P = Prize behind this door; N = No prize behind this door;
Bold = The door you initially picked; Italics = The door Monty Hall reveals; K = Keep your original door; S = Switch doors; W = You win with this strategy; L = You lose with this strategy.
1 2 3 K S PN N W L P N N W L
The error that you've made in this analysis can be summed up in the first two lines of your table. In the case where the player chooses the correct door, it is irrelevant which door Monty choses, so they are not two separate cases as you have shown. Monty could always pick the lower-numbered door and not change the problem.
None of these arguments matter because this business won't succeed anyway.
It says in the article that they need to sell about 1,000,000 units to break even. If TiVo still can't sell 1,000,000 units (last I saw it was about 600,000) at the same price point for something so obviously useful and revolutionary, then there's no way that they're going to sell 1,000,000 units of this mildly rehashed old idea of questionable use.
Twenty years ago you could have placed a phone call from Hungary to any of hundreds of mail-order houses in the United States and they would have refused to sell to you, then, too.
It's just plain difficult to sell internationally to consumers. The myriad regulations, taxes, and fraud problems just aren't worth the trouble and never have been for most businesses. On a B2B level where you're dealing with wholesale quantities, things are different.
Oh, his rights! Too harsh! Communists! Innocent until proven guilty! Judges suck!
Come on. You all will have a knee-jerk reaction to anything. With just a few paragraphs of fluff from an AP report to base your statements on, you freely second guess our legal system and judges.
This guy pleaded guilty. Obviously he and his lawyer thought there was a pretty solid case against him. Have any of you criticizing this case seen any of the evidence? If you have more knowledge of this case that the rest of us, how about posting a like along with your breathless comments.
Myself, I'm glad what happened to this guy. I think everyone these days knows well that what he was doing is illegal. This guy deserved to be make an example of.
What would have been so bad about using his obvious skills to get a real job and earn an honest income? How about not being to damn greedy and selfish?
... It's like those fucking morons in the 70's and 80's who'd pay 40 dollars for those stupid fucking alligator shirts.
Same thing goes for Nike, Reebok, Addidas, and lots of other "brand name" products, that sell for hundreds more than other products, but aren't any better. Only a fucking moron would buy them. Even in the business world, there are morons spending 10 times more for a 1000 dollar suit, when that suit is only maybe 10% better than a 100 dollar suit.
... It is not cool to be a fucking moron and waste money on crap.
Read my journal and comment!
I did, and I will!
How can you go off about Nike, and Reebok, and Abercrombie, and so on, bemoaning "brand name" products, when your journal clearly shows you are a top-notch brand-name consumer?
How about your April 8th entry? A six paragraph diatribe about Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippin, Phil Jackson, the Bulls, the Lakers, etc. These people and teams are some of the biggest brand names around. Doesn't the price of NBA tickets, logoed merchandise, and player's salaries bother you as much as the price of Nikes? Was Michael Jordan really 100 times better than a player who got paid 1/100 what he did? I think not. Maybe 5 times better, or even ten times better, but no way he's 100 times better. Just about all professional sports are overpriced brand-name products, with basketball nearly the worst. As you would say, "Only a fucking moron would buy them."
Or perhaps your December 15th entry? Where you say you love the music of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain, and Celine Dion? Please... every one of those names is a highly-marketed brand-name. None of them are nearly as good as any of hundreds of lesser-known artists on independent labels that are not involved in industry conspiracies to drive up CD costs. As you would say, "Only a fucking moron would buy them."
I could probably go on, but frankly, I'm bored with your journal already. I guess I'll just make my point here: buy what you think is a good value and let others do the same. Kindly spare the "fucking moron" judgements, especially when you are going to publish details of your own tastes which are just as easily ridiculed.
I happen to like to wear Ralph Lauren Polo brand shirts. Are they expensive, yes, nearly rediculously (although my wife, who buys most of my clothes, always seems to be able to get them on sale for half off). But to me, they are noticably better quality than most other brands. The fabrics are softer and thicker; the tailoring is better; the workmanship is of a higher standard. They do look better and look better longer than most other shirts. And while it's not at all why I wear them, if the little Polo logo impresses someone, that's fine with me, too.
On the other hand, I think that almost all professional sports are a huge waste of time and money and I have no problem finding hundreds of other things I would rather spend my time and money on. And frankly, I think your previously mentioned musical tastes are really the lowest form of music that I consider suitable for only pre- and early-teen children. I would rather listen to dogs barking than any of those artists.
