2d and 3d art and print 2d and 3d was AWESOME - you could work in there for hours, vs. the few seconds of playing with a silly virtual sword.) Scotts Dodecahedron was a wonderful example of taking something abstract and virtual and making it real and usable. Isa's overview of wearable tech and cyberfashion (she took out the notes, dammit!) was refreshing, if not so new to a frequent slashdotter. (She's a burner too!) Some of the mixed reality work being done at the University of Singapore was really neat. (This is an example of some of the most exciting stuff there. Several researchers showed some great work being done in augmented reality, and combining that with some of the reasonable priced wearable and wirelessable computing, we can see some real headway being made. One researcher even composites a virtual face back onto a fellow participant in the augemented reality environment, masking the HMD, even going so far as to track the eyes and simulate the gaze.) The results of last years meditation chamber research installation was an interesting and possibly VERY useful application of VR technology. W. Bradford Paley's work on applying alternative interfaces to explore other media was fascinating, where you can use this LARGE java tool named TextArc to examine graphically over 400 literary works. The Web3D Consortium's release of the final working draft of X3D (with tools) could end up being much more important than the newest video card from ATI. Dietmar Offenhuber's work on non-isotropic spaces at wegzeit was an interesting approach to mapping and representing real places. Zachary Simpson et al's delightfully simple shadow interactivity was many times more fun than the virtual swordfight. Fabric.ch's knowscape was also exciting, both for the viewers and the presenter, as he would find additions from his European counterparts each morning when he logged on to the shared 3d space. Kenneth Huff's beautiful art using maya was just one example of some wonderful digital work being done. Lastly, Michael J. Lyons soon-to-be-published research on the aesthetics of Tokyo's Kyoto Gardens was both informative and inspiring. And this is just a TINY PART of what happened there!
Really, SIGGRAPH was NOT just an exhibition floor with cheesey swag (although the little green LED lights were very nice) and some cool new toys. It was presentation after presentation by resesarchers, some barely able to speak engrish, but all excited about their work and open to collaboration. It was hours and hours of animation, some (Like Allain Escalle's "Le Conte du monde flottant") were so stunning as to make you forget where animation ended and life began. Disney's work on replacing one actors face with another, retaining ALL facial expression, was downright scary. And the Spiderman gag footage, his spidey-suit oddly replaced with a fully reflective silver surface, like most of the rest of SIGGRAPH'S less entertaining presentations, were surely an indication of things to come.
Take the time to go to SIGGRAPH2002 and look around. If you find something interesting, write the author. This is where the new VR and AR comes from - not ATI!
A couple of days ago I heard a report about a Palistinian village. Israel had suspected that terrorists were there, so Israeli tanks surrounded the village, bombarded it, and left. It was a small report, almost an aside to the main news, which was lots of talk about the U.S. economy, and how not EVERYONE had a job.
I kept thinking about that village. I wondered what it would feel like, to feel afraid for your life, to not know where they might strike next.
Now I know. Today at work I kept looking out the window, reassured to see the un-marred Houston skyline. I thought of the many possible stategic sites that could be hit in Houston, of refineries that could spew poisens for days, of skyscrapers here full of people.
And I thought of that Palistinian village. They've been living with this kind of terror for months, even years.
This attack did not occur in a vacuum. Certainly those responsible committed a horrible act. But responding with another horrible act wouldn't help. Do we blow up Afghanni families, just in case it was Osama Bin Laden? Do we push the Israelis to attack large Palistinian areas, only to find it was another Timothy McVey?
Regardless of whether one agrees with the current administrations foreign policies, it would be reasonable to recognize a very real arrogance in the dispensation of those policies. The United States acts like it is the invulnerable master, the king of the hill, casting justice and consensus aside. Just this week the US refused to participate in a UN conference on racism. We do anything we want, and dare anyone to try and do anything about it.
Someone did. It would only make things worse to react in an agressive military fashion. Certainly justice must be served, but it should be measured, accurate and appropriate.
