So what if your gun is undetectable. Bullets are still made of metal and will show up on Xray and metal detectors. But even these 3D printed guns have small bits of metal in them for the firing pin.
I'm in the same camp. Especially when doing a monthly backup, I don't really care how long it takes to write. I just want to make sure when it comes time to read it that it works. The only success I ever had was with DVD-RAM, especially the ones in the caddy cartridges. Of course, 4GB just won't cut it today. Off the shelf DVD-R was a joke. Sometimes the discs would work for a few weeks before developing errors, even if stored in a jewel case in a dark, cool room, with no humidity.
One of the MAIN reasons I gave up optical discs is because they were not reliable. Sure, the factory pressed discs were okay. But anything burned at home seemed to have a lifespan of 2 years tops before it started to degrade. At one point I was buying expensive DVD-RAM for backups because it was actually business-grade and would last for a long time. But the capacity soon became too low to use anymore, especially considering the cost of the discs. I have heard about the "archive quality" discs but have never put any to the test.
I get a call EVERY DAY from some automated message telling me "The FBI reports there is a break in every 15 minutes" I have tried asking them nicely to stop calling me, tried cursing at them, tried screaming at them, tried threatening them with bodily harm. They still call me EVERY DAY from a different phone number. I asked them yesterday "You have called me over 100 times and I have not been interested. Did you think maybe if you just called me one....more...time.... that I'd change my mind?" If I knew where these people operated out of, I'd burn their building down.
Back in the 1990's I was really excited about this project. I really hated how Microsoft had a strangle hold on the entire industry and there was no sign that it was going to change anytime soon. This project was promising in that it really offered a possible solution. But they're about 13 years too late. Far too little progress has been made. Microsoft has already been knocked off of its pedestal and now there are viable alternatives that consumers are embracing. Specifically, MacOS, IOS, and Android devices. Linux is still a niche for desktops. And the browser is really the thing that killed Microsoft more than anything else.
I'd like to see a guy out on the streets here in Texas try to stab people to death. He might get one, then he'll get shot by several people who were carrying concealed handguns. But unfortunately for the UK they have disarmed all of their citizens.
If I were poor (and yes, I was poor at one point) I would still much rather buy a good-quality, reliable used car for the same price as this brand-new eye-sore. So if this car is going to cost $10,000 in the USA, I could think of many used cars that I'd much prefer to own that can be purchased for less money.
There are actually quite a few PPC machines still in use out there. I am actually using a G4 Mac Mini to type this. True, they are obsolete and not particularly fast. At least the G4 Mac Mini is power-efficient. But, for geeks, these machines can still keep going for several years beyond their usual life-span. I also use a G4 Mac Mini hooked up to a daisy-chain of firewire hard drives for my file-server and it does very well.
Incidentally, I tried Ubuntu on a G4 Mac Mini recently and found it very lacking for a desktop PC. But it would probably be okay for a server.
This issue affected so many different manufacturers. For example, the Apple iMac G5 was a big problem with bad caps. Also lots of LCD monitor manufacturers have failing backlight inverters due to the same issue. Also plenty of motherboards manufactured by Intel that went into HP, Gateway, and others all had the same problem. Sure, Dell did what they had to do because they couldn't get any good caps anywhere and the only other choice would have been to just shut down the company. My company buys lots of Dell products and they are always very quick to get problems resolved, usually overnighting us a part.
The main reason most users don't bother reading error messages is because they aren't used to having messages that are informative. PC LOAD LETTER is an excellent example, but in many cases with products the error messages may even be clear, but they aren't accurate. How many times have we seen a program give an error message about "insufficient memory" or something to that effect. So the user (if they read it) believes that they need a RAM upgrade in their computer. After you research the message, you find out that it really has nothing to do with memory and was in fact some totally unrelated problem. If programmers spent more time creating accurate error messages, maybe people would read them.
I'll be buying one. As soon as my local Chevrolet dealer has one on the lot and I can pick one up for around $30,000 or less (after any govt. incentives, obviously). True, I normally wouldn't pay more than $25 for any vehicle, but with the gas-savings it will make up the difference. And the volt beats the heck out of the Plug-in Prius that only goes around 12 miles on battery.
