If anti-piracy groups released a video portraying pirates as supervillians who invade your home and take your money and never give it back, we'd all be making fun of it.
And in turn, it's the anti-piracy groups' good right to be making fun of this. I don't see the problem. Besides, don't tell me you've forgotten all those anti-piracy educational messages and videos depicting copyright infringers as the worst scum of the earth, or the ones suggesting what happens to your analog hole in prison once their lawyers get to you?
customers simply won't buy it and will choose a different product
That's assuming:
Joe Average Customer is actually aware of the effects DRM will have on his ability to do things he now takes for granted.
There will in fact be other products to choose from. Since the entertainment industry is lobbying hard to make DRM mandatory, I wouldn't count on it.
And since DRM is tightly coupled to all the great new stuff like digital radio, HDTV, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, next-gen OS'es etc... one can't avoid buying DRM if he wants to keep up with the latest tech. Of course, one could keep on using his current stuff, but that's assuming his current stuff will keep working once the new tech rolls out. And guess what? Once the new tech is in place, the old tech will be outphased, so that in say 5 years your current TV set won't be able to pick up anything anymore because everything is either digital or HD. And then of course, there's the issue of every piece of electronics wearing out and breaking down after a while.
Rights aren't being violated
Except our fair-use rights. Or don't you agree that those are in fact rights?
it's just another product on the market place to reject or accept
The three "evils" depicted in the cartoon are:
The audio flag
The broadcast flag
Lawfully plugging the analog hole
The entertainment industry is lobbying to get all three of those mandatory by law, thus eliminating any kind of competing technology. They do not plan to introduce "just another product on the market place to reject or accept"; they're aiming at making this product the only product available on the market place (at least legally). There is no "reject or accept", there will only be "obey and consume".
Now, tell me again how this, in your point of view, is not a bad thing?
I agree though; the cartoon sucks, like most "edutainment" pieces. The script is so lame and hyperbolic that it fails to captivate anyone's interest.
Heheh, doubt it; they use more advanced tools than simple metal detectors based on magnetism nowadays.;)
I heard of possible uses in defusing old bombs; apparently some of them have some kind of magnetic booby trap mechanism that reacts to ferrometalic presense to blow up the person trying to defuse it. Wouldn't know if there's actual truth to the story though; perhaps someone knowledgeable about old war explosives could confirm or debunk this story? I sure'd be interested in knowing if there's any truth to this...
Wootz AFAIK isn't manufactured; it's the impurities in the steel that make wootz wootz. There are ways to manufacture something wootz-like, but it's not real wootz. My first forge job was actually a small wootz knife with a leather wrapped handle, I use it in the kitchen to cut my chicken.;)
Funny thing: we didn't know it was actually wootz untill we finished the blade, and noticed the fine pattern after grinding it down and polishing it. We then submerged the blade in acid to better bring out the contrast. If you're looking for wootz, a good chance of finding it is old springs from cars, friends of mine often score it in the form of old Mercedez springs from the car cemetary. The ones you're looking for are the long flat ones that look kind of like a bow, not the more recent spiral springs. Don't know the proper english term, but I hope this description is sufficient.
As for people who work with wootz to make blades, you might wanna try Bladeforums. Lots of knowleadgable bladesmiths hang out there, in the knife maker's area.
No, but it has other properties which make it useful for knives anyway: lack of magnetic signature, doesn't rust. It's pretty decent for a diving knife, where it doesn't have to be razor sharp, but has to be rust resistant. It's also good when you need a knife that can operate in an environment where you can't use tools that react to magnetic fields.
Yup, I helped a friend make small strips of that for use in knifemaking. It's relatively easy; all you need is a gas forge (he helped me make mine, there's not much to it actually), an anvil, borax, steel cable, a welding machine and some large forging pliers to hold the hot piece of metal while beating it with a hammer. Oh, and you need a decent hammer too; one with hardened faces; soft ones won't do.
The process is simple; you tie off one end of the cable with some wire, before the point where it starts to untangle. You then cut off the untangled part relatively close to the point where you tied it off. Then weld the end fixed, so it won't untangle again. Repeat the same process a bit down the cable; how far depends on how long a strip you want to create. You then fire up your gas forge, wait for it to heat up completely, and just put the rod in. Wait untill it glows the right shade of red, take it out of the fire, then either throw borax on it using a large salt-shaker type of thing, or just roll the rod into a large bowl of borax. This will form a layer of borax around the rod. Back into the forge, the borax will seep between the strands of the cable, eating away at the impurities contained within. Repeat this process a couple of times... actually, a lot of times... The borax will drip into your forge, and it will eventually eat through the hull, so you better use one with a decent ceramic coating to prevent or slow down this process. Anyway, after you've repeated this process enough times, it's time to start welding the cable into a proper strip.
