Screenplays and stories do not a good movie make. I'm not into a lot of old / poorly produced films (innovative or not), because if I just want a good story, I can pick up a good book and have my mind supply the intermediaries. YMMV, of course.
The Matrix kicked ass because of the flawless integration of the special effects into the story, and it's the only film I can say I've watched more than a dozen times.
I go to the movies for eye candy. I read books for depth. I'm sure you have a different opinion.
I won't be too sad if there's no sequel. The matrix is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and the number of movies that hollywood will leave alone to enjoy their limelight are few and far between - look at what happened to Highlander *whince*. I don't believe a sequel was ever made to Bladerunner, either, and it hasn't hurt it's cult following.
I never thought I'd see the day that a machine outclassed the Sony Vaio.. this thing blows it away. I want one, bad.. this machine kicks some serious ass. 1GB of ram? eeek!
All we need is for some big Linux sugardaddy *cough* RedHat *cough* *cough* to pick up LinuxPPC and make this line of notebooks fully supported under Linux.. That would be sweet. It'd be nice if they did the same for something like the Apple G4 also, and then brokered getting hardware drivers set up and whatnot - that'd give Linux a "home" architecture to work from, and allow you to fully exploit the capabilities of the hardware.
Oh well, I can dream.. damn, I want one of those though:). Match a titanium PDA case from Rhinoskin really nice, too.
The TINI from iButton is the shit for doing this sort of thing - $50 gets you a board that has ethernet, serial, loads of goodies, it's a joke to interface to, and it speaks Java, so it's easy to program, has a full suite of internet connectivity and you can do it in linux to boot! These things are a great deal, and offer all sorts of interesting possibilities with the addition of iButtons and the Java Ring, for instance..
I'm sure this stuff was covered on/., but I'm too lazy to look:).
If this is the case, then they've already been beat to the punch. The price is a little steep, you could probably cobble together a unit yourself for $400 or so, hardest part being the gears/transmission.
This company wasted untold amounts of money developing a product that:
Has no random access (tape)
Is physically bigger (tape)
Can be eaten by your machine ($$)
Can't be played on your notebook
Can't be played on your computer, either
Makes interactive movies difficult or impossible
Is designed to make copying (backups?) difficult or impossible(ha)
Costs between 5 and 8 times what a DVD player does
Has next to no support from video rental outlets
I can't believe this crap! Does the MPAA off whores to go with kickbacks, or something? Oh well. No need to worry, if there's one thing even my MOM hates, it's VHS tapes and having to pick them out of a VCR when they (inevitably) fail. This format is DOA, but if I was a shareholder, I'd be pissed.
Maybe I'm missing some of the nomenclature here, but how is a digital TV different than a computer monitor? I'd sure like to hope that these TV's (or large, flatscreen digital monitors, which is what they are) have the capability to display a computer signal on them. If this is the case, then you just don't use the tuner that's in the TV and replace it with a computer with a digital out video card, and your problem is fixed.
Piracy will always be there, this is about control. Consumers are stupid, but as we saw with Divx, they aren't THAT stupid. Those digital TV's are hella expensive, and if you think I'm going to drop a few grand on something that won't do whatever the hell I want with it, then you're dead wrong, and I think a lot of people think along the same lines.
It's not just Europe that is like that - most companies in Canada (barring ones that are puppets for US based companies) do not require drug testing. This is for the most part because you can't be fired in Canada (and Europe, IIRC) for drug abuse, as that would be discriminatory - your employer in most cases would even offer rehabilitation!. If you're not paying me, what I do at home, or what I did 5 years before coming to work for you is none of your business. I show up coked/stoned/drunk, that's a different matter. One of the things that irks me is that you can tell if someone's out of it without making them piss in a bottle.
If you don't want to see "blood test" added to the list of employment pre-screens, refuse them! I have only had to do this once, and got the job regardless. Tell them you object to the violation of your privacy - and you'd be suprised that most of the time you get agreed with. I'm shocked they would ask - I mean, what would they do if you asked THEM to piss in a bottle for you so you can see what kind of workplace they run?
Another thing that is distrubing is that these tests produce paperwork, and you have no control over the paperwork - it gets sent to the employer. So, you think that your credit cards are worth worrying about? Would you be worried about your medical/drug history, likely stored unsecured? Plan on running for office in 20 years? (I won't even let employers keep my school transcripts on file - you want to look, fine, but you're not getting a copy!). I get ill thinking about people that use those supermarket buying cards - I'm sure my health insurer would love to cancel my insurance in 50 years because I drank a 24 of beer every week or ate 3 pounds of bacon every weekend (etc).
You have a choice. "Just Say No". If you lose the job, fine, there are other jobs out there. If you don't say no, then don't bitch and moan when you're a second class citizen as a result. The jobs that actually have some merit to requiring drug testing are few, and the ones requiring DNA testing are IMHO non-existant.
I think you're confusing commerical with a commerical unit that's fed with a differential signal (DGPS). This utilizes a known fixed location to offest the error in the GPS signal, however, it requires a fixed known station. This can get pretty good - better than 3 meters. The commercial units you get from Garmin or whatever are good to 10-15 meters, although the altitude measurements are almost worthless in most cases. So, 10-15M is on par with 22 yards (that's maybe a little optimistic).
Actually since they are selling the binaries they have to have the source readily available. But where's the source?
