Maybe they'll actually make a Master of Magic 2 as well...oooh...*drool.*
Sadly there is a 'sort of' follow-up to MoM (one of the best games ever). The Age of Wonders series is effectively the sequles to MoM. I recently picked up Age of Wonders II, and it is very MoM like in the way the game play works. You are again a wizard controling an army, turn based strategy, spell casting and research and graphics remenicent of MoM. On the whole its almost a great follow-up to MoM.
So why do I say almost? Well, to begin with you no longer have the ability to choose your race. No more playing Dark Elves. You are a human wizard trying to solve the worlds problems by conquering the multiverse. Plus you are a little goddie two-shoes. Was it just me or was there something enjoyable about ransacking a city, murdering its population then building a city for your own race on its ashes? Secondly, and the biggest atrocity, the game is now level based. Its not the huge world that you can crush beneath your boot type game anymore. You are stuck playing levels and trying to acheive objectives. Its just not as fun anymore. They have taken a great game idea and killed it by trying to put a story in it.
I realize that most newer games are these huge productions, with high budgets and paid script/story writters. But I wonder if its a good thing? Sure, its occasionanly nice to have a bit of story to tie the violence together, but the Master of Magic/Orion games didn't need it. You were a warlord out to conquer the worlds/galaxy, that was enough. Now get the story out of my way and let me get on about the business crushing my enemies.
I just hope MoO 3 is as good as MoO 2 was. I spent countless hours finding new and unique was to rule the galaxy, and am looking forward to doing it again.
Well, since you made me remember it, I'll share.
Back in high-school autoshop we had a computer for tech-manuals. Of course greasy fingers and keyboards are a problem. But, some inventive person had come up with a solution, a plastic key cover. Which we all called:
A keyboard condom.
Sticky key problem solved.
Take a read though the article. They actually said that it was resistant to bodily fluids.
From the article: "If you masturbate in the bathtub, that's part of the idea -- even though it doesn't say it in the promotional material," Mohanraj said. "If you get distracted, it's not so bad to drop the book in the bathtub."
Mohanraj said the book's pages withstand not only bath water, but also bodily fluids and sex oils. Wine, however, will stain the pages.
So now if you shoot on your porn you can wash it off, and the pages won't get stuck together. Teenagers everywhere rejoice!
Someone please tell me, why there was actually research money sink into this?
Why are explosions in space circular and not spherical?
Because hollywood special effects departments don't think spherical explosions are impressive enough. They want more of a visual effect.
As for real explosions in space, I don't see why they wouldn't be mostly spherical in nature, perhaps elliptical. If a non-rotating body blew up in space I would expect to see a sphere. Might get a bit deformed due to structural weaknesses in an object, some parts would blow out faster, which, if shaped right might give the whole ring thingy. For example, the Death Star(the first one) might have split apart along the trench, which may have acted as a shape charge causing the ring effect. Though if you consider a non-enclosed explosive going off in a weightless enviroment, I can't see anything that would cause a shape like that. There's nothing compressing the expanding gas. It should expand uniformally.
Rotating bodies would probably get a flatened sphere, as the rotational interia might cause the matter farthest from the axis of rotation to be ejected slightly faster.
and just for fun why do space captains always take off their shirts?
Because, the true sign of how good a captian is, is the number of hot alien space babes he has slept with. And the best way to attract one of those is for the captain to take off his shirt.
If all you're after is deterrence, just get a knife. A great, big, "That's not a knife. This is a knife." kind of knife.
No, the ideal weapon for home deterence is a pump action shotgun. Thanks to the media, just about everyone knows the distictive sound of a round being chambered, they also have a good idea of what 00 buck will do to someone at 5 feet. Its a great weapon for home defence. First and foremost, you chamber a round, at this point most of your criminals are going to shit a brick and run. Those dumb enough to stay are going to be in for a rough time of it. With a good shotgun at 10 to 20 feet, you're gonna get around a 1 foot spread pattern, so 'close' is good enough. Also, you're not likely to have any blow through. The pellets will stop in whatever they hit first, unless it is really flimsy, or close enough that the pellets are still all together.
Really there are two problems with firearms and home defence.
1. Properly identifying a target. If you're not sure don't shoot. This is why the police use a flashlight in conjunction with a firearm, it lets you see a target, before you shoot. I would recommend to anyone using a gun, have a flashlight as well. If you are using a hand gun, put the light in your off-hand. If its a rifle, attach the flashlight to the rifle, that way you light something up, and then can make a proper decsion on whether to shoot or not.
2. Not firing when you should. This would probably help out with those people that get shot by their own guns. If you find a criminal in your house, shoot. Don't think about it, once you identify them as not being a friendly, shoot, shoot again, put a third bullet in them, and then ask them who they are. And if they make any sort of movements put a few more rounds in them, they are in your house trying to rob or kill you, or worse. There is nothing wrong morally, or legally in defending your home and family.
While I agree that a knife can be a good weapon, and it does have that whole large phalic intimidation factor, a gun gives you a range advantage. This is pretty much the whole advantage to having a gun, a good handgun will give you up to 50 meters of effective range, plenty in a house. Up close, it only has a slight speed advantage, and even then, its so directional that it can be a problem. A slashing knife, in comparison, covers a good arc, higer probability of a hit. And unless you are good with one you shouldn't be stabbing, if you're not trained with a knife, stabbing amounts to asking the person to take the knife away from you.
Lastly, if you are going to have a gun, you should at least be responsible about it. Take the time to learn to use the weapon, go out shooting with it, its fun and a good way to learn to use and respect it. On the whole, I do belive in gun ownership, but I also belive that there should be some sort of licensing process for the gun owners. Make it so that any person, who has not been convicted of a felony, can carry a loaded and conceled weapon, provided that they have been though a gun training class, and passed a written and practical test (kinda like a drivers license.)
IF people can believe that millions of abductees are lying why then is it illogical to believe our government may have faked the moon landings?
You actually inspired a journal entry for me, you can read my response to this statement here
To this day no other country has put a man on the moon
Why bother, all anyone cared about was being first, after that its a matter of pure science. Which, sadly, tends to get ignored by a lot of countries, including the US, we sent a few more because we had the money and technology to do it, but that dried up. As for other countries, they have two choices, either A) Start a moon program, send people to the moon, and spend billions of dollars, or B) Ask NASA if they can borrow a sample or two, pay a few hundred thousand and they can run all the tests they want. Sending someone back is not a practical way to spend money when there is little more they would get from the expeince compared to working with NASA.
To this day we havent went back to the moon, and the timing is suspcious.
The timing was all politics. The Soviets had just given the US a black eye by launching Sputnik before we got into space. Next, Yari Gragrin became the first man to orbit the earth, and got back alive. Then they pushed a cosmonaut out an airlock and got him back in one piece, before we did a space walk. NASA and the US was being beating by their cold war enemy. So JFK gave his moon comitment speech, and we dumped tons of money into it. Plus we got a lucky break when the Soviets couldn't scale their rockets up to do a manned moon shot. Also, the Soviets were starting to face a bit of an economic collapse in their country, once we won, we didn't need to keep pushing to beat them, so we let it go after that.
I'm not saying we couldnt do it, but we have every right to be skeptical of the moon landings, just like we have every right to be skeptical of the roswell incident.
I agree, skepticism is a good thing. But this idea just requires way too much of it. There's just too much evidence to support the moon landings. The rocks have been examind numerous times by real geologists who claim that they are non-terrestrial in orgin, and didn't go through a meteror type entry. Of all of the people involved in the moon shot, no one has come forward to say it was a hoax. And with the thousands of people involved in the project, no one ever slipped and let out the secret? The public knew about the existance of the stealth fighter well before it was made public. All of the photographic evidenvce of the hoax wasn't noticed for 30 years until a tech writter who left Rocketdyne in a huff (in '63) noticed them. I'm sorry, its all too much of a strech.
