I have a closetful of such stuff... one of the problems I've run into with old small HDs, is that newer mobos won't recognise them at all. So if you need to mess with old storage, it doesn't hurt to keep that old 386 board, after all it doesn't eat much.
One problem I've run into, is that VLB stuff that sits around doing nothing... DIES. It was working when it went into The Closet, but is dead as a doornail next time I try to use it. I've had this happen enough times that I've lost all faith in old VLB stuff.:(
Oddity that came my way... a VLB SCSI card. Only one I've ever seen!
Yeah, if you filter out all the foreground, that would make the background more obvious... I wasn't unaware of the foreground stuff, tho. It was a fun and interesting state, regardless.
I tend to be more aware of microshit than most folks, tho (maybe goes with being a supertaster, having a perfect ear, and being sensitive to more colours than normal -- so overall, a hyperaware nervous system) -- frex, I notice stuff like that if you get the light reflecting into your eyes just right, you can see your own retina (fundus, blood vessels, and all) as reflected off the back of the lens. And that you can readily see nuclear and other structures in the cellular debris that floats around in your eyes. (I've got one string of such debris that's been there since I was a kid... have watched it deteriorate over the years.) Being ridiculously aware of my sleeptime surroundings, to the chagrin of that spider, I suppose goes with the territory.
I've never had tetris dreams, tho I know people who do. My DOOM dreams come in two types: DOOM in Real Life, and "inside a level" -- always the same level, which is MONSTROUS HUGE and I've never "finished" it, tho I know my way around most of it by now. Funny how you have to learn the layout even when your own brain created it!
I always look like the Doomguy in my dreams, and I never get hit:)
Another peculiar sleep state: sometimes I can tell that one chunk of my brain has more or less "gone to sleep" even tho I'm up and around and interacting with people, etc. If it happens, it'll always be around 8pm, which would be one "sleep unit" prior to my normal first sleep cycle (a little after 10pm).
Conversely, if I get woke up, frex by an emergency phone call in the middle of the night, I'll proceed to give perfectly good advice despite that I can tell part of my brain isn't online yet. It's as if only the parts that need to be awake can be arsed to do so.
Sleep is a complex state, for sure, and it's not nearly so clearcut as "awake" or "asleep". That dreams are influenced by TV... well, most kids have a show they feel like they want to live inside of. For my generation, that usually meant Star Trek -- as escapist as you could get at the time. Is it any wonder that B/W viewing becomes a B/W dream?
Well, we know who's going to be The Target today, don't we?;)
I dreamed in B/W til 10 years after we got a colour TV (when I was 16), and I always attrib'd that to growing up with a B/W TV. I suspect how your dreams are affected by what real-life influences depends a lot on what's important to your life, and how your brain processes it. To me, TV and dreams were both an escape; that one paralleled the other shouldn't be surprising. Now, I have mostly DOOM dreams -- the escapism I most enjoy in Real Life is there in dreams too.:)
I grew up with B/W TV. I dreamed in B/W from the time I was a little kid, until about 10 years after we got a colour TV, when I was 16. I've always attributed having B/W dreams to growing up with a B/W TV.
I've had those, but immediately assumed it was just "half" of REM sleep, so no panic.
However, if I try to physically fight the state, my heartrate skyrockets -- so I suspect nighttime heart attacks are often side effects of the state in folks with heart conditions. I've also had the unpleasantness of being in an awkward position so breathing is difficult -- one wonders about the implications of that!
Also, it won't end so long as I'm resisting -- best thing to do is relax and it'll go away in a few minutes.
Sometimes the state has started with my eyes open. If I close them, I can't reopen my eyes til it's over.
I've found that the state can be induced -- in my case, if my brain is following three different trains of thought at once, while on the edge of sleep. I've learned to recognise when it's about to slip over into sleep paralysis, and interrupt myself, since it's not exactly fun.
Something related that happened often when I was a kid, but almost never as an adult: a hyperawareness state, where I can feel each individual thread in the sheets, can feel/hear my blood moving, etc. This is NOT accompanied by paralysis, and I'm functionally awake, but I think it's probably a partial sleep state.
