If you Google "Byte magazine covers", you'll see that the covers often took a certain amount of artistic license.
I'm not even sure that one needs to excuse it as "artistic license".
To me- and I suspect almost anyone at the time- that looks as if it were quite clearly intended as a non-literal but eye-catching metaphor for "one day we will have wrist watches as powerful as today's personal computers".
I honestly don't think for a second they were suggesting that such a machine would *actually* resemble a ludicrously miniaturised PC...
(Skims the actual article)
Okay, so even the article itself understands that the original image was tongue-in-cheek; something the summary doesn't make so clear. And I do understand the point it's trying to make about predictions of the future looking like the present with high-tech bells on. But at the same time it slightly weakens the point being made, as there are probably many seriously-intended examples of "future tech" that are almost as silly!
What were the words of Uncle Ben? "With great power comes great responsibility".
Am I the only person who read "Uncle Ben" and thought of the fictitious rice guy?!
Though it pretty obviously wasn't him, it sounded like something one of those oft-quoted American leaders might say, so I assumed "Uncle Ben" might refer to "Benjamin Franklin". Then I looked it up.
Sorry, did you ask for me to return my geek card? Er.... listen, to be honest I already had to hand that in a while back. I only got in here because I bribed the guy on the door with an "Apple Genius" t-shirt. What? Yeah, I know, I don't think he's a real geek either, he only wanted that because it got a product placement on The Big Bang Theory. He bought Windows 8 for the same reason.
Anyway, I don't know that much about Spiderman, saw the first two movies a few years back but don't remember much about them. Can I stay if I mention I liked Spiderman and his Amazing Friends when I was a kid? No? Look, I know the words to that Spiderman song, here, let me sing it for you...
(Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, nor even a scientist).
The thing is, people talk about detecting or seeing "IR" as if it's a single entity, much like how they talk about seeing or detecting visible light. However, "IR" covers a much, *much* wider range than visible light (*) and "near" IR- which is just outside the visible light range- arguably has a lot more in common with visible light (and how it can be recorded) than the "far" IR closer to the other end, which is used in heat-sensitive cameras.
"Near" IR can be recorded on most regular digital cameras if the IR-blocking filter has been removed (i.e. they're sensitive to it by default and it has to be filtered out), or even if the IR-blocking filter is weak (some older cameras were like this). It looks interesting and different, much like how someone who can only see green or blue light might feel when seeing a photo of the red part of the spectrum. And it can be used for night vision if it's used with a near-IR light source (which people can't see, but is still easy to detect with unfiltered electronic sensors).
But it won't give you "heat vision" unless the thing you're viewing is so hot it's almost- but not quite- visibly glowing red (**). The wavelengths of IR given out by things at normal temperatures are much lower (i.e. closer to "far" IR) and require different detection equipment- the problem being of course that they traditionally had to be cooled to avoid detecting their own heat being emitted.
And in fact, IR-based "night vision" could refer to (at least) these two very different solutions- *either* the "easier but requires IR illumination" near-infrared device one could theoretically do with modified off-the-shelf camera sensors or far-infrared heat detection (i.e. detecting the objects' own heat).
Anyway, it sounds like this report is describing "heat vision" far-IR detection, since it mentions the problems with that, and how it gets around it. Just bear in mind that "infrared vision" could potentially refer to either near or far IR, and they're different kettles of fish.
(*) Visible light covers wavelengths from 380 to 700 nm (i.e. approx twofold difference from the shortest to the longest), IR covers from 700nm (0.7 micrometres) to 1mm (1000 micrometres), a factor of well over a thousand times difference!
(**) AFAIK this is as per:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... , i.e. as something gets hotter, the frequencies it gives off generally increase, from far-infrared to near-infrared, to red and then to yellow. (Yellow becomes "white hot" rather than blue because it's still emitting significant amounts of lower frequencies). So if it's almost- but not *quite*- red hot, it'll be emitting signficant amounts of near-infrared. Much cooler, and the radiation will be of lower wavelength.
Apparently most younger Japanese aren't much into it themselves either, and the "tradition" isn't, really.
From this report:-
For [Mitoshi Noguchi] there is nothing wrong with eating whale, it reminds him of school lunch.
"When we were growing up we didn't have ample supply of food, so this was meat for us, our protein," he says. "So when we eat it now it's very reminiscent. It's delicious."
Mr Noguchi is in late middle age, but on the same table is one of his much younger colleagues, Yoshitaka Takayanagi, born after the meat was phased out in Japanese schools. Few Japanese eat whale regularly these days, especially the young, and he has only eaten it twice before.
So why does Japan exert so much diplomatic effort on this issue? The official line is that whaling is an integral part of Japanese culture, a practice dating back hundreds of years.
That isn't quite true. A few coastal communities, like Wakayama, have been hunting whales for centuries, traditionally with hand-held harpoons.
But the rest of Japan only became familiar with eating whale during the 20th Century, as modern ships with harpoon-guns became available. Whale meat was especially widespread in the difficult years after the Second World War, when it was seen as a cheap source of protein.
But as incomes rose, people switched to imported beef, or fish like tuna and salmon. With such an abundance of high-quality protein available these days, few Japanese see the point in eating whale, which doesn't taste that special.
There are other reasons for Japan's determined campaign.
