the whole bit about Padme dying not only ridiculously maudlin but making the Epside VI statement by Leia that she could still remember her mother rather odd, considering Luke didn't.
Actually this is not quite as outlandish as it may appear. Leia was raised by people who knew her mother, and would have been able to relate an experience of Padme to her. You or I may not consider this to be a true memory, however I strongly suspect that you have installed memories from your early childhood that if you really thought about it, you can't logically explain how they exist. I know I do. Likewise the fact that Padme was well respected, and loved by those around her would have given the experience of related stories of her a stronger sense of realism than the naration of some history of her.
On the other hand neither Uncle Owen, nor Aunt Beru would have had any memory of Padme to relate, and for the most part they wanted to avoid discussing what became of Anikin, though they would have recalled several of his heroic episodes on Tatooine, as well as some of the more reprehensible events. It would have been better perhaps if Ben had been able to relate some of his mother's history to him as he grew up, so that there would be a bit of ballance to what family history he was taught, but Uncle Owen made the decision to try to keep the Jedi part of the family history out of the picture, which excluded Ben's ability to get involved.
Then again, what do I know. I honestly have not made a study of the subject.
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that they are talking about using SMS as an infrastructure to IM people via the method that seems to work so well when text messaging people today.
In other words you get to IM your buddies cell phone number, which you probably have aliased in your phone book some how, and the phone handles figuring out how to get the message to it's destination.
What most people have mentioned above is using something like AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messanger, etc. to do their instant messaging (or clients for one of those services) which requires additional software to be installed on the phone, as well as a server somewhere for that software to talk with.
Via SMS at the moment it is easy enough to send a message through your provider's web site, and for many people it seams fast enough to just SMS from the phone to another phone, however there are delays built into the phone system's handling of SMS messages that currently gives AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger an advantage.
Unfortunately unless the platform they are putting together can interact with the other providers, and can gateway for them, (which AIM has given people problems with in the past) they are restricting themselves to phone to phone IMing. Which as others have noted seems to defeat the purpose of having a cell phone in the first place.
Personally I like the idea of having a text based ssytem for sending brief messages back and forth. At the moment it is a bit of a pain to pull down voice mail whenever someone is unable to reach me directly, whereas SMS and IM messages show up as soon as the phone enters a service area, or gets turned on and I enter my pin. I also have fewer problems with someone taking their time about getting back to me when I send a text message of one sort or another.
But that's me. Your experience may lead you to different conclusions.
I think it is flame bait in an effort to get it below the threshold of visibility for someone. They could have selected trol or over-rated just as effectively. Also since it may be interpreted as advocating an illegal activity, which I attempted to indicate the activity would be and tried to disuade people from, which might have been interpreted as insighting an illegal activity which may have brought about a lot more responses of a flaming nature.
In any case, if the UPC in question is the manufacturer's upc, then that bar code is nearly always the same across sales venus. If you buy a model 1001 tv made by xyz company, the upc will be the same at both Circuit City as it is at Best Buy.
Some retailers have their own UPC bar codes that get printed and stuck over the manufacturer's UPC. I have seen something like this at both CompUSA and MicroCenter. If the rebate is associated with the store rather than the manufacturer, then the mail-in form may be looking for that code.
Another method of protecting against this sort of fraud would be to use the serial number. At MicroCenter devices like Hard Drives and other higher end products get scanned for both their UPC and their Serial number. That SN gets printed on the receipt, so if you return the device the store knows it is the correct device. Likewise if you attemptd to perpitrate the fraud I described, the SN of the device you attempted to get the rebate on would be different from the one on the receipt. Sending in the wrong SN would be an issue. However it would be potentially easier to perpitrate the fraud online as you would simply re-enter the SN from the receipt.
If the SN was not on the receipt, it would still be part of the tracking information that the manufacturer maintained regarding sales channels. I.e. If you attempted to use the SN of a product purchased online as part of a Best Buy rebate program, the manufacturer would be able to say that the SN of the device in question was not distributed to Best Buy.
How a rebate handler would deal with the rebate request may be situation dependent. The three methods I can think of are to honor the rebate as least expensive, check with the distribution channels in question and send your rebate request to some law enforcement agency, or they could simply reject the rebate.
In any case having a mind that can envision a criminal activity is the first step in finding a way to prevent people from doing that type of activity.
This is more complicated, and as it is fraud seriously not recommended but...
Find a product available at Best Buy, with a rebate.
Find the product available online at a lower overall cost (delivered) than the product at Best Buy, minus the rebate.
Buy the product online, and take delivery before the rebate offer expires at Best Buy.
Buy the product at Best Buy, request the duplicate receipt required for a rebate.
Take the product you just bought at Best Buy directly to the return counter, and return it, unopened, returning one of the receipts.
Process the rebate using the duplicate receipt, and the upc off the product purchased online.
Send a nice thank you letter to Best Buy for the excelent service you received from their sales and returns people at the store you shoped at.
This will not work if the system that handles the rebates has access to the Best Buy receipt system, as that will show that your purchase was voided.
This is also fraud, and if you commit this process to such a level that you cross some threshold, (not sure if it is $2000 or some other number) it is considered a Felony.
The vast majority of those plastic bags you get your food in at the grocery store checkout counter are actually made from corn oil, not crude oil.
There are quite a few other "plastic" products that are made with various other vegetable oils. Granted a large number of hits on Google are for bio-diesel, but there are others as well.
You might try setting up a system that randomly selects what MP3, CD, DVD or other recording media gets played, and simply turn on your TV or entertainment center to that stream whenever it feels right to you to watch whatever is on.
It has the advantage that what gets played is stuff that you have selected to have a copy of, in whatever media that is, and supports your decision to passively watch whatever is on.
You could even set up schedules along the lines of from 12:00 to 4:00 play old sitcom shows, starting at the top of each hour. Use the remaining time in each half hour, or hour, to scroll through news stories that you have filtered, while playing some arbitrary genra of music file in the background. From 4:00 to 8:00 play some other genra of TV show, say westerns, with a scroll of slashdot story responses as filler, and electronica music as the background. From 8:00 to 12:00 play movies, and fill any empty space with some other text content being scrolled, and perhaps movie soundtracks for background audio.
Repeat for the other 12 hours. Vary the schedule for weekend days, perhaps cartoons in the am 8:00 to 12:00. The Goom as the video background for some format of music as filler.
Perhaps in the minute before the top of the hour you can display a schedule of shows for the next week in this block of time, or cycle through each block over a 20 second period.
