Uh, dude, you either have 1080 or you don't. The magical electromagnetic spectrum fairy doesn't just randomly pull out a 100 lines here and there to fuck with people. You won't get 900 lines or 700 lines, you'll get 1080 or you'll get nothing (or 720 or 480 or 576 depending on the broadcaster's format). Lemme guess, the HDTV expert at Best Buy told you this?
Republican politicians argued that the new rules were necessary to thwart terrorists, saying that four of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers possessed valid state-issued driver's licenses. "When I get on an airplane and someone shows ID, I'd like to be sure they are who they say they are," said Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, during a floor debate that started Wednesday.
Yet once again... all in the name of preventing terrorism. You know, as time goes on I realize just how bad of an event 9/11 was. Not for everyone who died, but for the fallout on the American public. Let me ask you something Mr. Tom Davis: if those terrorists had completely valid and legal licenses, what is going to prevent them from getting more completely valid and legal licenses with this new system?
Well, it depends. If you're sitting in one of these hellishly ugly subdivisions that just plowed through 100 acres of forest to build your ass a place to sit, to produce trash, to add to congestion, and to pollute the air with your daily commute in your SUV, then yes... you are at fault. However, some people actually move into a rural area and try to keep it rural. You may need some help from your township/county leaders and such, but if you can pick up 10 to 100 acres on the outskirts of a smaller town, and you can get your neighbors to do the same by promoting a spread-out comfortable style of living to keep land costs down... then you won't have the same kind of impacts on the environment. Drive an efficient car to work, or work from home some of the time. Compost and recycle all sorts of would-be garbage. You'd be amazed how far a little thought and effort goes. Even using recycled materials to build your house is easy to do. But the problem is that these developers just keep plowing through rural America, turning it into fields and fields of ugly strip housing... because it's easy, cheap for them, they make a huge profit, and the masses are too stupid to figure out a better way on their own. It amazes me that a 1/4 acre lot in a hideous sub goes for the same price as a 1 acre lot on the side of a country road a little further away. Are people really that desperate for human interaction that they have to live with other people in their backyard too? Sigh.
You know what else is funny? I can walk into a senior level engineering exam with 3 books, a binder full of 100s of pages of notes, dozens of reference sheets, and my calculator... and still fail the exam (on a straight scale but still pass on a curved scale). While I can walk into an economics (social science requirement) class with nothing but my pencil and ace it.
And it's not that you can't find the right information on the engineering exam, it's that the problems are just so complex that the amount of work and thought to fully solve one is hard to boil down into a 2 hour exam. Like 1/2 an exam will be to design and optimize a bracket that can handle certain 3rd order modes coming from an engine or something. Ok, I can slap a huge chunk of steel in there and prove that it will not fail (which isn't simple, it's just straight-forward). But that isn't what the prof is looking for.
I guess the prof thinks that if the exam takes them 1 hour to complete, 2 hours should be fine for us. Not to mention that he/she has been an expert in their field for 20 years and we've only spent 4 months listening to them talk. I'm not complaining, just observing. And this doesn't apply to all profs, some design very good exams (these are typically the ones that structure their lectures extremely well).
Ah well, I guess that's why we get paid the big bucks (I hope, heh). Maybe I should have become a lawyer... hmmmm
Actually, the numbers of franchise chains has sky-rocketed in the past 15 years or so. In fact, franchise chains were practically non-existent before, say 1970ish. Regular chains existed in large numbers before then. Managers have realized that it is much more simple to let everyone run their own store and to just control the name brand and marketing at the top level. Regular chains are still thriving because that method of operations still works, it's just easier and typically more efficient to franchise. Even businesses that used to be strictly company-owned are turning to franchises: 7-11, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donuts, Matco Tools, Meineke, Midas,... the list goes on and on and on. Starbucks is just another company that has decided to keep company control over everything instead of franchising. Maybe that's why you pay $5 for a latte. Your analogy has failed.
It's a simple fact of life. It's harder to manage 100 people than it is to manage 10 people. You should have already picked this up from school, work, etc.
This should be a state-by-state decision and a state run program. We do not need the federal government adding one more program to the laundry list of programs that they already don't run efficiently. For interstate purchases just settle on a standard where the state of the seller or the state of the buyer collects the fee. Heck, set it up like a deposit system. You pay $10 when you buy the computer and get $5 back when you turn the computer in.
