I didn't say it was good, just that (a) it existed and arguably qualifies as a "Podcast", and (b) it deserved to be mentioned on a thread titled "Podcasting from Space".
Besides, if not exactly "high quality", I did think it rated as at least "occasionally entertaining".
Podcasting is just another hip-to-be-cool term coined by some luminary metrosexual in the blogosphere.
Thank you. Beautifully worded.
What the article title, especially combined with the whole issue of the word "Podcast", reminds me of is this: I can't be the only one who remembers that back in ~1999-2000, the Slashdot guys had their own internet "radio" show, GEEKS in SPACE...?
They would record themselves rambling for a half-hour or so about whatever had been big on Slashdot that week, then post an MP3 of that recording. Sure sounds like a "Podcast" to me, though I'm sure it wasn't the first either, despite having been years before the iPod first came out.
Actually, just before the Mini first came out, when a friend and I were speculating about what the new machine would be, that was the only point on which my guess missed the mark.
I was picturing something of about the same size, shape, and specs, but even cheaper, and with no hard drive but an integrated iPod dock. Oh, and a TV-out jack.
Huh. My Apex (600a, iirc, which I also "rushed to Circuit City to get", though my reason was the loophole menu) worked fine for, oh, I don't know... three or four years at least, before it crapped out (with exactly the same symptoms you described) just last fall.
And, interestingly enough, I happened to replace it with the same $39 CyberHome POS. Am I the only one who thinks the similarity between our stories is getting creepy? But I think I got mine at Best Buy.
So yeah, mileage varies. It's certainly not a "high-end" machine by any standard, but then they've got to be cutting costs somewhere. I'm not too upset about my Apex dying when it did, considering the price. And my CyberHome is still working fine after ~7 months -- even if it too craps out before the end of the year, I still won't be too upset.
Yeah, that was sort of my point (and I'll have you know, my tongue is still numb from being jammed so solidly in my cheek while I wrote my previous comment.)
Apex's UI (at least on my old 600a before it crapped out) is IMO actually pretty lame from a human-interaction design point of view (though I haven't used enough other players to know where it ranks). But the fact that it allows you to do things like skip previews, let alone bypass region-coding and turn off Macrovision, makes it functionally far superior to any player that sticks to the spec.
My comparison was meant to drive home just how much the restrictions in the spec. harm the quality of the products -- "stifling innovation" is the correct phrase, I believe. (And I chose Sony to pick on because they're the one in the incestuous position of being in both the movie-making and consumer-electronics businesses.)
Yes, you could buy a player from one of the more innovative consumer-electronics companies like Apex, instead of boring old dinosaurs like Sony, and get a better-designed UI with features to let you better control the playback.
You might also look into DVD backup software, which you should be using anyway, to protect your investment. Why take a chance on scratches/smudges/etc. ruining your original $20-30 disc? Use your backup for day-to-day viewing, and keep the original safe in its case. And some of those programs actually allow you to create an enhanced UI for the copy by changing the navigation controls so that even your Sony (or whatever you have) player will be able to mimic some of the innovative features of the Apex.
It's interesting in that we can assume that Mr. Dell no longer thinks Steve Jobs should (paraphrased) "shut Apple down, sell all its assets, and distribute the proceeds to the shareholders", as I seem to recall him recommending as the best thing that could be done with the company back around the time Jobs took over.
(Certain types of comments stick in Apple fans' memories (even the non-"rabid fanboi" type) and produce a certain desire to gloat at times like this.)
Driving a projectile with a magnetic field (energy but no mass, hooray) seems to offer limitless muzzle velocities. However, they have a history of throwing their breech into the ground at mach 2, rather than putting a bullet in the air when anyone over the rank of major is watching
I keep hearing things like this -- that, being so much more powerful than regular guns, railguns present all sorts of new engineering challenges, like the sabot being either vaporized or spot-welded to the rails the instant the current starts, or the device flying apart from various internal forces, etc.
So... anyone think to try making it a bit less powerful, at least at first? I know the physics only vaguely -- is there a minimum power level at which the effect will work? Or could you make one that was "only", say, 3x-10x more powerful than a conventional Howitzer, and work up from there?
Disclaimer: short of doing the unthinkable and reading TFA, I can only guess here. But the ability to self-replicate given a crate of conveniently laid-out pre-fabbed parts is an entirely different proposition from the ability to bootstrap an entire industrial base (as in, digging up ore and smelting metals, etc.) so as to self-replicate "from scratch", let alone the nano-tech equivalent of being able to grab raw materials atom-by-atom.