So I'll keep padding Ralph Lauren's wallet, and you keep doing the same for the NBA and the RIAA and maybe we can just respect our differences?
These satellites contain other instruments on board which can be used to continue the mission.
No it doesn't.
As noted here and here and probably elsewhere, Landsat 7 contains only a single istrument -- the ETM (Enhanced Thematic Mapper).
It's nothing like the Voyager spacecraft, which were multi-purpose and indeed contained many instruments. Landsat 7 was designed for exactly one specific function. If the ETM is badly broken, the whole satellite is pretty much a loss.
Those who bothered to read the article would have found this little gem of a quote from Arctic Silver at the end:
Look at it this way, if you applied the same criteria to selecting a car, everyone would be driving a low power, fuel efficient station wagon with rain tires and foot-thick rubber bumpers all the way around.
Yeah, and anyone who takes their under-warranty low power, fuel efficient car and replaces the radiator with an unapproved aftermarket part, and replaces the coolant with something that doesn't meet manufacturer requirements, probably won't get warranty service, either!
This case should not be confused with an independent person doing a "clean room" reverse engineering of the technology. This person was in a position of trust and violated that trust by stealing something that didn't belong to him.
It's irrelevant that he did not profit from this. The cost to DirecTV is the same whether he used the information himself or passed it on to someone else who did.
Why is this in YRO again? What rights online does this concern?
Theo de Raadt made comments in his own name. That is his right and prerogative as a citizen of a free country.
Please don't be stupid. Not on Slashdot -- it's unheard of.
He didn't make those comments in his own name. Find for me one published statement of his comments that does not identify him as the leader of OpenBSD. There are none.
When you are the leader of something, you have an obligation to act responsibly towards that which you lead. Which means thinking about the implications of things you say and do personally, because you are seen as a representative of your organization, right or wrong.
I have no more sympathy for Theo than I have for politicians or corporate leaders that lose their positions due to poor judgement in their personal lives. If you are going to accept an important position with responsibility, act the part. Don't try to weasel the benefits without accepting the responsibilities by claiming "free speech" or "privacy". If you want free speech and privacy, don't act like a celebrity
Theo seemed to me to be flaunting his apposition to the US-led war. In effect, "Look at those suckers, giving me money even though I publicly oppose them! Ha ha ha."
The fact that Theo heads OpenBSD is coincidental
It's not coincidental. It's the only reason that you have ever even heard of Theo or his political beliefs.
Looks like DVDs to me... did you follow the link provided before posting criticism of it, or just mouse over and see that the URL includes the string "cd_r_rw"?
"Lead Data Purple/Silver DVD-Recordable media, 4.7 GB, for DVD-R General 2.0 conformant drives, 1x certified, unbranded, 100 pack. $79.00
4 lb"
It should be noted that the Vera font sets use very minimal delta hinting, as the documentation states. They are designed with the future of Freetype in mind, and traditional OSX and Windows (Cleartype) may not render them as nicely as they would on a standard Unix/Linux machine
Right you are. I got excited when I noticed it includes a monospaced version, because I'm always on the lookout for a new and better terminal emulator font.
I installed Vera on Windows 2K and the 8-point, my preferred telnet window size, looked absolutely like crap. Turned anti-aliasing (called "Smooth edges of fonts" for Windows dummies) on and it's nice.
I haven't liked the soft look of anti-aliased fonts in the past, which is why I had it off, but maybe I'll give this a try for a few days and see what happens.
At least for small items. Can't say I've bought anything with a big rebate recently.
OfficeMax constantly has rebates on CD blanks, CD-RW drives, and memory. So, all the machines in the house now have at least 512MB RAM ($20 per 256MB after rebate), 48x16x48 or better CD-RW drives ($20 each after rebate), and I've probably gotten at least 1000 CD-R blanks in the last year for a total of $3.70 (the cost of 10 stamps).
This week, they have PC2100 256MB DIMMS for free after rebate (I know, I know, your machine needs faster). The RAM is usually PNY or Kingston -- not top-of-the-line, but not crap, either.
The first thing I do when I get home is mail the rebates. Takes maybe two minutes. And out of probably 20 in the last year, I've gotten every check, no problem. These are a mix of store and manufacturer mail-ins.
I'm getting ready to buy a ham radio transceiver that's got a $200 mail in. I'll let you know how that goes.
