That, actually, is sort of interesting. What would it take to create an Sony Aibo based scientific rover? Its already pretty mobile, just strip out the "personality AI" and load it up with chemical sensors and whatnot. It would obviously have to be "hardened" for the Martian environment, but I cant imagine that would be too dificult. Something like I described could possibly avoid hiccups like the rover that got stuck on a 2 inch or some such rock, iirc. Has anyone thought of taking the off the shelf form factor and applying it to a more "practical" use such as Mars exploration? I know Sony wasnt too happy with a guy modding his to dance disco, but this is more scientific and nerdy... Maybe they would even bother to sponsor some sort of development...
no I didnt rtfa, but I can attest to what I have gained from years of game playing. Playing quake and other fps's really tweaked my audio acuity many times over since I read somewhere soon after first getting quake 1, that a truely masterful player can tell where everything is in a room, just by listening. so I did that for a while, about 2 months, I would just listen and try to play through levels. It got very easy, and eventually I was able to beat it on normal skill without turning on my monitor. Nowadays, I can tell what someone is doing behind me or in the other room just from the sounds they generate.
I hope I am not the only one who can attest to years of mudding having increased typing speeds and accuracy. when its a matter of life or death, you learn speedily to type accurately. when I started mudding back in the 7th grade, I was typing at like 15-20wpm/10 errors, now after nearly a decade of mudding, I type ~100wpm/2 errors. I will admit though, that some terms from my mudding days have seeped into my daily vocabulary; more than once I have said things like "let me check my eq" when I meant to imply "let me see if I have that"... it gets scary...
let us not forget the hours and hours that we gamers have wasted on mini-puzzles and macro-puzzles that are tossed into games so frequently these days. I know for a fact that those skills have come in handy for me in the form of increased logical problem identification speeds.
I think I should shut up know, I have a feeling I am going to be modded into oblivion...
I agree with your points on the MPAA/RIAA.. however, I am in disagreement with your prices. To quote
Scalp a 33 cent ticket for 36 cents?
But thats where the prices start. If they end at lets say, $8.50, and you are selling them for $5 (I realize I originally said 10% off, but thats really not worth it at these prices, it would result in a ticket of $7.55, and hardly worth the hastle) , and you got it for $0.33, you are making $4.57, not too bad, surely more than the printing costs. Now you sell 200 an hour, your at $914... not too bad for an hours worth of work. As for costs, you have your initial investment in the scanner, comp and printer, lets say thats a thousand dollars and your recurring costs of toner (laser printers = higher quality + more prints/cartridge versus inkjet), and paper and lets say thats $50 a night (3 reams of paper a night and a new toner cartridge once a month). At the end of the month, claiming an average of 4 hours a day of sales, each hour averaging $700, thats $2800 a day, ~15 days a month (weekends, prime movie releases) your talking $42000, not too shabby. You pay back your initial investment in the first night and have enough cash to cover expenses for the rest of the month. The rest is just cream.
Then again, I am probably just completely wrong and I am sure, since this is/., atleast 1 person will correct me.. *shrugs* such is life...
They do in fact sell tickets at the theater, via kiosks in the lobby. to quote:
Seats have to be booked on the internet, either from home or at one of a half-dozen computers in the lobby of the cinema.
So there:p... I still think my point is valid. Never said it would be practical. Defeating barcode based security wouldnt be that hard. Part of the barcode would have to identify the movie, and part probably the date. they cant segment by location, since you can order tickets from multiple locations. so it becomes a case of buying multiple tickets for several different movies, and if possible, different locations, and analyzing them. I cant really imagine this to be too hard, as they seem to be aiming for simplicity and cheap-ness, and as such, probably would not dedicate a whole lot of energy to creating Un-defeatable tickets.
heres a geeky pipedream... create a barcode generator for your favorite handheld device, based on your analysis from above, and BAM!... free admit anytime you feel like catchin a picture show... now thats nice... *drool*
am I the only one who sees the myriad of scalping possibilities with this plan? go in, buy a ticket at the cheapest possible price. The movie doesnt start for an hour or whatever, so you leave and come back. That is what I assume they expect for the cheapskates, as they dont have any reason to stay, its no frills.