So I'm thinking the idea here is that it's logistically easier to airdrop one pre-assembled robot and a whole bunch of crates full of parts than to have to transport all the robots pre-assembled. The crates take less space, and the parts can be a generic collection that can be assembled into any combination of these robots and whatever other machinery you wanted. This means you initially only have to figure out how many crates to send, and then you can decide how to use them as you go.
Oh, it's funny all right. I actually did have mod points at the time, so it's not like I hate it or want it modded own or anything. I just, after the third or fourth time noticing it, couldn't resist asking.
Thank you. At the risk of this sounding like a mere "me too" post, I say: there is zero possibility of anything worthwhile coming out of the Star Trek franchise as long as that idiot has anything to do with it. Not only that, but some of the damage that his nonsense has done to the universe's back-story is irreparable by any means short of completely removing it from the canon, i.e., saying none of it ever happened. (If they want to throw him a bone, they can say his stuff all happened in some kind of alternate reality, via time-travel -- he'll like that, and the rest of us can get back to the real story.)
Wake me up when not only do they fire him and replace him with someone who has some understanding of Trek and of science fiction in general, but when that person begins his tenure by declaring that nothing that happened in the Trek universe under Berman should be considered canon.
That's how I view it: The last few shows (and even most of the TNG-cast movies) just don't count as Trek -- they're just generic (mostly-crappy-but-occasionally-decent) sci-fi/action/adventure shows that use Trek-like uniforms and names, but they're not part of the same universe; in fact, there hasn't been any new realTrek produced in years. I've been ignoring all of his stuff and just hoping that someday there'll be a real new Trek series.
I guess we could begin by pointing out that there are two kinds of "satellite antennas" -- those that receive signals from satellites, and those that transmit signals to them -- and asking him to guess which would most likely be found in this device, and then to speculate as to how much radiation each kind emits.
Yes, and if that were what TFA said they were doing, then you'd be right and the OP would look foolish, instead of vice versa.
However, TFA talks about just running the cold water through the pipes, and specifically uses the term "sweating" in exactly the same way as it uses that term to refer to using cold pipes to extract water vapor from the air through condensation. The OP's point, which I was wondering about too, is that this doesn't seem to make much sense, because the soil wouldn't be full of vapor to condense.
And of course, as another reply has already called you on, seawater isn't the best thing for irrigation, anyway.
We can probably assume that the idea involves irrigating with the fresh water produced by the other part of the system. (Yeah, okay, figuring this out really isn't rocket science.) But TFA is apparently not just telling us what even we non-rocket-scientists could figure out, namely that having a supply of fresh water will come in handy for all the applications where fresh water is needed, including irrigation. It also talks about "cold irrigation" being a new way to increase crop yield. I'd assume the full answer is that cold irrigation is properly viewed as a whole separate innovation that's also made possible by this system, and that TFA just described it wrong.
I'm probably not supposed to tell you this, but the joke's actually on you, and the four other people on/. who think the "geeks never get laid" jokes are still funny. The rest of us are getting laid all the time.
From what I gather, an upcoming goal for Firefox development is to package all the back-end engine stuff into a "XUL Runner" runtime platform that could be installed separate from any one application. Firefox itself would then be just a ~1MB bundle of XUL code, chrome, etc., and Thunderbird, Sunbird, and other apps could be equally lightweight.
Re:Perl is a write-only language
on
Perl Medic
·
· Score: 1
We're talking about Perl here -- what has Wall got to do with it?
Perl has a Wall. Larry Wall.
Ah, you've heard of him. Good. I'd assume this means you got my joke. I'm glad it wasn't too subtle.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say it was good, just that (a) it existed and arguably qualifies as a "Podcast", and (b) it deserved to be mentioned on a thread titled "Podcasting from Space".
Besides, if not exactly "high quality", I did think it rated as at least "occasionally entertaining".
Podcasting is just another hip-to-be-cool term coined by some luminary metrosexual in the blogosphere.
Thank you. Beautifully worded.
What the article title, especially combined with the whole issue of the word "Podcast", reminds me of is this: I can't be the only one who remembers that back in ~1999-2000, the Slashdot guys had their own internet "radio" show, GEEKS in SPACE
They would record themselves rambling for a half-hour or so about whatever had been big on Slashdot that week, then post an MP3 of that recording. Sure sounds like a "Podcast" to me, though I'm sure it wasn't the first either, despite having been years before the iPod first came out.
they could just tell you to use your iPod.
