This is like if a Janator asked "Should the office manager know about heavy duty plastic garbage bags? I mean, how many times must these thin bags tear open, and how often must I clean up the mess?". The anwser is shut your mouth and clean the shit up.
A good manager might not neccesarily have to have the same level of technical knowledge that a trained Garbologist would possess, but you'd better believe he should be intelligent enough to listen to his staff when they explain to him so clearly and succinctly why he shouldn't order a thousand rolls of cheap, flimsy garbage bags.
Generally, they're also supposed to be able to spell.
Actually, for a geek, a movie can make an excellenty firsty datey (sorry...I think I was channelling the Swedish Chef for a moment there).
See, it gives you something to talk about. Most geeks, you'll meet them for lunch and they'll be straight from the office and all they can talk about is tech-stuff, which - unless your date is also a geek - will not win you any friends or influence many people.
Much better to come out of a movie raring to go with all the emotional reactions that a (note the qualifier here) good movie can provide. The pair of you can compare notes, review the good bits and bad bits, the bits she liked and why, her opinions of the characters, how she related to them, what she thought of the different characters, how the movie relates to her life in some way, life in general, funny old thing, life, isn't it amazing, oh I hear you, my you've got a lovely voice, I could listen to it all day, what are you doing for the rest of your life?
Another benefit is that it gives your date the opportunity to study you - at least if you're the type who does get into a good movie. 'Specially if there's a sad bit in it, because then she'll see you're really just a big softie underneath, and not likely to be someone who tortures kittens or anything.
No, seriously; going on a date to anywhere, most women will be watching you like a hawk - unless she's the self-absorbed type, in which case you'd be better off just watching the movie anyway.
So, what better way to demonstrate the following?
1. You're not a masher - you're not going to go sit in the back row, and you're not a rowdy troublemaker - you're not going to sit in the front row and fry her eyes and crick her neck. You're going to sit around the middle somewhere, towards the centre to get (sorry, to make sure she gets) the best view and the best sound, aren't you?
2. You watch the movie with her, half the time when something happens in the movie, she'll be watching you*. So when somebody gets hit inna face with a shovel or something (unless it's the bad guy) and she sees you do that little wince that everybody who isn't likely to be an axe-murderer who watches thrillers to pick up DIY tips does, there's a point for you. Same when you shout "Hurray" when the bad guy gets what's coming to him and our hero finally saves the day (ok, shouting "Hurray" in a crowded theatre probably isn't going to impress her all that much, but you know what I mean).
3a. She sees you cry. You win, right there. That's it man. Then you get the hand on the arm or the knee or whatever (oh my god! she touched me! she touched me! I'm touched...), the long glistening looks and the soppy violins - instant opportune moment, right there, folks...
3b. You get to make her laugh. Drop in a few (and only a few. A handful, at most - don't want to be too much of a handfull for her. And don't laugh at your own jokes when you tell them either, 'cause we all laugh like, well, like geeks at our own jokes. So don't do that.) one-liners and she'll know that you have the ability to make her laugh. For some reason a lot of women find that highly desirable in a potential mate. And pray to whatever Gods you have that you do actually have one that is (wit that's sparkling, that is. Or at least lame but in a charmingly cute sort of way). This gives you another route to the the slightly-longer-than-normal eye contact with a lovely pair of bright, sparkling eyes and the shared moments of private hilarity and the holding hands (Aaaargh!) laughing because you both thought the same funny thought at the same time or something bits.
4. She gets to argue with you about it later. They love that too. Well, actually, it's not so much an argument as an extended bout of proactive communication, which women are, by all accounts, very good at, and it is something they like to do. It's also something that most of them are very keen on their men having the knack of engaging in as well. And having taken my fair share of tech support calls that do come
Actually, for a geek, a movie can make an excellenty firsty datey (sorry...I think I was channelling the Swedish Chef for a moment there).
See, it gives you something to talk about. Most geeks, you'll meet them for lunch and all they can talk about is tech-stuff, which - unless your date is also a geek - will not win you any friends or influence many people.
Much better to come out of a movie raring to go with all the emotional reactions that a (and it's time to introduce the qualifier here) good movie can provide. The pair of you can compare notes, review the good bits and bad bits, the bits she liked and why, her opinions of the characters, how she related to them, what she thought of the different characters, how the movie relates to her life in some way, life in general, funny old thing, life, isn't it amazing, oh I hear you, my you've got a lovely voice, I could listen to it all day, what are you doing for the rest of your life?
Another benefit is that it gives your date the opportunity to study you - at least if you're the type who can really get into a good movie. 'Specially if there's a sad bit in it, because then she'll see you're really just a big softie underneath, and not likely to be someone who tortures kittens or anything.
No, seriously; going on a date to anywhere, most women will be watching you like a hawk - unless she's the self-absorbed type, in which case you'd be better off just watching the movie anyway.
So, what better way to demonstrate the following?
1. You're not a masher - you're not going to go sit in the back row, and you're not a rowdy troublemaker - you're not going to sit in the front row and fry her eyes and crick her neck. You're going to sit around the middle somewhere, towards the centre to get (sorry, to make sure she gets) the best view and the best sound, aren't you?
2. You watch the movie with her, half the time when something happens in the movie, she'll be watching you*. So when somebody gets hit inna face with a shovel or something (unless it's the bad guy) and she sees you do that little wince that everybody who isn't likely to be an axe-murderer who watches thrillers to pick up DIY tips does, there's a point for you. Same when you shout "Hurray" when the bad guy gets what's coming to him and our hero finally saves the day (ok, shouting "Hurray" in a crowded theatre probably isn't going to impress her all that much, but you know what I mean).
3a. She sees you cry. You win, right there. That's it man. Then you get the hand on the arm or the knee or whatever (oh my god! she touched me! she touched me! I'm touched...), the long glistening looks and the soppy violins - that's the opportune moment, right there, folks...