You missed the point. Since they didn't sell YOU a binary, nobody has to give YOU the source. If you buy their binary, you get the source. You could also get the source from someone who bought it.. but nothing says they have to give it to you unless they agree to sell or provide a binary to you. GPL is no guarantee of access, and hence free as in speech is not free as in beer, a point that escapes many here.
Nothing says the GPL means free as in beer code. The GPL just guarantees anyone you give a binary to, you have to give the source code to, if they ask. That's it, nothing more. Nothing stops them from redistributing it.. unless they don't wanna.
I thought one of the conditions of their first antitrust trial was that they agreed to never directly release a version of Unix that would compete with offerings from SCO, Solaris, et al, and it wouldn't be too far a reach to argue that linux could be included in there, too. Of course, as we all know.. Gnu's Not Unix.. (oh, the irony if GNU/Linux came back to bite RMS in a legal battle with Microsoft over this issue..
Maybe someone who knows more can comment - has the recent trials or breakup of the company changed this ruling from way back when (I feel old now)..
And get yourself the books "Getting Started In Electronics" and ALL of the little "Engineer's Handbook" books (recently updated, I noticed) by Forrest Mims. This man has started more people into electronics than I could possibly imagine. I hope he was compensated well by the publisher for his great contribution to electronics - I owe a lot of my start to get where I am now to him.
I CANNOT recommend these books highly enough and I'm suprised nobody else has. Once you get those, you can get on your way with some parts and things, but get them from someplace like DigiKey or Mouser and you'll save a lot of money experimenting. I also recommend surplus places, one in particular: BG Micro, they have lots of stuff to tinker with cheap.
Do you like digital stuff? Then go check out a Java-based TINI from Ibutton or even better, some of the kits that are available from Parallax Inc. They're expensive, but their stuff is quality and works.
Good luck on a rewarding and interesting hobby with almost no bounds!
We've got more power than we know what to do with up here. Hell, we sell most of it to the USA. Why not relocate some of the plants up here, and then the local governments can lament the NIMBY phenonomon when they don't have the growth in the local economy and the corresponding tax revenue that these companies provide?
That said.. people need to accept that if they're not going to look at techniques for affordable power generation other than coal and oil - specifically, nuclear technologies, solar power, and the best and baddest, hydroelectric and the corresponding impact on whatever you're damming up - there's going to be (real) economic impacts.
I never understood why more people didn't look at geothermal power.. Lots of heat in the earth's core to tap. Although, people will probably whine about that, too.
Or, you can just pay more. Heh. Help out that Canadian trade defict!
Heh.. these guys are the shit.. I highly recommend them to any and all geeks out there; Those with an especially bitter and jaded outlook on life will find their lyrics +1 insightful or at least, +1, interesting. Ok, well, they're worth at least a napster download hehe:).
I value my privacy as much as the next guy, but this seems a bit extreme to me. Is it really worth all that effort just to make sure no one is reading your mail?
Like other posters suggested.. I think you need to read some books, and 1984 is a good start. You must be young, or incredibly naive.. I'm not an old geezer, but I understand power. My history teacher in high school way back when used to have a huge poster above the board. It said: "Power: It ain't for the givin', it's for the takin'". Those in power will do anything to further it. It's a theme that has been played out since the beginning of recorded history. Do you know what power is? It's the ability to control YOU, the lowly serf. That doesn't sit to good with me.
It seems to me that for most people, this should not even be an issue. If you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. The only people who need to use encryption are those who have something to hide. Maybe we should be snooping around in these people's inboxes
There's another very famous quote about police dictatorships not being built up overnight. Not everyone values information and free thought the way the average person here on/. or kuro5hin might. If the populace is trained to accept blatant violations of their personal freedom - for instance, random searches in schools, gradual introduction of monitoring cameras in common areas - then eventually you can get total control. And that prospect scares the living shit out of me. I'm not even an american, but the whole concept of the United States of America was to devise a system whereby the people could be guaranteed freedom from this - the founders of that nation were very wise - and look at what has happened under the guise of "protection" from terrorists, drug dealers, insert-evil-guy here.
People need to wake up and start to take responsibility for their lives and their freedom. Maybe we need a major war every generation. Watching friends die bloody violent deaths might wake a few people up about the true costs of freedom and make them think twice when those freedoms are given up for "protection".
Arrgh, this must have been a troll, but I'm cranky and half in the bag. Get GPG while you can.
This isn't very well thought-out. It also demonstrates the shallow insight provided on those other issues mentioned.
Any discussion of these issues is subject to gross simplification. My posts included. You're missing my point that there are far bigger issues to deal with, like what will happen when India and China ramp up their industrial processes. If we cut our CO2 and other emissions by 50%, it won't mean jack squat if China is putting out 200% of what we are now in 5 years, which is quite rightly the case, and how can you argue against them doing that to improve the quality of their lives? We did it during our industrial revolutions.
Do you REALLY want to put your life in the hands of a group of humans playing the role of mother nature?
Look around you if you live in a city. We do it all the time, we do it right now, and as population and consumption grows, we will do it on an even larger and more grand scale. I suspect you'll start seeing arcologies a la SimCity in the industrialized world that are completely self sustaining as a result of pressures brought on by transportation costs. My point is that I look to history when I think about the future, and thus my view is quite bleak.