None of this is particularly hard. After all the networks have been doing a variation of this for years.
Likewise, if you correctly identify the record size, but include the binary code to be executed in place of the expected wmf data to say draw a line, what would cause the setabort event to trigger?
Presumably if a record exists that has invalid data, some sort of failure will happen. Whether that is the first record, last record, or some arbitrary record in the middle of the wmf file. What Steve has reported is that if he sets an invalid record size of 1 on that record, it causes the system to treat the data of the record as an executable program to be executed in a new thread. Setting it to the invalid record sizes of 0, 2, 3, 4, or 5 does not trigger this event, it simply fails.
I don't know that he ever tried setting the record length to the size of the executable that was included in the record, or if he tried adding records after that record. (Presuming that he did set the correct record lenght, so that the program reading the wmf file might attempt to read another record, even though it should have treated the content of the record with a binary executable in it's data segment as a point to fail.)
My own suspicion as to why the 2000/XP varient of the WMF reader does not use the same set of controls to not use the printer SetAbortProc code, is that the WMF reader in 2k/XP is based on NT3.1, where they very probably also used the priter code. From what I have seen, the 2k/XP platform is still NT, with a UI that follows the design, but not necesarily the code from 95/99.
[sarcasm] I've noticed how all the manufacturers have clearly labeled their web cams as supporting Video 4 Linux 2 these days. It makes it really easy to just walk into my local CompUSA, Best Buy, MicroCenter, etc. and just pick up a box off the shelf that I know will work with Linux. [/sarcasm]
I.e. I haven't had that experience. Pretty much as counter to that as the manufacturers can get.
Cluttering up this place somewhere I have some four webcams that for one reason or another just don't quite work. The closest I have come to a 'webcam' that works with any sort of regularity is the Intel Play Microscope. Might help me show how a blood sample in a web conference, if I could ever get the lights to come on for it. (That required re-compiling the driver for the chipset with patches that support the top and bottom light controls, which are pretty much useless for anything else out there. Every time I update anything that decides it has to get a fresher set of drivers for that camera chipset.)
Next up is a webcam that I did pick up for nearly nothing, which failed after about an hour's use.
Having had good luck with the Intell Play microscope, I figured I might have good luck with an Intell USB webcam that someone at work no longer wanted. It works under Windows, but for one reason or another, the driver just won't quite work under Linux. It either doesn't compile, or if I find the binary, won't load, or if it loads, won't talk with the camera.
Likewise for the GE camera I picked up.
Worst so far is the Logitech webcam that the microphone input is recognized by Ubuntu system, but the video is not. Oh, that one works well under Windows too.
My basic experience is that USB webcams love Windows. If I ws comfortable leaving a camcorder plugged into a haupauge tv card, I might go that route, but I think that sort of defeats the intent of a small web cam that 'just works.'
Of course this is my experience. I wish you better experiences.
Oops, I forgot the sarcasm marks. I do agree in general that many languages, as well as many of the tools to support different platforms are best learned by going to the website of the developer, or searching any of a variety of resources on the Internet for FAQs about that subject. No it is not infaliable. Perl, and Python are very good examples. Others may vary by any of a number of reasons.
Some of the very best explanations of how some things work have been created not by the originator of that thing, but by people who wanted to make use of it, but didn't initially understand how. I have seen a recomendation for someone to start an FAQ by writing the questions that they had down, then writing potential answers to those questions, and posting the resulting document. The reason this supposedly is effective is that you start getting feedback from people who know more about each individual question, and can revise the FAQ with their explanations (properly attributed) as well as taking any questions that they may include in their response. You then release a revised FAQ.
Initially the revisions may come out every hour or so, then daily, then weekly, for perhaps a year every month. At some time you declare that you are no longer going to maintain the FAQ, and off it goes to the archives. One reason for no longer maintaining the FAQ may be that the platform that the FAQ was designed to address may have moved on in such a way that a large portion of the questions, or explanations are no longer valid. It may also be that no one is using what the FAQ addresses.
Other reasons may exist as well, perhaps the maintainer has moved on to a platform where the original tool is not available, or is suplanted by tools that are superior in some way. As an example I used 4dos as a replacement for my command.com interpreter in Dos. When I moved to OS/2 I switched to a combination of cmd.exe and REXX. That took care of most of what I had been using 4dos for. Since moving primarily to Linux I use Bash almost exclusively. I didn't write a FAQ for 4dos, but had I been maintaining one, I would probably have dropped it by now.
Thanks for the response. It looks like it was taken in the good humor it was intended.
I learned Python, Perl, TI Basic, Intercal this way.
I'm impressed. I didn't know you could learn Intercal at the python.org website. I don't personally have a need for TI Basic, but Intercal might be usefull some day.
The problem with this argument is that the reason one puts messages in envelopes very rarely has anything to do with preventing the mail carrier from reading the contents of that letter.
As a case in point, if you are sending a check, money order, or even cash to someone, most people use some sort of method of further obscuring the contents than simply putting it into an envelope. They pay extra for a box of 'Security' envelopes, printed on the inside with some pattern that makes it difficult to discern writing or printing. They wrap an additional piece of paper around the instruments. And so on. This doesn't happen in every case, but just about as often as not.
It has also been long recognized that if you are sending mail to a country or person that someone has significant concerns about, that there are several ways of opening the envelope, or even extracting the letter from within the envelope without opening it. Read or copy the contents, then return the contents of the letter and send it on it's way.
In a lot of cases the real reason for using an envelope has more to do with protecting the contents of the envelope from smudging or being separated than with preventing anyone from knowing what those contents are. If you are paying a bill, you use an envelope to keep the check and the bill stub together so that the people being paid have some idea of what the check is for.
If you get a multi-page letter from Aunt May, she is more likely to be trying to keep the pages together and in order than otherwise. If you are traveling, you very probably do send post cards, often with a picture of where you are, and a brief note wishing the recipient were along for the trip. An interested party may glean far more from a brief glance at the picture than by reading pages of text.
Note that there are a couple of elements of the above that do make sense when related to encrypting or digitally signing the e-mail that you send. For all practical purposes the e-mail that you send is a single page document. Even if you print it to 100 pages of a single spaced double sided 6 point font as far as the e-mail handling software is concerned, it doesn't matter if the message is zero bytes, or a couple million bytes. If the parts are not all put together correctly at the far end, an error is logged, and the system trys to fix the situation. Likewise the system is mostly proof against smudging or error introduction to the body of the message, as it is being handled by a TCP connection. That does not prevent changes to the headers, nor does it prevent an alteration by a malicious server in the middle. Encrypting or signing the contents does reduce the likelyhood that a change to the contents will be noticed. (Though it does nothing for the headers, including the subject.)
