Make the dog bark more. Seriously. Get a powerful ultrasonic whistle (electronic) and either play it loudly 24/7, or joyfully engage it automatically at 3 AM daily, and especially weekends, until the dog problem resolves itself...
Howdy y'alls. I'm a-sellin an authentic data bit once used by Linus Torvalds. I'm lettin it go for cheap cause I need the money for my ailin gramma, and some pseudoephedrine purchases. Please email me at backwoodshacker at appachiatech.com with best offer. Hurry, these are rare and it'll go fast. I have 12 offers already, from some guy named Darl McBride.
Note to self: Ukrainians do NOT understand how to play video games. Rewrite instructions to say, when the game requires you to shoot someone onscreen, we do NOT mean shoot the screen. Really. Also tell the Poles there is a Delete key for word processing, and WhiteOut is not actually a good idea.
I have a most excellent elixir made from the blood of young virgins (you know, the ones under 12, the only ones left) and it sharpens my mind and clarifies my vision. Except for the times when I black out and regain consciousness holding body parts that are not mine. On the other hand, it enabled me to write a lot of Windows code at Microsoft until the day Redmond security came to my cubicle and showed me the surveillance cam footage with the black plastic bags and the shovel and the dirt... Then they took away my badge and my honor. But I got even. Now I work for Google. I like their motto: "Do no evil at which you can get caught". Now pardon me. I must go. There are little children outside on the street here in Mountain View. This cannot be tolerated.
This might explain some sightings of remarkably shape-changing, flexible-structure airborne objects - I will not say UFOs because that has crackpot connotations. But if this has been around long enough, we undoubtedly have some interesting black-budget aircraft architectures out there.
Also coming to mind when I read this was, 'hey, this could be perfect for realizing the octopoid robotic tentacles of 1950's science fiction magazine cover fame". And Doctor Octopus, too. And...um...sexual prosthetics..er, not that there's anything wrong with that...um...foot shuffle..gulp
This estimate lacks a couple of things and oversimplifies. 200WH per mile is impossible in urban start stop traffic even with regen braking. And are you assuming 100% efficiency in charging, and in storage? In reality, energy is wasted outside the car, in the delivery system. This must be taken into account in overall cost to society of the entire system (electricity generation, transmission, charging stations or household charging, vehicles) And energy is lost to battery heating during charging and household wiring IR loss. My gut feeling is still that the mass of vehicles and the infrastructure to support charging them will certainly consume more power overall than what is saved from tungsten replacement by CFLs.
It seems to me that while 200WH per mile sounds small, in reality it is a significant power consumption. Assume 1KWH per five miles. If you travel 5 miles at, say 50mph, that's 1/10 hour or 6 minutes. And using 1KWH of power in 6 minutes is far more than a house consumes in electric lighting in a day. So if you drive over, say 6 minutes, you've already used more than a house does on lighting daily. And an 8 hour charging time then is huge compared to lighting. So I still maintain it is senseless to to kill tungsten and then impose a far larger electricity burden on the infrastructure.
I see an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, Congress is debating whether to ban the use of tungsten light bulbs (encouraging CFLs instead) in order to save electric power and reduce need to build more electric generating plants. And on the other hand, we have all this fervor about electric cars, which will require massive amounts of electricity for recharging. As if we could easily replace millions of gallons of gas as an energy source without severe upgrading of the infrastructure. Clearly these philosophies are at ends, and we haven't yet seen the clash.
I will not ask how you managed to ski downhill, either. Although I envision something involving a vacuum cleaner coupled with a snow thrower. A very fast vacuum cleaner. A very substantial snow thrower. Although you could have gotten by with snowmobile skis, the ones with motorized treads. I think I'll go lie down now, I don't feel at all well.
You've RUINED my Christmas. I always thought it was Santa who caused the lights.