In case you need it spoonfed: Your suggestion that humans can survive no ozone by becoming nocturnal is ignorant of our position in the food chain / ecosystem. Will the rest of the animals we eat become nocturnal? Hmm.. No vegetation. It'd be nice not to have some oxygen once in a while.
I am not as ignorant as you might think. Again, gross oversimplifications abound in my arguements and yours. I look at it from the more pessimistic side, and more people should be thinking about how to deal with ecological disasters rather than (IMHO, hopelessly) trying to prevent them. Of course not every animal will become nocturnal. Most of the species that ever existed on this planet are exinct, too. The earth 2 million years ago was vastly different than it is now; The earth will always be changing, and it's foolish to think that things will always be as they are now based on growth and consumption patterns. It sucks, yes, but life's hard.
It is in our nature to destroy ourselves. That sums up my arguements in one sentence.
I hate to flame but, people like you are the reason that we are in the shit hole situation we are in now...
No, I'd make a safe bet that the 500-1000 or so million people in the world that like warm houses, electricity, cars, and small boxes with blinky lights are much more to blame than myself individually. But you're free to have your opinion. I don't drive a moronic SUV, but I do own a sports car.
which by the way has nothing to do with the ozone other than the fact that if we have no ozone world hunger won't be a problem as THERE WON'T BE ANYONE AROUND TO EAT
Bullshit. If there's no ozone, then you just become nocturnal or you don't go outside during the day. You adapt to your changing environment (or you die). Plants love a little extra UV. Sure, lots of crops might fail, but there's technological solutions for that, too. It's just a matter of cost and engineering. (Much cheaper to grow outside!).
as much as you want to believe that in your pathetic paultry 65 year life span nothing you do or say is going to change the fact that once you are dead and gone and long turned to dust your sorry ass will have long ago turned into ozone, fertilizer and probably gotten well sun burnt on the way due to your misconception that if we hide our collective heads in the sand the world will fix it's self and all the bad will go away
Ugh, it's OK to rant my friend, I do it alot, but punctuation please.. at least make it so I can read it when I'm being flamed! heh. I don't go outside. I minimize my sun exposure. I don't think the sun is especially good for my skin's DNA. I do have every intention of making sure my 65 year (give or take) stay on this planet is a nice one, though. If there are serious environmental problems, there will become an economic incentive to gix them, and someone will rise to the challenge. If nobody gives a fuck, then yes, the planet will decay, but it's because of apathy. Apathy is evil, yes, but I call 'em like I see 'em. Not much you can do considering how many others are also planning on there enjoyable 65 year lifespans.
we hide our collective heads in the sand the world will fix it's self and all the bad will go away..
No, it won't.. but I don't concern myself with the masses who don't want to listen to logic. Fishermen bitch about mismanagement when there's no more fish. People bitch about gas prices when there's no more gas. People will bitch about global warming when their homes are under 10 feet of ocean. They'll bitch about the ozone when their kids get cancer. I'll work on developing things to deal with those demands. If you're not as bitter and jaded as me, congrats, and I hope you make a difference.
I have an extremely dim view of human nature.
I would like to end my rant and apologise to the rest of the/.ers, oh and yes I could have mod'd this one to the grave but chose to respond
Thank you for posting a shining example of why moderation doesn't work, and I suggest you read the moderation guidelines, you sorry pathetic little loser. What would you mod it as? -1, I don't agree? -1, Not politically correct? -1, I don't like you? You didn't refute my arguement in fact or substance.
Ozone is quite simply, an ion of Oxygen formed when you expose O2 to high intensity electric fields (arc gaps, or a welder), from some industrial processes, and most importantly, Ozone is formed when the UV light that is much stronger in the upper atmosphere causes the same effect and creates O3. I always wondered why we couldn't get planes or something with huge ozone generators on them to repair the damage, or if that was even feasible. Maybe I'll do the math sometime.
Interesting factoid: One of the reasons that there's not much commercial supersonic flight is that they fly extremely high to lessen air drag. I was taking a course in astrophysics (intro) in my last year of university, and the prof asked us if we could guess why there were no liscences being issued - and it's because at that height, a lot of the oxygen you're burning IS ozone, and the jet exhaust breakdown components are also reactive. Fun stuff.
Another interesting factoid, where I'm from, Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia Canada, had a ozone hole open up right on the top of the island a few years back, I think it was one of the lowest latitudes that this was recorded at. Whoo!:)
Need to such CO2 out of the atmosphere: Here's just one low-tech solution that could sink billions of tonnes of CO2 into the ocean.
There's technical solutions for everything. The problem, of course, is how much it's gunna cost.
Global warming is sooooo low on my list of worries for the future it isn't funny. We don't even have a decent computational model of the atmosphere to work from, and are decades from getting one - push for more money for that.
Something that pisses me off is that it's so easy to whine about global warming with a full stomach. There are lots of people in China, India, and Africa that haven't effectively gone through an industrial revolution and don't have that luxury. I'm not going to get high and mighty when they start burning billions of tonnes of coal to do what we did at the end of the 18th century.
There's a bunch of solutions out there if you want to be a little crafty, and most of it is just limited by how much you want to spend and how reliable you need the data transfer to be (as you can guess.. the two are linked:).
