Even with "standardized" documentation, you have to fight the ridiculous rules of the noninsurance companies / death management organizations (HMO's).
True story: a friend of mine went in for a routine breast exam. Doctor told her she needed to have test X run. The way they would do this is, first they would do Test A (which required a biopsy about the size of a pencil eraser nub). Test A always comes back inconclusive. As in, they've been sending this test off for 10 years, and every fucking time it comes back "inconclusive." BUT, and here's the stupid part, once they've done Test A then the insurance companies/HMO's will approve Test X because Test A is "inconclusive." For Test X, they'll need to take a biopsy about the size of a nickel, same depth.
There is no way to jump straight past Test A and go to Test X; the insurance companies will disallow it on the grounds that "preliminary" work hasn't been done. So not only does her money get wasted (one copay for each procedure, plus copay for FOLLOWUP visit to get results of each procedure and approve next one, rather than just copay for one test) but a completely redundant and useless test is done, wasting the money of everyone else who's been paying into the insurance/HMO networks. Oh, and as an added bonus, she has to go through all the pain and healing process of a biopsy, not once but twice.
I don't think "digital documentation" will help for that.
Other things that get in the way of digital documentation, of course: - Originals of a lot of records (x-rays for one example) do not transfer well to digital. Heck, transferring any analog recording, visual or auditory, to digital inevitably means a loss of fidelity at some point or another. You either save a far-too-small file that someone looks at and misses detail (or dismisses an important detail as compression artifacting) later, or your file is completely freaking huge.
- Digital copies are unusable if you lose power. The risk of data corruption is also present. Magnetic storage media has a certain lifespan before it demagnetizes. Optical media tends to die due to oxidization, either of the ink or the metal or the plastic layer (ever seen a 10-year-old CDR? Kinda frightening when the plastic is that cloudy). Physical shock can destroy both quite easily (woe to us when people need their records following a magnitude-8 shock out in Cali).
Now, I'm not 100% against digital records, or even the idea of all (or just mostly) typed records so that we don't have to deal with my doctor's crappy handwriting (how the pharmacist ever figures out what he prescribed and in what quantity, I have no idea). But we have to deal with the realities here, and weigh the benefits of going "all-digital", and there's a definite case for keeping originals of paper records and testing results (when possible) available.
It's a good thing our finance industry has stayed so heavily regul.. oh. wait.
It's most of the deregulation effects (things like repealing Glass-Steagal and entering into "free trade" with GATT/NAFTA/WTO from the Carter age onwards) that caused our problems there, actually. Just like how Radio has been effectively fucked to smithereens with the removal of mass-market ownership limits; we dropped from having over 5,000 radio station owners, most of who were comfortably making a profit (if not insanely rich), and converted to where 99% of the radio market is owned by 5 companies all of which are claiming to be "on the edge of bankruptcy" and dropping all the local shows and local commentary to push prerecorded crap and "the same rotation of songs every hour" formats instead... and then wonder why people aren't listening anymore.
It's a good thing regulations protected the people who got screwed by Enr... oh wait.
Most of Enron's crimes were already on the books; the "responsive" stuff (Sarbanes-Oxley) was really fluff to tell people "look, we responded, see we passed a law" while being utterly fucking redundant. The problem was enforcement, not the regulations and laws themselves.
It's a good thing regulations protected the town that the movie Erin Brockovicth was based on.. oh, wait.
You're going by a movie? Again, the problem was that enforcement didn't happen, not that the laws and regulations themselves weren't right.
You, sir, got lucky, and think that because things went a certain way for you, they go that way for everyone. They don't. The world is a larger sample set than the town you lived in.
You, sir, need to realize something very basic: if we just enforced the laws we already have on the books properly, we'd solve so many problems it'd be unbelievable. The problem today is that 99% or more of the laws exist on the books without ever seeing enforcement, and politicians convince the sheeple that "passing a law" means solving the problem, even if the law they just passed is already redundant to 4-5 other fucking laws already on the books that aren't being enforced either.
If we cleaned up the law books, consolidated all the redundant crap, cleaned up/repealed the really stupid or badly worded ones and then simply enforced what we have properly, we'd be a lot better off.
No, I said worker protection laws. Unemployment safety nets, safety/health regulations, worker compensation for on-the-job accidents, maximum working days (goes into "health" again), overtime pay past the 40-hour workweek, etc.
I never said the countries had to pay precisely the same dollar wage. But they should have to have the same environmental standards (so that the "lower cost" doesn't come at the expense of shitting up the planet) and worker protections (so that the "lower cost" doesn't come at the cost of maiming or killing thousands of people in unsafe "factories").
Was that so hard to understand, or were you deliberately being obtuse?