3b. You get to make her laugh. Drop in a few (and only a few. A handful, at most - don't want to be too much of a handfull for her. And don't laugh at your own jokes when you tell them either, 'cause we all laugh like, well, like geeks at our own jokes. So don't do that.) one-liners and she'll know that you have the ability to make them laugh. For some reason a lot of women find that highly desirable in a potantial mate. And pray to whatever Gods you have that you do actually have one that is (wit that's sparkling, that is. Or at least lame but in a charmingly cute sort of way). This gives you another route to the the slightly-longer-than-normal eye contact with a lovely pair of bright, sparkling eyes and the shared moments of private hilarity and the holding hands (Aaaargh!) laughing because you both thought the same funny thought at the same time or something bits.
4. She gets to argue with you about it later. You can disagree over a motive for a plot point or a director's use of colour and/or music or even what the hell a Best Boy really is, but the thing is you'll have some sort of debate with her and you'll able to engage in discourse, exchange ideas in a logical and rational manner and explore areas of conversation that you'd have to spend like two or three hours
It's interesting to see the opinions on this topic turning away from what was once seen as the benefits of wireless networking - the opportunities for sharing stuff. The old "Mine! Mine! Get away! Mine!" monster starts rearing its ugly head again. They're like the local grouch rousing on the neighborhood kids for picking fruit off _his_ fruit tree. Fruit that's hanging over _his_ (usually high) fence, to within reach of people passing by on the _not_his_ footpath (or sidewalk, if you're that way inclined).
This guy was way over the line of what is acceptable, this is true, and well should have he received the good LARTing that he did. And people that carry on like him may very well ruin it for the rest of us. It's the difference between the kids nicking the overhanging fruit and the guy who comes around at midnight with a ladder and a couple of buckets.
But it's generally only a small minority of people who do these sort of things. If the average man on the street sees a car with the keys in it and the engine running, he's not going to jump in and drive it away. Only a car thief would do that, he thinks to himself, and goes on his way. It's a matter of mores, things that we get taught are acceptable behaviour. Who is going to find a wallet and not return it to the owner? Not many. Who will spend the money and return the wallet to the owner by some anonymous means? Probably more. How many would keep the wallet? Hopefully less, but who's to say?
Talk to the old ladies tending their gardens about all the folks that stop by to admire it, and you'll generally find they'll admit to being pleased as punch (they may even use that very phrase) to give a cutting to anyone who asks for one. Apart from the grouches, most people aren't too concerned with fruit on the other side of the fence. So, if you have a wireless connection and an unmetered broadband connection, where the harm if it's left available for someone passing by to check their email, find out where the nearest $whatever is or when the next bus is due? They may ever look at your website and leave a comment on how much they love your use of blink tags or something. Or leave something in return - a donation, some little token of their appreciation - an mp3 of this hot new local band or other barter item?
Yeah, well it's probably time I stopped channeling Mr. fucking Rogers and got back in touch with the real world. Hey you! Come back here with my prize azelea!
It might have something to do with the effect described in this article, which describes a ventricular assist device that uses a spinning impeller to move the blood around.
People implanted with this device have no pulse, which should be enough to really put the screaming willies into the Rise of the Machines brigade..
Although this doesn't say that the implantees no longer have a heartbeat, it does mean that when they are lying in bed or something like that, they don't have the sound of blood pulsing through their inner ear,. Apparently the sound is a gentle swishing noise a bit like a washing machine. Certainly, I think it would be eerie, until you got used to it.
On MY new monstrosity all I have to do is hold down the voice-activation key and say the name of the person I want to call. I can say "ring x at home" or "ring x's mobile".
apropos: nothing in particular, just voice-activated dialling is really, really cool if you're sick of pressing buttons.
Many birds do have the ability to mimic sounds - The Australian Lyrebird is one - it's been known to mimic everything from steam whistles to typewriters (complete with the little bell at the end of a line and the sound of the returning carriage) and chainsaws.
I once visited a wildlife park that had a group of aviaries where were kept larger predator-type birds like Kookaburras, Magpies and Butcherbirds. The Butcherbirds and the Magpies could both laugh like the Kookaburras. They would start laughing back whenever the Kookaburras started doing their schtick.
I had a really incredible experience with birds mimicking different sounds, in a geeky kind of way - it all started when I was playing with VirtualDub for the first time. I was mucking about trying all the different compression types, filters and everything and the video I had chosen to play with was a clip of the opening titles of Doctor Who.
The title sequence was from the middle years of Tom Baker's stint as the Doctor. There's a clip of it here.
So, with all fiddling about I was doing, the music for the titles got played a lot that afternoon. I mean a lot. Try one set of filters, with one particular type of compression, process it, play it several times examining the results, change the filters/compressor, process, play another several times, over and over again.
The thing was, when I was playing the results, I tended not to play the whole clip, but just the first 13 seconds or thereabouts. That much of the clip includes the first measure of the melody line - the first four notes.
Some time later, I realised that I could hear what sounded like the music from the clip coming from the garden outside the window. I discovered that two different species of birds had copied different parts of the theme and now my front garden was echoing with the sounds of Doctor Who!
There was a songbird of some sort out there that was repeating the first four notes of the melody line, while a family of Indian Mynas gathered in a grove of trees were mimicking what I can only describe as the the "sparkly" bits - not the bass riff, but the ascending scale of sort of tinkly sounds.
Many birds do have the ability to mimic sounds - The Australian Lyrebird is one - it's been known to mimic everything from steam whistles to typewriters (complete with the little bell at the end of a line and the sound of the returning carriage) and chainsaws.
I once visited a wildlife park that had a group of aviaries where were kept larger predator-type birds like Kookaburras, Magpies and Butcherbirds. The Butcherbirds and the Magpies could both laugh like the Kookaburras. They would start laughing back whenever the Kookaburras started doing their schtick.