The government lies when it benifits them to do so.
They also, can, and do pull off some pretty amazing technological feats. Also, which would have really been more difficult, go to the moon. Or, get a couple thousand people to put on the biggest hoax in history, and have no-one let it slip.
However, your willingness to dismess out of hand the, shall we call it, intuition, of someone who is clearly at least educated both in the anatomy of hearing and the signals-processing fundamentals, is just as baseless.
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
This guy did little more than quote a college biology book, and scan the pictures to create a web site. On first reading the article I thought to myself, "funny, it doesn't feel like April first."
Also, even if we give this guy the benefit of doubt for a moment, there is still nothing to worry about. When was the last time you listened to MP3's and/or video games in a completely soundless environment for an extended period of time? Last few times I did it, I was at home with the refidgerator humming away, a few computer fans whirring, my chair creaking occasionally, simply put, I had lots of background noise for my ears to filter out, without my speakers adding to it. Sure, I would love to put a sensory depravation tank around my computer when playing Thief, it can really blow yuor concentration when your roomate bursts out in laughter 3 feet away from you while reading his email. But, I don't have one, and so am bombarded with small, often inaudiable sounds.
If I were a betting man, I would confidently bet you were right. But just the same, I hope a few members of the medical community (I think this would take a background in neurolobiology/cog. sci/audiology) see this, and at least consider it. You could probably devise a relatively inexpensive animal study or two that could safely close off this kind of speculation.
There are far better things for that money to be spent researching. Don't waste it on junk like this.
I don't think they are going after the people that just rant about nothing in general. The people they go after, are the ones that reveal company secrets, or who say things that would have gotten them fired anyway.
Take for example, the lady who got fired for blasting her co-workers in her blog. Sure it was thinly veiled, but it would seem that her intent was obvious enough for her managers to catch. Now, if I were to do something similar on dead trees, write derogatory comments about my co-workers and start passing it out, if my company caught wind of it, they would probably dump me as being a disgruntled worker, or "not a teamplayer" as the jargon goes. Why should it beng on the internet be any different, its still distributing derogatory comments about your co-workers. You are making a problem of yourself, and they are going to fire you.
As for posting hateful stuff, at least in the US, its still allowed. I've not bothered to check but I have a feeling that there is something like a neonazi.com out there calling for the extermination of the Jews. And I'd expect the KKK and Black Panthers to have websites. So, you can still get away with that. Though again, your company may take a dim view of your personal beliefs, and may look for a way to "right-size" you out of a job.
Slanderous, is a bit more different. Those do tend to be tracked down, as they should be. Though you have to prove that it is actually slander, and not just a statement opinion about a person.
And lastly, you have the posting of comapny information, and/or secrets. This is going to get you canned, and possibly sued, as it should. You signed a contract with your employer, you breach it you are on the hook. Sure, its in your journal, but its a journal that you have specifically made publicly accessable, and you know it.
I don't feel any sympathy for the people that gat nailed for putting stuff in thier blog that should not have been there. If you want to write about this sort of stuff, do it in a dead tree journal, and don't pass it around. If you are going to put it on the web, then you need to be a bit more responsible about what you say. Yes, you have the right to free-speech, that doesn't mean that your employer has to like what you say, and if you signed an NDA with them and you break it, well, sucks to be you.
However, if you were going to go that route (ie running wires), it'd still be cheaper and more effective just to buy a Tuner card and send whatever to your TV via Composite or Svideo.
One problem with running composite video cables, distance. I was looking at doing something like this a while back. I have a GForce4, with the TV-Out port. And I was thinking that if I would do a cable run from my computer room to the TV, I could call up the movie files on my PC and watch them on the TV. I did a rough guesstemate on the distance, and figureed that for a proper run (up the wall, across the attic, and back down the wall next to the TV) I would need between 150 to 200 feet. Probably towards the 200 end just to have some slack, and to provide for extra cable in case the cats chewed on one of the ends. Of course, knowing that distance can be a killer in networking, I assumed that video signals might have a problem in that area too. After some research, I discovered that anything over 30' for a composite signal was pushing it. There were some really nice low impedence cables for sale that were 100' but the prices were astonomical. In the end I just let the idea go.
Now, with this sort of box comming out, I have hope for the project once again, though its still not quite what I would want. This type of thing would be great if they would integrate a record function with it. I imagine that we will eventually see a set-top box capable of playing media off a PC, though a network connection (doesn't need to be wireless, I don't mind doing a CAT-5 run) and being able to turn around and record a show directly to your PC, again through a network link.
Re:Pretend this works well, for a moment...
on
Got Sleep?
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Considering that this is intended for military use, I imagine that there would be a desire to stay awake, even if it does take a little time off your life. Since the alternative might just be dying right then and there.
I agree that in the civilian sector it might not be such a great thing. I actually enjoy sleeping, sure there are times I fight it for one reason or another, but on the whole, I like the feeling of lying down and slowly drifting off. But, were I a soldier, hiding in a foxhole in the middle of a war zone, you sure as hell can bet that I would be doing everything I could to keep my eyes open.
As with every other law, I'm sure the lobbyists will make sure that we'll still get our fair share of calls from "legitamized" companies.
Of course they aren't going to stop all unsolicited calls, they don't have the authority. They only have authority over certain areas. Specifically, they don't have the power to stop political telemarketers, its outside their domain. Financial institutions are probably outside their influence as well. So cut them some slack, at least they are trying to move in the right direction. Its going to be a case of small steps to get this madness stopped, and it will never be brought to a complete halt, but it would be nice to stop some of it.
First, you are right, there is little evidence to support a logical conclusion. I think this is the reason that there is still so much debate about this, its an emotional issue, based on little more than opinion.
That being out of the way, I'll provide a bit of couterpoint to your analogy.
In fact, if you carried a gun in your pocket, and a criminal stuck a gun in your face on the street, that gun is going to do you very little good, because his finger and that bullet can move faster than your arm. This is why I think the argument that owning a gun is good for self defense is ridiculous.
Ok, you're right, in this particular case, I'm screwed. If I'm smart I hand over my wallet and call the police. But there is another dimension that is being missed here. What about other people on the street? Said criminal pulls a gun, I stand there hoping to not get shot, but if there are say two or three other people around, and they have guns, they might just feel inclined to pull thier guns and point them at the criminal. Creating a bit of a standoff.
Now, I am going to go out on a bit of a limb here, and claim that criminals tend to be selfish. I don't think that this is a big strech. So, is that criminal going to decide to go down in a blaze of gunfire, and still not get my wallet, or is he going to try and get out of the situation alive? I think that the criminal might tend towards the second option.
The idea isn't always about defending myself, it also about defending society as a whole. Given the above situation from the witness standpoint, you bet I'm going to get involved if I have a gun.
I don't think that your example is much of a reason to say that gun ownership of self defense is ridiculous. Its an extreme case, and assumes a whole bunch of factors (as does my counter example) one of the reasons that arguing by example/analogy is really a bad way to argue. In the end I think we're stuck with the statement that...There are no good statistics that prove or disprove this... Its really the only thing we have any good evidence to support.
Other than that, we have our opinions, which are, in this case different.
Also, there is the question if whether or not the military will follow orders. One of the problems with turning the US military against the US people is that you have a bunch of soldiers who would be ordered to do things that they don't agree with. Do you really think every pilot in the USAF would be up to cluster bombing US citizens? I don't think so, I think, its more likely that there would be a split in the US military, if it came down to civil war. You would probably end up with both sides holding some of the neat-o high tech weapons, plus a lot of people fighting in the good old fashioned street to street methods. This is one of the reasons I support gun ownership, so, in the unlikely event that the US government becomes overtly opressive, I can at least fight back. Sure, the odds would be stacked against me, and those like me, but its better than nothing. "Give me liberty or gove me death." wasn't it?