One other point: lawpoop below points to this, which is absolutely brilliant and spot-on. And I know precisely why so many of the "globalist" "open borders" "free trade" people hate the points brought up in it - they're not taught history in school any more, not taught math and economics anymore, and know sod-all about the world.
"Free trade" concerning commodities that are easily made (or grown) in an area, like tropical fruit towards northern climates, is one thing.
"Free trade" based on paying workers shit wages, or based on the fact that one country (*coughmexshitcocough*) has absolutely crappy evironmental protection laws while their neighbors don't, doesn't - it temporarily drives down "costs" while ensuring that the environment gets ruined and poverty is taken advantage of.
The solution is "fair trade" instead - place tariffs on any and all imported goods from countries whose labor protection and environmental laws are inferior to our own, such that the cost to produce them there and them import is the same (or better yet, slightly more expensive) as doing the production either here, or in a country with proper worker and environmental protection standards. If the USA/Canada/European countries would do that, then the countries with shit worker protection and environmental laws will have to fall in line and we can actually get things addressed.
I hope the FIRST thing he does is start working on eliminating all these local-municipality "time warner/cox cable/comcrap/etc paid the city council a bag of money and sent them some whores in exchange for a local monopoly right" practices, and require equal-infrastructure access so that 'net service works the same way that power and phone service now do.
Actually, I'm not. I'm decidedly in the suburbs of one of the 5 largest cities in America. The signals are coming from a pretty wide arc.
Get rid of the antenna preamp. Most have a horrible S/N ratio and just add to the problem with receiver front-end overloading. Switch to a more onmi directional antenna. This would help with the multi path issue. Forget the sales hype. DTV is in the same band space as conventional TV.
Already omni, same antenna I've used for a long time. Tried it both ways.
The problems in my area (confirmed by running a googlemap check on the transmitter locations) are:
- "new construction" semi-skyscrapers (~10-story buildings) that have popped up over the last 5 years in the oddest places wipes out 2 channels by direct LoS obstruction. - Reflections from more of the semi-skyscrapers (I have double-phase ghosting from at least 3 analog signals, but they are at least watchable; the double-phase ghosting absolutely destroys 2 more of the DTV signals). - Inability to see one signal (the local PBS station) because their transmitter was "relocated" to a 2-story building right behind the "downtown" area and completely blocked off; the old transmitter they used to send from is being entirely taken up by something else more "lucrative" for the downtown skyscraper owner.
What really sucks? Of the remaining 7 that I can get, two are the shitty-ass "we rebroadcast crappy Mexican TV shows for the illegals to watch" stations. I can get Fox, NBC, "UPN/WB/MNT/whatevertheyarenow", a Trinity Broadcasting (Televangelism 24/7! We Run The "Bible-Man" Superhero Show!) station, a local "Independent" station that broadcasts a ton of "Classic TV" stuff (occasionally good), and of course Mexican Crap 1 and Mexican Crap 2. I lose another 2 independent stations, plus PBS, ABC, and CBS affiliates.
That works fine, unless you have the typical issues for digital.
In my area, there are supposed to be 12 OTA digital stations (each running two feeds). I can see maybe 7 due to intervening buildings, even with a nice powered antenna on the roof.
Plus, OTA digital has shorter range the same way FM radio has shorter travel range than AM. Just the nature of the signal and how fault-tolerant it is. Rural areas are more screwed by the change since they could make do with a less-powerful signal before and now just get cut off completely (plus, their "local" stations may not be as money-rich to afford the new transmission equipment).
The old drivers are tagged to only work with their accompanying driver version. When they went to the 170 driver series, they screwed us over.
You can't run the base 170 driver series with the 160-series stereo support driver, and newer games are going to require the 170 driver series. Functionally, people who've bought Nvidia for years and been loyal customers are being cynically dicked over.
Are you really that much of a moron? You obviously never used the technology; it runs at 120 Hz, and you get 60 Hz per eye. It runs off the monitor sync signal.
This isn't a "review", this is a paid-for advert disguised as one.
A few examples: Active glasses for stereo 3D viewing are not a technology created by NVIDIA and in fact they have been around for some time as well. However, the quality of the glasses and the user experience has been low due to low frame rates (30 Hz to each eye usually) and bulky hardware.
Reality: Existing glasses solutions (from companies like EDimensional and preceding them, VRStandard) are just as slim as the NVidia offering and run at the same framerate (100-120 Hz).
As of today, NVIDIA's 3D technology will work with only two types of displays: true 120 Hz LCD monitors and 3D-Ready DLP projection televisions.
That's only because Nvidia has a monetary interest in forcing people to buy new hardware; the old glasses solutions worked just fine with true 120-Hz monitors, DLP projection TV's, and even standard CRT monitors until recently when Nvidia deliberately broke the drivers and made 3D-support only available on Windows Vista.