I pretty much stopped reading shortly after hitting the following, as the author lost all credibility at this point:
Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.
This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to pander to the anti-Microsoft crowd. Karma whoring, if you will.
Every one of the systems described is better than the minimum requirements for Windows XP Professional.
The author is whacked if they think it is going to be easier to get working drivers for their crappy hardware under Linux than Windows-anything, even XP.
I'm no lover of Microsoft or their products, but whipping out unfounded bashing in a supposedly technical article doesn't help anyone's cause.
And I'm guessing that's not the author's real name...
Tsu Dho Nimh?
Sounds an awful lot like "pseudonym" when you say it, eh?
A System That is Tactically Superior To All Future Weapon Systems Potential US/NATO Adversaries Will Ever Consider Developing, Derived Solely From US Research/Technology.
Pretty bold claim, eh?
"...Ever Consider Developing..."?
"Ever"? "Consider"?
Maybe those adversaries are just smarter than us. Just one of these things uses 740 grams of Polonium every 60 days? That's 12 grams a day!
I doubt that even by the 15-25 year timeframe this thing is taking about that 12 grams of Polonium will have
ever
been made.
Heh, "Derived Solely From Heavily Fantisized Research/Technology" would be more appropriate.
I was once exiting a movie theater in a drizzle. This particular theater's parking lot is under high-tension transmission lines. Since it was raining, I was using an umbrella.
Walking across the parking lot, I heard a buzzing sound. Looking up, I noticed that where the metal ribs of the umbrella connected to the plastic hub in the center, that the tips of the ribs were arcing between them!
Surprisingly enough, I merely thought it curious and noted that I should go back some time and study the effect further and take some measurements, etc. That was probably a dozen years ago, and I pretty much forgot about it until this story prodded my memory.
I assume that some sort of "Tesla" effect was responsible, as I felt nothing myself. I don't know the specifics of the transmission lines involved.
would have to assume you're joking. RNA virili and bacteria are far more prone to mutations in the genes. Why hasn't AIDS been cured? It's an RNA virus;
I am certainly not an expert in this field, but I notice that according to the linked page of photos of this class of virus, that it includes both measles and mumps. The body pretty much self-vaccinates against both of these diseases, in that normally, once you contract the disease once, you have a lasting immunity.
This seems to contradict the sweeping statement that because of the class of virus this thing is, it would mutate too often to make a "standard" vaccination work. Obviously, if it mutated so frequently, people would be succeptable to mutated strains of the diseases over and over again.
Oh, yeah, not to mention that there are effective vaccines for both measles and mumps.
Interestingly, though, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), yet another illness in this same family, is not currently prevented with a vaccine, but rather with a monoclonal antibody injection, Synagis
I expect posters to not read the article (well, ppt), but even the submitter didn't read it?
The article does mention x-rays, saying "not enough energy to change a DRAM capacitor." Yet everyone talks about x-rays...
I found the phrase from the article "screw driver to remove hard drive" amusing when I first read it. Then I realized they meant "screwdriver". I thought initially they were referring to a DOS attack by corrupting the device driver!
FYI - signals do not travel at the speed of light. Somewhere around 50-60% the speed of light in most types of cable.
Overcoming the differences in arrival time of signals in a parallel cable is not significantly more difficult than handling clocking (and maybe clock recovery) and buffering and serial-to-parallel conversion on a serial interface.
The main reason that parallel interfaces were popular years ago when things like SCSI were established was the electronics at the time just weren't very fast. The 74LS00 family logic that SCSI and parallel printer ports were designed around had a maximum clock rate of about 30Mhz. Add in margin for cable noise and distortion and 5-10Mhz was absolutely the most you could manage through any distance. So, if that wasn't fast enough for what you wanted to do, you used more wires in parallel.
These days, it's relatively easy to put multi-gigahertz logic onto chips, and the fewer wires in a cable and connector, the cheaper, so serial wins.
If I'm doing my math right, which I'm probably not, assuming each land mine is a cylinder 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter, 110,000,000 of these things would form a cube 33 miles on each side. Are there really that many?
Well, at least you were right when you said you were probably doing your math wrong.