Sincerely,
Billy Widget, Age 8, Cleveland Ohio
P.S. I bet you're going to tell me next that there is no Easter Bunny, storks don't deliver babies, and Microsoft sells flawless software. I'm not THAT dumb.
I was chagrined when Carlos Slim bought The Good Guys audio/video stores and merged them into CompUSA. The Good Guys had excellent stock including the superb Loewe HD TVs, good sales every so often, and the salemen didn't entirely suck. The bastard child of the merger was that CompUSA began pushing LCD big screens but almost no other A/V equipment.
As many others have noted, it would be useful if Fry's had some stores in other parts of the country. (You hear me, John Fry?) Even if Fry's has issues with stupid salesmen, the merchandise selection is pretty good, including off the shelf software for when you're on a deadline and can't wait for mail-order or get a vendor download. I Hope they slowly and carefully extend themselves to the East Coast and become available to more people. But not overextend themselves, that's how Tower Records killed its retail presence, by expanding into Japan.
Frankly, I think predictions #28: "Playstation 9 will sweep market", #31: "Blu-Ray 3D conquers adult entertainment market", #60: "President Chelsea Clinton announces new Green Initiative with husband Tommy Lee Gore", and #81: "Windows 2025 requires 16 TB PC memory and delivers faultless DRM with only 23 minute bootup time" are all too likely to come true. However, I'm rooting for #110, "RealDoll 2025 cooks, vacuums, and comes with MUTE button" and #111, "Android-Human marriage legalized".
That would be the Apple iPlasma phone. Not only can you make calls, listen to music, and watch videos on it, but you can extend the plasma antenna and kill people who are using ordinary cell phones. Especially the annoyingly talkative oblivious ones in restaurants, movies, or grocery lines.
The iPlasma -- flaming death in a compact shape -- only from Apple. Note: We only accept cash, and only two iPlasmas to a customer, please.
If we are ignoring that, someone in the Pentagon needs be retired. Our failure to detect them could have been due to inadequate equipment, or else incompetent personnel or practices, or worse, arrogance. I'm not too thrilled with any of these cases.
Clearly you're ignoring the Fisher-Price MRI for Tots toy, priced at a reasonable $500,000 for discerning parents who want their kids to go to Harvard someday. And besides, it's always fun for a kid to force his little sister to put her head in a superconducting magnet chamber or face evisceration of her dolly.
An 18-year old knows things a 10-year old cannot conceive of. And a 40-year old might well be able to understand complex big systems in a way a 20-year old cannot because of lack of experience. There's a difference between a mere IT technician grease monkey who replaces bad hardware, and an IT manager who has the wisdom needed to make complex decisions keeping a corporate IT infrastructure running. Not that all managers are wise; I know of no-nothing Dilbertian IT managers too.
Om the other hand, a 20 year old's auto insurance rate is often higher than that of a 40-year old, usually for good reason.
I beg to differ. Consider all the tree paper being used in photocopiers each year. What if a new system were put in place where a photocopier could output images to re-usable e-pages? So instead of throwing out the old memos, you recycle them in the machine. This could save huge amounts of money. Also consider fax machines. Though outdated by email, they are still used widely but are inundated by spam faxes. But if fax sheets were recyclable, this would reduce the amount of ink and paper thrown out. Bridgestone needs to make the technology available cheaply enough that it could spawn new industries. I've got a few ideas for new applications besides advertising, I'm sure other people will too.
I still have an Aura, and I don't see that it is capable of generating enough audio 'force' to kill a kid. That is, the acoustic energy output in watts is low and while it can deliver 'thumps', even a stream of them could not kill a wearer unless they trigger defibrillation. Which would be really atypical.
Indeed, the post does not truly spell things out. A critical problem with the FCC proposal is that any media conglomerate that comes to dominate the media outlets in an area then has an inordinate ability to shape political contests to its own will.
