Isn't this laser going to produce lots of instant retina frying reflections from the target that are going to play randomly over anything nearby? If a 250mw laser is a serious blinding hazard a 32kw laser must be a much more serious problem even after the reflections have bounced off several reflective surfaces.
It seems that these days tech names don't have to mean anything and, in fact, the more meaningless the better; if you make up a new word you can be sure that searches for it will only return sites relevent to your product. I miss the old days where tech names were generally meaningful, if a bit obscure, but there were some noteable exceptions that sounded meaningful but weren't. A couple that spring to mind are KERMIT (an old BBS file transfer protocol) which had several theories about what it was an acronym for before its creator finally admitted he just named it after the muppet and TWAIN (scanner data protocol) which stands for 'Technology Without An Interesting Name'.
There's a scene by scene comparison of the trailer and the relevant panels from the graphic novel here. It looks remarkably similar and I'm quite hopeful that this will be a credible conversion now.
I have a Chinese green laser here and it's nothing like what you've described. It's a bit larger than than a regular laser pointer ; about the size of a large fountain pen and almost all of that space is taken up by the batteries. You can clearly see the beam in any light level short of full daylight and the dot it puts on the wall is very bright; my eyes ache if I look directly at it for more than a couple of seconds. I tried its range one night from a hilltop and it clearly illuminated trees a couple of miles away.
That said, it's hardly a weapon and couldn't have caused the symptoms described in the article unless the pilot was looking directly down the beam for quite some time.
I've been very skeptical about these subjective tests ever since I read about one in 'New Scientist' many years ago.
Back when the great audiophile debate was between CD and vinyl, New Scientist magazine put a load of audiophiles to the test by playing them the same piece of music from CD and then from Vinyl and asked them to identify which version was from which media and describe the differences between them.
What they didn't tell them was that they simply played the same CD track twice so any differences they thought they heard were purely a result of their own perception fantasies; it didn't stop them from describing in some detail how the two tracks varied though.
Don't forget that you also need to add the time taken to write and read those 248,000 DVDs as well. "Insert DVD #148,256 and press any key to continue..."
I can't comment on whether safely removing USB drives is worth doing on Apple computers but it's certainly worth doing on Windows PCs.
There seems to be a problem with ntbackup (Windows backup utility) and unsafe removal of USB pen drives. Even though I haven't been able to find anything online about this problem, I've seen it too many times - dozens at least, maybe hundreds by now.
When USB drives are inserted they are listed as devices in the removable storage pools and unsafe removal of them doesn't remove them from the pools; they are just flagged as not working. For some unknown reason, ntbackup then refuses to mount any tapes until they are deleted from the media pools. Ntbackup doesn't even produce it log of the error; the log is created but is blank. Running ntbackup manually shows that it tries to mount the tape but then exits with no warning. After removing the USB device from the media pools it then works with no other changes.
Anyway, improper removal of USB devices does have a bad effect on Windows even if it may not be immediately apparent.
I'm still waiting for this area to be updated
on
Spamming Google Maps
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Where I live right now is just a very low-res blur on Google Earth and Maps. We've had a banner on the roof of our garage that reads "Fuck off Google!" in 3' high letters for the past two years just waiting for the day they update their imagery. We're still waiting...
I've been using one of these for a couple of years now to listen to mp3s on my car radio so I'm glad it's finally legal, not that there was really any chance of being prosecuted for using an illegal device.
I did have one other use for it though; last summer my neighbour would listen to Kiss FM radio (bland dance music that I hate) very loud while gardening. We tuned the trasmitter to the frequency of this radio station, waited for the current song to end, then started broadcasting over his signal, initialy with songs that could appear on that station but slowly moving towards our musical tastes. Within 30 minutes he was listening to Captain Beafheart none the wiser that he wasn't listening to the radio anymore. We considered making up some fake news-flashes but decided against it because we wanted to continue listening to our music choices rather than his and, to this day, he still doesn't know what we did.
I've been told by more than one Christian (true story here) that atheists do not have the capacity for morality
I think this says far more about the lack of morality of the person making this statement than it does about the morality of athiests - they are obviously only held in check by their fear of divine retribution and are incredulous that anybody who is not so constrained would act in a moral manner because they themselves wouldn't if they thought they could get away with it.
Dungeon Master" on the Atari ST was the best game of its time. It was a very early ST game and was a real eye-opener for anyone used to 8-bit computers. It probably sold almost as many STs as Doom did for PCs. The use of the mouse was perfect and I can still recall many of the rune sequences to cast spells even now, almost 20 years later.