I had a really incredible experience with birds mimicking different sounds, in a geeky kind of way - it all started when I was playing with VirtualDub for the first time. I was mucking about trying all the different compression types, filters and everything and the video I had chosen to play with was a clip of the opening titles of Doctor Who.
The title sequence was from the middle years of Tom Baker's stint as the Doctor. There's a clip of it here.
So, with all fiddling about I was doing, the music for the titles got played a lot that afternoon. I mean a lot. Try one set of filters, with one particular type of compression, process it, play it several times examining the results, change the filters/compressor, process, play another several times, over and over again.
The thing was, when I was playing the results, I tended not to play the whole clip, but just the first 13 seconds or thereabouts. That much of the clip includes the first measure of the melody line - the first four notes.
Some time later, I realised that I could hear what sounded like the music from the clip coming from the garden outside the window. I discovered that two different species of birds had copied different parts of the theme and now my front garden was echoing with the sounds of Doctor Who!
There was a songbird out there that was repeating the first four notes of the melody line, while a family of Indian Mynas gathered in a grove of trees were mimicking what I can only describe as the the "sparkly" bits - not the bass riff, but the ascending scale of sort of tinkly sounds.
You know, looking at the article, it could be the latter - the first picture in the article has the caption "Sceptics say the weather is not changing dramatically" but put your mouse over the image and the tag reads "Snow in Afghanistan". Most people's concept Afghanistan is of a hot desert-type of place. Not somewhere they get a lot of snow.
The side-bar also has links to stories supporting the opposite view - that climate change is a real thing, like;
Rising tides - Life in Bangladesh's low-lying Ganges delta.
Warming: The evidence How can Kyoto be strengthened? Climate change; Contacts, information and advice to help you take action
SEE ALSO: Climate crisis near 'in 10 years' Arctic rivers 'flowing faster' Climate change sceptics 'wrong'
It could be that as the BBC, they do have to give air to both sides. But that doesn't mean they can't do a little editorialising of their own.
There's a bit in article about experiments to find variations in Newton's inverse cube and inverse square laws. Maybe we should be looking for other things that can decrease - or increase with some sort of ratio. Say an inverse quadratic of the distance or something. Or, Well, if I'm just pulling scientific gobbledykook out of thin air (IANAQP), how about a non-inverse square to indicate the presence of a mirror universe?
In another section, the article talked about the new twist that M-theory is giving to string theory. Perhaps looking for things that increase with some similar ratio kind of thing could be an indicator. Take the galactic superclusters like the Sculptor supercluster - 250 million lightyears across, about a billion lightyears away. Could it be possible to measure how say, gravity changes across the cluster? Variations in the amount of gravitanional lensing in diferent areas in areas closer and further from the centre and stuff.
And, while I was looking up galaxy superclusters Curios About Astronomy was where I got the answer - lots of interesting reading there, I found out that galaxy-class clusters like the Sculptor, Bootes and the Cona tend to have more elliptical galaxies that spirals like the smaller clusters like our own local group. Could this be one of the places where the distances are shorter. Indeed, our own Milky Way is being pulled towards the Great Attractor at the heart of the Virgo SuperCluster, so it could be said that in this region, the universe may actually be shrinking in that direction by a tiny factor, or that the elliptical galaxies and strange x-ray emissions are a real-world example of what happens when you get.0000001 percent more quarks per cubic nanometre or something.
I've really got to stop geting drunk and reading quantum physics papers.
Well, actually I always thought that saying no if you don't understand it was the better course.
similar to the block everything first principle in firewalls, nu?
Then you can teach them that there are some things that it is safe to say yes to - as, on the whole, the subset of things it is safe to say yes to is far smaller than the ones you want to say no to.
Defaulting to OK, yes, open, available, however you want to describe the ON switch is what got Windows into all this trouble in the first place.
Perhaps someone in the army has been reading Tery Pratchett.
Hear me out - In "Night Watch", there's a bit about the Watch being there to defend the City and not the rulers of the city. Therefore, if the ruler of the city was acting contrary to the interests of the City, it was the Watch's duty to defend the City against it's rulers.
The US Army has a similar sort of thing;
I. I am an American soldier -- a protector of the greatest nation on earth -- sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
II. I will treat others with dignity and respect and expect others to do the same.
III. I will honor my Country, the Army, my unit and my fellow soldiers by living the Army Values.
IV. No matter what situation I am in, I will never do anything for pleasure, profit, or personal safety which will disgrace my uniform, my unit, or my Country.
Note that defending Congress, the President, politicians, the CIA, the FBI or any other agent of government control are not mentioned. Neither, you'll notice, are the general population of the US included in the list of things that will be protected by the Army.
Now, if the allegations made by the lawyer at the end of this report are true, there might be a few enemies within the walls that the Army would be excused from looking slightly askance at, in the light of the Army's sworn oarth to uphold the Constitution but not the Government of the US. Of course, that's how coups get started, so it's probably not something that you really want happening.
But if the Generals decide that the people actually responsible for the Bin Ladens and the Saddam Husseins are oooh, I don't know, certain US government bodies or certain politicians, what would their code tell them to do?
Now, extend it a bit further in this direction. The cheaters in the Army's territory and they are acting in a way that is directly in opposition to the US Army code.
What would General Patton do?
And finally, what if the decision was made by the shadowy figures of power deep within the Pentagon that the best way to stop individuals getting into power who would contribute to the creation of the Bin Ladens and Osamas of the future was to catch them all at the cheating at computer games stage?
See, at that point, all that could be needed are a couple of Marines with really big guns to show up at the front door of Johnny Wallhacker's house to "have a little chat" about behaviour appropriate to a citizen of "the Greatest Country on Earth" to make a difference twenty years down the line somewhere.
