...that the particular thing we're seeing on Titan that should have been methane is actually a molecular composition that simply has never ever been seen before?
we've investigated a variety of planets and moons and based things on our earthly understanding of the universe... but what if these clouds on titan are made up of a substance that nobody ever knew existed before?
If someone wanted to build that monstrocity in my neighborhood i'd be all about it... assuming we all get free juice out of the deal. (and assuming they figured out that thump thump thump thing mentioned above.)
i opened the article. there was an advertisement showing a man wearing a tie with tux on it. i thought "cool" and went googling for tux ties. i found a site selling them. then as i was looking through their selection of stuff, there was the very same keyboard for sale! cha-ching!
So this means... more wizard-style interfaces? There must already be 15 useless wizards in 2000 and XP.. things like the "connect to the internet" wizard, where all the defaults are always wrong... now it just got easier to do.
on the other side though, as a native web developer, this could make programming in the windows application environment a little friendlier.
KIA is a prime example. I will not buy a KIA. is it because they're put-put cars? no. is it because they're made of plastic? no. is it because i have something against KIA? no.
it's because of all those damned corny commercials on the radio and television.
When KIA first came on the scene, they advertised dependable cars by showing a fellow with his back seat full of coffee cups. that was cool. i remember thinking, "oh. neat. maybe i'll consider buying one of those in a few months. i'm about due for a new car."
then.. a few months later.. suddenly their entire marketing campaign changed. now you have phoney celebrities, stupid hillbilly music, tons of little stupid sound effects, and there's one of these offenses in every commercial break on the radio and tv both. after such an enslaught, i firmly refuse to even remotely consider buying one of these little cars.
there are other examples of this... but just as there are negative marketing campaigns that firmly set me against the products shown, there are also a few highly positive ones - and i think the negative ones make the positive ones moreso. Those insane Quiznos commercials kick ass. Now i eat Quiznos. good food, with a good marketing strategy - honestly, i go there sometimes just because i support the decisions they're making in their use of the advertising media available, and want to see companies like theirs succeed.
in any event - i personally wouldn't vote for or against a political party based purely on whether or not i get spam about them. tho if it legitimately came from their party, i would take it into consideration.
seems like it'd almost be better to change your ss name to tim. if that's possible. i've been doing the same thing. some things say matthew. other things say matt. no problems so far, but who knows...
driving 70 to 80mph on many united states freeways is often safer than driving 55 or 65. researchers in areas where speed limits have been increased have found that in most cases, raising the speed limit 10 or 15mph didnt really effect the speeds at which people generally tended to drive. therefore i dont think the idea of raising speed limits is unjustified.
regarding the idea of a 120mph lane... i would fully support that. i know i'd use it regularly! but it should be clearly marked with some kind of universal paint or signs to keep old doc jones from driving his 76 pickup there at 55mph.;)
keep in mind i'm thinking autobahns here. give us a 65mph truck lane, an 80mph lane, and an unrestricted lane. and let the police stop people who drive in the wrong ones, or practice less than kosher driving like high-speed tailgating or swerving about... things that can actually be dangerous.
regarding streets and highways.. speed limits in these areas should make sense. right now they dont. or at least there should be dual speeds.. in the winter time, the current speed limits should probably apply. on a sheet of ice, you might need to keep it down to 25 on the straight three mile stretch of road between your house and the nearest highway. but definitely not in the summer when the roads are dry.
no... speed limits simply haven't kept up. sure, back in the day 35mph made sense in a lot of places. cars travelling faster than that were dangerous. today those same roads can be safely navigated at 45 or 50 mph thanks to improved vehicle technology.
as for the problem being that everyone speeds.. i think that's looking at it completely backwards. If everyone were driving the same speed, roadways would be a far safer place, even if that speed were 10 or 20mph over the posted limits. a river with a flat bed flows smoothly. random rocks jutting to the surface disrupt that smoothness. would you rather take a canoe down a smooth flowing river, or one with violent rapids?
drivers will always drive at whatever speed they feel appropriate. when you take that into account, it's only logical to adapt to those speeds so the roadways will be a safer place for all.
Their web site says, "Display the best on-line shopping sites for items mentioned in each sentence."
Swell. So it's adware. Cleverly disguised as.. uh.. adware?
Sure, it's based on a novel idea... but i'm betting this idea was spawned in a thinktank where the single goal was to find a new form of targetted advertising, and the biggest challenge they faced was giving users a reason to download it. of all the "cool things" it says it can do, the only item that seems worth pursuit is the inline language translation...