As the old saying goes 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes'. In this case it can be updated to 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a bunch of DVDs in the mail'. Netflix's days are numbered so long as bandwidth continues to increase. They've probably got a good few years yet though until they are overtaken, especially if HD disks become popular; demand for higher quality should give their delivery system better bandwidth than online connection for some time. In the meantime they'll continue to make a lot of money.
The scene in question for those that haven't seen Red Dwarf:
CAT, LISTER and RIMMER are sitting round a table in the sleeping quarters. CAT and LISTER are playing a card game and RIMMER is regaling them with tales of his youth. As the scene opens we see that CAT and LISTER seem to be in some kind of pain.
RIMMER: So there we were at 2:30 in the morning; I was beginning to wish
I had never come to cadet training school. To the south lay water --
there was no way we could cross that. To the east and west two armies
squeezed us in a pincer. The only way was north; I had to go for it
and pray the Gods were smiling on me. I picked up the dice and threw
two sixes. Caldecott couldn't believe it. My go again; another two
sixes! LISTER: Rimmer, what's wrong with you? Don't you realize that no one is
even slightly interested in anything you're saying? You've got this
major psychological defect which blinds you to the fact that you're
boring people to death! How come you can't sense that? RIMMER: Anyway I picked up the dice again... Unbelievable! Another two
sixes! LISTER: Rimmer! RIMMER: What? LISTER: No one wants to know some stupid story about how you beat your
Cadet School Training Officer at Risk. RIMMER: Then -- disaster! I threw a two and a three; Caldecott picked up
the dice and threw snake eyes -- I was still in it. LISTER: Cat, can you talk to him?.
CAT is sitting with big pieces of cotton wool plugged in to his ears. As LISTER talks to him he takes one of the pieces.
CAT: What? RIMMER: Anyway, to cut a long story short I threw a five and a four which
beat his three and a two, another double six followed by a double four
and a double five. After he'd thrown a three and a two I threw a six
and a three. CAT: Man, this guy could bore for his country! LISTER: What I want to know, is how the smeg can you remember what dice
you threw at a game you played when you were seventeen? RIMMER: I jotted it down in my Risk campaign book. I always used to do
that so I could replay my moments of glory over a glass of brandy in
the sleeping quarters. I ask you, what better way is there to spend a
Saturday night? CAT: Ya got me. RIMMER: So a six and a three and he came back with a three and a two. LISTER: Rimmer, can't you tell the story is not gripping me? I'm in a
state of non-grippedness, I am completely smegging ungripped. Shut the
smeg up. RIMMER: Don't you want to hear the Risk story? LISTER: That's what I've been saying for the last fifteen minutes. RIMMER: But I thought that was because I hadn't got to the really
interesting bit... LISTER: What really interesting bit? RIMMER: Ah well, that was about two hours later, after he'd thrown a
three and a two and I'd thrown a four and a one. I picked up the
dice... LISTER: Hang on Rimmer, hang on... the really interesting bit is exactly
the same as the dull bit. RIMMER: You don't know what I did with the dice though, do you? For all
you know, I could have jammed them up his nostrils, head butted him on
the nose and they could have blasted out of his ears. That would've
been quite interesting. LISTER: OK, Rimmer. What did you do with the dice?. RIMMER: I threw a five and a two. LISTER: And that's the really interesting bit? RIMMER: Well it was interesting to me, it got me into Irkutsk.
I really liked the last two Serious Sam games. They were unique at the time because they were the only games to throw huge numbers of enemies at you at the same time whiole still looking great. One of my favourite gaming moments is the level in SS1 where you are rushed by about 150 skeletal horse-things, all on-screen at the same time, firing every grenade, then rocket, then other weapons into the oncoming mass with explosions in the ranks throwing bones everywhere while you back-peddle as fast as you can. Other games tend to bump up the detail level until the engine has serious trouble displaying more than a few creatures at once and the games are designed with this in mind, whereas Serious Sam was really more like Robotron in 3D for most of the levels. It's the nearest I've experienced to old-skool pulse-raising arcade gameplay with modern graphics. Shame they've lost the plot with this one; hopefully they'll get it right again next time.
The same is true for the Shining, great movie, beautiful, whatever you want... He changed the scenario, turning a "living house" type of horror novel into one's man mental breakdown, fine with me, and then he screws up the whole movie letting a ghost open a door.