If they were 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter and you stacked them based on a square grid:
The space each mine occupies in the grid is:
1 in x 6 in x 6 in = 36 in^3
36 in^3 / 12 in / 12 in / 12 in = 0.0208333 ft^3
So 110,000,000 of them are:
.0208333 ft^3 x 110,000,000 = 2,291,666.666 ft^3
2,291,666.666 ft^3 ^ (1/3) = 131.841 ft
So, they would make a cube only 131 ft 10 inches.
Of course, if they are really round, you could stack each layer honeycomb-style and the cube would be even smaller. As they say, the solution is left as an exercise for the reader.
I find it ironic that many people in the this community find it necessary to complain about the actions of other groups when they don't necessarily agree with the intentions of that group.
I thought that was a good reason. After all, actions are how people carry out intentions.
Would you rather we complain based on the color of their skin, or nationality, or sexual preference, or what, then?
In-vitro fertilization involves creating a number of embryos to insure at least one success. A healthy one is selected and the rest are discarded. Since there being discarded anyway we might as well use them for stem cell research
I think you've hit upon the point, but in the opposite way you probably intended. One of the biggest problems with embryonic research is that it adds justification to the practice of destroying embryos by giving it a supposedly beneficial purpose.
Label me as a radical freak if you will, but I still believe in the ages-old principle of morality that states that you must have good means to good ends.
I don't dispute that it would be an excellent thing to find a cure for paralysis and neural diseases. Or that it is great and worthwhile work to help people have children that otherwise couldn't. But regardless of how good these ends, it is simply not justifiable to acheive either one through the means of killing human embryos.
And for those who don't have a problem with killing embryos, I can only see that you fall into two categories:
Those who believe that it is acceptable to take human life, or,
Those beleive that human embryos do not represent human life.
For the former category, I will not attempt to persuade you otherwise, for I feel you are too far gone to be helped.
But for the latter, what is an embryo then? I think by any scientific definition of "life" it must be agreed that embryos are alive. So that only leaves the question of "are they human?"
All I can do about this is offer insight into my own reasoning. Take it for what you will.
I am the father of twin girls who were born after 16 weeks of pregnancy. I watched their live birth, and then watched them as they died afteward. I was left with no doubt from this experience that those two girls were live human beings. They looked human, they acted human.
So then, when did they become human? The day before? The day before that? The day before the day before? The day before the day before the day before? I can't say. I can't determine with any satisfaction that there is a single point since their conception where they transitioned from being not human life to being human life. Therefore, I can only conclude that they were always human life. Or, at a minimum, I can conclude that the safest thing to do when dealing with questions of life and death, is to consider that they were always human life, and err on the side of caution.
If you are hunting and you see in the distance what looks to you an awful lot like a deer, but has bright orange on it, what do you do? Do you shoot anyway, assuming that one of those PETA freaks have just put an orange vest or paint on a deer? Or do you err on the side of caution that it might be a fellow hunter?
This seems like a kind of stupid thing for CleanFlicks' customers to be doing, as in the long term, it can only make things worse; for every cleaned-up copy that CleanFlicks sells/rents, an original copy is purchased. So, the studio's sales figures reflect every copy that goes through CleanFlicks.
If you are the sort of person that doesn't approve of the type of material they are removing, do you really want to increase sales on those items for the studio? What is happening, in effect, by CleanFlicks existence, is that sales of the very type of movies that their customers are offended by are being increased!
Studios are going to see sales rise on these "offensive" titles as CleanFlicks becomes more popular. And what will they do in response? Make even more "offensive" movies.
If people don't like the content of the movie, don't watch it. In particular, DON'T PAY FOR IT, even through CleanFlicks. When you pay for something, you are casting a vote of approval for that item.
And who wins from this cycle? CleanFlicks! Because as time goes on and movie studios find that they can sell "offensive" movies to a much broader audience than intrisically "clean" films (counting those who buy both the original and the CleanFlicks versions), they will begin to only make "offensive" ones. So CleanFlicks ends up being the only place you can buy a clean movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Prior Restraint (179698) said:
The error that you've made in this analysis can be summed up in the first two lines of your table. In the case where the player chooses the correct door, it is irrelevant which door Monty choses, so they are not two separate cases as you have shown. Monty could always pick the lower-numbered door and not change the problem.
Why not run a simulation if you don't believe?