Make sure you wear decent protection, because when you hit that cable with your hammer, borax might shoot out, and hot borax will leave wounds that will ooze puss for days when it hits your bare skin. Even if you don't care about a couple of scars and some temporary discomfort, at least be smart enough to wear eye protection. Great, let's get on with it. Take the rod out of the forge, it's best to work in pairs so one can hold it with the pliers while laying it on the anvil, while the other smashes away at it with the hammer. Start beating it at one end, and do a couple of centimeters at a time. At first your goal is to create a rod with a square cross section; once you have that, you repeat the process, this time flattening it into a strip. Every time the metal cools off (starts glowing dimmer), put it back in the forge, and when it's heated up enough again, repeat the process, but start where you left off, slowly working your way from one end of the rod to the other. You'll notice that the metal will warp under the blows of your hammer; this is perfectly normal. Just turn it around, and you can smash it straight again. First hammer it on four sides to a square cross section, when you've covered the whole rod, repeat but this time beating it only on two sides so you end up with a strip.
Eventually, you'll end up with a rudimentary strip of cable damascus a couple of millimeters thick. Flatten it with a belt sander or whatever you have at your disposal, cut it into a straight strip, and you have a nice piece of cable damascus for stock removal production of knives (meaning you file the shape of the knife out of the bare strip, leaving the edge about 1mm in thickness, heat treat it, then polish and sharpen it). Of course you don't have to go the stock removal route; if you're more inclined to actually forge your knife/sword out of the rod, then work towards the shape you want for your knife/sword instead of a straight strip, and finish it off by belt sanding it to its final shape, heat treating it, then polishing and sharpening it.
You can find lots of info on knife/sword forging online if you google around a bit, and there's tons of books written on the subject. I'm just lucky I have a couple of friends who inducted me into this obscure art, though I wish I had more time to actually finish the designs I started...;)
For those interested in this kind of stuff, a good starting point might be the knife makers forums on bladeforums.
This is a nice example. Traditionalists frown upon his non-traditional methods, but it is said that his babies can chop through a traditional Japanese katana (mounted in a vice, of course; you don't wanna be holding on to a sword about to be chopped in two). Can't be bothered to look up evidence proving or disproving this claim though; if you really want to know just google for it; I gave you a starting point.;)
Those colors are pretty, and can be achieved by simply anodizing the titanium, which does not compromise its toughness at all. I for one prefer my titanium a nice shade of blue... Then again, the titanium I own is in the form of liners or frames for folding knives, nothing welded there. Which is a good thing, considering the whole lockup mechanism of the knife depends on it.
This has got to be the simplest way to build a fuel cell from scratch. The design is ridiculously simple, whilst being effective - it will allow you to explore the concepts of fuel cells in a ludicrously simple way.
This has got to be the most redundant blurb I read in weeks. This blurb is ridiculously redundant, whilst conveying little info - it will allow us to absorb one simple factoid in a ludicrously redundant way.
You know your article lacks in substance when you actually need filler text just so you can write a 3 line blurb about it...
My thoughts exactly. Nowadays whenever I click a link on slashdot, first thing I do is check if there's a "next page" link somewhere, and how much content is on the page... If there's a "printer friendly" link, I'll continue. If it's only 2 or 3 pages, I'll continue. Otherwise, the new tab closes a lot faster than it opened...
And to think that I actually remember the time when tomshardware was actually a great site with tons of solid info... Man, I'm getting old...
Yup, I was expecting something along the lines of "The Game"... Wasn't there some game a couple years back that did something similar to that movie? With people getting phone calls and emails and stuff, kinda creepy...
Study the behavior of humans in your chosen genre: see how they react, the ways they interact, the ways they try to play the game against each other - and use this as a foundation for building an AI.
Depends on the kind of game, really. For a game of chess or poker, you're definitely right. For tournament style FPS your assumption still holds. However, when I play Quake 4, I expect the enemies to behave like believable strogg soldiers, while for a game like Unreal Tournament I want them to behave like believable human players sitting behind their monitors, using keyboard and mouse (and limited reflexes + aim accuracy).
Actually, that last bit is really high up on my list of AI features I want. Right under giving each NPC an agenda, an emotional state and restrictions imposed on him by the environment or society as portrayed in the game (like having him perform a daily routine that consists of food, sleep and work). But right under that on the same list, lies one of my biggest pet peeves with most AI: the AI can do things no human opponent can match. Their reflex rates are through the roof (FPS), they have perfect awareness of their visible part of the battlefield while we need to scroll around to see what's going on (RTS), they can handle multiple tasks "simultaneously" while we're restricted by the speed at which we can pan over the battlefield to get the relevant units in sight and move the mouse to select units and issue them orders (again RTS). Plus we get tired or miss some detail because it's small and doesn't stand out against the background, thus occasionaly we mess up; the AI is always at peak efficiency and sees everything, even a black player skin against a black background.
Yup, saw this on Spanish television last weekend at my old folks' home. I was amazed... Amazed and shocked that I had to learn of this from some backward country's international broadcast station rather than slashdot. Since when do we lag on conventional media pickup for tech news?
If you have a relative who's a car mechanic, do you expect them to fix your car for free?