Many people downlaod music that they would never buy and end up liking it and then buy the artists CD. The trading of music over the Net has greatly increased the different types of music that a person listens too. To bad the RIAA doesnt trust the studies that say this is true.
I have no doubt that they know this is true, and I am sure it scares the hell out of them. Consider for a moment one of the implications of people hearing more/different types of music. I don't think it takes a leap of logic to conclude that some of the bands a person likes/buys are from independent labels, or direct from the artist. And the more independednt artists' CDs people buy, the less money the RIAA/Major Labels get. Also, if people start listening to non-RIAA stuff, the pop/recycled crap bands probably won't sell as well.
Don't fool yourself, the RIAA et al. know exactly what the score is on P2P networks, they are not stupid, they have been making billions by spoon feeding the masses the same crap over and over again. The last thing they want you to do is start looking at new/different artists. They want you to listen to a Clear Channel radio station and have the newest RIAA backed artist's songs drilled into you. This is why the content companies hate the 'net, and want to control it, to control you. They want to control all of the music and information reaching you, to control your thoughts.
They could have educated people about both systems, and let people choose. Within a few decades the imperial system could be done away with quite easily. But no, it has to be shoved down our throaghts in almost no time at all!
I'm not so sure about this, I know that as I was going through school in the US, we were taught both sets of units. In some ways there was more concentration on the metric system than on the Imperial system. e.g. We covered more of the units. Even still, I find that I use the Imperial system for everything. I stand 6'2", or 1.9m, guess which one I use? If a country is going to switch its going to have to be forced upon the populous, otherwise they just aren't going to do it. The question that will be asked is, why? What is the big gain for all the trouble? The average US citizen isn't going to see the base 10 thing as a big advantage. Please tell me, other than that what is the gain for the average citizen? International trade, Joe Six-pack barely recognizes the difference between another country and another state, he's not going to care about that. Sadly, at this point the Imperial system is so ingrained that I don't expect that it will be done away with before the US collapses.
As for trying to base a system on a non-arbitrary value, I don't think its going to be practical. Take a look at what are currently used for the basis of the metric system. The meter is based on the velocity of light in a vaccum. How many of us here have the technical ability and the equipment to reproduce that? Anyone? Buller? Well then, what about the second? Ok, where did I put that Cesium sample? Now lets start counting... 1 2 oh $#!^ I think I missed a few occilations. In the end we are just going to use devices that get close enough. The only place that you might see anything approching accuracy in the context of these units is in a lab. For the world at large, close is good enough (how big around is that gift tube, well its about 3 inches across, pi * D, call it 9 inches.) In the end just pick an arbitrary point of reference, measure it to a sickening degree, and then make close copies of it to distribute. Also, when you pick a point of refernce, make it a value that is useful to the average person. I could measue the distance to the grocery store in parsecs (a nice based on physics unit) but it just isn't practical. Kilometers, not a bad choice, but neither is miles.
First, for soundproofing the easiest method would be to place the sound source and the hot/cold plates in a "double, hollow walled box" evacuate most of the air between the hollow walls. This leaves no way for the sound waves to propogate outside the cooling unit. The cooling effect takes place outside of the hollow walled box because the fridge will still presumably circulate a fluid (which has absorbed heat in the refrigerator box through the cooling unit and back to the fridge/freezer. So there's wouldn't be a sound source even when the refridgerator is opened. Then put a sound sensor outside the box that shuts down the fridge if the vacumn fails and the sound rises above a certain level.
I actually came to the same conclusion, but ran into one problem with it: The heat exchanger. At some point the heat exchanger is going to have to contact the metal plates in the sound tube. Thermodynamics being what they are, the most efficent way for the cooled metal plates to suck heat out is going to be through conduction with the fluid (possibly through a interum medium, such as a heat sink). Just cooling the metal plates and waiting for radiation to transfer the heat through a near vaccum is going to be slow, very slow.
So now we have a heat exchanger, contacting the plates in the sound tube, the exchanger and contained fluid (if they use one) come into contact with both the air and the rest of the the fridge. making for one nice sounding board.
On the upshot though, you could use nylon fasteners to mount the exchanger system, thus isolating it a bit, and also a bit of insulation around the heat exchanger, except where it must be exposed, could go a long way to damping the sound. Also, as the article mentioned the system uses a gas under pressure to propagate the sound at the desired level, so even if there is some vibration transfered out through the heat exchange system, it may not generate much more noise than a current fridge.
I agree that trying to outlaw something because its annoying is silly. But that's not what this is about, at least in my mind.
I've seen those ads(before I switched to Mozilla). And, even being a somewhat savvy computer user, they gave me pause for half a second. It looked very much like a windows warning. Of course, after a quick scan of the text I realized that it was just and ad. For someone like myself, and I assume most of the slashdot crowd, its easy to recoginze the messages as bogus. On ther other hand you have people like my girlfriend, who uses her computer to play games and get email. She doesn't know much about windows errors, and when she sees one, like most average end users, she clicks OK. Its people like this that will click on one of these things, and suddenly have that damn purple gorrilla in thier system tray. (Or in my g/f's case, she did it on my system.)
This is why we have laws that ban deceptive advertising, it can trick people into doing something that they would not do if they had been properly informed. Now, I expect that a large portion of readers are at this point thinking, "well those 1users deserve what they get" this is bullshit. Most people are not experts on computers, they have no need to be, and it shouldn't be required of them. To give a real world analogy, how would you like to have your mom walk in to get her car's oil changed and the mechanic tells her she also needs a new front differental, since the current one is in pretty bad shape. Of course he can install one for $200 in about an hour. If she does it, is she just a 'luser' who should have known better? Or is the mechanic a rotten thief that is about to get a visit from the BAR?
Just because we use a technology, doesn't mean we should have to be an expert in it. We have way too much of it hanging around for any one person to know every last detail about all of it. We rely on those people that are experts to help us when we can't help ourselves. And we rely on the government to enforce some standards in the way businesses treat us. The whole point of government is the protection of the governed. Which brings us my last point, why isn't it the FTC nailing these people?
In my experience it's easier to backup and restore Linux based systems. Fair enough with Windows you can backup the registry hives but that's a lot trickier than just copying a few text files. When Windows NT/2k/XP won't boot (BSOD on bootup) you're often up a creek without a paddle. At least with Linux you can get the system up with a bootable CD or boot floppy.
Actually, this is just a case of knowing what you are doing with a Win2K system, and a bit of planning in advance.
The pre-planning comes in by installing the recovery console on the Win2K server (Start-Run, "f:\I386\winnt32.exe/cmdcons", Next-Next-Couple more Next's-Finish). Or, if you missed that step, boot off the Win2K server CD choose Repair, Recovery Console. Login, and disable the offending drivers. You can even replace corrupted DLLs, etc. I've been able to bring hosed systems back from the dead pretty quick. I've even managed to switch a system from the multi-processor kernel to the single processor kernal manually, if you haven't tried yet, its a pain in the neck. (The why behind this story is longer than I want to post.)
Though since I am a big fan of regular backups, and system imaging (ala Power Quest Drive Image) I will often skip the whole re-build/fixing process and just dump an image of the system on it from a time when it was clean. Restore backups, install patches, did, done, fininshed. But, the option for recovery is there, you just have to know what you are doing with the system. (Where have I heard that before?)
The issue isn't one of what things are hypothetical possibilities, rather what is specifically coded into the laws of the United States today
I've only had a chance to skim through the new laws, and am not very good at translating legaleese, can you provide a specific portion of the legislation that would allow the government to come and shoot you, without any recourse?
...according to the deputy director of the FBI, the interference by an oil man who is also president led directly to the worst terrorist attack in US history.
