Saturday night I went shopping at a local grocery store that uses those cards. After the checker scanned all my items she asked if I had a "Super Saver Card." I told her "No" and she started in on her spiel about how I'll get all kinds of coupons and special offers and how I can get up to 20% off on selected items whenever I use the card.
Then to demonstrate she ran the store's card through the scanner. The register beeped and printed a line on the reciept. "See", she said, "It's just that easy!" "So how much did I save?" I asked. She checked the receipt, "Um, well, nothing this time. But you could save up to 20 % on selected items!" "No thanks", I said.
Voyager, Cassini, Galileo, numerous spy sats and all Apollo moon missions had RTG reactors. I believe at least one of the Mars missions did as well.
Do a search for "SNAP 9A reactor" to find out about the failed Transit 5-BN-3 mission that spread P-238 over the entire world in 1964. That one accident is credited as the main source of P-238 in the environment and was still detectable in the upper atmosphere as late as 1995 (The last time anyone checked). One group of researchers reported that contamination from that one accident was spread to every continent and was probably responsible for increased lung cancer rates 20 years later.
The US currently has 4 abandoned plutonium reactors still in orbit, the Soviets have an unknown number. 8 of the reactors known to be still in orbit are damaged.
Apollo 13's reactor is on the bottom of the Pacific ocean, hopefully undamaged. The other Apollo reactors are on the moon.
Both the US ans the Soviets have used these reactors since the 60's to provide power on Earth for weather stations, light houses, marker buoys and monitoring and surveillance stations. It's assumed the Chinese have done the same but there's no information to confirm that.
There was a reference a few years ago on the web about a CIA spy station in the mountains somewhere in Asia that had one of these reactors buried in a landslide and never recovered. I can't find it on the web anymore so maybe it's been pulled.
There's no reason to assume that the plutonium in question is going into space. Maybe they're setting up a secret monitoring station in Afghanistan.
I'm not assuming anything, it's just that deals like this are common in business. HP sells printers to Dell at a discount in return for Dell offering them exclusively with their systems. Dell gets cheaper printers ("WE offer HP printers for the price of an Epson when you buy a complete system!") , HP gets new suckers ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H customers to sell ink to; everybody wins. (Except the consumer, but he doesn't count anyway. "Just give us the money and no one gets hurt.")
I can't say for sure this is what was going on but it's not out of the ordinary.
Now if Dell has their own printers, which they (probably) make a greater profit on, which one do you think will be pushed harder by the Dell sales people? Yup. Dell. So HP's pretty much cut out of Dell's market anyway. Why help Dell if they're going to cut you off anyway?
I'll grant you, HP is probably just being vindictive and spiteful by this action, but that's not unusual in business either. Nor is it necessarily bad for the company. Only time will tell. If Dell sells really crappy printers it may increase HP's sales as older Dell users tell the newbies, "DUDE! You shoulda got an HP!";-)
In the end you're right, it will be the consumer who decides what printer he wants. The totally uninformed will probably just buy a package deal and won't care about what brand of printer is shipped with it as long as it works. Kinda like they do with monitors, it may say DELL on the outside but what's inside? Hitachi? Sony? NoNameCo? Few people care as long as it looks good and works. I'm currently staring at a monitor marked "Hewlett Packard" but I know that they didn't make it. Who did? Who cares? Monitors have become a commodity item, interchangable and easily replaced. Printers should be as well, but it may take a few more years for this to happen and the printer manufacturers are fighting it hard as they try to hold on to the profitable ink market.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go buy a printer, any printer, and some bottles of ink, any ink, fill up the ink resevoirs and start printing? Kinda like we do now with floppy disks, paper, blank cds and other computer consumables. Proprietary products suck.
It's probably not as simple as that. HP probably sells printers to Dell at a discount while selling them at full price elsewhere. Now that Dell is going to compete with them in the printer market, why would HP want to give them that discount only to have Dell undercut them on their own printers in the retail market?
Originally designed for commercial radios, it works great for me. You can set the turn off delay from 15 minutes to 15 hours. Kinda expensive at $75 (I got mine free as a demo) but it also provides high, low and reverse voltage protection and will handle 30 Amps.
You're thinking of "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. It's a short story written in 1959 that won a Hugo Award. Later expanded into a novel which was made into a movie, "Charly."
I don't have the links but the IMDB probably lists it. Good book, but I thought the movie was so-so.
My mother-in-law was a waitress for most of her adult life and a total caffine addict, 3-4 POTS of coffee a day, she got headaches if she didn't get enough caffine. When she couldn't have coffee she'd have Mountain Dew or really, really strong tea.
Now she has rapidly-advancing Alzheimer's and it's not a pretty sight. She's in perfect physical health, strong heart & lungs and may last another 5 years until her brain deteriorates to the point where it forgets how to breathe.