A couple people have suggested a laser link. I built a small one for experimenting using a UART and some of the schematics from the book Lasers, -Ray Guns & Light Cannons ISBN: 0-07-045035-8. (Someone better buy it because I had to dig through two years of crap to find it!:) I got the lasers from some surplus place cheap. It worked well at 2400 baud or something like that, I was trying to build a circuit to act as a wireless point-to-point link to get high speed internet just slightly off campus (e.g. through my lab window to a buddy across the street:). It worked well, although I ran out of time to finish it. Think I was planning on selling them to build cheap point-to-point links at the time, or something. Hard to aim, though. Anyhow.
Another way is through wireless modules like the folks at Lynx Technologies or Parallax Inc. The parallax ones are of better quality right out of the box, and they'll sell to individuals, the former was nasty to me when I wanted to order some samples.
YET another way is through using Ham Radio and packet. You can get an all - in - one unit from Kenwood called the TH-D7A that is a small handheld with a 9600 baud TNC built into it. It's truely plug-and-play. Extremely expensive at $550cdn a pop, I know, I have one. You also need to be liscened to operate at these frequencies, and most/all places won't sell you one without your callsign or liscence.
These work VERY well.
That said, one of those options will be the best for you. IR is out as it doesn't work worth a damn in direct sunlight, even laser detectors have a bit of a problem with sun. Sun is a great source of optical noise:). If I was needing something mission critical and a long distance, your best choice is the kenwood/packet option, or maybe the parallax modules. They hook right up to a serial port.
Alternately, you could just get a cheap 486 notebook and get a 802.11 card, and wire the whole thing to a big-ass car battery (find one that takes 12V, and make sure to put a fuse on it!). That might be cheaper in the long run, and will provide a lot of bandwidth.
Gates will be forced to _choose_ a company with which to have is stock in, so he could either have stock in the OS company, or he could have stock in the applications company. This would be a difficult choice, as I see it, the apps company would make more money, but Gates not going with his roots on the OS side could be interpreted as a vote of non-confidence in the flagship product.
Going to be interesting to see what happens. Personally, I think cokehea^H^H^H^H^H^H^H, Bush will overthrow the decision, or interfere at the least. All those campeign contributions gotta count for something (although, last time I checked, microsoft gave money to both campeigns, more to Bush, I believe, though).
Ohboy, I'm tired, and I'm going to have some real fun with this.
How can you demand an extremely trendy, light, crisp, wireless solution from Oakley (of all people), but then advise them to not stress on anything "fancy" and to start simple.
Ok.. not to diss Oakley - they rock - but sunglasses aren't rocket science. They might make it SEEM like rocket science, but they're basically colored plastic with nifty colors. I think they may have just started offering polarizing lenses recently. If you read my post - I wasn't refering to the container of the HUD when I was talking, it was the HUD itself. 80x20 or even 40x20 or something more primitive, ascii display. That's a good base target. Most of the commercial and military offerings are insano expensive, and a large part of that is the resolution of the optics.
I suppose you would also like to see it Extremely Cheap as well why they are at it.
Your definition of cheap and my definition of cheap are most certainly different. HUD technology isn't that exotic. There's lots of different ways to do it. I'd settle for "available on open market" or "possible to interface to without custom electronics", even.
There are these things called Post-Its (most chicks call them "stickey's" so you might also know them by that name), they kick ass for memos and related information.
*tee hee* You're so smart and witty! Math is hard! Let's go shopping!
We need to reduce the amount of distractions for the morons driving today, not give them another reason to rear-end, swurve into, and generally get their minds off the road. I can just see the tech-sauvy driving to work wearing this thing checking what meetings are on the schedule to miss and talking on his/her cell phone
Here's where you go from person missing the point of my post to being an absolute ignorant moron. I autocross on occassion and taking your eyes off the course to check RPMs is a problem. Do you know why fighter pilots use HUDs? Or why high end cars are starting to come with them? Or, for that matter, why Kenwood offered a consumer HUD to run their car audio? That's so you can get important information - such as speed, RPM, engine temperature, alerts for road temperature (near freezing), etc etc ET AL so you don't HAVE to take your eyes off the road. Anyone who does their Email or schedules while driving has an appointment with Darwin.
Besides, for the sake of arguement if I want to talk on my phone on the freeway, fsck you. It's legal, and until someone says otherwise, there's a place and time when you can use a phone, and when you can't. Millions of people do it every day without problems. Cell phones don't make ignorant drivers, just like beer doesn't make drunk drivers.
Cell phones and HUD technology are completely different. HUD technology can make driving a lot safer - and maybe make my life a little easier.
Why can't Oakley make a decent "cool" wearable set that hides the wires or is wireless, light, and provides basic text or vector graphics? That would be pretty sweet. The problem will all those wearables is you look like a goddamn freak with them on, unless you're a doctor in a hospital or something. If oakley or another sunglass manufacturer could get in the game, you'd have something that was a hell of a lot more trendy.
This also begs the question, is there any kind of standard protocols for head mounted displays? I don't imagine so, but it would be nifty if something could be established to provide a wireless link to the device you're using for a data source (be it a palmpilot, wearable, or even a cell phone). For the first generation of true wearables, I'd be happy just to see a good-looking, extrememly light product that did extremely crisp text display and maybe primitive vector graphics. I could use something like that for all sorts of memos and related information, not to mention it would make a great display for driving - speed, et al - and racing, too.
