Except that you're not focusing at 'infinity'. You're focusing at an area that is further away than the actual picture by a distance that is mathematically related to the distance between the pictures. The cross-eyed versions are the same way, only in the opposite direction. You shouldn't have to focus any more in one direction than the other.
I've never been able to successfully do cross-eyed stereograms without significant effort, but I can refocus a wall-eyed one in less than a second. Still, these particular pictures took some real effort... thank goodness for Opera's zoom feature! (I found them easiest at 70% or so.)
But I will check out the Quake mod - that sounds like fun!
I don't know, Opera is still the fastest I have ever seen.
The only reason I use Firefox (and I use it a lot) is that I can't split proxy servers in Opera.
The best best best part about Opera is that it doesn't check with the server when you hit the back button!!! This is the best feature in Opera, IMHO, and has saved me hundreds of hours (and that might just possibly be literal) of waiting.
When you hit 'back' in Opera, the browser simply redisplays (from the cache) what was there before. No waiting, no re-rendering, no asking 'do you want me to re-post the data from the form you filled out?' NO!!! - if I want to re-post the fucking form, I'll hit reload!
If Firefox can overcome this limitation and simply REDISPLAY the previous page, I will be a very happy man, because then I will have TWO amazing and extraordinarily handy browsers. But for now, I'll only use Firefox when I absolutely have to.
(Oh, and BTW, whoever coded the mouse gestures xpi for firefox gets a huge dollop of my undying gratitude. You made firefox usable.)
when we borrow words from other languages, we only borrow words, not grammar structures
Not so fast. For starters, in most English examples, borrowing structures is quite analagous to simply borrowing more words, so the distinction there is rather arbitrary.
In order to borrow a grammar structure, we would have to apply that structure to words which had a different origin. For instance, the Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) plural of garda (police) is gardi. To apply this grammar to an 'English' word, like idea, would make the plural idei instead of ideas.
Further, there are plenty of examples of borrowed words which have retained (among other things) their singular/plural distinction in English. Datum/data, alumnus/alumna/alumni, stratum/strata, criterion/criteria, beau/beaux, cactus/cacti, nucleus/nuclei, terminus/termini, syllabus/syllabi and many others. (Most of these are Latin and Greek, but we do get it from other languages too. I just can't think of any right now.)
IANAL, but this makes perfect sense to me. It's even better if they use the "your call may be recorded for...", etc. message since it specifically does not state WHO will be recording the call. They might have a better case if they were to say "We may record your call for..." instead.
Of course, you can always tell the rep you're talking to on the phone that you are going to record the call for legal purposes... this sometimes gets results because they know ou're serious about pursuing this.
Also, don't forget about the Better Business Bureau, both in your state and theirs, since they operate in both places... The Attorney General's office would be another good place to go. And any chambers of commerce they belong to would be good places to report abuse as well.
Seriously, if you think about it, this makes perfect sense. The Earth is a rotating sphere, right? So unless an object approaching ground level happens to maintain a perfectly geosynchronous orbit around the Earth as it falls inward, it will hit the atmosphere at an angle and not straight down. So almost inevitably, there will be a horizontal component (think the base of the triangle where the trajectory/vector is the hypotenuse) to go with the vertical component. How much and in which direction(s) the object is deflected from its ordinary horizontal state (the result of the pure angle of entry into the atmosphere) gives direct indication about the presence, speed, and direction of any wind which might exist at that place. (Vertical deflection from standard gravitational acceleration gives important information about the stratification and density of the atmosphere in the same manner.)
Spoofstick is a useful tool, too. I don't know if it protects against this particular attack, but it's good for the casual browser (i.e., mom/aunt gert/the cranky old guy down the street who always asks for computer help) to help protect against phishing.
I heard a quote the other day that only 1% of the earth's oceans have been explored. I'm tempted to say that that was an overstatement.
I know there are different forces involved
Technically, you are incorrect here; it's not different forces, but rather different amounts of the same basic forces. Compared to deep sea exploration, space exploration is easy: in space, most forces we feel here on earth - gravity, atmospheric pressure, earth's magnetism, mantle heat, etc. - are significantly reduced. This makes it simple to sustain life there - simply bring a little bit of those forces with us, enough to keep us alive.