But if you are enterprising, you just grab a small business card scanner, turn it into a image and duplicate it... clip and sell for late commers at 10% of the now higher price.. works great for multiple day runs too, come back whenever you want to see it again... whos going to check your ticket? a barcode scanner...
what happens of the person uploads the barcode to the itnernet? Now thousands could get in free.. Imagine the reprocussions for a flick like LOTR:ROTK... could be tragic... The geek to sheep ratio on that film alone could ruin the film industry.... Heres hoping!!:D
To be absolutely honest, I might be conned into using something like this.. it looks simple enough, and there are times that all I really need to do is IM someone. ATM it only uses Aim though, which is a drawback to users of other IM'ng services, though the article does mention possibility of expansion. overall I give it a 2.5 out of 10.. its being marketed too specifically towards kids, I imagine it could be useful in leu of telephones in some business applications where its necessary to just say a word or 10. The Aim only thing is also a pain..the size and weight are also drawbacks, along with a crappy screen.. 9 lines of b&w text? why no color screen? even 16 color is better than b&w.. *shrug*
wonder how long it will be till someone makes it run on linux.. *ducks*
here is a link to a video I found on techtv with the chair... Their site seems to be slowly going the way of the bison though...
and here is a text clippet from the FreshGear section where I found the video:
You've got all the gadgets to make the perfect home office, but it still has to look cool. If you're willing to pay the premium, a company called Personal Computing Environments in Los Angeles will customize a look that's just your fit.
"Fresh Gear" took a look at PCE's flagship MasterPeace. Here's what it's configured with:
* Two 17-inch flat panel displays
* Dolby 5.1 surround sound
* 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor
* 2GB DDR RAM
* 180GB hard drive
* Radion 9700 Pro graphics card with 128MB of video RAM
* Audigy Platinum sound card
* An adjustable frame connecting the components together
Click on the video icon above to see PCE's MasterPeace up close.
Company: Personal Computing Environments
Price: $4,000 for PeaceMaker; over $7,000 for MasterPeace
I think alot of people are sort of missing the mark, suggesting leaving stuff on hard drives with minimal installs, and also moving the files around as new hardware becomes available. Why not just keep an entire pc, strictly meant for playback, once you get the collection digitized. Once the PC is configured for playback, using whatever your favorite OS might be, and having the data stored in some convenient fashion on hard drives or dvd's, simply unplug the damn thing and let it be. Its now your archive. Take care of it. If nothing physically damages it, it should be fine in 20 years. Your biggest problem then becomes providing power, which shouldnt be that hard to rig.
Just wait for the Airbus A380....Now in my opinion, that is a damn fine plane... Very spacious, and while not the fastest plane in the world, mightily efficient at what it does.
Now yes, there maybe some coolness lost to the Concorde, but come on... The grand stairway alone makes it all up for me... Finally, a plane suitable for tall people (under 6'6" need not apply:P)
I think that it has a bit more to do with people using the librarys PC's to access the Internet, and investigative parties forcing the libraries to turn over who uses which public PC and when. I am not clear, however, I do believe this to be more of the point than which book is being borrowed... Why should they have to tell (your favorite alphabet soup group) which PC I was using?....
The Pentagon released a report today announcing the ban of all light emiitting sources by anyone near any military action. The reason for such a move is that it makes it easier for the terrorist/enemy to locate American troops in the field by usin a little known technology called "Vision". This technology, only used by evil evil terrorists is somehow connected to the mutation of devices scientists are now calling "eyes". Donald Rumsfeld announced new investigations into the linkage of this mutation and the Al Quaeda, Osama Bin Laden, and McDonalds french fries. He also said today that America would be launching a preventive strike against this new evil terroist weapon, its now 5th on the list, after Iraq, Osama, Kim Jong Il, and rap music.
