Heh, I actually like Daves regular Insanity Sauce, because it isn't all vinegar tasting like most hot sauce and it adds noticeable flavor with just a drop (not to mention a lot of heat). It's also fairly inexpensive and goes a long way.
You'd be surprised how old the turbines are at your local power plant. It's the boiler room that generally seems to require the most upkeep (fire is a harsh mistress). Plus, even if they did require replacement the cost of the plant is a lot less than the cost of the gigantic solar grid.
That's my guess, that it's a Cooking Mama clone. It seems pretty hard to do a real Iron Chef style game (where you would have to come up with unique dishes) since computers don't have a good idea of what tastes good.
I love Alton too, but I wish his recipes didn't include "put this in your fridge for 4 hours" quite so often. I've always suspected that he was trained as a restaurant chef (where 4 hour wait times are a virtue since it allows you to do some of the work before the lunch/dinner rush) and that's why a lot of his recipes are less than ideal for a home setting. 4 hour waits are the worst since you can't do them the night before or in the morning before going to work, but if you wait until you get home you won't be eating until midnight. I do love how he explains what exactly is happening with his cooking techniques, it allows the show to be useful well beyond whatever he happens to be making that day.
I thought the plan sounded pretty cool, but couldn't help but to think they had glossed over some details that are likely to make the total cost of the plan skyrocket, like the current production rates on Solar Cells or the cost of replacing them every 25 years as they degrade. The biggest problem is that the whole plan is so grandiose and expensive that it would be impossible to get through Congress, even if it does end up saving bucketloads of money in the end. The plan also handwaved through the "What if it's really cloudy over the entire Western US in the middle of winter?" question.
I do have to say that this was thought out more than most grand energy plans I've seen, but it still smells only maybe 3/4 baked.
The point isn't necessarily that you need to build it into the TV, but it gives you the option to build stuff like Tivo that doesn't interact well with the traditional cable box model. Besides, Cable boxes tend to suck, universally, and people wouldn't use them if they didn't need to. The worst part is that we got away from them for a bit when TV manufacturers improved their tuners enough to be compatible with cable (Cable Ready TVs), but with the DRM requirements of new digital channels you can't make a simple solution like that anymore.
If it were just a matter of putting a digital signal decoder in the TV we would have had them years ago, but because they need to decrypt and re-encrypt the signal umpteen times between the head end and your TV, the technology is still buggy and badly supported.
This was a rumor I'd heard as to why Privateer Press suddenly stopped production on their D20 stuff when 4.0 was announced. Supposedly they weren't going to be able to get a license to continue production and were having to work up alternatives.
From what I've heard, the OGL is not sticking around for the 4.0 release. This has independent producers scrambling to find alternatives to the D20 system or just rolling their own. While the D20 system has it's flaws and clunky bits, it's usually better than homebrew systems.
Maybe the reporter was seeing all of these possible stories about international conflict, Iraq, or even the presidental primaries but was given an adverstory on an already popular gaming console and just phoned it in.
Or it was the holidays and he was hoping to whip out a story quick to spend more time with the family.
Or he just sucks at actually getting facts correct.
9 months? From what I see their problems are going for at least 13 months now and counting. There was an article in my local paper this morning about how people were lining up in front of some store because they were getting a shipment of 100 Wiis instead of the normal 5 or 6. Apparently that store won some sort of sales contest over the Christmas holiday season and got the big shipment as a prize. The idea of seeing a Wii in stock around here is still laughable and the console has been out for over a year now.
Interestingly enough, my Cable Company (Verizon FIOS) does that with their Video on Demand service. The surprising thing: The movies from Netflix look better than the VoD movies which seem to suffer from an excessive amount of compression. The only advantage of the cable company is that their movie start streaming right away instead of waiting until it is downloaded. I've also tried Amazon's Tivo integration service and found the quality to be somewhere in the middle, although it too suffers from the need to download the whole movie before it is played.
I'm normally pretty forgiving of stuff like macroblocking and other such artifacts on my video, but the Verizon one was muddled enough that it was difficult to see what was happening in dark scenes and the blocking was really distracting during action scenes.