Looking at the layout, it may be that the word "bathroom" is being used here as that quaint (albeit confusing) Merkin euphemism for the smallest (smelliest) room in the house. You know, the one where most people keep the big porcelain bus. The WC. The Lavvy, loo, or even, horror of horros, The Toilet.
It sounds logical - the best place to keep what is, basically, a toilet for cats, would be in the toilet. Keeps all your digestive process end results in the same place, so to speak.
Why do they call it a bathroom, anyway? There's no bath in there...
For example, the blue parts of R2-D2. They glow. In that particular shade of glowing blue that you usually only see on some species of tropical fish.
c-3p0 is gold, really, really gold. The images are sharper, absolutely crystal clear. The scene looking down over Mos Eisley, you can even see individual boulders all the way down the valley. Mos Eisley itself isn't just a grey blur off in the distance, you can make out individual buildings and roads.
If you want to call that an asteroid, then this is also an asteroid? This was a meteor that passed right through Earth's atmosphere in 1976, with a perehelion of 58,000 metres.
Although, I think the point here is that this is the closest observed astronomically. It's like seeing the meteor before it hits the atmosphere, I guess. Anyway, the astronomers are all in a tizzy over it, so that must be a good thing.
I see a world where all the devices are locked down so that the general appliance-buying public doesn't have access to the stuff under the bonnet - ie, it's locked locked up in a myriad of those little embedded devices, all running some version of Linux.
The only people who will still be able to acess them is technical folk like, oh I don't know...Us? Service people, programmers and technicians, probably just about anybody that has access to a command prompt for whatever reason.
At which point, the entertainment industry will suddenly see the signal-to-noise ratio of wild cards and loose cannons doing lord-only-knows-what with all their precious content decrease to such a low level that the problem disappears altogether off their radar screens, declare the "War Against Pirates" to be well and truly won and retire to bask in the adulation of their shareholders forever, leaving the rest of us free to keep doing whatever it is we've been doing with all their precious content all these years.
Actually, I can think of a few ways that files can be raided from a computer that is "off". Note the quotes. Windows XP's idea of "turning off" is a lot different from what was the opposite of ON when I went to school. A lot of the power supplies I'm seeing don't even have master switches on the PSU, even. The only way to remove power from the machine is by pulling the cable. Or using a real OFF switch like, say, the one on the wall at the other end of the cable.
A scheduled task set to wake up the computer at a certain time, or a wake on LAN signal and the computer is ready to deliver, or do, whatever.
True, no different from a rooted box serving up hot'n'spicy FTP goodness to all and sundry, so it's not a problem that's specific to P2P, but there you have it.
PS: Does anybody know if the slots are still live? I've never been game to try it myself, but I would be interested to know if cards can be removed or inserted when the computer is "off", but the little LED on the motherboard is still very clearly ON.
I mean, people are already comfortable with Pk and non-PK servers, right?
Or, another thought. A lock on the level of players you're allowed to attack. It could be as simple as a message along the lines of "This one is not a worthy challenge" or (say for a Jedi character in SWG (which I'm glad I never bought now)) "You're supposed to be defending the weak, remember?", or something like that
Unless it's the little runt who just stole your favorite blurdlecruncheon, of course
Mr Spock singing about hobbits is something that continues to haunt my nightmares, probably for the rest of my life.
Spock. Hobbits. Singing. Mix either two and you'll get - well, let's be honest - at the worst a mild headache, but together they unite into an unholy triumvirate that possess the ability to warp space in really, really horrible ways.
Re:brings to mind an old question I once had.
on
GPU Gems
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· Score: 1
One thing it could be very handy for is compression. Video compression is, of course, the first thing that springs to mind, but I guess other types of compression could work too, as long as there is a data path back out of the GPU, to the hard drive or wherever else you want that compressed data to go.
For applications like that, the back channel isn't that much of an issue, because the data coming out of the process is so very much smaller, ie - a lot of data is being thrown away in the GPU
Conversely, on the way in, the data is big. I capture video at 922x576, 25 fps from a dedicated TV card using Huffyuv - a lossless codec, and I get about 7.3 MB per second of data going into the capture file. That works out to about half a gig per minute. If I was to use no compression, it balloons out to about 25 MB/sec
Then I use VirtualDub to run it through a filter or two, resize it with a biCubic transfer and compress it with xVid - With a 1 Gig Duron, the data's going in at about 750 KB per second, getting processed at about 1.8 frames per second and then going back out at (get this) 50 BYTES per second.
If, instead my graphic card could up that by a factor of fifty rather than just sitting there (mostly) idle, I think it'd be great - no more waiting an HOUR to render down a 4-minute clip. If , instead of going TV-card->processor->hard drive it went TV-card->GPU(compress)->processor(filter)->hard drive, the recording could be done all in one hit.
By the way - I can get an hour's worth of video into just under 75 MB and it's still quite watchable - About par with slightly older VHS tapes.
I know what people want from a website. You don't.
I know how to apply technology in ways that will maximise the benefit that you get from your website. You don't.
I know what will get people to read a bit further, to click on a link, to buy something from you. You've never even heard of the golden ratio.
Now, given that I have all this knowledge and the ability to apply it, who would be considered the snotty, arrogant wanker? The person who knows all trying to advise the one who knows nothing what will work and what won't?
Or perhaps the person who knows NOTHING!!! trying to tell me how to do my job? And then getting on his high horse and throwing personal slurs around because I dare to suggest that I know better?
Slashdot Mirror
This is like if a Janator asked "Should the office manager know about heavy duty plastic garbage bags? I mean, how many times must these thin bags tear open, and how often must I clean up the mess?". The anwser is shut your mouth and clean the shit up.
A good manager might not neccesarily have to have the same level of technical knowledge that a trained Garbologist would possess, but you'd better believe he should be intelligent enough to listen to his staff when they explain to him so clearly and succinctly why he shouldn't order a thousand rolls of cheap, flimsy garbage bags.