Kubrick's films have always been about more than they appear at first glance. He was notorious for being painstaking with every shot to make sure it contained several layers of detail. As you think that the Shining was just about one man's mental breakdown, let me ask you whether you thought it odd that the hotel lobby had a huge statue of a soldier attacking a native american woman in the lobby, native-american artwork everywhere and whether you noticed that Wendy looked more native-american as the film progressed (especially towards the end)?
Kubrick called his last film "Eyes wide shut" for a reason.
I didn't like the first game for a number of reasons but liked the fact that it was essentially a battle of wills between the player and the AI. A typical gamer such as myself would click furiously doing everything and would inadvertantly train the AI to be lazy and rely on the player to do everything for them whereas non gamers would be more content to explore the world, spend time with their creature and generally play at a more relaxed pace mostly letting the AI villagers do what they wanted. The villagers seemed to be quite able to play the game themselves and would grow their villages and go about their lives quite happily with no player intervention at all if left to their own devices. This meant that any attempt to play the game like a traditional RTS would inevitably lead to the villagers getting lazy and waiting for you to do everything for them rather than doing it themselves. It was quite funny to see that, rather than training the AI to look after itself, some players found themselves being trained by the AI to do everything for it.
When it comes to guns the UK population in general has a completely different attitude to than the US. The ban on firearms has practicly the complete support of politicians and the public; there is no gun lobby and it's a non-issue politicly. It could be seen as a reduction in civil rights if people in the UK wanted to own firearms but weren't allowed to but, as things stand, it's universally regarded as a good law. My local shop sells some gun magazines but, tellingly, they store them on the top shelf with the pornography.
I like this one because it's simple but the result is surprising (to me at least).
You have a rope tied around two trees that are 200 metres apart. A 10 metre tall truck has to pass under the rope by driving through the centre of the gap between the trees. How much slack do you have to put into the rope to allow the centre of it to be lifted over the 10 metre tall truck?
The more time wasted by the scammers trying to scam people who are just stringing them along for laughs, the less time the scammers will have to scam real victims. I think trying to scam the scammers into sending money is a bit dubious morally (but satisfyingly ironic all the same) but wasting their time is certainly a good thing.
I was thinking more about cutting it into a T-shirt pattern and displaying constantly changing fractals (or whatever) on it. Hopefully it will be durable enough to allow this sort of use.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't this laser going to produce lots of instant retina frying reflections from the target that are going to play randomly over anything nearby? If a 250mw laser is a serious blinding hazard a 32kw laser must be a much more serious problem even after the reflections have bounced off several reflective surfaces.
It seems that these days tech names don't have to mean anything and, in fact, the more meaningless the better; if you make up a new word you can be sure that searches for it will only return sites relevent to your product. I miss the old days where tech names were generally meaningful, if a bit obscure, but there were some noteable exceptions that sounded meaningful but weren't. A couple that spring to mind are KERMIT (an old BBS file transfer protocol) which had several theories about what it was an acronym for before its creator finally admitted he just named it after the muppet and TWAIN (scanner data protocol) which stands for 'Technology Without An Interesting Name'.
There's a scene by scene comparison of the trailer and the relevant panels from the graphic novel here. It looks remarkably similar and I'm quite hopeful that this will be a credible conversion now.
I have a Chinese green laser here and it's nothing like what you've described. It's a bit larger than than a regular laser pointer ; about the size of a large fountain pen and almost all of that space is taken up by the batteries. You can clearly see the beam in any light level short of full daylight and the dot it puts on the wall is very bright; my eyes ache if I look directly at it for more than a couple of seconds. I tried its range one night from a hilltop and it clearly illuminated trees a couple of miles away. That said, it's hardly a weapon and couldn't have caused the symptoms described in the article unless the pilot was looking directly down the beam for quite some time.
Back when the great audiophile debate was between CD and vinyl, New Scientist magazine put a load of audiophiles to the test by playing them the same piece of music from CD and then from Vinyl and asked them to identify which version was from which media and describe the differences between them.
What they didn't tell them was that they simply played the same CD track twice so any differences they thought they heard were purely a result of their own perception fantasies; it didn't stop them from describing in some detail how the two tracks varied though.
Internet 1 was designed to keep running after a nuclear exchange whereas Internet 2 can be taken down by a stray cigarette. That's progress for you...
Don't forget that you also need to add the time taken to write and read those 248,000 DVDs as well. "Insert DVD #148,256 and press any key to continue..."
