...crunch graphics numbers other than using a single chip..... SLI on one card using two slightly slower chips...
it's called silicon real-estate.
it's also called packaging cost.
it's called data routing on the board (FR4 is very, very slow unless you use a LOT of traces, which is very, very diffcult).
I think it may also be called lower MTBF.
and how about "debugging is a pain?"
either way, though - don't expect "multi-processing" on but the most high-end incarnations - when they have squeezed out of every bit of performance per-chip.
funny, i was *just* reading about this
on
Banana to be Sequenced
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· Score: 2, Informative
here on SciAm they have some cool stuff about this in general.
on the other hand - I have to wonder, while interesting how does this article fit in slashdot?
This means we lesser photographers can now get the right action shot just by volume alone;-)
now there are two problems with this:
1) without knowing how to set up exposure / apature / focus / whitebalance / and most importantly - general image composition - your chances of getting the right shot does not improve all that much with volume.
2) moreover, assuming that you are an amature and want to actually have some control over your images afterwards (i.e. store it in a raw format so you can adjust the exposure and stuff - btw it's very useful I seriously encourage anyone who can spare the space to do this), the transfer-rate is worefully inadequate. one raw 3Mpix image is usually some 6-9Mbytes; that's some 1.5-2 seconds per image. Considering that in the real world, 3fps is considered mediocre, continue to rely on your SDRAM buffers (for the ones who have the luxury of them) for a little longer. For JPEGs, high quality 2Mpix is still usually about 1M a piece - so don't expect too much if your camera actually have a decent pixel count.
anyway - not that it's not good news, or that I am humorless and don't get the joke - but I think microdrives will be around for a little longer for good reason.
BUT - IIRC on a plane (which is considered a "vessel" you are skill under the jurisdiction of the vessel's country of soverign - i.e. Germany; even though you are travelling through international waters.
However, if you get on a boat and sail out to the middle of the atlantic, well - spam away! (not that it's encouraged)
The funky thing about this is that you could just added a whopping huge amount of on-die cache.
I don't think this is entirely true. You can't spread out SRAM throughout the chip as localized heatsinks - they usually (for the purpose of less area / easier-to-trace address / data lines - all of the on-die-cache/memory/storage are always grouped together on their own little corner. So while it would provide *some* benefit, I wouldn't think it solves all the problems, as the heat is locally produced (on the high-frequency switched parts) anyway.
besides; people misunderstand how small cache-transistors really are - or more precisely, how tightly they can be packed. While regular transistors are about the same size (shy ones that needs to drive many gates are bigger to provide more current), the ones on cache memory are packed together while the "logic" portion are always fudged because that's the only way you can run the interconnects (without painstaking human intervention - this is mostly spewed out by computer).
so... I'd say that adding cache is more for the purpose of adding cache, with the 10% cooling as a fringe benefit, instead of the other way around as you seem to believe it to be.
I was going to mention it, but it does not fall into the "excercise" category. but wow you have not seen a person "play" until you go to japan and look at scraggy dressed guys play the 7-key version at ultra-insane difficulty level, on *double* (using both stations)...
the act of catching every raindrop in your immediate vicinity using your hand would probably be easier -- but it's pretty neat to look at the guy go into a trance and their fingers mechanically responds to the coming "notes", all at some 200bpm.
it makes me wonder if people actually are physically capable of responding that fast - each "note", from top of the screen to the bottom, lasts only some fraction of a second - i mean, the info has to travel between your eye to your brain and down to your fingers - not to mention that you have to time everything right; maybe it's all about the memorization. I don't know... I fudge up on the 5-key version on medium...
So... besides the tried and true DanceDanceRevolution (and all its spinoffs - the korean versions seems the hardest so far), there are many others nowadays. (and have been)
For those who complains that there is insufficient stuff for your hands to do because "nobody dances like that", there is also ParaParaParadise or somesuch that focuses on the hands. If you follow *exactly* what the person do onscreen, it actually gets pretty fancy.
Moreover, in Japan I have seen some boxing games where you would put on a pair of gloves and hit targets as they come up; at least one of them is themed after "Fist of the Northern Star." Also gives you quite a cardiovascular workout after a while.
