... over Tivo. We bought an UltimateTV reciever from Radio Shack (*gasp!*) about five years ago. Since then, my wife's mom upgraded from a basic DirecTV unit to a DirecTivo unit, and we have had plenty of time to use it, and we were so frustrated by the Tivo's limitations that we immediately went on eBay and bought a couple more used UTV units for spare parts and backup units. While not as hackable as a Tivo (you can upgrade the hard drive), the basic functionality is equal to a Tivo, the guide appears and scrolls far faster, the 30-second skip works perfectly, it's got the predictive resume everyone has been raving about in this discussion, and we actually like the fact it does NOT guess what we want to watch and fill up our hard drive unless we ask it to do so. And oh, yes, it does allow us to specify not to record duplicates, etc. One big plus - the Tivo's max fast forward speed only seems to be about 8x real time. The UTV will do 300x fast forward and rewind.
Unfortunately, nobody sells these units new anymore; apparently Microsoft decided to put its eggs in the MCE basket instead.
We looked at the HDTV version of the DirecTivo, and it was even worse than the basic DirecTivo.
We won't be able to use the UTV boxen with HDTV, but then we don't watch TV so much that it really bothers us, and besides we are too far from a major market to get over-the-air HDTV anyway.
There isn't a commercial airliner currently flying that is rated to land with full fuel - at least without some kind of overstress inspection if it happens. They'll fly around in circles for some time burning and/or dumping fuel until they're light enough to land. There's nothing particularly odd about this issue.
But as has been noted here already, even Voyager had an issue the first time they tried full fuel - a big issue, but one that didn't prevent success.
I was having consistent random crashes - the computer would suddenly reboot (all the way to bios, instantly) with no warning. The only clue was it happened most often when I was doing a disk-intensive task (which meant I had several crashes while the system was writing the FAT... BAD news).
For months I troubleshot all kinds of stuff, to no avail. New mobo, new processor, rearranged hard drives, reinstalled software, new network card, you name it - one step at a time, but no effect. The crashes continued.
Finally I happened upon some similar accounts of instability and they mentioned power supplies. I thought I was okay with a 300w supply and my Athlon. Nope. As soon as I replaced it, instant stability.
Some things to note about my experiences:
I upgraded to the Antec TruePower 430. It's an extremely quiet supply, even quieter than my processor fan, with a temp-controlled variable-speed fan and a second case fan molex connector that also is temp-controlled. It rarely runs above idle, but my case is always cool. That alone was worth the upgrade price.
I was loading the supply more than I had realized: I run dual graphics cards, two hard drives, and two CD/DVD drives. The crashes were apparently caused by the hard drives - it's apparently well-known (in some circles) that the highest instantaneous current draw in a PC is when the hard drive head starts to seek (lots of current is needed to get rapid motion and get the seek times down). So anytime I was doing a disk-to-disk operation - like a backup or CD burning - I was loading the power supply dangerously close to its limit. One step over the line, and the processor would hiccup. Boom, instant bad FAT table and a week of rebuilding.
Finally, this wasn't an overnight problem. I brought it on over time by adding things to my PC incrementally... hey, let's add another drive... hey, a spare graphics card... I can keep the case - it's working fine, right?
So word to the wise: get a GOOD power supply, and get one that's rated well ABOVE your expected average load. Pay attention to those current draw numbers on the hard drives; wattage alone doesn't tell the whole story, and small spikes can kill you.
I had a roommate in college in the late 80's who reminds me of all these pirates. He was into cracking software, not so much to enjoy the software, as to prove he could do it. I'd guess he's probably one of those guys doing this today.
(His "crowning" achievement at the time was cracking a particular game in which the code was stored encrypted, then once loaded from disk, decrypted before running - basic self-modifying code. He dug around the assembly code and figured out how to copy the decrypted code back to disk, and disabled the decryption routines, so the disk only contained the real runtime code. This proves if it can be protected, it can be cracked...)
Also, I had a relative (now deceased, but not from anything the RIAA did... *grin*) who was into downloading these cracked films. When we were going thru the estate and cleaning his house, we found around a hundred CDs burned with copies of all kinds of current films. I looked at a couple and was shocked at how bad they were. I don't think he ever watched more than a few - he was a compulsive collector (like his hundreds of Elvis CDs) and just had to have them, not watch them. He never would have spent money on them.
So it seems to me that the danger from these guys is incidental to Hollywood. I can't see that they're really losing that much money from these pirates. It's about bragging rights, not enjoying the movies.
Now, this doesn't condone the practice. I still consider it to be theft (no, this isn't flamebait), since someone ends up losing money at some level whenever someone else doesn't pay appropriately to view a movie or listen to a CD legally. Depriving someone of legally due money is theft, no matter whether it's property that is removed or information that is copied.
But in the end, I suspect that the monetary damages due to this copying are less than the net costs to Hollywood from aggravated and disenfranchised consumers.
>You would need some sort of computer assisted device. 20+ >years of Star Wars research can't hit a target the size of a >ballistic missle.
First of all, in 20 plus years of research, we HAVE demonstrated the ability to accurately target a missile. Enough to blow a few out of the sky. Second, we've done that from a 747 in flight at high altitude, not just a stable base placed on the ground. For crying out loud, we can repeatedly hit a precise spot on the MOON from the ground. Computer assist? Nah, just a good telescope with a bore-scoped laser.
Bear in mind that most airports have a very repeatable approach path - the planes come in within a few hundred yards of the same point in the sky, one every couple minutes, all day long. It's not that hard to get things lined up and try again and again until you get just one good shot.
After all, as Bush and Rumsfeld have said quite a few times, all the terrorists have to do is get it right once.
Sure, it wouldn't be as "sexy" as the X-Prize, but wouldn't some privately sponsored prize money do wonders for this longtime human dream? Call it, say, the Mecha Prize, and offer a few million bucks to whoever builds the first mecha that can go a half mile, pick up a Dodge Neon and move it in the air for 50 feet, then return to the starting line. Or something similar.
I have no doubt that someone as creative as Rutan is out there, and with a little incentive and the promise of some real financial gain could use modern actuators and pressure pads and gyro sensors and so forth to finally create a useful mecha.
I also have no doubt that (unlike Spaceship One) a mecha that could complete the above test would immediately be of great value in quite a few industrial and/or emergency applications.
My small business has a product we advertise using both Google Adwords and Overture... very useful methods of advertising. I've found one of my most productive ad buys is using my primary competitor's product name as a search term. And I'm absolutely certain I'm not the only one doing this, and frankly I don't feel the slightest bit bad about it. Customers looking for a product are often looking for a class of products, not the specific product, and simply only know one particular brand name to search. (How many people are looking for copiers in general when they type "xerox"?)