Smaller goverments run programs better - more efficiency, less impact due to corruption (on a smaller scale corruption is easier to detect), and more people are able to keep watch and keep the program in check. The insight for a program might start on the federal level, but it's insane having 1/2 the programs that we have running at the federal level.
If you go on a sex binge for like a week, doing it 3 times a day every day, you're bored at the end of the week (not "physically" bored, but psychologically bored). And guess what, for the next few days you won't even think about sex, less asking your girl for more sex. Heck, she may even ask you for sex before you get around to thinking you would like some more. You can only do something so many times in a row in such a short span of time before it bores you. But don't worry, you'll get back around to begging for it every 10 minutes, you just have to take a break for a few days.
While your statement may be true for the average or crappy teachers, it does not hold for the excellent teachers. And that is part of the problem with the system, you can't pay an excellent teacher more than a crappy teacher because the crappy teacher will complain (citing discrimination, blah blah blah, instead of their crappy performance). The excellent teachers (of which I had several in HS through taking College Prep and Advanced Placement classes) deserve more - at least in my school district, where salaries were pretty low already. And how much more they should be getting partially corresponds to how much less the crappy teachers should be getting.
Also, while the crappy teachers may be content to sit back and laze away during the summer, the other teachers are looking for ways to fill that 3 month gap in their work schedule. A career that doesn't use 25% of your life (and doesn't pay you for 25% of your life) isn't maximizing your earning potential. They recognize this and try to patch up that hole... teach at the local CC, tutor over the summer, even resort to manual labor like painting houses or construction.
You totally missed the boat on that one. The point of tabbed browsing isn't to have a bunch of windows open. In fact, I used to do exactly what you are talking about, but that is nothing like tabbed browsing. Maybe you have never tried tabbed browsing or something, I dunno. Tabbed browsing is like a second Taskbar for FF. You can have 1 instance of FF open in your windows Taskbar and have 4 different pages open in FF. I love it for research or referencing equations and theories, because I can have 6 instance of FF open in my windows Taskbar for different core topics... then I can have 5 tabs open inside each FF instance for sub-topics. Total I've got 30 pages open that I'm referencing at the same time (and they're organized). Try having 30 pages open with IE, it ain't gonna work too well.
Why not? You know, if Google could spend a few years in heavy development (perhaps they already are) to build a new OS from the ground up (instead of another Lindows - hey, let's make a quick buck off of a Linux distro) they could do well in the desktop market. So many people know the Google name that they would already feel "familiar" with the OS before they even use it. And if they built an OS somewhat similar to Windows (although a different OS in enough ways) to make porting a simpler task (simpler than to Linux or OSX, etc) then developers could make a smooth transition as well. Google could tap into a huge market (hey, MS has made billions over the years) and if it worked out right, it would be worth every bit of the investment.
I agree, even if just from an end-user standpoint. I have to use IE on some computers I work on and I absolutely hate it. Just the fact that tabbed browsing is missing is horrible (although it may appear in IE in later versions)... among other things. I put FF on a machine at a place I was working a while back and my coworkers were amazed at what I was using. They asked about it, I told them where to find it, and they come back thanking me for telling them about such a great browser.
Wow, you really are near-sighted aren't you? You can't get over your ignorance to see that just vaccinating a bunch of children isn't going to fix the nation's problems. Please, tell me, what is next after they vaccinate the children? There is no infrastructure, so they can't go to school, they can't get a job, and they've lost most of their farming and agriculture skills because of food handouts we've given them in the past. What now? They're running around with nothing to do but fight with each other wait for more handouts. Exactly how is this the right first step to be taking? Please, enlighten me to how this will solve all of their problems.
Sure, they aren't dying from polio, rickets, and ebola. But what now? They're still living in poverty and now they're gonna gripe and complain for the next 20 years that we won't give them more hand outs.
I actually don't consider this a win-win situation. However, if the Gates foundation pledged $750 million to build schools and bring in teachers to educate the ones that DO survive normally, that would be a win-win situation. It's the old give a man a fish / teach a man to fish saying. Vaccinating a whole generation of poverty-stricken 3rd world humans will actually hurt the situation because we'll have a generation with a 80% survival rate instead of the normal 25% (or whatever it is). And they will go on to produce a shitload more poverty-stricken 3rd world humans. Then, where will the Gates foundation be to cough up the $7.5 billion needed to vaccinate that generation... and the $75 billion to vaccinate the next generation... and the $750 billion for the generation after that.