Then we have the horse-riding ones... While looking silly, those gets tiring!
Another "all the rage" game is a drumming one. The Playstation version is not so tiring, but in the arcade with big drums and relatively heavy sticks, they can get interesting mighty quick (since for fast tracks you have to accelerate a fairly massy stick to the drum at high frequency).
In ESPN-zone in downtown Chicago, there is also a rock-climbing thingy. Nobody can afford one on their own, but that's probably the most physically engaging "game" I have ever played.
so... no reason to stick just to the bikes, y'all.
This is a different way of manufacturing stuff, and in a way closer to the nanotech promise of universal manipulators in its function and operations. (this part is not as important, but i thought i'd point it out - because if the print nozzles get small enough and resolution high enough - what is the difference between this and a univ.manipulator in practical terms?)
besides, non-electronic stuff can already be "printed."
there are a few impacts that I think needs to be considered:
ford completely changed "manufacturing" by inventing the assembly line. Now we are going back the other way of making things one at a time. this is interesting - from a economic perspective if anything:
there are always tradeoffs in the world (let's focus on manufacturing): let's take, for example, if you want to make a silicon chip for some application; you can either get a FPGA (field programmable gate array) from Altera / Xilinx / whoever, or go for a ASIC process with custom plates and stuff. for big runs ASIC is cheaper, for small runs FPGA is cheaper.
same thing with buring CDs. you want a few CDs of your stuff? you can burn them or send them to be stamped. under 1000 copies, don't even think about stamping.
exactly the same in manufacturing - even though assembly line is nice and efficient, there is the infrastructure cost and the start-up cost/delay (especially for big / complex stuff). this is problematic in several ways:
1) designing for an assembly line sucks because making models of what you are trying to make eventually is a completely different process. making models takes a lot of time, and they are not always 100% reprasentative / difficult to change, etc (why do you think so many uses computers to do industrial design / modelling?) 2) making changes to an assembly line (say, to correct error / bug) also suck, if in a rigid configuration (what, you mean my gate masks are wrong and I have to etch another one?). 3) small runs / cheap crap (toys, say) does not warrent a real "assembly line" and a humanized assembly line / having humans make them would be expensive. to solve this problem, many manufacture of cheap stuff offload them to, say, china - where stuff are made by hand in assembly, mostly. This is *still* relatively expensive, prone to humar error, cause bag working conditions, etc.
being able to "print out" a working model / product solves all three and fits neatly in a segment that desperatly needs, or would at least hugely benefit, from sucha technology.
I welcome it. It also may mean that instead of building lego robot command toys, my kids will be able to design his whatever gizmo in a computer and just "print it out."
but when an actual product is as easy to "copy" as a song on a CD - boy we will see some crazy changes in the future! This if anything convinces me of the not-so-distant singularity, and its proximity.
If an object the size of the sun suddenly acquired the 99x its mass, would it not either collapse upon itself, or expand rapidly, nova, and the core would collapse upon itself, causing the same result, a singularity, with a small event horizon.
the slightly longer answer is "because in the sun's inertial reference frame (i am going to leave gen.rel out of this) the sun still has the same mass."
if you don't understand what I just said, read more about special relativity, kay?
Templeton foundation always offers a prize that's valued at more than the Nobel's (Nobels are about 1 million US dollars, making it the highest paying science award, I believe)...
Worse yet, I hear that you are always forced (peer pressure?) to donate away your award (Nobel, anyway) if you are in the sciences; I think the templeton people keep theirs?
Small side-note: Nobels have no category for Mathematics; but i think recently (last few decades) a separate foundation set up one for math with comparable awards. Something about Nobel (the dude) hating mathematicians because (unsure) his gf was seduced away by one, or some such (please correct me if anyone knows the straightdope)
I wonder how long it will take to find that one out? I bet a dollar to a donut that we know how that works out before we find out what's going on in the middle of the galaxy, though. any takers?
