could you explain how the magnetic flux of a permanent magnet retains the same strength over time
The gravitational attraction of a given mass of matter also remains constant over time (proton decay notwithstanding), but I would also ridicule any PMM based on known gravitational forces.
Keeping an open mind does not preclude rejecting extraordinary claims (unless there is correspondingly extraordinary evidence, which is clearly lacking here).
Be careful what you dismiss as pseudoscience
Good advice indeed -- but given that the inventor claims something that has never been demonstrated in a reliable or repeatable way, and has huge reams of both experimental and theoretical evidence against it, and has furthermore been repeatedly used in hoaxes and frauds over the years...
May I suggest easily-google-able sites detailing the unworkability of PMM's in general, and electromagnetically-based ones in particular:
Even if it didn't fit past articles, this one alone should be grounds for an indefinite suspension of story submission rights (for both submitter and editor).
The slogan here is "news for nerds", not "news for people who have no knowledge whatsoever of the basic principles of physical science"...
Umm... because the ACLU is already pretty busy dealing with the Federal Government that is *actively* violating our civil liberties (as opposed to this loser who is merely proposing it)?
The ACLU is not a partisan organization. If they happen to be picking on Republicans these days, I submit to you that it's because they have earned it...
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Smut! Give me smut and nothing but! A dirty novel I can't shut, If it's uncut, and unsubt- le.
I've never quibbled If it was ribald, I would devour where others merely nibbled. As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense, "To be smut It must be ut- Terly without redeeming social importance."
Por- Nographic pictures I adore. Indecent magazines galore, I like them more If they're hard core.
(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything! More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)
Stories of tortures Used by debauchers, Lurid, licentious, and vile, Make me smile. Novels that pander To my taste for candor Give me a pleasure sublime. (Let's face it, I love slime.)
All books can be indecent books Though recent books are bolder, For filth (I'm glad to say) is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. (I could tell you things about Peter Pan, And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)
I thrill To any book like Fanny Hill, And I suppose I always will, If it is swill And really fil thy.
Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley. But now they're trying to take it all away from us unless We take a stand, and hand in hand we fight for freedom of the press. In other words,
Smut! (I love it) Ah, the adventures of a slut. Oh, I'm a market they can't glut, I don't know what Compares with smut.
Hip hip hooray! Let's hear it for the Supreme Court! Don't let them take it away!
Even experienced software developers have a large rampup period learning its arcane interface
Look, iTunes is not my favorite music app, but "arcane interface"? WTF? (Especially ironic on slashdot, where command-line apps are still given as examples of shining usability...)
iTunes is, IMHO, one of the classic examples of software that actually passes The Mom Test (even my Mom can figure out how to use it without calling me for tech support).
If anything, my complaint is that the UI is *too* dumbed-down, at least for my purposes; some stuff I want to do is either impossible or impractical. But that doesn't make it "arcane" or gives me a "rampup period"!
Does Dreamweaver somehow add invisible junk to the HTML I type into its HTML-source-editor window? Maybe it mind-melds me into thinking inserting lots of huge and slow stuff into my normally lean-and-mean code?
Sure, you *can* use it to make bloated code. (The same is true for any text editor, but hey...)
By "mixed bag", do you mean "I've never seen a website that actually uses this combination of technology, nor do I know which browser(s) might support it, or what plugin(s) I might need to support it"?
For years I wondered why I never could find Traveling Wilburys (Vol 1) on CD.
Then I finally bothered to google for it and learned it had been out of print for years due to various legal snafus.
Normally I make it a point to actually *pay* for my music -- my rule of thumb is that if I listen to something 2 or 3 times and realize I want to keep listening to it, it's time to acquire a CD or other legal license of some sort -- but in this case I was unable to.
So I ended up finding a friend with a copy, and ripped his copy (with the above explanation, of course).
(But yes: if they ever bother to put it back into print, I'll go buy a copy. The RIAA seems to be composed of remarkably dense individuals, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to be paid for their product.)
Um... because I forgot about it when I typed it:-)
Actually, I agree with another responder... it's a great scifi movie, and though PKD apparently loved it (at least the early bits he saw prior to his death), it's only tenuously related to his source material.
I thought KnoppMyth sounded like a great idea, so I downloaded it a few weeks ago to try out.
Problem #1: the setup menus don't work with USB keyboards. (Or so I learned after going to their site -- at first I just thought the computer had frozen.) There is a workaround ("unplug and replug the keyboard after you get to that menu"), which was deemed simple enough to postpone fixing this one indefinitely. (I don't think I've owned a non-USB keyboard for... oh, 8 or 10 years. I certainly don't have one in the house these days.) Annoying, but how many times will I encounter this -- it's a setup menu right? So, I slog on.
