Yes. There is a program out there that identifies a disc's manufacturer, and all the Japanese Fuji's I've bought have been Taiyo Yudens. Consequently, they're all I buy. I've never had one fail yet (and have had lots of other brands fail. (Such as, oh, about every other disc made by CMC Magnetics. Horrid.)
I've also had good luck with the Verbatum "VideoGard" line. (DVD Identifier says the batch here on my desk is made by Mitsubishi Chemical.) Their particular gimmick is a hard, scratch-resistant coating which is particularly helpful for high-use media. (i.e., non-archival.)
Whenever I archive my most important data (such as all of our old family movies) I create two copies on different-branded media for safety. And then I make a duplicate set to store off-site (safety deposit box.)
It reminds me of Jeremy Bentham, whose body is preserved in the Auto-Icon at UC London. I think just about every law book on Property mentions him and the effect of a "Dead Man's Hand." (I.e., someone's Will or Trust Instrument influencing events far after they are dead.)
Oh yes. It's astonishing how much higher the levels of dangerous nuclide being belched out of coal plants are than are detectable around nuclear plants, for example.
Radon, as a heavier-than-air gas, obviously sinks. A person living in a basement apartment might have 1000% greater yearly environmental radiation exposure than someone living in a high-rise. And I'm sure flight attendants who routinely work the long trans-Atlantic routes get hit with a lot from space. Etc.
>>Lead-210 can decay into Polonium (through two beta minus decays), but Lead-210 also exhibits alpha decay. As such, it's not a given that Lead-210 eventually decays into Polonium.
The beta decay branch for Pb-210 is ~100%. Alpha decay is.0000019%.
>>and since when does Lead-210 emit gamma rays?
46.5keV gammas on beta decay (4%), to be precise. Not super energetic, but useful for measurements.
I think perhaps I was thinking of Pb-214 in the Uranium-238 decay chain though...
I found it a bit amusing when they stated that Polonium was hard to obtain. It is actually drawn from the soil into Tobacco plants and is one of the Really Bad Things implicated in smoking and cancer (along with the also-radioactive Lead-210, which emits gamma rays and decays into Polonium eventually.)
Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter - something you really don't want to ingest. I'd have to look up dose-equivalents, etc, but if I remember correctly, it was estimated a two-pack-a-day smoker gets the radioactive equivalent of something like 300 chest X-rays a year. And remember that these are heavy metals that stay in the body for a long time!
I always assumed LCDs wouldn't suffer from burn in, but I have two (older) LCD displays that indicate otherwise. Both are 19" LCDs from 1999*, made by two different manufacturers. Both have a native 1280x1024 resolution, but they were only run at 1024x768 (not using full area of the display). After years of that, the 1024x768 area in the center looks quite washed-out compared to the outer band when I run them at 1280x1024. So something is going on. Pixel fatigue?:-p
>>I don't understand this whole unpaid overtime anyway. If these companies are so bought into capitalism, then they ought to buy more of your labor when they need more.
Exactly. I always wonder how we've gotten to this point. Henry Ford, who made positively vast amounts of profit at the time, did so not only through efficiency and affordable products (i.e., he sold below even what the market forced him to sell at), but also by *doubling* industry wages for his workers and creating the standard 8-hour-a-day, 5-day-a-week work-week. He wanted loyal, efficient workers, and that's sure one hell of a way to get them.
You'll probably find this guy's experience both amusing and utterly appalling. How far can you really go with credit card signatures? http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/
I understand your pain. I live in a small Midwest college town (with over 3500 students during the school year) and my only choice for broadband is Sprint DSL. I can only get DSL from them if I also have phone service from them. Even choosing the very most basic local service possible, I end up paying about $85 a month for [really, really crappy] 1.5Mb DSL*. I justify it because I'm basically a frugal person otherwise and need internet. (And don't need TV.)
*In name only. 1.5Mbps = a theoretical 192KBps, before overhead. However, I give a whoop of joy on the exceedingly rare occasion I hit 80kbps.
