"What's this I hear about HP bringing out the successor to the iPaq next month? I think it's about time, the flat screen and metal arm design always looked like an orange attacking a sheet of paper.
Item! Steve Bellmar and the wacky crew at Apple Computer will be releasing their next computer, which will use Intel's Itanium processor. Careful, or that'll be a baked apple!"
Unfortunately, if you live in a city of any size, these FM transmitters aren't worth the cost at all, as the FM dial is pretty well saturated with enough signal bleed on the rare unused station to make using those impossible, unless you hold the transmitter itself and act as an antenna. Not really practical.
I know a guy who went to NYC a few years ago and bought (for novelty value, he says) a Folex watch. The same guy later bought a Panasoanic discman when he was in Mexico. It was surprisingly good -- I never heard a disc skip on that.
Alas, the Folex wasn't too accurate as far as timepieces go.
My interests on music lately have tended towards full-show live music by a few bands. Recently, as featured here, Phish started their Live Phish Downloads series. I ended up ordering the New Year's Eve run, and those were usually available within 24 hours of the show, but they were so huge that downloading them was a minor hassle.
Now Pearl Jam is expanding their already ridiculously large live bootleg series with the upcoming Riot Act tour. The.au/.jp tour bootlegs will be sold online, but a few hours after the show, they will also be making those concerts available for download to those who purchased the CD (which would be available about a week or so later).
But this is exactly what I've wanted in all of my concert-goings. While I have some reservations since it's got the Clear Channel name attached to it, I've been to a few concerts that were just mindblowingly good and wished I could have a CD of it to listen to again the next morning. I'd definitely go for something like this.
There needs to be a mechanism for the governments to pick up the excess cost of people receiving spam, rather than Jo Punter paying for it in a few extra pennies every time he dials up to check his mail...
Of course, even if the government did pick up the excess cost, you'd still be paying for it... unless your government doesn't collect taxes.
No, the original poster was right. Basically, the logic follows this simple format (you may have seen it before).
1. Change newline character so it follows Unicode spec.
2. ?????
3. PROFIT!!!!
I'm sure he just left out #2 for the sake of brevity.
Not light reading...
on
Hacker Culture
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I picked this book up over the summer on a whim. I expected a fairly interesting read that might tend to romanticize the image of hackers in some way.
Not so. The book is actually very dense, and looks at hackers/hacker culture in a more sociological/anthropological context, examining norms and values of the subculture versus traditional society and so forth.
It's interesting and I moved through it fairly quickly, but it's not really light reading. It basically reads like someone's thesis paper or something. And there are enough typos that it just might drive you nuts. But on a four hour flight, I would much rather read this than the thrilling American Airlines magazine.
As someone else said earlier, "It's the economy, stupid".
I do freelance advertising/pr work and the amount of contracts have dwindled over the last two years. This, in turn, has led to less disposable income in my pocket.
With the economy like it is, and work hard to come by, I'm more inclined to hold on to my money and make sure I'm able to cover my costs not just for this month, but well into the future. Additionally, with interest rates so low, I've also been making larger payments on student loans and remaining credit card debt.
What this means, obviously, is that I'm not going to go out and buy CDs as freely as I did when I was making money faster than I could spend it. Plus, why in the world would I want to go buy a CD for $18, when half the tracks either suck or are filler? (That's my new pet peeve: I can accept the bad song, because at least it was an attempt. Those filler tracks of random noise or whatever just sound like a waste of my money, however.)
What has increased my CD spending recently, however, is the number of sub-$10 CDs I've found. Borders has tons of CDs priced at $7.99 and for the last several weeks, I've seen new releases at anywhere from $8-13. That's much closer to a reasonable price -- and at $7, it's in that impulse-buy range for me.
It's been said before, but I think the RIAA needs to wake up and look at the facts. CDs are priced too high, and the economy sucks. Add to it that a lot of CDs are just crap lately, and why would I want to fork over $18-20 for a CD where I might like four tracks, when I can use it to pay down some of my debt?
... but it might help to not get ahead of yourself.
While the x86 ports of MacOS have been rumored to exist for ages, the buzz doesn't seem to suggest that Apple is totally ready to give up on PPC just yet.
The Apple rumor scene has been abuzz about the rumored desktop version of the Power4 -- even the article mentions this. This CPU supposedly has Altivec functions included, which Apple has been going crazy about since the G4 came out. IBM said they'd discuss it at the Microprocessor Forum -- and I'd keep my eyes on this.
While it's all speculation, it makes more sense than requiring yet another shift in architecture and requiring everyone to rewrite their apps to run on an x86 version of Mac OS X.