Problem #2: after I got to that elegant workaround, it got as far as the network setup menu... but when it tried to find a DHCP server, it apparently was unable to deal with the fact that eth0 wasn't actually connected to anything on this computer (it's running a wireless card). It dealt with this unexpected problem by... dropping to the shell command prompt.
So, that download went into the recycling bin.
Look, I realize that this is a hard problem, but promoting something as a LiveCD implies (to me, anyway) that it Will Just Work. (And if it can't Just Work on your hardware, it should be able to detect this and fail gracefully.)
Could I have fixed all this myself? Yeah,I guess. But I have better things to do. (Like reading Slashdot and bitching when free software doesn't work perfectly the first time.)
Glad to hear you had an OK experience there. Many others at EA didn't share that experience.
Had a reputable union been available during my stint at EA, I would have joined in a heartbeat. I don't know if the game *industry* needs a union, but EA (when I was there) absolutely did.
Sound or no sound, flash is a resource hog, even on high-end systems.
Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
That's like saying "JPEG is a resource hog" -- because the 30 megapixel image you downloaded from NASA was kinda slow.
Sure, Flash *can* be a resource hog, just like any other programmable environment. But don't blame Flash -- blame the ad network (Google?) for accepting a poorly-written SWF.
Well-written SWF is actually remarkable CPU-efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
City Of Villains wouldn't let me use "The Craptacular Fucktard" as a character name.
But geez, I'm a VILLAIN.
Shouldn't I be REQUIRED to have a name that's somehow offensive?
Sigh... sadly, you are probably correct.
:-/
And we both just contributed to the problem
could you explain how the magnetic flux of a permanent magnet retains the same strength over time
h inem s.htm
The gravitational attraction of a given mass of matter also remains constant over time (proton decay notwithstanding), but I would also ridicule any PMM based on known gravitational forces.
Keeping an open mind does not preclude rejecting extraordinary claims (unless there is correspondingly extraordinary evidence, which is clearly lacking here).
Be careful what you dismiss as pseudoscience
Good advice indeed -- but given that the inventor claims something that has never been demonstrated in a reliable or repeatable way, and has huge reams of both experimental and theoretical evidence against it, and has furthermore been repeatedly used in hoaxes and frauds over the years...
May I suggest easily-google-able sites detailing the unworkability of PMM's in general, and electromagnetically-based ones in particular:
http://www.phact.org/e/z/freewire.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion_mac
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm
http://www.kilty.com/pmotion.htm
http://www.phact.org/e/dennis4.html
http://burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/whythere.html
http://commons.bcit.ca/physics/rjw/pmm/text/em_pm
Didn't realize that was possible! Thanks for the tip.
Even if it didn't fit past articles, this one alone should be grounds for an indefinite suspension of story submission rights (for both submitter and editor).
The slogan here is "news for nerds", not "news for people who have no knowledge whatsoever of the basic principles of physical science"...
It supports JavaScript, Flash and all this other crap that would easily make me wary of opening any unipage document
PDF also supports JavaScript and Flash as embedded content. And it has for quite a while.
Um, PDF has been able to embed Flash content for a while now -- since well before Adobe bought Macromedia.
m e_gb.pdf
One example:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/a7_try
Umm... because the ACLU is already pretty busy dealing with the Federal Government that is *actively* violating our civil liberties (as opposed to this loser who is merely proposing it)?
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/index.html
The ACLU is not a partisan organization. If they happen to be picking on Republicans these days, I submit to you that it's because they have earned it...
(Long line inserted here to get around "comment has too few character per line" filter... Long line inserted here to get around "comment has too few character per line" filter... Long line inserted here to get around "comment has too few character per line" filter... Long line inserted here to get around "comment has too few character per line" filter...)
Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut,
If it's uncut,
and unsubt- le.
I've never quibbled
If it was ribald,
I would devour where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he
acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."
Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they're hard core.
(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties,
samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)
Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
(Let's face it, I love slime.)
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)
I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will,
If it is swill
And really fil
thy.
Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they're trying to take it all
away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand
we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words,
Smut! (I love it)
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut,
I don't know what
Compares with smut.
Hip hip hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!
I love the concept of KnoppMyth, but IMHO it doesn't have anywhere near the polish needed for a LiveCD distro. My earlier post on the fatal install flaws it had on my system: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17715 8&cid=14702591
Yeah, it does look cool.
Too bad it's gonna be published by EA, as that will prevent me from playing it: I've taken the pledge to avoid their products.
Even experienced software developers have a large rampup period learning its arcane interface
Look, iTunes is not my favorite music app, but "arcane interface"? WTF? (Especially ironic on slashdot, where command-line apps are still given as examples of shining usability...)
iTunes is, IMHO, one of the classic examples of software that actually passes The Mom Test (even my Mom can figure out how to use it without calling me for tech support).