Too much emphasis on fancy right now.. take a lesson from the Palm; Start simple, and do it well.
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Screenplays and stories do not a good movie make. I'm not into a lot of old / poorly produced films (innovative or not), because if I just want a good story, I can pick up a good book and have my mind supply the intermediaries. YMMV, of course.
The Matrix kicked ass because of the flawless integration of the special effects into the story, and it's the only film I can say I've watched more than a dozen times.
I go to the movies for eye candy. I read books for depth. I'm sure you have a different opinion.
I won't be too sad if there's no sequel. The matrix is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and the number of movies that hollywood will leave alone to enjoy their limelight are few and far between - look at what happened to Highlander *whince*. I don't believe a sequel was ever made to Bladerunner, either, and it hasn't hurt it's cult following.
I never thought I'd see the day that a machine outclassed the Sony Vaio .. this thing blows it away. I want one, bad.. this machine kicks some serious ass. 1GB of ram? eeek!
All we need is for some big Linux sugardaddy *cough* RedHat *cough* *cough* to pick up LinuxPPC and make this line of notebooks fully supported under Linux.. That would be sweet. It'd be nice if they did the same for something like the Apple G4 also, and then brokered getting hardware drivers set up and whatnot - that'd give Linux a "home" architecture to work from, and allow you to fully exploit the capabilities of the hardware.
Oh well, I can dream.. damn, I want one of those though :). Match a titanium PDA case from Rhinoskin really nice, too.
The TINI from iButton is the shit for doing this sort of thing - $50 gets you a board that has ethernet, serial, loads of goodies, it's a joke to interface to, and it speaks Java, so it's easy to program, has a full suite of internet connectivity and you can do it in linux to boot! These things are a great deal, and offer all sorts of interesting possibilities with the addition of iButtons and the Java Ring, for instance..
I'm sure this stuff was covered on /., but I'm too lazy to look :).
If this is the case, then they've already been beat to the punch. The price is a little steep, you could probably cobble together a unit yourself for $400 or so, hardest part being the gears/transmission.
Time to sell some stock.
This company wasted untold amounts of money developing a product that:
I can't believe this crap! Does the MPAA off whores to go with kickbacks, or something? Oh well. No need to worry, if there's one thing even my MOM hates, it's VHS tapes and having to pick them out of a VCR when they (inevitably) fail. This format is DOA, but if I was a shareholder, I'd be pissed.
Maybe I'm missing some of the nomenclature here, but how is a digital TV different than a computer monitor? I'd sure like to hope that these TV's (or large, flatscreen digital monitors, which is what they are) have the capability to display a computer signal on them. If this is the case, then you just don't use the tuner that's in the TV and replace it with a computer with a digital out video card, and your problem is fixed.
Piracy will always be there, this is about control. Consumers are stupid, but as we saw with Divx, they aren't THAT stupid. Those digital TV's are hella expensive, and if you think I'm going to drop a few grand on something that won't do whatever the hell I want with it, then you're dead wrong, and I think a lot of people think along the same lines.
It's not just Europe that is like that - most companies in Canada (barring ones that are puppets for US based companies) do not require drug testing. This is for the most part because you can't be fired in Canada (and Europe, IIRC) for drug abuse, as that would be discriminatory - your employer in most cases would even offer rehabilitation!. If you're not paying me, what I do at home, or what I did 5 years before coming to work for you is none of your business. I show up coked/stoned/drunk, that's a different matter. One of the things that irks me is that you can tell if someone's out of it without making them piss in a bottle.
If you don't want to see "blood test" added to the list of employment pre-screens, refuse them! I have only had to do this once, and got the job regardless. Tell them you object to the violation of your privacy - and you'd be suprised that most of the time you get agreed with. I'm shocked they would ask - I mean, what would they do if you asked THEM to piss in a bottle for you so you can see what kind of workplace they run?
Another thing that is distrubing is that these tests produce paperwork, and you have no control over the paperwork - it gets sent to the employer. So, you think that your credit cards are worth worrying about? Would you be worried about your medical/drug history, likely stored unsecured? Plan on running for office in 20 years? (I won't even let employers keep my school transcripts on file - you want to look, fine, but you're not getting a copy!). I get ill thinking about people that use those supermarket buying cards - I'm sure my health insurer would love to cancel my insurance in 50 years because I drank a 24 of beer every week or ate 3 pounds of bacon every weekend (etc).
You have a choice. "Just Say No". If you lose the job, fine, there are other jobs out there. If you don't say no, then don't bitch and moan when you're a second class citizen as a result. The jobs that actually have some merit to requiring drug testing are few, and the ones requiring DNA testing are IMHO non-existant.
I think you're confusing commerical with a commerical unit that's fed with a differential signal (DGPS). This utilizes a known fixed location to offest the error in the GPS signal, however, it requires a fixed known station. This can get pretty good - better than 3 meters. The commercial units you get from Garmin or whatever are good to 10-15 meters, although the altitude measurements are almost worthless in most cases. So, 10-15M is on par with 22 yards (that's maybe a little optimistic).
But, 10M is pretty good!
don't you think it would be a little hard for gays to pass on their genes down their family tree?
There are lots of genes that do this. They just have to be recessive on the X chromosome, carried by an (unafflicted?) female.
Actually since they are selling the binaries they have to have the source readily available. But where's the source?
