" Democrats played helpless victims. Once The New York Times revealed the wiretapping program, for instance, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he'd had "concerns" as early as July 2003. His response? He wrote a letter to Vice President Cheney and put a copy in his safe.
Clearly, Rockefeller couldn't shout his objections from the Senate floor, but senators do have leverage to lobby colleagues and push for meetings with the president."
Not much of a vigorous concern raised by Rockefeller. He could not muster up anyone else on the committee to raise concerns? Go to the president? Actually voice his concerns withing the confines of a secure environment? Instead he writes a letter in his journal and locks it in a safe, something that could never be faked after the fact? Crazy. If he had genuine concern at the time he could have actively done something to correct the situation without pushing the bounds of national security.
I don't know if you intentionally left out the part about Rockefeller not actually raising concerns about spying, or maybe you get your news from dailykos (not that USA today is much better).
You forget about loss during conversion. Moving energy around usually results in heat, which results in loss to the environment. It would be much better to just use the wind/solar directly when possible.
Cost is the problem for grid level storage. I have heard of pumping water up hill into a lake to be stored as potential energy, then using it at night to push turbines and generate electricity. There are other ways to store energy, like giant flywheels. Electrochemical batteries have a lot of lead and a limited lifetime.
This capacitor technology is great since they charge quickly and release quickly. If the density and cost are improved, they could be used in a lot of appliations.
ECHELON was a Clinton era problem, don't blame W for this intrusion because you don't like his politics. Dems and Pubs have reduced your freedom for years.
And what some call prosecution of whistle blowers, others call revealing state secrets or treasonous behavior. The spy program you say was "above the law" was briefed to congressmen of both parties and nobody raised the issue. Dems came out against spying on terrorists only after the news broke, although many new of the program earlier.
In 1984, people were required to have the TV spy sets in their houses to be watched. You are not required to post on MySpace or/.
In 1984, I think you could not turn off the TV. In 2006, you can turn off your computer and TV and go outside.
You are not spied on inside your house without cause, but posting on the internet is like putting a big sign up in your front yard with information availalable to the public in general. If you don't like people reading your public information, don't post online or be careful what you post or post disinformation.
Yes, the NSA probably has hooks into banks and credit cards. Don't like that? Use cash / gold / barter for transactions. Nobody forces you to pay 18% interest on a credit card. The 15 page user agreement you signed probably has something in there about sharing your information with other parties. The credit card companies sell your information to marketing firms, why not the NSA?
If you want more secure communication, use PGP for email and SSH for tunneling around encrypted.
If you want even more secure communication, tempest proof your computer.
If you want secure communication, don't use the phone or a computer, or develop a one-tim-pad system.
The problem with capacitors is energy density. They can charge and discharge quickly, but the amount of energy per unit volume or per unit weight is usually not very good, even compared to batteries.
New supercapacitors (existing term, really) will improve the energy per weight or energy per volume, but they may cost more (energy per dollar).
If this is cheap and hig density, it could be a great step forward.
EPS is a nice open standard, and MS has ignored it or had a partial implementation for years.
Do they have a vector graphics formant other than WMF?
They partially supported EPS in the past, but I have heard the EPS import has gotten even worse not (no preview in many cases, old version was poor preview if you had embedded tiff)
LaTeX and EPS are the way to go for so many technical things. I personally like tgif for vector graphics drawing, but there are a ton of them out there.
I generally us LaTeX (LyX actually) and it generates linked PDFs for me easily. Cross referencing, chapter section, and indexed stuff all links nicely.
I have heard horror stories about trying to get Word to do any sort of TOC/referencing/cross referencing automatically. When I try it, nothing works for me, but I could be doing it all wrong. Most people say they just go through the final draft and number everything by hand (figures, equations, references, etc.) crazy.
I have used a postscript printer driver, print-> save to file, then ps2pdf to make pdf files in the past when I did not have the Adobe software. Works fine and is free.