After all, it wasn't too long ago that it was ruled okay to refer to your competition in an advertisement (like Coke mentioning Pepsi, etc.), so this is just another example of the same thing.
Also, even in the non-targeted (non-paid) results, you'll often find multiple competing products, simply by virtue of similar characteristics and reviews of multiple products on a given page.
Somehow I doubt that a meteorite that was going fast enough to vaporize on impact would leave a *dark* steak in the frame. Secondly, if it was big enough to leave that wide a dark streak, it would make a MUCH bigger impact than that little flash. But moments later, there's no visible sign, even in the water.
I personally own a similar Canon G-3, and I've never seen a dark streak on the image, even when shooting pictures with a strong point light source (as was speculated for a blowing-out light bulb). In fact, with the G-3, a well known problem is "purple fringing" around bright lights. None of that here, so the bright splotch is probably not that bright.
I personally subscribe to the "bug in front of the flash" theory.
(Question: one post suggested the EXIF data shows the flash fired. Why would a halfway decent photog leave the flash on for a distance shot like this? It just risks illuminating the dust between you and the subject matter.)
Why on EARTH was the parent mod'ed INFORMATIVE?! Where's the "CLUELESS" mod when you need it?
>In Outlook Express, the location of the mail is hidden.
This is a pretty lame gripe, since most/. readers wouldn't hesitate to install Linux or dive into that arcane art of a command line interface - which requires an intimate knowledge of the directory structure.
C'mon already. It's THIS SIMPLE: Tools:Options:Maintenance:Store Folder, and OE helpfully tells you where it's stored. One simple setting change in OE, and your email will be stored in My Documents/Email, like mine is. Not that hard, is it? Now, whenever I go on a trip, I just burn a CD with the contents of that one folder. And if I need to move my email to another PC with OE, I just overwrite that other computer's store folder, and Voila, there's all my email. The only legit gripe would be that something is by default stored in the normally hidden Application Data folder, but that's hardly MS-specific; many apps do that.
>Further you can't export your mail to any easilly accesible format.
Oh? How about "Save As..." to a.txt or.eml format. Pretty straightforward. And for that matter, you can simply open the email store files in any text editor. Again, this is really a no-brainer for any/. reader.
Geez, save the complaints for something that is REALLY arcane or hard to handle. This just doesn't qualify.
But you can also buy accelerometers for the same purpose directly from the manufacturer's (Analog Devices) website for $12 in single units.
Sure. But does that include a computer interface that doesn't require custom hardware and software, can be easily understood by any computer user, and can be easily programmed in Visual Basic or a dozen other languages?
Yes, it's quite possible to buy low-cost sensors. The beauty of using a mouse as the basis for a sensor is its ready-to-use nature.
This got me thinking... me and my geek engineer brain...
Seems to me by mounting a small mass between springs right above the sensor, you could probably measure acceleration fairly accurately. The spring deflection would be precisely related to the acceleration, the mass, and the spring constant, two of which are known (or can be measured independently) and are fixed values.
F=ma, where force = mass times acceleration F=kx, where force = spring constant times displacement so a = kx/m (Figuring out the units is left as an exercise for the reader.)
So as the combined mouse/spring/mass assembly was accelerated, the cursor would deflect accordingly. Calibration would be straightforward: since k is fairly linear for most springs (within small ranges), and m is fixed, simply turning the sensor on its side (e.g., subjecting it to exactly 1.0g) gives a very nice data point.
Might be a cheap and fun way to build a sensor, say for measuring cornering force on your car, etc. Also might be a neat high school physics class experiment.
That is, unless Microsoft already patented that use... *grin*
Smurfs "cute" or "cannon fodder"?
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>But then I got into the "Halo" world and started to get chased by a bunch of Smurfs. >All of the cute little animals making noises like squeaky toys. I felt bad shooting them actually.
Hey, wait a minute - I thought shooting smurfs was a GOOD thing.
Cute depends on who you ask - I always thought they were horribly irritating, and somehow the idea of a FPS where you run around shooting smurfs really appeals to me...
Besides, anything with a gun shooting at ME instantly loses the descriptor "cute".
Ya know, with 5mp, suddenly a decent-looking digital zoom (when the output stays 640x480) becomes possible. You can't zoom optically in something this small, but you sure can digizoom it. Even with cheesy optics, that's got to be a selling point.
After all, it'll be a while before we regularly trade 2Mb photos with our pals on their cellphones with 120x240 screens.
I'm calling foul on part of this comment. (IAAAE - yes, I am an aero engineer...)
The genius of SpaceShipOne is that it essentially tumbles back into the atmosphere at a high angle of attack, with a high drag configuration, and very low speed. The low speed entry generates very little friction and therefore negligable heat.
No.
There's no "genius" in SS1 relating to its reentry speed - it's simply that the thing is coming in from "only" 100km up, starting at zero speed (the top of a vertical ballistic arc is zero speed). If this thing were orbiting, starting at Mach 25, it would burn up on reentry almost immediately. The only way you could avoid that, from a true orbital altitude, would be to completely stop the orbit (requiring a HUGE amount of fuel), and keep your vertical speed from getting too high until you hit the atmosphere again from that MUCH higher altitude (300km for a typical Shuttle orbit, not 100km for SS1), again requiring a lot of fuel.
The REAL genius is certainly the configuration - but merely because it eliminates the attitude stabilization problems, at least for a relatively low ballistic reentry. The thing will automatically acquire the right attitude and stay there.
But bear in mind that this approach would NOT work for a true high speed, orbital reentry. The ship would tumble initially - because at high altitudes (thin atmosphere) and high speeds, the flow is supersonic (actually hypersonic), which means shock waves off the leading edge of whatever's pointing forward, and pretty poor flow behind that shock wave. (Can you guess why supersonic fighters have huge tail surfaces?) This means very poor aerodynamic control (that's why the craft rolled "uncontrollably" last week!). And the feather configuration is pure aerodynamics - it'll tumble until it gets lower and slower. With this in mind, the feather configuration is essentially useless for initial reentry.
Sorry to burst any bubbles, but Rutan has a LONG way to go before this thing goes orbital (and I don't think it EVER will).
If there is indeed life on Mars, and a future sample retrieval mission obtains a sample, AND the replicating mechanism of that sample is NOT RNA/DNA (but perhaps, a more primitive form of it), would that be enough to convince significant numbers of creationists of evolution?