#!/bin/shrand2 () {
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=1 2>/dev/null |
tr '\0-\177' "${1#?}" | tr '\200-\377' "${1%?}"
}
rand3 () {
two="${1#?}"
unset rand
while [ -z "$rand" ]
do
rand=`dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=1 2>/dev/null |
tr '\0-\124' "${1%??}" | tr '\125-\251' "${two%?}" |
tr '\252-\376' "${1#??}" | tr -d '\377'` done
echo "$rand"
}
echo "runs prize choice monty other stay switch"
while
do
prize=`rand3 123`
choice=`rand3 123`
monty=`echo "123" | sed -e "s/$prize//" -e "s/$choice//"`
if [ "${#monty}" != 1 ]
then monty=`rand2 "$monty"`
fi
other=`echo "123" | sed -e "s/$monty//" -e "s/$choice//"`
[ "$prize" = "$choice" ] && stay=$(( $stay + 1 ))
[ "$other" = "$prize" ] && switch=$(( $switch + 1))
runs=$(( $runs + 1 ))
echo "$runs $prize $choice $monty $other $stay $switch"
done
None of these arguments matter because this business won't succeed anyway.
It says in the article that they need to sell about 1,000,000 units to break even. If TiVo still can't sell 1,000,000 units (last I saw it was about 600,000) at the same price point for something so obviously useful and revolutionary, then there's no way that they're going to sell 1,000,000 units of this mildly rehashed old idea of questionable use.
What does this have to do with the Internet?
Twenty years ago you could have placed a phone call from Hungary to any of hundreds of mail-order houses in the United States and they would have refused to sell to you, then, too.
It's just plain difficult to sell internationally to consumers. The myriad regulations, taxes, and fraud problems just aren't worth the trouble and never have been for most businesses. On a B2B level where you're dealing with wholesale quantities, things are different.
Oh, his rights! Too harsh! Communists! Innocent until proven guilty! Judges suck!
Come on. You all will have a knee-jerk reaction to anything. With just a few paragraphs of fluff from an AP report to base your statements on, you freely second guess our legal system and judges.
This guy pleaded guilty. Obviously he and his lawyer thought there was a pretty solid case against him. Have any of you criticizing this case seen any of the evidence? If you have more knowledge of this case that the rest of us, how about posting a like along with your breathless comments.
Myself, I'm glad what happened to this guy. I think everyone these days knows well that what he was doing is illegal. This guy deserved to be make an example of.
What would have been so bad about using his obvious skills to get a real job and earn an honest income? How about not being to damn greedy and selfish?
Same thing goes for Nike, Reebok, Addidas, and lots of other "brand name" products, that sell for hundreds more than other products, but aren't any better. Only a fucking moron would buy them. Even in the business world, there are morons spending 10 times more for a 1000 dollar suit, when that suit is only maybe 10% better than a 100 dollar suit.
Read my journal and comment!
I did, and I will!
How can you go off about Nike, and Reebok, and Abercrombie, and so on, bemoaning "brand name" products, when your journal clearly shows you are a top-notch brand-name consumer?
How about your April 8th entry? A six paragraph diatribe about Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippin, Phil Jackson, the Bulls, the Lakers, etc. These people and teams are some of the biggest brand names around. Doesn't the price of NBA tickets, logoed merchandise, and player's salaries bother you as much as the price of Nikes? Was Michael Jordan really 100 times better than a player who got paid 1/100 what he did? I think not. Maybe 5 times better, or even ten times better, but no way he's 100 times better. Just about all professional sports are overpriced brand-name products, with basketball nearly the worst. As you would say, "Only a fucking moron would buy them."
Or perhaps your December 15th entry? Where you say you love the music of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain, and Celine Dion? Please... every one of those names is a highly-marketed brand-name. None of them are nearly as good as any of hundreds of lesser-known artists on independent labels that are not involved in industry conspiracies to drive up CD costs. As you would say, "Only a fucking moron would buy them."
I could probably go on, but frankly, I'm bored with your journal already. I guess I'll just make my point here: buy what you think is a good value and let others do the same. Kindly spare the "fucking moron" judgements, especially when you are going to publish details of your own tastes which are just as easily ridiculed.
I happen to like to wear Ralph Lauren Polo brand shirts. Are they expensive, yes, nearly rediculously (although my wife, who buys most of my clothes, always seems to be able to get them on sale for half off). But to me, they are noticably better quality than most other brands. The fabrics are softer and thicker; the tailoring is better; the workmanship is of a higher standard. They do look better and look better longer than most other shirts. And while it's not at all why I wear them, if the little Polo logo impresses someone, that's fine with me, too.
