The pinball game in the Roger Williams University game room (sorry, I forget the name) gives you FIVE balls per game, lots of bonus balls, and has great flipper balance. This is not a slot machine - I've played games that lasted a half-hour, and I'm only a "good" player.
...then I don't care if they're shills or not. Attractive women who "like" discussing technology - even the illusion would be damn cool. Now if only I were old enough to visit bars - wait! Canada! Woohoo!
Yeah, it's cool a third-grader could do that, but I don't think you'd have to be an especially bright 3rd grader to pull it off. I don't know c64 basic, but I do know that in pascal and c++, it only takes a few lines to do this - I can't imagine it would be that much harder on the c64.
Say your kid says he's taking a girl to a given movie theatre. You know how far away it is. If you see from the box that the kid stopped the car for an extended period in a place that wasn't the same distance away as the theatre - or wherever he said he was going - then you can conclude you kid's been parking. Or sitting perfectly still in odd places for no reason.
The caffeine temporarily offsets the effects of the booze, but it gets metabolized faster - so you end up drinking a lot, thinking it isn't effecting you, and then the caffeine wears off. The booze hits very hard, very fast, when that happens. Not safe. And more importantly, Red Bull is vile stuff.
Dan's Data (www.dansdata.com) had a very nice review of the Via C3 - basically, it's pretty damn slow, but does not generate much heat at all. If all you want is an MP3 player or some other application that doesn't need a whole lot of grunt, this may be the thing for you.
One, the average user - you know, the kind that thinks Yahoo is cool and is scared of command prompts - is not going to be very willing to install his or her own hard drive. Yes, I know, it's simplicity itself, but too many people have an unreasoning fear of computer parts, and will not touch them. Period.
Two, the whole trend is towards more digital rights management, which is all about controlling what goes on a player. Forcing the user to buy a unit with the hard drive sealed in, and loading music using proprietary software, makes controlling what goes on the player much easier than letting people use their own drives.
Also, I hope when you say "ROM", you mean flashable ROM - it would stink if you were stuck with only the formats available when the unit came out, and couldn't upgrade to new standards later.
If it was free as in beer (or speech), I'd give it a look. They can't make my windows xp install any less secure than it is fresh off the cd, and I don't think they'll install some sort of evil spyware. Not saying I'd keep it, though, just because I don't really havy any need for better than marginal security, and this if this is anything more than a registry-tweaker, if it's an app than runs in the background, I probably won't want the overhead.
The taliban is not a nice group of people - they have no respect for human rights, treat women as chattel, and like to persecute anyone who isn't a Muslim. If Bush has tried to provide evidence, the Taliban would have just played games about how they "weren't convinced". Bull. The United States does not answer to the whims of criminal regimes - they answer to *us*. The taliban was given a chance to comply with the demands of the United States, and they declined to comply. Getting bombed into tiny little bits is no worse than what they deserve.
History satellite go boom. Bye bye, non-state-sanctioned history.
Come to think of it, should we worry?
on
Digital Dark Ages?
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· Score: 2
I know this contradicts another post I made to this thread, but is the collapse of civilization worth worrying about? I mean, civilization was a much more fragile thing when humans numbered in the millions and a village of 1,000 people was considered pretty damn big. A big storm or famine could destroy civilization, at least locally, but enough people would be left to pick up the pieces.
That isn't true now. Even in the event of fairly major war, plague, etc., there is usually going to be someplace that can stay "civilized", that can retain technology and culture, and assist in recovery efforts. Example: World War 2 left Europe in pretty bad shape, but the Marshall Plan helped turn those bomb-churned fields back into producers of tasty crops. Mmm...crops. Sorry, I'm hungry.
My point is, the only things that could destroy all civilization on Earth - which would be the only way to end civilization, even temporarily - would all have the nasty tendency to end human existence on this planet. Nuclear war could do this, for example. Or maybe a superplague. Or a Big Freakin' Asteroid. All these things could "end civilization", but they'd be unlikely to leave enough human survivors to carry on the species. Remember, if it ISN'T a total global catastrophe, civilization will survive somewhere.
So why worry about saving info for potentially barbaric descendents? If civilization dies, humans are probably screwed anyway.
You laugh, but not a bad idea for some things
on
Digital Dark Ages?