I feel it is also important to realize that while the 3D effects we are seeing today are really cool and well worth the investment of $199,
A pair of EDimensional glasses six months ago ran you $60-80 depending on where you bought them, and were exactly the same technology inside; all NVidia's done is changed which pin they're hiding the monitor/glasses sync signal in on the video cable. Charging $200 is fucking highway robbery and they know it.
It's a pity that "PC Perspective" ran a shitty, paid-for "review" and are trying to fool everyone. I call Scam because I see one.
No, previous systems worked just fine. I had a monitor capable of 1280x1024, 120 Hz (60 for each eye) and it was fan-fucking-tastic. I still have the hardware and would use it today if Nvidia hadn't fucked the consumer over by stripping their "3D system" driver add-on down to Vista-only and "buy our new hardware".
I've had a pair of shutter glasses (as have a hell of a lot of other people) for years. For years, I was a fan of Nvidia because they included shutter support in an add-on driver release. I played Portal with my original-series VRStandard glasses and it was AMAZING.
Six months ago, Nvidia entered into a monetary partnership with people who make some shitty, half-assed "3d compatible" lcd monitors. All of a sudden, the latest version of the add-on driver (a) is Vista-Only (fucking bullshit) and (b) dropped support for anything but anaglyph, these "3d compatible lcd monitors", or "official Nvidia shutter glasses."
I'm not about to infect my computer with the Vista Virus to have this, much less have to go spend money on buying more new hardware that, internally, is exactly the fucking same as I already own except for having the monitor-sync bit use a different one of the 14 VGA pins to hide its left/right signal.
Fuck Nvidia till they start putting the consumer first again. And if they don't fix this and give us back the driver support, then I won't buy their cards anymore.
I've had Win ME installed on a system at home since 2001 and it's been running as close as it will get to flawlessly.
This is like saying you're getting "as close to good performance as I can" out of a Pinto or a Yugo.
Win ME is not nearly half as disastrous as most people will tell you, provided that you configure it correctly. Most of the out-of-the-box default settings glitchy at best and system crashing at worst, though going menu by menu and rearranging everything manually will fix most of its glaring problems (notably the RAM management and ballooning system restore folder).
Or you can just install 2000/XP, drop 98SE either into a separate partition or a virtual machine somewhere, and be plenty happy. And if we could get a virtual machine that emulated a proper video board (nothing fancy, just something reasonably above a freaking S3 Virge 3D decelerator like VMWare and VirtualPC do, even a basic GeForce would be good for most of the older titles that ask for Win98) I'd happily be able to load up pretty much any game and simply enjoy.
RIGHT up until you need to visit another city for any reason.
Say, a job interview. Looking to move. Visiting friends or relatives. Going home during winter break.
"My car goes 150 miles and I only drive 20 in a day" is nice. Lucky you. Now try living in a real city and not being a rich motherfucker who can afford to live that close to their job (the most affordable housing, alas, is OUTSIDE the work zone by a good 15 miles for most large metropolitan areas), visit someone a few hours away, or run errands back and forth around your city on your day off from work.
It's not practical. And whoever tells you otherwise is lying to you.
A girl at my high school had one of the first EV1s off the line, and didn't charge it but Wednesdays and Sundays in a normal week
A girl in high school does not have a "typical" driving pattern or even close to it.
every one of these technologies degrades over time, as well as when heated. Their power production curves are mostly the "fall to near-zero instantly" type, with very little warning that they're running out of juice.
Say originally, someone has a car that got 250 miles per charge when they bought it midwinter. A year and a half later, it's midsummer, and a year's wear, so they're down to 220 miles on this charge. They tool along, thinking they are doing fine, only 218 miles... 219.... THUNK. Car stops or drops to a crawl, barely enough power to operate the new "energy saving" drive-by-wire steering (if that much) to pull off the road.
So now where are we? We have a dead car on the side of the road. Motorist assistance drops by, they're out of juice. Whoops, can't just give them a gallon or so of gas and point them down the road to the gas station 8 miles down... nope, have to get a hauler out there and have them towed. And then they have to figure out what their NEW battery life is, and worry about when their capacity drops to 200...190...180... and so on.
Yes, people do experience reduced gas mileage out of the life of the car, or when they get gas from an Ethanol-infested zone, or spots like that. But gas gauges are pretty damn reliable (unlike battery capacity readouts) and the people who do actually run out are probably boobs who tried to really run the tank dry and use up their reserve, or just weren't paying attention, instead of people who got fucked over by the tech itself and a lying battery life readout.
