I have had pretty good luck using the following tools/apps:
webvcrplus for scheduling/recording,
mplayer for playback,
avidemux for commercial removal,
mencoder for postprocessing (deinterlacing, audio syncing, etc.), and
transcode with DVD::Rip for backing up DVDs.
My primary goal for this is to make backup copies of media for when I travel. When I watch live TV on my computer, I use TVTime. I am looking more into something like MythTV, because of the possibility of streaming content, and the fact that it is getting toward the point of being able to remove commercials on the fly.
That said, I have been very happy with my current configuration. Webvcrplus works like a charm, downloading listings through xmltv and scheduling them for recording.
I stopped recommending Dell after talking to their tech support. My mom bought a Dell that came preloaded with Windows ME. She wanted to upgrade to 2000. I had a copy of 2000 I wasn't using, so she shipped me the PC. While not a Windows admin, I went through the install. When it switched over to the graphical portion of the install, the machine hung. I tried to boot a Knoppix CD, and the same thing happened. As soon as X tried to start, the machine stopped responding.
After trying this with a PCI nVidia card I had lying around and getting the same thing, I gritted my teeth and got on the phone with tech support (it was still under support). The first question I was asked after describing the problem was "Did you purchase a copy of Windows 2000 from Dell?" I told the lady that I did not, but I had a generic Microsoft copy, and what's more that I had tried to load Linux on it. She said, in essence, that only Dell-blessed copies of software would work on Dell computers. At that point, I decided that Dell was not a company with which I wanted to do business.
This is obviously another case of a company being less concerned about customer's privacy and satisfaction than their bottom line. And they have not figured out that their bottom line is directly affected by customer satisfaction. We need to speak with our wallets and let Dell know that this type of behavior will not be tolerated.
I was just wondering whether or not other distributions can use the work that RH is doing to get a "common Common Criteria" effect. After all, they are all using the same Ring 0 piece, being the Linux kernel. After that, it should just become a matter of configuration verification...
And with the support that Linux has gotten from the NSA, through SE-Linux, I would think a lot of the in-depth work on Linux has been covered.
Its pretty well common knowledge in the security community that Microsoft paid for that certification.
While I can't remember if it was specifically Windows 2000 with the Common Criteria or Windows NT with the Orange Book Cert, I do remember that the system configuration which won them the cert was with no network connection, no floppy drives, and no CDROM drives on the box that was tested. In essence, no non-keyboard input methods. (They couldn't guarantee the OS would stay clean long enough to get the cert.)
Basically, the certification was useless as soon as you configured the box to do any useful processing on the machine. Then again, many would say that is the same of Windows itself.
Yeah, Baen's setup is great. What he has found out is that by giving the books away, his sales rises.
As mentioned in the original post, Baen has the free library, which contains the first few books of a given series (for instance the free library includes the first couple of Honor Harrington books). When David Weber came out with the 10th book in the series, the first-release hardback included a CD which not only included the entire Honor Harrington series (including the book that it came with) in ebook format, but selections of other authors, in total, 40 or 50 books, plus pictures, fanfiction, and other sci-fi goodness.
John Ringo recently came out with the fourth (book 3 part 2 by his counting) book of his Posleen series, and version 2 of the Baen CD came out as well. Surprisingly, there was no overlap in titles. This CD not only included a roleplaying game, but also selections of Sluggy Freelance (Bun-bun plays prominently in his books).
And the best part of this? The CDs license reads This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold.
If more publishers would follow Jim Baen's example, ebooks would be as common as paperbacks. I will continue to buy Baen books, in hardback, especially if he continues to give away CDs with ebooks. I'm almost to the point where leisure reading on dead trees feels alien and wierd.
Name the last album you listend to that had a theme, thematic or musical, through the whole album...soundtacks don't count!
Absolutely. Those days seem to be gone. Concept albums like Pink Floyd's Animals or The Wall, or the Eagles Desperado were great because they told a story. You didn't have to love each song on the album, but each song was another piece of the story. Now, as everybody seems to agree, you have to dig the diamonds out of the pile of festering dung.
In the old days, I bought albums based on a single song, and invariably liked the rest of the album better than the single played on the radio. Unfortunately, those days are gone.
The movie industry is really in an interesting position, aren't they? On one hand, they need us, our pocketbooks, our money to keep cranking out movies. Without us, they fall off into oblivion.