On the other hand, I think that almost all professional sports are a huge waste of time and money and I have no problem finding hundreds of other things I would rather spend my time and money on. And frankly, I think your previously mentioned musical tastes are really the lowest form of music that I consider suitable for only pre- and early-teen children. I would rather listen to dogs barking than any of those artists.
So I'll keep padding Ralph Lauren's wallet, and you keep doing the same for the NBA and the RIAA and maybe we can just respect our differences?
These satellites contain other instruments on board which can be used to continue the mission.
No it doesn't.
As noted here and here and probably elsewhere, Landsat 7 contains only a single istrument -- the ETM (Enhanced Thematic Mapper).
It's nothing like the Voyager spacecraft, which were multi-purpose and indeed contained many instruments. Landsat 7 was designed for exactly one specific function. If the ETM is badly broken, the whole satellite is pretty much a loss.
Those who bothered to read the article would have found this little gem of a quote from Arctic Silver at the end:
Yeah, and anyone who takes their under-warranty low power, fuel efficient car and replaces the radiator with an unapproved aftermarket part, and replaces the coolant with something that doesn't meet manufacturer requirements, probably won't get warranty service, either!
I'm all for this.
This case should not be confused with an independent person doing a "clean room" reverse engineering of the technology. This person was in a position of trust and violated that trust by stealing something that didn't belong to him.
It's irrelevant that he did not profit from this. The cost to DirecTV is the same whether he used the information himself or passed it on to someone else who did.
Why is this in YRO again? What rights online does this concern?
Theo de Raadt made comments in his own name. That is his right and prerogative as a citizen of a free country.
Please don't be stupid. Not on Slashdot -- it's unheard of.
He didn't make those comments in his own name. Find for me one published statement of his comments that does not identify him as the leader of OpenBSD. There are none.
When you are the leader of something, you have an obligation to act responsibly towards that which you lead. Which means thinking about the implications of things you say and do personally, because you are seen as a representative of your organization, right or wrong.
I have no more sympathy for Theo than I have for politicians or corporate leaders that lose their positions due to poor judgement in their personal lives. If you are going to accept an important position with responsibility, act the part. Don't try to weasel the benefits without accepting the responsibilities by claiming "free speech" or "privacy". If you want free speech and privacy, don't act like a celebrity
Theo seemed to me to be flaunting his apposition to the US-led war. In effect, "Look at those suckers, giving me money even though I publicly oppose them! Ha ha ha."
The fact that Theo heads OpenBSD is coincidental
It's not coincidental. It's the only reason that you have ever even heard of Theo or his political beliefs.
Looks like DVDs to me... did you follow the link provided before posting criticism of it, or just mouse over and see that the URL includes the string "cd_r_rw"?
"Lead Data Purple/Silver DVD-Recordable media, 4.7 GB, for DVD-R General 2.0 conformant drives, 1x certified, unbranded, 100 pack. $79.00 4 lb"
It should be noted that the Vera font sets use very minimal delta hinting, as the documentation states. They are designed with the future of Freetype in mind, and traditional OSX and Windows (Cleartype) may not render them as nicely as they would on a standard Unix/Linux machine
Right you are. I got excited when I noticed it includes a monospaced version, because I'm always on the lookout for a new and better terminal emulator font.
I installed Vera on Windows 2K and the 8-point, my preferred telnet window size, looked absolutely like crap. Turned anti-aliasing (called "Smooth edges of fonts" for Windows dummies) on and it's nice.
I haven't liked the soft look of anti-aliased fonts in the past, which is why I had it off, but maybe I'll give this a try for a few days and see what happens.
At least for small items. Can't say I've bought anything with a big rebate recently.
OfficeMax constantly has rebates on CD blanks, CD-RW drives, and memory. So, all the machines in the house now have at least 512MB RAM ($20 per 256MB after rebate), 48x16x48 or better CD-RW drives ($20 each after rebate), and I've probably gotten at least 1000 CD-R blanks in the last year for a total of $3.70 (the cost of 10 stamps).
This week, they have PC2100 256MB DIMMS for free after rebate (I know, I know, your machine needs faster). The RAM is usually PNY or Kingston -- not top-of-the-line, but not crap, either.
The first thing I do when I get home is mail the rebates. Takes maybe two minutes. And out of probably 20 in the last year, I've gotten every check, no problem. These are a mix of store and manufacturer mail-ins.