America is a special place, luckier than most humans have ever seen. We spend most of our time planning parties and designing toys. When something like this happens we should step back, look at the BIG picture, and reflect - what have we done to help? Has any one of us written to a congressman, expressing concern over continued financial support of the heavy-handed Israelis? How many of us even NOTICE what our foreign policy is?
Several media reports have referred to this as a second Pearl Harbour. We would be wise to recall that our enemies in that conflict are now some of our staunchest allies. Also forgotten was the American blockade of fuel oil to Japan, precipitating the attack.
This morning the first person I talked to after I heard the news was a black man in an auto parts store. He was lamenting the fighting in the middle east, pointing out that here in Houston such strife is all but unthinkable. The Hispanic parts salesman and I agreed.
The United States is a unique culture, made up of disparate cultures themselves sometimes at odds with each other in their respective homelands. Now one of these conflicts has struck our home. A strong response is appropriate, but we should also look at our actions and attitudes, and take what measure of responsibility is ours. Then, maybe instead of dealing with a symptom, we can address a cause - perhaps even right a wrong.
Yes! I can't get mail for my .cx domain. What can you do when your TLD goes down? grrr....
I completely agree. The trailer for FF was the best special effects I've seen in years - maybe ever. Just the trailer. It may not be linux, but it's gorgeous.
Not to disagree with the whole linux thing, I'm all for it. That thing. Any "Non-M$" thing.
OH yes there is. Try movielink. Friday night it was at the Edwards on I-10, and I saw it at the 30-screen ludicrous-plex on Dunvale off Westheimer. As for the movie - anyone who has exposed themselves to traditional chinese literature will recognize common themes such as unrequited love, honor over happiness, many many characters, and a comon end result - tragedy. I thought this was a incredibly moving film, only lessened by the often ridiculous wirework. Had they LEPT from roof to roof it would have seemed superhuman. FLYING from roof to roof kicking their legs looked silly, even if it is the traditional asian movie way. When the wirework was used for the fighting it was often incredible, far exceeding it's use in Matrix. Overall this is the best movie of 2000, close to 1999's Magnolia in the sheer volume of great acting. And it was a nice touch to have some of the music provided by yo-yo ma. And one of the most moving facets of the experience was to see a large commercial theater filled with "normals" engrossed by such a thouroughly "foreign" artwork. Hopefully Hollywood will notice this and other successes this season, and start giving us works, and not just commercial marketing vehicles.
www.point.com
www.decide.com
www.myrateplan.com
These ask you detailed questions about your intended use, then suggest the best rates in your area. I would try all of them, think about my actual/possible use, find a good plan, then look at the phones, and decide what you must have, and if that plan can provide it. I ended up with a Nokia 6161, which is a triple mode (both digitals and analog) with a long battery life, but also look at the nokia 6185 (also triple mode) which can attach with a special serial cable to your cpu/palm.
Who shot J.R.?
Where's the Beef?
Did Martha Washington have splinters on her ass?
Just what IS Chemical X?
Can you canoe?
Is there REALLY urine in Mountain Dew?
Who made-a the salad?
Was Paul really the walrus?
Who farted!?!
Is Goku REALLY a super-sayen?
Did Clinton inhale?
Did George W. snort?
Is Peekachoo a mutant smurf?
Are BigMacs really made of worms? Is KFC really vat-grown chicken flesh?
Just what IS a Scooby-snack?
And lastly of course, is Bill Gates REALLY an alien, and if so can we autopsy him for the discovery channel?
...we know a lot about a little.
what does this mean?
++++SPOILER+++
I too noticed the audio seemed wrong, until I was reminded:
Mike had the little video camera, AND the DAT. - it was the audio used for the 16mm. When he drops his video camera he also drops the DAT - when the view switches to her (up the stairs) the audio is still from his location , and you hear her screaming as she runs towards you, while seeing her running down to him.
This, along with noting that Mike was "standing in the corner" was an awesome and unerving touch.