The deep sea, otoh, has all of those forces in much greater quantity. The atmospheric pressure we feel at sea level (about 14.7lbs/in^2, IIRC) doubles every 33ft underwater. Rather than trying to keep a little atmosphere in like we would in space, we're trying to keep a bunch of atmospheres OUT. This is a much more complicated problem, espcially since the most remote parts of the deep ocean are miles below the surface... in parts of the Mariana Trench, the sea floor is almost 7 miles (35,000 feet/11km) deep, and the pressure is more than 1000 atmospheres (14,000+lbs/in^2!).
This isn't to say that these places can't be explored - obviously they can, as we have sent probes to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - but that it makes it a whole lot more difficult than "just" sending a man to the moon.
There is also a great deal of parody in the fansub (and fandub) world, which is explicitly not copyright infringement. So be careful not to mix the two.
Some of the best fansub work I have seen is hysterically funny.
OTOH, there are a number of anime films/series I have seen which were fansubbed (or fandubbed) accurately, which I never would have understood without them. (Dirty pair, tank police, bubblegum crisis - all loooong before I ever saw the 'official' subs/dubs.)
What's even more interesting is that a source (of unknown reliability) at a television studio told me that when Sailor Moon was licensed for broadcast in the U.S., the "translator" didn't speak a word of Japanese. Therefore the entire first season was "translated" simply by watching the visuals and trying to come up with a storyline to match.
I too am of the opinion that anything which can be algorithmically derived must have some sort of pattern. The fact that there is no such thing as a true random number generator gives us an limit we can approach asymptotically, os we know there is no finite limit to the accuracy of algorithms, only a limit to their applicability.
Sometimes I think God created us just to appreciate his cool handiwork here in the universe.:-)
I wouldn't say my time is worthless, and I spend an awful lot of time fixing microsoft products.
And the only reason I don't spend time endlessly tweaking windows is because...wait for it... I can't. Because ms makes it impossible to make it work the way I want it to.
So I'd say on the time front, microsoft products are more expensive than Linux, too.
Sadly, it's nearly impossible to find an NTSC multiregion player here in the U.S.:-(
But I too recommend that anyone who is buying anything stay away from Sony. I've had nothing but bad luck with every piece of Sony equipment I've ever bought.
Panasonic, otoh, I have not had a problem with ever. I've bought over a dozen phones (both for myself and as gifts), three CD players, a television, and various other gadgets and I have had tremendous luck with it all...
Hmm, you had a different take on it than I did. I imagined he would be using the system to share general medical information (diagnoses, avant-garde treatments, etc. - the sort of stuff you might find in a peer-review journal, for instance) more than patient-specific charts, etc.
But you raise a good point - wikis are hard to secure, by the very nature of their openness. I would highly recommend showing a warning to anyone modifying the wiki not to put any sensitive or personally-identifiable patient information up there.
Wikis are for knowledge sharing, not document sharing!
And if you have a PS2 and Xbox, get the Xbox version. Much nicer graphics:)
I haven't seen the xbox version, but the PS2 version in progressive scan mode is pretty damn nice, too...
I hear that the xbox live online experience is much better than the PS2 one. I can't imagine it's worse - random disconnects, timeouts, server-side connection problems, and listening to other players voices that sound like they are underwater... EA seems to have major problems running game servers. But when it works, man is it fun!
Here are some thoughts regarding Burnout 3 that I wrote a while ago, but aren't 100% finished. Sorry for the length:
=== Burnout 3 Beefs === by Mattcelt1 (currently ranked 98 out of 30,000 on PS2)
Here are the things I have found to be helps or hindrances when playing Burnout 3: Takedown. Before I begin, I should say that this game is incredible. It is a major enhancement over Burnout 2, but interestingly they've changed enough that BO2 is still fun to play for its own sake. In Burnout 3, the graphics are incredible, the playability is way up there, and the game is just difficult enough to make you nuts. For the first time ever, I actually hit my controller hard enough in frustration to break the vibrating unit inside. Not my finest hour. But I'll be the first to say that I should be frustrated by my own screw-ups, not because the game isn't working the way it should!