While I will grant that a president shoudn't go about stopping investigations for the purposes of profit, I think you are making a leap in logic here that is not really supportable. Yes, Bush may have insisted that the Bin Laden family investigation be halted; however, this does not mean that he caused the attacks, or thier success. First, the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia had already distanced themselves from Osama. Second, there is no garantee that continuing the investigation would have stopped the attacks. The US is a rather open society, it allows people to come and go mostly at will. There are also a number of people that are willing to die to attack the US. It was really only a matter of time until a terrorist group got lucky and killed a lot of people. Trying to blame this on anyone person is silly. Yes, Bush canceled an investigation that might have helped thwart this particular attack, but we will never know this. Further, the CIA did have information that might have thwarted this attack, but it had not been reviewed properly yet, so again we will never know. What you are doing is pointing out a maybe and trying to use it to assign blame. You seem otherwise logical, so please, get off the Bush bashing bandwagon, yes he's screwed up a couple of things but this is nothing more than an illogical personal attack.
...Further these attacks were used as an excuse to pass the most draconian laws in the history of the country.
I do have to agree with this point. I don't like the way that the government is using the attacks as a way to trample privacy. At this point, we can only hope that in a year or three, when the attacks are further behind, that the Judical branch will re-assert its constitutional powers and duty, and vacate these laws.
Personally, I think the whole Clinton thing was a witch hunt because a freaking blow job is totally irrelevant to his job. Yes, he lied, but that is what would be expected of a gentleman.
Yes, but he lied to a Grand Jury, for most citizens this would be called perjury. But this is really beside the point. And you are right, two wrongs don't make a right.
There are many other things about the Clinton Presidency and his prior Governership which I would much rather see investigated. Like the deaths of *a lot* of the people he was associated with and the evidence of his involvement with the cocaine trade in Arkansas.
Agreed, this is the sort of thing that should have gotten the air time.
For example, I saw a report the other day stating that there was some evidence linking childhood immunizations to the huge increase in autism in this country. I had seen many other such reports previously, mainly in European papers.
Now, the link hasn't been demonstrated absolutely, correlation not being causation and all of that.
The thing that struck me as very suspicious was that no mention whatsoever was made in this report (might have been CNN, but I'm not sure) that one of the riders put into the Homeland Security bill specifically prevents the company who made this vaccination from being sued.
Actually, I was somewhat suprised that CNN would print anything at all. If there isn't a firm link between a problem and a cause then it printing that a link might exist could have a determental effect. One of the problems we have in the US is that the majority of people are sheep, they will blindly follow what the media tells them, and are not usually inclined, or capable, of understanding the difference between causality and commonality. Somthing like this could cause people to try to stop childhood vaccinations, which, may carry an incresed risk of autism, but definatly carries a higher risk of diseases such as polio.
As for not mentioning the rider in the Homeland security act (again, I've not had a chance, if you could point me at the specific clause I would appreciate it.) The reporter may not have known about it. This report was probably written by a journalist specializing in medicine, not in law, and so he/she may not have even known about that particular clause.
As for making informed descions, are you implying that every person should hold a law degree? Because that's what it would truly take for people to know and understand the implications of every law that gets passed. Yes, it would be nice, but it is impractical. This is like arguing that every person that drives a car should be an ASE certified mechanic, if they use a computer, they must hold a BS in Computer Science, etc. There is a point at which we all have to rely on people that should know a certain subject. This is one of the advantages of a Republic, the people elect a person who has the time, drive, and education to fully understand a proposal before codifying it into law. Certainly the system can be abused, and the rise of the two party system doesn't help, though you can vote for anyone if you wish. Also, if I may interject my opinion, term limits on congressmen would help out a lot, by denying someone the chance to build a powerbase, and getting rid of carrer congressmen. But, its about as good as we are going to get. If you don't like how things are going, they start getting your opinion out there. Slashdot is a nice place to start, but it is hardly a widely read forum. You might try things such as letters to the editor of newspapers, maybe even starting your own news site, crying foul in a less than widely public forum isn't going to accomplish much. For an example of how to do this sort of thing, look a Limbaugh, you may not agree with what he has to say (hell, I rarely do and I'm mostly conservative) but he is a good example of how to start and run a sucessful political radio talk program.
I wouldn't say that I totally disagree with your overall point, the govenrment, as it stands, is a bit out of hand. Though I don't think I would quite call it a totalitarian state yet. The simple fact that we are able to discuss this sort of thing publicly seems to indicate otherwise. We are still able to decry our own govenment, and we are still able to try to enact peaceful change in our governemt. I agree that we should be worried about where we are headed, but it something that should be approced in a more thoughtful manner than name calling.
Thank you, I needed that laugh.
By the by, "Dragon Fantasy" is it just me or does that sound like a title to a new themed porn? That was one of the first titles that poped into my head when I saw the info on this merger.
Thanks for the info.
By the by, two other question I've had about these things, if you would be so kind.
1. How big is the storage media in these things? I assume that it is basically a hard drive, how many minutes can you get on one of these things?
2. Can the storage media be upgraded, without adversly affecting the Tivo service?
This brings up another question. Ok, so the Tivo won't record over requested programs with its suggestions. How about the other way around? If I have set a Tivo up to record stuff will it overwrite the suggestions? I realize this may be a bit of a dumb question, but I haven't used one of these units, and I've seen programs woth dumber features.
Great, can we expect 4 hours of FMV in the next Dragon Quest game?
Not only will the next Dragon Quest game have 4 hours of FMVs, there'll be no way to skip the $@#%ing things. Am I the only one that hates sitting through a cut-sceen, getting killed shortly afterwards, before you can save, and then being forced to sit through the damn thing again? Its pretty once or twice, but after that its just annoying.
The other thing that scares the hell out of me with this merger, is that Enix might start to put out that "steam-punk" crap. This is just my opinion, but I'm going to rant about it anyhow, so if you don't want to read it, skip a bit brother.
(Start rant)
What ever happened to good old swords and sorcery fantasy? No technology, no god-damn desert submersable castles (ala FF3, stateside). The only Final Fantasy title that even came close to doing this was the first one, at least the tiny bit of tech in it was truly alien to the world. (mind, I haven't seen all of the ones released in Japan) To this day FF1 is still my favorite of the series. FF2 started getting wierd, FF3 was just too much. I've watched people play 7 and 8 enough to know that I don't want to bother. The series stopped being "fantasy" somewhere in the middle of FF3, and turned more into "sci-fi" with one wierdo, usually the hero, still slinging a sword. Would somone please just shoot the idiot with the sword and be done with it? Afterall, which would you rather have, a magic sword that does shitloads of damage, or a magic mini-gat with each bullet doing shitloads of damage, and no kick. One cuts the enemy open if you can get next to them, the other turns the enemy to hamburger at 100 yards.
(End Rant)
Anyway, I hope that this will lead to more, high quality RPGs. And God willing, they will be more than just eye-candy. I don't care that a game has 5 million hours of FMV with a quadrillion polygons for a character's butt hair, if the game play sucks then the game sucks. Yes, those Final Fantasy magic animations are nice, but it would be nice if the story wasn't just a re-hash of the last Final Fantasy. (Town/Family killed, start self discovery, find other chacaters, more self discovery, have conflicting love interests, get close to figuring self out, discover some relationship to "Big Enemy", play through self doubt sequence, discover mentor, resolve love interest when somone makes a sacrifice, fight "Big Enemy", win for a bit, "Big Enemy" reveals "True Self", get real close to losing, defeat "Big Enemy", listen to "Big Enemy" make inspiring final speech, game end.) That's the plot of almost every FF game after the first. They go for a deep twisting plot, but its the same deep twisting plot every time, no suprises, nothing innovative, just prettier graphics, more FMV, more zeros in the hit points, and longer spell casting sequences. Could we please get a plot that is fresh? Oh well, I'm ranting again, I'll stop.
It would seem that we do carry different views of things. Considering that this is a difference in opinions, not in facts. I think we'll just have to agree that we disagree on this point. I do see you point, and I agree that it is equally valid, I just don't agre with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll have to go back and look at that. Thanks. As usual I didn't read the manual, and probably missed the scenario option when starting.