More importantly, Virtual Machines can actually hamper your testing depending on what you're doing. If you need precise (or even semi-precise) timing then a VMware box is a bad idea since their clocks tend to drift at an alarming rate and you have little control over at least one of the schedulers affecting your process.
Of course sometimes you gotta make due. When your product is large and complex and only written for Linux, and the only thing you have to test with is a loaded down old creaky and underpowered windows laptop running a bunch of software with no Linux equivalent, then you just gotta suck it up and factor in the uncertainty in your tests.
From what I understand though, the immune system is locked out of the brain proper thanks to the blood brain barrier, so this drug shouldn't have any effect on naturally occurring opiates. My high school anatomy class never got into where the opiates are generated when someone has an orgasm (that would have made it far too interesting) but I'm guessing it's in the brain directly and not in the sex organs (where they would have to filter through the bloodstream before getting to the brain). Given how orgasms tend to be immediately gratifying, I'm guessing the production is local.
They're legal in the sense that SL has very few actual rules about player conduct and basically no enforcement of the few rules they do have. Unless you're crashing servers or spamming dicks it's pretty hard to get in trouble in SL, and even if you do it's just a temporary suspension. Even if your character were banned, the worst that would happen is you would lose whatever L$ you have not cashed out for real life bucks and would be forced to roll a new character.
Doesn't someone do this about once every six months in Second Life? I'm pretty sure if I troll through the archives I'll find plenty of references to people who set up "banks" in SL, and then promptly ran away with the L$ after a few months. Why people put their trust (and $!) in the hands of some random person they don't know on the internet is beyond me. As far as I know, not one of these SL "banks" has ever been legitimate. I guess P.T. Barnum was right.
I bought my TV a little over 8 years ago now. I knew that I'd eventually need a digital tuner but when I bought my TV those tuners were only available in the wildly overpriced high end TVs of the time. I know I'm a fool for doing it, but the industry didn't leave me much choice. Luckily, I have cable so this won't actually be a problem.
That's not really the point though. My enjoyment of the content wasn't greatly enhanced by the increased resolution offered by the HD disc, at least not enough to justify $1500 (set + player + audio + etc...). I could see the difference, but the increased resolution didn't really look that much better, just a bit more crisp and showing more detail. You could more easily see stuff like individual gems on the King's crown, but I wasn't watching the movie to count the gems and it seemed like maybe a bit of overkill. It's not like the VHS days when faces would get muddy enough that it was hard to read expressions (especially on older tapes).
I think anybody expecting a repeat of the tremendous success of DVD with these new HD titles really hasn't looked at the big picture. Sure DVDs had better picture quality than VHS tapes, but that was but one of their many advantages (near instant seeking, no rewinding, fit more on a shelf, considerably reduced price (VHS movies were more expensive than DVD movies, especially when adjusted for inflation, thanks to the labor intensive dubbing process), extras, and more. The only additional feature on HD discs of both types is more obnoxious DRM.
Really? Because I've seen that disc (it was for King Arthur or something) and while you could tell which side was the HD side, from a normal living room distance the difference was marginal at best. It was actually that disc that convinced me not to bother with the HD stuff for awhile.
All this means is you have to remember to swap out your optical drive for the spare battery before going through the security line. The TSA folks probably would not appreciate it if you forgot and had to do it in front of them, they're not allowed to have a sense of humor.
Quick question: Can you actually short out a spare battery enough to cause it to explode by putting a paperclip between the terminals? That sounds like a saftey hazard if true. All of the battery explosions I've heard about are caused by malfunctioning current limiters on the charging side though.
How far "up the chain" would someone have to be that would allow them to register domains "for free" for an extended period of time (6 months)? Is it possible these Domain Squatters can make a profit because of corruption somewhere, IE they pay only funny money for domain registration?
No, because they get to sit on the domain name for free for 30 days and then drop it if they want. Domain Name registration is an amazingly shady part of the internet for being such an important piece. I have long suspected that the registrars (especially the no-name ones) and the domain squatters are one in the same.
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Heh, I actually like Daves regular Insanity Sauce, because it isn't all vinegar tasting like most hot sauce and it adds noticeable flavor with just a drop (not to mention a lot of heat). It's also fairly inexpensive and goes a long way.