As to the nominal topic -- we had only B/W TV til I was 16. I dreamed in B/W until about 10 years after we got a colour TV, and I've always attributed that to the fact of growing up with B/W TV. However, when I had a B/W TV again for several years in the 1980s, I did not revert to dreaming in B/W, nor have I dreamed in monochrome since I began dreaming in colour.
The first dream I can remember, I was 5 years old, and it was in colour but wasn't a "real" dream -- more like being in the middle of multiple lightning flashes. I thought of it as a "nightmare" because being in bright colours made it so different, tho it wasn't actually scary.
The majority of memorable/fun dreams I have now are set in some variant of DOOM. Since I still think this is the only game worth playing, I have no complaint.:)
I'm a very light sleeper... one time I dreamed that a spider was building a web attached to my nose. Woke up and guess what, some idiot spider HAD built a web between the ceiling and my nose. WTF?!!
I know someone who got mad and yelled at a mass-transit-dept. phone drone, and as a result got hauled into court for "making terrorist threats". For losing his temper against the obstinacy of a bureaucrat. Anyone here who hasn't ever done that?? No? Congrats, we're all "terrorists".
Occurs to me that in such case, there's no need whatever for any changes in the system -- just use the already-elected State Assembly and State Senate members, which are roughly apportioned per this "30,000" site's notions, or close enough.
What? Your State Senate and State Assembly aren't competent to run the state, let alone the nation? You begin to see the problem, yes??
A wise AC says, ========= Why is that a crime when you shouldn't have been arrested in the first place?
If you aren't in court for the act they arrested you for, resisting arrest shouldn't be there. ========
Absolutely. But now it's all about having good conviction stats, not about justice. And if you can always get SOME conviction, even if not for the original purported crime... your high stats stay intact.
Actually, I had those thoughts after reading info on some of the court cases referenced in the arguments against CA Prop 6. Sometimes it happens to innocent people. About half the time the dog handler is out of line and there was no reason to release the dog at all. The courts seem to find either way according to whether the judge thinks ALL "resisting arrest" is bad, not whether the person was reasonably defending themselves.
See, I used to think resisting arrest, and defending yourself against the cops during an arrest, was (almost) always bad. Now... I've come to believe that often as not, you're fully justified, as in today's environment the cops are often out of line, sometimes radically so. Did you see the case where the cops broke into the mayor's house, cuffed him, and shot his two dogs, on a MISPLACED SUSPICION that he'd received drugs via an anonymous package delivery??
But these laws are not used that way. They're used to guarantee that even if there is NO evidence of any other crime, the cops can ALWAYS get a conviction thanks to this secondary law. CA Prop 6 is an example of that (see my previous post).
Some sort of wholly anonymous remailer seems in order... perhaps one where everyone uses the same email address, and email is only routed to your box if there's an appropriate flag in the subject, or as a suffix to the username (akin to the "name+place@wherever.com" trick)
Conversely, a single-use email address randomizer, akin to the throwaway addresses generated by mypacks.net (https://www.mypacks.net/dea/DEARegistration.do)
I've noticed a huge increase in the "we'll get you one way or another" type of laws ever since private industry got hold of the prison system. D'ya think there just might be some lobbying and conflict of interest there, hmmmm??
Example: CA Prop 6, on this November's ballot, would make it a felony to fail to register with police if you're a gang member. (For this post, we'll ignore the fact that it's unconstitutional as it violates the right of freedom of assembly.) Now, what good is such a law? It means that if you get picked up on suspicion, but there is NO EVIDENCE that you committed a crime, they can still get you if you're an "unregistered" gang member.
An existing law makes it a felony to "injure" or "interfere with" a police dog "in pursuit of its duty". So if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, a cop sics his dog on you, and you quite reasonably defend yourself against that dog (who clearly wants to rip your arm off) by giving the dog a swift kick, you've just committed a felony, EVEN THO UNTIL THAT MOMENT YOU HAD COMMITTED NO CRIME.
Recent laws are full of crap like that. Cue Ayn Rand....
Agreed; I'll be a lot more forgiving of an early version than of what is nominally a mature version.