I never cease to be amazed at users' appreciation for relatively useless software. *cough*GATOR*cough*
bwahahahaha that's excellent... if your car has firm ride control, you could play white zombie when it's switched on... the Gone in 60 Seconds soundtrack is pretty good too...
i think another good addition while you're playing, would be a "police" setting. it'd turn down your audio system and disable your brake lights if you're traveling over 30mph, as well as turn on your firm ride control to reduce nose dipping. and if you connected that somehow to your radar detector....
i'm using twin 17" trins at 1600x1200 each. next week i plan to add two more with identical specs.
the concept of driving with a tiny windshield is very very accurate here... you can talk about splitting windows being infuriating, but try running just dreamweaver, photoshop and three IE instances on a 2x17" for a week... then switch back to a single. get a 21" if you like, it wont matter. you'll never forgive yourself for the experiment that spoiled your single-screen satisfaction forever.
One thing that i haven't seen mentioned here so far is RAM. It takes extra ram to keep track of that extra window space. switch from one to two? if your machine is decent you may not notice... but try running 4 screens, and that piddly 256mb of ram they gave you at the office will get old real quick.
as will mini-atx boards! that has to be the most annoying thing about corporate computers today - it's obvious how useful multiple screens are, so why does every computer you see now in offices have a mini-atx with two pci slots? and low-profile ones no less. You end up taking the metal plates off the fronts of whatever limited selection of pci video cards you can find... and dont even THINK about trying to fit a dual-head card in there...
I hope studies like this will drive manufacturers to take multiple-screen systems into consideration when designing motherboards and the like... what i'd really like to see is a mobo with three or more AGP slots. and full-height ones at that.
hell yeah! Racing games NEED more customization. Sure, building these exotic cars and modding them out in Gran Tourisimo is fun, but imagine if you had your choice of family sedans, vans, etc, and could paint them any way you like, add accessories, etc... it'd be a ricer's dream, give your car a HUGE spoiler and watch your little car flip over on the straight-away... or for those of us with larger tastes, you could build a supercharged 91 thunderbird with woodland camoflauge paint.. i imagine someone out there will want to race a monster truck just for the heck of it...
btw, i think it's worth noting that people dont just make their characters like themselves - they often build their characters the way they want to see themselves. That 300lb 7' muscle-bound lumberjack with his plaid shirt, jeans, and thick bushy moustache? yeah. that's me. all 5' 11" 150lbs of me. heheh. That's really the point of games, to live out a fantasy. and it's way more fun when you get to create your own ideal self in that fantasy.
Sure it's convenient, but are you really willing to pay $60-80 just for the third season of Star Trek Voyager?
Besides, then when you have friends and relatives over, you can't stand over a large server box next to your hifi equipment, grasping your belt like barney fife, sniffing loudly and saying "yeeep, this baby has three terabytes of television stored on it. And it's only half full."
I dont think cruelty to animals is a noble practice, in itself.. or that we should just experiment on the masses without their knowledge..
but how can you compare the existances of a few hundred mice to the betterment of life for all mankind? And why not give people with terminal diseases at least the option to try experimental therapies? If i'm gonna die, i think i'd want to at least be offered the opportunity to try out something new that might just be the next great medical breakthrough.
On a related note, I have a friend who was in a car accident and had his back broken. He's paralyzed from the waist down. He was only 16 when it happened back in 2000. I really wonder how many stem cell protestors could face my friend and say "I'm protesting the research that may give you back your legs."
Here's another thought... the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security is backing this wholeheartedly -- what if this is really a ploy to get users of microsoft software to install a remote tracking patch designed by microsoft to send usage information to the DoHS? What if this patch to handle remote control security actually sends information to the government? or better yet, ALLOWS certain types of remote control BY the government?
Surely I'm not the only one out there who's considering this possiblity...
"Hello, Bill Gates?"
"Uh, how did you get this number?"
"This is the Dept of Defense. $500,000,000 is being wired to your account in exchange for launch of Operation MS Probe as previously agreed. We will expect patches online within the hour."
Slashdot Mirror
we've investigated a variety of planets and moons and based things on our earthly understanding of the universe... but what if these clouds on titan are made up of a substance that nobody ever knew existed before?
What the hell are you talkin about?
If someone wanted to build that monstrocity in my neighborhood i'd be all about it... assuming we all get free juice out of the deal. (and assuming they figured out that thump thump thump thing mentioned above.)
How's this for ironic...
i opened the article. there was an advertisement showing a man wearing a tie with tux on it. i thought "cool" and went googling for tux ties. i found a site selling them. then as i was looking through their selection of stuff, there was the very same keyboard for sale! cha-ching!
so here's a link:
http://www.getdigital.de/index/0x55/lng/2
how long till we start seeing these emblazened with the AOL running man in our mailboxes?