I may not be *the* most avid Anime-fan out there (but I do live in Japan so maybe that should raise the credibility somewhat?), but it really does not seem to me that anime discusses much about aliens / civilizations and our relationships with them.
I mean, I think the genre can be categorized into a few (rough) parts, but non of them are really the "explore new land meet new people" sort of (startrek like, I suppose) way.
I mean, the only ones I can think of on top of my head that goes near the subject is: 1) Robotech (actually a soap opera and you know it) 2) Nadesico (which is anime talking about anime - but the aliens turned out to be human (oops did I spoil this?) who are all anime freaks) 3) pokemon / and the like (but that's no alien civilization now, right?) 4) sex-starved monsters (won't get into this)
What I am trying to say is that anime to me, at least, seem to use "aliens and their civilizations" more often as a background story than as a focus. Besides most of the "alien (read: forign / non-human biological)" stuff is usually mystical (magical powers, etc) rather than factual.
but there are a lot of human's relationship with technology / machines. Ghost in the Shell, Zoujin-Z, Lain, just to name a few "on the mark" ones.
7-monthes is a fungshui thing; it more lucky to make seven month contract because seventy-seven year old wise grandma of CEO predicted so.
and what "selected area" really means is that only those people where the power-line enters the house from the south gets service. people who has power-line from south-east / south-west is okay as long an there are three windows, live dear a pond (with live goldfishes inside), and must be in viewable range of five bushes.
In Japan you can get DSL without voice service which will save you about 600-700 dollars in the "line rights."
The phone company is happy to provide the copper line for you (or activate your current voice line into a DSL only line) because they get their share of "carry-DSL-fee" (about 20 dollars a month) regardless. ISPs (you pick one) who actually provide you with the DSL service charges around 30 dollars for between 8Mbit-12Mbit service.
I heard that CA is the only place that can't do the no-voice line thing, though; but don't quote me on this one.
"quality" is a difficult-to-define thing (to avoid calling it "a difficult to define quality"). However, A lot of times you can tell by:
1) holding the thing in your hands / trying it out (as, say a Made-in-Japan CD player vs. a Made-in-China CD player), or
2) notice the kind of quality the people have that makes the stuff.
I trust german engineering not because they have better schools, or smarter people - but that it always seemed to me that they are often meticulous to the point of being excessive (in a complementable way, in this respect anyhow), and this guy and his margin tests goes to show that.
I mean, 2000 repeated tests (and counting) at ~20% margin (75k), and more tests at >30% margin. That is impressively dedicated - especially since it's done out of his own little workshop!
Granted though - I am sure someone will point out "it's his life on the line here" - true: but nontheless: 2000 times! in his own workshop with no sponsors! one test each day means five. and. half. years...
So, indeed - german badge does not guarantee against future failures, but I bet on average these failures (or even minor annoyances) comes much later than a widget made by people who are not as excessive about the engineering.
he had it tested at MTU (Motoren und Turbinen Union) to be sure it will stand the design speed of his engine (65krpm) and has got a sufficient safety margin. This wheel had been accelerated 2000 times up to 75krpm and will still have to be tested a few hundered times at 82krpm.
Now... why I get a feeling that Ford does not put this much into their quality assurance? maybe because the windshield wiper burns and explodes if it's set on high for more than 30 seconds (as *one* example)
Rocky VI: MGM is nearing a final deal with Sylvester Stallone to write, star in and produce another "Rocky" installment, which will return the franchise to its indie-style roots. THR sources close to MGM say that -- given the right script -- the studio and Stallone hope to continue that trend with a "Rocky VI" budgeted in the $10-$15 million range. The story line for "Rocky VI" would find Stallone as a 50-year-old Rocky Balboa who is now at work running a youth center. He is lured out of retirement from the ring for one last fight (...again).
So, yeah... another Rocky.
I think personally that even after Stallone dies, they will CGI him and make more Rocky films (They are doing this to Bruce Lee, btw). Maybe until the universe implodes, will we finally get a rest?
I don't know about the multiplying buttons on top, though. I mean, seems like with every release, the buttons get drunk, get an orgie, and out pops some more buttons (maybe the buttons are catholic).
soon I will need 1920 pixels of horizontal resolutions just so all the buttons displays properly.