Maybe they'll actually make a Master of Magic 2 as well...oooh...*drool.*
Sadly there is a 'sort of' follow-up to MoM (one of the best games ever). The Age of Wonders series is effectively the sequles to MoM. I recently picked up Age of Wonders II, and it is very MoM like in the way the game play works. You are again a wizard controling an army, turn based strategy, spell casting and research and graphics remenicent of MoM. On the whole its almost a great follow-up to MoM.
So why do I say almost? Well, to begin with you no longer have the ability to choose your race. No more playing Dark Elves. You are a human wizard trying to solve the worlds problems by conquering the multiverse. Plus you are a little goddie two-shoes. Was it just me or was there something enjoyable about ransacking a city, murdering its population then building a city for your own race on its ashes? Secondly, and the biggest atrocity, the game is now level based. Its not the huge world that you can crush beneath your boot type game anymore. You are stuck playing levels and trying to acheive objectives. Its just not as fun anymore. They have taken a great game idea and killed it by trying to put a story in it.
I realize that most newer games are these huge productions, with high budgets and paid script/story writters. But I wonder if its a good thing? Sure, its occasionanly nice to have a bit of story to tie the violence together, but the Master of Magic/Orion games didn't need it. You were a warlord out to conquer the worlds/galaxy, that was enough. Now get the story out of my way and let me get on about the business crushing my enemies.
I just hope MoO 3 is as good as MoO 2 was. I spent countless hours finding new and unique was to rule the galaxy, and am looking forward to doing it again.
Waterproof keyboards: no sticky keys!
Well, since you made me remember it, I'll share.
Back in high-school autoshop we had a computer for tech-manuals. Of course greasy fingers and keyboards are a problem. But, some inventive person had come up with a solution, a plastic key cover. Which we all called:
A keyboard condom.
Sticky key problem solved.
Take a read though the article. They actually said that it was resistant to bodily fluids.
From the article:
"If you masturbate in the bathtub, that's part of the idea -- even though it doesn't say it in the promotional material," Mohanraj said. "If you get distracted, it's not so bad to drop the book in the bathtub."
Mohanraj said the book's pages withstand not only bath water, but also bodily fluids and sex oils. Wine, however, will stain the pages.
So now if you shoot on your porn you can wash it off, and the pages won't get stuck together. Teenagers everywhere rejoice!
Someone please tell me, why there was actually research money sink into this?
Why are explosions in space circular and not spherical?
Because hollywood special effects departments don't think spherical explosions are impressive enough. They want more of a visual effect.
As for real explosions in space, I don't see why they wouldn't be mostly spherical in nature, perhaps elliptical. If a non-rotating body blew up in space I would expect to see a sphere. Might get a bit deformed due to structural weaknesses in an object, some parts would blow out faster, which, if shaped right might give the whole ring thingy. For example, the Death Star(the first one) might have split apart along the trench, which may have acted as a shape charge causing the ring effect. Though if you consider a non-enclosed explosive going off in a weightless enviroment, I can't see anything that would cause a shape like that. There's nothing compressing the expanding gas. It should expand uniformally.
Rotating bodies would probably get a flatened sphere, as the rotational interia might cause the matter farthest from the axis of rotation to be ejected slightly faster.
and just for fun why do space captains always take off their shirts?
Because, the true sign of how good a captian is, is the number of hot alien space babes he has slept with. And the best way to attract one of those is for the captain to take off his shirt.
If all you're after is deterrence, just get a knife. A great, big, "That's not a knife. This is a knife." kind of knife.
No, the ideal weapon for home deterence is a pump action shotgun. Thanks to the media, just about everyone knows the distictive sound of a round being chambered, they also have a good idea of what 00 buck will do to someone at 5 feet. Its a great weapon for home defence. First and foremost, you chamber a round, at this point most of your criminals are going to shit a brick and run. Those dumb enough to stay are going to be in for a rough time of it. With a good shotgun at 10 to 20 feet, you're gonna get around a 1 foot spread pattern, so 'close' is good enough. Also, you're not likely to have any blow through. The pellets will stop in whatever they hit first, unless it is really flimsy, or close enough that the pellets are still all together.
Really there are two problems with firearms and home defence.
1. Properly identifying a target. If you're not sure don't shoot. This is why the police use a flashlight in conjunction with a firearm, it lets you see a target, before you shoot. I would recommend to anyone using a gun, have a flashlight as well. If you are using a hand gun, put the light in your off-hand. If its a rifle, attach the flashlight to the rifle, that way you light something up, and then can make a proper decsion on whether to shoot or not.
2. Not firing when you should. This would probably help out with those people that get shot by their own guns. If you find a criminal in your house, shoot. Don't think about it, once you identify them as not being a friendly, shoot, shoot again, put a third bullet in them, and then ask them who they are. And if they make any sort of movements put a few more rounds in them, they are in your house trying to rob or kill you, or worse. There is nothing wrong morally, or legally in defending your home and family.
While I agree that a knife can be a good weapon, and it does have that whole large phalic intimidation factor, a gun gives you a range advantage. This is pretty much the whole advantage to having a gun, a good handgun will give you up to 50 meters of effective range, plenty in a house. Up close, it only has a slight speed advantage, and even then, its so directional that it can be a problem. A slashing knife, in comparison, covers a good arc, higer probability of a hit. And unless you are good with one you shouldn't be stabbing, if you're not trained with a knife, stabbing amounts to asking the person to take the knife away from you.
Lastly, if you are going to have a gun, you should at least be responsible about it. Take the time to learn to use the weapon, go out shooting with it, its fun and a good way to learn to use and respect it. On the whole, I do belive in gun ownership, but I also belive that there should be some sort of licensing process for the gun owners. Make it so that any person, who has not been convicted of a felony, can carry a loaded and conceled weapon, provided that they have been though a gun training class, and passed a written and practical test (kinda like a drivers license.)
IF people can believe that millions of abductees are lying why then is it illogical to believe our government may have faked the moon landings?
You actually inspired a journal entry for me, you can read my response to this statement here
To this day no other country has put a man on the moon
Why bother, all anyone cared about was being first, after that its a matter of pure science. Which, sadly, tends to get ignored by a lot of countries, including the US, we sent a few more because we had the money and technology to do it, but that dried up. As for other countries, they have two choices, either A) Start a moon program, send people to the moon, and spend billions of dollars, or B) Ask NASA if they can borrow a sample or two, pay a few hundred thousand and they can run all the tests they want. Sending someone back is not a practical way to spend money when there is little more they would get from the expeince compared to working with NASA.
To this day we havent went back to the moon, and the timing is suspcious.
The timing was all politics. The Soviets had just given the US a black eye by launching Sputnik before we got into space. Next, Yari Gragrin became the first man to orbit the earth, and got back alive. Then they pushed a cosmonaut out an airlock and got him back in one piece, before we did a space walk. NASA and the US was being beating by their cold war enemy. So JFK gave his moon comitment speech, and we dumped tons of money into it. Plus we got a lucky break when the Soviets couldn't scale their rockets up to do a manned moon shot. Also, the Soviets were starting to face a bit of an economic collapse in their country, once we won, we didn't need to keep pushing to beat them, so we let it go after that.
I'm not saying we couldnt do it, but we have every right to be skeptical of the moon landings, just like we have every right to be skeptical of the roswell incident.
I agree, skepticism is a good thing. But this idea just requires way too much of it. There's just too much evidence to support the moon landings. The rocks have been examind numerous times by real geologists who claim that they are non-terrestrial in orgin, and didn't go through a meteror type entry. Of all of the people involved in the moon shot, no one has come forward to say it was a hoax. And with the thousands of people involved in the project, no one ever slipped and let out the secret? The public knew about the existance of the stealth fighter well before it was made public. All of the photographic evidenvce of the hoax wasn't noticed for 30 years until a tech writter who left Rocketdyne in a huff (in '63) noticed them. I'm sorry, its all too much of a strech.