Read the original auction. Note this bit: (boldface added for emphasis)
"
The donor car is a 1988 Ford Escort and only has 880 miles since built. It is titled as a Ford. The engine runs strong and should be good for another 80,000 miles because the donor vehicle has 102k original miles on it.
102k = 102,000 880 = 880 80,000 = 80,000
102,000 80,000 + 880 ------- 182,880
In other words, yes, the seller is suggesting that the car will run for 182,000 miles.
I have had my share of high-stress, we-need-it-done-yesterday type projects in the past. For years, I would just load up on caffeine (my choice was tea; coffee when I didn't want to deal with the extra production involved with making good tea). One of the things I noticed was lack of clarity and focus. When I'd get some good sleep after the project was over, I'd see all kinds of mistakes and general lack of polish on the work.
Then I discovered the best agent for improving performance: Sleep. I know, it's a tight deadline/you're having a lot of fun/whatever, and sleep is the last thing on your mind. However, with a few hours of sleep, you'll be able to approach your work with a much fresher, clearer state of mind. The key is to not let yourself lounge in bed all day.
Once I ditched the caffeine-fueled nights and decided to call it a night when I was feeling tired (and then getting an early start), I found the quality of my work increased dramatically and less time was spent tracking down and fixing strange mistakes. And I still made deadlines with ease.
And it works for partying, too. If you want to stay up late, get a good nap during the afternoon. As long as you keep it short (i.e., not a three-hour coma), you should be good to go for quite a while. I did this all the time in college, had no trouble staying up till 5 AM and beyond.
If you're up late because you just like the atmosphere of playing your favorite FPS in a darkened room, you might want to consider blacking out your windows somehow. It's actually not too hard to do (tape a couple garbage bags on your window -- boom, instant night) and you can get all of the fun with less of the sleep deprivation.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but working on a normal schedule and staying well-rested and getting even a small amount of exercise will help your clarity and focus and energy level far more than any drink will, and you'll also have the benefit of not ruining your teeth. (Doubt this? Ask your dentist about the patients he gets who drink tons of soda. If he's been working long, he'll be able to tell you plenty of stories).
Anyway, that's my $2.39. But if you've gotta drink caffeine, go for some sort of tea (find one you like, not that prebagged, blended crap that has no taste at all).
Wasn't this the plot of one of the Space Quest games?
Re:Anti-spam law will not achieve much
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 1
In the US, what spammers are engaged in, however, is classified as "commercial speech," which is not afforded the same level of protection as political speech.
However, I agree -- most spammers would happily ignore any law passed. At least at that point, getting rid of them might be easier.
Pearl Jam released Binaural in 2000 and then 72 live albums in 2000-2001.
Now if you mean, "haven't released a new album that I'm interested in", that's something else.
I've had a DVD-R for nearly six months and after having used it, I think it's a technology that's best suited for a few things (IMO, of course):
Burning home video to DVD - this one's pretty obvious, given the Apple commercials earlier and the increasing market penetration of DVD players.
Backing up large amounts of data for archival purposes - This is a pretty common use -- archiving tons of Quark/Photoshop/etc documents that take up tons of space but don't need to be instantly retrieved.
Backing up MP3s - Since I have a large collection, this is the easiest way to prevent the nightmare scenario of having to re-rip a couple hundred CDs.
If I were in your situation, I'd go for a large drive -- 120GB drives are around $200, last I checked, which is a steal. Plus it's faster and generally less hassle. DVD blanks are at a minimum $5, but usually more expensive (RWs definitely are, I think Rs are around $5)
Alternatively, if you're looking for portable but large-volume storage, I'd definitely consider a firewire drive. (and depending on your needs, this is an excellent opportunity to justify the iPod purchase...;) )
Recordable DVDs seem to be most convenient as a large-scale archiving medium; smaller stuff can go by the 'net or CD-R.
You'd be surprised what you can make with a little bit of time and some ingenuity. While you may not make an ANH-era Obi-Wan saber exactly without rare grenades, with access to high-quality photos of the original, you can quickly reproduce it by silicon casting or even old-fashioned carving. But you'd be surprised at what can be done by a machinist who knows what he's doing.
Besides, the article states that he's machining his own handles -- it's not Obi-Wan sabers, it's kind of a fan-fiction EU type thing. Although I do think he made one that looked like Obi-Wan's TPM/AOTC saber.
The only thing really expensive is just the equipment to make this stuff -- and at the prices he charges, he paid that off in short order.
The original lightsaber handles (Luke Skywalker's first, Darth Vader's, and Obi-Wan Kenobi's) were indeed converted graflex flash unites. However, starting with Luke Skywalker's second saber (in ROTJ), they've been machined/cast sabers. It's a quicker and more cost-effective way to make them en masse.