What, you think handymen don't have these "support" problems? How many times hasn't my dad fixed peoples' cars, changed the tires, changed the brakes, changed their oil, do some engine work etc... How many times haven't I witnessed friends of mine help other friends install a car stereo system, "tint" the windows etc? How many times hasn't my uncle had to help someone in the family install or fix a sattellite dish + receiver, how many times hasn't another one of my uncles helped people fix broken electronics? You know shit other people don't, and if they're friends or relatives, they often expect you to come help them for free. The good guys offer something in return; I have this kind of relationship with my sattellite dish uncle: I regularly help him with his computer, and he helps me with car stuff (most of my family knows a fair bit about cars since they all work at the Ford Motor Company plant in Genk, Belgium).
If you have a relative who is an airline pilot, do you expect them to give you free rides?
That's different; the airplane ain't his, the tickets aren't his to give away. But I suppose most airlines have this policy of letting their pilots' relatives fly cheaper, so yeah, even there you get something out of it. This question should be rephrased as "If you have a relative who's a pilot, would you expect him to give you free lessons when you learn to fly that little sports plane? I'm assuming the rental fee is yours to pay, of course; the lesson is free, but you don't expect them to spend their money to do you favors. Rephrased like this, it becomes quite similar to "if you have a relative who has a driver's license, do you expect them to teach you for free?" Gosh, well... isn't that how most of us learned to drive?
If you have a relative who is a prostitute, do you expect, umm, well anyway...
No, but I have a relative who's a hairdresser. She even offered me to cut my hair for free on several occasions. I said no, because I don't like to owe people favors. But to answer your question: if it were a good looking relative, and not too closely related (a sister would be kinda yuck, a cousin would be awkward, but your brother's wife's sister would be OK) I see no reason why I wouldn't take advantage of her services. I wouldn't expect a discount, but I'm sure I'd be getting better service than most of her other customers...
Oh God, what am I saying??? I can't betray my poor Fluffy like this! Ignore that last paragraph!
Anyway, last installment in the saga of my dad's life: a cousin of my mother came by the other day, funny how you hardly ever see them unless they need something done, but they're OK, so it's allright... Anyway, he wanted my dad's help laying new floor throughout his house. It was something like "I got a favor to ask; if you have time, could you help me lay new floor throughout the house? The old floor is busted, my tax return will come in pretty soon, and I thought of investing it in a new floor. I know you can do it since I saw you put in new floor in your own home, so if you would have some time somewhere next month, you think you could help me out? Or just show me how it's done so I can do it myself, 'coz I got no clue on how to do it myself...
Note that last part: he doesn't mind doing the work himself, but he just doesn't have the experience, and understandably doesn't want to mess up a project with this kind of expense involved. He doesn't expect my father to do all the work. My father has the choice of either coming to help, while the guy does part of the work as well, but with lesser risk of screwing up because someone knowledgeable is around to keep an eye on his work, or just teaching the guy how it's done, telling him what he needs to keep in mind while doing it. Those are the best kind of "support calls": these people know you have your own life and respect the fact that you want to manage your own time. Also
According to the great prophet Bill Hicks, that would be Tennessee...
Quote (from memory, so it might not be word for word as he said it): "Nah, you were great... Here, I'd like you to meet my wife and sister!"... and there was one girl next to him... Not a thumb between them... Tennessee...
Nah, I'd rather use something that's written properly from the ground up. If the first thing I see is it lists register_globals as a requirement for using the software, I can't help but wonder what else is wrong with it. I'd rather write it myself if I need it, as a matter of fact.
Then again... It's not like we're talking software that manages financial data or processes online payments or anything like that, unlike the stuff I have to write at work, so yeah... In comparison there's little to worry about.
Heh, I guess many of us did stuff like this in highschool. Well, at least, many of us nerds...;)
Must say I'm impressed with your system though; far easier to write quickly with it than with the system I developed. Mine was more like writing everything in captials, while yours has a nice flow to it... Would you care to share the font you created of it?
Heh, nice one, but I think I trump you... At my job I was asked, together with my colleague, to set new root passwords on all our boxes a while ago. We decided to come up with some pretty tough ones to crack, but just for fucks sake leave the password hints in plain sight.
Enter the MOTD... Right now, anyone logging in at one of our servers is greeted with a tongue-in-cheek taunt to try and figure out the root password. The taunt sentence is the basis from which the password is derived. But the process of deriving the password from the taunt sentence alone is pretty hard... For example, "computer" may be represented in the password string as [1+1] (to denote a box that does computations) or 1+1=>[]=>2 to denote a box that accepts computational jobs and outputs results. Or it can just be represented as "c".;)
The only problem with this scheme: even though I was the one coming up with the taunts and the corresponding passwords, I sometimes have to ring up my colleague when I try to get root on one of the boxes where I rarely use the root account. I made the passwords so hard to derive that the password hint kind of loses its purpose...