Thanks for a great question - allow me to jump into the fray.
<DISCLAIMER>Okay, first of all, let me offer a caveat: I'm a creationist, but I don't believe that evolution is impossible: I just don't believe that God chose to use evolution to create man. More specifically, the Bible says God created Man - it doesn't say HOW, but since it says He created us "in His image", I don't believe that leaves much room for "in the image of a monkey".
</DISCLAIMER>
Given that disclaimer, as a Christian, I have no problem believing in life on Mars. Why should I, as an intelligent, thinking, yet finite creature, believe that I can understand how an infinitely powerful God decided to create things? Why should the concept of life on Mars offend my sensibilities? Rather, it would increase my sense of awe at the variety of God's creation and abilities. See, I'm a logical Christian - I believe that the very definition of "god" implies infinite ability - and I don't believe it's my place to artificially limit His ability simply because it's too difficult to comprehend. Instead, I have to continually adjust MY thinking about God to suit the evidence around me.
The church in the years since the Enlightenment has constantly had the same struggle - how to reconcile the Bible with new scientific data. But that didn't end up destroying the Church - instead it gave greater awareness of the awesome, majestic creation around us. The Bible states that the universe itself sings God's praises, and that no man has any excuse for not believing in God, because God has presented Himself to us via everything we see around us.
Now, before the evolutionists and atheists out there jump on me for a perceived inconsistency in my logic, let me go a step further. I do NOT believe, given this framework, that just because God CAN use scientific processes to create, that He always DOES so. The Bible is very clear about the process whereby man was created - and it was very different than the process by which animals and other life were created. It clearly specifies that God "breathed life into Adam". This description makes it clear that there was a separate, unique step of creative endowment with "life" - meaning a spirit, not just "life" as purely reproductive ability. So, no, I don't see man as having evolved. That does NOT, however, discount the possibility that evolution is possible and even responsible for the fossil record.
Let me make one other useful point. I don't believe that evolution is overall God's tool of choice for creation. There are huge gaps in the fossile record between monkey and man, and huge gaps between many other species. From a strict scientific-process viewpoint, evolution is still a hypothesis: it has never been proven as the means by which all the current diversity of life exists. In fact, there are many very convincing reasons to believe that the fossil record and many other observable facts all illustrate that evolution is NOT a possible explanation for what we see around us. If you disagree, just do a Google search for the data. There are plenty of SCIENTISTS that believe in creation.
At this point, most Baptists and other fundamentalists reading this are probably seething with righteous indignation. Still, I'm a fundamentalist in this manner: I believe that the Bible is the complete, wholly accurate, inerrant, and literal word of God, at least in its original form (the original documents in the original languages, not any of our English translations). I've had this discussion with many fundamentalist friends - and they can no more convince me that I'm
No, that really wouldn't help anything. Jimbo or Granny wouldn't know that the system went down because it wasn't properly patched. They'd just be forced to rebuild the system, and in all likelihood they once again would NOT patch it because Windows Update would recommend about 80 Mb of downloads to do the patching. "After all, the system was working fine - it must have been a one-time event." And in weeks, it would be re-infected by something else malicious.
No, user education is the only option without changing the operating system.
Do you remember that web pages in 1996 look like shit?
Do remember that web development these days cannot rely on simple static text?
Do you realize that with HTML/XHTML editing tools around these days, it doesn't matter?
Right tool for the job, my friend. A text editor is for writing static text. HTML/XHTML tools are used for making web pages and interfaces.
Oh please.
Do I remember? Yeah, I've been coding HTML by hand since 1995, and my pages looked pretty messy back then. But it wasn't the HTML - it was my poor grasp of what looks good and works well for other users.
"Cannot rely on simple static text"? It's been said here before, and apparently you don't believe it. If your pages rely on flashy formatting and movement and pixel-level formatting, you're letting the formatting get in the way of content.
Right tools? Heh. Sorry, I've tried PageMill, and FrontPage, and Netscape and Mozilla built-in editors, and even MS Office's HTML editing. Don't like them. They all generate bulky, messy code, hard to tweak, impossible to really control. I've hand-coded everything from day one, and will always do it. And if you think hand-coded HTML is unpretty, somehow, visit http://www.worship-live.com for what you can do without an editor. Looks nice in any browser, lightweight and therefore bandwidth-friendly, and has yet to generate complaints of any significance. Maybe it won't parse out as perfectly W3 compliant - maybe I put the italics tag on the wrong side of my paragraph tag - but it works.
Sorry, but I just disagree with your basic premise. Frankly, the biggest problem facing the web today is people who somehow think that PageMill or Frontpage make them better web designers. Sorry - that's exactly the wrong answer.
... like User Agent Switcher Extension. Why on earth would you let a site identify your browser correctly when you can spoof it? If you want to continue to "plug" your use of a non-IE browser, you can always append some explanatory text at the end, like:
--Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Actually Mozilla Firefox - try it now!)
The beauty of the FireFox design IS the plugins - you can do this kind of thing.
Oh, and by the way, there are many other ways to do this, and you can also do it in Opera and Mozilla. Here's a comprehensive article on how to manipulate the User Agent strings.
Okay, I've read all the rants on either side of this issue, and the conclusion I've reached is this.
Continuity is highly overrated.
So, I'll admit I'm not a fanboy. I *am* a fan, however, and while continuity is important to me, it's not gospel, and I don't really get the urge to throw myself over the nearest cliff when it gets disrupted.
Instead, the way I see it, Star Trek in its whole has provided a generalized SciFi framework, into which different authors, directors, writers, artists, etc. can provide a story. Look at the general spread between TOS, TNG, DS9, STV and STE. Aside from the "boldly go" kind of essense, there's a HUGE diversity there. And frankly, as long as any one story is enjoyable, I don't really mind if there's some non-canonical bits therein. I *do* mind if they overuse the particle-of-the-week, just like I thought the midichlorian was a hideously stupid plot trick in Star Wars Ep1. But for run-of-the-mill stories, I'm more interested in how they handle the character development, coupled with the staple of SciFi - which is, in my opinion, how humans handle advanced technology and its effects (including the effect of encountering other species). All the rest is just details. Cool technology, maybe, but still just details.
So as far as I'm concerned, the "Star Trek" name provides a rather broad, rather permissive framework - with NAME RECOGNITION. And the best thing about it: that name recognition provides a budget for reasonably cool SciFi movies and television. Maybe not the BEST, but at least reasonably entertaining, and definitely more quantity than we'd get otherwise. And it spurs all kinds of spinoffs and competitors (B5, Andromeda, etc.) which are even better.