"Honey! The new AOL computer is here!"
"Oh good, now we can finish this beowulf cluster..."
So this means... more wizard-style interfaces? There must already be 15 useless wizards in 2000 and XP.. things like the "connect to the internet" wizard, where all the defaults are always wrong... now it just got easier to do.
on the other side though, as a native web developer, this could make programming in the windows application environment a little friendlier.
I have the same resolve - but i do descriminate.
KIA is a prime example. I will not buy a KIA. is it because they're put-put cars? no. is it because they're made of plastic? no. is it because i have something against KIA? no.
it's because of all those damned corny commercials on the radio and television.
When KIA first came on the scene, they advertised dependable cars by showing a fellow with his back seat full of coffee cups. that was cool. i remember thinking, "oh. neat. maybe i'll consider buying one of those in a few months. i'm about due for a new car."
then.. a few months later.. suddenly their entire marketing campaign changed. now you have phoney celebrities, stupid hillbilly music, tons of little stupid sound effects, and there's one of these offenses in every commercial break on the radio and tv both. after such an enslaught, i firmly refuse to even remotely consider buying one of these little cars.
there are other examples of this... but just as there are negative marketing campaigns that firmly set me against the products shown, there are also a few highly positive ones - and i think the negative ones make the positive ones moreso. Those insane Quiznos commercials kick ass. Now i eat Quiznos. good food, with a good marketing strategy - honestly, i go there sometimes just because i support the decisions they're making in their use of the advertising media available, and want to see companies like theirs succeed.
in any event - i personally wouldn't vote for or against a political party based purely on whether or not i get spam about them. tho if it legitimately came from their party, i would take it into consideration.
seems like it'd almost be better to change your ss name to tim. if that's possible. i've been doing the same thing. some things say matthew. other things say matt. no problems so far, but who knows...
unless someone does a google search on the name you used when you submitted your comment:
like so...
heheheh. i'm so freaking cruel.
driving 70 to 80mph on many united states freeways is often safer than driving 55 or 65. researchers in areas where speed limits have been increased have found that in most cases, raising the speed limit 10 or 15mph didnt really effect the speeds at which people generally tended to drive. therefore i dont think the idea of raising speed limits is unjustified.
;)
regarding the idea of a 120mph lane... i would fully support that. i know i'd use it regularly! but it should be clearly marked with some kind of universal paint or signs to keep old doc jones from driving his 76 pickup there at 55mph.
keep in mind i'm thinking autobahns here. give us a 65mph truck lane, an 80mph lane, and an unrestricted lane. and let the police stop people who drive in the wrong ones, or practice less than kosher driving like high-speed tailgating or swerving about... things that can actually be dangerous.
regarding streets and highways.. speed limits in these areas should make sense. right now they dont. or at least there should be dual speeds.. in the winter time, the current speed limits should probably apply. on a sheet of ice, you might need to keep it down to 25 on the straight three mile stretch of road between your house and the nearest highway. but definitely not in the summer when the roads are dry.
> cars are grossly overpowered
no... speed limits simply haven't kept up. sure, back in the day 35mph made sense in a lot of places. cars travelling faster than that were dangerous. today those same roads can be safely navigated at 45 or 50 mph thanks to improved vehicle technology.
as for the problem being that everyone speeds.. i think that's looking at it completely backwards. If everyone were driving the same speed, roadways would be a far safer place, even if that speed were 10 or 20mph over the posted limits. a river with a flat bed flows smoothly. random rocks jutting to the surface disrupt that smoothness. would you rather take a canoe down a smooth flowing river, or one with violent rapids?
drivers will always drive at whatever speed they feel appropriate. when you take that into account, it's only logical to adapt to those speeds so the roadways will be a safer place for all.
mandrake mandraaaake! mandrake, ah mandraaake!
for those of you staring blankly at your screens wondering where the hell all this came from, please behold badgerbadgerbadger.com
i wonder if weebl can be convinced to do a third badger flash where they have shell prompts, and in some scenes can be seen gnawing on 'clippy'...
Their web site says, "Display the best on-line shopping sites for items mentioned in each sentence."
Swell. So it's adware. Cleverly disguised as.. uh.. adware?
Sure, it's based on a novel idea... but i'm betting this idea was spawned in a thinktank where the single goal was to find a new form of targetted advertising, and the biggest challenge they faced was giving users a reason to download it. of all the "cool things" it says it can do, the only item that seems worth pursuit is the inline language translation...
I never cease to be amazed at users' appreciation for relatively useless software. *cough*GATOR*cough*
Legos?!?
