I strongly advocate people paying to support quality journalism.
That's why I sent £50 to Wikileaks, and think you should too.
Can you point to the journalism that wikileaks has performed? As far as I can tell they just publish source documents that people send to them, they don't do any actual journalism.
Not that it isn't important; I just don't see it as journalism.
I don't see why anyone actually deals with robocalls. You can always tell when an automated system called you, there is that long pause after you pick up the phone before it connects you to the automated message system or the poor call center schmuck. It usually takes a second or two to connect, so you have that nice moment of absolute silence that tips you off to hang up. If robocallers want to get my opinion, or deliver their message to me, they'd better have someone actually on the line when I pick the phone up (not that they seem to be missing my input...).
Complete wishful bullshit. Amazing how much rationalization is going into analyzing (and trying to explain away) polling data that suggests a Democratic bloodbath. What, too much "change" in the air now?
Fwiw and purely anecdotally, I've always seen results skew 4+ percent to the right of polls, because consevatives (even 'engaged' ones), are far more likely to share their view with a pollster, while liberals - especially the young - LOVE to tell everyone how liberal they are.
That's great. Exactly the opposite of my experience, but it probably depends on where you live. I live in a town with a pretty strong liberal majority, so nobody ever goes around spouting anything about it. It is the more conservative types who go around telling everyone within earshot how conservative they are (but you're right, it does tend to be the younger ones - I think because they are so excited about being all "rebellious" going against their liberal parents).
Come to think of it, it may actually be the independents that are the worst in this respect (but around here independents are usually conservative, so same difference).
There is no law, federal or state, that prohibits theaters from showing R (or higher) rated movies to minors. It is all voluntary, from the ratings issued by the MPAA to the individual theaters enforcing those ratings. The fact that lots of people do think it is actually illegal for minors to see these movies just shows that there is really no reason for the gaming law - the film version was struck down in 1965 (according to wikipedia) but the "voluntary" system still seems pretty effective (though I do seem to recall managing to get into numerous R-rated movies before I was 18).
The law is stupid, but claiming it would cause an exodus of developers is equally stupid. It doesn't change in any way what they do, or what they are able to sell nationwide, it only affects what they can sell to minors in California - and in that respect affects developers equally regardless of where they live/work. The law should be struck down, as it was originally before our (nominally Republican - I thought those guys were supposed to be against such idiocy) loveable governator decided to appeal the decision, but it doesn't help matters any to spout such nonsensical hyperbole.
Hmmm.... if the train was going fast enough for relativistic effects to kick in, then this would make the computer *even faster*. You, sir / ma'am, are brilliant!
Actually, relativistic effects would cause the computer to run slower and slower the faster it traveled.
When are reporters going to learn that they need to include the actual wording of the question posed in the poll for people to actually understand what was asked? From what little information is in the article, there is a wide gamut of ways the question might have been posed that would affect the outcome. Why, oh why, can't they learn to include the actual question in addition to their canned analysis of the results? 100% of Americans think that the linked article is useless (plus or minus 99.99997%).
My guess is that if you're spending a quarter or a half million dollars on an outfit, you're not going to wear it much period. I suspect that it is going to end up behind a glass case for the remainder of its life.
You are utterly, 100% wrong.
Obviously it will be in the glass case. Why would you put it behind a glass case? That doesn't make any sense at all.
How do you suggest they collect taxes then? Around here anyway, there are sales taxes, income taxes and property taxes. Beyond that, it's frivilous. If I'm a renter making minimum wage at McDonald's, sales tax is all I pay.
Sales tax may be all you pay directly, but you can be sure a portion of the rent you pay is going to pay the property tax on the property you rent, as well as income tax for the individual or business that you are renting from. Just because you aren't directly paying into the tax pool doesn't mean you aren't contributing. Never mind that even if you make minimum wage, I'm pretty sure you are still in some minimal tax bracket for the feds and most states.
The fundamental problem is people actually paying attention to TV political ads. What we need is voting reform in the form of massive civics and logic education. Teach people to cast a vote based on their own research & conclusions and not an error laden, buzzword filled TV ad that plays on people's emotions.
I like this idea; unfortunately, logic and civics are widely known to have a liberal bias, so it would be very difficult to bring either of these into our public education system.