Keep in mind that despite my rants here, this is still one of the most fun games I have ever played, and that these problems I have do not keep me from racking up many, many hours of enjoyable play. What's more, the interesting thing is that in nearly all the instances, the things I recommend are interface changes, mostly cosmetic. That should speak volumes about the game itself - it's built on a solid core, and I have no complaints about the physics or the controls. Most of what I'm going to complain about is nitpicking; once these things are addressed, this game will be as close to perfect as possible. So now it's time to see what I'm on about.
The Camera: By far the major offender in this game is the camerawork. I'm going to say this very loudly so that any passers-by from Criterion will hear it reverberating through the streets: HIRE A CINEMATOGRAPHER!!!! Seriously, put a cinematographer on your development staff and listen to what s/he has to say about the camera. The addition of 'aftertouch' in crash situations was a stroke of genius, and I love it. But a consequence of this great idea is that camera positioning, control, aiming, and zoom have suddenly become major factors in successful gameplay, where camera views were incidental at best in Burnout 2. Where they were once incidental windows into the action, the cameras are now integral to successful gameplay, and the lack of control makes them, frustratingly, a hindrance instead of a help.
There is something in film circles known as "crossing the line", the prohibition of which is the first rule taught to any cameraman. If there's a girl on the right and a boy on the left, you never, never, ever cut to another angle where their positions are switched (i.e., the girl is on the left and the boy on the right). It's the biggest sin you can commit in cinema. Yet Burnout 3 does it all the time. You're racing, you crash. You start to aftertouch, pressing left to try to take down the car you know is following you. Then all of a sudden, the camera swings wide in a 180-degree arc, and you find yourself moving away from the other guy, without ever lifting your finger off the stick! This is too frustrating for words.
The second time this rears its ugly head is during crash competitions. Most of the time I play single-player crash, I plan my crashes so that I get the 4x multiplier (or one of the other power-ups) during aftertouch. But with the camera jumping around from place to place, and even coming to rest on some far-off vehicle that's rocking back and forth on its
You obviously don't know what the word, "proof" means. You are confusing evidence with proof. They are not the same thing. It is tragic that our public school systems allow lazy thinking like yours to pass through the system without challenge.
The ironic thing is that these stickers might have actually encouraged some of these kids to be less lazy in their thinking. To bad they didn't have them when "fossle" guy was in school.
So just buy a RR (maybe even on credit), and the money will come!
Actually, this isn't too far off the mark... having an RR can make people think you're a millionaire, which, if you are savvy enough, you can parlay into said millions.
But you are correct that simply having a Rolls Royce does not automatically make you a millionaire - YMMV, so to speak.
Devolve, actually, but I agree. Sometimes I think science journalists are hired by scientists just to make sure the populace is thoroughly confused by their research.
Seriously, I dial '+', then the country code, city code, and private number, which works fine*.
I've been very happy with my AT&T international dialing plan on my mobile. I pay <8c/minute for all international calls and I can use it anywhere - I'm not limited to making calls from home like I would be w/VOIP.
*I don't know about others, but on Sony/Ericsson phones if you hold the '0' key for a second it will turn it to a '+' for international dialing.
Don't forget HIPAA! Make sure all developers go to at least one week-long security programming course before commencing work on the design for this application. That may actually help make the decision for you, since there are outstanding security issues for both J2EE and.NET - at least you'll know what you are getting into.
Remember that you can (and will, if your clients have any sense at all) be held responsible if your application doesn't conform to HIPAA requirements for data protection and integrity. That is a large burden to bear, believe me.
IIRC, the Canon XL2 can do 16:9, but I dont recall if that's the native resolution of the CCDs or not (though I think it may be). I think there are also a couple of Sony (yuck!) cameras that have 16:9 resolution.
Forget using consumer-level cameras altogether. You're going to have to start at the prosumer level at a minimum. The XL2 may be a good point at which to start your search.
Slashdot Mirror
Right! He has been elected, and now we should all stand behind him, because Senator Kennedy is such a fine...
...as I was saying, President Bush is such a fine elected official!
:-)
*listens to whisper in ear*
(Pot, meet kettle.
Except that you're not focusing at 'infinity'. You're focusing at an area that is further away than the actual picture by a distance that is mathematically related to the distance between the pictures. The cross-eyed versions are the same way, only in the opposite direction. You shouldn't have to focus any more in one direction than the other.
