It doesn't really provide a lot of income, but occasionally on weekends I work as a monorail driver at Disney World. Not many more things in life are as cool as getting paid to play with a 70-ton electric train set.:-) It's not all driving - there's a lot of platform work, and dealing with the tourists can sometimes be a PITA, but in general I enjoy it, especially come summertime when the scantily-clad Brazilian girls start visiting the parks...
I agree about the thoughts on morphine, although I would describe my experience with it as not really doing anything for the pain, but putting me in a state where I really didn't care about it.:-) The overwhelming nausea that came later made me wonder how anyone could find taking it pleasurable to the point of voluntarily taking enough of it to become addicted.
And let's not forget our wonderful War On Drugs here in the U.S., which benefits almost no one outside the government and where seized assets become the property of the agency responsible for the seizure without the benefit of due process in many cases. If we could get the legislature to change the law such that speeding fines and other monetary penalties went into the state's general fund instead of going to the agency responsible for said fines, I think it would take away a lot of the incentive for some of the ridiculous fines and seizures we see nowadays.
In LED's, IR is doubled in frequency by a Q cell to make UV which then hits a coating to comvert it to visable.
Almost, but not quite - frequency-doubled IR ends up as green or blue, not UV. This is how those spiffy green laser pointers work - they use an IR laser diode for the initial beam and then run it through a KTP or other similar frequency doubling crystal to get the (*much* lower power) green light.
White LEDs are simply blue LEDs with a blue-sensitive phosphor, and didn't really appear on the market until Nichia got the blue ones right.
On the Test Track attraction at Disney's Epcot park, you can actually see this in action. The attraction contains a number of individually controlled vehicles, but at the unload queue they tend to stack up a bit. The wayside computer signals when the queue becomes clear, and all of the cars waiting in line (usually 3 or 4) to get to the unload platform all begin moving at once and at exactly the same speed. Kinda freaky to see it in action.
Non-competes often are not worth the paper they're written on - just because it's there doesn't mean it's enforceable, particularly if it effectively denies a living to the employee. EA might be able to get away with a non-compete forbidding the employee from working for a games company for six months or a year, but most states would frown upon anything more strict than that.
Re:No, A Dual Joystick Controller Really Is Better
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Halo 2 Released
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You probably had a better-than-average keyboard then.
How the computer processes keystrokes doesn't have anything to do with this. True n-key rollover (where you can press any arbitrary number of keys and get exactly what you've pressed) is a function of how the keyboard itself is wired, and there aren't many keyboards out there that support it. The problems mentioned before occur because the keyboard is wired such that certain keys in combination will short-circuit the key matrix, preventing the CPU in the keyboard from being able to see all of the keys that are down. If the keyboard CPU can't see the keys, it can't send key-up/key-down messages to the computer, so regardless of which input API you use, you won't see those keystrokes because they never made it out of the keyboard.
Of all the computers I've owned, I think my Amigas are the only ones that had real n-key rollover.
That's because the humain eye is more sensitive to luminance than to chrominance (try to recognize colors in the dark, you can't, but you can still read B&W text)
While you're correct that the eye is more sensitive to brightness than color, the demonstration you offered is somewhat flawed - you're effectively using a separate visual system in low-light conditions. Below a certain light level, the color-perceiving cones won't work, so the eye uses the non-color-sensitive rods, which are much more sensitive to small variations in brightness. Luminous displays of any kind are generally way too bright for the rods to be involved (see "rhodopsin" or "visual purple"), unless they're a very dim red color.
No, I'm saying that the majority of defensive uses of a gun don't involve the discharge of the weapon, and consequently don't have any injuries or fatalities at all.
Intentional, non-suicide firearm injuries will have about the same rates of injury and lethality, regardless of whether the situation is a DGU or not.
I don't think you can make this assumption - defensive uses will tend to have a lower fatality rate simply because the shooter is likely to be suffering from a substantial loss of fine motor control due to the fight-or-flight response. One can train to get around this problem, but the vast majority of people haven't.
Kleck's survey reported that 8% of defensive gun uses involved the target being wounded or killed. With Kleck's estimate of 2,500,000 DGUs per year, that gives us 200,000 DGU-caused firearm deaths or injuries per year.