She's only been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the last 2 years and she's already forgotten her children, husband, and grandchildren. She can't dress herself, can barely feed herself (you have to keep reminding her to pick up the spoon and eat) and will sometimes hold animated, rambling, incoherent conversations with inanimate objects. Yet somehow she still remembers her dog, who stays loyally by her side, her constant companion.
It's a sad, sad disease and reminds me of what my grandmother once told me when I was small, "There are things worse than death and scarier, too." I didn't understand then, but I do now.
They may be onto something, but I'll be a bit sceptical until they do more research. And I'll still have another cup of coffee or two. Not necessarily because I believe it will help (My aunt has Alzheimer's as well, she's always in a fetal position and totally unresponsive now.) but because I enjoy it. (And some days I NEED it. Sleep? What's that?)
It's the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission not the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).
The FTC handles trade, commerce, tariffs, advertising and business practices. The FCC handles radio & telephone communications policies, standards and practices.
We need to stop letting our kids play these unrealistic, mind warping games. None of that escapism stuff for us, no sirree.
What we need are REALISTIC games! Games that teach kids a thing or two. Games like these:
"Looking for a Parking Space" Where you drive endlessly around and around the parking lot looking for a space only to have the stores close before you can get there.
Or how about "Traffic Jam"? Sit behind the wheel, inching forward at a snail's pace while watching your engine temperature rise. Will you make it home before the engine overheats? Wheel gripping inaction!
Or you could always play "Road Construction Ahead". Try to pick the correct lane to be in only to have it suddenly come to a halt once you get into it. Grit your teeth as idiots try to squeese in ahead of you. It's frustration for the whole family!
If those sound too exciting for you there's always,
"Balancing Your Checkbook" Spend endless hours trying to read scrawled figures and cryptic bank statements in an attempt to see if there's still enough money left at the end of the month for pizza, or will it be ramen again tonight?
Now those are some happening games, man!
Excuse me, I gotta get coding. I'm gonna be RICH!
Re:Telstar 1 communication frequencies??
on
Live Via Satellite
·
· Score: 1
Microwave frequencies have been generated since before World War I. Do a search for "klystron tube" and you'll find several references.
Klystrons are capable of hundreds of Gigahertz and Megawatts of power.
Well, maybe you were trying to be funny and maybe you were looking for answers.
There are actually 8760 hours in a year so 1 nine (90%) is 876 hours of downtime per year, 2 nines (99%) is 87.6 hours of downtime per year, 3 nines (99.9%) is 8.76 hours of downtime per year, 4 nines (99.99%) is.876 hours of downtime or 52.56 minutes per year, 5 nines (99.999%) is 5.256 minutes of downtime per year, (or.864 seconds per day) 6 nines (99.9999%) is 31.536 seconds of downtime per year, 7 nines (99.99999%) is 3.1536 seconds of downtime per year.
Of course these numbers are for a regular year, not a leap year.;-)
I believe you're mistaken According to this the wrench is only 60 inches long. That's 5 feet. And it's hardly rare, if you go here anyone can buy one for only $224.50.
I know these aren't that rare as my father was a plumber/pipefitter and had one of these for over 20 years.
I've been trying to do this with an All-In-Wonder for a couple of months. The video quality is very good, TMPEGEnc converts them into a format my DVD player accepts, but I haven't had much success getting rid on the commercials. Currently I can get 2 half hour programs (with commercials) on 1 SVCD disk. If I could get rid of the commercials I could get 3 to a disk.
I've used Ulead VideoStudio and VideoWave with mixed results. Both have a flashy interface but using them seems counter-intuitive. Anyone know of a better product or have any hints on how to better use what I've already got?
Yeah, that was my biggest dissappointment when I first saw the show. I was hoping for REAL robot wars.
A cleared arena surrounded by thick metal panels, bullet-proof glass in front of the cameras, and REAL weapons: guns, flame throwers, EMP, shooting steel bolts, etc. Autonomous, self-contained, computer controlled competitors seeking out each other in the arena with only 2 operator controls:
START and EMERGENCY STOP.
Now THAT I'd pay good money to see!
But not in person, of course. That would be stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Saturday night I went shopping at a local grocery store that uses those cards. After the checker scanned all my items she asked if I had a "Super Saver Card." I told her "No" and she started in on her spiel about how I'll get all kinds of coupons and special offers and how I can get up to 20% off on selected items whenever I use the card.
Then to demonstrate she ran the store's card through the scanner. The register beeped and printed a line on the reciept. "See", she said, "It's just that easy!"
"So how much did I save?" I asked.
She checked the receipt, "Um, well, nothing this time. But you could save up to 20 % on selected items!"
"No thanks", I said.