Of course the above is a rather simplistic explanation, and there are other elements involved.
Well, I don't know about that. I presume we will have to take the word of Joss on that, unless Jewel Stait wants to pipe up on the situation. Note that I did not say that Nathan was not all of what Joss said in his report, only that it had as much to do with the EW article as the EW article had to do with the Joss interview that generated it.
Basicly what Joss is saying is that about the only thing that EW got right on their report is that he is comfortable with the prospect that there will be no more Firefly adventures. That is not to say that he does not love the show. It is not to say that there is anything about the show that he does not feel could be continued. It is not to say that he has any issues with any of the actors or actresses in the show or the movie.
The quote that he provided in his rebutal is to say that EW took statements of his as far out of context as these quotes are out of context with the EW story. In other words EW's reporting is just about as wrong as you can get.
When Joss says he is comfortable with closure for the project, he is saying that if he can not get funding for another movie, or if no-one picks up the ball and starts a radio show, or a book series, or a continues the comic books, or extends them into graphic novels, well, that's OK. The story is good as it stands. He would much rather see ongoing media work related to the Firefly universe, but it does not have to happen.
28,860 mph is just over 8 miles per second. When compared to lights speed of 186,000 miles per second in a vacume, it isn't much to write home about. Granted it's still fast, and I don't really think I want it hitting my appartment, or even your mom's house...
It does appear that I missinterpreted the question. I could claim that since there is an episode of firefly titled Serenity that I was referring to that, but I was not.
I would suspect that the first place that Serenity is going to show up on is the pay-per-view channels on cable. Considering that it went from theater to dvd in under 4 months, I would doubt that it will spend even a month on PPV.
Next it will make the rounds on one of the secondary movie channels. I doubt that HBO ro Showtime will show it on either of their primary channels, though Showtime may show it once then roll it to Cinimax if they pick up the rights. Again perhaps a month on one of the secondary channels in prime rotation, with another month in a secondary rotation schedule. (Aimed at off hours.)
After that I would suspect there will be a two month period where no-one will be showing it, after which SciFi may be able to claim that they are Premiring it.
DVD volume sales may alter the scheduling. As may PPV sales. Since I do not elect to use PPV services (including dvd rentals) my only impact on the schedule would be the copies I have already bought.
As to Whedon having another hit, I have no doubt that if he finds a way to get a broadcaster to pick up another series of his, that he will have no problem getting a hit started. I think Fox poisoned the waters for him with them, so he will probably look to one of the other broadcasters, or work things out with a cable channel.
The likely candidate in my mind are WB for broadcaster, as they are the hungriest of the companies, and are therefore more likely to allow him to take his show with him if they later on decide not to carry it for some reason. Off to Cable I think it is a tossup between TNT and Spike. SciFi is possible, but I know a lot of people who would look at the history of shows that have moved to SciFi and been killed and note to Joss that it looks a lot like Fox. TNT at least let JMS finish B5. Compared to Farscape and Andromeda on SciFi, though there are a lot of people disapointed with the last season of Andromeda in any case.
I threw in Spike because I think they would really like to have a potential first run hit series that happens to star some rather attractive women. I don't really think it will happen, but I think they are a reasonable candidate. The down side for Joss here would be the perception of the channel as the TnA channel. I think his brand of show tends to attract a higher level of thinking than much of what Spike tends to pay for as original TV, though they have been known to carry some very good SF over the years.
Other possibilities are out there as well. He may chose to go the sindication route. Worked well for Herculese and Xena, not quite so well for Andromeda.
Then again, I don't claim to really know all that much about what he is interested in doing, or who would be interested in working with him.
If by 'soon,' you mean 'will they broadcast it at all?' they already have. By my count they have re-broadcast the series at least two times, and I believe it has run through three times.
If you mean 'in the near future?' you may want to watch the listings at Sci-Fi's web site, and see what is comming up on the schedule. Granted this may be work for you, so I won't be surprised if you don't follow through, but that would be the easiest way to find out, and if it is being re-broadcast at this time, you will be able to find the day of the week, and the time of day that it will be on.
Alternatively you can set up a Tivo or Replay to record any tv show with the name 'Firefly' on any channel, and wait till all of the episodes show up. It may take a while. For those using MythTv, or one of the other home built PVR alternatives, you may do this as well. At the moment I don't show any listings for the next two weeks on my MythTV listings. I won't suggest the parent to try to set this up on their MythTV box, I don't expect they have one.
As a worst case situation, you can go to any of several online DVD sellers and order a copy of the series on dvd. You may even want to order a set of the series and a copy of the DVD for Serenity at the same time. Then you will have a copy of the entire set.
For those less inclined to support the franchise, you may find torrents of the series online. I don't really know how likely that is, I wouldn't put up my set.
As a side note, I stopped at Suncoast today to pick up a copy of the movie, and decided to pick up a second copy, as well as a set of the series to give as a christmas gift to my daughter and son-in-law for Christmas. Apparently the Suncoast that I stopped at had two copies of the series in stock thie morning and those two went almost immediately (presumably to people who bought copies of the movie at the same time.)
There is a bit mroe to it than just ading more power gets you a higher data rate. If you send a.25 watt signal with all the power in a.5 khz bandwidth signal, you are not going to get more than about 300 bits per second data transfer. Increasing your power level does not improve the data rate, though it may improve your receive capability over a longer distance. I.e. increasing the power from that original.25 watt to say 25 megawatts doesn't improve the data rate, but it may mean you can receive the signal somewhat further away.
If you want to increas the data rate, you need to expand the transmited bandwidth. Most of the comercial handheld 2-way radios out there use about a 2.5 khz bandwidth, which is OK for voice, though Hams and older (much older actually) comercial equipment uses a 5 khz bandwidth for voice. This bandwidth also works fairly well for slow scan vidio, which is basically single images sent over a period of between 5 and 20 minutes, depending upon the data rate, (1200 bps, or 9600 bps are common on ham frequencies) and image resolution and color depth.
If you want to send live video, you have to step up the bandwidth significantly. Standard TV uses a channel separation of 6 mhz, You can do a lot better with compression, and by reducing the frame rates. If you are video conferencing over your dsl or cable modem line, with an uplink cap of 128kbps, the signal your video chat partner receives is going to be somewhat less impressive than they get off the air for TV.