Generally, they're also supposed to be able to spell.
Actually, for a geek, a movie can make an excellenty firsty datey (sorry...I think I was channelling the Swedish Chef for a moment there).
See, it gives you something to talk about. Most geeks, you'll meet them for lunch and they'll be straight from the office and all they can talk about is tech-stuff, which - unless your date is also a geek - will not win you any friends or influence many people.
Much better to come out of a movie raring to go with all the emotional reactions that a (note the qualifier here) good movie can provide. The pair of you can compare notes, review the good bits and bad bits, the bits she liked and why, her opinions of the characters, how she related to them, what she thought of the different characters, how the movie relates to her life in some way, life in general, funny old thing, life, isn't it amazing, oh I hear you, my you've got a lovely voice, I could listen to it all day, what are you doing for the rest of your life?
Another benefit is that it gives your date the opportunity to study you - at least if you're the type who does get into a good movie. 'Specially if there's a sad bit in it, because then she'll see you're really just a big softie underneath, and not likely to be someone who tortures kittens or anything.
No, seriously; going on a date to anywhere, most women will be watching you like a hawk - unless she's the self-absorbed type, in which case you'd be better off just watching the movie anyway.
So, what better way to demonstrate the following?
1. You're not a masher - you're not going to go sit in the back row, and you're not a rowdy troublemaker - you're not going to sit in the front row and fry her eyes and crick her neck. You're going to sit around the middle somewhere, towards the centre to get (sorry, to make sure she gets) the best view and the best sound, aren't you?
2. You watch the movie with her, half the time when something happens in the movie, she'll be watching you*. So when somebody gets hit inna face with a shovel or something (unless it's the bad guy) and she sees you do that little wince that everybody who isn't likely to be an axe-murderer who watches thrillers to pick up DIY tips does, there's a point for you. Same when you shout "Hurray" when the bad guy gets what's coming to him and our hero finally saves the day (ok, shouting "Hurray" in a crowded theatre probably isn't going to impress her all that much, but you know what I mean).
3a. She sees you cry. You win, right there. That's it man. Then you get the hand on the arm or the knee or whatever (oh my god! she touched me! she touched me! I'm touched...), the long glistening looks and the soppy violins - instant opportune moment, right there, folks...
3b. You get to make her laugh. Drop in a few (and only a few. A handful, at most - don't want to be too much of a handfull for her. And don't laugh at your own jokes when you tell them either, 'cause we all laugh like, well, like geeks at our own jokes. So don't do that.) one-liners and she'll know that you have the ability to make her laugh. For some reason a lot of women find that highly desirable in a potential mate. And pray to whatever Gods you have that you do actually have one that is (wit that's sparkling, that is. Or at least lame but in a charmingly cute sort of way). This gives you another route to the the slightly-longer-than-normal eye contact with a lovely pair of bright, sparkling eyes and the shared moments of private hilarity and the holding hands (Aaaargh!) laughing because you both thought the same funny thought at the same time or something bits.
4. She gets to argue with you about it later. They love that too. Well, actually, it's not so much an argument as an extended bout of proactive communication, which women are, by all accounts, very good at, and it is something they like to do. It's also something that most of them are very keen on their men having the knack of engaging in as well. And having taken my fair share of tech support calls that do come
Actually, for a geek, a movie can make an excellenty firsty datey (sorry...I think I was channelling the Swedish Chef for a moment there).
See, it gives you something to talk about. Most geeks, you'll meet them for lunch and all they can talk about is tech-stuff, which - unless your date is also a geek - will not win you any friends or influence many people.
Much better to come out of a movie raring to go with all the emotional reactions that a (and it's time to introduce the qualifier here) good movie can provide. The pair of you can compare notes, review the good bits and bad bits, the bits she liked and why, her opinions of the characters, how she related to them, what she thought of the different characters, how the movie relates to her life in some way, life in general, funny old thing, life, isn't it amazing, oh I hear you, my you've got a lovely voice, I could listen to it all day, what are you doing for the rest of your life?
Another benefit is that it gives your date the opportunity to study you - at least if you're the type who can really get into a good movie. 'Specially if there's a sad bit in it, because then she'll see you're really just a big softie underneath, and not likely to be someone who tortures kittens or anything.
No, seriously; going on a date to anywhere, most women will be watching you like a hawk - unless she's the self-absorbed type, in which case you'd be better off just watching the movie anyway.
So, what better way to demonstrate the following?
1. You're not a masher - you're not going to go sit in the back row, and you're not a rowdy troublemaker - you're not going to sit in the front row and fry her eyes and crick her neck. You're going to sit around the middle somewhere, towards the centre to get (sorry, to make sure she gets) the best view and the best sound, aren't you?
2. You watch the movie with her, half the time when something happens in the movie, she'll be watching you*. So when somebody gets hit inna face with a shovel or something (unless it's the bad guy) and she sees you do that little wince that everybody who isn't likely to be an axe-murderer who watches thrillers to pick up DIY tips does, there's a point for you. Same when you shout "Hurray" when the bad guy gets what's coming to him and our hero finally saves the day (ok, shouting "Hurray" in a crowded theatre probably isn't going to impress her all that much, but you know what I mean).
3a. She sees you cry. You win, right there. That's it man. Then you get the hand on the arm or the knee or whatever (oh my god! she touched me! she touched me! I'm touched...), the long glistening looks and the soppy violins - that's the opportune moment, right there, folks...