On the other hand, they are saying that we are all criminals and that they are going to take measures to keep our criminal tendencies in check. Putting metal detectors and night vision goggles in theaters? Are we going for a couple of hours of entertainment or on night maneuvers in the desert?
Basically, the movie/music industry (MPAA, RIAA, that gang of thieves) would be happiest if we just sat there and took what they put out, and every time we thought about it, gave them money.
The other sude of the equation is that the very people that they are worried enough about to place night vision and metal detectors in theaters for are the same people they are trying to entice. Why else would they spend billions of dollars making more and more sophisticated special effects?
The best way to deal with this is to speak with your pocketbook. Don't go see movies in theaters that have this equipment. Better yet, deprive the MPAA by waiting until it comes out on dvd...
Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
I've encountered the same situation with Earthlink. Because I use a DDNS service (whyi.org), because they cannot do a reverse lookup (the reverse zone belongs to my ISP), they bounce my messages as spam. At the same time, I was getting voluminous amounts of spam from their users.
However, trying to steer the lawmaking apparatus, no doubt with bribe^H^H^H^H charitable donations to our elected officials is very very low...
Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
Mr. Barry,
I want you to know that your book Babies and Other Hazards of Sex cost me $10 in late fees from the library, because I found I could not read it late at night without waking my family, thanks to the hysterical laughter.
Now that your son, Robert is All Grown Up (TM), has he has turned into his father? Does he publically admit to it?
Regards,
id Software is probably the best as far as it goes
I started using Linux eight years ago, with Slackware. I was pleasantly surprised that the Games set for Slack contained Doom. Pleasantly enough that I shot an email to the address on their page thanking them for taking the time to support Linux. One of the developers wrote me back saying "what are you talking about? We write it under Linux and port it to DOS..."
I thought that was very very cool.
If you look back over the list of duplicates, nearly all of them are Taco's.
Now remember, gang, he's a newlywed...He is in that magical time between "I'm a geek and never have a date." and marriage being old hat (or just old). The boy's (possibly for the first time since the site started) got something other than slashdot on his mind...
Radio Shack doesn't bother me nearly as much any more. As many have said, you can always say "no."
The thing that irritates me is the grocery stores where I live (Virginia). The major chains now have a system set up where they will only give you your savings (stuff on sale, buy one get one free, etc) if you have one of their little bar code cards. Because of the bar codes on the items themselves, they already know what is being sold, why is it that they need to know who is buying it? These grocery store chains are building huge databases of what kind of toilet paper I use and what kind of coffee I buy.
I became really disturbed by this about six months after moving here, when, in my mail, was a flyer from one of these chains with "custom tailored coupons valued at $xxx.xx"...And sure enough it was stuff that my family purchased.
What can we do about this? First, I shop at stores where the shoppers have unused cards that they swipe. (I can just imagine the skew that whoever gets that card is going to put in their demographic...)
Second, depending on my rant, I either mention to the checker the privacy issues at stake, or I go on a slashdot-style rant on the subject. Invariably, the checker just shakes her head with a sad smile.
Finally, one of the stores banned checkers from doing this. So when I go to that store, I tell the checker that I "forgot" my card, so they want me to put in my phone number. I usually try some random phone number, or the number of an acquaintance. I know of a group of 20 or so former coworkers that used to swap cards at random intervals, just to screw with the demographic.
That next time I get stopped by the police, I can invoke the DMCA to keep the officer from using my name or driver's license number? Hey, maybe I can claim it to not give it to him in the first place.
Do they get an expensive trenchcoat to throw over their heads when the Feds come to take them away because the SEC found they were involved in insider trading?
They have actually started selling advertisements for common products (commercials!) for stuff like Volkswagen, Downy, etc in place of (or mixed in with) the trailers. And why not? They have a captive audience, chained in their seats by the small fortune they invested in an evening of enjoyment...
And with the stuff that Hollywood is squeezing out, you really get to see the gist of the movie in the trailer, and whats left beyond the trailer is not worth the $6 or $8 that you would have to pay.
There is an exception to this rule. Crowd participation movies like the Rocky Horror Picture Show are much better watched in a theater than at home...But then you're supposed to be yelling at the screen...
I have been working on this very thing the past feww months, and have found that while there is an associated learning curve, there are advantages to using a PC to record over a TiVO.
Since my job requires some travel, I have found that it is a definite boon to collect movies. Using my workstation as a PVR, I am able to capture to the hard drive, do some postprocessing and write a DivX to a 700MB CD-R which I can then take with me and watch on business trips. And its all perfectly legal, since I am archiving for later viewing. On the other hand, getting the same from a TiVo requires modifications of questionable legality. In addition, I can make backup copies of my DVDs on 700MB media so I don't have to risk leaving my DVDs in a hotel room somewhere.