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· Score: 2
There was actually a story about this on slashdot a month or so ago - there's a group of people trying to figure out how to mark nuclear waste storage sites so that it's still clear they're dangerous thousands of years from now. That's just one example - the fact of the matter is, there are quite a few things we really probably should try to Make Damn Sure our descendents don't forget, even if civilization somehow magically collapses. Radiation is bad for you, for example. Boiling water makes it clean - simple, but do you know how many people die even today from waterborne bacteria? Too damn many.
In short, any data that really DOES matter to the survival of the species probably really should be etched into a pyramid or monolith or something.
Uh, you should check an online material safety data sheet before you work with pure caffeine powder. There IS a lethal dose of the stuff - I'm not sure, so *don't just take my word for it*, but I think it's around ten grams. It's also unhealthy to inhale pure caffeine dust. We tend to forget it, but caffeine is DANGEROUS when in its pure, non-foodstuff or pill form.
Here's a safer alternative: thinkgeek, in the caffeine section, has caffeinated syrups that are VERY highly caffeinated, in a variety of flavors. If you chugged a bottle of this stuff, you might get in trouble, but short of that it's a hell of a lot safer than the pure powder, and thinkgeek says how much caffeine there is in each ounce, so you can use this stuff to determine the caffeine content of your drinks pretty precisely. Just mix with soda water, maybe some fruit juices as well.
Seriously, my cat show more genuine affection for me than any rodent I've ever owned - I used to keep guinea pigs. She'll sit on my lap while I work or watch tv, she walks in front of my monitor to be scratched (well, nobody's perfect) and she bats at the screen when I play video games - I think she likes Asteroids more than I do. So we have common interests, and she's not needy, like a guinea pig - as someone else mentioned, cats take care of themselves. They don't need you, but they choose to associate with you, and that makes them great pets.
In addition, cats are obsessive about cleanliness. That's good - means less dander floating into your boxen.
A classmate of mine bought a really cool Giant Hissing Cockroach for an English project, and named his Gregor. Cute little guy - I hope he found a good home -
Slashdot Mirror
The pinball game in the Roger Williams University game room (sorry, I forget the name) gives you FIVE balls per game, lots of bonus balls, and has great flipper balance. This is not a slot machine - I've played games that lasted a half-hour, and I'm only a "good" player.
...then I don't care if they're shills or not. Attractive women who "like" discussing technology - even the illusion would be damn cool. Now if only I were old enough to visit bars - wait! Canada! Woohoo!
Yeah, it's cool a third-grader could do that, but I don't think you'd have to be an especially bright 3rd grader to pull it off. I don't know c64 basic, but I do know that in pascal and c++, it only takes a few lines to do this - I can't imagine it would be that much harder on the c64.
Running any car over a cliff will destroy it, regardless of safety systems. This is not a valid test of a car safety system.
Say your kid says he's taking a girl to a given movie theatre. You know how far away it is. If you see from the box that the kid stopped the car for an extended period in a place that wasn't the same distance away as the theatre - or wherever he said he was going - then you can conclude you kid's been parking. Or sitting perfectly still in odd places for no reason.
The caffeine temporarily offsets the effects of the booze, but it gets metabolized faster - so you end up drinking a lot, thinking it isn't effecting you, and then the caffeine wears off. The booze hits very hard, very fast, when that happens. Not safe. And more importantly, Red Bull is vile stuff.
look at their web site.
Dan's Data (www.dansdata.com) had a very nice review of the Via C3 - basically, it's pretty damn slow, but does not generate much heat at all. If all you want is an MP3 player or some other application that doesn't need a whole lot of grunt, this may be the thing for you.
Since when do I need any sort of excuse - like encouraging Cg - to buy an Nvidia card? I needed an excuse?
My mom is still scared of the idea, and the average user is not that much more savvy than my mom. (Hi, mom!)
One, the average user - you know, the kind that thinks Yahoo is cool and is scared of command prompts - is not going to be very willing to install his or her own hard drive. Yes, I know, it's simplicity itself, but too many people have an unreasoning fear of computer parts, and will not touch them. Period.
Two, the whole trend is towards more digital rights management, which is all about controlling what goes on a player. Forcing the user to buy a unit with the hard drive sealed in, and loading music using proprietary software, makes controlling what goes on the player much easier than letting people use their own drives.
Also, I hope when you say "ROM", you mean flashable ROM - it would stink if you were stuck with only the formats available when the unit came out, and couldn't upgrade to new standards later.
I thought it had been phased out, even in the military. Is there really any advantage to it, compared with C++?