The government lies when it benifits them to do so.
They also, can, and do pull off some pretty amazing technological feats. Also, which would have really been more difficult, go to the moon. Or, get a couple thousand people to put on the biggest hoax in history, and have no-one let it slip.
However, your willingness to dismess out of hand the, shall we call it, intuition, of someone who is clearly at least educated both in the anatomy of hearing and the signals-processing fundamentals, is just as baseless.
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
This guy did little more than quote a college biology book, and scan the pictures to create a web site. On first reading the article I thought to myself, "funny, it doesn't feel like April first."
Also, even if we give this guy the benefit of doubt for a moment, there is still nothing to worry about. When was the last time you listened to MP3's and/or video games in a completely soundless environment for an extended period of time? Last few times I did it, I was at home with the refidgerator humming away, a few computer fans whirring, my chair creaking occasionally, simply put, I had lots of background noise for my ears to filter out, without my speakers adding to it. Sure, I would love to put a sensory depravation tank around my computer when playing Thief, it can really blow yuor concentration when your roomate bursts out in laughter 3 feet away from you while reading his email. But, I don't have one, and so am bombarded with small, often inaudiable sounds.
If I were a betting man, I would confidently bet you were right. But just the same, I hope a few members of the medical community (I think this would take a background in neurolobiology/cog. sci/audiology) see this, and at least consider it. You could probably devise a relatively inexpensive animal study or two that could safely close off this kind of speculation.
There are far better things for that money to be spent researching. Don't waste it on junk like this.
I don't think they are going after the people that just rant about nothing in general. The people they go after, are the ones that reveal company secrets, or who say things that would have gotten them fired anyway.
Take for example, the lady who got fired for blasting her co-workers in her blog. Sure it was thinly veiled, but it would seem that her intent was obvious enough for her managers to catch. Now, if I were to do something similar on dead trees, write derogatory comments about my co-workers and start passing it out, if my company caught wind of it, they would probably dump me as being a disgruntled worker, or "not a teamplayer" as the jargon goes. Why should it beng on the internet be any different, its still distributing derogatory comments about your co-workers. You are making a problem of yourself, and they are going to fire you.
As for posting hateful stuff, at least in the US, its still allowed. I've not bothered to check but I have a feeling that there is something like a neonazi.com out there calling for the extermination of the Jews. And I'd expect the KKK and Black Panthers to have websites. So, you can still get away with that. Though again, your company may take a dim view of your personal beliefs, and may look for a way to "right-size" you out of a job.
Slanderous, is a bit more different. Those do tend to be tracked down, as they should be. Though you have to prove that it is actually slander, and not just a statement opinion about a person.
And lastly, you have the posting of comapny information, and/or secrets. This is going to get you canned, and possibly sued, as it should. You signed a contract with your employer, you breach it you are on the hook. Sure, its in your journal, but its a journal that you have specifically made publicly accessable, and you know it.
I don't feel any sympathy for the people that gat nailed for putting stuff in thier blog that should not have been there. If you want to write about this sort of stuff, do it in a dead tree journal, and don't pass it around. If you are going to put it on the web, then you need to be a bit more responsible about what you say. Yes, you have the right to free-speech, that doesn't mean that your employer has to like what you say, and if you signed an NDA with them and you break it, well, sucks to be you.
However, if you were going to go that route (ie running wires), it'd still be cheaper and more effective just to buy a Tuner card and send whatever to your TV via Composite or Svideo.
One problem with running composite video cables, distance. I was looking at doing something like this a while back. I have a GForce4, with the TV-Out port. And I was thinking that if I would do a cable run from my computer room to the TV, I could call up the movie files on my PC and watch them on the TV. I did a rough guesstemate on the distance, and figureed that for a proper run (up the wall, across the attic, and back down the wall next to the TV) I would need between 150 to 200 feet. Probably towards the 200 end just to have some slack, and to provide for extra cable in case the cats chewed on one of the ends. Of course, knowing that distance can be a killer in networking, I assumed that video signals might have a problem in that area too. After some research, I discovered that anything over 30' for a composite signal was pushing it. There were some really nice low impedence cables for sale that were 100' but the prices were astonomical. In the end I just let the idea go.
Now, with this sort of box comming out, I have hope for the project once again, though its still not quite what I would want. This type of thing would be great if they would integrate a record function with it. I imagine that we will eventually see a set-top box capable of playing media off a PC, though a network connection (doesn't need to be wireless, I don't mind doing a CAT-5 run) and being able to turn around and record a show directly to your PC, again through a network link.
Considering that this is intended for military use, I imagine that there would be a desire to stay awake, even if it does take a little time off your life. Since the alternative might just be dying right then and there.
I agree that in the civilian sector it might not be such a great thing. I actually enjoy sleeping, sure there are times I fight it for one reason or another, but on the whole, I like the feeling of lying down and slowly drifting off. But, were I a soldier, hiding in a foxhole in the middle of a war zone, you sure as hell can bet that I would be doing everything I could to keep my eyes open.
As with every other law, I'm sure the lobbyists will make sure that we'll still get our fair share of calls from "legitamized" companies.
Of course they aren't going to stop all unsolicited calls, they don't have the authority. They only have authority over certain areas. Specifically, they don't have the power to stop political telemarketers, its outside their domain. Financial institutions are probably outside their influence as well. So cut them some slack, at least they are trying to move in the right direction. Its going to be a case of small steps to get this madness stopped, and it will never be brought to a complete halt, but it would be nice to stop some of it.
First, you are right, there is little evidence to support a logical conclusion. I think this is the reason that there is still so much debate about this, its an emotional issue, based on little more than opinion.
...There are no good statistics that prove or disprove this... Its really the only thing we have any good evidence to support.
That being out of the way, I'll provide a bit of couterpoint to your analogy.
In fact, if you carried a gun in your pocket, and a criminal stuck a gun in your face on the street, that gun is going to do you very little good, because his finger and that bullet can move faster than your arm. This is why I think the argument that owning a gun is good for self defense is ridiculous.
Ok, you're right, in this particular case, I'm screwed. If I'm smart I hand over my wallet and call the police. But there is another dimension that is being missed here. What about other people on the street? Said criminal pulls a gun, I stand there hoping to not get shot, but if there are say two or three other people around, and they have guns, they might just feel inclined to pull thier guns and point them at the criminal. Creating a bit of a standoff.
Now, I am going to go out on a bit of a limb here, and claim that criminals tend to be selfish. I don't think that this is a big strech. So, is that criminal going to decide to go down in a blaze of gunfire, and still not get my wallet, or is he going to try and get out of the situation alive? I think that the criminal might tend towards the second option.
The idea isn't always about defending myself, it also about defending society as a whole. Given the above situation from the witness standpoint, you bet I'm going to get involved if I have a gun.
I don't think that your example is much of a reason to say that gun ownership of self defense is ridiculous. Its an extreme case, and assumes a whole bunch of factors (as does my counter example) one of the reasons that arguing by example/analogy is really a bad way to argue. In the end I think we're stuck with the statement that
Other than that, we have our opinions, which are, in this case different.
Also, there is the question if whether or not the military will follow orders. One of the problems with turning the US military against the US people is that you have a bunch of soldiers who would be ordered to do things that they don't agree with. Do you really think every pilot in the USAF would be up to cluster bombing US citizens? I don't think so, I think, its more likely that there would be a split in the US military, if it came down to civil war. You would probably end up with both sides holding some of the neat-o high tech weapons, plus a lot of people fighting in the good old fashioned street to street methods. This is one of the reasons I support gun ownership, so, in the unlikely event that the US government becomes overtly opressive, I can at least fight back. Sure, the odds would be stacked against me, and those like me, but its better than nothing. "Give me liberty or gove me death." wasn't it?