I moved into a house with a DirecTV dish, which I kept paying for for a year. Then the tuner (a VERY old one) went bad, and I switched to Dish network.
I switched to Dish for 2 main reasons:
1. Quality looked much better on screen. I could always see a pixelation with DirecTV, not so with Dish. 2. Dish had BBC, which I really wanted.
But theres a lot going on in this field.
When I called to cancel DirecTV after I bought the Dish solution, they asked me why. they said that they had just bought Primestar, and would be bringing more international choices from that. This, in combination with their purchase of USSB, gives DirecTv MANY more choices of channels. Dish does have a wide variety of international channels, but they are ala cart, and often expensive, and require a second dish.
the dish unit I bought (an older one, even though its just a few months old it was an "old" type) has some awesome features compared to the Diretv unit. All Dish units update their software automatically from the sattelite, which should be good, but reading the newsgroups you can see a flurry of "hell, what did they do?" messages after upgrades sometimes.
The dish unit I have uses a UHF remote but also supports IR TV, VCR, and another one (I forgot.) When looking through the guide for shows, if you pick one that isnt on yet it gives you a choice of programming both the satelite receiver and the vcr to record it, automatically doing the start stop times. This is great (at least the 90% of the times that the guide is correct.) Just make sure the remote is pointing at the vcr and it has a blank tape and is ON. To me a major benefit over DirecTV.
DirecTV has MUCH Music, the canadian MTV type thing which is much much better. Do miss that.
A recent satllite deal gave DirecTV more satelite transponders I think, but Id check that first. Could affect future expansion.
Overall, I like the hell out of my Dish unit, and only miss one or two channels from DirecTV. Cost is virtually identical. I live 2 miles from most of the broadcast antennas in Houston so get local reception at least as good as I care for. My new 19" Hansol monitor keeps knocking channels off (interferes somehow with the receiver) but is not that big a deal. (havent really troubleshot this yet.)If DirecTV gets a butload of international stuff at a reasonable price I would want that, as I care more for that than movies or sports. Havent heard the best about the internet access, heard it was very expensive and still uses 56K modem to upload.
WHATEVER YOU DO go to the newsgroups and read a butload. There are web pages (tagged at home of course) that compare the nearly identical channel offerings (except the movies on USSB of course.) But the newsgroups have a tremendous wealth of info, and some very real experts. You will learn far more there than you really want to know (although the satelite launch and tracking page is sweet. I love the track for the recent one that splashed after launch, it's listed as "below horizon".)
Here on Ghost Plant we've heard rumours that apple is going to come out with a decent consumer portable later this year. Supposed to have a G3 processor. OS 8.6 even has enablers for it (or is somehow engineered to run on it.) Could one of the PPC liuxs (just what is the plural of linux? Linii?) run on this platform? OF course, its going to have weird everything (display, interactivity, possible radio communications, etc.) Sigh. Sometimes I think apple is too smart for their own good...
I totaly agree. This kind of site, with thoughtful not-very-arrogant-at-all commentary, run by someone who either gives a damn or fakes it really good - this IS the net as far as I'm concerned.
In fact, here on Ghost Planet we've built a large shrine to Bob. We call it "Bob Rocks Our World At Least This Little Part Of It Right Here."
Now if I just knew how to log in and make some of this stuff work. Maybe someone (anyone who knows, not necessaarily he-who-knows-all-and-needs-beer) could write a moving FAQ. We could call it Shirly.
wait a minute... who's Rob? What did he do to Bob? I'm going to count to ten, and if Bobs not back...
That sounds all fine and good, but most of us have enough trouble stopping ourselves from SAYING something stoopid, all we need is:
"in the I-did-it-already-dont-ask-me-again department, this story on OH SHIT THAT COFFEES HOT... damn, my favorite sailor moon shirt too... what was I doing?..."
Really, we'll need some kind of filtering before we could implement that. We'va all seen the various sci-fi permutations, lots of authors have looked at that scenario, we'll have to do some real work on MENTAL discipline before we can do anything like that sucessfully.
Keep trying for the T1 though...