"If the current ban on hunting whales is allowed to become permanent," says Hideki Moronuki, at the Fisheries Agency, the government department leading the campaign, "activists may direct their efforts to restricting other types of fishing."
As Japan consumes more fish than any other nation, it worries about possible curbs on its fishing activities in open seas for species like tuna.
Officials also like to claim that whales damage fish stocks because of the quantities they eat, although this is largely dismissed by scientists in the rest of the world.
But perhaps the biggest factor is resentment of being told by other countries what Japan can and cannot do.
"Why do people in the west make such a big deal about our very limited hunting of whales?" asks Hideki Moronuki.
"How would they feel if we told Americans they couldn't hunt deer, or if we told Australians to stop hunting kangaroos?"
I kind of wonder whether activation is going to work after April 8. No one has brought this up in years. Microsoft's servers have to still answer to requests from XP machines; if they don't, the software is unusable.
I kind of wonder what the legal issues would be if they *didn't* keep the activation servers working for the forseeable future.
Yes, I'm sure they've got a "you agree to give us your firstborn if we ask for it and not to sue us if we turn of the servers" clause in the EULA somewhere. Whether that would stand up in court- especially outwith the US- given MS's near-monopoly position on the desktop market (*) is open to question.
(*) Yes, MS are arguably losing dominance, not because anyone achieved the impossible and unseated them in the desktop arena, but because the current paradigm shift in computer hardware is moving things away from desktop PCs. Still a massively dominant company, however.
Whether you find it funny or not, XKCD at least has creativity and intelligence, and it's unfair to compare it with the awful "User Friendly". AFAICT, that only got where it was by targeting and pandering to the geek audience and being an online webcomic in the mid-to-late-90s when the former was still rare and the latter still somewhat novel.
The fact that it was badly-drawn (*) and not actually that clever in itself- so much as giving its oft-maligned (**) target audience an excuse to feel superior to others- didn't seem to matter.
Compare that to User Friendly. Aside from its "moderately-promising 14-year-old still showing too much influence from the Teach-Yourself-Cartooning book" drawing style, User Friendly has always relied on its geek-friendly subject matter and viewpoints to flatter the audience and obscure the fact that it's neither creative nor funny.
There's nothing creative about this. The "news" was a real-life item reported in many tech outlets about a year back. The strip itself is just a lazy excuse to let the audience laugh again at that story- it adds nothing to it except an audience-pandering but uncreative aside.
xkcd has a long way to go before it gets *that* lazy.
(*) XKCD isn't exactly detailed in the artwork stakes either, but that comes across as an intentional style, whereas User Friendly just looks like a wannabe of better-looking cartoons.
(**) This is before it was (allegedly) cool to be a geek.
An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.
Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?
The DMA controller was a seperate 40 pin Intel chip and omitting it probably reduced the cost by tens of dollars. It also severely crippled the I/O throughput.
"Tens of dollars" (cost price) would still have been a significant amount back then. Also, if, as others have commented, the PC Jr was already intentionally hobbled to avoid competing with IBM's more expensive machines, this reduced performance would likely have suited marketing anyway(!)
Funny that for all the bitching about the "chiclet" style keyboard back then, now I see way too many laptops (and even Macs) that are using what looks like the same style.
I laugh and laugh at the Mac's chiclet crap. They're horrible to use for touch typing, just one step above a membrane keyboard.
To be fair, AFAICT (*) "chiclet keyboard" is a word that seems to have changed its meaning over the years. In the PC Jr's day (again, AFAICT) it referred to *rubber-keyed* keyboards with the "chiclet" appearance. Rubber keyboards- like the PC Jr's- are not fun to type on.
The present-day Mac desktop keyboards often called "chiclet"- like this one- are, to be fair, not rubber keyed.
That said, I'd now like to agree with the parent and grandparent... they're still absolutely f*****g awful, style-over-substance garbage. I was typing on one (like the image above) today, and it's utterly horrid. I would blame it on the keys' lack of travel, but I've used laptop keyboards that are actually quite nice despite that. It may well be the "chiclet" layout, can't say. I've used it before as well, so it's not a case of being unfamiliar with it.
On the same machine I'd already swapped out the equally overrated "Magic" mouse mainly because its low profile might have looked good, but it was odious from an ergonomic point-of-view (i.e. nothing to hold in the hand, and I don't even have big hands).
Urgh.
(*) Based on what I've read from US sources. I live in the UK, and the expression "chiclet keyboard" wasn't used over here in the early-to-mid-80s (because "chiclets" gum wasn't sold here either). We simply called them "rubber keyboards".
As a matter of fact, the basic design [of the Coleco Adam] was tweaked slightly and became the MSX standard that was so popular in Japan.
It didn't "become" the MSX standard, where did you get that... interesting... history from?
Maybe he's getting it confused with the Spectravideo SV-328 (and SV-318) which *were* supposedly the design upon which MSX was based, although not 100% MSX-compatible themselves.
One quick check on Wikipedia later... Apparently CiF "Comment is Free" is something to do with The Guardian's website? Don't know, never posted there. The "last time" I referred to was on Slashdot as well, I just can't find the comment now...
I drive about the same, but live in the UK where "gas" costs have always been high. Thing is though, it's still cheaper (and twice as fast) as taking the train.