Without the stupid Jimmy Carter-style prohibitions on nuclear recycling, "nuclear waste repositories" would be completely unnecessary; we could re-refine our "nuclear waste" and the actual amount of real "waste" to date would be easily pit into a 100-gallon drum or two, stuffed into a rocket, and lobbed at the sun.
Not just that, they don't evaluate the OTHER problems caused by the technologies. Making solar panels for solar electrical generation generates massive quantities of toxic waste, which has to either be chemically treated or otherwise disposed of. Wind farms have massive problems of maintenance due to fluctuating conditions, and are unreliable at the best of times.
The most "reliable" of the lot is actually Geothermal, which is predictable. Solar and Wind both have weather-related (not joking here) problems; Tidal and Hydroelectric (river/dam-based) generation suffer whenever the water level changes due to rainfall or landmass motion.
Now admittedly, Ethanol is a fucking joke, especially corn-based ethanol which wastes 1.8 units of energy just to produce 1 unit of "energy" in the form of whiskey in the gas tank (you think I'm joking: I'm not). And Ethanol is also MURDER on engines.
And then there's the problem of burning food for fuel. I mean, seriously. That's an idea that came right out of the wrong side of an Animaniacs "Good Idea, Bad Idea" sketch if I ever saw one.
"Clean Coal"? Well, no combustion-based energy source will ever be "perfect", but I don't think that completely eliminating coal use overnight is possible, so I'm all for cleaning it up as much as is reasonable until we can phase it out over time (one big problem with the envirowacko movement, they always want things RIGHT NOW, they never can understand that you have to change things over time).
As for the rest... there's a reason that gasoline beat electrical batteries for automobile power sourcing in the early days and it still holds true today: our battery technology just has NOT caught up to where it needs to be. Gasoline allows for a fill-up to take 5-10 minutes tops, and a mobile range of a couple hundred miles before another fill-up. If you can't do that, then you can't compete with gasoline, and I'm sorry but that is just how it has to be.
"Hydrogen" isn't a real fuel source: you have to extract it from something, and store it somehow. IF we had nothing but electrical from "renewable" sources or properly refined Nuclear, it could theoretically be made viable (better utilized in fuel cells than a combustion engine, but still). Since the majority of our generation is still fossil-fuel based, generating hydrogen to "replace" gasoline will actually cause MORE emissions than just putting the fucking gas in our cars.
You obviously have never been forced to be around toddlers for any length of time. If you're not used to it and/or already emotionally geared towards it, that's torturous enough even without the big gay purple dino (or Tinky Winky etc) to deal with.
Phased arrays of antennas can "direct energy" such that the interference points of the multiple waveforms reinforce and suppress in a specific pattern, but they cannot direct the energy merely to a single "point."
And, you are still not directing "all the energy" along that single point. Far from it, you are losing plenty of energy; it is still being sent through the dead zones, even if the waveforms from the multiple antennas are having the net effect of canceling each other. The energy is expended either (a) in the transmission medium or (b) upon whatever they reach when they deconverge past the cancellation point.
Miranda rights are for people picked up by the police, in a non-war zone.
They do not apply to enemy military personnel, especially enemy personnel wh fail to uphold their Geneva Convention responsibilities to dress in military uniform and carry their weapons openly (so as not to cause problems in telling military and civilians apart) who are picked up either (a) in the act of sabotage or (b) on the battlefield itself.
Finally: spies have NO rights, even in the Geneva Conventions.
I've been tortured by morons blasting their music in my apartment complex and out of cars with overly shaky bass systems constantly. I hereby protest these so-called "artists" and their crappy music.
I think the biggest barrier to growth is the lack of music talent now compared to the times past which saw explosive growth in the 70's and 80's.
Not true, not true at all. There is plenty of new music talent out there; the problem is that the MafiAA companies no longer want to promote new talent, because new talent are not interested in selling their eternal souls to crappy slave-labor contracts, MafiAA "creative accounting" practices, and multi-album deals where the labels hold musicians hostage by claiming their final contracted album needs to be "re-done" over and over until they manage to blackmail the artist into signing an extension or giving up any hope of ever owning their own music.
Track the MafiAA's supposed "piracy loss" numbers against the number of new albums and new acts released, and you find a linear correlation that has absolutely nothing to do with "piracy."
Slashdot Mirror
Even with "standardized" documentation, you have to fight the ridiculous rules of the noninsurance companies / death management organizations (HMO's).
True story: a friend of mine went in for a routine breast exam. Doctor told her she needed to have test X run. The way they would do this is, first they would do Test A (which required a biopsy about the size of a pencil eraser nub). Test A always comes back inconclusive. As in, they've been sending this test off for 10 years, and every fucking time it comes back "inconclusive." BUT, and here's the stupid part, once they've done Test A then the insurance companies/HMO's will approve Test X because Test A is "inconclusive." For Test X, they'll need to take a biopsy about the size of a nickel, same depth.