More on this breaking story as it happens. Coming up next, How to eat all the fat and preservatives you want and still lose 40lbs a day.
someone would get a nice little pile of evidence against these lawmakers and policy setters to prove that they are doing exactly the opposite of what they preach. For these anti-vpn people as well as the **AA's... Wouldnt it be marvelous just to get the specs on the no-vpn guy's "special connection" from his house in the hills to the office. oh crap, its a vpn connection... oooops... Imagine Hillary Rosen with an armload of bootleg cd's. I wonder if she has a burner in her pc. or 4, because its a 40x, and we know thats worth atleast 4 drives because its fast....
sorry... this is just another in the long line of wtf laws and policies that I see being proliferated...
[ot.. well, more ot]I hope there isnt another troll storm.. I see the beginings of one[/ot]
Because simply put; That would make sense. Look around. When was the last time you can say that, and not either be lying or looking at things in a miniscule scale.
Your critique of high school is astute, but the condescending attitude is pretty much unjustified.
I dont think so, as I was recently in high school, this attitude formed recently and has only been clarified by revisiting my old school and seeing it slip down hill. (for milwaukeeans interested, try stopping by Washington High and see what I mean)
As to the points of "readability" of a text, I had an opprotunity to examine a few books that were under consideration for a friend of mines school for the following year. For the most part, the revisions came down to the adding of a few charts and graphs, and maybe the occasional URL. If this is an improvement, it is one that I can not see. Granted, the books I glanced through are not examples of the given authors work, but I take them as examples of the initiative in general to make education accessible to the masses.
This might be true. But neither you nor your high school are even remotely qualified to judge that. There is very little correlation between those who excel in school and those who succeed in life (however you like to measure that, I've not room to go into more detail here).
I agree whole heartedly with this statement, but I do believe a crutial piece of information is being missed. My statements are based upon the initiative in my local public school district to create "Schools within a school", specialized academies for things like IT, The Arts, and Health Resources (whatever that means...). This movement is trying to get kids into tracks of education specializing them for the supposed work force. The problem is that the majority of these kids dont have a 8th grade reading level, so how can they come up with a plan for life? Meanwhile, the kids who are the brighter half of the class are being herded into classes with the dimmer kids, and classes are being geared for the entire class, creating alienation. My whole point is that if they are going to get kids into career tracks, why not reduce that even further and put the kids who really want to learn into their own sections? This would only help, and keep the numbers, ie GPA and attendance and the such, the numbers which seem to count to the school board, high. My old high school did this for years, it was called the R&D program. Kids who were interested in science and technology went into the R&D program, and were groomed for college by way of more challenging classes and the AP programs.
I realize I am seemingly going off on a tangent, but my whole point is that this textbook reform, if done improperly, is nothing more than a disservice to a large percentage of students. It is also a product of the emerging national movement of school to work programs in high school. Dont beleive that the school to work program is gaining ground? Just google it, or maybe "school within a school"
I wasnt part of the IB program, but took several AP courses. For the most part, these were the teachers that werent the meat farmers, they actually cared about the course work, thats why they didnt have a single text for the class.
You have to admit that these revisions of text books arent meant for the dedicated teachers to make their lives easier, those teachers already have plans and work to make their students education as good as possible . These Textbook revisions are meant for teachers who simply, for lack of a better analogy, are sheep farmers, getting their sheep ready for market.
maybe you didnt catch the part where I was saying I am a product of that system. That being a given, I dont believe your arguments against my post hold much water. A few mispellings, a couple gramatical errors, and whatnot, but aparently you got my point... so whats wit the bitching?? Your mad that I called educators sheep? its been my experience that most are. They are there for the check, and not to provide anything that can be equated to a quality education. I am not saying calculus/physics dullards are inferior, to be honest, I am captain of that particular dullard academy. I chose to take CCNA as apposed to calculus, as I had my 4 years of math already (took advanced math 1 and trig my junior year). I think people should be offended in general that these things are not more readily available to youth before college. I did not intend to offend you, you should be offended to be willing to call yourself a dullard in that subject. I know I am.
as far as my being able to show fancy equations to upper management, Management can bite my ass...