This is silly for Adobe to not let MS use pdf functionality. How is it even up to Adobe if the specification is out there for anyone to use? For once, it seems like MS should just include this function for the common good.
I wonder if MS is spinning "the breakdown of talks" so that they don't need an actual useful standard in office, so they can push their "pdf killer". The only thing that will kill PDF is a big old EMP...
Last time I was there, they had closed that maze thing down. My wife and I had great fun, as one would drive and the other would follow the RC car around and give directions. That was a really neat little game...
This magiquest could be modded / homebrew for ren fairs. Pay $20 to get a wand and cloak to wear, then wander around in the woods looking for clues the same way. A single quest could not be that hard to develop. The wand basically was some sort of IR device with a motion sensor inside. You could just go with a remote, point and shoot. Sensors and devices can be simplistic, and you could link them with WIFI if you need networking...
I had the same thing after the make your own rollercoaster for like an hour or two. I was miserable, but it was my own macho self pushing the limits, and I paid the price.
Exactly. Canada and Finland appear to have low population density due to large uninhabited tracts of space. The density if pretty high in the populated areas. If you ignore the totally
The US has moderate density popluation through most of the east coast and midwest, with large low density areas out West and in Alaska. It is much harder to cover 90% of our population vs covering 90% in Canada or Finland. We have a more difficult problem in the US overall.
What angers me is that I still get dropped calls in large metro areas in the US. We still have crappy systems in place and my provider won't fix the holes on major highways.
I am not sure that you are correct. I poked around online and found a few sites describing word XML format. The format is not ideal in that it is not clear, but most things are in plain text (something about tags around every word?). There was fear that MS would release.doc with XML tags surrounding it, but it may not have done so (yet).
MS complains that XML is slow and bloated, but it also appears they are doing what they can to make thier XML generated files as confusing and bloated as possible, making XML less attractive.
I can't see how it can be any more bloated than.doc files. I just made a empty doc file in office, 19,456 bytes. Empty file in vi: 0 bytes. (unfair comparison, word has to embed your MAC address and other info into files so the FBI can track you down).
MS has a known history of paying people for grassroots positive PR online. That is where we got the term astroturfer from.
So go ahead and defent MS on the merits. Convince me a.doc file is a better format. Tell me why we should not have open standards. Defend the indefensible. Most of us will poke holes in the silly arguments and some will call you names.
It can't be any slower than putting up with Word on XP. I hit save and my machine locks on me for 5-10 seconds. Hangs, basically.
vi rarely does that (on some 2 GB mail files) and LyX appears to save in the background, so I can go on editing. Whatever unix does, it seems to actually be responsive. LyX (and a lot of unix editors) keep an emergency save file, so I bet they are continuously saving so that it is not a big change when you want to update the "current" file.
I just got a new dual Xeon to use a desktop, thinking it would fix some of the sluggishness of XP. Wrong! You click on my computer, and it hangs. You try to "save as" a file and every folder hangs. What is MS doing? Why is it so hard to navigate directories without delays? These little snags drive me nuts.
I would almost rather be back on a green screen vt100 terminal, at least it did what you told it to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I just hit the file name issue trying to sync some stuff between unix / Windows XP using rsync.
The case insensitivity was annoying and the limited char set on XP was no good.
Again, you would think they would have fixed this on XP.
I have seen people make arguments about focal length and such to get at a human eye resolution.
One I hears last was around 4000x2000 at 8 MP. Those 30 inch displays are close to that, at 2500x1600.
The letter from Rockefeller to Cheney was news to me on the spy case, so I dug around trying to find a reference.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2
" Democrats played helpless victims. Once The New York Times revealed the wiretapping program, for instance, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he'd had "concerns" as early as July 2003. His response? He wrote a letter to Vice President Cheney and put a copy in his safe.
Clearly, Rockefeller couldn't shout his objections from the Senate floor, but senators do have leverage to lobby colleagues and push for meetings with the president."