There is no way to jump straight past Test A and go to Test X; the insurance companies will disallow it on the grounds that "preliminary" work hasn't been done. So not only does her money get wasted (one copay for each procedure, plus copay for FOLLOWUP visit to get results of each procedure and approve next one, rather than just copay for one test) but a completely redundant and useless test is done, wasting the money of everyone else who's been paying into the insurance/HMO networks. Oh, and as an added bonus, she has to go through all the pain and healing process of a biopsy, not once but twice.
I don't think "digital documentation" will help for that.
Other things that get in the way of digital documentation, of course:
- Originals of a lot of records (x-rays for one example) do not transfer well to digital. Heck, transferring any analog recording, visual or auditory, to digital inevitably means a loss of fidelity at some point or another. You either save a far-too-small file that someone looks at and misses detail (or dismisses an important detail as compression artifacting) later, or your file is completely freaking huge.
- Digital copies are unusable if you lose power. The risk of data corruption is also present. Magnetic storage media has a certain lifespan before it demagnetizes. Optical media tends to die due to oxidization, either of the ink or the metal or the plastic layer (ever seen a 10-year-old CDR? Kinda frightening when the plastic is that cloudy). Physical shock can destroy both quite easily (woe to us when people need their records following a magnitude-8 shock out in Cali).
Now, I'm not 100% against digital records, or even the idea of all (or just mostly) typed records so that we don't have to deal with my doctor's crappy handwriting (how the pharmacist ever figures out what he prescribed and in what quantity, I have no idea). But we have to deal with the realities here, and weigh the benefits of going "all-digital", and there's a definite case for keeping originals of paper records and testing results (when possible) available.
There is a subset of humans who are both mathematically and socially inclined.
They become "Managers" or "Agents" and bilk the "musicians" and "actors" out of millions of dollars.
It's a good thing our finance industry has stayed so heavily regul.. oh. wait.
It's most of the deregulation effects (things like repealing Glass-Steagal and entering into "free trade" with GATT/NAFTA/WTO from the Carter age onwards) that caused our problems there, actually. Just like how Radio has been effectively fucked to smithereens with the removal of mass-market ownership limits; we dropped from having over 5,000 radio station owners, most of who were comfortably making a profit (if not insanely rich), and converted to where 99% of the radio market is owned by 5 companies all of which are claiming to be "on the edge of bankruptcy" and dropping all the local shows and local commentary to push prerecorded crap and "the same rotation of songs every hour" formats instead... and then wonder why people aren't listening anymore.
It's a good thing regulations protected the people who got screwed by Enr... oh wait.
Most of Enron's crimes were already on the books; the "responsive" stuff (Sarbanes-Oxley) was really fluff to tell people "look, we responded, see we passed a law" while being utterly fucking redundant. The problem was enforcement, not the regulations and laws themselves.
It's a good thing regulations protected the town that the movie Erin Brockovicth was based on.. oh, wait.
You're going by a movie? Again, the problem was that enforcement didn't happen, not that the laws and regulations themselves weren't right.
You, sir, got lucky, and think that because things went a certain way for you, they go that way for everyone. They don't. The world is a larger sample set than the town you lived in.
You, sir, need to realize something very basic: if we just enforced the laws we already have on the books properly, we'd solve so many problems it'd be unbelievable. The problem today is that 99% or more of the laws exist on the books without ever seeing enforcement, and politicians convince the sheeple that "passing a law" means solving the problem, even if the law they just passed is already redundant to 4-5 other fucking laws already on the books that aren't being enforced either.
If we cleaned up the law books, consolidated all the redundant crap, cleaned up/repealed the really stupid or badly worded ones and then simply enforced what we have properly, we'd be a lot better off.
Did I say "pay the same wage as here in the US"?
No, I said worker protection laws. Unemployment safety nets, safety/health regulations, worker compensation for on-the-job accidents, maximum working days (goes into "health" again), overtime pay past the 40-hour workweek, etc.
I never said the countries had to pay precisely the same dollar wage. But they should have to have the same environmental standards (so that the "lower cost" doesn't come at the expense of shitting up the planet) and worker protections (so that the "lower cost" doesn't come at the cost of maiming or killing thousands of people in unsafe "factories").
Was that so hard to understand, or were you deliberately being obtuse?
One other point: lawpoop below points to this, which is absolutely brilliant and spot-on. And I know precisely why so many of the "globalist" "open borders" "free trade" people hate the points brought up in it - they're not taught history in school any more, not taught math and economics anymore, and know sod-all about the world.
The basic problem is that "free trade" never is.
"Free trade" concerning commodities that are easily made (or grown) in an area, like tropical fruit towards northern climates, is one thing.