Now if you want to reach the same distances with the higher bandwidth signal as you would with that.5khz wide signal, you are going to need more power spread across that bandwidth. Going to a 2.5 khz signal means you will need a 1.25 watt signal. 5khz means a 2.5 watt signal. For that uncompressed live video feed, if you use a 5mhz wide signal (this gives a comfortable 1 mhz separation for most people, which is probably sufficient to toss in an audio stream of some sort) you are going to need a 2500 watt signal to start with. If you need to be able to receive it at a significant distance, you will need to be able to either increase the radiated power, or the gain of the signal in the direction the receiver is located in. Gain is measured in db, and for the purposes of this posting are compared to an omnidirectional signal. If you can get an effective four times the power radiated in the direction of your receiver, you have effectively increased the gain by 6db. (3db is double the signal.) You can also improve the signal reception by increasing the gain of the receiving antenna. In the case of the article the improvement in gain was done via a 1 meter offset sattelite dish.
For the most part the desire is to get the gain of the desired signal to be some power level over the noise floor of the environment you are working. The noise floor is generated by background radiation, as well as radiation of the environment you live in. If you happen to have mountains between you and all the local cities, or can work from an island over the horizon from significant RF sources, you can improve your separation somewhat. That doesn't help with the univeral background radiation, so he had to add some filtering to lower the signal level for signals outside of the desired bandwidth. As he was able to reduce those sigals by an effective 50db with his waveguide filter, he significantly improves his ability to receive the desired signals.
Granted he still has to be able to point the receiving system at the sending system. Sounds like he was able to.
The radiated power that the Mars Express transmits with is published data, as well as the effective gain of its transmitting antennas. The range between earth and Mars is reasonably easily calculable. It sounds like M0EYT got the rest of the calculations to work out as well.
Some of the above is not exact. Feel free to do more research to learn more about it yourself.
Cheese: (Councile of Happy Eclectic Entertainers Seemingly Everywhere), has long known the secret to life, they just refuse to publish until they are confident in the DRM.
Bread: (Basic Research Evidence And Data) keeps telling us that Guts is only another year or so away. They are looking for that 'One Inch formula'. I keep trying to direct them to a gastric bypass, but you have to ask Douglas Adams about bypasses. We really need to get them together with Cheese, Ham, and perhaps Mayo. Of course there is a bit of infighting between Whole Wheat (WHO Lives Everywhere While Holding Each Alternative Taste) and Rye (Researchers Yearning Everywhere) over which goes better with the above. I say they are both brown.
Mayo: A medical facility in Rochester, MN. Founded by a pair of doctors who were brothers, with an interest in doing the best medicine possible at the time.
The last thing I remember seeing these in was a frequency counter. Nothing else really needed a numeric display, and the equipment that the frequency counter was being used on predated the nixi tubes anyway. (1950-1965 era military equipment.)
I don't think there was a maintenance tech in his right mind that would have suggested taking one of those frequency counters to the field.
Whether there were that many maintenance techs that were in their right mind to begin with is an entirely different question, which I won't even suggest persuing.
When you consider that the tech nerds are the ones who are 'on' 24x7, carrying a pager and liable to be called in at any time of the day or night to fix whatever failed, I do think that the attitude of 'at least they are wearing clothing.' is a more realistic attitud to take than 'why isn't he in a white shirt and tie, with good slacks, a blazer, and highly polished shoes?'
The answer to that of course is 'because he was paged at 2:30 by the panicked help desk who needed him to come in to fix the core routers, and he figured that solving that issue was a bit more important than determining whether the blue slacks went with the charcoal blazer, and spending an additional 15 min. while getting ready to refresh the shine on his hiking boots.'
... in 'Stranger in a Strange Land.' I would have thought that the issues would have been well understood.
I think it would also be understood that as long as you have a mixed gender group of people together for an extended period of time, there isn't a lot you can do to prevent it either.
You will have to do more research for yourself, however from having looked at educational distributions in the past, the primary goal is to set up a thin client based infrastructure that allows the school to deploy a large number of very low cost workstations, often without hard drives, that the students will use as their desktop. Memory, video card, sound card, keyboard, mouse, display and case. Possibly a CD and or floppy drive, though it would be unlikely to include a cdr/cdrw drive. Possibly a USB port, possibly not.
This is then supported by one or two farily large servers that most of the applications are actually run on or at least from.
Advantages for the school include the possiblity that they can just strip out the hard drives from systems that won't support the latest distribution of Windows, and effectively have zero or very low cost per workstation to move to Linux. A centralized account management structure where the school can insure that sutdents are only maintaining school related work in their storage folders, while providing an infrastructure that is disaster tolerant if they have implemented periodic backups of that online storage. If a vandal destroys a workstation you are not spending a day or more replacing it, updating all of the software with the current patches, etc, you simply replace it with an off the shelf spare, or pick up a bare bones system and put the appropriate network boot firmware on a network card if the bios does not already support booting off the network.
User interface is usually either a X windows desktop, or possibly a vnc or other thin client desktop. It can even be rdesktop if you insist upon using a windows platform for some reason.
All that said, I do not know what of it is included in Edubuntu.
They do. Usually they attribute the source as being Paul Murphy, but it seems that almost any source that can put two words together and get them published is a good source for flame bait as a source.
Yes they do allow you to compress things and as a result save space. However......they are too easy to get a hole in, at which point they are simply a bag with a bunch of stuff in them....they cost far too much for the space savings they provide....if you leave something in these bags for an extended period of time, plan on washing it when it comes out. If for no other reason than to get rid of the wrinkles, though my experience is that something ends up in the bag that propogates smell to everything else as well.
A cheaper alternative is to pick up some clear 35 gallon garbage bags, put a few items in one, then use a vacume to draw all the air out. Now tape, or better yet seal the bag with some sort of thermal seal.
One of the few sets that some people may find worthwhile to own are the camping kit sets. Put a shirt in it, close it, roll the bag up to squeeze out the air, then unroll the bag to get it flat again for packing. It makes a workable way of keeping clothing dry if you go camping and are prone to falling into creeks or rivers, or dropping your backpack or other carry bag that way. Again you will want to watch out for overpacking, as the zip lock seals may very well come appart on you.
That's just my opinion though. Others may note other opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
the whole bit about Padme dying not only ridiculously maudlin but making the Epside VI statement by Leia that she could still remember her mother rather odd, considering Luke didn't.