This compared to like what, 6 buttons I use on Moz? shared on the same line as address bar?
Gosh I really wish they can just let these things die.
Really...
Why does the movie industry have to pimp a franchise until it runs out of money, but at the cost of running out of charm too?
Take MIB - it was nice, well, self contained. MIB2 was not NEARLY as good, but they just HAD to drag everyone back to make another sequel (and probably one after that too)
Arnold is like how old now?
And there is gonna be another Rocky? - so will I see dentures flying in the ring?
Creativity just seem really lacking these days. Can't we go and start some new pop legend, instead of feeding on old ones till our brains shrivel?
*matrix is the only "new" one i can think of it off the top of my head. Fight Club maybe too - and I really hope there is no sequel to that*
Is it the story-line? Disney has nothing to do with most of the older film's story-line - albeit the Quasimodo's life style got a big change.
The animation techniques? While they have been going toward more abstract reprasentatives of people, I think the technique has been improving. The scenes where Tarzan slides through vines, etc conveys the scence of mastery Tarzan has over the forest that traditional animation techniques would have never been capable of.
True, there has been craps recently (all the ones that screams "low budget!" - pocahontas 2, peter pan 2, etc), but i really think they are kind of running-out-of stories. I mean, it's not like they can make Moby Dick / Crime & Punishment into a kids film, ya know. (Though have the Capt'n ride ride the whale into the sunset at film-end would be an interesting ending)
But seriously, I *personally* didn't find most of the older disney films that interesting, beside a nod to it as "this is history" - maybe I am growing out of the "liking kids stuff (simple hero-villain structure, etc)" age? A lot of the newer stuff has jokes that both kids and adults can appreciate - and they have taken off a lot of the different-sex-and-their-specific-rolls overtones from the older films, which is another thing I find pleasing about the newer Disney stories.
So, I actually like "Tarzan" more than "Sleeping Beauty" - of course, that's just me.
Re:Competition makes things good.
on
EA As The Next Disney
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I disagree.
Movie-wise I would say disney has been getting better.
Or, for my own taste anyway - Lilo&Stitch was an excellent film - and all the pixar productions keeps getting better as well.
I mean, compared to "Sleeping Beauty"... I'd take today's disney films any day of the week.
One may argue that Disney is trying to drown out Gibli stuff by buying up the rights, but maybe they are actually recognizing talent?
as of this moment, on Yahoo (where the news is hosted) there is 103 comments;
on/. there is over 900, 868 legit (i.e. >= 0 in score)...
hmm...
and another one - seem like he used the phrase "hard working men and women" many times. I wonder if he is trying to appeal to somebody (everyone)?
I think it's like the saying about "perfectionist" - if you ask people individually, almost EVERYONE will think that they are a perfectionist (like over 90% (non-authoratative)) - but they all know that there are actually very few (of the REAL ones) out there. Makes it easy to identify with people if you can "guess" this trait of theirs.
(good at picking up girls too, or so I hear, since the percentage is even higher amongst the female)
... or make heck of a bunch of hackers / crackers and what you have it...
my highschool had student admins. (it was the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, btw - i know there are others out there in different states. chime in if you know what i am talking about / goes/went to one) These said students knew more about computers, security, and everything so much more than the actual school admins - that eventually when the school decided to "take" these machines from them (changed root password, etc), they got in before you had time to say "blueberry pie."
so either way, it's good. though I am not sure about the attitude it breeds in people. I know I will get flamed / called a flame-bait - but seriously though - a lot of times stereotypes exist for a reason, and unfortunately unix/linux breeds some of the smartest, but yet sometimes the most anal / strange admins/hackers in existance.
what's wrong with chaining the pen to your TABLET? I suspect those ID holders (one with stretch-strings for access cards, company IDs, etc) seem perfect for the job. a little ghetto-rigged, but for the forgetful - hey beats 300 buxs eh?
i mean, i wouldn't suspect you'd use the pens anywhere else later anyhow.
and also - maybe you lose palm styluses (styli?) because they are cheaper? I can say the same thing like "i will never buy one of those 300 dollar Cartier or S.T.Doupont because I keep losing my BICs!" but that's just not true - knowing that i have shelled out massive dollars for the pen, I am (would be, anyhow) much more careful with it.