Many people downlaod music that they would never buy and end up liking it and then buy the artists CD. The trading of music over the Net has greatly increased the different types of music that a person listens too. To bad the RIAA doesnt trust the studies that say this is true.
I have no doubt that they know this is true, and I am sure it scares the hell out of them. Consider for a moment one of the implications of people hearing more/different types of music. I don't think it takes a leap of logic to conclude that some of the bands a person likes/buys are from independent labels, or direct from the artist. And the more independednt artists' CDs people buy, the less money the RIAA/Major Labels get. Also, if people start listening to non-RIAA stuff, the pop/recycled crap bands probably won't sell as well.
Don't fool yourself, the RIAA et al. know exactly what the score is on P2P networks, they are not stupid, they have been making billions by spoon feeding the masses the same crap over and over again. The last thing they want you to do is start looking at new/different artists. They want you to listen to a Clear Channel radio station and have the newest RIAA backed artist's songs drilled into you. This is why the content companies hate the 'net, and want to control it, to control you. They want to control all of the music and information reaching you, to control your thoughts.
They could have educated people about both systems, and let people choose. Within a few decades the imperial system could be done away with quite easily. But no, it has to be shoved down our throaghts in almost no time at all!
I'm not so sure about this, I know that as I was going through school in the US, we were taught both sets of units. In some ways there was more concentration on the metric system than on the Imperial system. e.g. We covered more of the units. Even still, I find that I use the Imperial system for everything. I stand 6'2", or 1.9m, guess which one I use? If a country is going to switch its going to have to be forced upon the populous, otherwise they just aren't going to do it. The question that will be asked is, why? What is the big gain for all the trouble? The average US citizen isn't going to see the base 10 thing as a big advantage. Please tell me, other than that what is the gain for the average citizen? International trade, Joe Six-pack barely recognizes the difference between another country and another state, he's not going to care about that. Sadly, at this point the Imperial system is so ingrained that I don't expect that it will be done away with before the US collapses.
As for trying to base a system on a non-arbitrary value, I don't think its going to be practical. Take a look at what are currently used for the basis of the metric system. The meter is based on the velocity of light in a vaccum. How many of us here have the technical ability and the equipment to reproduce that? Anyone? Buller? Well then, what about the second? Ok, where did I put that Cesium sample? Now lets start counting... 1 2 oh $#!^ I think I missed a few occilations. In the end we are just going to use devices that get close enough. The only place that you might see anything approching accuracy in the context of these units is in a lab. For the world at large, close is good enough (how big around is that gift tube, well its about 3 inches across, pi * D, call it 9 inches.) In the end just pick an arbitrary point of reference, measure it to a sickening degree, and then make close copies of it to distribute. Also, when you pick a point of refernce, make it a value that is useful to the average person. I could measue the distance to the grocery store in parsecs (a nice based on physics unit) but it just isn't practical. Kilometers, not a bad choice, but neither is miles.
First, for soundproofing the easiest method would be to place the sound source and the hot/cold plates in a "double, hollow walled box" evacuate most of the air between the hollow walls. This leaves no way for the sound waves to propogate outside the cooling unit. The cooling effect takes place outside of the hollow walled box because the fridge will still presumably circulate a fluid (which has absorbed heat in the refrigerator box through the cooling unit and back to the fridge/freezer. So there's wouldn't be a sound source even when the refridgerator is opened. Then put a sound sensor outside the box that shuts down the fridge if the vacumn fails and the sound rises above a certain level.
I actually came to the same conclusion, but ran into one problem with it: The heat exchanger. At some point the heat exchanger is going to have to contact the metal plates in the sound tube. Thermodynamics being what they are, the most efficent way for the cooled metal plates to suck heat out is going to be through conduction with the fluid (possibly through a interum medium, such as a heat sink). Just cooling the metal plates and waiting for radiation to transfer the heat through a near vaccum is going to be slow, very slow.
So now we have a heat exchanger, contacting the plates in the sound tube, the exchanger and contained fluid (if they use one) come into contact with both the air and the rest of the the fridge. making for one nice sounding board.
On the upshot though, you could use nylon fasteners to mount the exchanger system, thus isolating it a bit, and also a bit of insulation around the heat exchanger, except where it must be exposed, could go a long way to damping the sound. Also, as the article mentioned the system uses a gas under pressure to propagate the sound at the desired level, so even if there is some vibration transfered out through the heat exchange system, it may not generate much more noise than a current fridge.
I agree that trying to outlaw something because its annoying is silly. But that's not what this is about, at least in my mind.
I've seen those ads(before I switched to Mozilla). And, even being a somewhat savvy computer user, they gave me pause for half a second. It looked very much like a windows warning. Of course, after a quick scan of the text I realized that it was just and ad. For someone like myself, and I assume most of the slashdot crowd, its easy to recoginze the messages as bogus. On ther other hand you have people like my girlfriend, who uses her computer to play games and get email. She doesn't know much about windows errors, and when she sees one, like most average end users, she clicks OK. Its people like this that will click on one of these things, and suddenly have that damn purple gorrilla in thier system tray. (Or in my g/f's case, she did it on my system.)
This is why we have laws that ban deceptive advertising, it can trick people into doing something that they would not do if they had been properly informed. Now, I expect that a large portion of readers are at this point thinking, "well those 1users deserve what they get" this is bullshit. Most people are not experts on computers, they have no need to be, and it shouldn't be required of them. To give a real world analogy, how would you like to have your mom walk in to get her car's oil changed and the mechanic tells her she also needs a new front differental, since the current one is in pretty bad shape. Of course he can install one for $200 in about an hour. If she does it, is she just a 'luser' who should have known better? Or is the mechanic a rotten thief that is about to get a visit from the BAR?
Just because we use a technology, doesn't mean we should have to be an expert in it. We have way too much of it hanging around for any one person to know every last detail about all of it. We rely on those people that are experts to help us when we can't help ourselves. And we rely on the government to enforce some standards in the way businesses treat us. The whole point of government is the protection of the governed. Which brings us my last point, why isn't it the FTC nailing these people?
In my experience it's easier to backup and restore Linux based systems. Fair enough with Windows you can backup the registry hives but that's a lot trickier than just copying a few text files. When Windows NT/2k/XP won't boot (BSOD on bootup) you're often up a creek without a paddle. At least with Linux you can get the system up with a bootable CD or boot floppy.
/cmdcons", Next-Next-Couple more Next's-Finish). Or, if you missed that step, boot off the Win2K server CD choose Repair, Recovery Console. Login, and disable the offending drivers. You can even replace corrupted DLLs, etc. I've been able to bring hosed systems back from the dead pretty quick. I've even managed to switch a system from the multi-processor kernel to the single processor kernal manually, if you haven't tried yet, its a pain in the neck. (The why behind this story is longer than I want to post.)
Actually, this is just a case of knowing what you are doing with a Win2K system, and a bit of planning in advance.
The pre-planning comes in by installing the recovery console on the Win2K server (Start-Run, "f:\I386\winnt32.exe
Though since I am a big fan of regular backups, and system imaging (ala Power Quest Drive Image) I will often skip the whole re-build/fixing process and just dump an image of the system on it from a time when it was clean. Restore backups, install patches, did, done, fininshed. But, the option for recovery is there, you just have to know what you are doing with the system. (Where have I heard that before?)
The issue isn't one of what things are hypothetical possibilities, rather what is specifically coded into the laws of the United States today
...according to the deputy director of the FBI, the interference by an oil man who is also president led directly to the worst terrorist attack in US history.
...Further these attacks were used as an excuse to pass the most draconian laws in the history of the country.
I've only had a chance to skim through the new laws, and am not very good at translating legaleese, can you provide a specific portion of the legislation that would allow the government to come and shoot you, without any recourse?