Not just the Soviets, the US did as well.
Voyager, Cassini, Galileo, numerous spy sats and all Apollo moon missions had RTG reactors. I believe at least one of the Mars missions did as well.
Do a search for "SNAP 9A reactor" to find out about the failed Transit 5-BN-3 mission that spread P-238 over the entire world in 1964. That one accident is credited as the main source of P-238 in the environment and was still detectable in the upper atmosphere as late as 1995 (The last time anyone checked). One group of researchers reported that contamination from that one accident was spread to every continent and was probably responsible for increased lung cancer rates 20 years later.
The US currently has 4 abandoned plutonium reactors still in orbit, the Soviets have an unknown number. 8 of the reactors known to be still in orbit are damaged.
Apollo 13's reactor is on the bottom of the Pacific ocean, hopefully undamaged. The other Apollo reactors are on the moon.
Both the US ans the Soviets have used these reactors since the 60's to provide power on Earth for weather stations, light houses, marker buoys and monitoring and surveillance stations. It's assumed the Chinese have done the same but there's no information to confirm that.
There was a reference a few years ago on the web about a CIA spy station in the mountains somewhere in Asia that had one of these reactors buried in a landslide and never recovered. I can't find it on the web anymore so maybe it's been pulled.
There's no reason to assume that the plutonium in question is going into space. Maybe they're setting up a secret monitoring station in Afghanistan.
BAH! You kids and your fancy editors.
In my day we used edlin AND WE LIKED IT!
I'm not assuming anything, it's just that deals like this are common in business. HP sells printers to Dell at a discount in return for Dell offering them exclusively with their systems. Dell gets cheaper printers ("WE offer HP printers for the price of an Epson when you buy a complete system!") , HP gets new suckers ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H customers to sell ink to; everybody wins. (Except the consumer, but he doesn't count anyway. "Just give us the money and no one gets hurt.")
;-)
I can't say for sure this is what was going on but it's not out of the ordinary.
Now if Dell has their own printers, which they (probably) make a greater profit on, which one do you think will be pushed harder by the Dell sales people? Yup. Dell. So HP's pretty much cut out of Dell's market anyway. Why help Dell if they're going to cut you off anyway?
I'll grant you, HP is probably just being vindictive and spiteful by this action, but that's not unusual in business either. Nor is it necessarily bad for the company. Only time will tell. If Dell sells really crappy printers it may increase HP's sales as older Dell users tell the newbies, "DUDE! You shoulda got an HP!"
In the end you're right, it will be the consumer who decides what printer he wants. The totally uninformed will probably just buy a package deal and won't care about what brand of printer is shipped with it as long as it works. Kinda like they do with monitors, it may say DELL on the outside but what's inside? Hitachi? Sony? NoNameCo? Few people care as long as it looks good and works. I'm currently staring at a monitor marked "Hewlett Packard" but I know that they didn't make it. Who did? Who cares? Monitors have become a commodity item, interchangable and easily replaced. Printers should be as well, but it may take a few more years for this to happen and the printer manufacturers are fighting it hard as they try to hold on to the profitable ink market.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go buy a printer, any printer, and some bottles of ink, any ink, fill up the ink resevoirs and start printing? Kinda like we do now with floppy disks, paper, blank cds and other computer consumables. Proprietary products suck.
It's probably not as simple as that. HP probably sells printers to Dell at a discount while selling them at full price elsewhere. Now that Dell is going to compete with them in the printer market, why would HP want to give them that discount only to have Dell undercut them on their own printers in the retail market?
I use
this
Originally designed for commercial radios, it works great for me. You can set the turn off delay from 15 minutes to 15 hours.
Kinda expensive at $75 (I got mine free as a demo) but it also provides high, low and reverse voltage protection and will handle 30 Amps.
Well if you knew, why did you ask it as a question?
Jeeze yourself.
You're thinking of "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. It's a short story written in 1959 that won a Hugo Award. Later expanded into a novel which was made into a movie, "Charly."
I don't have the links but the IMDB probably lists it. Good book, but I thought the movie was so-so.
You forgot about all the "The Making of LOTR" disks (with behind-the-scenes interviews). There's gotta be at least 3 of those.
My mother-in-law was a waitress for most of her adult life and a total caffine addict, 3-4 POTS of coffee a day, she got headaches if she didn't get enough caffine. When she couldn't have coffee she'd have Mountain Dew or really, really strong tea.
Now she has rapidly-advancing Alzheimer's and it's not a pretty sight. She's in perfect physical health, strong heart & lungs and may last another 5 years until her brain deteriorates to the point where it forgets how to breathe.
She's only been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the last 2 years and she's already forgotten her children, husband, and grandchildren. She can't dress herself, can barely feed herself (you have to keep reminding her to pick up the spoon and eat) and will sometimes hold animated, rambling, incoherent conversations with inanimate objects. Yet somehow she still remembers her dog, who stays loyally by her side, her constant companion.