Yeah, but that's not saying much- the UK's privatised train system is horrendously expensive compared to similar railways (*) elsewhere in Europe- it makes a mockery of the Conservatives' claimed motives for privatisation, that it supposedly increases competition and efficiency and drives down costs. (**) Years upon years of way above the rate of inflation increases on prices that weren't cheap to start off with. When even the Tory-friendly Daily F****** Mail is running a story on how shockingly expensive it is (***), you know it's bad.
(*) Run along OMG COMMUNIST!!!!111^w^w more socialist lines
(**) Then again, we all know that this is about Tory dogma and feathering their own nests, regardless of how they dress it up. Their recent privatisation of the Royal Mail, despite the fact that the majority of people in the UK- including many Conservative supporters!- were opposed to this, and the fact that it was blatantly sold off at far below its market value, makes obvious what most people had already figured out long ago. Expect the Royal Mail to go the way of the Dutch national mail service when *that* was privatised and is apparently very poor now.
(***) This story was the top of the search results last time I searched for a story to make this point, so go figure...
Yes, because I'm retired now. Used to be 15K miles per year, now it's 4K.
Why's that a "Well Duh"? The story was about teenagers, and unless you're exceptionally precocious, I suspect that you're not a retired teenager, right? And if you are, well, I suspect you're *not* a typical example...:-)
I think it's safe to assume they meant "the demographic group that are teenagers", i.e. the fact that you got included in the group of teenagers for several decades back doesn't mean that you still get to count towards the present-day "teenager" statistic!
Just get over it dude. People are going to make jokes. Often times those jokes will be in questionable or bad taste.
Go back and read what I said. I wasn't responding to the original (lame) jokes, but calling out the OP's bullshit *response* of "black humour is a coping mechanism" being used by people who clearly *weren't* using it as such.
Specifically, these people *didn't* have the guts to say "yeah, I made a sick joke"- quite the opposite, they tried to put themselves in the same position as those actually affected by the event and grab the moral high ground.
You have no right to control what other people say
That'd be why I didn't tell people what or what not to say at any point, then. I simply exercised my (equally legitimate) right to call them out on it.
Ironically, it sounds more like you're telling *me* what I shouldn't say- that *I* shouldn't be allowed to call people out on bullshit self-righteousness. "Too bad", because it doesn't work that like that. If someone's free to make a sick joke (and I never claimed they weren't), other people are just as entitled to call them a sick f*** or express their dislike. And if you respond to that with the weasellishly BS self-justification above, *I'm* quite entitled to call you out on that.
If this "offends you" then tough- freedom of speech cuts both ways. "Just get over it dude".:-P
People who can laugh at life's ineviable hardships and disasters - whether their own or someone else's - bounce back.
People who are afraid to face life and death and laugh at him, cower.
Yeah, very poetic. Still the same old self-justifying misappropriation of "black humour as a coping strategy" being used to rationalise sick jokes by those who were neither involved in nor traumatised by the event being mocked. As I said last time:-
Most of the time I see that argument parrotted on Slashdot, it's being intentionally misused some borderline sociopathic asshole that's just made an insensitive joke about something that happened on the other side of the world and been called out on it.
Sure, we all know that you made that sick joke about that tragedy in the Philippines/China/wherever that'll never affect your home in Buttfuck, Illinois (which you'll have forgotten about by the time you move on to the next news item) as a "coping strategy". It's because you were scared by it.
Bullshit.
We all know that people closely affected by events (or feel themselves likely to be affected) often take solace in black humour- fair enough. We also know that many people are just dicks that like to make sick jokes about stuff that doesn't affect them personally. Anyone in the latter group trying to justify themselves and place themselves *above* their critics with a self-righteous appropriation of the "non-PC coping mechanism" argument is full of it.
When we see Bill Gates walking around in a brand new 20 year old body, then we can start assuming they DO have a cure and are keeping it from the public.
Bill Gates *does* have a brand new 20 year old body. He's just hired someone to occupy his old one and make occasional public appearances so that- as you suggest- no-one finds out.
Incidentally, I've managed to acquire a photograph of Gates in his new body... as a 20-year old *female*!
Remember that the article claims that the "Brown M&Ms" clause was mixed in with the *technical details*. It's quite possible that a sloppy promoter would hand the list of tech specs (with that in it) derived from the contract to whoever was responsible- and, of course, the tech guys, if they were doing their job correctly, should get back to the promoter saying "Have you seen this clause? That's not our job, but you should get someone to look at it".
As for the show being forfeit, that was (I assume) intentionally draconian, but as the other guy said, better that the show be cancelled than the stage collapse because instructions weren't followed- that clause gives the band a get-out if they have to do that due to the promoter's incompetence.
Same mistake as the previous guy- in an attempt to "summarise" the article you've omitted details that make clear the logic behind the clause, and introduced inaccuracy.
Van Halen concerts need a LOT of amperage for their very heavy equipment.
Still misleading; makes it sound like the amperage was needed because the equipment was "heavy". Also, you're extrapolating things that weren't actually mentioned in the article.
If you read the article, the heavy equipment (which could- and did- damage floors that weren't designed to take it) was the *only* specific, detailed example given of a problem that actually happened, and wasn't related to the issue of amperage.
And the latter was only mentioned as a potential clause (" So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . .." This kind of thing."). They didn't say anything about circuit breakers blowing- that may have happened, but you're still guessing.