"Free trade" based on paying workers shit wages, or based on the fact that one country (*coughmexshitcocough*) has absolutely crappy evironmental protection laws while their neighbors don't, doesn't - it temporarily drives down "costs" while ensuring that the environment gets ruined and poverty is taken advantage of.
The solution is "fair trade" instead - place tariffs on any and all imported goods from countries whose labor protection and environmental laws are inferior to our own, such that the cost to produce them there and them import is the same (or better yet, slightly more expensive) as doing the production either here, or in a country with proper worker and environmental protection standards. If the USA/Canada/European countries would do that, then the countries with shit worker protection and environmental laws will have to fall in line and we can actually get things addressed.
Indeed!
I hope the FIRST thing he does is start working on eliminating all these local-municipality "time warner/cox cable/comcrap/etc paid the city council a bag of money and sent them some whores in exchange for a local monopoly right" practices, and require equal-infrastructure access so that 'net service works the same way that power and phone service now do.
Sounds like you are close in.
Actually, I'm not. I'm decidedly in the suburbs of one of the 5 largest cities in America. The signals are coming from a pretty wide arc.
Get rid of the antenna preamp. Most have a horrible S/N ratio and just add to the problem with receiver front-end overloading. Switch to a more onmi directional antenna. This would help with the multi path issue.
Forget the sales hype. DTV is in the same band space as conventional TV.
Already omni, same antenna I've used for a long time. Tried it both ways.
The problems in my area (confirmed by running a googlemap check on the transmitter locations) are:
- "new construction" semi-skyscrapers (~10-story buildings) that have popped up over the last 5 years in the oddest places wipes out 2 channels by direct LoS obstruction.
- Reflections from more of the semi-skyscrapers (I have double-phase ghosting from at least 3 analog signals, but they are at least watchable; the double-phase ghosting absolutely destroys 2 more of the DTV signals).
- Inability to see one signal (the local PBS station) because their transmitter was "relocated" to a 2-story building right behind the "downtown" area and completely blocked off; the old transmitter they used to send from is being entirely taken up by something else more "lucrative" for the downtown skyscraper owner.
What really sucks? Of the remaining 7 that I can get, two are the shitty-ass "we rebroadcast crappy Mexican TV shows for the illegals to watch" stations. I can get Fox, NBC, "UPN/WB/MNT/whatevertheyarenow", a Trinity Broadcasting (Televangelism 24/7! We Run The "Bible-Man" Superhero Show!) station, a local "Independent" station that broadcasts a ton of "Classic TV" stuff (occasionally good), and of course Mexican Crap 1 and Mexican Crap 2. I lose another 2 independent stations, plus PBS, ABC, and CBS affiliates.
That works fine, unless you have the typical issues for digital.
In my area, there are supposed to be 12 OTA digital stations (each running two feeds). I can see maybe 7 due to intervening buildings, even with a nice powered antenna on the roof.
Plus, OTA digital has shorter range the same way FM radio has shorter travel range than AM. Just the nature of the signal and how fault-tolerant it is. Rural areas are more screwed by the change since they could make do with a less-powerful signal before and now just get cut off completely (plus, their "local" stations may not be as money-rich to afford the new transmission equipment).
City of Heroes: massive texture fail on anything preceding 170 drivers, unless you disable almost all features and set texture size to smallest.
Crysis: you've got to be kidding
Bioshock: same deal, massive texture fail below 170 drivers.
I could go on, but I trust I've made my point. And it'll only get worse as the next round of games come out.
The old drivers are tagged to only work with their accompanying driver version. When they went to the 170 driver series, they screwed us over.
You can't run the base 170 driver series with the 160-series stereo support driver, and newer games are going to require the 170 driver series. Functionally, people who've bought Nvidia for years and been loyal customers are being cynically dicked over.
Are you really that much of a moron? You obviously never used the technology; it runs at 120 Hz, and you get 60 Hz per eye. It runs off the monitor sync signal.
This isn't a "review", this is a paid-for advert disguised as one.
A few examples:
Active glasses for stereo 3D viewing are not a technology created by NVIDIA and in fact they have been around for some time as well. However, the quality of the glasses and the user experience has been low due to low frame rates (30 Hz to each eye usually) and bulky hardware.
Reality: Existing glasses solutions (from companies like EDimensional and preceding them, VRStandard) are just as slim as the NVidia offering and run at the same framerate (100-120 Hz).
As of today, NVIDIA's 3D technology will work with only two types of displays: true 120 Hz LCD monitors and 3D-Ready DLP projection televisions.
That's only because Nvidia has a monetary interest in forcing people to buy new hardware; the old glasses solutions worked just fine with true 120-Hz monitors, DLP projection TV's, and even standard CRT monitors until recently when Nvidia deliberately broke the drivers and made 3D-support only available on Windows Vista.