Actually this is not quite as outlandish as it may appear. Leia was raised by people who knew her mother, and would have been able to relate an experience of Padme to her. You or I may not consider this to be a true memory, however I strongly suspect that you have installed memories from your early childhood that if you really thought about it, you can't logically explain how they exist. I know I do. Likewise the fact that Padme was well respected, and loved by those around her would have given the experience of related stories of her a stronger sense of realism than the naration of some history of her.
On the other hand neither Uncle Owen, nor Aunt Beru would have had any memory of Padme to relate, and for the most part they wanted to avoid discussing what became of Anikin, though they would have recalled several of his heroic episodes on Tatooine, as well as some of the more reprehensible events. It would have been better perhaps if Ben had been able to relate some of his mother's history to him as he grew up, so that there would be a bit of ballance to what family history he was taught, but Uncle Owen made the decision to try to keep the Jedi part of the family history out of the picture, which excluded Ben's ability to get involved.
Then again, what do I know. I honestly have not made a study of the subject.
-Rusty
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that they are talking about using SMS as an infrastructure to IM people via the method that seems to work so well when text messaging people today.
In other words you get to IM your buddies cell phone number, which you probably have aliased in your phone book some how, and the phone handles figuring out how to get the message to it's destination.
What most people have mentioned above is using something like AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messanger, etc. to do their instant messaging (or clients for one of those services) which requires additional software to be installed on the phone, as well as a server somewhere for that software to talk with.
Via SMS at the moment it is easy enough to send a message through your provider's web site, and for many people it seams fast enough to just SMS from the phone to another phone, however there are delays built into the phone system's handling of SMS messages that currently gives AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger an advantage.
Unfortunately unless the platform they are putting together can interact with the other providers, and can gateway for them, (which AIM has given people problems with in the past) they are restricting themselves to phone to phone IMing. Which as others have noted seems to defeat the purpose of having a cell phone in the first place.
Personally I like the idea of having a text based ssytem for sending brief messages back and forth. At the moment it is a bit of a pain to pull down voice mail whenever someone is unable to reach me directly, whereas SMS and IM messages show up as soon as the phone enters a service area, or gets turned on and I enter my pin. I also have fewer problems with someone taking their time about getting back to me when I send a text message of one sort or another.
But that's me. Your experience may lead you to different conclusions.
-Rusty
I think it is flame bait in an effort to get it below the threshold of visibility for someone. They could have selected trol or over-rated just as effectively. Also since it may be interpreted as advocating an illegal activity, which I attempted to indicate the activity would be and tried to disuade people from, which might have been interpreted as insighting an illegal activity which may have brought about a lot more responses of a flaming nature.
In any case, if the UPC in question is the manufacturer's upc, then that bar code is nearly always the same across sales venus. If you buy a model 1001 tv made by xyz company, the upc will be the same at both Circuit City as it is at Best Buy.
Some retailers have their own UPC bar codes that get printed and stuck over the manufacturer's UPC. I have seen something like this at both CompUSA and MicroCenter. If the rebate is associated with the store rather than the manufacturer, then the mail-in form may be looking for that code.
Another method of protecting against this sort of fraud would be to use the serial number. At MicroCenter devices like Hard Drives and other higher end products get scanned for both their UPC and their Serial number. That SN gets printed on the receipt, so if you return the device the store knows it is the correct device. Likewise if you attemptd to perpitrate the fraud I described, the SN of the device you attempted to get the rebate on would be different from the one on the receipt. Sending in the wrong SN would be an issue. However it would be potentially easier to perpitrate the fraud online as you would simply re-enter the SN from the receipt.
If the SN was not on the receipt, it would still be part of the tracking information that the manufacturer maintained regarding sales channels. I.e. If you attempted to use the SN of a product purchased online as part of a Best Buy rebate program, the manufacturer would be able to say that the SN of the device in question was not distributed to Best Buy.
How a rebate handler would deal with the rebate request may be situation dependent. The three methods I can think of are to honor the rebate as least expensive, check with the distribution channels in question and send your rebate request to some law enforcement agency, or they could simply reject the rebate.
In any case having a mind that can envision a criminal activity is the first step in finding a way to prevent people from doing that type of activity.
This is more complicated, and as it is fraud seriously not recommended but...
Find a product available at Best Buy, with a rebate.
Find the product available online at a lower overall cost (delivered) than the product at Best Buy, minus the rebate.
Buy the product online, and take delivery before the rebate offer expires at Best Buy.
Buy the product at Best Buy, request the duplicate receipt required for a rebate.
Take the product you just bought at Best Buy directly to the return counter, and return it, unopened, returning one of the receipts.
Process the rebate using the duplicate receipt, and the upc off the product purchased online.
Send a nice thank you letter to Best Buy for the excelent service you received from their sales and returns people at the store you shoped at.
This will not work if the system that handles the rebates has access to the Best Buy receipt system, as that will show that your purchase was voided.
This is also fraud, and if you commit this process to such a level that you cross some threshold, (not sure if it is $2000 or some other number) it is considered a Felony.
Not quite everything plastic.
The vast majority of those plastic bags you get your food in at the grocery store checkout counter are actually made from corn oil, not crude oil.
There are quite a few other "plastic" products that are made with various other vegetable oils. Granted a large number of hits on Google are for bio-diesel, but there are others as well.
You might try setting up a system that randomly selects what MP3, CD, DVD or other recording media gets played, and simply turn on your TV or entertainment center to that stream whenever it feels right to you to watch whatever is on.
It has the advantage that what gets played is stuff that you have selected to have a copy of, in whatever media that is, and supports your decision to passively watch whatever is on.
You could even set up schedules along the lines of from 12:00 to 4:00 play old sitcom shows, starting at the top of each hour. Use the remaining time in each half hour, or hour, to scroll through news stories that you have filtered, while playing some arbitrary genra of music file in the background. From 4:00 to 8:00 play some other genra of TV show, say westerns, with a scroll of slashdot story responses as filler, and electronica music as the background. From 8:00 to 12:00 play movies, and fill any empty space with some other text content being scrolled, and perhaps movie soundtracks for background audio.
Repeat for the other 12 hours. Vary the schedule for weekend days, perhaps cartoons in the am 8:00 to 12:00. The Goom as the video background for some format of music as filler.
Perhaps in the minute before the top of the hour you can display a schedule of shows for the next week in this block of time, or cycle through each block over a 20 second period.
None of this is particularly hard. After all the networks have been doing a variation of this for years.
-Rusty
Likewise, if you correctly identify the record size, but include the binary code to be executed in place of the expected wmf data to say draw a line, what would cause the setabort event to trigger?