So, I'm all for chilling out the holy wars and just enjoying whatever is enjoyable, as it gets released.
A few months ago, I took a class on Pilot-Induced Oscillations (PIOs). As an aerospace engineer who works on military high performance aircraft, I know how bad PIOs can be, and just how deadly a problem they can be. This looks like a classic PIO, triggered by a control problem.
To summarize the two-day class into one paragraph, a PIO is an oscillation that is generally sustained by pilot inputs, is usually triggered by some external event, and has at least two common causes: rate-limited control actuators, or so-called "phase lags" (lag between input and output).
Relevant to this case, then, is the roll actuator (the hydraulic device responsible for moving the roll control surfaces). It sounds from the non-technical answer in the article "the actuator delayed moving one of the ship's flaps" like a rate-limited actuator. The pilot demanded a larger input faster than the system was able to provide, so the control surface hit its stop.
What ends up happening, in such a case, is that the pilot doesn't get the overall response he expects, so he puts in MORE input. But then it turns out to be too much, so he puts in a response the other way - but it takes a while to start reacting, so he puts in MORE input... etc. etc. etc..
Also, the "external event" in this case was probably a wind shear. You can have a PIO-prone system and it will fly just fine - right up until you hit that trigger event which is just large enough to throw you into a PIO - and then you're basically hosed. Nothing you can physically do will stop the PIO - OTHER than just releasing the controls and letting everything stop naturally - because it's the inputs that drive the oscillation. And you can bet that's quite frightening for a control-freak pilot who's afraid he's about to lose control. Takes a LOT of training in how to recognize it for what it is; stopping it is easy (if you have time or altitude) - just let go.
To fix a control system that has PIO problems, you can (a) increase the authority of the control device, (b) increase the response speed of the device, or (c) decrease the phase lag so it responds more quickly. None of those fixes are trivial, unless they're caused by a broken component.
I'm quite sure Rutan, of all people, is intimately familiar with this issue, and I have no doubt that he and his team will address it appropriately.
GPS plus a cellphone is no big deal - we already know where all the bases are anyway. However, I work at a military facility that strictly bans camera-phones from the flight line (where the planes are parked) - because there's quite a bit of sensitive material there - designs we don't want our enemies to see, or even our allies.
Cell phones are NOT banned from all meetings. Far from it. See, quite a bit of the stuff that gets discussed is completely banal - "Okay, have your secretary call mine and set up a meeting to discuss this issue further" - but you can bet they're strictly banned from any conversation that is at all sensitive.
Now, about the Coke cans. The real issue is NOT the GPS receiver, or the cell phone technology - I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with not wanting some Coke reps in a big white van full of interesting gadgets to try crashing the gates at a sensitive military facility. You want to get visited at home, no problem - leave the can there. Just don't invite them HERE, thank you very much. Again, it's common sense.
And yeah, I suspect there are some latent concerns about nefarious uses. But I doubt that's any more of a concern than for any other cell phone, or Blackberry two-way pager, or whatever.
It's common sense, people. Contrary to Hollywood's view, the US military is neither incompetent nor full of powermongers. It's mostly a lot of very dedicated, very intelligent people trying their best to defend and strengthen the good 'ol USofA, and that includes defense against reasonably possible intelligence-gathering hardware. Because face it, it's a lot cheaper to steal a good design than create it from scratch.
One, no military pilot in his right mind would deliberately FOD the cockpit - release Foreign Object Debris - even as small as an M&M - it's a surefire way to cause problems later. You'd be amazed at how little it takes to induce seriously Bad problems in an airplane cockpit. Even chocolate. Even three or four flights later, when that ONE M&M you didn't find post-flight just happens to melt or stick in an unfortunate spot.
Two, watch the silhouette of the vehicle carefully during the external footage of the thrust phase. Boy, the thing is rocking back and forth badly. Serious controllability problems. Yeah, I know, we already heard all about that - but this video drives home just how nasty it was. I can distinctly see four roll oscillations greater than 90 degrees in just about five seconds. Ouch. Any pilot in a military jet would be reaching for the ejection handle right then. Interesting they didn't include the over-the-shoulder footage for THAT.
Oh, and IAAAE (I AM an aerospace engineer) and DO happen to have experience working with both military pilots and jets.
>every piece of software has bugs and issues, regardless of the language you use to describe them.
Very true. I market a software program that I've created, and I don't consider "zero bugs" to be a reasonable goal. What I *do* consider reasonable is that, when a bug occurs, it's appropriately trapped without a complete program crash, the user gets a polite message and some options when applicable, they have a chance to easily report the bug directly to us with relevant details, and most importantly, they have a chance to save their work and exit gracefully. And when I get the bug report, I consider it my duty to handle the complaint with a personal response and in all likelihood an updated version posted within a day or two.
This is quite different from my experiences with programs like Word and Excel, which, when they DO crash, USUALLY do so by instantly quitting, with no chance of recovery or an opportunity to save my work; there is no useful (and privacy-worry-free) way of reporting the bug and little hope that it'll ever be fixed, if even noted. And in my experience, I can kind of count on those programs failing at least once a week under average use, and I know that AutoSave is only marginally useful at protecting me.
Now which would YOU rather have - MS's "zero defect" program, or my less-than-perfect software with graceful error handling and prompt, courteous responses?
I have been pondering the same issue for quite some time, as my business depends heavily on internet traffic. I've found one of the best ways to both track traffic, and benefit from it, is the Google AdSense program.
With a relatively compact bit of javascript embedded into a page, the user gets hopefully relevant ads that are not obtrusive or flashy, same as the Google Adwords text-only ads you see on the right side of the Google results pages. And you can customize the colors and format to suit your own pages. Google, while they do serve the ads based on your site's content, do allow you to prohibit certain keywords, so you can block out competitors' ads.
To make it useful to the host, Google allows you to create "channels", so within one AdSense account you can track different pages. You can get a detailed report of how many pageviews each channel generates, as well as click-thrus (which of course leave your site).
To sweeten the deal, you get paid for click thrus. That means you get paid when someone leaves your site, but my philosophy is that if they do that, they weren't planning on sticking around anyway, so I might as well profit from it.
In my case, my site generates about 3000 pageviews and 15 clickthrus, and that translates into about $1 a day in revenue. It's not much, but I roll that back into the Google AdWords campaigns that I run, which generate inbound traffic. I'd rather have people coming to my site that want to be here, than those that don't, so I see it as a fair trade.