I feel it is also important to realize that while the 3D effects we are seeing today are really cool and well worth the investment of $199,
A pair of EDimensional glasses six months ago ran you $60-80 depending on where you bought them, and were exactly the same technology inside; all NVidia's done is changed which pin they're hiding the monitor/glasses sync signal in on the video cable. Charging $200 is fucking highway robbery and they know it.
It's a pity that "PC Perspective" ran a shitty, paid-for "review" and are trying to fool everyone. I call Scam because I see one.
No, previous systems worked just fine. I had a monitor capable of 1280x1024, 120 Hz (60 for each eye) and it was fan-fucking-tastic. I still have the hardware and would use it today if Nvidia hadn't fucked the consumer over by stripping their "3D system" driver add-on down to Vista-only and "buy our new hardware".
Nvidia fucked over the consumer with these.
I've had a pair of shutter glasses (as have a hell of a lot of other people) for years. For years, I was a fan of Nvidia because they included shutter support in an add-on driver release. I played Portal with my original-series VRStandard glasses and it was AMAZING.
Six months ago, Nvidia entered into a monetary partnership with people who make some shitty, half-assed "3d compatible" lcd monitors. All of a sudden, the latest version of the add-on driver (a) is Vista-Only (fucking bullshit) and (b) dropped support for anything but anaglyph, these "3d compatible lcd monitors", or "official Nvidia shutter glasses."
I'm not about to infect my computer with the Vista Virus to have this, much less have to go spend money on buying more new hardware that, internally, is exactly the fucking same as I already own except for having the monitor-sync bit use a different one of the 14 VGA pins to hide its left/right signal.
Fuck Nvidia till they start putting the consumer first again. And if they don't fix this and give us back the driver support, then I won't buy their cards anymore.
See also: How Obama Got Elected.
I've had Win ME installed on a system at home since 2001 and it's been running as close as it will get to flawlessly.
This is like saying you're getting "as close to good performance as I can" out of a Pinto or a Yugo.
Win ME is not nearly half as disastrous as most people will tell you, provided that you configure it correctly. Most of the out-of-the-box default settings glitchy at best and system crashing at worst, though going menu by menu and rearranging everything manually will fix most of its glaring problems (notably the RAM management and ballooning system restore folder).
Or you can just install 2000/XP, drop 98SE either into a separate partition or a virtual machine somewhere, and be plenty happy. And if we could get a virtual machine that emulated a proper video board (nothing fancy, just something reasonably above a freaking S3 Virge 3D decelerator like VMWare and VirtualPC do, even a basic GeForce would be good for most of the older titles that ask for Win98) I'd happily be able to load up pretty much any game and simply enjoy.
But the fact is, making good playable games is less profitable than making lousy games with pretty graphics.
That's because society, as a whole, has been breeding for stupidity for quite a few generations already.
You don't believe me? Consider this one. Or just the number of people who think that "reality TV" and (c)rap music are entertaining.
RIGHT up until you need to visit another city for any reason.
Say, a job interview. Looking to move. Visiting friends or relatives. Going home during winter break.
"My car goes 150 miles and I only drive 20 in a day" is nice. Lucky you. Now try living in a real city and not being a rich motherfucker who can afford to live that close to their job (the most affordable housing, alas, is OUTSIDE the work zone by a good 15 miles for most large metropolitan areas), visit someone a few hours away, or run errands back and forth around your city on your day off from work.
It's not practical. And whoever tells you otherwise is lying to you.
A girl at my high school had one of the first EV1s off the line, and didn't charge it but Wednesdays and Sundays in a normal week
A girl in high school does not have a "typical" driving pattern or even close to it.
Here's another problem to solve:
every one of these technologies degrades over time, as well as when heated. Their power production curves are mostly the "fall to near-zero instantly" type, with very little warning that they're running out of juice.
Say originally, someone has a car that got 250 miles per charge when they bought it midwinter. A year and a half later, it's midsummer, and a year's wear, so they're down to 220 miles on this charge. They tool along, thinking they are doing fine, only 218 miles... 219.... THUNK. Car stops or drops to a crawl, barely enough power to operate the new "energy saving" drive-by-wire steering (if that much) to pull off the road.
So now where are we? We have a dead car on the side of the road. Motorist assistance drops by, they're out of juice. Whoops, can't just give them a gallon or so of gas and point them down the road to the gas station 8 miles down... nope, have to get a hauler out there and have them towed. And then they have to figure out what their NEW battery life is, and worry about when their capacity drops to 200...190...180... and so on.