There seems to be a problem with ntbackup (Windows backup utility) and unsafe removal of USB pen drives. Even though I haven't been able to find anything online about this problem, I've seen it too many times - dozens at least, maybe hundreds by now.
When USB drives are inserted they are listed as devices in the removable storage pools and unsafe removal of them doesn't remove them from the pools; they are just flagged as not working. For some unknown reason, ntbackup then refuses to mount any tapes until they are deleted from the media pools. Ntbackup doesn't even produce it log of the error; the log is created but is blank. Running ntbackup manually shows that it tries to mount the tape but then exits with no warning. After removing the USB device from the media pools it then works with no other changes.
Anyway, improper removal of USB devices does have a bad effect on Windows even if it may not be immediately apparent.
Where I live right now is just a very low-res blur on Google Earth and Maps. We've had a banner on the roof of our garage that reads "Fuck off Google!" in 3' high letters for the past two years just waiting for the day they update their imagery. We're still waiting...
I was always glad that, when playing Doom, none of the monsters thought to make armour out of whatever the doors were made of.
For the full story see www.badcaps.net
How many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None - their manager just declares darkness to be the new standard.
I did have one other use for it though; last summer my neighbour would listen to Kiss FM radio (bland dance music that I hate) very loud while gardening. We tuned the trasmitter to the frequency of this radio station, waited for the current song to end, then started broadcasting over his signal, initialy with songs that could appear on that station but slowly moving towards our musical tastes. Within 30 minutes he was listening to Captain Beafheart none the wiser that he wasn't listening to the radio anymore. We considered making up some fake news-flashes but decided against it because we wanted to continue listening to our music choices rather than his and, to this day, he still doesn't know what we did.
I think this says far more about the lack of morality of the person making this statement than it does about the morality of athiests - they are obviously only held in check by their fear of divine retribution and are incredulous that anybody who is not so constrained would act in a moral manner because they themselves wouldn't if they thought they could get away with it.
This plus a copy of World of Warcraft would be perfect for training for the next marathon.
Dungeon Master" on the Atari ST was the best game of its time. It was a very early ST game and was a real eye-opener for anyone used to 8-bit computers. It probably sold almost as many STs as Doom did for PCs. The use of the mouse was perfect and I can still recall many of the rune sequences to cast spells even now, almost 20 years later.
As the old saying goes 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes'. In this case it can be updated to 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a bunch of DVDs in the mail'. Netflix's days are numbered so long as bandwidth continues to increase. They've probably got a good few years yet though until they are overtaken, especially if HD disks become popular; demand for higher quality should give their delivery system better bandwidth than online connection for some time. In the meantime they'll continue to make a lot of money.
The scene in question for those that haven't seen Red Dwarf:
CAT, LISTER and RIMMER are sitting round a table in the sleeping
quarters. CAT and LISTER are playing a card game and RIMMER is regaling
them with tales of his youth. As the scene opens we see that CAT and
LISTER seem to be in some kind of pain.
RIMMER: So there we were at 2:30 in the morning; I was beginning to wish
I had never come to cadet training school. To the south lay water --
there was no way we could cross that. To the east and west two armies
squeezed us in a pincer. The only way was north; I had to go for it
and pray the Gods were smiling on me. I picked up the dice and threw
two sixes. Caldecott couldn't believe it. My go again; another two
sixes!
LISTER: Rimmer, what's wrong with you? Don't you realize that no one is
even slightly interested in anything you're saying? You've got this
major psychological defect which blinds you to the fact that you're
boring people to death! How come you can't sense that?
RIMMER: Anyway I picked up the dice again... Unbelievable! Another two
sixes!
LISTER: Rimmer!
RIMMER: What?
LISTER: No one wants to know some stupid story about how you beat your
Cadet School Training Officer at Risk.
RIMMER: Then -- disaster! I threw a two and a three; Caldecott picked up
the dice and threw snake eyes -- I was still in it.
LISTER: Cat, can you talk to him?.
CAT is sitting with big pieces of cotton wool plugged in to his ears. As
LISTER talks to him he takes one of the pieces.
CAT: What?
RIMMER: Anyway, to cut a long story short I threw a five and a four which
beat his three and a two, another double six followed by a double four
and a double five. After he'd thrown a three and a two I threw a six
and a three.
CAT: Man, this guy could bore for his country!
LISTER: What I want to know, is how the smeg can you remember what dice
you threw at a game you played when you were seventeen?