No, I'm perfectly aware that happens. That's not the purpose of the data your cellphone sends out though. Your cellphone just sends out ping replies, requests to connect to other towers etc... The fact they can trace you is just a side-effect. They know what towers you're connected to, and what your signal strength regarding those towers is. The main goal is to make sure you're still connected to the network; the side effect is they know pretty well where the hell you were at all times. It's comparable to an IP address: its main purpose is not to identify the person behind a computer; it's main purpose is to allow it to talk to other computers, and have them talk back to it and it alone. However, since your ISP keeps records on who leased which IP at what time, it could also be used to identify the real world entity hiding behind that IP.
Anyway, you'd think criminals would get smarter, huh? How many times haven't we heard on the news how a criminal/terrorist got tracked by his cellphone? How many times haven't we heard about some service that lets you locate your kids by their cellphone signal? And still people bring their cellphones to a future crime scene where they're about to become the protagonist... It boggles the mind.;)
What the hell is my phone transmitting when i'm not receiving a call?
It's periodically sending your GPS location to the government who's building a huge database of people's movements, to correlate against all sorts of crimes ranging from terrorist attacks and murders to petty theft and jaywalking.
The RIAA has shown interest in this as well. They want access to the data so they can draw up a list of people who walked by a record store without stepping inside and buying a CD. They claim it's not only in their own interest, but for national security as well, since anyone found guilty of such a crime is a threat to the national economy, and therefore a terrorist. But don't worry, the government is protecting you and is fiercely negotiating with the RIAA on your behalf. They finally realised what a bunch of nutcases these RIAA folk really are, they're sick of being pushed around by some corporate lobbyists, and are now actively pushing for a rewrite of that RIAA bill that would change the wording from "terrorism" to a mere "theft". And it looks like they might even have a chance of winning this one...
OK, and now for the serious answer: a cellphone tower can only support a limited number of simultaneously connected cellphones. It therefore needs to know exactly when a cellphone leaves its range, or disconnects from the network altogether, so it can free up its connection slot for use by another cellphone. Normally a phone communicates a disconnect to the tower whenever possible (for example if it's getting out of reach and connects to another tower, it then disconnects from the first and the connection gets transferred gracefully from the old tower to the new one, even in the middle of a conversation). However, if you just yank out the batteries, the phone gets utterly destroyed, you suddenly enter a cage of faraday or even an underground tunnel,... the phone will have no time to notify the tower, so the tower needs to check up on supposedly connected phones from time to time to check that none of them are MIA. It's basically similar to an ICMP ping on the Internet. And that's what you hear over your speakers. Similar thing happens right before a call or SMS comes in, or when you dial out: there's two-way communication, and the RF interference the cellphone puts out is picked up by your audio equipment.
1) Anime is not a good place to learn Japanese. A useful anecdote for this would be to imagine a Japanese person learning English from episodes of Simpsons and Family Guy. While such thoughts are no doubt filled with hillarity, they do prove just how silly Anime-bin Japanese would seem to native speakers...
I disagree. As far as English is concerned, at least... Amerikans and Britons learn English as their native language, but for the rest of the world it's a learned, second language. Here in Europe, most countries just show the movies dubbed in their own language, but a couple of countries use subtitles. I happen to live in Belgium, where the latter is the case. I picked up all my English from cartoons (when I was really young), TV shows and movies. By the time I got to English class in school, I was already so proficient that I never had a hard time learning the expanded vocabulary you don't get from movies.
Contrast this to my French which is horrible, even though I'm the son of Spanish emigrants and speak a lot of Spanish which is similar enough to French to have allowed me to pick up basic French pretty fast. I started learning French in school at age 10, and had French class up to age 18. English, however, wasn't taught at my school until age 14. Even though I had 4 years more of formal training in French, Belgium's second language, my English is way better simply because most movies/shows/cartoons I watch are in English.
This being said, I must admit that the first English phrases I learned were "hands up", "shut up" and "fuck you". Not exactly the best way to start learning a language. This is probably true for Anime as well, given the theme of most anime shows. But starting from those overly dramatic sentences I built my entire knowledge of the English language, which I hope you will agree after reading my reply isn't all that shabby...
Perhaps anime isn't such a bad place to start after all, as long as you follow it up with some regular movies, and perhaps even some formal training. You just have to keep in mind that the dialogue in most anime is pretty over the top, but it's good enough to pick up some extra vocabulary you'd otherwise never cover in class.
What the world needs is maybe a participatory TV show, that people can consume and maybe even play a part in creating, without need for the big networks. The first one of those we see will be revolutionary. And then we'll see more and more. It's getting easier for people to create their own content, and distributing it worldwide is now trivially simple and free. If you're the CEO of a big media corporation, this is terrifying. If you're a random human with a few friends and a net connection, it's a good time to yank our culture back and return it to the hands of the people who create it.
Yeah, 'coz we all know youtube is literaly bursting with masterpieces of contemporary culture.
Slashdot Mirror
If anti-piracy groups released a video portraying pirates as supervillians who invade your home and take your money and never give it back, we'd all be making fun of it.