Studies have shown that approximately 23% of firearm injuries are fatal. Accordingly, Kleck's survey numbers imply that DGUs account for 46,000 killings by firearm per year.
You've got a problem with your comparison here - Kleck was comparing defensive usage *only*, whereas the UoP study didn't make any distinctions between how the injuries were sustained, so comparing the percentages is comparing apples to oranges as it's possible that at least some of the Pittsburgh injuries/fatalities were the result of gang violence or other non-defensive activities. As you note later in your post, "defensive usage" can be something as simple as "accidentally" letting your concealed pistol print when someone suspicious approaches you, and as such doesn't even require the weapon to be drawn. It's still a valid defensive use of the weapon.
I've not actually read the Kleck study, but I've heard it referred to often - I need to get cracking on my reading.:-)
A.45 hollow-point is unlikely to go through the target either - it's a low-pressure, low-velocity round that's designed to dump as much of its energy into the target as quickly as possible.:-) A.45 FMJ *might* go through someone, but why would someone be using that for self-defense?
And just to piss you off, I can broadcast a full-power time signal at several places on the 2.4 GHz band, and there's really nothing you'd be able to do about it.:-)
*real* operators don' need no steenkin' analyzer to find radiators.:-)
I agree with that. However, reading the article would have shown that's not the issue at hand. The issue is the prohibition of APs connected to private networks.
b) The FCC currently isn't doing its job; they are allowing companies to set standards and sell gear that does interfere.
That's what Part 15 is all about, sheesh. If you are going to put critical infrastructure on unlicensed spectrum, you have to accept that there will be interference. If you don't like the interference, pony up for protected spectrum and work out some way of using it. Would you rather require every AP purchaser to get an allocation and only then send them the crystal for their unit?
Students can use the university's access points. If they set up their own they would interfere with the network that the university has setup. The university should have the right to protect their network infrastructure on campus.
Then the university shouldn't be using unlicensed spectrum that they have no legal authority to regulate as the basis for their network connectivity. If it's that big of a problem for them, let them petition for a FCC license and roll their own APs on their licensed frequencies.
IANAL and this isn't legal advice, but I see a rather big problem - the store offered to sell under a specific set of terms (price + shipping to his residence), and the customer offered to buy at those terms, which formed a legal contract obligating the store to sell the item on those terms. Attempting to ring up the sale is pretty strong evidence of both parties' agreement to the terms of sale, and I think if the original poster wanted to press it hard enough, the store would be forced to ship his item, open-box or not. Ignorance on the part of the salesman shouldn't absolve the store of its legal responsibilities - the salesman is empowered to enter into this kind of contract for the store, so it really should be honored.
That depends on your locality - many cities have volunteer programs where the city pays for the equipment and gives a tax break to the participants. The last time I was there, Virginia Beach, VA had a very large volunteer program, and didn't charge a penny for it.
I've seen this happen with a number of people. I'm guessing that having the alcohol in your system makes you relax, which improves your stroke and follow-through. A lot of people hold the cue much too tightly and try to control their stroke way too much, resulting in a stilted, unnatural motion - remove these impediments and it's quite possible that your shooting will get better.
The bottom line is that blocking all law enforcement access to these technologies is going to cost people their lives, but letting the pigs sniff around where they don't belong is going to ruin everyone's life. This is just another balancing act in the giant circus we call a democratic society.
I'll consider a sweet spot when we get a government that will accept responsibility for its actions. As it is, neither law enforcement nor anyone else in the executive branch is legally responsible for anyone's safety. We lost thousands of people and billions of dollars on 9/11, yet no one who allowed it to happen by failing to do their job will be held accountable in any meaningful way. Why should I let the government erode yet more civil liberties when it refuses to accept responsibility when it screws up? Sure, we can vote new people into office, but the vast majority of the folks we really have to worry about are appointed, and thus more or less untouchable by the public. Look at Lon Horiuchi, who carelessly shot and killed Vicki Weaver during the Ruby Ridge standoff, and the way in which the federal government prevented the state of Idaho from bringing him to justice. Fuck those who feel they need more power just to do their jobs - if they can't do them with the vast resources already at hand, get them out and get people in who can.