Slashdot Mirror
it's called silicon real-estate.
it's also called packaging cost.
it's called data routing on the board (FR4 is very, very slow unless you use a LOT of traces, which is very, very diffcult).
I think it may also be called lower MTBF.
and how about "debugging is a pain?"
either way, though - don't expect "multi-processing" on but the most high-end incarnations - when they have squeezed out of every bit of performance per-chip.
on the other hand - I have to wonder, while interesting how does this article fit in slashdot?
now there are two problems with this:
1) without knowing how to set up exposure / apature / focus / whitebalance / and most importantly - general image composition - your chances of getting the right shot does not improve all that much with volume.
2) moreover, assuming that you are an amature and want to actually have some control over your images afterwards (i.e. store it in a raw format so you can adjust the exposure and stuff - btw it's very useful I seriously encourage anyone who can spare the space to do this), the transfer-rate is worefully inadequate. one raw 3Mpix image is usually some 6-9Mbytes; that's some 1.5-2 seconds per image. Considering that in the real world, 3fps is considered mediocre, continue to rely on your SDRAM buffers (for the ones who have the luxury of them) for a little longer. For JPEGs, high quality 2Mpix is still usually about 1M a piece - so don't expect too much if your camera actually have a decent pixel count.
anyway - not that it's not good news, or that I am humorless and don't get the joke - but I think microdrives will be around for a little longer for good reason.
here is some interesting info:
l
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_136.htm
arguably 90km, or as high as you want.
BUT - IIRC on a plane (which is considered a "vessel" you are skill under the jurisdiction of the vessel's country of soverign - i.e. Germany; even though you are travelling through international waters.
However, if you get on a boat and sail out to the middle of the atlantic, well - spam away! (not that it's encouraged)
I don't think this is entirely true. You can't spread out SRAM throughout the chip as localized heatsinks - they usually (for the purpose of less area / easier-to-trace address / data lines - all of the on-die-cache/memory/storage are always grouped together on their own little corner. So while it would provide *some* benefit, I wouldn't think it solves all the problems, as the heat is locally produced (on the high-frequency switched parts) anyway.
besides; people misunderstand how small cache-transistors really are - or more precisely, how tightly they can be packed. While regular transistors are about the same size (shy ones that needs to drive many gates are bigger to provide more current), the ones on cache memory are packed together while the "logic" portion are always fudged because that's the only way you can run the interconnects (without painstaking human intervention - this is mostly spewed out by computer).
so... I'd say that adding cache is more for the purpose of adding cache, with the 10% cooling as a fringe benefit, instead of the other way around as you seem to believe it to be.
I was going to mention it, but it does not fall into the "excercise" category. but wow you have not seen a person "play" until you go to japan and look at scraggy dressed guys play the 7-key version at ultra-insane difficulty level, on *double* (using both stations)...
the act of catching every raindrop in your immediate vicinity using your hand would probably be easier -- but it's pretty neat to look at the guy go into a trance and their fingers mechanically responds to the coming "notes", all at some 200bpm.
it makes me wonder if people actually are physically capable of responding that fast - each "note", from top of the screen to the bottom, lasts only some fraction of a second - i mean, the info has to travel between your eye to your brain and down to your fingers - not to mention that you have to time everything right; maybe it's all about the memorization. I don't know... I fudge up on the 5-key version on medium...
So... besides the tried and true DanceDanceRevolution (and all its spinoffs - the korean versions seems the hardest so far), there are many others nowadays. (and have been)
For those who complains that there is insufficient stuff for your hands to do because "nobody dances like that", there is also ParaParaParadise or somesuch that focuses on the hands. If you follow *exactly* what the person do onscreen, it actually gets pretty fancy.
Moreover, in Japan I have seen some boxing games where you would put on a pair of gloves and hit targets as they come up; at least one of them is themed after "Fist of the Northern Star." Also gives you quite a cardiovascular workout after a while.