And in turn, it's the anti-piracy groups' good right to be making fun of this. I don't see the problem. Besides, don't tell me you've forgotten all those anti-piracy educational messages and videos depicting copyright infringers as the worst scum of the earth, or the ones suggesting what happens to your analog hole in prison once their lawyers get to you?
customers simply won't buy it and will choose a different product
That's assuming:
- Joe Average Customer is actually aware of the effects DRM will have on his ability to do things he now takes for granted.
- There will in fact be other products to choose from. Since the entertainment industry is lobbying hard to make DRM mandatory, I wouldn't count on it.
And since DRM is tightly coupled to all the great new stuff like digital radio, HDTV, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, next-gen OS'es etc... one can't avoid buying DRM if he wants to keep up with the latest tech. Of course, one could keep on using his current stuff, but that's assuming his current stuff will keep working once the new tech rolls out. And guess what? Once the new tech is in place, the old tech will be outphased, so that in say 5 years your current TV set won't be able to pick up anything anymore because everything is either digital or HD. And then of course, there's the issue of every piece of electronics wearing out and breaking down after a while.Rights aren't being violated
Except our fair-use rights. Or don't you agree that those are in fact rights?
it's just another product on the market place to reject or accept
The three "evils" depicted in the cartoon are:
- The audio flag
- The broadcast flag
- Lawfully plugging the analog hole
The entertainment industry is lobbying to get all three of those mandatory by law, thus eliminating any kind of competing technology. They do not plan to introduce "just another product on the market place to reject or accept"; they're aiming at making this product the only product available on the market place (at least legally). There is no "reject or accept", there will only be "obey and consume".Now, tell me again how this, in your point of view, is not a bad thing?
I agree though; the cartoon sucks, like most "edutainment" pieces. The script is so lame and hyperbolic that it fails to captivate anyone's interest.
suppose you wanted to stay on the forefront of Java based web development, what would you do?
Kill myself.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
1
Heheh, doubt it; they use more advanced tools than simple metal detectors based on magnetism nowadays. ;)
I heard of possible uses in defusing old bombs; apparently some of them have some kind of magnetic booby trap mechanism that reacts to ferrometalic presense to blow up the person trying to defuse it. Wouldn't know if there's actual truth to the story though; perhaps someone knowledgeable about old war explosives could confirm or debunk this story? I sure'd be interested in knowing if there's any truth to this...
Wootz AFAIK isn't manufactured; it's the impurities in the steel that make wootz wootz. There are ways to manufacture something wootz-like, but it's not real wootz. My first forge job was actually a small wootz knife with a leather wrapped handle, I use it in the kitchen to cut my chicken. ;)
Funny thing: we didn't know it was actually wootz untill we finished the blade, and noticed the fine pattern after grinding it down and polishing it. We then submerged the blade in acid to better bring out the contrast. If you're looking for wootz, a good chance of finding it is old springs from cars, friends of mine often score it in the form of old Mercedez springs from the car cemetary. The ones you're looking for are the long flat ones that look kind of like a bow, not the more recent spiral springs. Don't know the proper english term, but I hope this description is sufficient.
As for people who work with wootz to make blades, you might wanna try Bladeforums. Lots of knowleadgable bladesmiths hang out there, in the knife maker's area.
No, but it has other properties which make it useful for knives anyway: lack of magnetic signature, doesn't rust. It's pretty decent for a diving knife, where it doesn't have to be razor sharp, but has to be rust resistant. It's also good when you need a knife that can operate in an environment where you can't use tools that react to magnetic fields.
Yup, I helped a friend make small strips of that for use in knifemaking. It's relatively easy; all you need is a gas forge (he helped me make mine, there's not much to it actually), an anvil, borax, steel cable, a welding machine and some large forging pliers to hold the hot piece of metal while beating it with a hammer. Oh, and you need a decent hammer too; one with hardened faces; soft ones won't do.
The process is simple; you tie off one end of the cable with some wire, before the point where it starts to untangle. You then cut off the untangled part relatively close to the point where you tied it off. Then weld the end fixed, so it won't untangle again. Repeat the same process a bit down the cable; how far depends on how long a strip you want to create. You then fire up your gas forge, wait for it to heat up completely, and just put the rod in. Wait untill it glows the right shade of red, take it out of the fire, then either throw borax on it using a large salt-shaker type of thing, or just roll the rod into a large bowl of borax. This will form a layer of borax around the rod. Back into the forge, the borax will seep between the strands of the cable, eating away at the impurities contained within. Repeat this process a couple of times... actually, a lot of times... The borax will drip into your forge, and it will eventually eat through the hull, so you better use one with a decent ceramic coating to prevent or slow down this process. Anyway, after you've repeated this process enough times, it's time to start welding the cable into a proper strip.