That's one of the reasons I haven't bought Starcraft II. Games like that are fun when they first come out, when people are just figuring out what strategies work and what does what. Once it gets to the point of pure APS, and just refining the identified strategies to perfection, all the fun and interest is gone. I guess some people like to just repeat the same thing over and over, faster and faster, but to me that is pretty boring.
Everyone loves achievements these days. Gamer's profiles proudly display the various achievements they have unlocked. These are meaningful only if they are generally accepted as cheat proof. If you want to cheat in single player, go right ahead, do it in offline mode, skip getting the achievement and be happy. What you do not get to do is cheat in single player and have your accomplishements respected the same as those of real players.
Someone has to enforce sportsmanship. No one likes the referee, but he is necessary. Because Blizzard wants their games to be seen as sports, they need to enforce sportsmanship.
Again, if you want to cheat, do it offline and skip the achievement. No problem, no ban.
Wow. How sad is that? Someone actually cares about the achievement BS? No wonder so many new games are going down the crapper - people care more about being able to show off their "achievements" than they do about playing a game they bought how they want, with whom they want.
That said, my only complaint in this is that Blizzard has clamped the game down to the point where you can only play the way they want; no screwing around with friends, you can only do it by yourself in offline mode (apparently we should be thankful that they allow us an offline mode at all!). The cheater deserved what he got; the problem is that he didn't have a choice. There is no legitimate reason for Blizzard to make it impossible to play without going through battlenet.
Don't get me wrong, games ARE getting easier, but that's not a bad thing. When I first played the new Halo Reach - it was with a buddy of mine and we were trying it on Legendary, no skulls. We got about half way through in one night - and its only because we've played all the halos through since the DEMO of Halo 1 - so our skills in those games are rather refined. When I was playing the game for myself, I wanted to jump in on multiplayer as soon as possible, but I also wanted to finish the campaign, just for the storyline - I would do Legendary another time when I felt like the challenge. Being able to breeze through the campaign on easy was a good thing, like an added feature to the game. When a game is storyline driven, as most games try to be now-a-days, its not a bad thing to have an easy difficulty setting where you can progress the game more like a movie.
I've found I do this more and more often. I just don't have the time anymore to slog through on the higher difficulty settings, trying levels over and over. I used to love that, but now I just want to see the story and have some good, relaxing fun.I think the change in difficult reflects the changing demographic of game players. When I was young, and Nintendo games were all the rage, it was basically only kids playing - kids with ample time to try and re-try the same level until they do everything perfectly. You could get away with having a challenging game, because even if you frustrate the player, they are going to come back for more - because they have ample time to master it. Today, gamers are on average significantly older, and they (generally) just don't have time to master every game that comes along. If I run into a roadblock in a game these days, where I try a few times and can't get past something, I'm unlikely to pick up that game again - I get to the point of frustration, but don't have time to work at it until I get beyond the frustration to the reward. When that happens, I tend to move on to the next game.
That said, I grew up playing games on PC (and before that Commodores; first PET then 64), and there were very few that I'd say were all that hard. It is mostly the impenetrable platformers from the NES and other consoles that people remember as being really difficult, and I never had much interest in those anyway.
They are not using a conventional SSD. This is flash, soldered right on the main board. Since Apple is the largest user of Flash memory in the world they are able to do it cheaply.
Great. They're really big on that whole "disposable computer" idea, aren't they.
Seriously, they couldn't find a spot for a commodity 1.8" ssd (~ $550 for 256 GB on newegg)?
First, it is Malibu, so no insulation needed - it is always 78 degrees out, except for those times when the whole place is on fire (this happens every 5-15 years).
Second, and more seriously, one of the articles indicated transport costs of $8,000 per hour for the helicopter used. I'm guessing it was picked up at the Mojave Airport (large mothball fleet there), so probably a couple of hours round trip. I would guess it would take several trips to move an entire 747, even if it is conveniently disassembled (unless they have a really powerful helicopter). So probably spent at least as much on transport as on materials.
Meh. I got a 1.5 TB about two months ago for ~$75; I don't think we're really going to see the prices drop a whole lot at the "low end", they are already pretty much bottomed out. As others have mentioned, drives have mostly been stuck at the 2 TB point for a while as none of the manufacturers wanted to deal with the controller/MBR/OS issues associated with going bigger, so prices have already had a chance to drop and stabilize. They might come down to $60 in a year or two, but that's probably about it.