If Real's after the fact authorizations screw up, say, 0.5% of the iPods out there in a way that requires a support call, thats 3,000,000 *.005 = 15,000 calls. Even if Apple tells every one of those people "tough break, it's your own damned fault" that's still 15,000 calls times however many minutes each call averages.
How is this different from the support calls Dell or any other manufacturer gets when some badly written applications software tanks Windows and the customer is on the phone bitching about it? It's not Dell's fault, but when you build a product for distribution to the general public, you have to accept that you're going to get support calls. A great big "wah!" goes out to those companies that want to bitch about that.
I probably have more Apple products in my home than most/.ers, and I really like Apple's design philosophy and the fact that *out of the box*, the stuff generally works well. However, Apple doesn't have the right to tell me what I can and can't do with the equipment I own, nor do I think they should be allowed to tell a competitor what they can do simply because it might inconvenience them. Apple is wrong on this one, and they'll just need to deal with the upset customers and explain to them that it's their own fault for screwing their iPod up, just like the auto dealer will refuse to honor your warranty if you show up with an engine you blew while racing. Refer 'em to Real, and let them deal with it.
This touches on an interesting point - who's to say that a hundred years from now, computers will have the same basic architecture as they do now? The basic ideas of bytes, words, long words, RAM, ROM, etc. may all be obsolete, so not only would one need to preserve the data itself, they'd need to provide a primer on exactly how this data is represented and how this system it runs on works. If you took someone from 40 years ago that was used to punching in code/data on cards or on a maintenance panel and stuck them in front of a modern PC, they'd be lost, just as a lot of modern programmers with no mainframe experience get lost when you stick them in front of something as new as a S/390. It's reasonable to assume that computers will have some seriously fundamental changes over the next couple hundred years or so, so there's a need to preserve more than just the code and data.
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The only hard part is getting subsonic ammunitions,
.45 ACP in Wal-Mart) It is?
(looks at the Winchester White Box 100 packs of
It doesn't really provide a lot of income, but occasionally on weekends I work as a monorail driver at Disney World. Not many more things in life are as cool as getting paid to play with a 70-ton electric train set. :-) It's not all driving - there's a lot of platform work, and dealing with the tourists can sometimes be a PITA, but in general I enjoy it, especially come summertime when the scantily-clad Brazilian girls start visiting the parks...
I agree about the thoughts on morphine, although I would describe my experience with it as not really doing anything for the pain, but putting me in a state where I really didn't care about it. :-) The overwhelming nausea that came later made me wonder how anyone could find taking it pleasurable to the point of voluntarily taking enough of it to become addicted.
And let's not forget our wonderful War On Drugs here in the U.S., which benefits almost no one outside the government and where seized assets become the property of the agency responsible for the seizure without the benefit of due process in many cases. If we could get the legislature to change the law such that speeding fines and other monetary penalties went into the state's general fund instead of going to the agency responsible for said fines, I think it would take away a lot of the incentive for some of the ridiculous fines and seizures we see nowadays.
In LED's, IR is doubled in frequency by a Q cell to make UV which then hits a coating to comvert it to visable.
Almost, but not quite - frequency-doubled IR ends up as green or blue, not UV. This is how those spiffy green laser pointers work - they use an IR laser diode for the initial beam and then run it through a KTP or other similar frequency doubling crystal to get the (*much* lower power) green light.
White LEDs are simply blue LEDs with a blue-sensitive phosphor, and didn't really appear on the market until Nichia got the blue ones right.
On the Test Track attraction at Disney's Epcot park, you can actually see this in action. The attraction contains a number of individually controlled vehicles, but at the unload queue they tend to stack up a bit. The wayside computer signals when the queue becomes clear, and all of the cars waiting in line (usually 3 or 4) to get to the unload platform all begin moving at once and at exactly the same speed. Kinda freaky to see it in action.
Actually, "Brother Bear" was the last Florida production.