Presumably if a record exists that has invalid data, some sort of failure will happen. Whether that is the first record, last record, or some arbitrary record in the middle of the wmf file. What Steve has reported is that if he sets an invalid record size of 1 on that record, it causes the system to treat the data of the record as an executable program to be executed in a new thread. Setting it to the invalid record sizes of 0, 2, 3, 4, or 5 does not trigger this event, it simply fails.
I don't know that he ever tried setting the record length to the size of the executable that was included in the record, or if he tried adding records after that record. (Presuming that he did set the correct record lenght, so that the program reading the wmf file might attempt to read another record, even though it should have treated the content of the record with a binary executable in it's data segment as a point to fail.)
My own suspicion as to why the 2000/XP varient of the WMF reader does not use the same set of controls to not use the printer SetAbortProc code, is that the WMF reader in 2k/XP is based on NT3.1, where they very probably also used the priter code. From what I have seen, the 2k/XP platform is still NT, with a UI that follows the design, but not necesarily the code from 95/99.
But that's just my suspicions.
-Rusty
[sarcasm]
I've noticed how all the manufacturers have clearly labeled their web cams as supporting Video 4 Linux 2 these days. It makes it really easy to just walk into my local CompUSA, Best Buy, MicroCenter, etc. and just pick up a box off the shelf that I know will work with Linux.
[/sarcasm]
I.e. I haven't had that experience. Pretty much as counter to that as the manufacturers can get.
Cluttering up this place somewhere I have some four webcams that for one reason or another just don't quite work. The closest I have come to a 'webcam' that works with any sort of regularity is the Intel Play Microscope. Might help me show how a blood sample in a web conference, if I could ever get the lights to come on for it. (That required re-compiling the driver for the chipset with patches that support the top and bottom light controls, which are pretty much useless for anything else out there. Every time I update anything that decides it has to get a fresher set of drivers for that camera chipset.)
Next up is a webcam that I did pick up for nearly nothing, which failed after about an hour's use.
Having had good luck with the Intell Play microscope, I figured I might have good luck with an Intell USB webcam that someone at work no longer wanted. It works under Windows, but for one reason or another, the driver just won't quite work under Linux. It either doesn't compile, or if I find the binary, won't load, or if it loads, won't talk with the camera.
Likewise for the GE camera I picked up.
Worst so far is the Logitech webcam that the microphone input is recognized by Ubuntu system, but the video is not. Oh, that one works well under Windows too.
My basic experience is that USB webcams love Windows. If I ws comfortable leaving a camcorder plugged into a haupauge tv card, I might go that route, but I think that sort of defeats the intent of a small web cam that 'just works.'
Of course this is my experience. I wish you better experiences.
-Rusty
Oops, I forgot the sarcasm marks. I do agree in general that many languages, as well as many of the tools to support different platforms are best learned by going to the website of the developer, or searching any of a variety of resources on the Internet for FAQs about that subject. No it is not infaliable. Perl, and Python are very good examples. Others may vary by any of a number of reasons.
Some of the very best explanations of how some things work have been created not by the originator of that thing, but by people who wanted to make use of it, but didn't initially understand how. I have seen a recomendation for someone to start an FAQ by writing the questions that they had down, then writing potential answers to those questions, and posting the resulting document. The reason this supposedly is effective is that you start getting feedback from people who know more about each individual question, and can revise the FAQ with their explanations (properly attributed) as well as taking any questions that they may include in their response. You then release a revised FAQ.
Initially the revisions may come out every hour or so, then daily, then weekly, for perhaps a year every month. At some time you declare that you are no longer going to maintain the FAQ, and off it goes to the archives. One reason for no longer maintaining the FAQ may be that the platform that the FAQ was designed to address may have moved on in such a way that a large portion of the questions, or explanations are no longer valid. It may also be that no one is using what the FAQ addresses.
Other reasons may exist as well, perhaps the maintainer has moved on to a platform where the original tool is not available, or is suplanted by tools that are superior in some way. As an example I used 4dos as a replacement for my command.com interpreter in Dos. When I moved to OS/2 I switched to a combination of cmd.exe and REXX. That took care of most of what I had been using 4dos for. Since moving primarily to Linux I use Bash almost exclusively. I didn't write a FAQ for 4dos, but had I been maintaining one, I would probably have dropped it by now.
Thanks for the response. It looks like it was taken in the good humor it was intended.
-Rusty
I learned Python, Perl, TI Basic, Intercal this way.
I'm impressed. I didn't know you could learn Intercal at the python.org website. I don't personally have a need for TI Basic, but Intercal might be usefull some day.
Thanks for the pointer.
The problem with this argument is that the reason one puts messages in envelopes very rarely has anything to do with preventing the mail carrier from reading the contents of that letter.
As a case in point, if you are sending a check, money order, or even cash to someone, most people use some sort of method of further obscuring the contents than simply putting it into an envelope. They pay extra for a box of 'Security' envelopes, printed on the inside with some pattern that makes it difficult to discern writing or printing. They wrap an additional piece of paper around the instruments. And so on. This doesn't happen in every case, but just about as often as not.
It has also been long recognized that if you are sending mail to a country or person that someone has significant concerns about, that there are several ways of opening the envelope, or even extracting the letter from within the envelope without opening it. Read or copy the contents, then return the contents of the letter and send it on it's way.
In a lot of cases the real reason for using an envelope has more to do with protecting the contents of the envelope from smudging or being separated than with preventing anyone from knowing what those contents are. If you are paying a bill, you use an envelope to keep the check and the bill stub together so that the people being paid have some idea of what the check is for.
If you get a multi-page letter from Aunt May, she is more likely to be trying to keep the pages together and in order than otherwise. If you are traveling, you very probably do send post cards, often with a picture of where you are, and a brief note wishing the recipient were along for the trip. An interested party may glean far more from a brief glance at the picture than by reading pages of text.
Note that there are a couple of elements of the above that do make sense when related to encrypting or digitally signing the e-mail that you send. For all practical purposes the e-mail that you send is a single page document. Even if you print it to 100 pages of a single spaced double sided 6 point font as far as the e-mail handling software is concerned, it doesn't matter if the message is zero bytes, or a couple million bytes. If the parts are not all put together correctly at the far end, an error is logged, and the system trys to fix the situation. Likewise the system is mostly proof against smudging or error introduction to the body of the message, as it is being handled by a TCP connection. That does not prevent changes to the headers, nor does it prevent an alteration by a malicious server in the middle. Encrypting or signing the contents does reduce the likelyhood that a change to the contents will be noticed. (Though it does nothing for the headers, including the subject.)
