Burnt food seems to be a popular description of the odor she's talking about. Here's a bit from Bill Shepherd's ISS Expedition 2 log for November 19, 2000. The Sergei he's referring to here is cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev:
Sergei led the way into the top of the Progress. Sergei said the nose of the docking probe "smells like space". It did have kind of a burnt toast odor to it--very faint.
More of the same log, with some editing, can be found here.
Is Iran really a dictatorship? That's one of the reasons why I'm so concerned about them, is that they seem like a country united behind their wack-ass president. If I've been fooled by their PR, then I'm actually somewhat relieved.
Here's some insight into contemporary life in Iran. It seems that the people interviewed in this article think Ahmadinejad should be spending more time on bread-and-butter issues like information freedom and tackling unemployment than on facing down the West on nuclear enrichment.
1) Never flirt. It's just bad news all around,and encourages the office males to view you as a sexual being instead of a coworker. Not good.
And part of flirting is your appearance. At a software firm I once worked at, there were several attractive women working in both development and documentation. All of them were careful to maintain standard business wear, except for one, who favored short skirts and tight tops. She infuriated the other women, who felt that she was setting them all back by playing the sex card in the office. It more-or-less destroyed at least one friendship.
I think perhaps your two points contradict each other in an interesting way; Your first point seems to be saying that one of the defining characteristic of a "highbrow game" is that it must rely on the latest technology. Your second point, that great stories have a staying power and bear repeated reads or views.
What's interesting to me is that the three examples you give for point 2, Pride and Prejudice, The Maltese Falcon, and Back To The Future, are all examples of stories done on trailing edge technology (books, B&W film, color film w/80's FX).
What this leads me to say is that maybe your point 1 is a red herring; Maybe the games that seem "horrible" after a few years weren't all that interesting as stories, and once their visuals became passe', it was easy to see that there was no depth to the plot or characters. Maybe, regardless of medium, interesting stories and characters are all that count, whether the original medium was cuneiform tablets or XBox 360 DVDs.
I'd be willing to jump up and down on them with little fear of breaking anything.
Not only do they seem to be built like tanks, but they seem to have over-engineered cooling systems. I use a Dell Latitude, IBM Thinkpad T-42 and G4 Powerbook daily, and I gotta say the IBM runs far cooler than either of these other two - Probably at least part of the reason for the Thinkpad lines' reputation for reliability.
The "unusual odor" is probably due to the fact that the affected machines are running iFart. I think Apple has discontinued this product, though. Not much of a market for it.
And they can extend those time intervals at will, depending on the task and the agency involved. I once was the subject of an investigation going back over 10 years for a Secret clearance. The form involved ran something like 15-20 pages, IIRC.
IIRC, some U.S. states have requirements that in the event of identity theft, the victim not only gets free credit reports, but also the lookup for the free report isn't counted. This eliminates, at least for the victims who happen to live in those states, the potential involuntary hit to their credit rating via the mechanism you've described.
I wonder what Balmer or Gates is going to say when they next tell the market how the 'integration' of Windows is why they'll beat GNU/Linux in the long run and someone mentions this blog in response?
I believe you already have your answer. Look at TFA again (as of Jun 15, 2006 15:08 EDT), and you'll find that the blogger has redacted his article.
Sounds right to me. Take the rocky Shetland Islands between the Scottish mainland and Norway - They seem to be a natural miniaturization lab, due to scarce resources - In TFA, they mention the miniaturization of deer brought over from the mainland to the Shetlands, and Shetland ponies, and Shetland sheep, herded by Shetland Sheepdogs (my breed of choice) are all well-known smaller variants of larger animals from elsewhere.
"On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies.
Why put classified bunker-type facilities in suburbia? My guess is, during the Cold War, those facilities were rural and far removed from the city, and easy to keep out of the public eye. Fifty years of DC area population growth has moved the suburbs out to those facilities now.
This kind of thing always seems a bit far-fetched in sci-fi movies, let alone modern-day America.
This reminds me of that cringe-worthy scene in Total Recall where Douglas Quaid sticks a set of pincers up his nostril and pulls out a glowing ping-pong ball sized tracking device, on advice from a video of himself running in his open briefcase.