While I will grant that a president shoudn't go about stopping investigations for the purposes of profit, I think you are making a leap in logic here that is not really supportable. Yes, Bush may have insisted that the Bin Laden family investigation be halted; however, this does not mean that he caused the attacks, or thier success. First, the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia had already distanced themselves from Osama. Second, there is no garantee that continuing the investigation would have stopped the attacks. The US is a rather open society, it allows people to come and go mostly at will. There are also a number of people that are willing to die to attack the US. It was really only a matter of time until a terrorist group got lucky and killed a lot of people. Trying to blame this on anyone person is silly. Yes, Bush canceled an investigation that might have helped thwart this particular attack, but we will never know this. Further, the CIA did have information that might have thwarted this attack, but it had not been reviewed properly yet, so again we will never know. What you are doing is pointing out a maybe and trying to use it to assign blame. You seem otherwise logical, so please, get off the Bush bashing bandwagon, yes he's screwed up a couple of things but this is nothing more than an illogical personal attack.
I do have to agree with this point. I don't like the way that the government is using the attacks as a way to trample privacy. At this point, we can only hope that in a year or three, when the attacks are further behind, that the Judical branch will re-assert its constitutional powers and duty, and vacate these laws.
Personally, I think the whole Clinton thing was a witch hunt because a freaking blow job is totally irrelevant to his job. Yes, he lied, but that is what would be expected of a gentleman.
Yes, but he lied to a Grand Jury, for most citizens this would be called perjury. But this is really beside the point. And you are right, two wrongs don't make a right.
There are many other things about the Clinton Presidency and his prior Governership which I would much rather see investigated. Like the deaths of *a lot* of the people he was associated with and the evidence of his involvement with the cocaine trade in Arkansas.
Agreed, this is the sort of thing that should have gotten the air time.
For example, I saw a report the other day stating that there was some evidence linking childhood immunizations to the huge increase in autism in this country. I had seen many other such reports previously, mainly in European papers. Now, the link hasn't been demonstrated absolutely, correlation not being causation and all of that. The thing that struck me as very suspicious was that no mention whatsoever was made in this report (might have been CNN, but I'm not sure) that one of the riders put into the Homeland Security bill specifically prevents the company who made this vaccination from being sued.
Actually, I was somewhat suprised that CNN would print anything at all. If there isn't a firm link between a problem and a cause then it printing that a link might exist could have a determental effect. One of the problems we have in the US is that the majority of people are sheep, they will blindly follow what the media tells them, and are not usually inclined, or capable, of understanding the difference between causality and commonality. Somthing like this could cause people to try to stop childhood vaccinations, which, may carry an incresed risk of autism, but definatly carries a higher risk of diseases such as polio.
As for not mentioning the rider in the Homeland security act (again, I've not had a chance, if you could point me at the specific clause I would appreciate it.) The reporter may not have known about it. This report was probably written by a journalist specializing in medicine, not in law, and so he/she may not have even known about that particular clause.
As for making informed descions, are you implying that every person should hold a law degree? Because that's what it would truly take for people to know and understand the implications of every law that gets passed. Yes, it would be nice, but it is impractical. This is like arguing that every person that drives a car should be an ASE certified mechanic, if they use a computer, they must hold a BS in Computer Science, etc. There is a point at which we all have to rely on people that should know a certain subject. This is one of the advantages of a Republic, the people elect a person who has the time, drive, and education to fully understand a proposal before codifying it into law. Certainly the system can be abused, and the rise of the two party system doesn't help, though you can vote for anyone if you wish. Also, if I may interject my opinion, term limits on congressmen would help out a lot, by denying someone the chance to build a powerbase, and getting rid of carrer congressmen. But, its about as good as we are going to get. If you don't like how things are going, they start getting your opinion out there. Slashdot is a nice place to start, but it is hardly a widely read forum. You might try things such as letters to the editor of newspapers, maybe even starting your own news site, crying foul in a less than widely public forum isn't going to accomplish much. For an example of how to do this sort of thing, look a Limbaugh, you may not agree with what he has to say (hell, I rarely do and I'm mostly conservative) but he is a good example of how to start and run a sucessful political radio talk program.
I wouldn't say that I totally disagree with your overall point, the govenrment, as it stands, is a bit out of hand. Though I don't think I would quite call it a totalitarian state yet. The simple fact that we are able to discuss this sort of thing publicly seems to indicate otherwise. We are still able to decry our own govenment, and we are still able to try to enact peaceful change in our governemt. I agree that we should be worried about where we are headed, but it something that should be approced in a more thoughtful manner than name calling.
Thank you, I needed that laugh.
By the by, "Dragon Fantasy" is it just me or does that sound like a title to a new themed porn? That was one of the first titles that poped into my head when I saw the info on this merger.
Thanks for the info.
By the by, two other question I've had about these things, if you would be so kind.
1. How big is the storage media in these things? I assume that it is basically a hard drive, how many minutes can you get on one of these things?
2. Can the storage media be upgraded, without adversly affecting the Tivo service?
This brings up another question. Ok, so the Tivo won't record over requested programs with its suggestions. How about the other way around? If I have set a Tivo up to record stuff will it overwrite the suggestions? I realize this may be a bit of a dumb question, but I haven't used one of these units, and I've seen programs woth dumber features.
Great, can we expect 4 hours of FMV in the next Dragon Quest game?
Not only will the next Dragon Quest game have 4 hours of FMVs, there'll be no way to skip the $@#%ing things. Am I the only one that hates sitting through a cut-sceen, getting killed shortly afterwards, before you can save, and then being forced to sit through the damn thing again? Its pretty once or twice, but after that its just annoying.
The other thing that scares the hell out of me with this merger, is that Enix might start to put out that "steam-punk" crap. This is just my opinion, but I'm going to rant about it anyhow, so if you don't want to read it, skip a bit brother.
(Start rant)
What ever happened to good old swords and sorcery fantasy? No technology, no god-damn desert submersable castles (ala FF3, stateside). The only Final Fantasy title that even came close to doing this was the first one, at least the tiny bit of tech in it was truly alien to the world. (mind, I haven't seen all of the ones released in Japan) To this day FF1 is still my favorite of the series. FF2 started getting wierd, FF3 was just too much. I've watched people play 7 and 8 enough to know that I don't want to bother. The series stopped being "fantasy" somewhere in the middle of FF3, and turned more into "sci-fi" with one wierdo, usually the hero, still slinging a sword. Would somone please just shoot the idiot with the sword and be done with it? Afterall, which would you rather have, a magic sword that does shitloads of damage, or a magic mini-gat with each bullet doing shitloads of damage, and no kick. One cuts the enemy open if you can get next to them, the other turns the enemy to hamburger at 100 yards.
(End Rant)
Anyway, I hope that this will lead to more, high quality RPGs. And God willing, they will be more than just eye-candy. I don't care that a game has 5 million hours of FMV with a quadrillion polygons for a character's butt hair, if the game play sucks then the game sucks. Yes, those Final Fantasy magic animations are nice, but it would be nice if the story wasn't just a re-hash of the last Final Fantasy. (Town/Family killed, start self discovery, find other chacaters, more self discovery, have conflicting love interests, get close to figuring self out, discover some relationship to "Big Enemy", play through self doubt sequence, discover mentor, resolve love interest when somone makes a sacrifice, fight "Big Enemy", win for a bit, "Big Enemy" reveals "True Self", get real close to losing, defeat "Big Enemy", listen to "Big Enemy" make inspiring final speech, game end.) That's the plot of almost every FF game after the first. They go for a deep twisting plot, but its the same deep twisting plot every time, no suprises, nothing innovative, just prettier graphics, more FMV, more zeros in the hit points, and longer spell casting sequences. Could we please get a plot that is fresh? Oh well, I'm ranting again, I'll stop.
It would seem that we do carry different views of things. Considering that this is a difference in opinions, not in facts. I think we'll just have to agree that we disagree on this point. I do see you point, and I agree that it is equally valid, I just don't agre with it.