Make sure you wear decent protection, because when you hit that cable with your hammer, borax might shoot out, and hot borax will leave wounds that will ooze puss for days when it hits your bare skin. Even if you don't care about a couple of scars and some temporary discomfort, at least be smart enough to wear eye protection. Great, let's get on with it. Take the rod out of the forge, it's best to work in pairs so one can hold it with the pliers while laying it on the anvil, while the other smashes away at it with the hammer. Start beating it at one end, and do a couple of centimeters at a time. At first your goal is to create a rod with a square cross section; once you have that, you repeat the process, this time flattening it into a strip. Every time the metal cools off (starts glowing dimmer), put it back in the forge, and when it's heated up enough again, repeat the process, but start where you left off, slowly working your way from one end of the rod to the other. You'll notice that the metal will warp under the blows of your hammer; this is perfectly normal. Just turn it around, and you can smash it straight again. First hammer it on four sides to a square cross section, when you've covered the whole rod, repeat but this time beating it only on two sides so you end up with a strip.
Eventually, you'll end up with a rudimentary strip of cable damascus a couple of millimeters thick. Flatten it with a belt sander or whatever you have at your disposal, cut it into a straight strip, and you have a nice piece of cable damascus for stock removal production of knives (meaning you file the shape of the knife out of the bare strip, leaving the edge about 1mm in thickness, heat treat it, then polish and sharpen it). Of course you don't have to go the stock removal route; if you're more inclined to actually forge your knife/sword out of the rod, then work towards the shape you want for your knife/sword instead of a straight strip, and finish it off by belt sanding it to its final shape, heat treating it, then polishing and sharpening it.
You can find lots of info on knife/sword forging online if you google around a bit, and there's tons of books written on the subject. I'm just lucky I have a couple of friends who inducted me into this obscure art, though I wish I had more time to actually finish the designs I started... ;)
For those interested in this kind of stuff, a good starting point might be the knife makers forums on bladeforums.
This is a nice example. Traditionalists frown upon his non-traditional methods, but it is said that his babies can chop through a traditional Japanese katana (mounted in a vice, of course; you don't wanna be holding on to a sword about to be chopped in two). Can't be bothered to look up evidence proving or disproving this claim though; if you really want to know just google for it; I gave you a starting point. ;)
Those colors are pretty, and can be achieved by simply anodizing the titanium, which does not compromise its toughness at all. I for one prefer my titanium a nice shade of blue... Then again, the titanium I own is in the form of liners or frames for folding knives, nothing welded there. Which is a good thing, considering the whole lockup mechanism of the knife depends on it.
This has got to be the simplest way to build a fuel cell from scratch. The design is ridiculously simple, whilst being effective - it will allow you to explore the concepts of fuel cells in a ludicrously simple way.
This has got to be the most redundant blurb I read in weeks. This blurb is ridiculously redundant, whilst conveying little info - it will allow us to absorb one simple factoid in a ludicrously redundant way.
You know your article lacks in substance when you actually need filler text just so you can write a 3 line blurb about it...
My thoughts exactly. Nowadays whenever I click a link on slashdot, first thing I do is check if there's a "next page" link somewhere, and how much content is on the page... If there's a "printer friendly" link, I'll continue. If it's only 2 or 3 pages, I'll continue. Otherwise, the new tab closes a lot faster than it opened...
And to think that I actually remember the time when tomshardware was actually a great site with tons of solid info... Man, I'm getting old...
Yup, I was expecting something along the lines of "The Game"... Wasn't there some game a couple years back that did something similar to that movie? With people getting phone calls and emails and stuff, kinda creepy...
Study the behavior of humans in your chosen genre: see how they react, the ways they interact, the ways they try to play the game against each other - and use this as a foundation for building an AI.
Depends on the kind of game, really. For a game of chess or poker, you're definitely right. For tournament style FPS your assumption still holds. However, when I play Quake 4, I expect the enemies to behave like believable strogg soldiers, while for a game like Unreal Tournament I want them to behave like believable human players sitting behind their monitors, using keyboard and mouse (and limited reflexes + aim accuracy).
Actually, that last bit is really high up on my list of AI features I want. Right under giving each NPC an agenda, an emotional state and restrictions imposed on him by the environment or society as portrayed in the game (like having him perform a daily routine that consists of food, sleep and work). But right under that on the same list, lies one of my biggest pet peeves with most AI: the AI can do things no human opponent can match. Their reflex rates are through the roof (FPS), they have perfect awareness of their visible part of the battlefield while we need to scroll around to see what's going on (RTS), they can handle multiple tasks "simultaneously" while we're restricted by the speed at which we can pan over the battlefield to get the relevant units in sight and move the mouse to select units and issue them orders (again RTS). Plus we get tired or miss some detail because it's small and doesn't stand out against the background, thus occasionaly we mess up; the AI is always at peak efficiency and sees everything, even a black player skin against a black background.
Yup, saw this on Spanish television last weekend at my old folks' home. I was amazed... Amazed and shocked that I had to learn of this from some backward country's international broadcast station rather than slashdot. Since when do we lag on conventional media pickup for tech news?
*reads telegram sent by the /. board of directors*
Oh, I see...
If you have a relative who's a car mechanic, do you expect them to fix your car for free?