And in the end, the reporting and tracking are handled by Google, and provide a tangible benefit to my business.
Oh, and if you want to see an example in operation, look at the very bottom of our site's main page.
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... over Tivo. We bought an UltimateTV reciever from Radio Shack (*gasp!*) about five years ago. Since then, my wife's mom upgraded from a basic DirecTV unit to a DirecTivo unit, and we have had plenty of time to use it, and we were so frustrated by the Tivo's limitations that we immediately went on eBay and bought a couple more used UTV units for spare parts and backup units. While not as hackable as a Tivo (you can upgrade the hard drive), the basic functionality is equal to a Tivo, the guide appears and scrolls far faster, the 30-second skip works perfectly, it's got the predictive resume everyone has been raving about in this discussion, and we actually like the fact it does NOT guess what we want to watch and fill up our hard drive unless we ask it to do so. And oh, yes, it does allow us to specify not to record duplicates, etc. One big plus - the Tivo's max fast forward speed only seems to be about 8x real time. The UTV will do 300x fast forward and rewind.
Unfortunately, nobody sells these units new anymore; apparently Microsoft decided to put its eggs in the MCE basket instead.
We looked at the HDTV version of the DirecTivo, and it was even worse than the basic DirecTivo.
We won't be able to use the UTV boxen with HDTV, but then we don't watch TV so much that it really bothers us, and besides we are too far from a major market to get over-the-air HDTV anyway.
There isn't a commercial airliner currently flying that is rated to land with full fuel - at least without some kind of overstress inspection if it happens. They'll fly around in circles for some time burning and/or dumping fuel until they're light enough to land. There's nothing particularly odd about this issue.
But as has been noted here already, even Voyager had an issue the first time they tried full fuel - a big issue, but one that didn't prevent success.
I was having consistent random crashes - the computer would suddenly reboot (all the way to bios, instantly) with no warning. The only clue was it happened most often when I was doing a disk-intensive task (which meant I had several crashes while the system was writing the FAT... BAD news).
For months I troubleshot all kinds of stuff, to no avail. New mobo, new processor, rearranged hard drives, reinstalled software, new network card, you name it - one step at a time, but no effect. The crashes continued.
Finally I happened upon some similar accounts of instability and they mentioned power supplies. I thought I was okay with a 300w supply and my Athlon. Nope. As soon as I replaced it, instant stability.
Some things to note about my experiences:
I upgraded to the Antec TruePower 430. It's an extremely quiet supply, even quieter than my processor fan, with a temp-controlled variable-speed fan and a second case fan molex connector that also is temp-controlled. It rarely runs above idle, but my case is always cool. That alone was worth the upgrade price.
I was loading the supply more than I had realized: I run dual graphics cards, two hard drives, and two CD/DVD drives. The crashes were apparently caused by the hard drives - it's apparently well-known (in some circles) that the highest instantaneous current draw in a PC is when the hard drive head starts to seek (lots of current is needed to get rapid motion and get the seek times down). So anytime I was doing a disk-to-disk operation - like a backup or CD burning - I was loading the power supply dangerously close to its limit. One step over the line, and the processor would hiccup. Boom, instant bad FAT table and a week of rebuilding.
Finally, this wasn't an overnight problem. I brought it on over time by adding things to my PC incrementally... hey, let's add another drive... hey, a spare graphics card... I can keep the case - it's working fine, right?
So word to the wise: get a GOOD power supply, and get one that's rated well ABOVE your expected average load. Pay attention to those current draw numbers on the hard drives; wattage alone doesn't tell the whole story, and small spikes can kill you.
I had a roommate in college in the late 80's who reminds me of all these pirates. He was into cracking software, not so much to enjoy the software, as to prove he could do it. I'd guess he's probably one of those guys doing this today.
(His "crowning" achievement at the time was cracking a particular game in which the code was stored encrypted, then once loaded from disk, decrypted before running - basic self-modifying code. He dug around the assembly code and figured out how to copy the decrypted code back to disk, and disabled the decryption routines, so the disk only contained the real runtime code. This proves if it can be protected, it can be cracked...)
Also, I had a relative (now deceased, but not from anything the RIAA did... *grin*) who was into downloading these cracked films. When we were going thru the estate and cleaning his house, we found around a hundred CDs burned with copies of all kinds of current films. I looked at a couple and was shocked at how bad they were. I don't think he ever watched more than a few - he was a compulsive collector (like his hundreds of Elvis CDs) and just had to have them, not watch them. He never would have spent money on them.
So it seems to me that the danger from these guys is incidental to Hollywood. I can't see that they're really losing that much money from these pirates. It's about bragging rights, not enjoying the movies.
Now, this doesn't condone the practice. I still consider it to be theft (no, this isn't flamebait), since someone ends up losing money at some level whenever someone else doesn't pay appropriately to view a movie or listen to a CD legally. Depriving someone of legally due money is theft, no matter whether it's property that is removed or information that is copied.
But in the end, I suspect that the monetary damages due to this copying are less than the net costs to Hollywood from aggravated and disenfranchised consumers.
Oh, please. Take off the tinfoil hat.
>You would need some sort of computer assisted device. 20+
>years of Star Wars research can't hit a target the size of a
>ballistic missle.
First of all, in 20 plus years of research, we HAVE demonstrated the ability to accurately target a missile. Enough to blow a few out of the sky. Second, we've done that from a 747 in flight at high altitude, not just a stable base placed on the ground. For crying out loud, we can repeatedly hit a precise spot on the MOON from the ground. Computer assist? Nah, just a good telescope with a bore-scoped laser.
Bear in mind that most airports have a very repeatable approach path - the planes come in within a few hundred yards of the same point in the sky, one every couple minutes, all day long. It's not that hard to get things lined up and try again and again until you get just one good shot.
After all, as Bush and Rumsfeld have said quite a few times, all the terrorists have to do is get it right once.
Sure, it wouldn't be as "sexy" as the X-Prize, but wouldn't some privately sponsored prize money do wonders for this longtime human dream? Call it, say, the Mecha Prize, and offer a few million bucks to whoever builds the first mecha that can go a half mile, pick up a Dodge Neon and move it in the air for 50 feet, then return to the starting line. Or something similar.
I have no doubt that someone as creative as Rutan is out there, and with a little incentive and the promise of some real financial gain could use modern actuators and pressure pads and gyro sensors and so forth to finally create a useful mecha.
I also have no doubt that (unlike Spaceship One) a mecha that could complete the above test would immediately be of great value in quite a few industrial and/or emergency applications.