>>Similarly, Americans never seem to be able to say Edinburgh or Gloucester correctly.
Part of that is because we Americans have places like Edinboro and Glouster, which are at least closer phonetically to the way they're spelled in English. (Corruptions? Probably. But it's what we're accustomed to.) On the other hand...we (obviously) have a state named Nevada. Well, here in Ohio, there is also a town named Nevada. And the locals pronounce it Nuh-vae-duh. Drives me crazy.
If you're not familiar already with the names, you're going to butcher them. I remember the first time I read the name 'Yves'. "Nice to meet you... Yeeves?"* :-)
You can't take shelter in the title to stolen goods, even if you bought the goods in good faith. (The title is void.) The real owner can come and take it back and leave you with nothing. Your course of action is then to sue the thief (if you can still find them) for the money you paid (if they are still solvent).
The law favors the real (true) owner in such cases.
(And before anyone says anything, yes, this is true only in cases of theft. Fraud is an entirely different crime; you give the good up willingly, even if you are misled. In that case, a good faith purchasor buying from the fraudster can acquire good title, even over the original owner.)
>>I imagine you'll be voting Quayle/Chenney in '08
I can't speak for LK, but as for me, if the Democrats actually nominate Hillary Clinton, I'll do my best to vote in whoever the Republicans want. Chuck Norris, Santa Claus, Hitler, a lifetime hereditary appointment of GWB, you name it. That's only a slight exaggeration.
Humor aside, I want a bipartisan ticket. It'll never happen, but I'd probably be content with a McCain/Leiberman ticket or something similar. Certainly better than anything else we're going to see in 2008, if still far from ideal.
I still have slim, naive hopes that the fallout from the upcoming 2008 electoral bloodbath will empower a third political party...
>>Solution: kill the man who saw you steal that 20 bucks worth of software, if you think you have a 50% chance of not getting caught.
Although that sounds funny, I'd like to point out that is exactly what happened during the Dark Ages. The classic example was when stealing bread was punishable by death, rather than the desired effect of deterring crime, the murder rate increased dramatically. If you might die for stealing, you might as well kill the person too and decrease your chance of getting caught.
Punishments have to fit the crime or they serve no valid purpose.
Reminds me of a comedian I heard one time who was from the deep south. He said when he moved to Chicago, everyone made fun of the way he said his cat's name - with 4 syllables. The name? Shithead. (Shee-it hey-ed):-)
You're right. The socratic method does most neatly fit into the teaching of law, but, coming from an engineering background, I could certainly see it worked somewhat into math/science curricula.
In that case, it would definitely still be most useful talking about theory. For calculus, I could see, perhaps, talking about Newton's method, developing it, and so forth, as an example. I'd scale back the adversarialness of the Socratic method and encourage other people to contribute too.
In English, the word you use depends on whether the thing you are describing is countable or uncountable. If English isn't your first language, that is the best way to think about it. Native speakers, of course, don't stop to think about it (and often get it wrong, for that matter:-) )
Some examples:
Countable: A cow "I have three cows" You can see individual cows; you can't divide a single cow into other cows.
Uncountable: Water is uncountable* You don't say "I have waters" (unless you are being strangely poetic) instead, you say "I have some water." If you divide up some water, each piece is still just "water".
How does this affect language? "I have many cows, and I have much water." "I have few cows. I have little water." "I have fewer cows than Michael. I have less water than Michael"
Hope that helps.
*Water itself is uncountable, but you can count the quantities it is in. "I much water" vs. "I have many litres of water"
>>You mean "Nintendo Power, Volume 1, Issue 1"? >> >>The Nintendo Fan Club newsletters that preceded that issue did not use the name >>Nintendo Power.
Yeah. I just found three of my old Nintendo Fan Club newsletters this past fall, but they were in color. What was the GParent thinking of, that was in black and white?