I imagine a lot of this was just needless pre-optimization, especially as the years rolled by and prices went down exponentially.
Prices for memory and such may have gone down for PCs and workstations, but may not have for the mainframes that, I'm guessing, ran (and run!) the bulk of this legacy code. I'm sure in some cases the machines were so obsolete that getting more memory or disk at any price might not have been possible.
And as for 2 versus 4 digits, storage size restrictions can be very real, and you do what you can. As late as 1999 I worked on a project where the client required us to shrink Java thick-client apps to a size that would run on a Windows box with 32MB of memory, total.
Yes, the little-known iRak from Apple. They used them in G'itmo. Strap some suspected terrorist SOB to it, insert an iPod into the dock, and it force feeds "Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" into the guy's eardrums on permanent repeat until he confesses stuff he doesn't even know.
You sound like you use the tool correctly and are a well organized person. This probably makes you the exception that proves the rule.
I, OTOH, prefer paper and pen for meetings and lectures. I'm a far faster writer than typist, and use that unless there's something that absolutely requires the machine. Scribbling on the handouts is better, if they're provided, but for the most part I do it the 19th century way. (Only with gel ink!) Good paper is a must, though - I get mine from Levenger.
Yeah, I saw that TV series - "Walker: Texas Consumer Help Desk Advocate". The network pulled it after one season, the jerks. And it was just starting to build an audience. I think they pulled it because the Indian Ambassador complained after the "Bang Bang Bangalore" episode. That one did great numbers among unemployed U.S. programmers and call center guys, but the advertisers didn't care about that demographic, and so it was curtains for the show after that.
You should have gotten the credit card company involved and contested the charge. I've seen a number of companies back down real quick on restocking fees and return problems once their merchant accounts are involved.
True dat. I once sicced MBNA on a harddrive dealer after the promised disk failed to materialize months after they billed my credit card. The company folded, but I got the charge reversed with no hassle, and the loser company got to add MBNA to their creditor list. >:->
I would have liked a little more context on the Dell running OS X vs. the MacBook Pro
Yeah, that would've helped this review some, but I'm guessing with a hacked machine of dubious origin, she may not have wanted to discuss the Dell any more than she did. No point in attracting the attention of Apple's legal sharks.
Slashdot Mirror
More of the same log, with some editing, can be found here.
Here's some insight into contemporary life in Iran. It seems that the people interviewed in this article think Ahmadinejad should be spending more time on bread-and-butter issues like information freedom and tackling unemployment than on facing down the West on nuclear enrichment.
Here's another side of the story, focussing on Claudia Mitchell, the woman seen in TFA.
Yeah, what he said. As long as the guys running the experiments don't cross the streams, everything will be fine.
And part of flirting is your appearance. At a software firm I once worked at, there were several attractive women working in both development and documentation. All of them were careful to maintain standard business wear, except for one, who favored short skirts and tight tops. She infuriated the other women, who felt that she was setting them all back by playing the sex card in the office. It more-or-less destroyed at least one friendship.
I think perhaps your two points contradict each other in an interesting way; Your first point seems to be saying that one of the defining characteristic of a "highbrow game" is that it must rely on the latest technology. Your second point, that great stories have a staying power and bear repeated reads or views.
What's interesting to me is that the three examples you give for point 2, Pride and Prejudice, The Maltese Falcon, and Back To The Future, are all examples of stories done on trailing edge technology (books, B&W film, color film w/80's FX).
What this leads me to say is that maybe your point 1 is a red herring; Maybe the games that seem "horrible" after a few years weren't all that interesting as stories, and once their visuals became passe', it was easy to see that there was no depth to the plot or characters. Maybe, regardless of medium, interesting stories and characters are all that count, whether the original medium was cuneiform tablets or XBox 360 DVDs.
Not only do they seem to be built like tanks, but they seem to have over-engineered cooling systems. I use a Dell Latitude, IBM Thinkpad T-42 and G4 Powerbook daily, and I gotta say the IBM runs far cooler than either of these other two - Probably at least part of the reason for the Thinkpad lines' reputation for reliability.