So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.
How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?
The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.
Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.
THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?
I agree that Mythbusters often doesn't exhaustively test myths, but that generally isn't realistic. You have to set some boundaries and often make some assumptions in order to come up with a testable hypothesis.
Take your hypothetical interpretation of the Death Ray myth - if you are going to start coming up with hypothetical ways that the myth may have come into being, then there is simply no way to test them all. Maybe it was a sunny day, and light was reflecting off the shields of the city's defenders. In a completely unrelated event, someone in one of the ships dropped an oil lamp and started a fire. If the ships were closely grouped, and it was a windy day, numerous ships could be consumed in such a fire; some dude watching interpreted the fire as the result of the reflected light, and recorded it as such. Is it possible? Absolutely. But that isn't what the myth says. And there are innumerable other potential explanations, none of which really have any bearing on what they are doing.
They are testing the myth, not (usually) what potential events may have caused the event that gave birth to the myth. In this case, the myth is that Archimedes developed a weapon using focused light to start fires on attacking ships. That is all they were testing - not trying to figure out what might have happened, but trying to determine whether the myth, as recorded, is plausible. In order to do that, they have to make some assumptions to narrow the test - try to stick to materials that would have been available at the time, etc.
Now, I often take issue with their test methods and interpretations, but on the whole I think they do a reasonable job of taking a myth, defining what aspect of the myth it is that they are testing, and then devising different tests and quantifying the results. It is a fair balance of entertainment and genuine testing to find out neat stuff; while I (and probably most Slashdot readers) would like them to be a little more rigorous and at least acknowledge shortcomings in their tests, it would be very easy to get bogged down in details ("rigor" in the oblig. xkcd) and then instead of Mythbusters you would have the Televised Transactions of the American Society of Materials Engineering, Physics, and History, and all of five people would still be interested in watching.
To be fair, if you have a large number of pictures it really doesn't work to email them to individual people (although Facebook is about the last place I would go to share them, there are many other alternatives that don't require you to sign up to view the pictures but still allows the uploader to control access via email address).
As many have already pointed out, there is a major difference between the records and private communications you mention and the publicly-available information you place on Facebook. Posting anything on Facebook you are implicitly giving, at a minimum, every one of the people you have identified as friends access to that information. It is not a private communication to an individual or group. If you are dumb and/or trusting enough to add "friends" willy-nilly that you know absolutely nothing about, giving them access to all information you post, you can't complain when they decide to read your posts (or look at your pictures, etc.). This isn't a case of the government going through personal files or intercepting private communications; they are looking through information that people freely placed in a public place. You are basically saying that the FBI should not be allowed to read a published book, magazine, or newspaper without a search warrant. Utterly ridiculous.
As someone else pointed out, this isn't like having agents break into houses on the off chance that they might find evidence of wrongdoing. It is more like a patrol car cruising through a neighborhood, looking to see if there is any suspicious (or, more likely, outright illegal) activities going on.
Now, if they are lying about who they are in order to get access to information that would otherwise be private, that is an issue. But it doesn't sound like that is what's happening.
I've been completely unimpressed with the 3D movies I've seen in the theater (aside from the first time I saw Captain EO at Disneyland), and the demos of 3D TV I've seen are very underwhelming.
Part of it, I think, is because I was rather spoiled in this regard during grad school. I had access to a "CAVE"; ours consisted of four walls (left, right, front, and floor). Using the system made me familiar with a lot of the deficiencies of the widely-available TV and theater systems, to the point where I get very distracted by the inherent distortion in these settings. The CAVE system uses four projectors and a set of bulky shutter glasses (pretty simple so far). In addition, it does very accurate head tracking, so it can keep track of where you are and the orientation of your eyes. The system has a profile for each user, using their specific eye separation (and I think other parameters) to generate an image that is tailored to that person. Even when you are standing still, as you look at different portions of the screens, tilt your head, etc. the system is constantly adjusting the image to match your viewing angle. The difference between this actively compensated image and what you get with a normal system is huge. Wearing a secondary pair of shutter glasses and watching as someone else is using the system, you really saw how big of a difference it made to have all this active compensation. If you weren't standing right next to the primary user, the image would be hugely distorted. This distortion is what you nearly always get from a 3D theater or 3D TV set. Unless you are in the one perfect viewing position, and your eyes are very close to the "average" that was used in filming and generating the 3D images, there will always be significant distortion. Some of this can be compensated for in video games, where the 3D content would be generated on the fly, but it is something you can't get around for any filmed or pre-rendered content. I prefer the traditional flat 2D image to a distracting distorted 3D image, never mind the hassle of having to wear glasses (and having to have a pair for each person).