What, you think handymen don't have these "support" problems? How many times hasn't my dad fixed peoples' cars, changed the tires, changed the brakes, changed their oil, do some engine work etc... How many times haven't I witnessed friends of mine help other friends install a car stereo system, "tint" the windows etc? How many times hasn't my uncle had to help someone in the family install or fix a sattellite dish + receiver, how many times hasn't another one of my uncles helped people fix broken electronics? You know shit other people don't, and if they're friends or relatives, they often expect you to come help them for free. The good guys offer something in return; I have this kind of relationship with my sattellite dish uncle: I regularly help him with his computer, and he helps me with car stuff (most of my family knows a fair bit about cars since they all work at the Ford Motor Company plant in Genk, Belgium).
If you have a relative who is an airline pilot, do you expect them to give you free rides?
That's different; the airplane ain't his, the tickets aren't his to give away. But I suppose most airlines have this policy of letting their pilots' relatives fly cheaper, so yeah, even there you get something out of it. This question should be rephrased as "If you have a relative who's a pilot, would you expect him to give you free lessons when you learn to fly that little sports plane? I'm assuming the rental fee is yours to pay, of course; the lesson is free, but you don't expect them to spend their money to do you favors. Rephrased like this, it becomes quite similar to "if you have a relative who has a driver's license, do you expect them to teach you for free?" Gosh, well... isn't that how most of us learned to drive?
If you have a relative who is a prostitute, do you expect, umm, well anyway...
No, but I have a relative who's a hairdresser. She even offered me to cut my hair for free on several occasions. I said no, because I don't like to owe people favors. But to answer your question: if it were a good looking relative, and not too closely related (a sister would be kinda yuck, a cousin would be awkward, but your brother's wife's sister would be OK) I see no reason why I wouldn't take advantage of her services. I wouldn't expect a discount, but I'm sure I'd be getting better service than most of her other customers...
Oh God, what am I saying??? I can't betray my poor Fluffy like this! Ignore that last paragraph!
Anyway, last installment in the saga of my dad's life: a cousin of my mother came by the other day, funny how you hardly ever see them unless they need something done, but they're OK, so it's allright... Anyway, he wanted my dad's help laying new floor throughout his house. It was something like "I got a favor to ask; if you have time, could you help me lay new floor throughout the house? The old floor is busted, my tax return will come in pretty soon, and I thought of investing it in a new floor. I know you can do it since I saw you put in new floor in your own home, so if you would have some time somewhere next month, you think you could help me out? Or just show me how it's done so I can do it myself, 'coz I got no clue on how to do it myself...
Note that last part: he doesn't mind doing the work himself, but he just doesn't have the experience, and understandably doesn't want to mess up a project with this kind of expense involved. He doesn't expect my father to do all the work. My father has the choice of either coming to help, while the guy does part of the work as well, but with lesser risk of screwing up because someone knowledgeable is around to keep an eye on his work, or just teaching the guy how it's done, telling him what he needs to keep in mind while doing it. Those are the best kind of "support calls": these people know you have your own life and respect the fact that you want to manage your own time. Also
According to the great prophet Bill Hicks, that would be Tennessee...
Quote (from memory, so it might not be word for word as he said it): "Nah, you were great... Here, I'd like you to meet my wife and sister!"... and there was one girl next to him... Not a thumb between them... Tennessee...
Nah, I'd rather use something that's written properly from the ground up. If the first thing I see is it lists register_globals as a requirement for using the software, I can't help but wonder what else is wrong with it. I'd rather write it myself if I need it, as a matter of fact.
Then again... It's not like we're talking software that manages financial data or processes online payments or anything like that, unlike the stuff I have to write at work, so yeah... In comparison there's little to worry about.
Heh, I guess many of us did stuff like this in highschool. Well, at least, many of us nerds... ;)
Must say I'm impressed with your system though; far easier to write quickly with it than with the system I developed. Mine was more like writing everything in captials, while yours has a nice flow to it... Would you care to share the font you created of it?
One of the first things I read in the docs:
2. Make sure you have register_globals = On
Yeah, that really fills me with confidence...
FOAD
Heh, nice one, but I think I trump you... At my job I was asked, together with my colleague, to set new root passwords on all our boxes a while ago. We decided to come up with some pretty tough ones to crack, but just for fucks sake leave the password hints in plain sight.
Enter the MOTD... Right now, anyone logging in at one of our servers is greeted with a tongue-in-cheek taunt to try and figure out the root password. The taunt sentence is the basis from which the password is derived. But the process of deriving the password from the taunt sentence alone is pretty hard... For example, "computer" may be represented in the password string as [1+1] (to denote a box that does computations) or 1+1=>[]=>2 to denote a box that accepts computational jobs and outputs results. Or it can just be represented as "c". ;)
The only problem with this scheme: even though I was the one coming up with the taunts and the corresponding passwords, I sometimes have to ring up my colleague when I try to get root on one of the boxes where I rarely use the root account. I made the passwords so hard to derive that the password hint kind of loses its purpose...