You'd be surprised how old the turbines are at your local power plant. It's the boiler room that generally seems to require the most upkeep (fire is a harsh mistress). Plus, even if they did require replacement the cost of the plant is a lot less than the cost of the gigantic solar grid.
That's my guess, that it's a Cooking Mama clone. It seems pretty hard to do a real Iron Chef style game (where you would have to come up with unique dishes) since computers don't have a good idea of what tastes good.
I love Alton too, but I wish his recipes didn't include "put this in your fridge for 4 hours" quite so often. I've always suspected that he was trained as a restaurant chef (where 4 hour wait times are a virtue since it allows you to do some of the work before the lunch/dinner rush) and that's why a lot of his recipes are less than ideal for a home setting. 4 hour waits are the worst since you can't do them the night before or in the morning before going to work, but if you wait until you get home you won't be eating until midnight. I do love how he explains what exactly is happening with his cooking techniques, it allows the show to be useful well beyond whatever he happens to be making that day.
I thought the plan sounded pretty cool, but couldn't help but to think they had glossed over some details that are likely to make the total cost of the plan skyrocket, like the current production rates on Solar Cells or the cost of replacing them every 25 years as they degrade. The biggest problem is that the whole plan is so grandiose and expensive that it would be impossible to get through Congress, even if it does end up saving bucketloads of money in the end. The plan also handwaved through the "What if it's really cloudy over the entire Western US in the middle of winter?" question.
I do have to say that this was thought out more than most grand energy plans I've seen, but it still smells only maybe 3/4 baked.
The point isn't necessarily that you need to build it into the TV, but it gives you the option to build stuff like Tivo that doesn't interact well with the traditional cable box model. Besides, Cable boxes tend to suck, universally, and people wouldn't use them if they didn't need to. The worst part is that we got away from them for a bit when TV manufacturers improved their tuners enough to be compatible with cable (Cable Ready TVs), but with the DRM requirements of new digital channels you can't make a simple solution like that anymore.
If it were just a matter of putting a digital signal decoder in the TV we would have had them years ago, but because they need to decrypt and re-encrypt the signal umpteen times between the head end and your TV, the technology is still buggy and badly supported.
This was a rumor I'd heard as to why Privateer Press suddenly stopped production on their D20 stuff when 4.0 was announced. Supposedly they weren't going to be able to get a license to continue production and were having to work up alternatives.
From what I've heard, the OGL is not sticking around for the 4.0 release. This has independent producers scrambling to find alternatives to the D20 system or just rolling their own. While the D20 system has it's flaws and clunky bits, it's usually better than homebrew systems.
Maybe the reporter was seeing all of these possible stories about international conflict, Iraq, or even the presidental primaries but was given an adverstory on an already popular gaming console and just phoned it in.
Or it was the holidays and he was hoping to whip out a story quick to spend more time with the family.
Or he just sucks at actually getting facts correct.
Ironically, I don't think it's the broadband connection but the slow as balls USB 802.11b wireless connection I'm using on my Series 2 Tivo.
9 months? From what I see their problems are going for at least 13 months now and counting. There was an article in my local paper this morning about how people were lining up in front of some store because they were getting a shipment of 100 Wiis instead of the normal 5 or 6. Apparently that store won some sort of sales contest over the Christmas holiday season and got the big shipment as a prize. The idea of seeing a Wii in stock around here is still laughable and the console has been out for over a year now.
Interestingly enough, my Cable Company (Verizon FIOS) does that with their Video on Demand service. The surprising thing: The movies from Netflix look better than the VoD movies which seem to suffer from an excessive amount of compression. The only advantage of the cable company is that their movie start streaming right away instead of waiting until it is downloaded. I've also tried Amazon's Tivo integration service and found the quality to be somewhere in the middle, although it too suffers from the need to download the whole movie before it is played.
I'm normally pretty forgiving of stuff like macroblocking and other such artifacts on my video, but the Verizon one was muddled enough that it was difficult to see what was happening in dark scenes and the blocking was really distracting during action scenes.