If they learn how to raise their standard of living on their own, they'll be able to support themselves in the future.
Actually, I recently sat in on a presentation that summarized the current affairs concerning global warming. It was given by a deputy director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University. The conclusion was that 99% of environmental (or similar - thermodynamicists, oceanographicists, particulate fluid dynamicists, etc) scientists that have actually sat down and looked at the data agree that global warming is happening and that it is a direct result of human actions. They do not debate how the data was collected, they do not debate the amount of data collected, they do not debate the origins of the data, everyone agrees global warming is upon us. Now, the debate is over what the effects of global warming will be and how long it will be before we notice effects (if we haven't already).
Even if the ocean currents change on a regular basis, that in combination with (or as a result of) other effects of global warming will not be good for us. Some people believe the situation is dire and we need to change now, others believe the situation is problematic but that we have time to figure out a solution. Whatever way you look at it, we need to change at some point in time. Current estimates put significant changes within the 40 to 80 year range. And the problem many people see is that it's not like we can come up with a solution, flip a switch, and have everything working. First, we'll have to spend 10 years changing world policy to get a solution. Then, we'll have to spend another 10 years just trying to put that solution into place. Then, we'll have to wait another 10 years before that solution starts showing any effect (at minimum). At that point, will it be too late? Time will tell.
One interesting point of the presentation was a comment (heard by the presenter) made by a Chinese official. The comment concerned the development of Chinese infrastructure for mass-production of consumer vehicles. Currently, in the entire world there exists about 600 million road vehicles (of which about 200 million reside in the USA). I recall that China had something like 60 million of those. The Chinese government is planing on raising that number to 600 million by 2050. Yikes:\
The only show left that is worth watching anymore is XPlay (and perhaps a few of the other speciality shows like Body Hits or Nerd Nation... whenever they can actually squeek them into the schedule). I was unable to watch anything on G4/TechTV for about 6 months and tuned in the other day to see what The Screen Savers was all about anymore. They had some hip-hop crew of dawgs and biatches for hosts (huh???) and the key feature of that particular show was their field trip to some store that sold dragon and hello kitty memorabilia or something. It was horrible. You know the situation is sad when the last remaining remnant of anything technical and interesting is Kevin Rose.
XPlay is actually a fun show to watch. I rue the day that the G4 PHBs will turn it into a review of hardcore anime porn. You know it'll happen... they've done nearly that with all the other shows.
Actually, with the morons running some of these theaters nowadays, it isn't that hard to beat the sound and video quality of a theater. The sound is the worst, with bass cracking , tweeters screeching, mid ranges washed out, and their respective volumes all inconsistent. If you properly analyze a room in your house, setup the speakers accordingly, and then fine tune them, you'll have a 10x better experience. And what is more, you can add in an infinite baffle (IB) subwoofer system for the same price as a good quality box sub and you will hear bass like you've never heard before (if you have an attic or similar). As far as the video, half the time the screen hasn't been cleaned in ages (simply because it doesn't need to be done every day or week, so the theaters don't think about it much) and you end up with gradients of clarity all over the place. On a freshly cleaned or new screen, a properly calibrated picture will jump off the screen at you. Picture quality can be kinda bad sometimes as well... at the very worst some parts of the picture may even be out of focus!
And that's just the technical details. You also have all of these dumbasses talking on their phones and letting their kids run around screaming like apes. Take control of your freaking brats you negligent morons. And the floor is sticky, and the seats are ANYTHING but comfortable. And if you don't get there early enough to get the sweet spot, then you'll be watching the whole movie with your head tilted up or to the side 45 degrees.
Yeh, home theater is the way to go. For about $1k you can have a pretty nice setup with a projector, few speakers, screen, and you'll have a blast with it every weekend - parties with friends over, etc. Sure, if you're struggling don't get one, but then why spend money at the theater anyhow? If you've got a steady job with a decent income, it's pretty easy to set aside $1k over the course of a year to invest in a theater system.
Actually yes, Roland shouldn't benefit from it, just like the 1000s of other people who submit stories without any intent to profit, who submit just to share the knowledge with the other interested nerds in the world. Slashdot is a community here to share knowledge, not to have some moron come along and claim someone else's research and hard work as his own.
Whenever I submit a story, I am serving Roland and not asking for anything in return, as is every other poster, why should he be special?