I'm getting ready to buy a ham radio transceiver that's got a $200 mail in. I'll let you know how that goes.
No, I don't work for OfficeMax.
How about the ethical dillema of people teaching things that they don't know enough about?
I pretty much stopped reading shortly after hitting the following, as the author lost all credibility at this point:
Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to pander to the anti-Microsoft crowd. Karma whoring, if you will.
Every one of the systems described is better than the minimum requirements for Windows XP Professional.
The author is whacked if they think it is going to be easier to get working drivers for their crappy hardware under Linux than Windows-anything, even XP.
I'm no lover of Microsoft or their products, but whipping out unfounded bashing in a supposedly technical article doesn't help anyone's cause.
And I'm guessing that's not the author's real name...
Tsu Dho Nimh?
Sounds an awful lot like "pseudonym" when you say it, eh?
From the PDF (capitalization intact):
A System That is Tactically Superior To All Future Weapon Systems Potential US/NATO Adversaries Will Ever Consider Developing, Derived Solely From US Research/Technology.
Pretty bold claim, eh?
"...Ever Consider Developing..."?
"Ever"? "Consider"?
Maybe those adversaries are just smarter than us. Just one of these things uses 740 grams of Polonium every 60 days? That's 12 grams a day!
I doubt that even by the 15-25 year timeframe this thing is taking about that 12 grams of Polonium will have
- ever
been made.Heh, "Derived Solely From Heavily Fantisized Research/Technology" would be more appropriate.
I was once exiting a movie theater in a drizzle. This particular theater's parking lot is under high-tension transmission lines. Since it was raining, I was using an umbrella.
Walking across the parking lot, I heard a buzzing sound. Looking up, I noticed that where the metal ribs of the umbrella connected to the plastic hub in the center, that the tips of the ribs were arcing between them!
Surprisingly enough, I merely thought it curious and noted that I should go back some time and study the effect further and take some measurements, etc. That was probably a dozen years ago, and I pretty much forgot about it until this story prodded my memory.
I assume that some sort of "Tesla" effect was responsible, as I felt nothing myself. I don't know the specifics of the transmission lines involved.
would have to assume you're joking. RNA virili and bacteria are far more prone to mutations in the genes. Why hasn't AIDS been cured? It's an RNA virus;
I am certainly not an expert in this field, but I notice that according to the linked page of photos of this class of virus, that it includes both measles and mumps. The body pretty much self-vaccinates against both of these diseases, in that normally, once you contract the disease once, you have a lasting immunity.
This seems to contradict the sweeping statement that because of the class of virus this thing is, it would mutate too often to make a "standard" vaccination work. Obviously, if it mutated so frequently, people would be succeptable to mutated strains of the diseases over and over again.
Oh, yeah, not to mention that there are effective vaccines for both measles and mumps.
Interestingly, though, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), yet another illness in this same family, is not currently prevented with a vaccine, but rather with a monoclonal antibody injection, Synagis
I expect posters to not read the article (well, ppt), but even the submitter didn't read it?
The article does mention x-rays, saying "not enough energy to change a DRAM capacitor." Yet everyone talks about x-rays...
I found the phrase from the article "screw driver to remove hard drive" amusing when I first read it. Then I realized they meant "screwdriver". I thought initially they were referring to a DOS attack by corrupting the device driver!
FYI - signals do not travel at the speed of light. Somewhere around 50-60% the speed of light in most types of cable.
Overcoming the differences in arrival time of signals in a parallel cable is not significantly more difficult than handling clocking (and maybe clock recovery) and buffering and serial-to-parallel conversion on a serial interface.
The main reason that parallel interfaces were popular years ago when things like SCSI were established was the electronics at the time just weren't very fast. The 74LS00 family logic that SCSI and parallel printer ports were designed around had a maximum clock rate of about 30Mhz. Add in margin for cable noise and distortion and 5-10Mhz was absolutely the most you could manage through any distance. So, if that wasn't fast enough for what you wanted to do, you used more wires in parallel.
These days, it's relatively easy to put multi-gigahertz logic onto chips, and the fewer wires in a cable and connector, the cheaper, so serial wins.
"1024 bytes to a kbyte thing" is only for storage. And even then, only consistenly for RAM. Most hard drive manufacturers use 1000 bytes.
Bit rates and frequencies are always n^10.
3Gbps = 3,000,000,000 bits per second.