You missed the point. Since they didn't sell YOU a binary, nobody has to give YOU the source. If you buy their binary, you get the source. You could also get the source from someone who bought it.. but nothing says they have to give it to you unless they agree to sell or provide a binary to you. GPL is no guarantee of access, and hence free as in speech is not free as in beer, a point that escapes many here.
Nothing says the GPL means free as in beer code. The GPL just guarantees anyone you give a binary to, you have to give the source code to, if they ask. That's it, nothing more. Nothing stops them from redistributing it.. unless they don't wanna.
I thought one of the conditions of their first antitrust trial was that they agreed to never directly release a version of Unix that would compete with offerings from SCO, Solaris, et al, and it wouldn't be too far a reach to argue that linux could be included in there, too. Of course, as we all know.. Gnu's Not Unix.. (oh, the irony if GNU/Linux came back to bite RMS in a legal battle with Microsoft over this issue..
Maybe someone who knows more can comment - has the recent trials or breakup of the company changed this ruling from way back when (I feel old now)..
And get yourself the books "Getting Started In Electronics" and ALL of the little "Engineer's Handbook" books (recently updated, I noticed) by Forrest Mims. This man has started more people into electronics than I could possibly imagine. I hope he was compensated well by the publisher for his great contribution to electronics - I owe a lot of my start to get where I am now to him.
I CANNOT recommend these books highly enough and I'm suprised nobody else has. Once you get those, you can get on your way with some parts and things, but get them from someplace like DigiKey or Mouser and you'll save a lot of money experimenting. I also recommend surplus places, one in particular: BG Micro, they have lots of stuff to tinker with cheap.
Do you like digital stuff? Then go check out a Java-based TINI from Ibutton or even better, some of the kits that are available from Parallax Inc. They're expensive, but their stuff is quality and works.
Good luck on a rewarding and interesting hobby with almost no bounds!
We've got more power than we know what to do with up here. Hell, we sell most of it to the USA. Why not relocate some of the plants up here, and then the local governments can lament the NIMBY phenonomon when they don't have the growth in the local economy and the corresponding tax revenue that these companies provide?
That said.. people need to accept that if they're not going to look at techniques for affordable power generation other than coal and oil - specifically, nuclear technologies, solar power, and the best and baddest, hydroelectric and the corresponding impact on whatever you're damming up - there's going to be (real) economic impacts. I never understood why more people didn't look at geothermal power.. Lots of heat in the earth's core to tap. Although, people will probably whine about that, too.
Or, you can just pay more. Heh. Help out that Canadian trade defict!
Heh .. these guys are the shit.. I highly recommend them to any and all geeks out there; Those with an especially bitter and jaded outlook on life will find their lyrics +1 insightful or at least, +1, interesting. Ok, well, they're worth at least a napster download hehe:).
I value my privacy as much as the next guy, but this seems a bit extreme to me. Is it really worth all that effort just to make sure no one is reading your mail?
Like other posters suggested.. I think you need to read some books, and 1984 is a good start. You must be young, or incredibly naive.. I'm not an old geezer, but I understand power. My history teacher in high school way back when used to have a huge poster above the board. It said: "Power: It ain't for the givin', it's for the takin'". Those in power will do anything to further it. It's a theme that has been played out since the beginning of recorded history. Do you know what power is? It's the ability to control YOU, the lowly serf. That doesn't sit to good with me.
It seems to me that for most people, this should not even be an issue. If you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. The only people who need to use encryption are those who have something to hide. Maybe we should be snooping around in these people's inboxes
There's another very famous quote about police dictatorships not being built up overnight. Not everyone values information and free thought the way the average person here on /. or kuro5hin might. If the populace is trained to accept blatant violations of their personal freedom - for instance, random searches in schools, gradual introduction of monitoring cameras in common areas - then eventually you can get total control. And that prospect scares the living shit out of me. I'm not even an american, but the whole concept of the United States of America was to devise a system whereby the people could be guaranteed freedom from this - the founders of that nation were very wise - and look at what has happened under the guise of "protection" from terrorists, drug dealers, insert-evil-guy here.
People need to wake up and start to take responsibility for their lives and their freedom. Maybe we need a major war every generation. Watching friends die bloody violent deaths might wake a few people up about the true costs of freedom and make them think twice when those freedoms are given up for "protection".
Arrgh, this must have been a troll, but I'm cranky and half in the bag. Get GPG while you can.
This isn't very well thought-out. It also demonstrates the shallow insight provided on those other issues mentioned.
Any discussion of these issues is subject to gross simplification. My posts included. You're missing my point that there are far bigger issues to deal with, like what will happen when India and China ramp up their industrial processes. If we cut our CO2 and other emissions by 50%, it won't mean jack squat if China is putting out 200% of what we are now in 5 years, which is quite rightly the case, and how can you argue against them doing that to improve the quality of their lives? We did it during our industrial revolutions.
Do you REALLY want to put your life in the hands of a group of humans playing the role of mother nature?
Look around you if you live in a city. We do it all the time, we do it right now, and as population and consumption grows, we will do it on an even larger and more grand scale. I suspect you'll start seeing arcologies a la SimCity in the industrialized world that are completely self sustaining as a result of pressures brought on by transportation costs. My point is that I look to history when I think about the future, and thus my view is quite bleak.