For example, let's say Rupert Murdoch comes to dominate Smallville, USA. He could then elect to minimize coverage of certain local candidates in favor of ones who would reciprocate his favors if elected. Clearly this drives special interests over public interests. Such a monopoly is the antithesis of a free market.
Imagine if Microsoft controlled all news media in a town, and you objected to schools buying Microsoft products over using open source. Or Wal-Mart owned the media outlets in a town and supported candidates for office who did not object to destruction of local merchants by the big box. A fair system would have some amount of healthy competition between media, and their coverage, thus helping guard against such domination.
Totally agree. The very idea of online video editing is completely absurd because of the massive bandwidth, the huge latencies relative to video needs, and the fact that it will require a heavy commitment to resources on the server end. They'll use the resource part to justify charging video editing customers a ton of money, probably charging by the minute and bandwidth, shades of early Internet schemes. I see them creating their downfall in this niche. In a way, this is analogous to the RIAA versus users changing the music industry. Eventually, your business model takes a giant hit and the paradigm faces changes.
Slashdot Mirror
Make the dog bark more. Seriously. Get a powerful ultrasonic whistle (electronic) and either play it loudly 24/7, or joyfully engage it automatically at 3 AM daily, and especially weekends, until the dog problem resolves itself...
Howdy y'alls. I'm a-sellin an authentic data bit once used by Linus Torvalds. I'm lettin it go for cheap cause I need the money for my ailin gramma, and some pseudoephedrine purchases. Please email me at backwoodshacker at appachiatech.com with best offer. Hurry, these are rare and it'll go fast. I have 12 offers already, from some guy named Darl McBride.
Note to self: Ukrainians do NOT understand how to play video games. Rewrite instructions to say, when the game requires you to shoot someone onscreen, we do NOT mean shoot the screen. Really. Also tell the Poles there is a Delete key for word processing, and WhiteOut is not actually a good idea.
- Sweeney Torvalds, demon coder of Fleet Street
Also coming to mind when I read this was, 'hey, this could be perfect for realizing the octopoid robotic tentacles of 1950's science fiction magazine cover fame". And Doctor Octopus, too. And...um...sexual prosthetics..er, not that there's anything wrong with that...um...foot shuffle..gulp
I, for one, oversalute our heat-death-defying, universe overclocking overlords!
It seems to me that while 200WH per mile sounds small, in reality it is a significant power consumption. Assume 1KWH per five miles. If you travel 5 miles at, say 50mph, that's 1/10 hour or 6 minutes. And using 1KWH of power in 6 minutes is far more than a house consumes in electric lighting in a day. So if you drive over, say 6 minutes, you've already used more than a house does on lighting daily. And an 8 hour charging time then is huge compared to lighting. So I still maintain it is senseless to to kill tungsten and then impose a far larger electricity burden on the infrastructure.
I see an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, Congress is debating whether to ban the use of tungsten light bulbs (encouraging CFLs instead) in order to save electric power and reduce need to build more electric generating plants. And on the other hand, we have all this fervor about electric cars, which will require massive amounts of electricity for recharging. As if we could easily replace millions of gallons of gas as an energy source without severe upgrading of the infrastructure. Clearly these philosophies are at ends, and we haven't yet seen the clash.
Hell, imagine a supercomputer cluster powered by French bicycle racers on steroids. With no deodorant. And garlic. in a small room.
I will not ask how you managed to ski downhill, either. Although I envision something involving a vacuum cleaner coupled with a snow thrower. A very fast vacuum cleaner. A very substantial snow thrower. Although you could have gotten by with snowmobile skis, the ones with motorized treads. I think I'll go lie down now, I don't feel at all well.
Sincerely,
Billy Widget, Age 8, Cleveland Ohio
P.S. I bet you're going to tell me next that there is no Easter Bunny, storks don't deliver babies, and Microsoft sells flawless software. I'm not THAT dumb.
"Oh my god. Do you call yourself a surgeon!?"
"Well, no, Mrs. Smith, I'm the IT trainee assigned to the OR. But - I AM a certified Microsoft System Engineer."