RIMMER: I jotted it down in my Risk campaign book. I always used to do
that so I could replay my moments of glory over a glass of brandy in
the sleeping quarters. I ask you, what better way is there to spend a
Saturday night?
CAT: Ya got me.
RIMMER: So a six and a three and he came back with a three and a two.
LISTER: Rimmer, can't you tell the story is not gripping me? I'm in a
state of non-grippedness, I am completely smegging ungripped. Shut the
smeg up.
RIMMER: Don't you want to hear the Risk story?
LISTER: That's what I've been saying for the last fifteen minutes.
RIMMER: But I thought that was because I hadn't got to the really
interesting bit...
LISTER: What really interesting bit?
RIMMER: Ah well, that was about two hours later, after he'd thrown a
three and a two and I'd thrown a four and a one. I picked up the
dice...
LISTER: Hang on Rimmer, hang on... the really interesting bit is exactly
the same as the dull bit.
RIMMER: You don't know what I did with the dice though, do you? For all
you know, I could have jammed them up his nostrils, head butted him on
the nose and they could have blasted out of his ears. That would've
been quite interesting.
LISTER: OK, Rimmer. What did you do with the dice?.
RIMMER: I threw a five and a two.
LISTER: And that's the really interesting bit?
RIMMER: Well it was interesting to me, it got me into Irkutsk.
I really liked the last two Serious Sam games. They were unique at the time because they were the only games to throw huge numbers of enemies at you at the same time whiole still looking great.
One of my favourite gaming moments is the level in SS1 where you are rushed by about 150 skeletal horse-things, all on-screen at the same time, firing every grenade, then rocket, then other weapons into the oncoming mass with explosions in the ranks throwing bones everywhere while you back-peddle as fast as you can. Other games tend to bump up the detail level until the engine has serious trouble displaying more than a few creatures at once and the games are designed with this in mind, whereas Serious Sam was really more like Robotron in 3D for most of the levels. It's the nearest I've experienced to old-skool pulse-raising arcade gameplay with modern graphics.
Shame they've lost the plot with this one; hopefully they'll get it right again next time.
Kubrick's films have always been about more than they appear at first glance. He was notorious for being painstaking with every shot to make sure it contained several layers of detail. As you think that the Shining was just about one man's mental breakdown, let me ask you whether you thought it odd that the hotel lobby had a huge statue of a soldier attacking a native american woman in the lobby, native-american artwork everywhere and whether you noticed that Wendy looked more native-american as the film progressed (especially towards the end)?
Kubrick called his last film "Eyes wide shut" for a reason.
I didn't like the first game for a number of reasons but liked the fact that it was essentially a battle of wills between the player and the AI.
A typical gamer such as myself would click furiously doing everything and would inadvertantly train the AI to be lazy and rely on the player to do everything for them whereas non gamers would be more content to explore the world, spend time with their creature and generally play at a more relaxed pace mostly letting the AI villagers do what they wanted. The villagers seemed to be quite able to play the game themselves and would grow their villages and go about their lives quite happily with no player intervention at all if left to their own devices. This meant that any attempt to play the game like a traditional RTS would inevitably lead to the villagers getting lazy and waiting for you to do everything for them rather than doing it themselves.
It was quite funny to see that, rather than training the AI to look after itself, some players found themselves being trained by the AI to do everything for it.
When it comes to guns the UK population in general has a completely different attitude to than the US. The ban on firearms has practicly the complete support of politicians and the public; there is no gun lobby and it's a non-issue politicly. It could be seen as a reduction in civil rights if people in the UK wanted to own firearms but weren't allowed to but, as things stand, it's universally regarded as a good law. My local shop sells some gun magazines but, tellingly, they store them on the top shelf with the pornography.
I like this one because it's simple but the result is surprising (to me at least).
You have a rope tied around two trees that are 200 metres apart. A 10 metre tall truck has to pass under the rope by driving through the centre of the gap between the trees. How much slack do you have to put into the rope to allow the centre of it to be lifted over the 10 metre tall truck?
The more time wasted by the scammers trying to scam people who are just stringing them along for laughs, the less time the scammers will have to scam real victims. I think trying to scam the scammers into sending money is a bit dubious morally (but satisfyingly ironic all the same) but wasting their time is certainly a good thing.
I was thinking more about cutting it into a T-shirt pattern and displaying constantly changing fractals (or whatever) on it. Hopefully it will be durable enough to allow this sort of use.