Oh yes.. I am all too familiar with this issue. I used to work at a computer store and people would call me on the phone nearly every day and start the line with something like "Yeah, I bought this hard drive there yesterday..." Then I'd have to spend the next 10 minutes trying to ring the information out of them to figure out if they bought a computer or a hard drive. I mean, without knowing what it was, it was hard to answer their question.
Only because it has cute girls
on
Cat Talk
·
· Score: 1
Nobody would ever click on this video to begin with if there wasn't a cute girl in the preview frame.
First of all, I should point out something. I've been told by numerous people that the police are not interested in your video footage unless somebody was killed or kidnapped. That is, unless you have a license plate, or you personally recognize the person. That is because there is no way to identify the people short of putting it on CNN.
Eventually I settled on analog security cameras. I discovered that if you are dealing with standard-def cameras, a good analog camera can produce the same or better image than an Axis only at a quarter of the cost. Now, if you want those license plate numbers, you'll need megapixel resolution and a hefty server. Currently, I have a small 1.0 Ghz computer in the closet with an analog capture board recording 3 cameras at 640x480. My total cost was about $250. it has worked flawlessly for a year now.
Couldn't you just reload Vista back on it, then take it in for repair? It isn't like they could tell the difference. But I do see your point, it is a matter of principle.
I had a Honda Insight for a year. I loved that car, never any problems. But I WAS in a 45 mile-per-hour collision with a Lincoln Town Car. (not my fault, FYI) The car was destroyed, more or less. But I walked away with nothing but some bent up glasses from the airbag.
Then I bought a 2003 Toyota Prius, which is good because we had a baby shortly afterwords and it has a rear-seat. I was rear-ended in that car 2 weeks later and also sustained no injury. The car was repaired and has been great now for about a year. No mechanical problems. I love both of the cars. I did test-drive a Honda Civic-Hybrid before deciding I liked the Prius as it was more technologically innovative. --DavidM
Okay.. To produce a screen which is backlit and has active matrix, the cost is only marginally different to produce a color screen instead of a black & white. I used to work at the laptop division of AST/Samsung and this was the case about 3 years ago. So here is the thing.. If you want to reduce cost, go with a non-backlit reflective LCD like you'd expect to see on a Palm or cell-phone and you could get away with a pretty cheap display. Truth is, there isn't much of a market for it. I would maybe use them on my servers to save space and heat but on my desktops I would want a crisper image. Color isn't so important to me as active matrix.
On the issue of dead pixels.. You have to look at it from the manufacture's point of view. If it costs you $1000 to produce a screen and 30% of your screens have 1 pixel that is out.. What do you do? If you trash those screens then you have to bump up the price of all the ones that do work in order to make up the difference. Your typical laptop LCD has over 2.4 million individual pixels (if you count red, green, & blue.. and usually the whole pixel doesn't go out, just one of the partitions) having a failure rate of 1 out of 2.4 million isn't that bad. As far as having more go out.. It isn't likely. Most of the time the ones that go out do so in the first few hours of operation. Anything that lives beyond that will probably last for years unless the screen is damaged.
Of course this whole conversation may be moot shortly with the introduction of OLED screens. These screens will cost less to produce than conventional LCD and definatly have sharper images and faster response times. Not to mention it is more durable. LCD is likely on its way out. Once all manufacturers realize it costs less to get more, they will drop LCD technology in favor of OLED.
I'm not writing this because I want to argue politics or religion. I just want it known that I read Slashdot every day, often several times a day. When I read something like "the republicans" I get the impression that the person posting thinks that no republicans read this group and therefor can be talked about in the 3rd person.
Truth is, maybe women don't find brains attractive, but men find brains in women attractive. Why d'you think Seven of Nine gets so much attention? Sure, she has a great body but so do a lot of other actresses out there. Her character makes her more attractive. If you ever saw Jerri Ryan in person or out of character (I have) you'd think of her less as "Seven of Nine" and more of a bimbo who can act well. The real Jerri Ryan never even used to watch Star Trek (too nerdy for her) until she hired on! My point is (not to try to be sexist) but there aren't that many genious women out there.. The ones that are look like men or worse. A woman who is both a genious and a gorgious babe is a rare thing indeed, and very much sought after.
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So what if your gun is undetectable. Bullets are still made of metal and will show up on Xray and metal detectors. But even these 3D printed guns have small bits of metal in them for the firing pin.
I mean particle physics is cool, but it doesn't do anything for the human spirit of exploration like a mission to Mars would.