Slashdot Mirror
just a thought...
Trinity is the agent
I hope I am not the only one who can attest to years of mudding having increased typing speeds and accuracy. when its a matter of life or death, you learn speedily to type accurately. when I started mudding back in the 7th grade, I was typing at like 15-20wpm /10 errors, now after nearly a decade of mudding, I type ~100wpm /2 errors. I will admit though, that some terms from my mudding days have seeped into my daily vocabulary; more than once I have said things like "let me check my eq" when I meant to imply "let me see if I have that" ... it gets scary...
let us not forget the hours and hours that we gamers have wasted on mini-puzzles and macro-puzzles that are tossed into games so frequently these days. I know for a fact that those skills have come in handy for me in the form of increased logical problem identification speeds.
I think I should shut up know, I have a feeling I am going to be modded into oblivion...
Then again, I am probably just completely wrong and I am sure, since this is
So there :p... I still think my point is valid. Never said it would be practical. Defeating barcode based security wouldnt be that hard. Part of the barcode would have to identify the movie, and part probably the date. they cant segment by location, since you can order tickets from multiple locations. so it becomes a case of buying multiple tickets for several different movies, and if possible, different locations, and analyzing them. I cant really imagine this to be too hard, as they seem to be aiming for simplicity and cheap-ness, and as such, probably would not dedicate a whole lot of energy to creating Un-defeatable tickets.
heres a geeky pipedream... create a barcode generator for your favorite handheld device, based on your analysis from above, and BAM! ... free admit anytime you feel like catchin a picture show... now thats nice... *drool*
am I the only one who sees the myriad of scalping possibilities with this plan? go in, buy a ticket at the cheapest possible price. The movie doesnt start for an hour or whatever, so you leave and come back. That is what I assume they expect for the cheapskates, as they dont have any reason to stay, its no frills.
... clip and sell for late commers at 10% of the now higher price.. works great for multiple day runs too, come back whenever you want to see it again... whos going to check your ticket? a barcode scanner...
... could be tragic... The geek to sheep ratio on that film alone could ruin the film industry.... Heres hoping!! :D
But if you are enterprising, you just grab a small business card scanner, turn it into a image and duplicate it
what happens of the person uploads the barcode to the itnernet? Now thousands could get in free.. Imagine the reprocussions for a flick like LOTR:ROTK
wonder how long it will be till someone makes it run on linux .. *ducks*
not quite.. I believe he is talking about this little charm in ice-t's past...
*cough*donthinkso*cough*
and here is a text clippet from the FreshGear section where I found the video:
You've got all the gadgets to make the perfect home office, but it still has to look cool. If you're willing to pay the premium, a company called Personal Computing Environments in Los Angeles will customize a look that's just your fit.
"Fresh Gear" took a look at PCE's flagship MasterPeace. Here's what it's configured with:
* Two 17-inch flat panel displays
* Dolby 5.1 surround sound
* 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor
* 2GB DDR RAM
* 180GB hard drive
* Radion 9700 Pro graphics card with 128MB of video RAM
* Audigy Platinum sound card
* An adjustable frame connecting the components together
Click on the video icon above to see PCE's MasterPeace up close.
Company: Personal Computing Environments
Price: $4,000 for PeaceMaker; over $7,000 for MasterPeace
Available: Now
just a poor geeks dream...
just my $.02
Step 2) Arange equipment in nice steel shipping container.
Step 3) Toss the entire thing into the bowels of either your local foundry's furnace or your closest actively erupting volcano
Step 4) Giggle because the poster never said the network had to work or anything....
"How many bands can a broadband broad if a broadband could broad bands?"
I am the picker of nits....
Now yes, there maybe some coolness lost to the Concorde, but come on... The grand stairway alone makes it all up for me... Finally, a plane suitable for tall people (under 6'6" need not apply :P)
unless I am off, which I might be...