Non-competes often are not worth the paper they're written on - just because it's there doesn't mean it's enforceable, particularly if it effectively denies a living to the employee. EA might be able to get away with a non-compete forbidding the employee from working for a games company for six months or a year, but most states would frown upon anything more strict than that.
You probably had a better-than-average keyboard then.
How the computer processes keystrokes doesn't have anything to do with this. True n-key rollover (where you can press any arbitrary number of keys and get exactly what you've pressed) is a function of how the keyboard itself is wired, and there aren't many keyboards out there that support it. The problems mentioned before occur because the keyboard is wired such that certain keys in combination will short-circuit the key matrix, preventing the CPU in the keyboard from being able to see all of the keys that are down. If the keyboard CPU can't see the keys, it can't send key-up/key-down messages to the computer, so regardless of which input API you use, you won't see those keystrokes because they never made it out of the keyboard.
Of all the computers I've owned, I think my Amigas are the only ones that had real n-key rollover.
That's because the humain eye is more sensitive to luminance than to chrominance (try to recognize colors in the dark, you can't, but you can still read B&W text)
While you're correct that the eye is more sensitive to brightness than color, the demonstration you offered is somewhat flawed - you're effectively using a separate visual system in low-light conditions. Below a certain light level, the color-perceiving cones won't work, so the eye uses the non-color-sensitive rods, which are much more sensitive to small variations in brightness. Luminous displays of any kind are generally way too bright for the rods to be involved (see "rhodopsin" or "visual purple"), unless they're a very dim red color.
No, I'm saying that the majority of defensive uses of a gun don't involve the discharge of the weapon, and consequently don't have any injuries or fatalities at all.
Intentional, non-suicide firearm injuries will have about the same rates of injury and lethality, regardless of whether the situation is a DGU or not.
I don't think you can make this assumption - defensive uses will tend to have a lower fatality rate simply because the shooter is likely to be suffering from a substantial loss of fine motor control due to the fight-or-flight response. One can train to get around this problem, but the vast majority of people haven't.
Kleck's survey reported that 8% of defensive gun uses involved the target being wounded or killed. With Kleck's estimate of 2,500,000 DGUs per year, that gives us 200,000 DGU-caused firearm deaths or injuries per year. Studies have shown that approximately 23% of firearm injuries are fatal. Accordingly, Kleck's survey numbers imply that DGUs account for 46,000 killings by firearm per year.
:-)
You've got a problem with your comparison here - Kleck was comparing defensive usage *only*, whereas the UoP study didn't make any distinctions between how the injuries were sustained, so comparing the percentages is comparing apples to oranges as it's possible that at least some of the Pittsburgh injuries/fatalities were the result of gang violence or other non-defensive activities. As you note later in your post, "defensive usage" can be something as simple as "accidentally" letting your concealed pistol print when someone suspicious approaches you, and as such doesn't even require the weapon to be drawn. It's still a valid defensive use of the weapon. I've not actually read the Kleck study, but I've heard it referred to often - I need to get cracking on my reading.
A .45 hollow-point is unlikely to go through the target either - it's a low-pressure, low-velocity round that's designed to dump as much of its energy into the target as quickly as possible. :-) A .45 FMJ *might* go through someone, but why would someone be using that for self-defense?
And just to piss you off, I can broadcast a full-power time signal at several places on the 2.4 GHz band, and there's really nothing you'd be able to do about it. :-)
*real* operators don' need no steenkin' analyzer to find radiators. :-)
I agree with that. However, reading the article would have shown that's not the issue at hand. The issue is the prohibition of APs connected to private networks.
b) The FCC currently isn't doing its job; they are allowing companies to set standards and sell gear that does interfere.
That's what Part 15 is all about, sheesh. If you are going to put critical infrastructure on unlicensed spectrum, you have to accept that there will be interference. If you don't like the interference, pony up for protected spectrum and work out some way of using it. Would you rather require every AP purchaser to get an allocation and only then send them the crystal for their unit?
Students can use the university's access points. If they set up their own they would interfere with the network that the university has setup. The university should have the right to protect their network infrastructure on campus.