Furthermore, if I later find out the company essentially lied to me by calling v1.0 vSomethingMature.x, that will quite destroy my confidence in the company's honesty.
The downsides definitely outweigh the potential to fool a few people into believing it's a mature product.
I have a bunch of old silver-type xray film, some of which is about as black as it ever gets and is the old thick type. It worked pretty well for taking film-camera photos thru binoculars during an eclipse back in 1979 (yes it's that old). It's a good deal darker than welding lenses, but I don't think I'd want to stare thru it long-term, regardless:)
Thanks, both very interesting. Especially to we who point at the sun when folks mention "global warming":)
Re:The cycle length can vary...
on
The Quietest Sun
·
· Score: 1
Other correlations:
When sunspot activity is at max, we see "white hair condition" in black- or brown-coated animals -- it's caused by a fungus that lives in the hair follicles. It produces a frosting or spotting effect, which is temporary in dogs, but permanent in horses and cats (and I believe also in cattle). Research at Colorado State University College of Vet Med, from about 35-40 years ago, pegged the fungus, but so far I seem to be the only one who's noticed it peaks with the sunspot cycle.
Trash bamboo (the crap you see growing in ditches in California) blooms only about once a decade. I've seen it happen twice in the past 24 years -- approximately in tune with high sunspot activity.
I'd guess there are plenty of other such small correlations in biological activity, but which generally go unnoticed.
I'm curious as to whether fully exposed xray film would do the job. It sure doesn't let much light through -- the sun winds up looking like a dim moon.
Yep... fact is, we'd probably all be better off if all the security theatre performances got bad reviews and had short runs.. because there will always be SOME people who believe in it and act accordingly -- even people you'd think would be smart enough to know better.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a closetful of such stuff... one of the problems I've run into with old small HDs, is that newer mobos won't recognise them at all. So if you need to mess with old storage, it doesn't hurt to keep that old 386 board, after all it doesn't eat much.
One problem I've run into, is that VLB stuff that sits around doing nothing... DIES. It was working when it went into The Closet, but is dead as a doornail next time I try to use it. I've had this happen enough times that I've lost all faith in old VLB stuff. :(
Oddity that came my way... a VLB SCSI card. Only one I've ever seen!
Excellent distinction between and archive and a backup. Thanks for putting it so clearly!
Yeah, if you filter out all the foreground, that would make the background more obvious... I wasn't unaware of the foreground stuff, tho. It was a fun and interesting state, regardless.
I tend to be more aware of microshit than most folks, tho (maybe goes with being a supertaster, having a perfect ear, and being sensitive to more colours than normal -- so overall, a hyperaware nervous system) -- frex, I notice stuff like that if you get the light reflecting into your eyes just right, you can see your own retina (fundus, blood vessels, and all) as reflected off the back of the lens. And that you can readily see nuclear and other structures in the cellular debris that floats around in your eyes. (I've got one string of such debris that's been there since I was a kid... have watched it deteriorate over the years.) Being ridiculously aware of my sleeptime surroundings, to the chagrin of that spider, I suppose goes with the territory.
I've never had tetris dreams, tho I know people who do. My DOOM dreams come in two types: DOOM in Real Life, and "inside a level" -- always the same level, which is MONSTROUS HUGE and I've never "finished" it, tho I know my way around most of it by now. Funny how you have to learn the layout even when your own brain created it!
I always look like the Doomguy in my dreams, and I never get hit :)
Another peculiar sleep state: sometimes I can tell that one chunk of my brain has more or less "gone to sleep" even tho I'm up and around and interacting with people, etc. If it happens, it'll always be around 8pm, which would be one "sleep unit" prior to my normal first sleep cycle (a little after 10pm).
Conversely, if I get woke up, frex by an emergency phone call in the middle of the night, I'll proceed to give perfectly good advice despite that I can tell part of my brain isn't online yet. It's as if only the parts that need to be awake can be arsed to do so.
Sleep is a complex state, for sure, and it's not nearly so clearcut as "awake" or "asleep". That dreams are influenced by TV... well, most kids have a show they feel like they want to live inside of. For my generation, that usually meant Star Trek -- as escapist as you could get at the time. Is it any wonder that B/W viewing becomes a B/W dream?