I've never been able to successfully do cross-eyed stereograms without significant effort, but I can refocus a wall-eyed one in less than a second. Still, these particular pictures took some real effort... thank goodness for Opera's zoom feature! (I found them easiest at 70% or so.)
But I will check out the Quake mod - that sounds like fun!
...only on their last album. Everything before that was pretty good!
The only reason I use Firefox (and I use it a lot) is that I can't split proxy servers in Opera.
The best best best part about Opera is that it doesn't check with the server when you hit the back button!!! This is the best feature in Opera, IMHO, and has saved me hundreds of hours (and that might just possibly be literal) of waiting.
When you hit 'back' in Opera, the browser simply redisplays (from the cache) what was there before. No waiting, no re-rendering, no asking 'do you want me to re-post the data from the form you filled out?' NO!!! - if I want to re-post the fucking form, I'll hit reload!
If Firefox can overcome this limitation and simply REDISPLAY the previous page, I will be a very happy man, because then I will have TWO amazing and extraordinarily handy browsers. But for now, I'll only use Firefox when I absolutely have to.
(Oh, and BTW, whoever coded the mouse gestures xpi for firefox gets a huge dollop of my undying gratitude. You made firefox usable.)
/*grabs soapbox and walks off*/
when we borrow words from other languages, we only borrow words, not grammar structures
Not so fast. For starters, in most English examples, borrowing structures is quite analagous to simply borrowing more words, so the distinction there is rather arbitrary.
In order to borrow a grammar structure, we would have to apply that structure to words which had a different origin. For instance, the Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) plural of garda (police) is gardi. To apply this grammar to an 'English' word, like idea, would make the plural idei instead of ideas.
Further, there are plenty of examples of borrowed words which have retained (among other things) their singular/plural distinction in English. Datum/data, alumnus/alumna/alumni, stratum/strata, criterion/criteria, beau/beaux, cactus/cacti, nucleus/nuclei, terminus/termini, syllabus/syllabi and many others. (Most of these are Latin and Greek, but we do get it from other languages too. I just can't think of any right now.)
Well I, for one, welcome our new oct......
aww fuckit, who am I kidding?
You are totally correct, except that it was a brain fart instead of a typo. (Though thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt! ;-)
Damn, and here I was all smug feeling smart for a change... <sigh>
IANAL, but this makes perfect sense to me. It's even better if they use the "your call may be recorded for...", etc. message since it specifically does not state WHO will be recording the call. They might have a better case if they were to say "We may record your call for..." instead.
Of course, you can always tell the rep you're talking to on the phone that you are going to record the call for legal purposes... this sometimes gets results because they know ou're serious about pursuing this.
Also, don't forget about the Better Business Bureau, both in your state and theirs, since they operate in both places... The Attorney General's office would be another good place to go. And any chambers of commerce they belong to would be good places to report abuse as well.
It's just you. ;-)
Seriously, if you think about it, this makes perfect sense. The Earth is a rotating sphere, right? So unless an object approaching ground level happens to maintain a perfectly geosynchronous orbit around the Earth as it falls inward, it will hit the atmosphere at an angle and not straight down. So almost inevitably, there will be a horizontal component (think the base of the triangle where the trajectory/vector is the hypotenuse) to go with the vertical component. How much and in which direction(s) the object is deflected from its ordinary horizontal state (the result of the pure angle of entry into the atmosphere) gives direct indication about the presence, speed, and direction of any wind which might exist at that place. (Vertical deflection from standard gravitational acceleration gives important information about the stratification and density of the atmosphere in the same manner.)
Does it make more sense now?
Spoofstick is a useful tool, too. I don't know if it protects against this particular attack, but it's good for the casual browser (i.e., mom/aunt gert/the cranky old guy down the street who always asks for computer help) to help protect against phishing.
I heard a quote the other day that only 1% of the earth's oceans have been explored. I'm tempted to say that that was an overstatement.