I think I have been baited by a troll here, but oh well...
Yeh, seriously. They should have just stopped at Madden 94, when football on a console was perfected. That is the only football game I ever play, and you know what? It looks amazing projected onto a 100" screen, you wouldn't believe the graphics they had back in 1994. I don't even know why anyone else tries, they should just bow down to Madden 94 and give up.
I simply just skip over the links to his blog. It's easy to tell if a post is his (mostly based on the last sentence... "This summary contains more details... blah"). And as others have noted, the legality of what he is doing is very questionable. If you don't like it, report his activity to the original author. I do appreciate some of the articles he has brought to light on slashdot (miniature turbines, etc). But, I think the way he tries to pass off the crap on his blog as original content is ridiculous. Slashdot is based upon the individuals in the community letting everyone in the community know about interesting articles they have run across. Roland should submit interesting stuff he runs across (as I and many others do) without an intent to profit.
... marijuana has far less detrimental (if any) effect on the human system...
As much as I agree that people can do whatever the hell they want with their lives (to the extent that it doesn't bother other people AND it doesn't cost the tax payers money through public rehab programs, etc), I still find your statement there pretty funny. No legitimate study would ever say marijuana doesn't hurt your body. Even if you just consider the fact that you are breathing in smoke and depriving yourself of oxygen, it still hurts. Anybody who says otherwise is either a complete moron or a pothead.
Wow, I never realized the Grand Canyon looked so much like the Bryce Canyon in Utah. It's simply amazing what you can do with a gigapixel image nowadays.
Sure, but ideal marriage material at 35 doesn't mean you'll be raking in the hot girls. Sure, the desperate losers in their mid-30s will be all over you, but why exactly are they desperate again? What you really want are all the hot girls in their mid-20s. And that comes after your geekiness rakes in the dough for you, and you're a multimillionaire at age 60.:)
Yeh, I've always thought that discharging was a key inhibitor to development of certain types of cancer. Your prostate was meant to be used and not using it is quite unnatural. Just like your heart or other glands and organs. If your heart isn't in good shape, if you don't exercise it with cardio workouts, then you are at a higher risk for heart dieseases and such.
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Uh, dude, you either have 1080 or you don't. The magical electromagnetic spectrum fairy doesn't just randomly pull out a 100 lines here and there to fuck with people. You won't get 900 lines or 700 lines, you'll get 1080 or you'll get nothing (or 720 or 480 or 576 depending on the broadcaster's format). Lemme guess, the HDTV expert at Best Buy told you this?
Republican politicians argued that the new rules were necessary to thwart terrorists, saying that four of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers possessed valid state-issued driver's licenses. "When I get on an airplane and someone shows ID, I'd like to be sure they are who they say they are," said Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, during a floor debate that started Wednesday.
... all in the name of preventing terrorism. You know, as time goes on I realize just how bad of an event 9/11 was. Not for everyone who died, but for the fallout on the American public. Let me ask you something Mr. Tom Davis: if those terrorists had completely valid and legal licenses, what is going to prevent them from getting more completely valid and legal licenses with this new system?
Yet once again
Sigh.
Well, it depends. If you're sitting in one of these hellishly ugly subdivisions that just plowed through 100 acres of forest to build your ass a place to sit, to produce trash, to add to congestion, and to pollute the air with your daily commute in your SUV, then yes ... you are at fault. However, some people actually move into a rural area and try to keep it rural. You may need some help from your township/county leaders and such, but if you can pick up 10 to 100 acres on the outskirts of a smaller town, and you can get your neighbors to do the same by promoting a spread-out comfortable style of living to keep land costs down ... then you won't have the same kind of impacts on the environment. Drive an efficient car to work, or work from home some of the time. Compost and recycle all sorts of would-be garbage. You'd be amazed how far a little thought and effort goes. Even using recycled materials to build your house is easy to do. But the problem is that these developers just keep plowing through rural America, turning it into fields and fields of ugly strip housing ... because it's easy, cheap for them, they make a huge profit, and the masses are too stupid to figure out a better way on their own. It amazes me that a 1/4 acre lot in a hideous sub goes for the same price as a 1 acre lot on the side of a country road a little further away. Are people really that desperate for human interaction that they have to live with other people in their backyard too? Sigh.