As for the cost issue, if you have a system with the right specs (a modern PC should pretty much do it), then the only additional cost should be a tv capture card, which can be had for $20 or $30 US. The only thing that one could point out is the time cost and the learning curve involved in making the hardware and software do what you want it to. But it is that way with anything. If its worth doing, you're probably going to have to teach yourself.
Microprose's Falcon4 is probably a perfeect example of this. Released in November, 1998, it still has a large and dedicated following (well, as large as hardcore flightsims' followings get).
Back in 1999, Hasbro/Microprose decided to drop Falcon4. However, before all of the developers were fired, the source code mysteriously ended up on the Internet.
A group which came to be known as Realism Patch Group (RPG) was releasing (free) patches to fix some of the realism issues in the original Falcon. At the same time, someone called eRazor had gotten his hands on the Falcon source code and was working on some of graphics issues. And simultaneously with this, an army of other developers were working on other aspects of the game. For instance, the eTeam took this F-16 only flightsim and added a Fly-Any-Plane patch, giving you the ability to fly any aircraft in the sim. Groups around the world immediately started working on accurate flight models for each aircraft and photo-realistic cockpits.
The two groups worked in parallel, releasing RPG and eRazor patches which more or less rewrote the sim. It was decided to create a Falcon4 Unified Team (f4ut). This group took all of the rewrites and data edits done by the eTeam and the RPG and combined them into series of Falcon4 SuperPaks. These patches/mods have completely transformed Falcon, and nearly made it into a completely new sim. The graphics engine was completely rewritten and is DirectX 8.1 compliant. Falcon supports anistropic filtering, antialiasing, etc. And the sim itself is one of the most realistic and engaging ever. It uses a dynamic "campaign-within-a-campaign" methodology to insure that play never repeats itself. Its literally a whole new ballgame.
In fact, the "unofficial" modding of Falcon has also snatched Falcon from the jaws of obsolescence. G2I Interactive has bought Falcon's IP and while allowing a last series of F4UT binary edits, will be coming out with Falcon5.
IMHO, this is the ultimate example of mods extending the life of a game or sim. And extending its playability. There are a number of active duty fighter pilots who are avid Falcon fans. That, IMHO is the ultimate compliment.
Uh huh. And this is exactly the reason that IBM has embraced Linux in a huge way. In fact, a former coworker got a laptop from work, it was an IBM, and it shipped with RedHat...
This is also why everything in the IBM product line runs Linux, from S390s to AS/400s to the M80s and X330s. IBM has also apparently changed their focus. About a year and a half ago, they planned to use Linux as a stepping stone. The lower-end systems were to run Linux, but when you needed the heavy-duty computing power, they would step you up to AIX. The latest release of AIX is more Linux-like, and according to the the IBM reps I have talked to, they will ultimately phase AIX out in favor of Linux.
Believe me, with their superb range of hardware and running Linux, IBM still has a considerable amount of smiting power.
There is nother side of lack of sleep which nobody has touched on. Your body, in its wakefulness, produces toxins from metabolism which collect in your tissues. The harder you work, the more toxins are produced. For instance, the reason you get sore after working out is because of lactic acid. Your body produces these toxins, and they are flushed from your system primarily during sleep. Taking these pills may cause you to be able to stay awake longer, but you are just building up these toxins in your system.
Another issue is the fact that you stay awake longer, you never take a downtime. The body was designed to deal with stress in three steps: React, Recover, Rest. Unfortunately, in our fast-paced world, the body gets used to being stressed, and just like continually stretching a rubber band without letting it bounce back to its original shape, it loses its shape, then ultimately breaks. This breakage may take the form of heart attack, stroke, aneurism, etc. I actually read a statistic that 60-70% (I've heard as high as 80%) of all doctor visits in America are due to stress-related maladies. Why prolong that with a drug that will rob your body of the rest it needs? (besides, you know that if someone invents a pill that will make you functional for 24 hours at a time, you are going to end up working for a boss that will want you to work 22 of them.
I know I am probably a bit older than the average/. reader, but I remember in the late 60s/early 70s that these same scientists were saying that these greenhouse gases etc etc etc were going to cause a new ice age. Now they say that this is going to cause global warming? If you look closely, the history of the earth seems to be a cyclical series of events. You would have a period of unusually warm weather followed by unusually cold weather.