My small business has a product we advertise using both Google Adwords and Overture... very useful methods of advertising. I've found one of my most productive ad buys is using my primary competitor's product name as a search term. And I'm absolutely certain I'm not the only one doing this, and frankly I don't feel the slightest bit bad about it. Customers looking for a product are often looking for a class of products, not the specific product, and simply only know one particular brand name to search. (How many people are looking for copiers in general when they type "xerox"?)
After all, it wasn't too long ago that it was ruled okay to refer to your competition in an advertisement (like Coke mentioning Pepsi, etc.), so this is just another example of the same thing.
Also, even in the non-targeted (non-paid) results, you'll often find multiple competing products, simply by virtue of similar characteristics and reviews of multiple products on a given page.
Baker as Dr. Who: http://www.solicitor.de/gamebox/gw/technik/drwho.j pg
or http://www.shillpages.com/dw/bakerc0.jpg
Wilder as Wonka: http://www.cineplexx.at/pics/Gene_Wilder_P42.jpg
Pretty convincing...
Somehow I doubt that a meteorite that was going fast enough to vaporize on impact would leave a *dark* steak in the frame. Secondly, if it was big enough to leave that wide a dark streak, it would make a MUCH bigger impact than that little flash. But moments later, there's no visible sign, even in the water.
I personally own a similar Canon G-3, and I've never seen a dark streak on the image, even when shooting pictures with a strong point light source (as was speculated for a blowing-out light bulb). In fact, with the G-3, a well known problem is "purple fringing" around bright lights. None of that here, so the bright splotch is probably not that bright.
I personally subscribe to the "bug in front of the flash" theory.
(Question: one post suggested the EXIF data shows the flash fired. Why would a halfway decent photog leave the flash on for a distance shot like this? It just risks illuminating the dust between you and the subject matter.)
Why on EARTH was the parent mod'ed INFORMATIVE?! Where's the "CLUELESS" mod when you need it?
/. readers wouldn't hesitate to install Linux or dive into that arcane art of a command line interface - which requires an intimate knowledge of the directory structure.
.txt or .eml format. Pretty straightforward. And for that matter, you can simply open the email store files in any text editor. Again, this is really a no-brainer for any /. reader.
>In Outlook Express, the location of the mail is hidden.
This is a pretty lame gripe, since most
C'mon already. It's THIS SIMPLE: Tools:Options:Maintenance:Store Folder, and OE helpfully tells you where it's stored. One simple setting change in OE, and your email will be stored in My Documents/Email, like mine is. Not that hard, is it? Now, whenever I go on a trip, I just burn a CD with the contents of that one folder. And if I need to move my email to another PC with OE, I just overwrite that other computer's store folder, and Voila, there's all my email. The only legit gripe would be that something is by default stored in the normally hidden Application Data folder, but that's hardly MS-specific; many apps do that.
>Further you can't export your mail to any easilly accesible format.
Oh? How about "Save As..." to a
Geez, save the complaints for something that is REALLY arcane or hard to handle. This just doesn't qualify.
Sure. But does that include a computer interface that doesn't require custom hardware and software, can be easily understood by any computer user, and can be easily programmed in Visual Basic or a dozen other languages?
Yes, it's quite possible to buy low-cost sensors. The beauty of using a mouse as the basis for a sensor is its ready-to-use nature.
This got me thinking... me and my geek engineer brain...
Seems to me by mounting a small mass between springs right above the sensor, you could probably measure acceleration fairly accurately. The spring deflection would be precisely related to the acceleration, the mass, and the spring constant, two of which are known (or can be measured independently) and are fixed values.
F=ma, where force = mass times acceleration
F=kx, where force = spring constant times displacement
so
a = kx/m
(Figuring out the units is left as an exercise for the reader.)
So as the combined mouse/spring/mass assembly was accelerated, the cursor would deflect accordingly. Calibration would be straightforward: since k is fairly linear for most springs (within small ranges), and m is fixed, simply turning the sensor on its side (e.g., subjecting it to exactly 1.0g) gives a very nice data point.
Might be a cheap and fun way to build a sensor, say for measuring cornering force on your car, etc. Also might be a neat high school physics class experiment.
That is, unless Microsoft already patented that use... *grin*
>But then I got into the "Halo" world and started to get chased by a bunch of Smurfs.
>All of the cute little animals making noises like squeaky toys. I felt bad shooting them actually.
Hey, wait a minute - I thought shooting smurfs was a GOOD thing.
Cute depends on who you ask - I always thought they were horribly irritating, and somehow the idea of a FPS where you run around shooting smurfs really appeals to me...
Besides, anything with a gun shooting at ME instantly loses the descriptor "cute".
Just my $0.02.
Ya know, with 5mp, suddenly a decent-looking digital zoom (when the output stays 640x480) becomes possible. You can't zoom optically in something this small, but you sure can digizoom it. Even with cheesy optics, that's got to be a selling point.
After all, it'll be a while before we regularly trade 2Mb photos with our pals on their cellphones with 120x240 screens.
The genius of SpaceShipOne is that it essentially tumbles back into the atmosphere at a high angle of attack, with a high drag configuration, and very low speed. The low speed entry generates very little friction and therefore negligable heat.
No.
There's no "genius" in SS1 relating to its reentry speed - it's simply that the thing is coming in from "only" 100km up, starting at zero speed (the top of a vertical ballistic arc is zero speed). If this thing were orbiting, starting at Mach 25, it would burn up on reentry almost immediately. The only way you could avoid that, from a true orbital altitude, would be to completely stop the orbit (requiring a HUGE amount of fuel), and keep your vertical speed from getting too high until you hit the atmosphere again from that MUCH higher altitude (300km for a typical Shuttle orbit, not 100km for SS1), again requiring a lot of fuel.
The REAL genius is certainly the configuration - but merely because it eliminates the attitude stabilization problems, at least for a relatively low ballistic reentry. The thing will automatically acquire the right attitude and stay there.
But bear in mind that this approach would NOT work for a true high speed, orbital reentry. The ship would tumble initially - because at high altitudes (thin atmosphere) and high speeds, the flow is supersonic (actually hypersonic), which means shock waves off the leading edge of whatever's pointing forward, and pretty poor flow behind that shock wave. (Can you guess why supersonic fighters have huge tail surfaces?) This means very poor aerodynamic control (that's why the craft rolled "uncontrollably" last week!). And the feather configuration is pure aerodynamics - it'll tumble until it gets lower and slower. With this in mind, the feather configuration is essentially useless for initial reentry.