In case you need it spoonfed: Your suggestion that humans can survive no ozone by becoming nocturnal is ignorant of our position in the food chain / ecosystem. Will the rest of the animals we eat become nocturnal? Hmm.. No vegetation. It'd be nice not to have some oxygen once in a while.
I am not as ignorant as you might think. Again, gross oversimplifications abound in my arguements and yours. I look at it from the more pessimistic side, and more people should be thinking about how to deal with ecological disasters rather than (IMHO, hopelessly) trying to prevent them. Of course not every animal will become nocturnal. Most of the species that ever existed on this planet are exinct, too. The earth 2 million years ago was vastly different than it is now; The earth will always be changing, and it's foolish to think that things will always be as they are now based on growth and consumption patterns. It sucks, yes, but life's hard.
It is in our nature to destroy ourselves. That sums up my arguements in one sentence.
I hate to flame but, people like you are the reason that we are in the shit hole situation we are in now...
No, I'd make a safe bet that the 500-1000 or so million people in the world that like warm houses, electricity, cars, and small boxes with blinky lights are much more to blame than myself individually. But you're free to have your opinion. I don't drive a moronic SUV, but I do own a sports car.
which by the way has nothing to do with the ozone other than the fact that if we have no ozone world hunger won't be a problem as THERE WON'T BE ANYONE AROUND TO EAT
Bullshit. If there's no ozone, then you just become nocturnal or you don't go outside during the day. You adapt to your changing environment (or you die). Plants love a little extra UV. Sure, lots of crops might fail, but there's technological solutions for that, too. It's just a matter of cost and engineering. (Much cheaper to grow outside!).
as much as you want to believe that in your pathetic paultry 65 year life span nothing you do or say is going to change the fact that once you are dead and gone and long turned to dust your sorry ass will have long ago turned into ozone, fertilizer and probably gotten well sun burnt on the way due to your misconception that if we hide our collective heads in the sand the world will fix it's self and all the bad will go away
Ugh, it's OK to rant my friend, I do it alot, but punctuation please.. at least make it so I can read it when I'm being flamed! heh. I don't go outside. I minimize my sun exposure. I don't think the sun is especially good for my skin's DNA. I do have every intention of making sure my 65 year (give or take) stay on this planet is a nice one, though. If there are serious environmental problems, there will become an economic incentive to gix them, and someone will rise to the challenge. If nobody gives a fuck, then yes, the planet will decay, but it's because of apathy. Apathy is evil, yes, but I call 'em like I see 'em. Not much you can do considering how many others are also planning on there enjoyable 65 year lifespans.
we hide our collective heads in the sand the world will fix it's self and all the bad will go away..
No, it won't.. but I don't concern myself with the masses who don't want to listen to logic. Fishermen bitch about mismanagement when there's no more fish. People bitch about gas prices when there's no more gas. People will bitch about global warming when their homes are under 10 feet of ocean. They'll bitch about the ozone when their kids get cancer. I'll work on developing things to deal with those demands. If you're not as bitter and jaded as me, congrats, and I hope you make a difference.
I have an extremely dim view of human nature.
I would like to end my rant and apologise to the rest of the /.ers, oh and yes I could have mod'd this one to the grave but chose to respond
Thank you for posting a shining example of why moderation doesn't work, and I suggest you read the moderation guidelines, you sorry pathetic little loser. What would you mod it as? -1, I don't agree? -1, Not politically correct? -1, I don't like you? You didn't refute my arguement in fact or substance.
Ozone is quite simply, an ion of Oxygen formed when you expose O2 to high intensity electric fields (arc gaps, or a welder), from some industrial processes, and most importantly, Ozone is formed when the UV light that is much stronger in the upper atmosphere causes the same effect and creates O3. I always wondered why we couldn't get planes or something with huge ozone generators on them to repair the damage, or if that was even feasible. Maybe I'll do the math sometime.
Interesting factoid: One of the reasons that there's not much commercial supersonic flight is that they fly extremely high to lessen air drag. I was taking a course in astrophysics (intro) in my last year of university, and the prof asked us if we could guess why there were no liscences being issued - and it's because at that height, a lot of the oxygen you're burning IS ozone, and the jet exhaust breakdown components are also reactive. Fun stuff.
Another interesting factoid, where I'm from, Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia Canada, had a ozone hole open up right on the top of the island a few years back, I think it was one of the lowest latitudes that this was recorded at. Whoo! :)
Need to such CO2 out of the atmosphere: Here's just one low-tech solution that could sink billions of tonnes of CO2 into the ocean.
There's technical solutions for everything. The problem, of course, is how much it's gunna cost. Global warming is sooooo low on my list of worries for the future it isn't funny. We don't even have a decent computational model of the atmosphere to work from, and are decades from getting one - push for more money for that.
Something that pisses me off is that it's so easy to whine about global warming with a full stomach. There are lots of people in China, India, and Africa that haven't effectively gone through an industrial revolution and don't have that luxury. I'm not going to get high and mighty when they start burning billions of tonnes of coal to do what we did at the end of the 18th century.
There's a bunch of solutions out there if you want to be a little crafty, and most of it is just limited by how much you want to spend and how reliable you need the data transfer to be (as you can guess.. the two are linked :).