3b. You get to make her laugh. Drop in a few (and only a few. A handful, at most - don't want to be too much of a handfull for her. And don't laugh at your own jokes when you tell them either, 'cause we all laugh like, well, like geeks at our own jokes. So don't do that.) one-liners and she'll know that you have the ability to make them laugh. For some reason a lot of women find that highly desirable in a potantial mate. And pray to whatever Gods you have that you do actually have one that is (wit that's sparkling, that is. Or at least lame but in a charmingly cute sort of way). This gives you another route to the the slightly-longer-than-normal eye contact with a lovely pair of bright, sparkling eyes and the shared moments of private hilarity and the holding hands (Aaaargh!) laughing because you both thought the same funny thought at the same time or something bits.
4. She gets to argue with you about it later. You can disagree over a motive for a plot point or a director's use of colour and/or music or even what the hell a Best Boy really is, but the thing is you'll have some sort of debate with her and you'll able to engage in discourse, exchange ideas in a logical and rational manner and explore areas of conversation that you'd have to spend like two or three hours
It's interesting to see the opinions on this topic turning away from what was once seen as the benefits of wireless networking - the opportunities for sharing stuff. The old "Mine! Mine! Get away! Mine!" monster starts rearing its ugly head again. They're like the local grouch rousing on the neighborhood kids for picking fruit off _his_ fruit tree. Fruit that's hanging over _his_ (usually high) fence, to within reach of people passing by on the _not_his_ footpath (or sidewalk, if you're that way inclined).
This guy was way over the line of what is acceptable, this is true, and well should have he received the good LARTing that he did. And people that carry on like him may very well ruin it for the rest of us. It's the difference between the kids nicking the overhanging fruit and the guy who comes around at midnight with a ladder and a couple of buckets.
But it's generally only a small minority of people who do these sort of things. If the average man on the street sees a car with the keys in it and the engine running, he's not going to jump in and drive it away. Only a car thief would do that, he thinks to himself, and goes on his way. It's a matter of mores, things that we get taught are acceptable behaviour. Who is going to find a wallet and not return it to the owner? Not many. Who will spend the money and return the wallet to the owner by some anonymous means? Probably more. How many would keep the wallet? Hopefully less, but who's to say?
Talk to the old ladies tending their gardens about all the folks that stop by to admire it, and you'll generally find they'll admit to being pleased as punch (they may even use that very phrase) to give a cutting to anyone who asks for one. Apart from the grouches, most people aren't too concerned with fruit on the other side of the fence. So, if you have a wireless connection and an unmetered broadband connection, where the harm if it's left available for someone passing by to check their email, find out where the nearest $whatever is or when the next bus is due? They may ever look at your website and leave a comment on how much they love your use of blink tags or something. Or leave something in return - a donation, some little token of their appreciation - an mp3 of this hot new local band or other barter item?
Yeah, well it's probably time I stopped channeling Mr. fucking Rogers and got back in touch with the real world. Hey you! Come back here with my prize azelea!
It might have something to do with the effect described in this article, which describes a ventricular assist device that uses a spinning impeller to move the blood around.
People implanted with this device have no pulse, which should be enough to really put the screaming willies into the Rise of the Machines brigade..
Although this doesn't say that the implantees no longer have a heartbeat, it does mean that when they are lying in bed or something like that, they don't have the sound of blood pulsing through their inner ear,. Apparently the sound is a gentle swishing noise a bit like a washing machine. Certainly, I think it would be eerie, until you got used to it.
As opposed to say, abusing apostrophes.
On MY new monstrosity all I have to do is hold down the voice-activation key and say the name of the person I want to call. I can say "ring x at home" or "ring x's mobile".
apropos: nothing in particular, just voice-activated dialling is really, really cool if you're sick of pressing buttons.
"the worst thing that happened in the personal computer world was the appearance of a strong leader in the form of Bill Gates and Microsoft."
No, no - he said a good leader.
Many birds do have the ability to mimic sounds - The Australian Lyrebird is one - it's been known to mimic everything from steam whistles to typewriters (complete with the little bell at the end of a line and the sound of the returning carriage) and chainsaws.
I once visited a wildlife park that had a group of aviaries where were kept larger predator-type birds like Kookaburras, Magpies and Butcherbirds. The Butcherbirds and the Magpies could both laugh like the Kookaburras. They would start laughing back whenever the Kookaburras started doing their schtick.
I had a really incredible experience with birds mimicking different sounds, in a geeky kind of way - it all started when I was playing with VirtualDub for the first time. I was mucking about trying all the different compression types, filters and everything and the video I had chosen to play with was a clip of the opening titles of Doctor Who.
The title sequence was from the middle years of Tom Baker's stint as the Doctor. There's a clip of it here.
So, with all fiddling about I was doing, the music for the titles got played a lot that afternoon. I mean a lot. Try one set of filters, with one particular type of compression, process it, play it several times examining the results, change the filters/compressor, process, play another several times, over and over again.
The thing was, when I was playing the results, I tended not to play the whole clip, but just the first 13 seconds or thereabouts. That much of the clip includes the first measure of the melody line - the first four notes.
Some time later, I realised that I could hear what sounded like the music from the clip coming from the garden outside the window. I discovered that two different species of birds had copied different parts of the theme and now my front garden was echoing with the sounds of Doctor Who!
There was a songbird of some sort out there that was repeating the first four notes of the melody line, while a family of Indian Mynas gathered in a grove of trees were mimicking what I can only describe as the the "sparkly" bits - not the bass riff, but the ascending scale of sort of tinkly sounds.
It was really, really cool.
Many birds do have the ability to mimic sounds - The Australian Lyrebird is one - it's been known to mimic everything from steam whistles to typewriters (complete with the little bell at the end of a line and the sound of the returning carriage) and chainsaws.
I once visited a wildlife park that had a group of aviaries where were kept larger predator-type birds like Kookaburras, Magpies and Butcherbirds. The Butcherbirds and the Magpies could both laugh like the Kookaburras. They would start laughing back whenever the Kookaburras started doing their schtick.