Yes, people do experience reduced gas mileage out of the life of the car, or when they get gas from an Ethanol-infested zone, or spots like that. But gas gauges are pretty damn reliable (unlike battery capacity readouts) and the people who do actually run out are probably boobs who tried to really run the tank dry and use up their reserve, or just weren't paying attention, instead of people who got fucked over by the tech itself and a lying battery life readout.
Yes, it was.
Without the stupid Jimmy Carter-style prohibitions on nuclear recycling, "nuclear waste repositories" would be completely unnecessary; we could re-refine our "nuclear waste" and the actual amount of real "waste" to date would be easily pit into a 100-gallon drum or two, stuffed into a rocket, and lobbed at the sun.
Not just that, they don't evaluate the OTHER problems caused by the technologies. Making solar panels for solar electrical generation generates massive quantities of toxic waste, which has to either be chemically treated or otherwise disposed of. Wind farms have massive problems of maintenance due to fluctuating conditions, and are unreliable at the best of times.
The most "reliable" of the lot is actually Geothermal, which is predictable. Solar and Wind both have weather-related (not joking here) problems; Tidal and Hydroelectric (river/dam-based) generation suffer whenever the water level changes due to rainfall or landmass motion.
Now admittedly, Ethanol is a fucking joke, especially corn-based ethanol which wastes 1.8 units of energy just to produce 1 unit of "energy" in the form of whiskey in the gas tank (you think I'm joking: I'm not). And Ethanol is also MURDER on engines.
And then there's the problem of burning food for fuel. I mean, seriously. That's an idea that came right out of the wrong side of an Animaniacs "Good Idea, Bad Idea" sketch if I ever saw one.
"Clean Coal"? Well, no combustion-based energy source will ever be "perfect", but I don't think that completely eliminating coal use overnight is possible, so I'm all for cleaning it up as much as is reasonable until we can phase it out over time (one big problem with the envirowacko movement, they always want things RIGHT NOW, they never can understand that you have to change things over time).
As for the rest... there's a reason that gasoline beat electrical batteries for automobile power sourcing in the early days and it still holds true today: our battery technology just has NOT caught up to where it needs to be. Gasoline allows for a fill-up to take 5-10 minutes tops, and a mobile range of a couple hundred miles before another fill-up. If you can't do that, then you can't compete with gasoline, and I'm sorry but that is just how it has to be.
"Hydrogen" isn't a real fuel source: you have to extract it from something, and store it somehow. IF we had nothing but electrical from "renewable" sources or properly refined Nuclear, it could theoretically be made viable (better utilized in fuel cells than a combustion engine, but still). Since the majority of our generation is still fossil-fuel based, generating hydrogen to "replace" gasoline will actually cause MORE emissions than just putting the fucking gas in our cars.
You obviously have never been forced to be around toddlers for any length of time. If you're not used to it and/or already emotionally geared towards it, that's torturous enough even without the big gay purple dino (or Tinky Winky etc) to deal with.
Actually, no.
Phased arrays of antennas can "direct energy" such that the interference points of the multiple waveforms reinforce and suppress in a specific pattern, but they cannot direct the energy merely to a single "point."
And, you are still not directing "all the energy" along that single point. Far from it, you are losing plenty of energy; it is still being sent through the dead zones, even if the waveforms from the multiple antennas are having the net effect of canceling each other. The energy is expended either (a) in the transmission medium or (b) upon whatever they reach when they deconverge past the cancellation point.
Miranda rights are for people picked up by the police, in a non-war zone.
They do not apply to enemy military personnel, especially enemy personnel wh fail to uphold their Geneva Convention responsibilities to dress in military uniform and carry their weapons openly (so as not to cause problems in telling military and civilians apart) who are picked up either (a) in the act of sabotage or (b) on the battlefield itself.
Finally: spies have NO rights, even in the Geneva Conventions.
Live and learn. If you ever learn.
I've been tortured by morons blasting their music in my apartment complex and out of cars with overly shaky bass systems constantly. I hereby protest these so-called "artists" and their crappy music.
Darnit, bumped the "submit" button early.
I think the biggest barrier to growth is the lack of music talent now compared to the times past which saw explosive growth in the 70's and 80's.
Not true, not true at all. There is plenty of new music talent out there; the problem is that the MafiAA companies no longer want to promote new talent, because new talent are not interested in selling their eternal souls to crappy slave-labor contracts, MafiAA "creative accounting" practices, and multi-album deals where the labels hold musicians hostage by claiming their final contracted album needs to be "re-done" over and over until they manage to blackmail the artist into signing an extension or giving up any hope of ever owning their own music.
Track the MafiAA's supposed "piracy loss" numbers against the number of new albums and new acts released, and you find a linear correlation that has absolutely nothing to do with "piracy."
But why take it from me? Take it instead from someone who's lived through MafiAA Hell herself.