*Van Halen inserts "M&M clause" as a mine canary to deal with bullshit venues that can't read simply documents.
Despite the fact I pointed out the problem with the *original* guy's summary of this part, you've repeated his mistake. You haven't explained *why* the clause was effective, i.e. the forfeiture penalty that anyone who'd actually read it would go out of their way to avoid... meaning that anyone who didn't do that clearly *hadn't* read it, or any of the other clauses properly.
The problem is that your summary may work as a reminder to someone who's *already* read the article and understood the points being made. But by definition, that's not what a "tl; dr" is aimed at.
Speaking as someone who's definitely too longwinded, I have great respect for the ability to be concise. Summarising by cutting corners isn't that hard. And burying all the information in a pile of semi (or not at all) relevant waffle isn't either- it's all too easy for geeks like me.
Actually distilling the *important* information into a concise but listenable *and* accurate form? That's harder to do well than most people think.:-/
How the hell is this modded up as informative? Should be modded fucking stupid and irrelevant to the discussion.
Just a guess, but I suspect everyone else understands why a "canary" clause (*) inserted to verify that people were paying attention to important technical details *might* be relevant to a case where the contractors had failed to pay attention to the technical information supplied to them.
(*) Which was the purpose of the "No Brown M&Ms" clause. You did understand that... right? Or were you still labouring under the assumption that it was a gratuitous rider requirement despite the fact I explained it wasn't and linked to the article?!
Unfortunately, your summary omits or misrepresents several aspects of the article and in the process dilutes (if not entirely misses) the point, as well as making it less interesting. Honestly, it's only a single-page Snopes article- if you don't know the story already, it's worth spending a minute or two reading.
Anyway:-
(i) The "brown M&Ms" clause *wasn't* at the end of the contract- where it would have been more likely to stand out- it was (presumably intentionally) hidden amongst all the other countless (but important) technical requirements.
(ii) The clause also stated that if it was not followed *the entire show would be forfeit*. That's a rather major penalty, and one anyone who'd actually been paying atention would be almost certain to want to avoid by following it to the letter. Hence its effectiveness as an indicator.
(iii) You also omit *why* it was so essential that the technical requirements were followed closely. (I could summarise that, but I'd probably just end up rewriting paragraphs that are more effective in context anyway; just read the blooming thing!:-) )
(From article summary):- "As it turns out, this well site was listed in the contract specifications given to all bidders for the tunnel's construction. "
Looks like somebody forgot to RTFM.
Looks like they should have had a "Brown M&Ms" clause in the contract for just that reason.
And if anyone doesn't get the reference (or even more so if you think you do, but don't get what the archetypal ludicrously demanding rock band rider has to do with tunnel boring), read the linked article.
Like any other business, you, the consumer, eventually do pay for them - in higher (and newer, more devious) fees, lower savings/CD interest rates, and higher loan interest rates.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that you;re getting a free ride.
And don't believe that old fallacy that it's the banks that pick up the tab either- as pointed out here, it's the retailer that almost always has to pick up the tab in such cases.
The banks simply yank back any fraudulent transactions and leave the business out of pocket- not them. This is why banks- in the UK at least- do not give a fuck about individual instances of credit card theft and fraud. They're not the ones having to pay for it.
If you're a retailer who knows with near-certainty that a credit card has been stolen and is being used fraudulently, it's virtually impossible to get the information passed on to the legitimate owner of the card. Generally speaking, nothing will be done at this stage, and nothing will happen until the legitimate owner notices fraudulent transactions on their statement, and contacts the credit card company.
Of course, that is usually *long* after the attempted fraud has taken place, along with later (possibly successful) attempts that could have been stopped, but weren't. The fraudsters are long gone, and it's the businesses that are left out of pocket.
The banks will bleat that there are too many cases of credit card theft and fraud to keep track of all these reports, even if the information is handed to them on a plate. Of course, you can bet that they'd manage to do so very quickly (by employing more dedicated staff) if they were having to foot the bill for the fraud themselves- but of course, they're not.
It's also worth noting that (again, in the UK), it's *very* difficult to get the police to do anything about even bleeding obvious cases of mail order credit card fraud, i.e. ones where the fraudulent delivery address has to be openly given. Even when details including the exact address- typically in London- are passed on to the police, nothing well be done. Same excuse, and same outcome- by the time anything happens, the fraudsters are long gone and not worth chasing up. Makes it quite easy to commit fraud; simply rent an address for a relatively short period, have the goods openly and directly delivered there safe in the knowledge that, even though the police will likely be notified, they'll be long gone before anything is done.
The customers mostly still believe- as shown here- that the banks cover the cost, so probably aren't upset as (if they think about it at all) they believe that the banks are having to foot the bill for their own incompetence. Not the case.
Personally, I'm in favour of publicising cases like this one and pointing out that the banks' nonchalance regarding people's credit cards (and by extension, personal details and- to some extent- identity theft) could have serious repercussions for them beyond the money that customers will have refunded. And pointing out that- regardless of their hypocritical (and often nickel-and-diming) identity protection schemes, it's the banks- with their self-serving laziness and disregard for credit card misuse- who are to blame for putting them at risk like this.
Slashdot Mirror
If you Google "Byte magazine covers", you'll see that the covers often took a certain amount of artistic license.
I'm not even sure that one needs to excuse it as "artistic license".