Well, we know who's going to be The Target today, don't we? ;)
I dreamed in B/W til 10 years after we got a colour TV (when I was 16), and I always attrib'd that to growing up with a B/W TV. I suspect how your dreams are affected by what real-life influences depends a lot on what's important to your life, and how your brain processes it. To me, TV and dreams were both an escape; that one paralleled the other shouldn't be surprising. Now, I have mostly DOOM dreams -- the escapism I most enjoy in Real Life is there in dreams too. :)
Thanks, you two, I remember all that, and now I feel really old ;)
Now I'm off to drag our first B/W TV (from 1953) in from the garage. Maybe it still works!!!
I grew up with B/W TV. I dreamed in B/W from the time I was a little kid, until about 10 years after we got a colour TV, when I was 16. I've always attributed having B/W dreams to growing up with a B/W TV.
I've had those, but immediately assumed it was just "half" of REM sleep, so no panic.
However, if I try to physically fight the state, my heartrate skyrockets -- so I suspect nighttime heart attacks are often side effects of the state in folks with heart conditions. I've also had the unpleasantness of being in an awkward position so breathing is difficult -- one wonders about the implications of that!
Also, it won't end so long as I'm resisting -- best thing to do is relax and it'll go away in a few minutes.
Sometimes the state has started with my eyes open. If I close them, I can't reopen my eyes til it's over.
I've found that the state can be induced -- in my case, if my brain is following three different trains of thought at once, while on the edge of sleep. I've learned to recognise when it's about to slip over into sleep paralysis, and interrupt myself, since it's not exactly fun.
Something related that happened often when I was a kid, but almost never as an adult: a hyperawareness state, where I can feel each individual thread in the sheets, can feel/hear my blood moving, etc. This is NOT accompanied by paralysis, and I'm functionally awake, but I think it's probably a partial sleep state.
As to the nominal topic -- we had only B/W TV til I was 16. I dreamed in B/W until about 10 years after we got a colour TV, and I've always attributed that to the fact of growing up with B/W TV. However, when I had a B/W TV again for several years in the 1980s, I did not revert to dreaming in B/W, nor have I dreamed in monochrome since I began dreaming in colour.
The first dream I can remember, I was 5 years old, and it was in colour but wasn't a "real" dream -- more like being in the middle of multiple lightning flashes. I thought of it as a "nightmare" because being in bright colours made it so different, tho it wasn't actually scary.
The majority of memorable/fun dreams I have now are set in some variant of DOOM. Since I still think this is the only game worth playing, I have no complaint. :)
I'm a very light sleeper... one time I dreamed that a spider was building a web attached to my nose. Woke up and guess what, some idiot spider HAD built a web between the ceiling and my nose. WTF?!!
Remember the stories discussed hereabouts, regarding printers and copiers that put a unique "signature" on each piece of paper they print out?
One of the comments under the story struck me as "coming to a country near you" and increasingly technologically feasible:
"Soon, we'll need a "door-pass" when leaving our homes"
If the next generation can be convinced to accept mandatory microchipping, the "door pass" step is easy.
I know someone who got mad and yelled at a mass-transit-dept. phone drone, and as a result got hauled into court for "making terrorist threats". For losing his temper against the obstinacy of a bureaucrat. Anyone here who hasn't ever done that?? No? Congrats, we're all "terrorists".
Occurs to me that in such case, there's no need whatever for any changes in the system -- just use the already-elected State Assembly and State Senate members, which are roughly apportioned per this "30,000" site's notions, or close enough.
What? Your State Senate and State Assembly aren't competent to run the state, let alone the nation? You begin to see the problem, yes??
A wise AC says,
=========
Why is that a crime when you shouldn't have been arrested in the first place?
If you aren't in court for the act they arrested you for, resisting arrest shouldn't be there.
========
Absolutely. But now it's all about having good conviction stats, not about justice. And if you can always get SOME conviction, even if not for the original purported crime... your high stats stay intact.