HAH!
Your Legos are FAR inferior to my Duplos! *cough*ASP.NET*cough*
Okay so? I was doing this when i was 14. And what's more, i nearly began a claymation-style movie.
that was shortly before dropping everything and embarking on a 7-year quest to get laid...
bah, the worms look down on spyware distributers and cringe. ;)
bwahahahaha that's excellent... if your car has firm ride control, you could play white zombie when it's switched on... the Gone in 60 Seconds soundtrack is pretty good too...
i think another good addition while you're playing, would be a "police" setting. it'd turn down your audio system and disable your brake lights if you're traveling over 30mph, as well as turn on your firm ride control to reduce nose dipping. and if you connected that somehow to your radar detector....
i'm using twin 17" trins at 1600x1200 each. next week i plan to add two more with identical specs.
the concept of driving with a tiny windshield is very very accurate here... you can talk about splitting windows being infuriating, but try running just dreamweaver, photoshop and three IE instances on a 2x17" for a week... then switch back to a single. get a 21" if you like, it wont matter. you'll never forgive yourself for the experiment that spoiled your single-screen satisfaction forever.
One thing that i haven't seen mentioned here so far is RAM. It takes extra ram to keep track of that extra window space. switch from one to two? if your machine is decent you may not notice... but try running 4 screens, and that piddly 256mb of ram they gave you at the office will get old real quick.
as will mini-atx boards! that has to be the most annoying thing about corporate computers today - it's obvious how useful multiple screens are, so why does every computer you see now in offices have a mini-atx with two pci slots? and low-profile ones no less. You end up taking the metal plates off the fronts of whatever limited selection of pci video cards you can find... and dont even THINK about trying to fit a dual-head card in there...
I hope studies like this will drive manufacturers to take multiple-screen systems into consideration when designing motherboards and the like... what i'd really like to see is a mobo with three or more AGP slots. and full-height ones at that.
imagine these things are phone booths. you and a friend can sit in a room together and chat from across the country. for $5 a minute. ;) hehehehh
http://www.dodgethis.org/~skyrider/sco.html
hell yeah! Racing games NEED more customization. Sure, building these exotic cars and modding them out in Gran Tourisimo is fun, but imagine if you had your choice of family sedans, vans, etc, and could paint them any way you like, add accessories, etc... it'd be a ricer's dream, give your car a HUGE spoiler and watch your little car flip over on the straight-away... or for those of us with larger tastes, you could build a supercharged 91 thunderbird with woodland camoflauge paint.. i imagine someone out there will want to race a monster truck just for the heck of it...
btw, i think it's worth noting that people dont just make their characters like themselves - they often build their characters the way they want to see themselves. That 300lb 7' muscle-bound lumberjack with his plaid shirt, jeans, and thick bushy moustache? yeah. that's me. all 5' 11" 150lbs of me. heheh. That's really the point of games, to live out a fantasy. and it's way more fun when you get to create your own ideal self in that fantasy.
there goes that whole thing nintendo's trying to do in china...
The machines are us and we are Pacman.
*MUNCH* *MUNCH* *MUNCH*
Sure it's convenient, but are you really willing to pay $60-80 just for the third season of Star Trek Voyager?
Besides, then when you have friends and relatives over, you can't stand over a large server box next to your hifi equipment, grasping your belt like barney fife, sniffing loudly and saying "yeeep, this baby has three terabytes of television stored on it. And it's only half full."
I dont think cruelty to animals is a noble practice, in itself.. or that we should just experiment on the masses without their knowledge..
but how can you compare the existances of a few hundred mice to the betterment of life for all mankind? And why not give people with terminal diseases at least the option to try experimental therapies? If i'm gonna die, i think i'd want to at least be offered the opportunity to try out something new that might just be the next great medical breakthrough.
On a related note, I have a friend who was in a car accident and had his back broken. He's paralyzed from the waist down. He was only 16 when it happened back in 2000. I really wonder how many stem cell protestors could face my friend and say "I'm protesting the research that may give you back your legs."
Here's another thought... the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security is backing this wholeheartedly -- what if this is really a ploy to get users of microsoft software to install a remote tracking patch designed by microsoft to send usage information to the DoHS? What if this patch to handle remote control security actually sends information to the government? or better yet, ALLOWS certain types of remote control BY the government?
Surely I'm not the only one out there who's considering this possiblity...
"Hello, Bill Gates?"
"Uh, how did you get this number?"
"This is the Dept of Defense. $500,000,000 is being wired to your account in exchange for launch of Operation MS Probe as previously agreed. We will expect patches online within the hour."
"Swell! You can count on it!"