Strange that the airport doesn't think that rodents are to blame; apparently they prefer the idea that they offer no security and people come and randomly damage/steal wiring from cars parked in their lot.
I passed through DIA a couple weeks ago, and I can tell you that the bunny rabbits hardly chewed on my wires at all.
Who wouldn't want that, and what reason could you argue not to have it?
Because the components will become outdated long before the TV portion does and the only way to update will be to replace the entire thing. Or do you actually think it will be based on an open architecture that will allow replacement of components and still remain in warranty? Sorry, not for me.
I agree. I hate that it has become nearly impossible to find a TV that is just a TV. Hell, in most cases even a TV tuner is unnecessary. It would be nice if some manufacturer put out a line of large-size monitors that skip out on all this BS. Just give me a ~55" LCD w/ as many LED backlights as you can, a few HDMI inputs, a couple s-video, component, and composite inputs, maybe a DVI input, and that's it. No speakers, no network interface, definitely no integrated online "experience". Probably don't even need any outputs. Okay, throw in an IR receiver so I can turn it on and off and change inputs without getting off the couch. Other than that - I've got all my sources covered already, I don't need redundant sources built into the TV. Seriously, concentrate on providing the best picture quality possible at a given price point, and ditch everything else.
This might not actually reduce the overall cost a huge amount, but it should at least make a difference, and I wouldn't feel like I'm spending money on crap I will never use.
Slashdot Mirror
I strongly advocate people paying to support quality journalism.
That's why I sent £50 to Wikileaks, and think you should too.
Can you point to the journalism that wikileaks has performed? As far as I can tell they just publish source documents that people send to them, they don't do any actual journalism.
Not that it isn't important; I just don't see it as journalism.
I don't see why anyone actually deals with robocalls. You can always tell when an automated system called you, there is that long pause after you pick up the phone before it connects you to the automated message system or the poor call center schmuck. It usually takes a second or two to connect, so you have that nice moment of absolute silence that tips you off to hang up. If robocallers want to get my opinion, or deliver their message to me, they'd better have someone actually on the line when I pick the phone up (not that they seem to be missing my input...).
Complete wishful bullshit.
Amazing how much rationalization is going into analyzing (and trying to explain away) polling data that suggests a Democratic bloodbath. What, too much "change" in the air now?
Fwiw and purely anecdotally, I've always seen results skew 4+ percent to the right of polls, because consevatives (even 'engaged' ones), are far more likely to share their view with a pollster, while liberals - especially the young - LOVE to tell everyone how liberal they are.
That's great. Exactly the opposite of my experience, but it probably depends on where you live. I live in a town with a pretty strong liberal majority, so nobody ever goes around spouting anything about it. It is the more conservative types who go around telling everyone within earshot how conservative they are (but you're right, it does tend to be the younger ones - I think because they are so excited about being all "rebellious" going against their liberal parents).
Come to think of it, it may actually be the independents that are the worst in this respect (but around here independents are usually conservative, so same difference).
Kind of like a brown version of Alaska, but not pretty, and they don't pay you to live there.
There is no law, federal or state, that prohibits theaters from showing R (or higher) rated movies to minors. It is all voluntary, from the ratings issued by the MPAA to the individual theaters enforcing those ratings. The fact that lots of people do think it is actually illegal for minors to see these movies just shows that there is really no reason for the gaming law - the film version was struck down in 1965 (according to wikipedia) but the "voluntary" system still seems pretty effective (though I do seem to recall managing to get into numerous R-rated movies before I was 18).