If anything, my complaint is that the UI is *too* dumbed-down, at least for my purposes; some stuff I want to do is either impossible or impractical. But that doesn't make it "arcane" or gives me a "rampup period"!
Dreamweaver makes BLOATED code
Evidence, please.
Does Dreamweaver somehow add invisible junk to the HTML I type into its HTML-source-editor window? Maybe it mind-melds me into thinking inserting lots of huge and slow stuff into my normally lean-and-mean code?
Sure, you *can* use it to make bloated code. (The same is true for any text editor, but hey...)
By "mixed bag", do you mean "I've never seen a website that actually uses this combination of technology, nor do I know which browser(s) might support it, or what plugin(s) I might need to support it"?
'cuz that's my reaction...
Silly me. I would have thought "Score: 0, Flamebait" more appropriate.
"Proprietary" I'll grant you (for Flash, not Dreamweaver).
But "eyesore"? It's a poor workman who blames his tools. If your webpage is an eyesore, it's hardly the fault of the editor you use.
And "full of bloat"? Evidence, please. Sure, Dreamweaver gives you the tools to make bloated stuff if that's what you want. But then, so does vi.
For years I wondered why I never could find Traveling Wilburys (Vol 1) on CD.
Then I finally bothered to google for it and learned it had been out of print for years due to various legal snafus.
Normally I make it a point to actually *pay* for my music -- my rule of thumb is that if I listen to something 2 or 3 times and realize I want to keep listening to it, it's time to acquire a CD or other legal license of some sort -- but in this case I was unable to.
So I ended up finding a friend with a copy, and ripped his copy (with the above explanation, of course).
(But yes: if they ever bother to put it back into print, I'll go buy a copy. The RIAA seems to be composed of remarkably dense individuals, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to be paid for their product.)
Um... because I forgot about it when I typed it :-)
Actually, I agree with another responder... it's a great scifi movie, and though PKD apparently loved it (at least the early bits he saw prior to his death), it's only tenuously related to his source material.
And then there's all the weak sellouts of Philip K Dick's work
Actually, at least one good PKD adaptation has been done that I know of: Screamers, based on the story "Second Variety".
Granted, not one of his major works -- nor an awesome film -- but a credible one.
(Frankly, I think that A Scanner Darkly looks like it might actually be a good adaptation, despite Keanu starring in it. We'll see...)
Some books may truly be unfilmable, but it's hard to tell in advance.
I would have thought that Fight Club was unfilmable, but man, was I wrong...
I thought KnoppMyth sounded like a great idea, so I downloaded it a few weeks ago to try out.
Problem #1: the setup menus don't work with USB keyboards. (Or so I learned after going to their site -- at first I just thought the computer had frozen.) There is a workaround ("unplug and replug the keyboard after you get to that menu"), which was deemed simple enough to postpone fixing this one indefinitely. (I don't think I've owned a non-USB keyboard for... oh, 8 or 10 years. I certainly don't have one in the house these days.) Annoying, but how many times will I encounter this -- it's a setup menu right? So, I slog on.
Problem #2: after I got to that elegant workaround, it got as far as the network setup menu... but when it tried to find a DHCP server, it apparently was unable to deal with the fact that eth0 wasn't actually connected to anything on this computer (it's running a wireless card). It dealt with this unexpected problem by... dropping to the shell command prompt.
So, that download went into the recycling bin.
Look, I realize that this is a hard problem, but promoting something as a LiveCD implies (to me, anyway) that it Will Just Work. (And if it can't Just Work on your hardware, it should be able to detect this and fail gracefully.)
Could I have fixed all this myself? Yeah,I guess. But I have better things to do. (Like reading Slashdot and bitching when free software doesn't work perfectly the first time.)
You were lucky. We used to dream of working 80 hours a day.
In my day, we were expected to work 80 hours an hour. And during crunch time, 80 hours a minute.
I'm not sure what you'd call this, but it sure ain't a union.
More like some sort of nebulous standards body for the recruiting agencies that serve the game industry.
And since the employer (not the employee) typically pays the recruiter's fee, color me skeptical that this is anything more than PR.
Glad to hear you had an OK experience there. Many others at EA didn't share that experience.
Had a reputable union been available during my stint at EA, I would have joined in a heartbeat. I don't know if the game *industry* needs a union, but EA (when I was there) absolutely did.
Well, that's only fair, since they also treat their employees like shit...
Sound or no sound, flash is a resource hog, even on high-end systems.
Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
That's like saying "JPEG is a resource hog" -- because the 30 megapixel image you downloaded from NASA was kinda slow.
Sure, Flash *can* be a resource hog, just like any other programmable environment. But don't blame Flash -- blame the ad network (Google?) for accepting a poorly-written SWF.
Well-written SWF is actually remarkable CPU-efficient.