I had a really incredible experience with birds mimicking different sounds, in a geeky kind of way - it all started when I was playing with VirtualDub for the first time. I was mucking about trying all the different compression types, filters and everything and the video I had chosen to play with was a clip of the opening titles of Doctor Who.
The title sequence was from the middle years of Tom Baker's stint as the Doctor. There's a clip of it here.
So, with all fiddling about I was doing, the music for the titles got played a lot that afternoon. I mean a lot. Try one set of filters, with one particular type of compression, process it, play it several times examining the results, change the filters/compressor, process, play another several times, over and over again.
The thing was, when I was playing the results, I tended not to play the whole clip, but just the first 13 seconds or thereabouts. That much of the clip includes the first measure of the melody line - the first four notes.
Some time later, I realised that I could hear what sounded like the music from the clip coming from the garden outside the window. I discovered that two different species of birds had copied different parts of the theme and now my front garden was echoing with the sounds of Doctor Who!
There was a songbird out there that was repeating the first four notes of the melody line, while a family of Indian Mynas gathered in a grove of trees were mimicking what I can only describe as the the "sparkly" bits - not the bass riff, but the ascending scale of sort of tinkly sounds.
It was really, really cool.
Actually, you may just find that Google has that basic tenet of western capitalism all ass-backwards.
i.e., they ARE in the business of helping you find things on the internet, and the making heaps of money is the nice side effect.
Boy, talk about your radical ideas...
You know, looking at the article, it could be the latter - the first picture in the article has the caption "Sceptics say the weather is not changing dramatically" but put your mouse over the image and the tag reads "Snow in Afghanistan". Most people's concept Afghanistan is of a hot desert-type of place. Not somewhere they get a lot of snow.
The side-bar also has links to stories supporting the opposite view - that climate change is a real thing, like;
Rising tides - Life in Bangladesh's low-lying Ganges delta.
Warming: The evidence
How can Kyoto be strengthened?
Climate change; Contacts, information and advice to help you take action
SEE ALSO:
Climate crisis near 'in 10 years'
Arctic rivers 'flowing faster'
Climate change sceptics 'wrong'
It could be that as the BBC, they do have to give air to both sides. But that doesn't mean they can't do a little editorialising of their own.
I'm only wildy theorising here, but;
.0000001 percent more quarks per cubic nanometre or something.
There's a bit in article about experiments to find variations in Newton's inverse cube and inverse square laws. Maybe we should be looking for other things that can decrease - or increase with some sort of ratio. Say an inverse quadratic of the distance or something. Or, Well, if I'm just pulling scientific gobbledykook out of thin air (IANAQP), how about a non-inverse square to indicate the presence of a mirror universe?
In another section, the article talked about the new twist that M-theory is giving to string theory. Perhaps looking for things that increase with some similar ratio kind of thing could be an indicator. Take the galactic superclusters like the Sculptor supercluster - 250 million lightyears across, about a billion lightyears away. Could it be possible to measure how say, gravity changes across the cluster? Variations in the amount of gravitanional lensing in diferent areas in areas closer and further from the centre and stuff.
And, while I was looking up galaxy superclusters Curios About Astronomy was where I got the answer - lots of interesting reading there, I found out that galaxy-class clusters like the Sculptor, Bootes and the Cona tend to have more elliptical galaxies that spirals like the smaller clusters like our own local group. Could this be one of the places where the distances are shorter. Indeed, our own Milky Way is being pulled towards the Great Attractor at the heart of the Virgo SuperCluster, so it could be said that in this region, the universe may actually be shrinking in that direction by a tiny factor, or that the elliptical galaxies and strange x-ray emissions are a real-world example of what happens when you get
I've really got to stop geting drunk and reading quantum physics papers.
Well, actually I always thought that saying no if you don't understand it was the better course.
similar to the block everything first principle in firewalls, nu?
Then you can teach them that there are some things that it is safe to say yes to - as, on the whole, the subset of things it is safe to say yes to is far smaller than the ones you want to say no to.
Defaulting to OK, yes, open, available, however you want to describe the ON switch is what got Windows into all this trouble in the first place.
Perhaps someone in the army has been reading Tery Pratchett.
Hear me out - In "Night Watch", there's a bit about the Watch being there to defend the City and not the rulers of the city. Therefore, if the ruler of the city was acting contrary to the interests of the City, it was the Watch's duty to defend the City against it's rulers.
The US Army has a similar sort of thing;
I. I am an American soldier -- a protector of the greatest nation on earth -- sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
II. I will treat others with dignity and respect and expect others to do the same.
III. I will honor my Country, the Army, my unit and my fellow soldiers by living the Army Values.
IV. No matter what situation I am in, I will never do anything for pleasure, profit, or personal safety which will disgrace my uniform, my unit, or my Country.
Note that defending Congress, the President, politicians, the CIA, the FBI or any other agent of government control are not mentioned. Neither, you'll notice, are the general population of the US included in the list of things that will be protected by the Army.
Now, if the allegations made by the lawyer at the end of this report are true, there might be a few enemies within the walls that the Army would be excused from looking slightly askance at, in the light of the Army's sworn oarth to uphold the Constitution but not the Government of the US. Of course, that's how coups get started, so it's probably not something that you really want happening.
But if the Generals decide that the people actually responsible for the Bin Ladens and the Saddam Husseins are oooh, I don't know, certain US government bodies or certain politicians, what would their code tell them to do?
Now, extend it a bit further in this direction. The cheaters in the Army's territory and they are acting in a way that is directly in opposition to the US Army code.
What would General Patton do?
And finally, what if the decision was made by the shadowy figures of power deep within the Pentagon that the best way to stop individuals getting into power who would contribute to the creation of the Bin Ladens and Osamas of the future was to catch them all at the cheating at computer games stage?
See, at that point, all that could be needed are a couple of Marines with really big guns to show up at the front door of Johnny Wallhacker's house to "have a little chat" about behaviour appropriate to a citizen of "the Greatest Country on Earth" to make a difference twenty years down the line somewhere.