More importantly, Virtual Machines can actually hamper your testing depending on what you're doing. If you need precise (or even semi-precise) timing then a VMware box is a bad idea since their clocks tend to drift at an alarming rate and you have little control over at least one of the schedulers affecting your process.
Of course sometimes you gotta make due. When your product is large and complex and only written for Linux, and the only thing you have to test with is a loaded down old creaky and underpowered windows laptop running a bunch of software with no Linux equivalent, then you just gotta suck it up and factor in the uncertainty in your tests.
From what I understand though, the immune system is locked out of the brain proper thanks to the blood brain barrier, so this drug shouldn't have any effect on naturally occurring opiates. My high school anatomy class never got into where the opiates are generated when someone has an orgasm (that would have made it far too interesting) but I'm guessing it's in the brain directly and not in the sex organs (where they would have to filter through the bloodstream before getting to the brain). Given how orgasms tend to be immediately gratifying, I'm guessing the production is local.
They're legal in the sense that SL has very few actual rules about player conduct and basically no enforcement of the few rules they do have. Unless you're crashing servers or spamming dicks it's pretty hard to get in trouble in SL, and even if you do it's just a temporary suspension. Even if your character were banned, the worst that would happen is you would lose whatever L$ you have not cashed out for real life bucks and would be forced to roll a new character.
Doesn't someone do this about once every six months in Second Life? I'm pretty sure if I troll through the archives I'll find plenty of references to people who set up "banks" in SL, and then promptly ran away with the L$ after a few months. Why people put their trust (and $!) in the hands of some random person they don't know on the internet is beyond me. As far as I know, not one of these SL "banks" has ever been legitimate. I guess P.T. Barnum was right.
Unless of course you read the FAQ first.
I bought my TV a little over 8 years ago now. I knew that I'd eventually need a digital tuner but when I bought my TV those tuners were only available in the wildly overpriced high end TVs of the time. I know I'm a fool for doing it, but the industry didn't leave me much choice. Luckily, I have cable so this won't actually be a problem.
That's not really the point though. My enjoyment of the content wasn't greatly enhanced by the increased resolution offered by the HD disc, at least not enough to justify $1500 (set + player + audio + etc...). I could see the difference, but the increased resolution didn't really look that much better, just a bit more crisp and showing more detail. You could more easily see stuff like individual gems on the King's crown, but I wasn't watching the movie to count the gems and it seemed like maybe a bit of overkill. It's not like the VHS days when faces would get muddy enough that it was hard to read expressions (especially on older tapes).
I think anybody expecting a repeat of the tremendous success of DVD with these new HD titles really hasn't looked at the big picture. Sure DVDs had better picture quality than VHS tapes, but that was but one of their many advantages (near instant seeking, no rewinding, fit more on a shelf, considerably reduced price (VHS movies were more expensive than DVD movies, especially when adjusted for inflation, thanks to the labor intensive dubbing process), extras, and more. The only additional feature on HD discs of both types is more obnoxious DRM.
Really? Because I've seen that disc (it was for King Arthur or something) and while you could tell which side was the HD side, from a normal living room distance the difference was marginal at best. It was actually that disc that convinced me not to bother with the HD stuff for awhile.
Ow! My Eyes! Crushed under the massive wall of text...
All this means is you have to remember to swap out your optical drive for the spare battery before going through the security line. The TSA folks probably would not appreciate it if you forgot and had to do it in front of them, they're not allowed to have a sense of humor.
Quick question: Can you actually short out a spare battery enough to cause it to explode by putting a paperclip between the terminals? That sounds like a saftey hazard if true. All of the battery explosions I've heard about are caused by malfunctioning current limiters on the charging side though.
For a second I thought you were talking about Mad Magazine.
How far "up the chain" would someone have to be that would allow them to register domains "for free" for an extended period of time (6 months)? Is it possible these Domain Squatters can make a profit because of corruption somewhere, IE they pay only funny money for domain registration?
No, because they get to sit on the domain name for free for 30 days and then drop it if they want. Domain Name registration is an amazingly shady part of the internet for being such an important piece. I have long suspected that the registrars (especially the no-name ones) and the domain squatters are one in the same.
No, no reasonable people can afford them yet.