Then the university shouldn't be using unlicensed spectrum that they have no legal authority to regulate as the basis for their network connectivity. If it's that big of a problem for them, let them petition for a FCC license and roll their own APs on their licensed frequencies.
The government brings civil actions all the time - speeding tickets, for instance.
IANAL and this isn't legal advice, but I see a rather big problem - the store offered to sell under a specific set of terms (price + shipping to his residence), and the customer offered to buy at those terms, which formed a legal contract obligating the store to sell the item on those terms. Attempting to ring up the sale is pretty strong evidence of both parties' agreement to the terms of sale, and I think if the original poster wanted to press it hard enough, the store would be forced to ship his item, open-box or not. Ignorance on the part of the salesman shouldn't absolve the store of its legal responsibilities - the salesman is empowered to enter into this kind of contract for the store, so it really should be honored.
That depends on your locality - many cities have volunteer programs where the city pays for the equipment and gives a tax break to the participants. The last time I was there, Virginia Beach, VA had a very large volunteer program, and didn't charge a penny for it.
I've seen this happen with a number of people. I'm guessing that having the alcohol in your system makes you relax, which improves your stroke and follow-through. A lot of people hold the cue much too tightly and try to control their stroke way too much, resulting in a stilted, unnatural motion - remove these impediments and it's quite possible that your shooting will get better.
As long as the bot has one foot on the floor, it's still legal. :-)
The bottom line is that blocking all law enforcement access to these technologies is going to cost people their lives, but letting the pigs sniff around where they don't belong is going to ruin everyone's life. This is just another balancing act in the giant circus we call a democratic society.
I'll consider a sweet spot when we get a government that will accept responsibility for its actions. As it is, neither law enforcement nor anyone else in the executive branch is legally responsible for anyone's safety. We lost thousands of people and billions of dollars on 9/11, yet no one who allowed it to happen by failing to do their job will be held accountable in any meaningful way. Why should I let the government erode yet more civil liberties when it refuses to accept responsibility when it screws up? Sure, we can vote new people into office, but the vast majority of the folks we really have to worry about are appointed, and thus more or less untouchable by the public. Look at Lon Horiuchi, who carelessly shot and killed Vicki Weaver during the Ruby Ridge standoff, and the way in which the federal government prevented the state of Idaho from bringing him to justice. Fuck those who feel they need more power just to do their jobs - if they can't do them with the vast resources already at hand, get them out and get people in who can.
If Real's after the fact authorizations screw up, say, 0.5% of the iPods out there in a way that requires a support call, thats 3,000,000 * .005 = 15,000 calls. Even if Apple tells every one of those people "tough break, it's your own damned fault" that's still 15,000 calls times however many minutes each call averages.
/.ers, and I really like Apple's design philosophy and the fact that *out of the box*, the stuff generally works well. However, Apple doesn't have the right to tell me what I can and can't do with the equipment I own, nor do I think they should be allowed to tell a competitor what they can do simply because it might inconvenience them. Apple is wrong on this one, and they'll just need to deal with the upset customers and explain to them that it's their own fault for screwing their iPod up, just like the auto dealer will refuse to honor your warranty if you show up with an engine you blew while racing. Refer 'em to Real, and let them deal with it.
How is this different from the support calls Dell or any other manufacturer gets when some badly written applications software tanks Windows and the customer is on the phone bitching about it? It's not Dell's fault, but when you build a product for distribution to the general public, you have to accept that you're going to get support calls. A great big "wah!" goes out to those companies that want to bitch about that.
I probably have more Apple products in my home than most
This touches on an interesting point - who's to say that a hundred years from now, computers will have the same basic architecture as they do now? The basic ideas of bytes, words, long words, RAM, ROM, etc. may all be obsolete, so not only would one need to preserve the data itself, they'd need to provide a primer on exactly how this data is represented and how this system it runs on works. If you took someone from 40 years ago that was used to punching in code/data on cards or on a maintenance panel and stuck them in front of a modern PC, they'd be lost, just as a lot of modern programmers with no mainframe experience get lost when you stick them in front of something as new as a S/390. It's reasonable to assume that computers will have some seriously fundamental changes over the next couple hundred years or so, so there's a need to preserve more than just the code and data.