Ok, I'm done with the wild surmises for now.
Looking at the layout, it may be that the word "bathroom" is being used here as that quaint (albeit confusing) Merkin euphemism for the smallest (smelliest) room in the house. You know, the one where most people keep the big porcelain bus. The WC. The Lavvy, loo, or even, horror of horros, The Toilet.
It sounds logical - the best place to keep what is, basically, a toilet for cats, would be in the toilet. Keeps all your digestive process end results in the same place, so to speak.
Why do they call it a bathroom, anyway? There's no bath in there...
It's gorgeous. Truly beautiful to behold.
For example, the blue parts of R2-D2. They glow. In that particular shade of glowing blue that you usually only see on some species of tropical fish.
c-3p0 is gold, really, really gold. The images are sharper, absolutely crystal clear. The scene looking down over Mos Eisley, you can even see individual boulders all the way down the valley. Mos Eisley itself isn't just a grey blur off in the distance, you can make out individual buildings and roads.
I think it looks incredible.
It's a bloody rock, is what that is.
If you want to call that an asteroid, then this is also an asteroid? This was a meteor that passed right through Earth's atmosphere in 1976, with a perehelion of 58,000 metres.
Although, I think the point here is that this is the closest observed astronomically. It's like seeing the meteor before it hits the atmosphere, I guess. Anyway, the astronomers are all in a tizzy over it, so that must be a good thing.
I see a world where all the devices are locked down so that the general appliance-buying public doesn't have access to the stuff under the bonnet - ie, it's locked locked up in a myriad of those little embedded devices, all running some version of Linux.
The only people who will still be able to acess them is technical folk like, oh I don't know...Us? Service people, programmers and technicians, probably just about anybody that has access to a command prompt for whatever reason.
At which point, the entertainment industry will suddenly see the signal-to-noise ratio of wild cards and loose cannons doing lord-only-knows-what with all their precious content decrease to such a low level that the problem disappears altogether off their radar screens, declare the "War Against Pirates" to be well and truly won and retire to bask in the adulation of their shareholders forever, leaving the rest of us free to keep doing whatever it is we've been doing with all their precious content all these years.
Well, I can dream, can't I?
Actually, I can think of a few ways that files can be raided from a computer that is "off". Note the quotes. Windows XP's idea of "turning off" is a lot different from what was the opposite of ON when I went to school. A lot of the power supplies I'm seeing don't even have master switches on the PSU, even. The only way to remove power from the machine is by pulling the cable. Or using a real OFF switch like, say, the one on the wall at the other end of the cable.
A scheduled task set to wake up the computer at a certain time, or a wake on LAN signal and the computer is ready to deliver, or do, whatever.
True, no different from a rooted box serving up hot'n'spicy FTP goodness to all and sundry, so it's not a problem that's specific to P2P, but there you have it.
PS: Does anybody know if the slots are still live? I've never been game to try it myself, but I would be interested to know if cards can be removed or inserted when the computer is "off", but the little LED on the motherboard is still very clearly ON.
What about limiting playable servers by level?
I mean, people are already comfortable with Pk and non-PK servers, right?
Or, another thought. A lock on the level of players you're allowed to attack. It could be as simple as a message along the lines of "This one is not a worthy challenge" or (say for a Jedi character in SWG (which I'm glad I never bought now)) "You're supposed to be defending the weak, remember?", or something like that
Unless it's the little runt who just stole your favorite blurdlecruncheon, of course
Mr Spock singing about hobbits is something that continues to haunt my nightmares, probably for the rest of my life.
Spock. Hobbits. Singing. Mix either two and you'll get - well, let's be honest - at the worst a mild headache, but together they unite into an unholy triumvirate that possess the ability to warp space in really, really horrible ways.
To whit; The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.. Look upon their works, ye mighty, and despair!
One thing it could be very handy for is compression. Video compression is, of course, the first thing that springs to mind, but I guess other types of compression could work too, as long as there is a data path back out of the GPU, to the hard drive or wherever else you want that compressed data to go.
For applications like that, the back channel isn't that much of an issue, because the data coming out of the process is so very much smaller, ie - a lot of data is being thrown away in the GPU
Conversely, on the way in, the data is big. I capture video at 922x576, 25 fps from a dedicated TV card using Huffyuv - a lossless codec, and I get about 7.3 MB per second of data going into the capture file. That works out to about half a gig per minute. If I was to use no compression, it balloons out to about 25 MB/sec
Then I use VirtualDub to run it through a filter or two, resize it with a biCubic transfer and compress it with xVid - With a 1 Gig Duron, the data's going in at about 750 KB per second, getting processed at about 1.8 frames per second and then going back out at (get this) 50 BYTES per second.
If, instead my graphic card could up that by a factor of fifty rather than just sitting there (mostly) idle, I think it'd be great - no more waiting an HOUR to render down a 4-minute clip. If , instead of going TV-card->processor->hard drive it went TV-card->GPU(compress)->processor(filter)->hard drive, the recording could be done all in one hit.
By the way - I can get an hour's worth of video into just under 75 MB and it's still quite watchable - About par with slightly older VHS tapes.
"Don't make me come back there!"
I know how the internet works. You don't.
I know how graphic design works. You don't.
I know what people want from a website. You don't.
I know how to apply technology in ways that will maximise the benefit that you get from your website. You don't.
I know what will get people to read a bit further, to click on a link, to buy something from you. You've never even heard of the golden ratio.
Now, given that I have all this knowledge and the ability to apply it, who would be considered the snotty, arrogant wanker? The person who knows all trying to advise the one who knows nothing what will work and what won't?
Or perhaps the person who knows NOTHING!!! trying to tell me how to do my job? And then getting on his high horse and throwing personal slurs around because I dare to suggest that I know better?