You know what else is funny? I can walk into a senior level engineering exam with 3 books, a binder full of 100s of pages of notes, dozens of reference sheets, and my calculator ... and still fail the exam (on a straight scale but still pass on a curved scale). While I can walk into an economics (social science requirement) class with nothing but my pencil and ace it.
... hmmmm
And it's not that you can't find the right information on the engineering exam, it's that the problems are just so complex that the amount of work and thought to fully solve one is hard to boil down into a 2 hour exam. Like 1/2 an exam will be to design and optimize a bracket that can handle certain 3rd order modes coming from an engine or something. Ok, I can slap a huge chunk of steel in there and prove that it will not fail (which isn't simple, it's just straight-forward). But that isn't what the prof is looking for.
I guess the prof thinks that if the exam takes them 1 hour to complete, 2 hours should be fine for us. Not to mention that he/she has been an expert in their field for 20 years and we've only spent 4 months listening to them talk. I'm not complaining, just observing. And this doesn't apply to all profs, some design very good exams (these are typically the ones that structure their lectures extremely well).
Ah well, I guess that's why we get paid the big bucks (I hope, heh). Maybe I should have become a lawyer
Actually, the numbers of franchise chains has sky-rocketed in the past 15 years or so. In fact, franchise chains were practically non-existent before, say 1970ish. Regular chains existed in large numbers before then. Managers have realized that it is much more simple to let everyone run their own store and to just control the name brand and marketing at the top level. Regular chains are still thriving because that method of operations still works, it's just easier and typically more efficient to franchise. Even businesses that used to be strictly company-owned are turning to franchises: 7-11, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donuts, Matco Tools, Meineke, Midas, ... the list goes on and on and on. Starbucks is just another company that has decided to keep company control over everything instead of franchising. Maybe that's why you pay $5 for a latte. Your analogy has failed.
It's a simple fact of life. It's harder to manage 100 people than it is to manage 10 people. You should have already picked this up from school, work, etc.
This should be a state-by-state decision and a state run program. We do not need the federal government adding one more program to the laundry list of programs that they already don't run efficiently. For interstate purchases just settle on a standard where the state of the seller or the state of the buyer collects the fee. Heck, set it up like a deposit system. You pay $10 when you buy the computer and get $5 back when you turn the computer in.
Smaller goverments run programs better - more efficiency, less impact due to corruption (on a smaller scale corruption is easier to detect), and more people are able to keep watch and keep the program in check. The insight for a program might start on the federal level, but it's insane having 1/2 the programs that we have running at the federal level.
Seriously.
If you go on a sex binge for like a week, doing it 3 times a day every day, you're bored at the end of the week (not "physically" bored, but psychologically bored). And guess what, for the next few days you won't even think about sex, less asking your girl for more sex. Heck, she may even ask you for sex before you get around to thinking you would like some more. You can only do something so many times in a row in such a short span of time before it bores you. But don't worry, you'll get back around to begging for it every 10 minutes, you just have to take a break for a few days.
While your statement may be true for the average or crappy teachers, it does not hold for the excellent teachers. And that is part of the problem with the system, you can't pay an excellent teacher more than a crappy teacher because the crappy teacher will complain (citing discrimination, blah blah blah, instead of their crappy performance). The excellent teachers (of which I had several in HS through taking College Prep and Advanced Placement classes) deserve more - at least in my school district, where salaries were pretty low already. And how much more they should be getting partially corresponds to how much less the crappy teachers should be getting.
... teach at the local CC, tutor over the summer, even resort to manual labor like painting houses or construction.
Also, while the crappy teachers may be content to sit back and laze away during the summer, the other teachers are looking for ways to fill that 3 month gap in their work schedule. A career that doesn't use 25% of your life (and doesn't pay you for 25% of your life) isn't maximizing your earning potential. They recognize this and try to patch up that hole
You totally missed the boat on that one. The point of tabbed browsing isn't to have a bunch of windows open. In fact, I used to do exactly what you are talking about, but that is nothing like tabbed browsing. Maybe you have never tried tabbed browsing or something, I dunno. Tabbed browsing is like a second Taskbar for FF. You can have 1 instance of FF open in your windows Taskbar and have 4 different pages open in FF. I love it for research or referencing equations and theories, because I can have 6 instance of FF open in my windows Taskbar for different core topics ... then I can have 5 tabs open inside each FF instance for sub-topics. Total I've got 30 pages open that I'm referencing at the same time (and they're organized). Try having 30 pages open with IE, it ain't gonna work too well.