Of course the above is a rather simplistic explanation, and there are other elements involved.
-Rusty
Well, I don't know about that. I presume we will have to take the word of Joss on that, unless Jewel Stait wants to pipe up on the situation. Note that I did not say that Nathan was not all of what Joss said in his report, only that it had as much to do with the EW article as the EW article had to do with the Joss interview that generated it.
-Rusty
Basicly what Joss is saying is that about the only thing that EW got right on their report is that he is comfortable with the prospect that there will be no more Firefly adventures. That is not to say that he does not love the show. It is not to say that there is anything about the show that he does not feel could be continued. It is not to say that he has any issues with any of the actors or actresses in the show or the movie.
The quote that he provided in his rebutal is to say that EW took statements of his as far out of context as these quotes are out of context with the EW story. In other words EW's reporting is just about as wrong as you can get.
When Joss says he is comfortable with closure for the project, he is saying that if he can not get funding for another movie, or if no-one picks up the ball and starts a radio show, or a book series, or a continues the comic books, or extends them into graphic novels, well, that's OK. The story is good as it stands. He would much rather see ongoing media work related to the Firefly universe, but it does not have to happen.
-Rusty
28,860 mph is just over 8 miles per second. When compared to lights speed of 186,000 miles per second in a vacume, it isn't much to write home about. Granted it's still fast, and I don't really think I want it hitting my appartment, or even your mom's house...
-Rusty
It does appear that I missinterpreted the question. I could claim that since there is an episode of firefly titled Serenity that I was referring to that, but I was not.
I would suspect that the first place that Serenity is going to show up on is the pay-per-view channels on cable. Considering that it went from theater to dvd in under 4 months, I would doubt that it will spend even a month on PPV.
Next it will make the rounds on one of the secondary movie channels. I doubt that HBO ro Showtime will show it on either of their primary channels, though Showtime may show it once then roll it to Cinimax if they pick up the rights. Again perhaps a month on one of the secondary channels in prime rotation, with another month in a secondary rotation schedule. (Aimed at off hours.)
After that I would suspect there will be a two month period where no-one will be showing it, after which SciFi may be able to claim that they are Premiring it.
DVD volume sales may alter the scheduling. As may PPV sales. Since I do not elect to use PPV services (including dvd rentals) my only impact on the schedule would be the copies I have already bought.
As to Whedon having another hit, I have no doubt that if he finds a way to get a broadcaster to pick up another series of his, that he will have no problem getting a hit started. I think Fox poisoned the waters for him with them, so he will probably look to one of the other broadcasters, or work things out with a cable channel.
The likely candidate in my mind are WB for broadcaster, as they are the hungriest of the companies, and are therefore more likely to allow him to take his show with him if they later on decide not to carry it for some reason. Off to Cable I think it is a tossup between TNT and Spike. SciFi is possible, but I know a lot of people who would look at the history of shows that have moved to SciFi and been killed and note to Joss that it looks a lot like Fox. TNT at least let JMS finish B5. Compared to Farscape and Andromeda on SciFi, though there are a lot of people disapointed with the last season of Andromeda in any case.
I threw in Spike because I think they would really like to have a potential first run hit series that happens to star some rather attractive women. I don't really think it will happen, but I think they are a reasonable candidate. The down side for Joss here would be the perception of the channel as the TnA channel. I think his brand of show tends to attract a higher level of thinking than much of what Spike tends to pay for as original TV, though they have been known to carry some very good SF over the years.
Other possibilities are out there as well. He may chose to go the sindication route. Worked well for Herculese and Xena, not quite so well for Andromeda.
Then again, I don't claim to really know all that much about what he is interested in doing, or who would be interested in working with him.
-Rusty
is scifi going to be running serenity soon ???
If by 'soon,' you mean 'will they broadcast it at all?' they already have. By my count they have re-broadcast the series at least two times, and I believe it has run through three times.
If you mean 'in the near future?' you may want to watch the listings at Sci-Fi's web site, and see what is comming up on the schedule. Granted this may be work for you, so I won't be surprised if you don't follow through, but that would be the easiest way to find out, and if it is being re-broadcast at this time, you will be able to find the day of the week, and the time of day that it will be on.
Alternatively you can set up a Tivo or Replay to record any tv show with the name 'Firefly' on any channel, and wait till all of the episodes show up. It may take a while. For those using MythTv, or one of the other home built PVR alternatives, you may do this as well. At the moment I don't show any listings for the next two weeks on my MythTV listings. I won't suggest the parent to try to set this up on their MythTV box, I don't expect they have one.
As a worst case situation, you can go to any of several online DVD sellers and order a copy of the series on dvd. You may even want to order a set of the series and a copy of the DVD for Serenity at the same time. Then you will have a copy of the entire set.
For those less inclined to support the franchise, you may find torrents of the series online. I don't really know how likely that is, I wouldn't put up my set.
As a side note, I stopped at Suncoast today to pick up a copy of the movie, and decided to pick up a second copy, as well as a set of the series to give as a christmas gift to my daughter and son-in-law for Christmas. Apparently the Suncoast that I stopped at had two copies of the series in stock thie morning and those two went almost immediately (presumably to people who bought copies of the movie at the same time.)
Have a good time.
-Rusty
There is a bit mroe to it than just ading more power gets you a higher data rate. If you send a .25 watt signal with all the power in a .5 khz bandwidth signal, you are not going to get more than about 300 bits per second data transfer. Increasing your power level does not improve the data rate, though it may improve your receive capability over a longer distance. I.e. increasing the power from that original .25 watt to say 25 megawatts doesn't improve the data rate, but it may mean you can receive the signal somewhat further away.
.5khz wide signal, you are going to need more power spread across that bandwidth. Going to a 2.5 khz signal means you will need a 1.25 watt signal. 5khz means a 2.5 watt signal. For that uncompressed live video feed, if you use a 5mhz wide signal (this gives a comfortable 1 mhz separation for most people, which is probably sufficient to toss in an audio stream of some sort) you are going to need a 2500 watt signal to start with. If you need to be able to receive it at a significant distance, you will need to be able to either increase the radiated power, or the gain of the signal in the direction the receiver is located in. Gain is measured in db, and for the purposes of this posting are compared to an omnidirectional signal. If you can get an effective four times the power radiated in the direction of your receiver, you have effectively increased the gain by 6db. (3db is double the signal.) You can also improve the signal reception by increasing the gain of the receiving antenna. In the case of the article the improvement in gain was done via a 1 meter offset sattelite dish.