To me- and I suspect almost anyone at the time- that looks as if it were quite clearly intended as a non-literal but eye-catching metaphor for "one day we will have wrist watches as powerful as today's personal computers".
I honestly don't think for a second they were suggesting that such a machine would *actually* resemble a ludicrously miniaturised PC...
(Skims the actual article)
Okay, so even the article itself understands that the original image was tongue-in-cheek; something the summary doesn't make so clear. And I do understand the point it's trying to make about predictions of the future looking like the present with high-tech bells on. But at the same time it slightly weakens the point being made, as there are probably many seriously-intended examples of "future tech" that are almost as silly!
But hey, why stop there? *** I *** am the center of the universe! All you people rotate around me!
If that happened to me, I'd probably take it as a sign that I needed to go on a diet.
What were the words of Uncle Ben? "With great power comes great responsibility".
Am I the only person who read "Uncle Ben" and thought of the fictitious rice guy?!
Though it pretty obviously wasn't him, it sounded like something one of those oft-quoted American leaders might say, so I assumed "Uncle Ben" might refer to "Benjamin Franklin". Then I looked it up.
Sorry, did you ask for me to return my geek card? Er.... listen, to be honest I already had to hand that in a while back. I only got in here because I bribed the guy on the door with an "Apple Genius" t-shirt. What? Yeah, I know, I don't think he's a real geek either, he only wanted that because it got a product placement on The Big Bang Theory. He bought Windows 8 for the same reason.
Anyway, I don't know that much about Spiderman, saw the first two movies a few years back but don't remember much about them. Can I stay if I mention I liked Spiderman and his Amazing Friends when I was a kid? No? Look, I know the words to that Spiderman song, here, let me sing it for you...
You don't want to see IR
(Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, nor even a scientist).
The thing is, people talk about detecting or seeing "IR" as if it's a single entity, much like how they talk about seeing or detecting visible light. However, "IR" covers a much, *much* wider range than visible light (*) and "near" IR- which is just outside the visible light range- arguably has a lot more in common with visible light (and how it can be recorded) than the "far" IR closer to the other end, which is used in heat-sensitive cameras.
"Near" IR can be recorded on most regular digital cameras if the IR-blocking filter has been removed (i.e. they're sensitive to it by default and it has to be filtered out), or even if the IR-blocking filter is weak (some older cameras were like this). It looks interesting and different, much like how someone who can only see green or blue light might feel when seeing a photo of the red part of the spectrum. And it can be used for night vision if it's used with a near-IR light source (which people can't see, but is still easy to detect with unfiltered electronic sensors).
But it won't give you "heat vision" unless the thing you're viewing is so hot it's almost- but not quite- visibly glowing red (**). The wavelengths of IR given out by things at normal temperatures are much lower (i.e. closer to "far" IR) and require different detection equipment- the problem being of course that they traditionally had to be cooled to avoid detecting their own heat being emitted.
And in fact, IR-based "night vision" could refer to (at least) these two very different solutions- *either* the "easier but requires IR illumination" near-infrared device one could theoretically do with modified off-the-shelf camera sensors or far-infrared heat detection (i.e. detecting the objects' own heat).
Anyway, it sounds like this report is describing "heat vision" far-IR detection, since it mentions the problems with that, and how it gets around it. Just bear in mind that "infrared vision" could potentially refer to either near or far IR, and they're different kettles of fish.
(*) Visible light covers wavelengths from 380 to 700 nm (i.e. approx twofold difference from the shortest to the longest), IR covers from 700nm (0.7 micrometres) to 1mm (1000 micrometres), a factor of well over a thousand times difference!
(**) AFAIK this is as per:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... , i.e. as something gets hotter, the frequencies it gives off generally increase, from far-infrared to near-infrared, to red and then to yellow. (Yellow becomes "white hot" rather than blue because it's still emitting significant amounts of lower frequencies). So if it's almost- but not *quite*- red hot, it'll be emitting signficant amounts of near-infrared. Much cooler, and the radiation will be of lower wavelength.
I've tasted whale, it isn't tasty.
Apparently most younger Japanese aren't much into it themselves either, and the "tradition" isn't, really. From this report:-
For [Mitoshi Noguchi] there is nothing wrong with eating whale, it reminds him of school lunch.
"When we were growing up we didn't have ample supply of food, so this was meat for us, our protein," he says. "So when we eat it now it's very reminiscent. It's delicious."
Mr Noguchi is in late middle age, but on the same table is one of his much younger colleagues, Yoshitaka Takayanagi, born after the meat was phased out in Japanese schools. Few Japanese eat whale regularly these days, especially the young, and he has only eaten it twice before.
This covers the phenomenon in general in more depth:-
So why does Japan exert so much diplomatic effort on this issue? The official line is that whaling is an integral part of Japanese culture, a practice dating back hundreds of years.
That isn't quite true. A few coastal communities, like Wakayama, have been hunting whales for centuries, traditionally with hand-held harpoons.
But the rest of Japan only became familiar with eating whale during the 20th Century, as modern ships with harpoon-guns became available. Whale meat was especially widespread in the difficult years after the Second World War, when it was seen as a cheap source of protein.
But as incomes rose, people switched to imported beef, or fish like tuna and salmon. With such an abundance of high-quality protein available these days, few Japanese see the point in eating whale, which doesn't taste that special.