No, I'm perfectly aware that happens. That's not the purpose of the data your cellphone sends out though. Your cellphone just sends out ping replies, requests to connect to other towers etc... The fact they can trace you is just a side-effect. They know what towers you're connected to, and what your signal strength regarding those towers is. The main goal is to make sure you're still connected to the network; the side effect is they know pretty well where the hell you were at all times. It's comparable to an IP address: its main purpose is not to identify the person behind a computer; it's main purpose is to allow it to talk to other computers, and have them talk back to it and it alone. However, since your ISP keeps records on who leased which IP at what time, it could also be used to identify the real world entity hiding behind that IP.
Anyway, you'd think criminals would get smarter, huh? How many times haven't we heard on the news how a criminal/terrorist got tracked by his cellphone? How many times haven't we heard about some service that lets you locate your kids by their cellphone signal? And still people bring their cellphones to a future crime scene where they're about to become the protagonist... It boggles the mind. ;)
What the hell is my phone transmitting when i'm not receiving a call?
It's periodically sending your GPS location to the government who's building a huge database of people's movements, to correlate against all sorts of crimes ranging from terrorist attacks and murders to petty theft and jaywalking.
The RIAA has shown interest in this as well. They want access to the data so they can draw up a list of people who walked by a record store without stepping inside and buying a CD. They claim it's not only in their own interest, but for national security as well, since anyone found guilty of such a crime is a threat to the national economy, and therefore a terrorist. But don't worry, the government is protecting you and is fiercely negotiating with the RIAA on your behalf. They finally realised what a bunch of nutcases these RIAA folk really are, they're sick of being pushed around by some corporate lobbyists, and are now actively pushing for a rewrite of that RIAA bill that would change the wording from "terrorism" to a mere "theft". And it looks like they might even have a chance of winning this one...
OK, and now for the serious answer: a cellphone tower can only support a limited number of simultaneously connected cellphones. It therefore needs to know exactly when a cellphone leaves its range, or disconnects from the network altogether, so it can free up its connection slot for use by another cellphone. Normally a phone communicates a disconnect to the tower whenever possible (for example if it's getting out of reach and connects to another tower, it then disconnects from the first and the connection gets transferred gracefully from the old tower to the new one, even in the middle of a conversation). However, if you just yank out the batteries, the phone gets utterly destroyed, you suddenly enter a cage of faraday or even an underground tunnel, ... the phone will have no time to notify the tower, so the tower needs to check up on supposedly connected phones from time to time to check that none of them are MIA. It's basically similar to an ICMP ping on the Internet. And that's what you hear over your speakers. Similar thing happens right before a call or SMS comes in, or when you dial out: there's two-way communication, and the RF interference the cellphone puts out is picked up by your audio equipment.
1) Anime is not a good place to learn Japanese. A useful anecdote for this would be to imagine a Japanese person learning English from episodes of Simpsons and Family Guy. While such thoughts are no doubt filled with hillarity, they do prove just how silly Anime-bin Japanese would seem to native speakers...
I disagree. As far as English is concerned, at least... Amerikans and Britons learn English as their native language, but for the rest of the world it's a learned, second language. Here in Europe, most countries just show the movies dubbed in their own language, but a couple of countries use subtitles. I happen to live in Belgium, where the latter is the case. I picked up all my English from cartoons (when I was really young), TV shows and movies. By the time I got to English class in school, I was already so proficient that I never had a hard time learning the expanded vocabulary you don't get from movies.
Contrast this to my French which is horrible, even though I'm the son of Spanish emigrants and speak a lot of Spanish which is similar enough to French to have allowed me to pick up basic French pretty fast. I started learning French in school at age 10, and had French class up to age 18. English, however, wasn't taught at my school until age 14. Even though I had 4 years more of formal training in French, Belgium's second language, my English is way better simply because most movies/shows/cartoons I watch are in English.
This being said, I must admit that the first English phrases I learned were "hands up", "shut up" and "fuck you". Not exactly the best way to start learning a language. This is probably true for Anime as well, given the theme of most anime shows. But starting from those overly dramatic sentences I built my entire knowledge of the English language, which I hope you will agree after reading my reply isn't all that shabby...
Perhaps anime isn't such a bad place to start after all, as long as you follow it up with some regular movies, and perhaps even some formal training. You just have to keep in mind that the dialogue in most anime is pretty over the top, but it's good enough to pick up some extra vocabulary you'd otherwise never cover in class.
What the world needs is maybe a participatory TV show, that people can consume and maybe even play a part in creating, without need for the big networks. The first one of those we see will be revolutionary. And then we'll see more and more. It's getting easier for people to create their own content, and distributing it worldwide is now trivially simple and free. If you're the CEO of a big media corporation, this is terrifying. If you're a random human with a few friends and a net connection, it's a good time to yank our culture back and return it to the hands of the people who create it.
Yeah, 'coz we all know youtube is literaly bursting with masterpieces of contemporary culture.
nice one ;)