Actually, just before the Mini first came out, when a friend and I were speculating about what the new machine would be, that was the only point on which my guess missed the mark.
I was picturing something of about the same size, shape, and specs, but even cheaper, and with no hard drive but an integrated iPod dock. Oh, and a TV-out jack.
Exactly
He said "own", not "0wn". It makes a big difference, you know.
Huh. My Apex (600a, iirc, which I also "rushed to Circuit City to get", though my reason was the loophole menu) worked fine for, oh, I don't know... three or four years at least, before it crapped out (with exactly the same symptoms you described) just last fall.
And, interestingly enough, I happened to replace it with the same $39 CyberHome POS. Am I the only one who thinks the similarity between our stories is getting creepy? But I think I got mine at Best Buy.
So yeah, mileage varies. It's certainly not a "high-end" machine by any standard, but then they've got to be cutting costs somewhere. I'm not too upset about my Apex dying when it did, considering the price. And my CyberHome is still working fine after ~7 months -- even if it too craps out before the end of the year, I still won't be too upset.
Yeah, that was sort of my point (and I'll have you know, my tongue is still numb from being jammed so solidly in my cheek while I wrote my previous comment.)
Apex's UI (at least on my old 600a before it crapped out) is IMO actually pretty lame from a human-interaction design point of view (though I haven't used enough other players to know where it ranks). But the fact that it allows you to do things like skip previews, let alone bypass region-coding and turn off Macrovision, makes it functionally far superior to any player that sticks to the spec.
My comparison was meant to drive home just how much the restrictions in the spec. harm the quality of the products -- "stifling innovation" is the correct phrase, I believe. (And I chose Sony to pick on because they're the one in the incestuous position of being in both the movie-making and consumer-electronics businesses.)
Next chapter is usually disabled.
Yes, you could buy a player from one of the more innovative consumer-electronics companies like Apex, instead of boring old dinosaurs like Sony, and get a better-designed UI with features to let you better control the playback.
You might also look into DVD backup software, which you should be using anyway, to protect your investment. Why take a chance on scratches/smudges/etc. ruining your original $20-30 disc? Use your backup for day-to-day viewing, and keep the original safe in its case. And some of those programs actually allow you to create an enhanced UI for the copy by changing the navigation controls so that even your Sony (or whatever you have) player will be able to mimic some of the innovative features of the Apex.
Its times like this that you have to link to penny arcade
Heh. Man, one of these days, I'm gonna add penny arcade to my list of regular webcomics. Aw, who am I kidding?
The way I like to say it is: "BSD: It's like Linux, but for grown-ups!"
I don't think the public knows what it wants Congress to do, but it wants Congress to do something
Situations like this are dangerous in that they can lead to the sort of political "logic" that goes something like:
[P1] <whatever> is terrible!
[therefore]
[P2] Something must be done!
[P3] This is "something".
[therefore, by P2]
[P4] This must be done!
Then again, TFS also said:
They don't have a lot of confidence that Congress will do the right thing.
It's interesting in that we can assume that Mr. Dell no longer thinks Steve Jobs should (paraphrased) "shut Apple down, sell all its assets, and distribute the proceeds to the shareholders", as I seem to recall him recommending as the best thing that could be done with the company back around the time Jobs took over.
(Certain types of comments stick in Apple fans' memories (even the non-"rabid fanboi" type) and produce a certain desire to gloat at times like this.)
Nesting ?: syntax makes baby Jesus cry.
Driving a projectile with a magnetic field (energy but no mass, hooray) seems to offer limitless muzzle velocities. However, they have a history of throwing their breech into the ground at mach 2, rather than putting a bullet in the air when anyone over the rank of major is watching
I keep hearing things like this -- that, being so much more powerful than regular guns, railguns present all sorts of new engineering challenges, like the sabot being either vaporized or spot-welded to the rails the instant the current starts, or the device flying apart from various internal forces, etc.
So... anyone think to try making it a bit less powerful, at least at first? I know the physics only vaguely -- is there a minimum power level at which the effect will work? Or could you make one that was "only", say, 3x-10x more powerful than a conventional Howitzer, and work up from there?