There are other reasons for Japan's determined campaign.
"If the current ban on hunting whales is allowed to become permanent," says Hideki Moronuki, at the Fisheries Agency, the government department leading the campaign, "activists may direct their efforts to restricting other types of fishing."
As Japan consumes more fish than any other nation, it worries about possible curbs on its fishing activities in open seas for species like tuna.
Officials also like to claim that whales damage fish stocks because of the quantities they eat, although this is largely dismissed by scientists in the rest of the world.
But perhaps the biggest factor is resentment of being told by other countries what Japan can and cannot do.
"Why do people in the west make such a big deal about our very limited hunting of whales?" asks Hideki Moronuki.
"How would they feel if we told Americans they couldn't hunt deer, or if we told Australians to stop hunting kangaroos?"
I kind of wonder whether activation is going to work after April 8. No one has brought this up in years. Microsoft's servers have to still answer to requests from XP machines; if they don't, the software is unusable.
I kind of wonder what the legal issues would be if they *didn't* keep the activation servers working for the forseeable future.
Yes, I'm sure they've got a "you agree to give us your firstborn if we ask for it and not to sue us if we turn of the servers" clause in the EULA somewhere. Whether that would stand up in court- especially outwith the US- given MS's near-monopoly position on the desktop market (*) is open to question.
(*) Yes, MS are arguably losing dominance, not because anyone achieved the impossible and unseated them in the desktop arena, but because the current paradigm shift in computer hardware is moving things away from desktop PCs. Still a massively dominant company, however.
The fact that it was badly-drawn (*) and not actually that clever in itself- so much as giving its oft-maligned (**) target audience an excuse to feel superior to others- didn't seem to matter.
As I once commented elsewhere:-
Compare that to User Friendly. Aside from its "moderately-promising 14-year-old still showing too much influence from the Teach-Yourself-Cartooning book" drawing style, User Friendly has always relied on its geek-friendly subject matter and viewpoints to flatter the audience and obscure the fact that it's neither creative nor funny.
Here's a good example:-
http://ars.userfriendly.org/ca...
There's nothing creative about this. The "news" was a real-life item reported in many tech outlets about a year back. The strip itself is just a lazy excuse to let the audience laugh again at that story- it adds nothing to it except an audience-pandering but uncreative aside.
xkcd has a long way to go before it gets *that* lazy.
(*) XKCD isn't exactly detailed in the artwork stakes either, but that comes across as an intentional style, whereas User Friendly just looks like a wannabe of better-looking cartoons.
(**) This is before it was (allegedly) cool to be a geek.
An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.
Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?
At Walnut Creek? So, is it used to cart CD-ROMs around?
I'm sure I still have that purple Aminet CD kicking around somewhere...
The DMA controller was a seperate 40 pin Intel chip and omitting it probably reduced the cost by tens of dollars. It also severely crippled the I/O throughput.
"Tens of dollars" (cost price) would still have been a significant amount back then. Also, if, as others have commented, the PC Jr was already intentionally hobbled to avoid competing with IBM's more expensive machines, this reduced performance would likely have suited marketing anyway(!)
Funny that for all the bitching about the "chiclet" style keyboard back then, now I see way too many laptops (and even Macs) that are using what looks like the same style.
I laugh and laugh at the Mac's chiclet crap. They're horrible to use for touch typing, just one step above a membrane keyboard.
To be fair, AFAICT (*) "chiclet keyboard" is a word that seems to have changed its meaning over the years. In the PC Jr's day (again, AFAICT) it referred to *rubber-keyed* keyboards with the "chiclet" appearance. Rubber keyboards- like the PC Jr's- are not fun to type on.
The present-day Mac desktop keyboards often called "chiclet"- like this one- are, to be fair, not rubber keyed.
That said, I'd now like to agree with the parent and grandparent... they're still absolutely f*****g awful, style-over-substance garbage. I was typing on one (like the image above) today, and it's utterly horrid. I would blame it on the keys' lack of travel, but I've used laptop keyboards that are actually quite nice despite that. It may well be the "chiclet" layout, can't say. I've used it before as well, so it's not a case of being unfamiliar with it.
On the same machine I'd already swapped out the equally overrated "Magic" mouse mainly because its low profile might have looked good, but it was odious from an ergonomic point-of-view (i.e. nothing to hold in the hand, and I don't even have big hands).
Urgh.
(*) Based on what I've read from US sources. I live in the UK, and the expression "chiclet keyboard" wasn't used over here in the early-to-mid-80s (because "chiclets" gum wasn't sold here either). We simply called them "rubber keyboards".
As a matter of fact, the basic design [of the Coleco Adam] was tweaked slightly and became the MSX standard that was so popular in Japan.
It didn't "become" the MSX standard, where did you get that ... interesting ... history from?
Maybe he's getting it confused with the Spectravideo SV-328 (and SV-318) which *were* supposedly the design upon which MSX was based, although not 100% MSX-compatible themselves.
One quick check on Wikipedia later... Apparently CiF "Comment is Free" is something to do with The Guardian's website? Don't know, never posted there. The "last time" I referred to was on Slashdot as well, I just can't find the comment now...
I drive about the same, but live in the UK where "gas" costs have always been high. Thing is though, it's still cheaper (and twice as fast) as taking the train.