The "unusual odor" is probably due to the fact that the affected machines are running iFart. I think Apple has discontinued this product, though. Not much of a market for it.
You mean like sitting in the terminal posting a comment to Slashdot via a wireless connection?
What I thought I was going to see under this subject was that this simply could not be ethically correct because "...every sperm is sacred..."
And they can extend those time intervals at will, depending on the task and the agency involved. I once was the subject of an investigation going back over 10 years for a Secret clearance. The form involved ran something like 15-20 pages, IIRC.
IIRC, some U.S. states have requirements that in the event of identity theft, the victim not only gets free credit reports, but also the lookup for the free report isn't counted. This eliminates, at least for the victims who happen to live in those states, the potential involuntary hit to their credit rating via the mechanism you've described.
So, that playground bully that used to knock me face first into the turf and say "Eat dirt, nerdo!" was actually making me stronger!...
I believe you already have your answer. Look at TFA again (as of Jun 15, 2006 15:08 EDT), and you'll find that the blogger has redacted his article.
Sounds right to me. Take the rocky Shetland Islands between the Scottish mainland and Norway - They seem to be a natural miniaturization lab, due to scarce resources - In TFA, they mention the miniaturization of deer brought over from the mainland to the Shetlands, and Shetland ponies, and Shetland sheep, herded by Shetland Sheepdogs (my breed of choice) are all well-known smaller variants of larger animals from elsewhere.
Why put classified bunker-type facilities in suburbia? My guess is, during the Cold War, those facilities were rural and far removed from the city, and easy to keep out of the public eye. Fifty years of DC area population growth has moved the suburbs out to those facilities now.
cliffski says:
This kind of thing always seems a bit far-fetched in sci-fi movies, let alone modern-day America.
This reminds me of that cringe-worthy scene in Total Recall where Douglas Quaid sticks a set of pincers up his nostril and pulls out a glowing ping-pong ball sized tracking device, on advice from a video of himself running in his open briefcase.
Raenex says:
I imagine a lot of this was just needless pre-optimization, especially as the years rolled by and prices went down exponentially.
Prices for memory and such may have gone down for PCs and workstations, but may not have for the mainframes that, I'm guessing, ran (and run!) the bulk of this legacy code. I'm sure in some cases the machines were so obsolete that getting more memory or disk at any price might not have been possible.
And as for 2 versus 4 digits, storage size restrictions can be very real, and you do what you can. As late as 1999 I worked on a project where the client required us to shrink Java thick-client apps to a size that would run on a Windows box with 32MB of memory, total.
Solar wind is going to create MILFs? Cool!
Oh, whoops, guess I should've RTFC. Never mind...
Yes, the little-known iRak from Apple. They used them in G'itmo. Strap some suspected terrorist SOB to it, insert an iPod into the dock, and it force feeds "Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" into the guy's eardrums on permanent repeat until he confesses stuff he doesn't even know.
So, obviously, in Russia, it's boxers, and elsewhere it's (lawyer's) briefs when it comes to software piracy.
You sound like you use the tool correctly and are a well organized person. This probably makes you the exception that proves the rule.
I, OTOH, prefer paper and pen for meetings and lectures. I'm a far faster writer than typist, and use that unless there's something that absolutely requires the machine. Scribbling on the handouts is better, if they're provided, but for the most part I do it the 19th century way. (Only with gel ink!) Good paper is a must, though - I get mine from Levenger.
Yeah, I saw that TV series - "Walker: Texas Consumer Help Desk Advocate". The network pulled it after one season, the jerks. And it was just starting to build an audience. I think they pulled it because the Indian Ambassador complained after the "Bang Bang Bangalore" episode. That one did great numbers among unemployed U.S. programmers and call center guys, but the advertisers didn't care about that demographic, and so it was curtains for the show after that.
True dat. I once sicced MBNA on a harddrive dealer after the promised disk failed to materialize months after they billed my credit card. The company folded, but I got the charge reversed with no hassle, and the loser company got to add MBNA to their creditor list. >:->
Yeah, that would've helped this review some, but I'm guessing with a hacked machine of dubious origin, she may not have wanted to discuss the Dell any more than she did. No point in attracting the attention of Apple's legal sharks.