Not much of a vigorous concern raised by Rockefeller. He could not muster up anyone else on the committee to raise concerns? Go to the president? Actually voice his concerns withing the confines of a secure environment? Instead he writes a letter in his journal and locks it in a safe, something that could never be faked after the fact? Crazy. If he had genuine concern at the time he could have actively done something to correct the situation without pushing the bounds of national security.
I don't know if you intentionally left out the part about Rockefeller not actually raising concerns about spying, or maybe you get your news from dailykos (not that USA today is much better).
You forget about loss during conversion. Moving energy around usually results in heat, which results in loss to the environment. It would be much better to just use the wind/solar directly when possible.
Cost is the problem for grid level storage. I have heard of pumping water up hill into a lake to be stored as potential energy, then using it at night to push turbines and generate electricity. There are other ways to store energy, like giant flywheels. Electrochemical batteries have a lot of lead and a limited lifetime.
This capacitor technology is great since they charge quickly and release quickly. If the density and cost are improved, they could be used in a lot of appliations.
ECHELON was a Clinton era problem, don't blame W for this intrusion because you don't like his politics. Dems and Pubs have reduced your freedom for years.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/19/114
And what some call prosecution of whistle blowers, others call revealing state secrets or treasonous behavior. The spy program you say was "above the law" was briefed to congressmen of both parties and nobody raised the issue. Dems came out against spying on terrorists only after the news broke, although many new of the program earlier.
In 1984, people were required to have the TV spy sets in their houses to be watched. You are not required to post on MySpace or /.
In 1984, I think you could not turn off the TV. In 2006, you can turn off your computer and TV and go outside.
You are not spied on inside your house without cause, but posting on the internet is like putting a big sign up in your front yard with information availalable to the public in general. If you don't like people reading your public information, don't post online or be careful what you post or post disinformation.
Yes, the NSA probably has hooks into banks and credit cards. Don't like that? Use cash / gold / barter for transactions. Nobody forces you to pay 18% interest on a credit card. The 15 page user agreement you signed probably has something in there about sharing your information with other parties. The credit card companies sell your information to marketing firms, why not the NSA?
If you want more secure communication, use PGP for email and SSH for tunneling around encrypted.
If you want even more secure communication, tempest proof your computer.
If you want secure communication, don't use the phone or a computer, or develop a one-tim-pad system.
The problem with capacitors is energy density. They can charge and discharge quickly, but the amount of energy per unit volume or per unit weight is usually not very good, even compared to batteries.
New supercapacitors (existing term, really) will improve the energy per weight or energy per volume, but they may cost more (energy per dollar).
If this is cheap and hig density, it could be a great step forward.
PS, check out the powerlabs guys. They do lots of dangerous stuff with bit caps
http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun.htm
But with LaTeX you just specify a chapter/section/subsection and it works.
Lyx is even easier, as you click the right thing and it works.
And when you use latex2pdf, you get links and it works.
And they are all free.
EPS is a nice open standard, and MS has ignored it or had a partial implementation for years.
Do they have a vector graphics formant other than WMF?
They partially supported EPS in the past, but I have heard the EPS import has gotten even worse not (no preview in many cases, old version was poor preview if you had embedded tiff)
LaTeX and EPS are the way to go for so many technical things. I personally like tgif for vector graphics drawing, but there are a ton of them out there.
I generally us LaTeX (LyX actually) and it generates linked PDFs for me easily. Cross referencing, chapter section, and indexed stuff all links nicely.
I have heard horror stories about trying to get Word to do any sort of TOC/referencing/cross referencing automatically. When I try it, nothing works for me, but I could be doing it all wrong. Most people say they just go through the final draft and number everything by hand (figures, equations, references, etc.) crazy.
I have used a postscript printer driver, print-> save to file, then ps2pdf to make pdf files in the past when I did not have the Adobe software. Works fine and is free.
This is silly for Adobe to not let MS use pdf functionality. How is it even up to Adobe if the specification is out there for anyone to use? For once, it seems like MS should just include this function for the common good.