A couple people have suggested a laser link. I built a small one for experimenting using a UART and some of the schematics from the book Lasers, -Ray Guns & Light Cannons ISBN: 0-07-045035-8. (Someone better buy it because I had to dig through two years of crap to find it! :) I got the lasers from some surplus place cheap. It worked well at 2400 baud or something like that, I was trying to build a circuit to act as a wireless point-to-point link to get high speed internet just slightly off campus (e.g. through my lab window to a buddy across the street :). It worked well, although I ran out of time to finish it. Think I was planning on selling them to build cheap point-to-point links at the time, or something. Hard to aim, though. Anyhow.
Another way is through wireless modules like the folks at Lynx Technologies or Parallax Inc. The parallax ones are of better quality right out of the box, and they'll sell to individuals, the former was nasty to me when I wanted to order some samples.
YET another way is through using Ham Radio and packet. You can get an all - in - one unit from Kenwood called the TH-D7A that is a small handheld with a 9600 baud TNC built into it. It's truely plug-and-play. Extremely expensive at $550cdn a pop, I know, I have one. You also need to be liscened to operate at these frequencies, and most/all places won't sell you one without your callsign or liscence. These work VERY well.
That said, one of those options will be the best for you. IR is out as it doesn't work worth a damn in direct sunlight, even laser detectors have a bit of a problem with sun. Sun is a great source of optical noise :). If I was needing something mission critical and a long distance, your best choice is the kenwood/packet option, or maybe the parallax modules. They hook right up to a serial port.
Alternately, you could just get a cheap 486 notebook and get a 802.11 card, and wire the whole thing to a big-ass car battery (find one that takes 12V, and make sure to put a fuse on it!). That might be cheaper in the long run, and will provide a lot of bandwidth.
Hope that helps.
Gates will be forced to _choose_ a company with which to have is stock in, so he could either have stock in the OS company, or he could have stock in the applications company. This would be a difficult choice, as I see it, the apps company would make more money, but Gates not going with his roots on the OS side could be interpreted as a vote of non-confidence in the flagship product.
Going to be interesting to see what happens. Personally, I think cokehea^H^H^H^H^H^H^H, Bush will overthrow the decision, or interfere at the least. All those campeign contributions gotta count for something (although, last time I checked, microsoft gave money to both campeigns, more to Bush, I believe, though).
Ohboy, I'm tired, and I'm going to have some real fun with this.
How can you demand an extremely trendy, light, crisp, wireless solution from Oakley (of all people), but then advise them to not stress on anything "fancy" and to start simple.
Ok.. not to diss Oakley - they rock - but sunglasses aren't rocket science. They might make it SEEM like rocket science, but they're basically colored plastic with nifty colors. I think they may have just started offering polarizing lenses recently. If you read my post - I wasn't refering to the container of the HUD when I was talking, it was the HUD itself. 80x20 or even 40x20 or something more primitive, ascii display. That's a good base target. Most of the commercial and military offerings are insano expensive, and a large part of that is the resolution of the optics.
I suppose you would also like to see it Extremely Cheap as well why they are at it.
Your definition of cheap and my definition of cheap are most certainly different. HUD technology isn't that exotic. There's lots of different ways to do it. I'd settle for "available on open market" or "possible to interface to without custom electronics", even.
There are these things called Post-Its (most chicks call them "stickey's" so you might also know them by that name), they kick ass for memos and related information.
*tee hee* You're so smart and witty! Math is hard! Let's go shopping!
We need to reduce the amount of distractions for the morons driving today, not give them another reason to rear-end, swurve into, and generally get their minds off the road. I can just see the tech-sauvy driving to work wearing this thing checking what meetings are on the schedule to miss and talking on his/her cell phone
Here's where you go from person missing the point of my post to being an absolute ignorant moron. I autocross on occassion and taking your eyes off the course to check RPMs is a problem. Do you know why fighter pilots use HUDs? Or why high end cars are starting to come with them? Or, for that matter, why Kenwood offered a consumer HUD to run their car audio? That's so you can get important information - such as speed, RPM, engine temperature, alerts for road temperature (near freezing), etc etc ET AL so you don't HAVE to take your eyes off the road. Anyone who does their Email or schedules while driving has an appointment with Darwin.
Besides, for the sake of arguement if I want to talk on my phone on the freeway, fsck you. It's legal, and until someone says otherwise, there's a place and time when you can use a phone, and when you can't. Millions of people do it every day without problems. Cell phones don't make ignorant drivers, just like beer doesn't make drunk drivers.
Cell phones and HUD technology are completely different. HUD technology can make driving a lot safer - and maybe make my life a little easier.
Why can't Oakley make a decent "cool" wearable set that hides the wires or is wireless, light, and provides basic text or vector graphics? That would be pretty sweet. The problem will all those wearables is you look like a goddamn freak with them on, unless you're a doctor in a hospital or something. If oakley or another sunglass manufacturer could get in the game, you'd have something that was a hell of a lot more trendy.
This also begs the question, is there any kind of standard protocols for head mounted displays? I don't imagine so, but it would be nifty if something could be established to provide a wireless link to the device you're using for a data source (be it a palmpilot, wearable, or even a cell phone). For the first generation of true wearables, I'd be happy just to see a good-looking, extrememly light product that did extremely crisp text display and maybe primitive vector graphics. I could use something like that for all sorts of memos and related information, not to mention it would make a great display for driving - speed, et al - and racing, too.
Too much emphasis on fancy right now.. take a lesson from the Palm; Start simple, and do it well.