It's a sad, sad disease and reminds me of what my grandmother once told me when I was small, "There are things worse than death and scarier, too." I didn't understand then, but I do now.
They may be onto something, but I'll be a bit sceptical until they do more research. And I'll still have another cup of coffee or two. Not necessarily because I believe it will help (My aunt has Alzheimer's as well, she's always in a fetal position and totally unresponsive now.) but because I enjoy it. (And some days I NEED it. Sleep? What's that?)
It's the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission not the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).
The FTC handles trade, commerce, tariffs, advertising and business practices.
The FCC handles radio & telephone communications policies, standards and practices.
It's not like they're required by law to do it.
Yet.
Yeah!
We need to stop letting our kids play these unrealistic, mind warping games. None of that escapism stuff for us, no sirree.
What we need are REALISTIC games! Games that teach kids a thing or two. Games like these:
"Looking for a Parking Space" Where you drive endlessly around and around the parking lot looking for a space only to have the stores close before you can get there.
Or how about "Traffic Jam"? Sit behind the wheel, inching forward at a snail's pace while watching your engine temperature rise. Will you make it home before the engine overheats? Wheel gripping inaction!
Or you could always play "Road Construction Ahead". Try to pick the correct lane to be in only to have it suddenly come to a halt once you get into it. Grit your teeth as idiots try to squeese in ahead of you. It's frustration for the whole family!
If those sound too exciting for you there's always,
"Balancing Your Checkbook" Spend endless hours trying to read scrawled figures and cryptic bank statements in an attempt to see if there's still enough money left at the end of the month for pizza, or will it be ramen again tonight?
Now those are some happening games, man!
Excuse me, I gotta get coding. I'm gonna be RICH!
Microwave frequencies have been generated since before World War I. Do a search for "klystron tube" and you'll find several references.
Klystrons are capable of hundreds of Gigahertz and Megawatts of power.
UC = Upper Cassette
LC = Lower Cassette
I'm still using my Laserjet IIID, just can't seem to wear the thing out.
Well, maybe you were trying to be funny and maybe you were looking for answers.
.876 hours of downtime or 52.56 minutes per year, .864 seconds per day)
;-)
There are actually 8760 hours in a year so
1 nine (90%) is 876 hours of downtime per year,
2 nines (99%) is 87.6 hours of downtime per year,
3 nines (99.9%) is 8.76 hours of downtime per year,
4 nines (99.99%) is
5 nines (99.999%) is 5.256 minutes of downtime per year, (or
6 nines (99.9999%) is 31.536 seconds of downtime per year,
7 nines (99.99999%) is 3.1536 seconds of downtime per year.
Of course these numbers are for a regular year, not a leap year.
Yeah, I'm glad the local nuclear power plant decided to save money and only go with 3 nines of reliability.
If he can just integrate a urinal into his computer he'll never have to leave his desk.
I believe you're mistaken
According to this the wrench is only 60 inches long. That's 5 feet.
And it's hardly rare, if you go here anyone can buy one for only $224.50.
I know these aren't that rare as my father was a plumber/pipefitter and had one of these for over 20 years.
Thanks for the advice. I'll go find VirtualDub and try it this weekend.
I've been trying to do this with an All-In-Wonder for a couple of months. The video quality is very good, TMPEGEnc converts them into a format my DVD player accepts, but I haven't had much success getting rid on the commercials. Currently I can get 2 half hour programs (with commercials) on 1 SVCD disk. If I could get rid of the commercials I could get 3 to a disk.
I've used Ulead VideoStudio and VideoWave with mixed results. Both have a flashy interface but using them seems counter-intuitive. Anyone know of a better product or have any hints on how to better use what I've already got?
Papa Legba writes "Just ran across this amazing story about an amateur satellite that has
returned from the dead.
Let me guess, he didn't happen to run across this story on say... SLASHDOT?
Except, of course, that the hams are a great deal older than the bikers.
And you're more likely to convince the bikers that they're wrong and you're right.
Yeah, that was my biggest dissappointment when I first saw the show. I was hoping for REAL robot wars.
A cleared arena surrounded by thick metal panels, bullet-proof glass in front of the cameras, and REAL weapons: guns, flame throwers, EMP, shooting steel bolts, etc.
Autonomous, self-contained, computer controlled competitors seeking out each other in the arena with only 2 operator controls:
START and EMERGENCY STOP.
Now THAT I'd pay good money to see!
But not in person, of course. That would be stupid.
Actually, with Wal-Mart's raw bulk buying power over the American marketplace, it's more likely we'll see Tux replaced with Wal-Mart's smiley face.