As many others have noted, it would be useful if Fry's had some stores in other parts of the country. (You hear me, John Fry?) Even if Fry's has issues with stupid salesmen, the merchandise selection is pretty good, including off the shelf software for when you're on a deadline and can't wait for mail-order or get a vendor download. I Hope they slowly and carefully extend themselves to the East Coast and become available to more people. But not overextend themselves, that's how Tower Records killed its retail presence, by expanding into Japan.
For god's sake, PLEASE don't tell my ex-wife about this, it'll make her even more efficient.
Frankly, I think predictions #28: "Playstation 9 will sweep market", #31: "Blu-Ray 3D conquers adult entertainment market", #60: "President Chelsea Clinton announces new Green Initiative with husband Tommy Lee Gore", and #81: "Windows 2025 requires 16 TB PC memory and delivers faultless DRM with only 23 minute bootup time" are all too likely to come true. However, I'm rooting for #110, "RealDoll 2025 cooks, vacuums, and comes with MUTE button" and #111, "Android-Human marriage legalized".
The iPlasma -- flaming death in a compact shape -- only from Apple. Note: We only accept cash, and only two iPlasmas to a customer, please.
http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/sub/type039song.asp
If we are ignoring that, someone in the Pentagon needs be retired. Our failure to detect them could have been due to inadequate equipment, or else incompetent personnel or practices, or worse, arrogance. I'm not too thrilled with any of these cases.
Clearly you're ignoring the Fisher-Price MRI for Tots toy, priced at a reasonable $500,000 for discerning parents who want their kids to go to Harvard someday. And besides, it's always fun for a kid to force his little sister to put her head in a superconducting magnet chamber or face evisceration of her dolly.
Om the other hand, a 20 year old's auto insurance rate is often higher than that of a 40-year old, usually for good reason.
We can rebuild him. Better, faster, stronger, and with bionic cheese. Much like the TV show, which defined the meaning of megacheesy.
I beg to differ. Consider all the tree paper being used in photocopiers each year. What if a new system were put in place where a photocopier could output images to re-usable e-pages? So instead of throwing out the old memos, you recycle them in the machine. This could save huge amounts of money. Also consider fax machines. Though outdated by email, they are still used widely but are inundated by spam faxes. But if fax sheets were recyclable, this would reduce the amount of ink and paper thrown out. Bridgestone needs to make the technology available cheaply enough that it could spawn new industries. I've got a few ideas for new applications besides advertising, I'm sure other people will too.
I might point out that Barbarella had the positronic ray. Well, actually, it was Duran Duran.
I still have an Aura, and I don't see that it is capable of generating enough audio 'force' to kill a kid. That is, the acoustic energy output in watts is low and while it can deliver 'thumps', even a stream of them could not kill a wearer unless they trigger defibrillation. Which would be really atypical.
For example, let's say Rupert Murdoch comes to dominate Smallville, USA. He could then elect to minimize coverage of certain local candidates in favor of ones who would reciprocate his favors if elected. Clearly this drives special interests over public interests. Such a monopoly is the antithesis of a free market.
Imagine if Microsoft controlled all news media in a town, and you objected to schools buying Microsoft products over using open source. Or Wal-Mart owned the media outlets in a town and supported candidates for office who did not object to destruction of local merchants by the big box. A fair system would have some amount of healthy competition between media, and their coverage, thus helping guard against such domination.
Totally agree. The very idea of online video editing is completely absurd because of the massive bandwidth, the huge latencies relative to video needs, and the fact that it will require a heavy commitment to resources on the server end. They'll use the resource part to justify charging video editing customers a ton of money, probably charging by the minute and bandwidth, shades of early Internet schemes. I see them creating their downfall in this niche. In a way, this is analogous to the RIAA versus users changing the music industry. Eventually, your business model takes a giant hit and the paradigm faces changes.