Apparently Philo gives the secret of how to make plutonium from common household objects.
I'm in the same camp. Especially when doing a monthly backup, I don't really care how long it takes to write. I just want to make sure when it comes time to read it that it works. The only success I ever had was with DVD-RAM, especially the ones in the caddy cartridges. Of course, 4GB just won't cut it today. Off the shelf DVD-R was a joke. Sometimes the discs would work for a few weeks before developing errors, even if stored in a jewel case in a dark, cool room, with no humidity.
One of the MAIN reasons I gave up optical discs is because they were not reliable. Sure, the factory pressed discs were okay. But anything burned at home seemed to have a lifespan of 2 years tops before it started to degrade. At one point I was buying expensive DVD-RAM for backups because it was actually business-grade and would last for a long time. But the capacity soon became too low to use anymore, especially considering the cost of the discs. I have heard about the "archive quality" discs but have never put any to the test.
I get a call EVERY DAY from some automated message telling me "The FBI reports there is a break in every 15 minutes" I have tried asking them nicely to stop calling me, tried cursing at them, tried screaming at them, tried threatening them with bodily harm. They still call me EVERY DAY from a different phone number. I asked them yesterday "You have called me over 100 times and I have not been interested. Did you think maybe if you just called me one....more...time.... that I'd change my mind?" If I knew where these people operated out of, I'd burn their building down.
Back in the 1990's I was really excited about this project. I really hated how Microsoft had a strangle hold on the entire industry and there was no sign that it was going to change anytime soon. This project was promising in that it really offered a possible solution. But they're about 13 years too late. Far too little progress has been made. Microsoft has already been knocked off of its pedestal and now there are viable alternatives that consumers are embracing. Specifically, MacOS, IOS, and Android devices. Linux is still a niche for desktops. And the browser is really the thing that killed Microsoft more than anything else.
I'd like to see a guy out on the streets here in Texas try to stab people to death. He might get one, then he'll get shot by several people who were carrying concealed handguns. But unfortunately for the UK they have disarmed all of their citizens.
If I were poor (and yes, I was poor at one point) I would still much rather buy a good-quality, reliable used car for the same price as this brand-new eye-sore. So if this car is going to cost $10,000 in the USA, I could think of many used cars that I'd much prefer to own that can be purchased for less money.
Whoever wrote this is having a very imaginative time, but I don't see any of this stuff ever being a reality. Sorry.
I plan on getting one as soon as possible. Check out this video for some common myths for all of you naysayers out there!
http://www.evtalk.org/95/evtalk-ev-myths/
There are actually quite a few PPC machines still in use out there. I am actually using a G4 Mac Mini to type this. True, they are obsolete and not particularly fast. At least the G4 Mac Mini is power-efficient. But, for geeks, these machines can still keep going for several years beyond their usual life-span. I also use a G4 Mac Mini hooked up to a daisy-chain of firewire hard drives for my file-server and it does very well.
Incidentally, I tried Ubuntu on a G4 Mac Mini recently and found it very lacking for a desktop PC. But it would probably be okay for a server.
This issue affected so many different manufacturers. For example, the Apple iMac G5 was a big problem with bad caps. Also lots of LCD monitor manufacturers have failing backlight inverters due to the same issue. Also plenty of motherboards manufactured by Intel that went into HP, Gateway, and others all had the same problem. Sure, Dell did what they had to do because they couldn't get any good caps anywhere and the only other choice would have been to just shut down the company. My company buys lots of Dell products and they are always very quick to get problems resolved, usually overnighting us a part.
In a way, this will probably HELP microsoft because this means less malware infections, which will make their O/S look more secure.
The main reason most users don't bother reading error messages is because they aren't used to having messages that are informative. PC LOAD LETTER is an excellent example, but in many cases with products the error messages may even be clear, but they aren't accurate. How many times have we seen a program give an error message about "insufficient memory" or something to that effect. So the user (if they read it) believes that they need a RAM upgrade in their computer. After you research the message, you find out that it really has nothing to do with memory and was in fact some totally unrelated problem. If programmers spent more time creating accurate error messages, maybe people would read them.
I'll be buying one. As soon as my local Chevrolet dealer has one on the lot and I can pick one up for around $30,000 or less (after any govt. incentives, obviously). True, I normally wouldn't pay more than $25 for any vehicle, but with the gas-savings it will make up the difference. And the volt beats the heck out of the Plug-in Prius that only goes around 12 miles on battery.