I know there are different forces involved
Technically, you are incorrect here; it's not different forces, but rather different amounts of the same basic forces. Compared to deep sea exploration, space exploration is easy: in space, most forces we feel here on earth - gravity, atmospheric pressure, earth's magnetism, mantle heat, etc. - are significantly reduced. This makes it simple to sustain life there - simply bring a little bit of those forces with us, enough to keep us alive.
The deep sea, otoh, has all of those forces in much greater quantity. The atmospheric pressure we feel at sea level (about 14.7lbs/in^2, IIRC) doubles every 33ft underwater. Rather than trying to keep a little atmosphere in like we would in space, we're trying to keep a bunch of atmospheres OUT. This is a much more complicated problem, espcially since the most remote parts of the deep ocean are miles below the surface...
in parts of the Mariana Trench, the sea floor is almost 7 miles (35,000 feet/11km) deep, and the pressure is more than 1000 atmospheres (14,000+lbs/in^2!).
This isn't to say that these places can't be explored - obviously they can, as we have sent probes to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - but that it makes it a whole lot more difficult than "just" sending a man to the moon.
There is also a great deal of parody in the fansub (and fandub) world, which is explicitly not copyright infringement. So be careful not to mix the two.
Some of the best fansub work I have seen is hysterically funny.
OTOH, there are a number of anime films/series I have seen which were fansubbed (or fandubbed) accurately, which I never would have understood without them. (Dirty pair, tank police, bubblegum crisis - all loooong before I ever saw the 'official' subs/dubs.)
What's even more interesting is that a source (of unknown reliability) at a television studio told me that when Sailor Moon was licensed for broadcast in the U.S., the "translator" didn't speak a word of Japanese. Therefore the entire first season was "translated" simply by watching the visuals and trying to come up with a storyline to match.
Nonetheless, they are particularly easy to break into, which doesn't help the situation whatsoever.
I too am of the opinion that anything which can be algorithmically derived must have some sort of pattern. The fact that there is no such thing as a true random number generator gives us an limit we can approach asymptotically, os we know there is no finite limit to the accuracy of algorithms, only a limit to their applicability.
:-)
Sometimes I think God created us just to appreciate his cool handiwork here in the universe.
I wouldn't say my time is worthless, and I spend an awful lot of time fixing microsoft products.
And the only reason I don't spend time endlessly tweaking windows is because...wait for it... I can't. Because ms makes it impossible to make it work the way I want it to.
So I'd say on the time front, microsoft products are more expensive than Linux, too.
Sadly, it's nearly impossible to find an NTSC multiregion player here in the U.S. :-(
But I too recommend that anyone who is buying anything stay away from Sony. I've had nothing but bad luck with every piece of Sony equipment I've ever bought.
Panasonic, otoh, I have not had a problem with ever. I've bought over a dozen phones (both for myself and as gifts), three CD players, a television, and various other gadgets and I have had tremendous luck with it all...
*looks around for a piece of wood*
Hmm, you had a different take on it than I did. I imagined he would be using the system to share general medical information (diagnoses, avant-garde treatments, etc. - the sort of stuff you might find in a peer-review journal, for instance) more than patient-specific charts, etc.
But you raise a good point - wikis are hard to secure, by the very nature of their openness. I would highly recommend showing a warning to anyone modifying the wiki not to put any sensitive or personally-identifiable patient information up there.
Wikis are for knowledge sharing, not document sharing!
And if you have a PS2 and Xbox, get the Xbox version. Much nicer graphics :)
I haven't seen the xbox version, but the PS2 version in progressive scan mode is pretty damn nice, too...
I hear that the xbox live online experience is much better than the PS2 one. I can't imagine it's worse - random disconnects, timeouts, server-side connection problems, and listening to other players voices that sound like they are underwater... EA seems to have major problems running game servers. But when it works, man is it fun!
Here are some thoughts regarding Burnout 3 that I wrote a while ago, but aren't 100% finished. Sorry for the length:
===
Burnout 3 Beefs
===
by Mattcelt1 (currently ranked 98 out of 30,000 on PS2)
Here are the things I have found to be helps or hindrances when playing Burnout 3: Takedown. Before I begin, I should say that this game is incredible. It is a major enhancement over Burnout 2, but interestingly they've changed enough that BO2 is still fun to play for its own sake. In Burnout 3, the graphics are incredible, the playability is way up there, and the game is just difficult enough to make you nuts. For the first time ever, I actually hit my controller hard enough in frustration to break the vibrating unit inside. Not my finest hour. But I'll be the first to say that I should be frustrated by my own screw-ups, not because the game isn't working the way it should!