Sorry to burst any bubbles, but Rutan has a LONG way to go before this thing goes orbital (and I don't think it EVER will).
Thanks for a great question - allow me to jump into the fray.
<DISCLAIMER>Okay, first of all, let me offer a caveat: I'm a creationist, but I don't believe that evolution is impossible: I just don't believe that God chose to use evolution to create man. More specifically, the Bible says God created Man - it doesn't say HOW, but since it says He created us "in His image", I don't believe that leaves much room for "in the image of a monkey". </DISCLAIMER>
Given that disclaimer, as a Christian, I have no problem believing in life on Mars. Why should I, as an intelligent, thinking, yet finite creature, believe that I can understand how an infinitely powerful God decided to create things? Why should the concept of life on Mars offend my sensibilities? Rather, it would increase my sense of awe at the variety of God's creation and abilities. See, I'm a logical Christian - I believe that the very definition of "god" implies infinite ability - and I don't believe it's my place to artificially limit His ability simply because it's too difficult to comprehend. Instead, I have to continually adjust MY thinking about God to suit the evidence around me.
The church in the years since the Enlightenment has constantly had the same struggle - how to reconcile the Bible with new scientific data. But that didn't end up destroying the Church - instead it gave greater awareness of the awesome, majestic creation around us. The Bible states that the universe itself sings God's praises, and that no man has any excuse for not believing in God, because God has presented Himself to us via everything we see around us.
Now, before the evolutionists and atheists out there jump on me for a perceived inconsistency in my logic, let me go a step further. I do NOT believe, given this framework, that just because God CAN use scientific processes to create, that He always DOES so. The Bible is very clear about the process whereby man was created - and it was very different than the process by which animals and other life were created. It clearly specifies that God "breathed life into Adam". This description makes it clear that there was a separate, unique step of creative endowment with "life" - meaning a spirit, not just "life" as purely reproductive ability. So, no, I don't see man as having evolved. That does NOT, however, discount the possibility that evolution is possible and even responsible for the fossil record.
Let me make one other useful point. I don't believe that evolution is overall God's tool of choice for creation. There are huge gaps in the fossile record between monkey and man, and huge gaps between many other species. From a strict scientific-process viewpoint, evolution is still a hypothesis: it has never been proven as the means by which all the current diversity of life exists. In fact, there are many very convincing reasons to believe that the fossil record and many other observable facts all illustrate that evolution is NOT a possible explanation for what we see around us. If you disagree, just do a Google search for the data. There are plenty of SCIENTISTS that believe in creation.
At this point, most Baptists and other fundamentalists reading this are probably seething with righteous indignation. Still, I'm a fundamentalist in this manner: I believe that the Bible is the complete, wholly accurate, inerrant, and literal word of God, at least in its original form (the original documents in the original languages, not any of our English translations). I've had this discussion with many fundamentalist friends - and they can no more convince me that I'm
No, that really wouldn't help anything. Jimbo or Granny wouldn't know that the system went down because it wasn't properly patched. They'd just be forced to rebuild the system, and in all likelihood they once again would NOT patch it because Windows Update would recommend about 80 Mb of downloads to do the patching. "After all, the system was working fine - it must have been a one-time event." And in weeks, it would be re-infected by something else malicious.
No, user education is the only option without changing the operating system.
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Do you remember that web pages in 1996 look like shit?
Oh please.Do remember that web development these days cannot rely on simple static text?
Do you realize that with HTML/XHTML editing tools around these days, it doesn't matter?
Right tool for the job, my friend. A text editor is for writing static text. HTML/XHTML tools are used for making web pages and interfaces.
Do I remember? Yeah, I've been coding HTML by hand since 1995, and my pages looked pretty messy back then. But it wasn't the HTML - it was my poor grasp of what looks good and works well for other users.
"Cannot rely on simple static text"? It's been said here before, and apparently you don't believe it. If your pages rely on flashy formatting and movement and pixel-level formatting, you're letting the formatting get in the way of content.
Right tools? Heh. Sorry, I've tried PageMill, and FrontPage, and Netscape and Mozilla built-in editors, and even MS Office's HTML editing. Don't like them. They all generate bulky, messy code, hard to tweak, impossible to really control. I've hand-coded everything from day one, and will always do it. And if you think hand-coded HTML is unpretty, somehow, visit http://www.worship-live.com for what you can do without an editor. Looks nice in any browser, lightweight and therefore bandwidth-friendly, and has yet to generate complaints of any significance. Maybe it won't parse out as perfectly W3 compliant - maybe I put the italics tag on the wrong side of my paragraph tag - but it works.
Sorry, but I just disagree with your basic premise. Frankly, the biggest problem facing the web today is people who somehow think that PageMill or Frontpage make them better web designers. Sorry - that's exactly the wrong answer.
--Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Actually Mozilla Firefox - try it now!)
The beauty of the FireFox design IS the plugins - you can do this kind of thing.
Oh, and by the way, there are many other ways to do this, and you can also do it in Opera and Mozilla. Here's a comprehensive article on how to manipulate the User Agent strings.
Let's burn some karma here.
Okay, I've read all the rants on either side of this issue, and the conclusion I've reached is this.
Continuity is highly overrated.
So, I'll admit I'm not a fanboy. I *am* a fan, however, and while continuity is important to me, it's not gospel, and I don't really get the urge to throw myself over the nearest cliff when it gets disrupted.
Instead, the way I see it, Star Trek in its whole has provided a generalized SciFi framework, into which different authors, directors, writers, artists, etc. can provide a story. Look at the general spread between TOS, TNG, DS9, STV and STE. Aside from the "boldly go" kind of essense, there's a HUGE diversity there. And frankly, as long as any one story is enjoyable, I don't really mind if there's some non-canonical bits therein. I *do* mind if they overuse the particle-of-the-week, just like I thought the midichlorian was a hideously stupid plot trick in Star Wars Ep1. But for run-of-the-mill stories, I'm more interested in how they handle the character development, coupled with the staple of SciFi - which is, in my opinion, how humans handle advanced technology and its effects (including the effect of encountering other species). All the rest is just details. Cool technology, maybe, but still just details.
So as far as I'm concerned, the "Star Trek" name provides a rather broad, rather permissive framework - with NAME RECOGNITION. And the best thing about it: that name recognition provides a budget for reasonably cool SciFi movies and television. Maybe not the BEST, but at least reasonably entertaining, and definitely more quantity than we'd get otherwise. And it spurs all kinds of spinoffs and competitors (B5, Andromeda, etc.) which are even better.