The law is stupid, but claiming it would cause an exodus of developers is equally stupid. It doesn't change in any way what they do, or what they are able to sell nationwide, it only affects what they can sell to minors in California - and in that respect affects developers equally regardless of where they live/work. The law should be struck down, as it was originally before our (nominally Republican - I thought those guys were supposed to be against such idiocy) loveable governator decided to appeal the decision, but it doesn't help matters any to spout such nonsensical hyperbole.
Hmmm.... if the train was going fast enough for relativistic effects to kick in, then this would make the computer *even faster*. You, sir / ma'am, are brilliant!
Actually, relativistic effects would cause the computer to run slower and slower the faster it traveled.
What if we throw it in reverse?
When are reporters going to learn that they need to include the actual wording of the question posed in the poll for people to actually understand what was asked? From what little information is in the article, there is a wide gamut of ways the question might have been posed that would affect the outcome. Why, oh why, can't they learn to include the actual question in addition to their canned analysis of the results? 100% of Americans think that the linked article is useless (plus or minus 99.99997%).
My guess is that if you're spending a quarter or a half million dollars on an outfit, you're not going to wear it much period. I suspect that it is going to end up behind a glass case for the remainder of its life.
You are utterly, 100% wrong.
Obviously it will be in the glass case. Why would you put it behind a glass case? That doesn't make any sense at all.
How do you suggest they collect taxes then? Around here anyway, there are sales taxes, income taxes and property taxes. Beyond that, it's frivilous. If I'm a renter making minimum wage at McDonald's, sales tax is all I pay.
Sales tax may be all you pay directly, but you can be sure a portion of the rent you pay is going to pay the property tax on the property you rent, as well as income tax for the individual or business that you are renting from. Just because you aren't directly paying into the tax pool doesn't mean you aren't contributing. Never mind that even if you make minimum wage, I'm pretty sure you are still in some minimal tax bracket for the feds and most states.
The fundamental problem is people actually paying attention to TV political ads. What we need is voting reform in the form of massive civics and logic education. Teach people to cast a vote based on their own research & conclusions and not an error laden, buzzword filled TV ad that plays on people's emotions.
I like this idea; unfortunately, logic and civics are widely known to have a liberal bias, so it would be very difficult to bring either of these into our public education system.
That's one of the reasons I haven't bought Starcraft II. Games like that are fun when they first come out, when people are just figuring out what strategies work and what does what. Once it gets to the point of pure APS, and just refining the identified strategies to perfection, all the fun and interest is gone. I guess some people like to just repeat the same thing over and over, faster and faster, but to me that is pretty boring.
Everyone loves achievements these days. Gamer's profiles proudly display the various achievements they have unlocked. These are meaningful only if they are generally accepted as cheat proof. If you want to cheat in single player, go right ahead, do it in offline mode, skip getting the achievement and be happy. What you do not get to do is cheat in single player and have your accomplishements respected the same as those of real players.
Someone has to enforce sportsmanship. No one likes the referee, but he is necessary. Because Blizzard wants their games to be seen as sports, they need to enforce sportsmanship.
Again, if you want to cheat, do it offline and skip the achievement. No problem, no ban.
Wow. How sad is that? Someone actually cares about the achievement BS? No wonder so many new games are going down the crapper - people care more about being able to show off their "achievements" than they do about playing a game they bought how they want, with whom they want.
That said, my only complaint in this is that Blizzard has clamped the game down to the point where you can only play the way they want; no screwing around with friends, you can only do it by yourself in offline mode (apparently we should be thankful that they allow us an offline mode at all!). The cheater deserved what he got; the problem is that he didn't have a choice. There is no legitimate reason for Blizzard to make it impossible to play without going through battlenet.
Don't get me wrong, games ARE getting easier, but that's not a bad thing. When I first played the new Halo Reach - it was with a buddy of mine and we were trying it on Legendary, no skulls. We got about half way through in one night - and its only because we've played all the halos through since the DEMO of Halo 1 - so our skills in those games are rather refined. When I was playing the game for myself, I wanted to jump in on multiplayer as soon as possible, but I also wanted to finish the campaign, just for the storyline - I would do Legendary another time when I felt like the challenge. Being able to breeze through the campaign on easy was a good thing, like an added feature to the game. When a game is storyline driven, as most games try to be now-a-days, its not a bad thing to have an easy difficulty setting where you can progress the game more like a movie.