Global warming? It seems to be the latest fad by the environmentalists to get us to bend to their wills.
Slashdot Mirror
webvcrplus for scheduling/recording, mplayer for playback, avidemux for commercial removal, mencoder for postprocessing (deinterlacing, audio syncing, etc.), and transcode with DVD::Rip for backing up DVDs.
My primary goal for this is to make backup copies of media for when I travel. When I watch live TV on my computer, I use TVTime. I am looking more into something like MythTV, because of the possibility of streaming content, and the fact that it is getting toward the point of being able to remove commercials on the fly.
That said, I have been very happy with my current configuration. Webvcrplus works like a charm, downloading listings through xmltv and scheduling them for recording.
I stopped recommending Dell after talking to their tech support. My mom bought a Dell that came preloaded with Windows ME. She wanted to upgrade to 2000. I had a copy of 2000 I wasn't using, so she shipped me the PC. While not a Windows admin, I went through the install. When it switched over to the graphical portion of the install, the machine hung. I tried to boot a Knoppix CD, and the same thing happened. As soon as X tried to start, the machine stopped responding.
After trying this with a PCI nVidia card I had lying around and getting the same thing, I gritted my teeth and got on the phone with tech support (it was still under support). The first question I was asked after describing the problem was "Did you purchase a copy of Windows 2000 from Dell?" I told the lady that I did not, but I had a generic Microsoft copy, and what's more that I had tried to load Linux on it. She said, in essence, that only Dell-blessed copies of software would work on Dell computers. At that point, I decided that Dell was not a company with which I wanted to do business.
This is obviously another case of a company being less concerned about customer's privacy and satisfaction than their bottom line. And they have not figured out that their bottom line is directly affected by customer satisfaction. We need to speak with our wallets and let Dell know that this type of behavior will not be tolerated.
I was just wondering whether or not other distributions can use the work that RH is doing to get a "common Common Criteria" effect. After all, they are all using the same Ring 0 piece, being the Linux kernel. After that, it should just become a matter of configuration verification...
And with the support that Linux has gotten from the NSA, through SE-Linux, I would think a lot of the in-depth work on Linux has been covered.
Its pretty well common knowledge in the security community that Microsoft paid for that certification.
While I can't remember if it was specifically Windows 2000 with the Common Criteria or Windows NT with the Orange Book Cert, I do remember that the system configuration which won them the cert was with no network connection, no floppy drives, and no CDROM drives on the box that was tested. In essence, no non-keyboard input methods. (They couldn't guarantee the OS would stay clean long enough to get the cert.)
Basically, the certification was useless as soon as you configured the box to do any useful processing on the machine. Then again, many would say that is the same of Windows itself.
As mentioned in the original post, Baen has the free library, which contains the first few books of a given series (for instance the free library includes the first couple of Honor Harrington books). When David Weber came out with the 10th book in the series, the first-release hardback included a CD which not only included the entire Honor Harrington series (including the book that it came with) in ebook format, but selections of other authors, in total, 40 or 50 books, plus pictures, fanfiction, and other sci-fi goodness.
John Ringo recently came out with the fourth (book 3 part 2 by his counting) book of his Posleen series, and version 2 of the Baen CD came out as well. Surprisingly, there was no overlap in titles. This CD not only included a roleplaying game, but also selections of Sluggy Freelance (Bun-bun plays prominently in his books).
And the best part of this? The CDs license reads This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold.
If more publishers would follow Jim Baen's example, ebooks would be as common as paperbacks. I will continue to buy Baen books, in hardback, especially if he continues to give away CDs with ebooks. I'm almost to the point where leisure reading on dead trees feels alien and wierd.
This is like banning language because someone could use it to yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. Ludicrous.
Absolutely. Those days seem to be gone. Concept albums like Pink Floyd's Animals or The Wall, or the Eagles Desperado were great because they told a story. You didn't have to love each song on the album, but each song was another piece of the story. Now, as everybody seems to agree, you have to dig the diamonds out of the pile of festering dung.
In the old days, I bought albums based on a single song, and invariably liked the rest of the album better than the single played on the radio. Unfortunately, those days are gone.
On the other hand, they are saying that we are all criminals and that they are going to take measures to keep our criminal tendencies in check. Putting metal detectors and night vision goggles in theaters? Are we going for a couple of hours of entertainment or on night maneuvers in the desert?