If you want to increas the data rate, you need to expand the transmited bandwidth. Most of the comercial handheld 2-way radios out there use about a 2.5 khz bandwidth, which is OK for voice, though Hams and older (much older actually) comercial equipment uses a 5 khz bandwidth for voice. This bandwidth also works fairly well for slow scan vidio, which is basically single images sent over a period of between 5 and 20 minutes, depending upon the data rate, (1200 bps, or 9600 bps are common on ham frequencies) and image resolution and color depth.
If you want to send live video, you have to step up the bandwidth significantly. Standard TV uses a channel separation of 6 mhz, You can do a lot better with compression, and by reducing the frame rates. If you are video conferencing over your dsl or cable modem line, with an uplink cap of 128kbps, the signal your video chat partner receives is going to be somewhat less impressive than they get off the air for TV.
Now if you want to reach the same distances with the higher bandwidth signal as you would with that
For the most part the desire is to get the gain of the desired signal to be some power level over the noise floor of the environment you are working. The noise floor is generated by background radiation, as well as radiation of the environment you live in. If you happen to have mountains between you and all the local cities, or can work from an island over the horizon from significant RF sources, you can improve your separation somewhat. That doesn't help with the univeral background radiation, so he had to add some filtering to lower the signal level for signals outside of the desired bandwidth. As he was able to reduce those sigals by an effective 50db with his waveguide filter, he significantly improves his ability to receive the desired signals.
Granted he still has to be able to point the receiving system at the sending system. Sounds like he was able to.
The radiated power that the Mars Express transmits with is published data, as well as the effective gain of its transmitting antennas. The range between earth and Mars is reasonably easily calculable. It sounds like M0EYT got the rest of the calculations to work out as well.
Some of the above is not exact. Feel free to do more research to learn more about it yourself.
-Rusty - kc0vcu
Cheese: (Councile of Happy Eclectic Entertainers Seemingly Everywhere), has long known the secret to life, they just refuse to publish until they are confident in the DRM.
Bread: (Basic Research Evidence And Data) keeps telling us that Guts is only another year or so away. They are looking for that 'One Inch formula'. I keep trying to direct them to a gastric bypass, but you have to ask Douglas Adams about bypasses. We really need to get them together with Cheese, Ham, and perhaps Mayo. Of course there is a bit of infighting between Whole Wheat (WHO Lives Everywhere While Holding Each Alternative Taste) and Rye (Researchers Yearning Everywhere) over which goes better with the above. I say they are both brown.
Mayo: A medical facility in Rochester, MN. Founded by a pair of doctors who were brothers, with an interest in doing the best medicine possible at the time.
Have a good day.
I could be wrong.
-Rusty
The last thing I remember seeing these in was a frequency counter. Nothing else really needed a numeric display, and the equipment that the frequency counter was being used on predated the nixi tubes anyway. (1950-1965 era military equipment.)
I don't think there was a maintenance tech in his right mind that would have suggested taking one of those frequency counters to the field.
Whether there were that many maintenance techs that were in their right mind to begin with is an entirely different question, which I won't even suggest persuing.
-Rusty
When you consider that the tech nerds are the ones who are 'on' 24x7, carrying a pager and liable to be called in at any time of the day or night to fix whatever failed, I do think that the attitude of 'at least they are wearing clothing.' is a more realistic attitud to take than 'why isn't he in a white shirt and tie, with good slacks, a blazer, and highly polished shoes?'
The answer to that of course is 'because he was paged at 2:30 by the panicked help desk who needed him to come in to fix the core routers, and he figured that solving that issue was a bit more important than determining whether the blue slacks went with the charcoal blazer, and spending an additional 15 min. while getting ready to refresh the shine on his hiking boots.'
-Rusty
No, 1080i is two 540 fields that overlap each other.. The sum is 1080 lines, thus 1080i.
... in 'Stranger in a Strange Land.' I would have thought that the issues would have been well understood.
I think it would also be understood that as long as you have a mixed gender group of people together for an extended period of time, there isn't a lot you can do to prevent it either.
Valentine Smith.
-Rusty
You will have to do more research for yourself, however from having looked at educational distributions in the past, the primary goal is to set up a thin client based infrastructure that allows the school to deploy a large number of very low cost workstations, often without hard drives, that the students will use as their desktop. Memory, video card, sound card, keyboard, mouse, display and case. Possibly a CD and or floppy drive, though it would be unlikely to include a cdr/cdrw drive. Possibly a USB port, possibly not.
This is then supported by one or two farily large servers that most of the applications are actually run on or at least from.
Advantages for the school include the possiblity that they can just strip out the hard drives from systems that won't support the latest distribution of Windows, and effectively have zero or very low cost per workstation to move to Linux. A centralized account management structure where the school can insure that sutdents are only maintaining school related work in their storage folders, while providing an infrastructure that is disaster tolerant if they have implemented periodic backups of that online storage. If a vandal destroys a workstation you are not spending a day or more replacing it, updating all of the software with the current patches, etc, you simply replace it with an off the shelf spare, or pick up a bare bones system and put the appropriate network boot firmware on a network card if the bios does not already support booting off the network.
User interface is usually either a X windows desktop, or possibly a vnc or other thin client desktop. It can even be rdesktop if you insist upon using a windows platform for some reason.
All that said, I do not know what of it is included in Edubuntu.
-Rusty
They do. Usually they attribute the source as being Paul Murphy, but it seems that almost any source that can put two words together and get them published is a good source for flame bait as a source.
-Rusty
Yes. With caveats.
...they are too easy to get a hole in, at which point they are simply a bag with a bunch of stuff in them. ...they cost far too much for the space savings they provide. ...if you leave something in these bags for an extended period of time, plan on washing it when it comes out. If for no other reason than to get rid of the wrinkles, though my experience is that something ends up in the bag that propogates smell to everything else as well.
Yes they do allow you to compress things and as a result save space. However...
A cheaper alternative is to pick up some clear 35 gallon garbage bags, put a few items in one, then use a vacume to draw all the air out. Now tape, or better yet seal the bag with some sort of thermal seal.
One of the few sets that some people may find worthwhile to own are the camping kit sets. Put a shirt in it, close it, roll the bag up to squeeze out the air, then unroll the bag to get it flat again for packing. It makes a workable way of keeping clothing dry if you go camping and are prone to falling into creeks or rivers, or dropping your backpack or other carry bag that way. Again you will want to watch out for overpacking, as the zip lock seals may very well come appart on you.
That's just my opinion though. Others may note other opinions.
-Rusty