I've found I do this more and more often. I just don't have the time anymore to slog through on the higher difficulty settings, trying levels over and over. I used to love that, but now I just want to see the story and have some good, relaxing fun.I think the change in difficult reflects the changing demographic of game players. When I was young, and Nintendo games were all the rage, it was basically only kids playing - kids with ample time to try and re-try the same level until they do everything perfectly. You could get away with having a challenging game, because even if you frustrate the player, they are going to come back for more - because they have ample time to master it. Today, gamers are on average significantly older, and they (generally) just don't have time to master every game that comes along. If I run into a roadblock in a game these days, where I try a few times and can't get past something, I'm unlikely to pick up that game again - I get to the point of frustration, but don't have time to work at it until I get beyond the frustration to the reward. When that happens, I tend to move on to the next game.
That said, I grew up playing games on PC (and before that Commodores; first PET then 64), and there were very few that I'd say were all that hard. It is mostly the impenetrable platformers from the NES and other consoles that people remember as being really difficult, and I never had much interest in those anyway.
They are not using a conventional SSD. This is flash, soldered right on the main board. Since Apple is the largest user of Flash memory in the world they are able to do it cheaply.
Great. They're really big on that whole "disposable computer" idea, aren't they.
Seriously, they couldn't find a spot for a commodity 1.8" ssd (~ $550 for 256 GB on newegg)?
First, it is Malibu, so no insulation needed - it is always 78 degrees out, except for those times when the whole place is on fire (this happens every 5-15 years).
Second, and more seriously, one of the articles indicated transport costs of $8,000 per hour for the helicopter used. I'm guessing it was picked up at the Mojave Airport (large mothball fleet there), so probably a couple of hours round trip. I would guess it would take several trips to move an entire 747, even if it is conveniently disassembled (unless they have a really powerful helicopter). So probably spent at least as much on transport as on materials.
Meh. I got a 1.5 TB about two months ago for ~$75; I don't think we're really going to see the prices drop a whole lot at the "low end", they are already pretty much bottomed out. As others have mentioned, drives have mostly been stuck at the 2 TB point for a while as none of the manufacturers wanted to deal with the controller/MBR/OS issues associated with going bigger, so prices have already had a chance to drop and stabilize. They might come down to $60 in a year or two, but that's probably about it.
U-Force. God, that thing was useless.
Also - no power glove?
Maybe I'm just confusing "strange" with "bad".
So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.
How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?
The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.
Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.
THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?
I agree that Mythbusters often doesn't exhaustively test myths, but that generally isn't realistic. You have to set some boundaries and often make some assumptions in order to come up with a testable hypothesis.
Take your hypothetical interpretation of the Death Ray myth - if you are going to start coming up with hypothetical ways that the myth may have come into being, then there is simply no way to test them all. Maybe it was a sunny day, and light was reflecting off the shields of the city's defenders. In a completely unrelated event, someone in one of the ships dropped an oil lamp and started a fire. If the ships were closely grouped, and it was a windy day, numerous ships could be consumed in such a fire; some dude watching interpreted the fire as the result of the reflected light, and recorded it as such. Is it possible? Absolutely. But that isn't what the myth says. And there are innumerable other potential explanations, none of which really have any bearing on what they are doing.
They are testing the myth, not (usually) what potential events may have caused the event that gave birth to the myth. In this case, the myth is that Archimedes developed a weapon using focused light to start fires on attacking ships. That is all they were testing - not trying to figure out what might have happened, but trying to determine whether the myth, as recorded, is plausible. In order to do that, they have to make some assumptions to narrow the test - try to stick to materials that would have been available at the time, etc.
Now, I often take issue with their test methods and interpretations, but on the whole I think they do a reasonable job of taking a myth, defining what aspect of the myth it is that they are testing, and then devising different tests and quantifying the results. It is a fair balance of entertainment and genuine testing to find out neat stuff; while I (and probably most Slashdot readers) would like them to be a little more rigorous and at least acknowledge shortcomings in their tests, it would be very easy to get bogged down in details ("rigor" in the oblig. xkcd) and then instead of Mythbusters you would have the Televised Transactions of the American Society of Materials Engineering, Physics, and History, and all of five people would still be interested in watching.