Why not? You know, if Google could spend a few years in heavy development (perhaps they already are) to build a new OS from the ground up (instead of another Lindows - hey, let's make a quick buck off of a Linux distro) they could do well in the desktop market. So many people know the Google name that they would already feel "familiar" with the OS before they even use it. And if they built an OS somewhat similar to Windows (although a different OS in enough ways) to make porting a simpler task (simpler than to Linux or OSX, etc) then developers could make a smooth transition as well. Google could tap into a huge market (hey, MS has made billions over the years) and if it worked out right, it would be worth every bit of the investment.
I agree, even if just from an end-user standpoint. I have to use IE on some computers I work on and I absolutely hate it. Just the fact that tabbed browsing is missing is horrible (although it may appear in IE in later versions) ... among other things. I put FF on a machine at a place I was working a while back and my coworkers were amazed at what I was using. They asked about it, I told them where to find it, and they come back thanking me for telling them about such a great browser.
Wow, you really are near-sighted aren't you? You can't get over your ignorance to see that just vaccinating a bunch of children isn't going to fix the nation's problems. Please, tell me, what is next after they vaccinate the children? There is no infrastructure, so they can't go to school, they can't get a job, and they've lost most of their farming and agriculture skills because of food handouts we've given them in the past. What now? They're running around with nothing to do but fight with each other wait for more handouts. Exactly how is this the right first step to be taking? Please, enlighten me to how this will solve all of their problems.
Sure, they aren't dying from polio, rickets, and ebola. But what now? They're still living in poverty and now they're gonna gripe and complain for the next 20 years that we won't give them more hand outs.
... and the $75 billion to vaccinate the next generation ... and the $750 billion for the generation after that.
I actually don't consider this a win-win situation. However, if the Gates foundation pledged $750 million to build schools and bring in teachers to educate the ones that DO survive normally, that would be a win-win situation. It's the old give a man a fish / teach a man to fish saying. Vaccinating a whole generation of poverty-stricken 3rd world humans will actually hurt the situation because we'll have a generation with a 80% survival rate instead of the normal 25% (or whatever it is). And they will go on to produce a shitload more poverty-stricken 3rd world humans. Then, where will the Gates foundation be to cough up the $7.5 billion needed to vaccinate that generation
If they learn how to raise their standard of living on their own, they'll be able to support themselves in the future.
Actually, I recently sat in on a presentation that summarized the current affairs concerning global warming. It was given by a deputy director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University. The conclusion was that 99% of environmental (or similar - thermodynamicists, oceanographicists, particulate fluid dynamicists, etc) scientists that have actually sat down and looked at the data agree that global warming is happening and that it is a direct result of human actions. They do not debate how the data was collected, they do not debate the amount of data collected, they do not debate the origins of the data, everyone agrees global warming is upon us. Now, the debate is over what the effects of global warming will be and how long it will be before we notice effects (if we haven't already).
:\
Even if the ocean currents change on a regular basis, that in combination with (or as a result of) other effects of global warming will not be good for us. Some people believe the situation is dire and we need to change now, others believe the situation is problematic but that we have time to figure out a solution. Whatever way you look at it, we need to change at some point in time. Current estimates put significant changes within the 40 to 80 year range. And the problem many people see is that it's not like we can come up with a solution, flip a switch, and have everything working. First, we'll have to spend 10 years changing world policy to get a solution. Then, we'll have to spend another 10 years just trying to put that solution into place. Then, we'll have to wait another 10 years before that solution starts showing any effect (at minimum). At that point, will it be too late? Time will tell.
One interesting point of the presentation was a comment (heard by the presenter) made by a Chinese official. The comment concerned the development of Chinese infrastructure for mass-production of consumer vehicles. Currently, in the entire world there exists about 600 million road vehicles (of which about 200 million reside in the USA). I recall that China had something like 60 million of those. The Chinese government is planing on raising that number to 600 million by 2050. Yikes
The only show left that is worth watching anymore is XPlay (and perhaps a few of the other speciality shows like Body Hits or Nerd Nation ... whenever they can actually squeek them into the schedule). I was unable to watch anything on G4/TechTV for about 6 months and tuned in the other day to see what The Screen Savers was all about anymore. They had some hip-hop crew of dawgs and biatches for hosts (huh???) and the key feature of that particular show was their field trip to some store that sold dragon and hello kitty memorabilia or something. It was horrible. You know the situation is sad when the last remaining remnant of anything technical and interesting is Kevin Rose.