Basically, the movie/music industry (MPAA, RIAA, that gang of thieves) would be happiest if we just sat there and took what they put out, and every time we thought about it, gave them money.
The other sude of the equation is that the very people that they are worried enough about to place night vision and metal detectors in theaters for are the same people they are trying to entice. Why else would they spend billions of dollars making more and more sophisticated special effects?
The best way to deal with this is to speak with your pocketbook. Don't go see movies in theaters that have this equipment. Better yet, deprive the MPAA by waiting until it comes out on dvd...
I've encountered the same situation with Earthlink. Because I use a DDNS service (whyi.org), because they cannot do a reverse lookup (the reverse zone belongs to my ISP), they bounce my messages as spam. At the same time, I was getting voluminous amounts of spam from their users.
However, trying to steer the lawmaking apparatus, no doubt with bribe^H^H^H^H charitable donations to our elected officials is very very low...
Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
Mr. Barry, I want you to know that your book Babies and Other Hazards of Sex cost me $10 in late fees from the library, because I found I could not read it late at night without waking my family, thanks to the hysterical laughter. Now that your son, Robert is All Grown Up (TM), has he has turned into his father? Does he publically admit to it? Regards,
I started using Linux eight years ago, with Slackware. I was pleasantly surprised that the Games set for Slack contained Doom. Pleasantly enough that I shot an email to the address on their page thanking them for taking the time to support Linux. One of the developers wrote me back saying "what are you talking about? We write it under Linux and port it to DOS..." I thought that was very very cool.
If you look back over the list of duplicates, nearly all of them are Taco's.
Now remember, gang, he's a newlywed...He is in that magical time between "I'm a geek and never have a date." and marriage being old hat (or just old). The boy's (possibly for the first time since the site started) got something other than slashdot on his mind...
...That this is different from the IT industry today:
1. No implants.
2. The rats are running the maze.
3. The maze eventually ends for the rats.
The thing that irritates me is the grocery stores where I live (Virginia). The major chains now have a system set up where they will only give you your savings (stuff on sale, buy one get one free, etc) if you have one of their little bar code cards. Because of the bar codes on the items themselves, they already know what is being sold, why is it that they need to know who is buying it? These grocery store chains are building huge databases of what kind of toilet paper I use and what kind of coffee I buy.
I became really disturbed by this about six months after moving here, when, in my mail, was a flyer from one of these chains with "custom tailored coupons valued at $xxx.xx"...And sure enough it was stuff that my family purchased.
What can we do about this? First, I shop at stores where the shoppers have unused cards that they swipe. (I can just imagine the skew that whoever gets that card is going to put in their demographic...)
Second, depending on my rant, I either mention to the checker the privacy issues at stake, or I go on a slashdot-style rant on the subject. Invariably, the checker just shakes her head with a sad smile.
Finally, one of the stores banned checkers from doing this. So when I go to that store, I tell the checker that I "forgot" my card, so they want me to put in my phone number. I usually try some random phone number, or the number of an acquaintance. I know of a group of 20 or so former coworkers that used to swap cards at random intervals, just to screw with the demographic.
That next time I get stopped by the police, I can invoke the DMCA to keep the officer from using my name or driver's license number? Hey, maybe I can claim it to not give it to him in the first place.
Do they get an expensive trenchcoat to throw over their heads when the Feds come to take them away because the SEC found they were involved in insider trading?
6. Six or seven trailers before the show starts
They have actually started selling advertisements for common products (commercials!) for stuff like Volkswagen, Downy, etc in place of (or mixed in with) the trailers. And why not? They have a captive audience, chained in their seats by the small fortune they invested in an evening of enjoyment...
And with the stuff that Hollywood is squeezing out, you really get to see the gist of the movie in the trailer, and whats left beyond the trailer is not worth the $6 or $8 that you would have to pay.
There is an exception to this rule. Crowd participation movies like the Rocky Horror Picture Show are much better watched in a theater than at home...But then you're supposed to be yelling at the screen...
I have been working on this very thing the past feww months, and have found that while there is an associated learning curve, there are advantages to using a PC to record over a TiVO.
Since my job requires some travel, I have found that it is a definite boon to collect movies. Using my workstation as a PVR, I am able to capture to the hard drive, do some postprocessing and write a DivX to a 700MB CD-R which I can then take with me and watch on business trips. And its all perfectly legal, since I am archiving for later viewing. On the other hand, getting the same from a TiVo requires modifications of questionable legality. In addition, I can make backup copies of my DVDs on 700MB media so I don't have to risk leaving my DVDs in a hotel room somewhere.