Price was an issue until just recently. SBC/ATT dropped to $13, and Verizon dropped to $15/mo. That's less than large ISPs (Earthlink, MSN, AOL) are charging for dial-up, and only slightly more than most others (Netzero, Juno, etc) with crappy dial-up service and software.
The only excuse now is if you travel a lot, and need access all across the country.
My parents pay something like $20/mo for 3.0Mb/s DSL.
I, on the other hand, live in an area where Sprint still has a monopoly and the other monopoly - the cable company - won't service my street. Period. As I've had broadband in one form or another since, oh, 1997, I refused to go to dial up. To justify the price of DSL here (and crappy DSL at that...) I have to cut other expenses considerably.
$25/mo Cheapest possible telephone service (required) $38/mo for claimed 1.5Mb DSL. I think it is really 768kb. And that's the discount price. $35/mo in access fees and taxes. Yes: nearly 40% of my bill is taxes
= $100/mo to have terrible broadband.
Oh, and despite having my own, I had to buy their modem, which was $125 added to the first bill. %*&$!@#
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Yes. There is a program out there that identifies a disc's manufacturer, and all the Japanese Fuji's I've bought have been Taiyo Yudens. Consequently, they're all I buy. I've never had one fail yet (and have had lots of other brands fail. (Such as, oh, about every other disc made by CMC Magnetics. Horrid.)
I've also had good luck with the Verbatum "VideoGard" line. (DVD Identifier says the batch here on my desk is made by Mitsubishi Chemical.) Their particular gimmick is a hard, scratch-resistant coating which is particularly helpful for high-use media. (i.e., non-archival.)
Whenever I archive my most important data (such as all of our old family movies) I create two copies on different-branded media for safety. And then I make a duplicate set to store off-site (safety deposit box.)
It reminds me of Jeremy Bentham, whose body is preserved in the Auto-Icon at UC London. I think just about every law book on Property mentions him and the effect of a "Dead Man's Hand." (I.e., someone's Will or Trust Instrument influencing events far after they are dead.)
Oh yes. It's astonishing how much higher the levels of dangerous nuclide being belched out of coal plants are than are detectable around nuclear plants, for example.
Radon, as a heavier-than-air gas, obviously sinks. A person living in a basement apartment might have 1000% greater yearly environmental radiation exposure than someone living in a high-rise.
And I'm sure flight attendants who routinely work the long trans-Atlantic routes get hit with a lot from space. Etc.
>>Lead-210 can decay into Polonium (through two beta minus decays), but Lead-210 also exhibits alpha decay. As such, it's not a given that Lead-210 eventually decays into Polonium.
.0000019%.
The beta decay branch for Pb-210 is ~100%. Alpha decay is
>>and since when does Lead-210 emit gamma rays?
46.5keV gammas on beta decay (4%), to be precise. Not super energetic, but useful for measurements.
I think perhaps I was thinking of Pb-214 in the Uranium-238 decay chain though...
I found it a bit amusing when they stated that Polonium was hard to obtain. It is actually drawn from the soil into Tobacco plants and is one of the Really Bad Things implicated in smoking and cancer (along with
the also-radioactive Lead-210, which emits gamma rays and decays into Polonium eventually.)
Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter - something you really don't want to ingest.
I'd have to look up dose-equivalents, etc, but if I remember correctly, it was estimated a two-pack-a-day smoker gets the radioactive equivalent of something like 300 chest X-rays a year. And remember that these are heavy metals that stay in the body for a long time!
I always assumed LCDs wouldn't suffer from burn in, but I have two (older) LCD displays that indicate otherwise. Both are 19" LCDs from 1999*, made by two different manufacturers. Both have a native 1280x1024 resolution, but they were only run at 1024x768 (not using full area of the display). After years of that, the 1024x768 area in the center looks quite washed-out compared to the outer band when I run them at 1280x1024. So something is going on. Pixel fatigue? :-p
* yeah, they were probably very expensive.
>>I don't understand this whole unpaid overtime anyway. If these companies are so bought into capitalism, then they ought to buy more of your labor when they need more.