Then we have the horse-riding ones... While looking silly, those gets tiring!
Another "all the rage" game is a drumming one. The Playstation version is not so tiring, but in the arcade with big drums and relatively heavy sticks, they can get interesting mighty quick (since for fast tracks you have to accelerate a fairly massy stick to the drum at high frequency).
In ESPN-zone in downtown Chicago, there is also a rock-climbing thingy. Nobody can afford one on their own, but that's probably the most physically engaging "game" I have ever played.
so... no reason to stick just to the bikes, y'all.
I really don't think that's the point, though.
This is a different way of manufacturing stuff, and in a way closer to the nanotech promise of universal manipulators in its function and operations. (this part is not as important, but i thought i'd point it out - because if the print nozzles get small enough and resolution high enough - what is the difference between this and a univ.manipulator in practical terms?)
besides, non-electronic stuff can already be "printed."
there are a few impacts that I think needs to be considered:
ford completely changed "manufacturing" by inventing the assembly line. Now we are going back the other way of making things one at a time. this is interesting - from a economic perspective if anything:
there are always tradeoffs in the world (let's focus on manufacturing): let's take, for example, if you want to make a silicon chip for some application; you can either get a FPGA (field programmable gate array) from Altera / Xilinx / whoever, or go for a ASIC process with custom plates and stuff. for big runs ASIC is cheaper, for small runs FPGA is cheaper.
same thing with buring CDs. you want a few CDs of your stuff? you can burn them or send them to be stamped. under 1000 copies, don't even think about stamping.
exactly the same in manufacturing - even though assembly line is nice and efficient, there is the infrastructure cost and the start-up cost/delay (especially for big / complex stuff). this is problematic in several ways:
1) designing for an assembly line sucks because making models of what you are trying to make eventually is a completely different process. making models takes a lot of time, and they are not always 100% reprasentative / difficult to change, etc (why do you think so many uses computers to do industrial design / modelling?)
2) making changes to an assembly line (say, to correct error / bug) also suck, if in a rigid configuration (what, you mean my gate masks are wrong and I have to etch another one?).
3) small runs / cheap crap (toys, say) does not warrent a real "assembly line" and a humanized assembly line / having humans make them would be expensive. to solve this problem, many manufacture of cheap stuff offload them to, say, china - where stuff are made by hand in assembly, mostly. This is *still* relatively expensive, prone to humar error, cause bag working conditions, etc.
being able to "print out" a working model / product solves all three and fits neatly in a segment that desperatly needs, or would at least hugely benefit, from sucha technology.
I welcome it. It also may mean that instead of building lego robot command toys, my kids will be able to design his whatever gizmo in a computer and just "print it out."
but when an actual product is as easy to "copy" as a song on a CD - boy we will see some crazy changes in the future! This if anything convinces me of the not-so-distant singularity, and its proximity.
the slightly longer answer is "because in the sun's inertial reference frame (i am going to leave gen.rel out of this) the sun still has the same mass."
if you don't understand what I just said, read more about special relativity, kay?
non-science pays more.
Templeton foundation always offers a prize that's valued at more than the Nobel's (Nobels are about 1 million US dollars, making it the highest paying science award, I believe)...
Worse yet, I hear that you are always forced (peer pressure?) to donate away your award (Nobel, anyway) if you are in the sciences; I think the templeton people keep theirs?
Small side-note: Nobels have no category for Mathematics; but i think recently (last few decades) a separate foundation set up one for math with comparable awards. Something about Nobel (the dude) hating mathematicians because (unsure) his gf was seduced away by one, or some such (please correct me if anyone knows the straightdope)
"Can we survive 2003?"
I wonder how long it will take to find that one out? I bet a dollar to a donut that we know how that works out before we find out what's going on in the middle of the galaxy, though. any takers?
I may not be *the* most avid Anime-fan out there (but I do live in Japan so maybe that should raise the credibility somewhat?), but it really does not seem to me that anime discusses much about aliens / civilizations and our relationships with them.