Oh yes.. I am all too familiar with this issue. I used to work at a computer store and people would call me on the phone nearly every day and start the line with something like "Yeah, I bought this hard drive there yesterday..." Then I'd have to spend the next 10 minutes trying to ring the information out of them to figure out if they bought a computer or a hard drive. I mean, without knowing what it was, it was hard to answer their question.
Nobody would ever click on this video to begin with if there wasn't a cute girl in the preview frame.
I went through the same dilemma a year ago.
First of all, I should point out something. I've been told by numerous people that the police are not interested in your video footage unless somebody was killed or kidnapped. That is, unless you have a license plate, or you personally recognize the person. That is because there is no way to identify the people short of putting it on CNN.
Eventually I settled on analog security cameras. I discovered that if you are dealing with standard-def cameras, a good analog camera can produce the same or better image than an Axis only at a quarter of the cost. Now, if you want those license plate numbers, you'll need megapixel resolution and a hefty server. Currently, I have a small 1.0 Ghz computer in the closet with an analog capture board recording 3 cameras at 640x480. My total cost was about $250. it has worked flawlessly for a year now.
Couldn't you just reload Vista back on it, then take it in for repair? It isn't like they could tell the difference. But I do see your point, it is a matter of principle.
I had a Honda Insight for a year. I loved that car, never any problems. But I WAS in a 45 mile-per-hour collision with a Lincoln Town Car. (not my fault, FYI) The car was destroyed, more or less. But I walked away with nothing but some bent up glasses from the airbag.
Then I bought a 2003 Toyota Prius, which is good because we had a baby shortly afterwords and it has a rear-seat. I was rear-ended in that car 2 weeks later and also sustained no injury. The car was repaired and has been great now for about a year. No mechanical problems. I love both of the cars. I did test-drive a Honda Civic-Hybrid before deciding I liked the Prius as it was more technologically innovative.
--DavidM
Okay.. To produce a screen which is backlit and has active matrix, the cost is only marginally different to produce a color screen instead of a black & white. I used to work at the laptop division of AST/Samsung and this was the case about 3 years ago. So here is the thing.. If you want to reduce cost, go with a non-backlit reflective LCD like you'd expect to see on a Palm or cell-phone and you could get away with a pretty cheap display. Truth is, there isn't much of a market for it. I would maybe use them on my servers to save space and heat but on my desktops I would want a crisper image. Color isn't so important to me as active matrix.
On the issue of dead pixels.. You have to look at it from the manufacture's point of view. If it costs you $1000 to produce a screen and 30% of your screens have 1 pixel that is out.. What do you do? If you trash those screens then you have to bump up the price of all the ones that do work in order to make up the difference. Your typical laptop LCD has over 2.4 million individual pixels (if you count red, green, & blue.. and usually the whole pixel doesn't go out, just one of the partitions) having a failure rate of 1 out of 2.4 million isn't that bad. As far as having more go out.. It isn't likely. Most of the time the ones that go out do so in the first few hours of operation. Anything that lives beyond that will probably last for years unless the screen is damaged.
Of course this whole conversation may be moot shortly with the introduction of OLED screens. These screens will cost less to produce than conventional LCD and definatly have sharper images and faster response times. Not to mention it is more durable. LCD is likely on its way out. Once all manufacturers realize it costs less to get more, they will drop LCD technology in favor of OLED.
I'm not writing this because I want to argue politics or religion. I just want it known that I read Slashdot every day, often several times a day. When I read something like "the republicans" I get the impression that the person posting thinks that no republicans read this group and therefor can be talked about in the 3rd person.
Truth is, maybe women don't find brains attractive, but men find brains in women attractive. Why d'you think Seven of Nine gets so much attention? Sure, she has a great body but so do a lot of other actresses out there. Her character makes her more attractive. If you ever saw Jerri Ryan in person or out of character (I have) you'd think of her less as "Seven of Nine" and more of a bimbo who can act well. The real Jerri Ryan never even used to watch Star Trek (too nerdy for her) until she hired on! My point is (not to try to be sexist) but there aren't that many genious women out there.. The ones that are look like men or worse. A woman who is both a genious and a gorgious babe is a rare thing indeed, and very much sought after.