... they've done nearly that with all the other shows.
XPlay is actually a fun show to watch. I rue the day that the G4 PHBs will turn it into a review of hardcore anime porn. You know it'll happen
Actually, with the morons running some of these theaters nowadays, it isn't that hard to beat the sound and video quality of a theater. The sound is the worst, with bass cracking , tweeters screeching, mid ranges washed out, and their respective volumes all inconsistent. If you properly analyze a room in your house, setup the speakers accordingly, and then fine tune them, you'll have a 10x better experience. And what is more, you can add in an infinite baffle (IB) subwoofer system for the same price as a good quality box sub and you will hear bass like you've never heard before (if you have an attic or similar). As far as the video, half the time the screen hasn't been cleaned in ages (simply because it doesn't need to be done every day or week, so the theaters don't think about it much) and you end up with gradients of clarity all over the place. On a freshly cleaned or new screen, a properly calibrated picture will jump off the screen at you. Picture quality can be kinda bad sometimes as well ... at the very worst some parts of the picture may even be out of focus!
And that's just the technical details. You also have all of these dumbasses talking on their phones and letting their kids run around screaming like apes. Take control of your freaking brats you negligent morons. And the floor is sticky, and the seats are ANYTHING but comfortable. And if you don't get there early enough to get the sweet spot, then you'll be watching the whole movie with your head tilted up or to the side 45 degrees.
Yeh, home theater is the way to go. For about $1k you can have a pretty nice setup with a projector, few speakers, screen, and you'll have a blast with it every weekend - parties with friends over, etc. Sure, if you're struggling don't get one, but then why spend money at the theater anyhow? If you've got a steady job with a decent income, it's pretty easy to set aside $1k over the course of a year to invest in a theater system.
Actually yes, Roland shouldn't benefit from it, just like the 1000s of other people who submit stories without any intent to profit, who submit just to share the knowledge with the other interested nerds in the world. Slashdot is a community here to share knowledge, not to have some moron come along and claim someone else's research and hard work as his own.
Whenever I submit a story, I am serving Roland and not asking for anything in return, as is every other poster, why should he be special?
I think I have been baited by a troll here, but oh well...
Yeh, seriously. They should have just stopped at Madden 94, when football on a console was perfected. That is the only football game I ever play, and you know what? It looks amazing projected onto a 100" screen, you wouldn't believe the graphics they had back in 1994. I don't even know why anyone else tries, they should just bow down to Madden 94 and give up.
I simply just skip over the links to his blog. It's easy to tell if a post is his (mostly based on the last sentence ... "This summary contains more details ... blah"). And as others have noted, the legality of what he is doing is very questionable. If you don't like it, report his activity to the original author. I do appreciate some of the articles he has brought to light on slashdot (miniature turbines, etc). But, I think the way he tries to pass off the crap on his blog as original content is ridiculous. Slashdot is based upon the individuals in the community letting everyone in the community know about interesting articles they have run across. Roland should submit interesting stuff he runs across (as I and many others do) without an intent to profit.
As much as I agree that people can do whatever the hell they want with their lives (to the extent that it doesn't bother other people AND it doesn't cost the tax payers money through public rehab programs, etc), I still find your statement there pretty funny. No legitimate study would ever say marijuana doesn't hurt your body. Even if you just consider the fact that you are breathing in smoke and depriving yourself of oxygen, it still hurts. Anybody who says otherwise is either a complete moron or a pothead.
And here's my solution to the nation's overpacked prisons: everybody behave! See, it's really just that easy ... now go do it!
Wow, I never realized the Grand Canyon looked so much like the Bryce Canyon in Utah. It's simply amazing what you can do with a gigapixel image nowadays.
Sure, but ideal marriage material at 35 doesn't mean you'll be raking in the hot girls. Sure, the desperate losers in their mid-30s will be all over you, but why exactly are they desperate again? What you really want are all the hot girls in their mid-20s. And that comes after your geekiness rakes in the dough for you, and you're a multimillionaire at age 60. :)
Yeh, I've always thought that discharging was a key inhibitor to development of certain types of cancer. Your prostate was meant to be used and not using it is quite unnatural. Just like your heart or other glands and organs. If your heart isn't in good shape, if you don't exercise it with cardio workouts, then you are at a higher risk for heart dieseases and such.