I mean, I think the genre can be categorized into a few (rough) parts, but non of them are really the "explore new land meet new people" sort of (startrek like, I suppose) way.
I mean, the only ones I can think of on top of my head that goes near the subject is:
1) Robotech (actually a soap opera and you know it)
2) Nadesico (which is anime talking about anime - but the aliens turned out to be human (oops did I spoil this?) who are all anime freaks)
3) pokemon / and the like (but that's no alien civilization now, right?)
4) sex-starved monsters (won't get into this)
What I am trying to say is that anime to me, at least, seem to use "aliens and their civilizations" more often as a background story than as a focus. Besides most of the "alien (read: forign / non-human biological)" stuff is usually mystical (magical powers, etc) rather than factual.
but there are a lot of human's relationship with technology / machines. Ghost in the Shell, Zoujin-Z, Lain, just to name a few "on the mark" ones.
just my 2 yen.
7-monthes is a fungshui thing; it more lucky to make seven month contract because seventy-seven year old wise grandma of CEO predicted so.
and what "selected area" really means is that only those people where the power-line enters the house from the south gets service. people who has power-line from south-east / south-west is okay as long an there are three windows, live dear a pond (with live goldfishes inside), and must be in viewable range of five bushes.
In Japan you can get DSL without voice service which will save you about 600-700 dollars in the "line rights."
The phone company is happy to provide the copper line for you (or activate your current voice line into a DSL only line) because they get their share of "carry-DSL-fee" (about 20 dollars a month) regardless. ISPs (you pick one) who actually provide you with the DSL service charges around 30 dollars for between 8Mbit-12Mbit service.
I heard that CA is the only place that can't do the no-voice line thing, though; but don't quote me on this one.
My original point was more like this, actually:
"quality" is a difficult-to-define thing (to avoid calling it "a difficult to define quality"). However, A lot of times you can tell by:
1) holding the thing in your hands / trying it out (as, say a Made-in-Japan CD player vs. a Made-in-China CD player), or
2) notice the kind of quality the people have that makes the stuff.
I trust german engineering not because they have better schools, or smarter people - but that it always seemed to me that they are often meticulous to the point of being excessive (in a complementable way, in this respect anyhow), and this guy and his margin tests goes to show that.
I mean, 2000 repeated tests (and counting) at ~20% margin (75k), and more tests at >30% margin. That is impressively dedicated - especially since it's done out of his own little workshop!
Granted though - I am sure someone will point out "it's his life on the line here" - true: but nontheless: 2000 times! in his own workshop with no sponsors! one test each day means five. and. half. years...
So, indeed - german badge does not guarantee against future failures, but I bet on average these failures (or even minor annoyances) comes much later than a widget made by people who are not as excessive about the engineering.
Now... why I get a feeling that Ford does not put this much into their quality assurance? maybe because the windshield wiper burns and explodes if it's set on high for more than 30 seconds (as *one* example)
as of now (18:42 Dec 20 Tokyo Time) - I havn't found any /. editors on the said page yet.
Rocky VI: MGM is nearing a final deal with Sylvester Stallone to write, star in and produce another "Rocky" installment, which will return the franchise to its indie-style roots. THR sources close to MGM say that -- given the right script -- the studio and Stallone hope to continue that trend with a "Rocky VI" budgeted in the $10-$15 million range. The story line for "Rocky VI" would find Stallone as a 50-year-old Rocky Balboa who is now at work running a youth center. He is lured out of retirement from the ring for one last fight (...again).
So, yeah... another Rocky.
I think personally that even after Stallone dies, they will CGI him and make more Rocky films (They are doing this to Bruce Lee, btw). Maybe until the universe implodes, will we finally get a rest?
I don't know about the multiplying buttons on top, though. I mean, seems like with every release, the buttons get drunk, get an orgie, and out pops some more buttons (maybe the buttons are catholic).
soon I will need 1920 pixels of horizontal resolutions just so all the buttons displays properly.
This compared to like what, 6 buttons I use on Moz? shared on the same line as address bar?
Gosh I really wish they can just let these things die.
Really...