As for the cost issue, if you have a system with the right specs (a modern PC should pretty much do it), then the only additional cost should be a tv capture card, which can be had for $20 or $30 US. The only thing that one could point out is the time cost and the learning curve involved in making the hardware and software do what you want it to. But it is that way with anything. If its worth doing, you're probably going to have to teach yourself.
Microprose's Falcon4 is probably a perfeect example of this. Released in November, 1998, it still has a large and dedicated following (well, as large as hardcore flightsims' followings get).
Back in 1999, Hasbro/Microprose decided to drop Falcon4. However, before all of the developers were fired, the source code mysteriously ended up on the Internet.
A group which came to be known as Realism Patch Group (RPG) was releasing (free) patches to fix some of the realism issues in the original Falcon. At the same time, someone called eRazor had gotten his hands on the Falcon source code and was working on some of graphics issues. And simultaneously with this, an army of other developers were working on other aspects of the game. For instance, the eTeam took this F-16 only flightsim and added a Fly-Any-Plane patch, giving you the ability to fly any aircraft in the sim. Groups around the world immediately started working on accurate flight models for each aircraft and photo-realistic cockpits.
The two groups worked in parallel, releasing RPG and eRazor patches which more or less rewrote the sim. It was decided to create a Falcon4 Unified Team (f4ut). This group took all of the rewrites and data edits done by the eTeam and the RPG and combined them into series of Falcon4 SuperPaks. These patches/mods have completely transformed Falcon, and nearly made it into a completely new sim. The graphics engine was completely rewritten and is DirectX 8.1 compliant. Falcon supports anistropic filtering, antialiasing, etc. And the sim itself is one of the most realistic and engaging ever. It uses a dynamic "campaign-within-a-campaign" methodology to insure that play never repeats itself. Its literally a whole new ballgame.
In fact, the "unofficial" modding of Falcon has also snatched Falcon from the jaws of obsolescence. G2I Interactive has bought Falcon's IP and while allowing a last series of F4UT binary edits, will be coming out with Falcon5.
IMHO, this is the ultimate example of mods extending the life of a game or sim. And extending its playability. There are a number of active duty fighter pilots who are avid Falcon fans. That, IMHO is the ultimate compliment.
Uh huh. And this is exactly the reason that IBM has embraced Linux in a huge way. In fact, a former coworker got a laptop from work, it was an IBM, and it shipped with RedHat...
This is also why everything in the IBM product line runs Linux, from S390s to AS/400s to the M80s and X330s. IBM has also apparently changed their focus. About a year and a half ago, they planned to use Linux as a stepping stone. The lower-end systems were to run Linux, but when you needed the heavy-duty computing power, they would step you up to AIX. The latest release of AIX is more Linux-like, and according to the the IBM reps I have talked to, they will ultimately phase AIX out in favor of Linux.
Believe me, with their superb range of hardware and running Linux, IBM still has a considerable amount of smiting power.
Yes, but does he cover Wil-E-Coyote's portable hole that the Roadrunner can run over but he always falls in to? Inquiring minds want to know...
There is nother side of lack of sleep which nobody has touched on. Your body, in its wakefulness, produces toxins from metabolism which collect in your tissues. The harder you work, the more toxins are produced. For instance, the reason you get sore after working out is because of lactic acid. Your body produces these toxins, and they are flushed from your system primarily during sleep. Taking these pills may cause you to be able to stay awake longer, but you are just building up these toxins in your system.
Another issue is the fact that you stay awake longer, you never take a downtime. The body was designed to deal with stress in three steps: React, Recover, Rest. Unfortunately, in our fast-paced world, the body gets used to being stressed, and just like continually stretching a rubber band without letting it bounce back to its original shape, it loses its shape, then ultimately breaks. This breakage may take the form of heart attack, stroke, aneurism, etc. I actually read a statistic that 60-70% (I've heard as high as 80%) of all doctor visits in America are due to stress-related maladies. Why prolong that with a drug that will rob your body of the rest it needs? (besides, you know that if someone invents a pill that will make you functional for 24 hours at a time, you are going to end up working for a boss that will want you to work 22 of them.
Stress kills, baby!
Global warming? It seems to be the latest fad by the environmentalists to get us to bend to their wills.
Now, is she going to be Mrs. Taco? (or Mrs. Fent-Taco?) I guess you realize that she has just been promoted to Admiral...