If it was free as in beer (or speech), I'd give it a look. They can't make my windows xp install any less secure than it is fresh off the cd, and I don't think they'll install some sort of evil spyware. Not saying I'd keep it, though, just because I don't really havy any need for better than marginal security, and this if this is anything more than a registry-tweaker, if it's an app than runs in the background, I probably won't want the overhead.
The taliban is not a nice group of people - they have no respect for human rights, treat women as chattel, and like to persecute anyone who isn't a Muslim. If Bush has tried to provide evidence, the Taliban would have just played games about how they "weren't convinced". Bull. The United States does not answer to the whims of criminal regimes - they answer to *us*. The taliban was given a chance to comply with the demands of the United States, and they declined to comply. Getting bombed into tiny little bits is no worse than what they deserve.
...would rather get laid than shot.
I suspect a fifteen year old attracted to a child not yet even into puberty - a ten year old - would be regarded as odd. At least.
...The physicists thought they had their knowledge of the universe pretty much down pat.
History satellite go boom. Bye bye, non-state-sanctioned history.
I know this contradicts another post I made to this thread, but is the collapse of civilization worth worrying about? I mean, civilization was a much more fragile thing when humans numbered in the millions and a village of 1,000 people was considered pretty damn big. A big storm or famine could destroy civilization, at least locally, but enough people would be left to pick up the pieces.
That isn't true now. Even in the event of fairly major war, plague, etc., there is usually going to be someplace that can stay "civilized", that can retain technology and culture, and assist in recovery efforts. Example: World War 2 left Europe in pretty bad shape, but the Marshall Plan helped turn those bomb-churned fields back into producers of tasty crops. Mmm...crops. Sorry, I'm hungry.
My point is, the only things that could destroy all civilization on Earth - which would be the only way to end civilization, even temporarily - would all have the nasty tendency to end human existence on this planet. Nuclear war could do this, for example. Or maybe a superplague. Or a Big Freakin' Asteroid. All these things could "end civilization", but they'd be unlikely to leave enough human survivors to carry on the species. Remember, if it ISN'T a total global catastrophe, civilization will survive somewhere.
So why worry about saving info for potentially barbaric descendents? If civilization dies, humans are probably screwed anyway.
There was actually a story about this on slashdot a month or so ago - there's a group of people trying to figure out how to mark nuclear waste storage sites so that it's still clear they're dangerous thousands of years from now. That's just one example - the fact of the matter is, there are quite a few things we really probably should try to Make Damn Sure our descendents don't forget, even if civilization somehow magically collapses. Radiation is bad for you, for example. Boiling water makes it clean - simple, but do you know how many people die even today from waterborne bacteria? Too damn many.
In short, any data that really DOES matter to the survival of the species probably really should be etched into a pyramid or monolith or something.
"Earl Gray, hot."
Uh, you should check an online material safety data sheet before you work with pure caffeine powder. There IS a lethal dose of the stuff - I'm not sure, so *don't just take my word for it*, but I think it's around ten grams. It's also unhealthy to inhale pure caffeine dust. We tend to forget it, but caffeine is DANGEROUS when in its pure, non-foodstuff or pill form.
Here's a safer alternative: thinkgeek, in the caffeine section, has caffeinated syrups that are VERY highly caffeinated, in a variety of flavors. If you chugged a bottle of this stuff, you might get in trouble, but short of that it's a hell of a lot safer than the pure powder, and thinkgeek says how much caffeine there is in each ounce, so you can use this stuff to determine the caffeine content of your drinks pretty precisely. Just mix with soda water, maybe some fruit juices as well.
In short, DON'T "FREEBASE" CAFFEINE. BAD IDEA.
Seriously, my cat show more genuine affection for me than any rodent I've ever owned - I used to keep guinea pigs. She'll sit on my lap while I work or watch tv, she walks in front of my monitor to be scratched (well, nobody's perfect) and she bats at the screen when I play video games - I think she likes Asteroids more than I do. So we have common interests, and she's not needy, like a guinea pig - as someone else mentioned, cats take care of themselves. They don't need you, but they choose to associate with you, and that makes them great pets.
In addition, cats are obsessive about cleanliness. That's good - means less dander floating into your boxen.
A classmate of mine bought a really cool Giant Hissing Cockroach for an English project, and named his Gregor. Cute little guy - I hope he found a good home -
Oh, wrong kind of bug? Nevermind then.
So I guess video capture cards, like the ATI TV Wonder series, are all useless. Silly me.
Seriously, spend $50 on a tv wonder VE, connect your VCR to that, you're in business. Perfectly reasonable.