Why does the movie industry have to pimp a franchise until it runs out of money, but at the cost of running out of charm too?
Take MIB - it was nice, well, self contained. MIB2 was not NEARLY as good, but they just HAD to drag everyone back to make another sequel (and probably one after that too)
Arnold is like how old now?
And there is gonna be another Rocky? - so will I see dentures flying in the ring?
Creativity just seem really lacking these days. Can't we go and start some new pop legend, instead of feeding on old ones till our brains shrivel?
*matrix is the only "new" one i can think of it off the top of my head. Fight Club maybe too - and I really hope there is no sequel to that*
What is your definition of "excellent?"
Is it the story-line? Disney has nothing to do with most of the older film's story-line - albeit the Quasimodo's life style got a big change.
The animation techniques? While they have been going toward more abstract reprasentatives of people, I think the technique has been improving. The scenes where Tarzan slides through vines, etc conveys the scence of mastery Tarzan has over the forest that traditional animation techniques would have never been capable of.
True, there has been craps recently (all the ones that screams "low budget!" - pocahontas 2, peter pan 2, etc), but i really think they are kind of running-out-of stories. I mean, it's not like they can make Moby Dick / Crime & Punishment into a kids film, ya know. (Though have the Capt'n ride ride the whale into the sunset at film-end would be an interesting ending)
But seriously, I *personally* didn't find most of the older disney films that interesting, beside a nod to it as "this is history" - maybe I am growing out of the "liking kids stuff (simple hero-villain structure, etc)" age? A lot of the newer stuff has jokes that both kids and adults can appreciate - and they have taken off a lot of the different-sex-and-their-specific-rolls overtones from the older films, which is another thing I find pleasing about the newer Disney stories.
So, I actually like "Tarzan" more than "Sleeping Beauty" - of course, that's just me.
I disagree.
Movie-wise I would say disney has been getting better.
Or, for my own taste anyway - Lilo&Stitch was an excellent film - and all the pixar productions keeps getting better as well.
I mean, compared to "Sleeping Beauty"... I'd take today's disney films any day of the week.
One may argue that Disney is trying to drown out Gibli stuff by buying up the rights, but maybe they are actually recognizing talent?
as of this moment, on Yahoo (where the news is hosted) there is 103 comments;
/. there is over 900, 868 legit (i.e. >= 0 in score)...
on
hmm...
and another one - seem like he used the phrase "hard working men and women" many times. I wonder if he is trying to appeal to somebody (everyone)?
I think it's like the saying about "perfectionist" - if you ask people individually, almost EVERYONE will think that they are a perfectionist (like over 90% (non-authoratative)) - but they all know that there are actually very few (of the REAL ones) out there. Makes it easy to identify with people if you can "guess" this trait of theirs.
(good at picking up girls too, or so I hear, since the percentage is even higher amongst the female)
... or make heck of a bunch of hackers / crackers and what you have it ...
/hackers in existance.
my highschool had student admins. (it was the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, btw - i know there are others out there in different states. chime in if you know what i am talking about / goes/went to one) These said students knew more about computers, security, and everything so much more than the actual school admins - that eventually when the school decided to "take" these machines from them (changed root password, etc), they got in before you had time to say "blueberry pie."
so either way, it's good. though I am not sure about the attitude it breeds in people. I know I will get flamed / called a flame-bait - but seriously though - a lot of times stereotypes exist for a reason, and unfortunately unix/linux breeds some of the smartest, but yet sometimes the most anal / strange admins
what's wrong with chaining the pen to your TABLET? I suspect those ID holders (one with stretch-strings for access cards, company IDs, etc) seem perfect for the job. a little ghetto-rigged, but for the forgetful - hey beats 300 buxs eh?
i mean, i wouldn't suspect you'd use the pens anywhere else later anyhow.
and also - maybe you lose palm styluses (styli?) because they are cheaper? I can say the same thing like "i will never buy one of those 300 dollar Cartier or S.T.Doupont because I keep losing my BICs!" but that's just not true - knowing that i have shelled out massive dollars for the pen, I am (would be, anyhow) much more careful with it.