More on this breaking story as it happens. Coming up next, How to eat all the fat and preservatives you want and still lose 40lbs a day.
someone would get a nice little pile of evidence against these lawmakers and policy setters to prove that they are doing exactly the opposite of what they preach. For these anti-vpn people as well as the **AA's... Wouldnt it be marvelous just to get the specs on the no-vpn guy's "special connection" from his house in the hills to the office. oh crap, its a vpn connection... oooops... Imagine Hillary Rosen with an armload of bootleg cd's. I wonder if she has a burner in her pc. or 4, because its a 40x, and we know thats worth atleast 4 drives because its fast....
sorry... this is just another in the long line of wtf laws and policies that I see being proliferated...
[ot.. well, more ot]I hope there isnt another troll storm.. I see the beginings of one[/ot]
Derg is a google Master
Because simply put; That would make sense. Look around. When was the last time you can say that, and not either be lying or looking at things in a miniscule scale.
[name of spiritual leader / deity] Help Us. Its the begining of the end.
I dont think so, as I was recently in high school, this attitude formed recently and has only been clarified by revisiting my old school and seeing it slip down hill. (for milwaukeeans interested, try stopping by Washington High and see what I mean)
As to the points of "readability" of a text, I had an opprotunity to examine a few books that were under consideration for a friend of mines school for the following year. For the most part, the revisions came down to the adding of a few charts and graphs, and maybe the occasional URL. If this is an improvement, it is one that I can not see. Granted, the books I glanced through are not examples of the given authors work, but I take them as examples of the initiative in general to make education accessible to the masses.
This might be true. But neither you nor your high school are even remotely qualified to judge that. There is very little correlation between those who excel in school and those who succeed in life (however you like to measure that, I've not room to go into more detail here).
I agree whole heartedly with this statement, but I do believe a crutial piece of information is being missed. My statements are based upon the initiative in my local public school district to create "Schools within a school", specialized academies for things like IT, The Arts, and Health Resources (whatever that means...). This movement is trying to get kids into tracks of education specializing them for the supposed work force. The problem is that the majority of these kids dont have a 8th grade reading level, so how can they come up with a plan for life? Meanwhile, the kids who are the brighter half of the class are being herded into classes with the dimmer kids, and classes are being geared for the entire class, creating alienation. My whole point is that if they are going to get kids into career tracks, why not reduce that even further and put the kids who really want to learn into their own sections? This would only help, and keep the numbers, ie GPA and attendance and the such, the numbers which seem to count to the school board, high. My old high school did this for years, it was called the R&D program. Kids who were interested in science and technology went into the R&D program, and were groomed for college by way of more challenging classes and the AP programs.
I realize I am seemingly going off on a tangent, but my whole point is that this textbook reform, if done improperly, is nothing more than a disservice to a large percentage of students. It is also a product of the emerging national movement of school to work programs in high school. Dont beleive that the school to work program is gaining ground? Just google it, or maybe "school within a school"
I wasnt part of the IB program, but took several AP courses. For the most part, these were the teachers that werent the meat farmers, they actually cared about the course work, thats why they didnt have a single text for the class.
You have to admit that these revisions of text books arent meant for the dedicated teachers to make their lives easier, those teachers already have plans and work to make their students education as good as possible . These Textbook revisions are meant for teachers who simply, for lack of a better analogy, are sheep farmers, getting their sheep ready for market.
maybe you didnt catch the part where I was saying I am a product of that system. That being a given, I dont believe your arguments against my post hold much water. A few mispellings, a couple gramatical errors, and whatnot, but aparently you got my point. .. so whats wit the bitching?? Your mad that I called educators sheep? its been my experience that most are. They are there for the check, and not to provide anything that can be equated to a quality education. I am not saying calculus/physics dullards are inferior, to be honest, I am captain of that particular dullard academy. I chose to take CCNA as apposed to calculus, as I had my 4 years of math already (took advanced math 1 and trig my junior year). I think people should be offended in general that these things are not more readily available to youth before college. I did not intend to offend you, you should be offended to be willing to call yourself a dullard in that subject. I know I am.
as far as my being able to show fancy equations to upper management, Management can bite my ass...