A 2.4Ghz CPU has a 2,400,000,000 cycles per second clock.
Your first paragraph doesn't clarify anything. Hughes/DirecTV is owned by GM (General Motors) not GE (General Electric).
As the story correctly states, GE is considering buying Hughes.
If I'm doing my math right, which I'm probably not, assuming each land mine is a cylinder 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter, 110,000,000 of these things would form a cube 33 miles on each side. Are there really that many?
Well, at least you were right when you said you were probably doing your math wrong.
If they were 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter and you stacked them based on a square grid:
The space each mine occupies in the grid is:
1 in x 6 in x 6 in = 36 in^3
36 in^3 / 12 in / 12 in / 12 in = 0.0208333 ft^3
So 110,000,000 of them are:
.0208333 ft^3 x 110,000,000 = 2,291,666.666 ft^3
2,291,666.666 ft^3 ^ (1/3) = 131.841 ft
So, they would make a cube only 131 ft 10 inches.
Of course, if they are really round, you could stack each layer honeycomb-style and the cube would be even smaller. As they say, the solution is left as an exercise for the reader.
I find it ironic that many people in the this community find it necessary to complain about the actions of other groups when they don't necessarily agree with the intentions of that group.
I thought that was a good reason. After all, actions are how people carry out intentions.
Would you rather we complain based on the color of their skin, or nationality, or sexual preference, or what, then?
In-vitro fertilization involves creating a number of embryos to insure at least one success. A healthy one is selected and the rest are discarded. Since there being discarded anyway we might as well use them for stem cell research
I think you've hit upon the point, but in the opposite way you probably intended. One of the biggest problems with embryonic research is that it adds justification to the practice of destroying embryos by giving it a supposedly beneficial purpose.
Label me as a radical freak if you will, but I still believe in the ages-old principle of morality that states that you must have good means to good ends.
I don't dispute that it would be an excellent thing to find a cure for paralysis and neural diseases. Or that it is great and worthwhile work to help people have children that otherwise couldn't. But regardless of how good these ends, it is simply not justifiable to acheive either one through the means of killing human embryos.
And for those who don't have a problem with killing embryos, I can only see that you fall into two categories:
For the former category, I will not attempt to persuade you otherwise, for I feel you are too far gone to be helped.
But for the latter, what is an embryo then? I think by any scientific definition of "life" it must be agreed that embryos are alive. So that only leaves the question of "are they human?"
All I can do about this is offer insight into my own reasoning. Take it for what you will.
I am the father of twin girls who were born after 16 weeks of pregnancy. I watched their live birth, and then watched them as they died afteward. I was left with no doubt from this experience that those two girls were live human beings. They looked human, they acted human.
So then, when did they become human? The day before? The day before that? The day before the day before? The day before the day before the day before? I can't say. I can't determine with any satisfaction that there is a single point since their conception where they transitioned from being not human life to being human life. Therefore, I can only conclude that they were always human life. Or, at a minimum, I can conclude that the safest thing to do when dealing with questions of life and death, is to consider that they were always human life, and err on the side of caution.
If you are hunting and you see in the distance what looks to you an awful lot like a deer, but has bright orange on it, what do you do? Do you shoot anyway, assuming that one of those PETA freaks have just put an orange vest or paint on a deer? Or do you err on the side of caution that it might be a fellow hunter?
This seems like a kind of stupid thing for CleanFlicks' customers to be doing, as in the long term, it can only make things worse; for every cleaned-up copy that CleanFlicks sells/rents, an original copy is purchased. So, the studio's sales figures reflect every copy that goes through CleanFlicks.
If you are the sort of person that doesn't approve of the type of material they are removing, do you really want to increase sales on those items for the studio? What is happening, in effect, by CleanFlicks existence, is that sales of the very type of movies that their customers are offended by are being increased!
Studios are going to see sales rise on these "offensive" titles as CleanFlicks becomes more popular. And what will they do in response? Make even more "offensive" movies.
If people don't like the content of the movie, don't watch it. In particular, DON'T PAY FOR IT, even through CleanFlicks. When you pay for something, you are casting a vote of approval for that item.
And who wins from this cycle? CleanFlicks! Because as time goes on and movie studios find that they can sell "offensive" movies to a much broader audience than intrisically "clean" films (counting those who buy both the original and the CleanFlicks versions), they will begin to only make "offensive" ones. So CleanFlicks ends up being the only place you can buy a clean movie.