I just looked and they're easier to find than I remember them. The eBay boards range from informative to asinine. In that sense, they're like anywhere else. But whatever floats your boat.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or does Dvorak always read like Jackie Harvey's The Outside Scoop?
"What's this I hear about HP bringing out the successor to the iPaq next month? I think it's about time, the flat screen and metal arm design always looked like an orange attacking a sheet of paper.
Item! Steve Bellmar and the wacky crew at Apple Computer will be releasing their next computer, which will use Intel's Itanium processor. Careful, or that'll be a baked apple!"
Separated at birth? I think so.
Unfortunately, if you live in a city of any size, these FM transmitters aren't worth the cost at all, as the FM dial is pretty well saturated with enough signal bleed on the rare unused station to make using those impossible, unless you hold the transmitter itself and act as an antenna. Not really practical.
I know a guy who went to NYC a few years ago and bought (for novelty value, he says) a Folex watch. The same guy later bought a Panasoanic discman when he was in Mexico. It was surprisingly good -- I never heard a disc skip on that.
Alas, the Folex wasn't too accurate as far as timepieces go.
They better get a double-neck guitar to balance the load, then.
Het, when I get ot of college, odds are there will be jobs of 50k and up just waiting for me
Either you've got the worst lag ever, or you're not aware that 1999 was four years ago. In either case, you might want to get a reality check.
My interests on music lately have tended towards full-show live music by a few bands. Recently, as featured here, Phish started their Live Phish Downloads series. I ended up ordering the New Year's Eve run, and those were usually available within 24 hours of the show, but they were so huge that downloading them was a minor hassle.
.au/.jp tour bootlegs will be sold online, but a few hours after the show, they will also be making those concerts available for download to those who purchased the CD (which would be available about a week or so later).
Now Pearl Jam is expanding their already ridiculously large live bootleg series with the upcoming Riot Act tour. The
But this is exactly what I've wanted in all of my concert-goings. While I have some reservations since it's got the Clear Channel name attached to it, I've been to a few concerts that were just mindblowingly good and wished I could have a CD of it to listen to again the next morning. I'd definitely go for something like this.
Make it so, Mr. LaForge.
They're soundboard recordings. And they're Phish soundboard recordings at that.
In other words, they sound better than most of their studio albums.
There needs to be a mechanism for the governments to pick up the excess cost of people receiving spam, rather than Jo Punter paying for it in a few extra pennies every time he dials up to check his mail...
Of course, even if the government did pick up the excess cost, you'd still be paying for it... unless your government doesn't collect taxes.
No, the original poster was right. Basically, the logic follows this simple format (you may have seen it before). 1. Change newline character so it follows Unicode spec. 2. ????? 3. PROFIT!!!! I'm sure he just left out #2 for the sake of brevity.
I picked this book up over the summer on a whim. I expected a fairly interesting read that might tend to romanticize the image of hackers in some way.
Not so. The book is actually very dense, and looks at hackers/hacker culture in a more sociological/anthropological context, examining norms and values of the subculture versus traditional society and so forth.
It's interesting and I moved through it fairly quickly, but it's not really light reading. It basically reads like someone's thesis paper or something. And there are enough typos that it just might drive you nuts. But on a four hour flight, I would much rather read this than the thrilling American Airlines magazine.
25 is PAL, 29.97 is NTSC.
As someone else said earlier, "It's the economy, stupid".
I do freelance advertising/pr work and the amount of contracts have dwindled over the last two years. This, in turn, has led to less disposable income in my pocket.
With the economy like it is, and work hard to come by, I'm more inclined to hold on to my money and make sure I'm able to cover my costs not just for this month, but well into the future. Additionally, with interest rates so low, I've also been making larger payments on student loans and remaining credit card debt.
What this means, obviously, is that I'm not going to go out and buy CDs as freely as I did when I was making money faster than I could spend it. Plus, why in the world would I want to go buy a CD for $18, when half the tracks either suck or are filler? (That's my new pet peeve: I can accept the bad song, because at least it was an attempt. Those filler tracks of random noise or whatever just sound like a waste of my money, however.)
What has increased my CD spending recently, however, is the number of sub-$10 CDs I've found. Borders has tons of CDs priced at $7.99 and for the last several weeks, I've seen new releases at anywhere from $8-13. That's much closer to a reasonable price -- and at $7, it's in that impulse-buy range for me.
It's been said before, but I think the RIAA needs to wake up and look at the facts. CDs are priced too high, and the economy sucks. Add to it that a lot of CDs are just crap lately, and why would I want to fork over $18-20 for a CD where I might like four tracks, when I can use it to pay down some of my debt?
... but it might help to not get ahead of yourself.