Keep in mind that despite my rants here, this is still one of the most fun games I have ever played, and that these problems I have do not keep me from racking up many, many hours of enjoyable play. What's more, the interesting thing is that in nearly all the instances, the things I recommend are interface changes, mostly cosmetic. That should speak volumes about the game itself - it's built on a solid core, and I have no complaints about the physics or the controls. Most of what I'm going to complain about is nitpicking; once these things are addressed, this game will be as close to perfect as possible. So now it's time to see what I'm on about.
The Camera:
By far the major offender in this game is the camerawork. I'm going to say this very loudly so that any passers-by from Criterion will hear it reverberating through the streets: HIRE A CINEMATOGRAPHER!!!! Seriously, put a cinematographer on your development staff and listen to what s/he has to say about the camera. The addition of 'aftertouch' in crash situations was a stroke of genius, and I love it. But a consequence of this great idea is that camera positioning, control, aiming, and zoom have suddenly become major factors in successful gameplay, where camera views were incidental at best in Burnout 2. Where they were once incidental windows into the action, the cameras are now integral to successful gameplay, and the lack of control makes them, frustratingly, a hindrance instead of a help.
There is something in film circles known as "crossing the line", the prohibition of which is the first rule taught to any cameraman. If there's a girl on the right and a boy on the left, you never, never, ever cut to another angle where their positions are switched (i.e., the girl is on the left and the boy on the right). It's the biggest sin you can commit in cinema. Yet Burnout 3 does it all the time. You're racing, you crash. You start to aftertouch, pressing left to try to take down the car you know is following you. Then all of a sudden, the camera swings wide in a 180-degree arc, and you find yourself moving away from the other guy, without ever lifting your finger off the stick! This is too frustrating for words.
The second time this rears its ugly head is during crash competitions. Most of the time I play single-player crash, I plan my crashes so that I get the 4x multiplier (or one of the other power-ups) during aftertouch. But with the camera jumping around from place to place, and even coming to rest on some far-off vehicle that's rocking back and forth on its
You obviously don't know what the word, "proof" means. You are confusing evidence with proof. They are not the same thing. It is tragic that our public school systems allow lazy thinking like yours to pass through the system without challenge.
The ironic thing is that these stickers might have actually encouraged some of these kids to be less lazy in their thinking. To bad they didn't have them when "fossle" guy was in school.
<sigh>
So just buy a RR (maybe even on credit), and the money will come!
Actually, this isn't too far off the mark... having an RR can make people think you're a millionaire, which, if you are savvy enough, you can parlay into said millions.
But you are correct that simply having a Rolls Royce does not automatically make you a millionaire - YMMV, so to speak.
You just did. :-)
Devolve, actually, but I agree. Sometimes I think science journalists are hired by scientists just to make sure the populace is thoroughly confused by their research.
Thank goodness for Brian Greene.
Cute.
Seriously, I dial '+', then the country code, city code, and private number, which works fine*.
I've been very happy with my AT&T international dialing plan on my mobile. I pay <8c/minute for all international calls and I can use it anywhere - I'm not limited to making calls from home like I would be w/VOIP.
*I don't know about others, but on Sony/Ericsson phones if you hold the '0' key for a second it will turn it to a '+' for international dialing.
Don't forget HIPAA! Make sure all developers go to at least one week-long security programming course before commencing work on the design for this application. That may actually help make the decision for you, since there are outstanding security issues for both J2EE and .NET - at least you'll know what you are getting into.
Remember that you can (and will, if your clients have any sense at all) be held responsible if your application doesn't conform to HIPAA requirements for data protection and integrity. That is a large burden to bear, believe me.
IIRC, the Canon XL2 can do 16:9, but I dont recall if that's the native resolution of the CCDs or not (though I think it may be). I think there are also a couple of Sony (yuck!) cameras that have 16:9 resolution.
Forget using consumer-level cameras altogether. You're going to have to start at the prosumer level at a minimum. The XL2 may be a good point at which to start your search.