Disclaimer: short of doing the unthinkable and reading TFA, I can only guess here. But the ability to self-replicate given a crate of conveniently laid-out pre-fabbed parts is an entirely different proposition from the ability to bootstrap an entire industrial base (as in, digging up ore and smelting metals, etc.) so as to self-replicate "from scratch", let alone the nano-tech equivalent of being able to grab raw materials atom-by-atom.
So I'm thinking the idea here is that it's logistically easier to airdrop one pre-assembled robot and a whole bunch of crates full of parts than to have to transport all the robots pre-assembled. The crates take less space, and the parts can be a generic collection that can be assembled into any combination of these robots and whatever other machinery you wanted. This means you initially only have to figure out how many crates to send, and then you can decide how to use them as you go.
Oh, it's funny all right. I actually did have mod points at the time, so it's not like I hate it or want it modded own or anything. I just, after the third or fourth time noticing it, couldn't resist asking.
Keep in mind Google's motto is: "Do No Evil".
Yes, it's a good thing they have that motto -- otherwise who knows what sort of evil things they might do?
But no, they say they're not evil, so there's clearly nothing to worry about.
Do you ever get tired of posting variations of the same joke on every Mars-related story, and always getting modded to Score:5, Funny?
Sorry, dumb question, I know.
Yes, this new learning amazes me, Sir AC. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes...?
No, it doesn't, Not with Berman in charge.
Thank you. At the risk of this sounding like a mere "me too" post, I say: there is zero possibility of anything worthwhile coming out of the Star Trek franchise as long as that idiot has anything to do with it. Not only that, but some of the damage that his nonsense has done to the universe's back-story is irreparable by any means short of completely removing it from the canon, i.e., saying none of it ever happened. (If they want to throw him a bone, they can say his stuff all happened in some kind of alternate reality, via time-travel -- he'll like that, and the rest of us can get back to the real story.)
Wake me up when not only do they fire him and replace him with someone who has some understanding of Trek and of science fiction in general, but when that person begins his tenure by declaring that nothing that happened in the Trek universe under Berman should be considered canon.
That's how I view it: The last few shows (and even most of the TNG-cast movies) just don't count as Trek -- they're just generic (mostly-crappy-but-occasionally-decent) sci-fi/action/adventure shows that use Trek-like uniforms and names, but they're not part of the same universe; in fact, there hasn't been any new real Trek produced in years. I've been ignoring all of his stuff and just hoping that someday there'll be a real new Trek series.
I guess we could begin by pointing out that there are two kinds of "satellite antennas" -- those that receive signals from satellites, and those that transmit signals to them -- and asking him to guess which would most likely be found in this device, and then to speculate as to how much radiation each kind emits.
Yes, and if that were what TFA said they were doing, then you'd be right and the OP would look foolish, instead of vice versa.
However, TFA talks about just running the cold water through the pipes, and specifically uses the term "sweating" in exactly the same way as it uses that term to refer to using cold pipes to extract water vapor from the air through condensation. The OP's point, which I was wondering about too, is that this doesn't seem to make much sense, because the soil wouldn't be full of vapor to condense.
And of course, as another reply has already called you on, seawater isn't the best thing for irrigation, anyway.
We can probably assume that the idea involves irrigating with the fresh water produced by the other part of the system. (Yeah, okay, figuring this out really isn't rocket science.) But TFA is apparently not just telling us what even we non-rocket-scientists could figure out, namely that having a supply of fresh water will come in handy for all the applications where fresh water is needed, including irrigation. It also talks about "cold irrigation" being a new way to increase crop yield. I'd assume the full answer is that cold irrigation is properly viewed as a whole separate innovation that's also made possible by this system, and that TFA just described it wrong.
I'm probably not supposed to tell you this, but the joke's actually on you, and the four other people on
I already interact with myself while I watch cyber girls on my computer. Man, this ain't news!
And you don't see any interesting potential applications for a system that can transmit tactile sensations via the internet? None at all?
Sheesh, man, do you need someone to draw you a diagram?
From what I gather, an upcoming goal for Firefox development is to package all the back-end engine stuff into a "XUL Runner" runtime platform that could be installed separate from any one application. Firefox itself would then be just a ~1MB bundle of XUL code, chrome, etc., and Thunderbird, Sunbird, and other apps could be equally lightweight.
Perl has a Wall.
Larry Wall.
Ah, you've heard of him. Good. I'd assume this means you got my joke. I'm glad it wasn't too subtle.