Yeah, but that's not saying much- the UK's privatised train system is horrendously expensive compared to similar railways (*) elsewhere in Europe- it makes a mockery of the Conservatives' claimed motives for privatisation, that it supposedly increases competition and efficiency and drives down costs. (**) Years upon years of way above the rate of inflation increases on prices that weren't cheap to start off with. When even the Tory-friendly Daily F****** Mail is running a story on how shockingly expensive it is (***), you know it's bad.
(*) Run along OMG COMMUNIST!!!!111^w^w more socialist lines
(**) Then again, we all know that this is about Tory dogma and feathering their own nests, regardless of how they dress it up. Their recent privatisation of the Royal Mail, despite the fact that the majority of people in the UK- including many Conservative supporters!- were opposed to this, and the fact that it was blatantly sold off at far below its market value, makes obvious what most people had already figured out long ago. Expect the Royal Mail to go the way of the Dutch national mail service when *that* was privatised and is apparently very poor now.
(***) This story was the top of the search results last time I searched for a story to make this point, so go figure...
Yes, because I'm retired now. Used to be 15K miles per year, now it's 4K.
Why's that a "Well Duh"? The story was about teenagers, and unless you're exceptionally precocious, I suspect that you're not a retired teenager, right? And if you are, well, I suspect you're *not* a typical example... :-)
I think it's safe to assume they meant "the demographic group that are teenagers", i.e. the fact that you got included in the group of teenagers for several decades back doesn't mean that you still get to count towards the present-day "teenager" statistic!
Just get over it dude. People are going to make jokes. Often times those jokes will be in questionable or bad taste.
Go back and read what I said. I wasn't responding to the original (lame) jokes, but calling out the OP's bullshit *response* of "black humour is a coping mechanism" being used by people who clearly *weren't* using it as such.
Specifically, these people *didn't* have the guts to say "yeah, I made a sick joke"- quite the opposite, they tried to put themselves in the same position as those actually affected by the event and grab the moral high ground.
You have no right to control what other people say
That'd be why I didn't tell people what or what not to say at any point, then. I simply exercised my (equally legitimate) right to call them out on it.
:-P
Ironically, it sounds more like you're telling *me* what I shouldn't say- that *I* shouldn't be allowed to call people out on bullshit self-righteousness. "Too bad", because it doesn't work that like that. If someone's free to make a sick joke (and I never claimed they weren't), other people are just as entitled to call them a sick f*** or express their dislike. And if you respond to that with the weasellishly BS self-justification above, *I'm* quite entitled to call you out on that.
If this "offends you" then tough- freedom of speech cuts both ways. "Just get over it dude".
People who can laugh at life's ineviable hardships and disasters - whether their own or someone else's - bounce back. People who are afraid to face life and death and laugh at him, cower.
Yeah, very poetic. Still the same old self-justifying misappropriation of "black humour as a coping strategy" being used to rationalise sick jokes by those who were neither involved in nor traumatised by the event being mocked. As I said last time:-
Most of the time I see that argument parrotted on Slashdot, it's being intentionally misused some borderline sociopathic asshole that's just made an insensitive joke about something that happened on the other side of the world and been called out on it.
Sure, we all know that you made that sick joke about that tragedy in the Philippines/China/wherever that'll never affect your home in Buttfuck, Illinois (which you'll have forgotten about by the time you move on to the next news item) as a "coping strategy". It's because you were scared by it.
Bullshit.
We all know that people closely affected by events (or feel themselves likely to be affected) often take solace in black humour- fair enough. We also know that many people are just dicks that like to make sick jokes about stuff that doesn't affect them personally. Anyone in the latter group trying to justify themselves and place themselves *above* their critics with a self-righteous appropriation of the "non-PC coping mechanism" argument is full of it.
When we see Bill Gates walking around in a brand new 20 year old body, then we can start assuming they DO have a cure and are keeping it from the public.
Bill Gates *does* have a brand new 20 year old body. He's just hired someone to occupy his old one and make occasional public appearances so that- as you suggest- no-one finds out.
Incidentally, I've managed to acquire a photograph of Gates in his new body... as a 20-year old *female*!
Remember that the article claims that the "Brown M&Ms" clause was mixed in with the *technical details*. It's quite possible that a sloppy promoter would hand the list of tech specs (with that in it) derived from the contract to whoever was responsible- and, of course, the tech guys, if they were doing their job correctly, should get back to the promoter saying "Have you seen this clause? That's not our job, but you should get someone to look at it".
As for the show being forfeit, that was (I assume) intentionally draconian, but as the other guy said, better that the show be cancelled than the stage collapse because instructions weren't followed- that clause gives the band a get-out if they have to do that due to the promoter's incompetence.
Van Halen concerts need a LOT of amperage for their very heavy equipment.
Still misleading; makes it sound like the amperage was needed because the equipment was "heavy". Also, you're extrapolating things that weren't actually mentioned in the article.
." This kind of thing."). They didn't say anything about circuit breakers blowing- that may have happened, but you're still guessing.
If you read the article, the heavy equipment (which could- and did- damage floors that weren't designed to take it) was the *only* specific, detailed example given of a problem that actually happened, and wasn't related to the issue of amperage.
And the latter was only mentioned as a potential clause (" So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . .
*Van Halen inserts "M&M clause" as a mine canary to deal with bullshit venues that can't read simply documents.