While the x86 ports of MacOS have been rumored to exist for ages, the buzz doesn't seem to suggest that Apple is totally ready to give up on PPC just yet.
The Apple rumor scene has been abuzz about the rumored desktop version of the Power4 -- even the article mentions this. This CPU supposedly has Altivec functions included, which Apple has been going crazy about since the G4 came out. IBM said they'd discuss it at the Microprocessor Forum -- and I'd keep my eyes on this.
While it's all speculation, it makes more sense than requiring yet another shift in architecture and requiring everyone to rewrite their apps to run on an x86 version of Mac OS X.
I have had my share of high-stress, we-need-it-done-yesterday type projects in the past. For years, I would just load up on caffeine (my choice was tea; coffee when I didn't want to deal with the extra production involved with making good tea). One of the things I noticed was lack of clarity and focus. When I'd get some good sleep after the project was over, I'd see all kinds of mistakes and general lack of polish on the work.
Then I discovered the best agent for improving performance: Sleep. I know, it's a tight deadline/you're having a lot of fun/whatever, and sleep is the last thing on your mind. However, with a few hours of sleep, you'll be able to approach your work with a much fresher, clearer state of mind. The key is to not let yourself lounge in bed all day.
Once I ditched the caffeine-fueled nights and decided to call it a night when I was feeling tired (and then getting an early start), I found the quality of my work increased dramatically and less time was spent tracking down and fixing strange mistakes. And I still made deadlines with ease.
And it works for partying, too. If you want to stay up late, get a good nap during the afternoon. As long as you keep it short (i.e., not a three-hour coma), you should be good to go for quite a while. I did this all the time in college, had no trouble staying up till 5 AM and beyond.
If you're up late because you just like the atmosphere of playing your favorite FPS in a darkened room, you might want to consider blacking out your windows somehow. It's actually not too hard to do (tape a couple garbage bags on your window -- boom, instant night) and you can get all of the fun with less of the sleep deprivation.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but working on a normal schedule and staying well-rested and getting even a small amount of exercise will help your clarity and focus and energy level far more than any drink will, and you'll also have the benefit of not ruining your teeth. (Doubt this? Ask your dentist about the patients he gets who drink tons of soda. If he's been working long, he'll be able to tell you plenty of stories).
Anyway, that's my $2.39. But if you've gotta drink caffeine, go for some sort of tea (find one you like, not that prebagged, blended crap that has no taste at all).
Wasn't this the plot of one of the Space Quest games?
In the US, what spammers are engaged in, however, is classified as "commercial speech," which is not afforded the same level of protection as political speech. However, I agree -- most spammers would happily ignore any law passed. At least at that point, getting rid of them might be easier.
Pearl Jam released Binaural in 2000 and then 72 live albums in 2000-2001. Now if you mean, "haven't released a new album that I'm interested in", that's something else.
To clarify one small point I just noticed:
I wouldn't use DVD as an always-on instant access thing. They work better as larger, offline (but cataloged) media, IMO.
I've had a DVD-R for nearly six months and after having used it, I think it's a technology that's best suited for a few things (IMO, of course):
If I were in your situation, I'd go for a large drive -- 120GB drives are around $200, last I checked, which is a steal. Plus it's faster and generally less hassle. DVD blanks are at a minimum $5, but usually more expensive (RWs definitely are, I think Rs are around $5)
Alternatively, if you're looking for portable but large-volume storage, I'd definitely consider a firewire drive. (and depending on your needs, this is an excellent opportunity to justify the iPod purchase... ;) )
Recordable DVDs seem to be most convenient as a large-scale archiving medium; smaller stuff can go by the 'net or CD-R.
You'd be surprised what you can make with a little bit of time and some ingenuity. While you may not make an ANH-era Obi-Wan saber exactly without rare grenades, with access to high-quality photos of the original, you can quickly reproduce it by silicon casting or even old-fashioned carving. But you'd be surprised at what can be done by a machinist who knows what he's doing.
Besides, the article states that he's machining his own handles -- it's not Obi-Wan sabers, it's kind of a fan-fiction EU type thing. Although I do think he made one that looked like Obi-Wan's TPM/AOTC saber.
The only thing really expensive is just the equipment to make this stuff -- and at the prices he charges, he paid that off in short order.
The original lightsaber handles (Luke Skywalker's first, Darth Vader's, and Obi-Wan Kenobi's) were indeed converted graflex flash unites. However, starting with Luke Skywalker's second saber (in ROTJ), they've been machined/cast sabers. It's a quicker and more cost-effective way to make them en masse.
I just looked and they're easier to find than I remember them. The eBay boards range from informative to asinine. In that sense, they're like anywhere else. But whatever floats your boat. :)