To be fair, if you have a large number of pictures it really doesn't work to email them to individual people (although Facebook is about the last place I would go to share them, there are many other alternatives that don't require you to sign up to view the pictures but still allows the uploader to control access via email address).
As many have already pointed out, there is a major difference between the records and private communications you mention and the publicly-available information you place on Facebook. Posting anything on Facebook you are implicitly giving, at a minimum, every one of the people you have identified as friends access to that information. It is not a private communication to an individual or group. If you are dumb and/or trusting enough to add "friends" willy-nilly that you know absolutely nothing about, giving them access to all information you post, you can't complain when they decide to read your posts (or look at your pictures, etc.). This isn't a case of the government going through personal files or intercepting private communications; they are looking through information that people freely placed in a public place. You are basically saying that the FBI should not be allowed to read a published book, magazine, or newspaper without a search warrant. Utterly ridiculous.
As someone else pointed out, this isn't like having agents break into houses on the off chance that they might find evidence of wrongdoing. It is more like a patrol car cruising through a neighborhood, looking to see if there is any suspicious (or, more likely, outright illegal) activities going on.
Now, if they are lying about who they are in order to get access to information that would otherwise be private, that is an issue. But it doesn't sound like that is what's happening.
I've been completely unimpressed with the 3D movies I've seen in the theater (aside from the first time I saw Captain EO at Disneyland), and the demos of 3D TV I've seen are very underwhelming.
Part of it, I think, is because I was rather spoiled in this regard during grad school. I had access to a "CAVE"; ours consisted of four walls (left, right, front, and floor). Using the system made me familiar with a lot of the deficiencies of the widely-available TV and theater systems, to the point where I get very distracted by the inherent distortion in these settings. The CAVE system uses four projectors and a set of bulky shutter glasses (pretty simple so far). In addition, it does very accurate head tracking, so it can keep track of where you are and the orientation of your eyes. The system has a profile for each user, using their specific eye separation (and I think other parameters) to generate an image that is tailored to that person. Even when you are standing still, as you look at different portions of the screens, tilt your head, etc. the system is constantly adjusting the image to match your viewing angle. The difference between this actively compensated image and what you get with a normal system is huge. Wearing a secondary pair of shutter glasses and watching as someone else is using the system, you really saw how big of a difference it made to have all this active compensation. If you weren't standing right next to the primary user, the image would be hugely distorted. This distortion is what you nearly always get from a 3D theater or 3D TV set. Unless you are in the one perfect viewing position, and your eyes are very close to the "average" that was used in filming and generating the 3D images, there will always be significant distortion.
Some of this can be compensated for in video games, where the 3D content would be generated on the fly, but it is something you can't get around for any filmed or pre-rendered content. I prefer the traditional flat 2D image to a distracting distorted 3D image, never mind the hassle of having to wear glasses (and having to have a pair for each person).
Strange that the airport doesn't think that rodents are to blame; apparently they prefer the idea that they offer no security and people come and randomly damage/steal wiring from cars parked in their lot.
I passed through DIA a couple weeks ago, and I can tell you that the bunny rabbits hardly chewed on my wires at all.
Who wouldn't want that, and what reason could you argue not to have it?
Because the components will become outdated long before the TV portion does and the only way to update will be to replace the entire thing. Or do you actually think it will be based on an open architecture that will allow replacement of components and still remain in warranty? Sorry, not for me.
I agree. I hate that it has become nearly impossible to find a TV that is just a TV. Hell, in most cases even a TV tuner is unnecessary. It would be nice if some manufacturer put out a line of large-size monitors that skip out on all this BS. Just give me a ~55" LCD w/ as many LED backlights as you can, a few HDMI inputs, a couple s-video, component, and composite inputs, maybe a DVI input, and that's it. No speakers, no network interface, definitely no integrated online "experience". Probably don't even need any outputs. Okay, throw in an IR receiver so I can turn it on and off and change inputs without getting off the couch.
Other than that - I've got all my sources covered already, I don't need redundant sources built into the TV. Seriously, concentrate on providing the best picture quality possible at a given price point, and ditch everything else.
This might not actually reduce the overall cost a huge amount, but it should at least make a difference, and I wouldn't feel like I'm spending money on crap I will never use.
Hmm, maybe I should just get a projector.
So.... do they deliver pizza?