Despite the fact I pointed out the problem with the *original* guy's summary of this part, you've repeated his mistake. You haven't explained *why* the clause was effective, i.e. the forfeiture penalty that anyone who'd actually read it would go out of their way to avoid... meaning that anyone who didn't do that clearly *hadn't* read it, or any of the other clauses properly.
:-/
The problem is that your summary may work as a reminder to someone who's *already* read the article and understood the points being made. But by definition, that's not what a "tl; dr" is aimed at.
Speaking as someone who's definitely too longwinded, I have great respect for the ability to be concise. Summarising by cutting corners isn't that hard. And burying all the information in a pile of semi (or not at all) relevant waffle isn't either- it's all too easy for geeks like me.
Actually distilling the *important* information into a concise but listenable *and* accurate form? That's harder to do well than most people think.
How the hell is this modded up as informative? Should be modded fucking stupid and irrelevant to the discussion.
Just a guess, but I suspect everyone else understands why a "canary" clause (*) inserted to verify that people were paying attention to important technical details *might* be relevant to a case where the contractors had failed to pay attention to the technical information supplied to them.
(*) Which was the purpose of the "No Brown M&Ms" clause. You did understand that... right? Or were you still labouring under the assumption that it was a gratuitous rider requirement despite the fact I explained it wasn't and linked to the article?!
Unfortunately, your summary omits or misrepresents several aspects of the article and in the process dilutes (if not entirely misses) the point, as well as making it less interesting. Honestly, it's only a single-page Snopes article- if you don't know the story already, it's worth spending a minute or two reading.
:-) )
Anyway:-
(i) The "brown M&Ms" clause *wasn't* at the end of the contract- where it would have been more likely to stand out- it was (presumably intentionally) hidden amongst all the other countless (but important) technical requirements.
(ii) The clause also stated that if it was not followed *the entire show would be forfeit*. That's a rather major penalty, and one anyone who'd actually been paying atention would be almost certain to want to avoid by following it to the letter. Hence its effectiveness as an indicator.
(iii) You also omit *why* it was so essential that the technical requirements were followed closely. (I could summarise that, but I'd probably just end up rewriting paragraphs that are more effective in context anyway; just read the blooming thing!
(From article summary):- "As it turns out, this well site was listed in the contract specifications given to all bidders for the tunnel's construction. "
Looks like somebody forgot to RTFM.
Looks like they should have had a "Brown M&Ms" clause in the contract for just that reason.
And if anyone doesn't get the reference (or even more so if you think you do, but don't get what the archetypal ludicrously demanding rock band rider has to do with tunnel boring), read the linked article.
Banks pay for credit card breaches, not consumers
Like any other business, you, the consumer, eventually do pay for them - in higher (and newer, more devious) fees, lower savings/CD interest rates, and higher loan interest rates.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that you;re getting a free ride.
And don't believe that old fallacy that it's the banks that pick up the tab either- as pointed out here, it's the retailer that almost always has to pick up the tab in such cases.
The banks simply yank back any fraudulent transactions and leave the business out of pocket- not them. This is why banks- in the UK at least- do not give a fuck about individual instances of credit card theft and fraud. They're not the ones having to pay for it.
If you're a retailer who knows with near-certainty that a credit card has been stolen and is being used fraudulently, it's virtually impossible to get the information passed on to the legitimate owner of the card. Generally speaking, nothing will be done at this stage, and nothing will happen until the legitimate owner notices fraudulent transactions on their statement, and contacts the credit card company.
Of course, that is usually *long* after the attempted fraud has taken place, along with later (possibly successful) attempts that could have been stopped, but weren't. The fraudsters are long gone, and it's the businesses that are left out of pocket.
The banks will bleat that there are too many cases of credit card theft and fraud to keep track of all these reports, even if the information is handed to them on a plate. Of course, you can bet that they'd manage to do so very quickly (by employing more dedicated staff) if they were having to foot the bill for the fraud themselves- but of course, they're not.
It's also worth noting that (again, in the UK), it's *very* difficult to get the police to do anything about even bleeding obvious cases of mail order credit card fraud, i.e. ones where the fraudulent delivery address has to be openly given. Even when details including the exact address- typically in London- are passed on to the police, nothing well be done. Same excuse, and same outcome- by the time anything happens, the fraudsters are long gone and not worth chasing up. Makes it quite easy to commit fraud; simply rent an address for a relatively short period, have the goods openly and directly delivered there safe in the knowledge that, even though the police will likely be notified, they'll be long gone before anything is done.
The customers mostly still believe- as shown here- that the banks cover the cost, so probably aren't upset as (if they think about it at all) they believe that the banks are having to foot the bill for their own incompetence. Not the case.
Personally, I'm in favour of publicising cases like this one and pointing out that the banks' nonchalance regarding people's credit cards (and by extension, personal details and- to some extent- identity theft) could have serious repercussions for them beyond the money that customers will have refunded. And pointing out that- regardless of their hypocritical (and often nickel-and-diming) identity protection schemes, it's the banks- with their self-serving laziness and disregard for credit card misuse- who are to blame for putting them at risk like this.
I hope they're not going to have to evacuate the *whole* of North Dakota- the congestion caused by three or four busloads of people would be awful.
Besides which, the South Dakota village hall doesn't have enough space to hold them all.