So, I'm all for chilling out the holy wars and just enjoying whatever is enjoyable, as it gets released.
A few months ago, I took a class on Pilot-Induced Oscillations (PIOs). As an aerospace engineer who works on military high performance aircraft, I know how bad PIOs can be, and just how deadly a problem they can be. This looks like a classic PIO, triggered by a control problem.
To summarize the two-day class into one paragraph, a PIO is an oscillation that is generally sustained by pilot inputs, is usually triggered by some external event, and has at least two common causes: rate-limited control actuators, or so-called "phase lags" (lag between input and output).
Relevant to this case, then, is the roll actuator (the hydraulic device responsible for moving the roll control surfaces). It sounds from the non-technical answer in the article "the actuator delayed moving one of the ship's flaps" like a rate-limited actuator. The pilot demanded a larger input faster than the system was able to provide, so the control surface hit its stop.
What ends up happening, in such a case, is that the pilot doesn't get the overall response he expects, so he puts in MORE input. But then it turns out to be too much, so he puts in a response the other way - but it takes a while to start reacting, so he puts in MORE input... etc. etc. etc..
Also, the "external event" in this case was probably a wind shear. You can have a PIO-prone system and it will fly just fine - right up until you hit that trigger event which is just large enough to throw you into a PIO - and then you're basically hosed. Nothing you can physically do will stop the PIO - OTHER than just releasing the controls and letting everything stop naturally - because it's the inputs that drive the oscillation. And you can bet that's quite frightening for a control-freak pilot who's afraid he's about to lose control. Takes a LOT of training in how to recognize it for what it is; stopping it is easy (if you have time or altitude) - just let go.
To fix a control system that has PIO problems, you can (a) increase the authority of the control device, (b) increase the response speed of the device, or (c) decrease the phase lag so it responds more quickly. None of those fixes are trivial, unless they're caused by a broken component.
I'm quite sure Rutan, of all people, is intimately familiar with this issue, and I have no doubt that he and his team will address it appropriately.
GPS plus a cellphone is no big deal - we already know where all the bases are anyway. However, I work at a military facility that strictly bans camera-phones from the flight line (where the planes are parked) - because there's quite a bit of sensitive material there - designs we don't want our enemies to see, or even our allies.
Cell phones are NOT banned from all meetings. Far from it. See, quite a bit of the stuff that gets discussed is completely banal - "Okay, have your secretary call mine and set up a meeting to discuss this issue further" - but you can bet they're strictly banned from any conversation that is at all sensitive.
Now, about the Coke cans. The real issue is NOT the GPS receiver, or the cell phone technology - I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with not wanting some Coke reps in a big white van full of interesting gadgets to try crashing the gates at a sensitive military facility. You want to get visited at home, no problem - leave the can there. Just don't invite them HERE, thank you very much. Again, it's common sense.
And yeah, I suspect there are some latent concerns about nefarious uses. But I doubt that's any more of a concern than for any other cell phone, or Blackberry two-way pager, or whatever.
It's common sense, people. Contrary to Hollywood's view, the US military is neither incompetent nor full of powermongers. It's mostly a lot of very dedicated, very intelligent people trying their best to defend and strengthen the good 'ol USofA, and that includes defense against reasonably possible intelligence-gathering hardware. Because face it, it's a lot cheaper to steal a good design than create it from scratch.
Really cool video.
What's downright scary is two things.
One, no military pilot in his right mind would deliberately FOD the cockpit - release Foreign Object Debris - even as small as an M&M - it's a surefire way to cause problems later. You'd be amazed at how little it takes to induce seriously Bad problems in an airplane cockpit. Even chocolate. Even three or four flights later, when that ONE M&M you didn't find post-flight just happens to melt or stick in an unfortunate spot.
Two, watch the silhouette of the vehicle carefully during the external footage of the thrust phase. Boy, the thing is rocking back and forth badly. Serious controllability problems. Yeah, I know, we already heard all about that - but this video drives home just how nasty it was. I can distinctly see four roll oscillations greater than 90 degrees in just about five seconds. Ouch. Any pilot in a military jet would be reaching for the ejection handle right then. Interesting they didn't include the over-the-shoulder footage for THAT.
Oh, and IAAAE (I AM an aerospace engineer) and DO happen to have experience working with both military pilots and jets.
>every piece of software has bugs and issues, regardless of the language you use to describe them.
Very true. I market a software program that I've created, and I don't consider "zero bugs" to be a reasonable goal. What I *do* consider reasonable is that, when a bug occurs, it's appropriately trapped without a complete program crash, the user gets a polite message and some options when applicable, they have a chance to easily report the bug directly to us with relevant details, and most importantly, they have a chance to save their work and exit gracefully. And when I get the bug report, I consider it my duty to handle the complaint with a personal response and in all likelihood an updated version posted within a day or two.
This is quite different from my experiences with programs like Word and Excel, which, when they DO crash, USUALLY do so by instantly quitting, with no chance of recovery or an opportunity to save my work; there is no useful (and privacy-worry-free) way of reporting the bug and little hope that it'll ever be fixed, if even noted. And in my experience, I can kind of count on those programs failing at least once a week under average use, and I know that AutoSave is only marginally useful at protecting me.
Now which would YOU rather have - MS's "zero defect" program, or my less-than-perfect software with graceful error handling and prompt, courteous responses?
With a relatively compact bit of javascript embedded into a page, the user gets hopefully relevant ads that are not obtrusive or flashy, same as the Google Adwords text-only ads you see on the right side of the Google results pages. And you can customize the colors and format to suit your own pages. Google, while they do serve the ads based on your site's content, do allow you to prohibit certain keywords, so you can block out competitors' ads.
To make it useful to the host, Google allows you to create "channels", so within one AdSense account you can track different pages. You can get a detailed report of how many pageviews each channel generates, as well as click-thrus (which of course leave your site).
To sweeten the deal, you get paid for click thrus. That means you get paid when someone leaves your site, but my philosophy is that if they do that, they weren't planning on sticking around anyway, so I might as well profit from it.
In my case, my site generates about 3000 pageviews and 15 clickthrus, and that translates into about $1 a day in revenue. It's not much, but I roll that back into the Google AdWords campaigns that I run, which generate inbound traffic. I'd rather have people coming to my site that want to be here, than those that don't, so I see it as a fair trade.
And in the end, the reporting and tracking are handled by Google, and provide a tangible benefit to my business.
Oh, and if you want to see an example in operation, look at the very bottom of our site's main page.