Actually, I had those thoughts after reading info on some of the court cases referenced in the arguments against CA Prop 6. Sometimes it happens to innocent people. About half the time the dog handler is out of line and there was no reason to release the dog at all. The courts seem to find either way according to whether the judge thinks ALL "resisting arrest" is bad, not whether the person was reasonably defending themselves.
See, I used to think resisting arrest, and defending yourself against the cops during an arrest, was (almost) always bad. Now... I've come to believe that often as not, you're fully justified, as in today's environment the cops are often out of line, sometimes radically so. Did you see the case where the cops broke into the mayor's house, cuffed him, and shot his two dogs, on a MISPLACED SUSPICION that he'd received drugs via an anonymous package delivery??
Heh... there is that...
But these laws are not used that way. They're used to guarantee that even if there is NO evidence of any other crime, the cops can ALWAYS get a conviction thanks to this secondary law. CA Prop 6 is an example of that (see my previous post).
Some sort of wholly anonymous remailer seems in order... perhaps one where everyone uses the same email address, and email is only routed to your box if there's an appropriate flag in the subject, or as a suffix to the username (akin to the "name+place@wherever.com" trick)
Conversely, a single-use email address randomizer, akin to the throwaway addresses generated by mypacks.net (https://www.mypacks.net/dea/DEARegistration.do)
Rather than repeat myself... http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=996987&cid=25394833
It's about ALWAYS having something they can use to get a conviction, even if there is NO other evidence of a crime.
I've noticed a huge increase in the "we'll get you one way or another" type of laws ever since private industry got hold of the prison system. D'ya think there just might be some lobbying and conflict of interest there, hmmmm??
Example: CA Prop 6, on this November's ballot, would make it a felony to fail to register with police if you're a gang member. (For this post, we'll ignore the fact that it's unconstitutional as it violates the right of freedom of assembly.) Now, what good is such a law? It means that if you get picked up on suspicion, but there is NO EVIDENCE that you committed a crime, they can still get you if you're an "unregistered" gang member.
An existing law makes it a felony to "injure" or "interfere with" a police dog "in pursuit of its duty". So if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, a cop sics his dog on you, and you quite reasonably defend yourself against that dog (who clearly wants to rip your arm off) by giving the dog a swift kick, you've just committed a felony, EVEN THO UNTIL THAT MOMENT YOU HAD COMMITTED NO CRIME.
Recent laws are full of crap like that. Cue Ayn Rand....
Couldn't say for sure, but it does keep a room cool if you hang it in the window to block out sunlight.
Agreed; I'll be a lot more forgiving of an early version than of what is nominally a mature version.
Furthermore, if I later find out the company essentially lied to me by calling v1.0 vSomethingMature.x, that will quite destroy my confidence in the company's honesty.
The downsides definitely outweigh the potential to fool a few people into believing it's a mature product.
I have a bunch of old silver-type xray film, some of which is about as black as it ever gets and is the old thick type. It worked pretty well for taking film-camera photos thru binoculars during an eclipse back in 1979 (yes it's that old). It's a good deal darker than welding lenses, but I don't think I'd want to stare thru it long-term, regardless :)
Thanks, both very interesting. Especially to we who point at the sun when folks mention "global warming" :)
Other correlations:
When sunspot activity is at max, we see "white hair condition" in black- or brown-coated animals -- it's caused by a fungus that lives in the hair follicles. It produces a frosting or spotting effect, which is temporary in dogs, but permanent in horses and cats (and I believe also in cattle). Research at Colorado State University College of Vet Med, from about 35-40 years ago, pegged the fungus, but so far I seem to be the only one who's noticed it peaks with the sunspot cycle.
Trash bamboo (the crap you see growing in ditches in California) blooms only about once a decade. I've seen it happen twice in the past 24 years -- approximately in tune with high sunspot activity.
I'd guess there are plenty of other such small correlations in biological activity, but which generally go unnoticed.
I'm curious as to whether fully exposed xray film would do the job. It sure doesn't let much light through -- the sun winds up looking like a dim moon.
Yep... fact is, we'd probably all be better off if all the security theatre performances got bad reviews and had short runs .. because there will always be SOME people who believe in it and act accordingly -- even people you'd think would be smart enough to know better.