I wonder if MS is spinning "the breakdown of talks" so that they don't need an actual useful standard in office, so they can push their "pdf killer". The only thing that will kill PDF is a big old EMP...
Title should have been more accurate. I meant to consider video games outside the home, the classic arcade.
The ones you mention are all normal activites, except lazer tag, which we don't see too often in the states for some reason.
I touch type pretty fast as well. Anyone that lives on a computer should learn to touch type.
I found slashdot since their team was winning one of those distributed computing efforts, and I checked out the web page back in '98 I think.
I remember when they started the user ids. I held out on getting one for weeks, thinking it was an invasion of my privacy, but finally I joined up.
And I still read here. Pretty sad.
Ed
Last time I was there, they had closed that maze thing down. My wife and I had great fun, as one would drive and the other would follow the RC car around and give directions. That was a really neat little game...
There are some augmented reality things being developed, where you impose images on top of what is reality.
I saw one where you have to shoot aliens, but can't find the link now.
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/ww
This magiquest could be modded / homebrew for ren fairs. Pay $20 to get a wand and cloak to wear, then wander around in the woods looking for clues the same way. A single quest could not be that hard to develop. The wand basically was some sort of IR device with a motion sensor inside. You could just go with a remote, point and shoot. Sensors and devices can be simplistic, and you could link them with WIFI if you need networking...
I had the same thing after the make your own rollercoaster for like an hour or two. I was miserable, but it was my own macho self pushing the limits, and I paid the price.
We got there right when they opened on a weekday and it was not too bad.
I think they opened at 10:00, but by 11:00 it was picking up a good bit.
I assume in quieter seasons it is just fine.
Ed
Exactly. Canada and Finland appear to have low population density due to large uninhabited tracts of space. The density if pretty high in the populated areas. If you ignore the totally
The US has moderate density popluation through most of the east coast and midwest, with large low density areas out West and in Alaska. It is much harder to cover 90% of our population vs covering 90% in Canada or Finland. We have a more difficult problem in the US overall.
What angers me is that I still get dropped calls in large metro areas in the US. We still have crappy systems in place and my provider won't fix the holes on major highways.
Both my desktop and my laptop running XP have similar issues with hanging on word (and other applications).
Saving to HD, not to floppy or network. Should be fast, but it is not.
But we always ran everything in vt100 mode to make sure you could connect easily. The terminals I usually saw were monochrome green.
The last one I used was in 2000 attached to a headless Sun server by a serial cable (so I guess it was not headless anymore).
I am not sure that you are correct. I poked around online and found a few sites describing word XML format. The format is not ideal in that it is not clear, but most things are in plain text (something about tags around every word?). There was fear that MS would release
MS complains that XML is slow and bloated, but it also appears they are doing what they can to make thier XML generated files as confusing and bloated as possible, making XML less attractive.
I can't see how it can be any more bloated than
MS has a known history of paying people for grassroots positive PR online. That is where we got the term astroturfer from.
So go ahead and defent MS on the merits. Convince me a
It can't be any slower than putting up with Word on XP. I hit save and my machine locks on me for 5-10 seconds. Hangs, basically.
vi rarely does that (on some 2 GB mail files) and LyX appears to save in the background, so I can go on editing. Whatever unix does, it seems to actually be responsive. LyX (and a lot of unix editors) keep an emergency save file, so I bet they are continuously saving so that it is not a big change when you want to update the "current" file.
I just got a new dual Xeon to use a desktop, thinking it would fix some of the sluggishness of XP. Wrong! You click on my computer, and it hangs. You try to "save as" a file and every folder hangs. What is MS doing? Why is it so hard to navigate directories without delays? These little snags drive me nuts.
I would almost rather be back on a green screen vt100 terminal, at least it did what you told it to do.
My dog "makes his own food" so to speak. He likes to eat poo, so dog food is what comes out of the dog.
So maybe that is what they mean by MS eating their own dogfood...