Exactly. I always wonder how we've gotten to this point. Henry Ford, who made positively vast amounts of profit at the time, did so not only through efficiency and affordable products (i.e., he sold below even what the market forced him to sell at), but also by *doubling* industry wages for his workers and creating the standard 8-hour-a-day, 5-day-a-week work-week. He wanted loyal, efficient workers, and that's sure one hell of a way to get them.
You'll probably find this guy's experience both amusing and utterly appalling. How far can you really go with credit card signatures?
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/
I understand your pain. I live in a small Midwest college town (with over 3500 students during the school year) and my only choice for broadband is Sprint DSL. I can only get DSL from them if I also have phone service from them. Even choosing the very most basic local service possible, I end up paying about $85 a month for [really, really crappy] 1.5Mb DSL*. I justify it because I'm basically a frugal person otherwise and need internet. (And don't need TV.)
*In name only. 1.5Mbps = a theoretical 192KBps, before overhead. However, I give a whoop of joy on the exceedingly rare occasion I hit 80kbps.
>>Similarly, Americans never seem to be able to say Edinburgh or Gloucester correctly.
... Yeeves?"*
:-)
Part of that is because we Americans have places like Edinboro and Glouster, which are at least closer phonetically to the way they're spelled in English. (Corruptions? Probably. But it's what we're accustomed to.) On the other hand...we (obviously) have a state named Nevada. Well, here in Ohio, there is also a town named Nevada. And the locals pronounce it Nuh-vae-duh. Drives me crazy.
If you're not familiar already with the names, you're going to butcher them. I remember the first time I read the name 'Yves'. "Nice to meet you
*Disclaimer: I was 12.
The time-honored CS example is:
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
Always liked that one.
In the USA, in general...
You can't take shelter in the title to stolen goods, even if you bought the goods in good faith. (The title is void.) The real owner can come and take it back and leave you with nothing. Your course of action is then to sue the thief (if you can still find them) for the money you paid (if they are still solvent).
The law favors the real (true) owner in such cases.
(And before anyone says anything, yes, this is true only in cases of theft. Fraud is an entirely different crime; you give the good up willingly, even if you are misled. In that case, a good faith purchasor buying from the fraudster can acquire good title, even over the original owner.)
>>I imagine you'll be voting Quayle/Chenney in '08
I can't speak for LK, but as for me, if the Democrats actually nominate Hillary Clinton, I'll do my best to vote in whoever the Republicans want. Chuck Norris, Santa Claus, Hitler, a lifetime hereditary appointment of GWB, you name it. That's only a slight exaggeration.
Humor aside, I want a bipartisan ticket. It'll never happen, but I'd probably be content with a McCain/Leiberman ticket or something similar. Certainly better than anything else we're going to see in 2008, if still far from ideal.
I still have slim, naive hopes that the fallout from the upcoming 2008 electoral bloodbath will empower a third political party...
>>...how many degrees is he from Kevin Bacon?
Infinity.
I found it really amusing that he was on IMDB to begin with, but apparently he can't be connected to Kevin Bacon. C'est la vie.
>>Solution: kill the man who saw you steal that 20 bucks worth of software, if you think you have a 50% chance of not getting caught.
Although that sounds funny, I'd like to point out that is exactly what happened during the Dark Ages. The classic example was when stealing bread was punishable by death, rather than the desired effect of deterring crime, the murder rate increased dramatically. If you might die for stealing, you might as well kill the person too and decrease your chance of getting caught.
Punishments have to fit the crime or they serve no valid purpose.
Reminds me of a comedian I heard one time who was from the deep south. He said when he moved to Chicago, everyone made fun of the way he said his cat's name - with 4 syllables. The name? Shithead. :-)
(Shee-it hey-ed)
You're right. The socratic method does most neatly fit into the teaching of law, but, coming from an engineering background, I could certainly see it worked somewhat into math/science curricula.
In that case, it would definitely still be most useful talking about theory. For calculus, I could see, perhaps, talking about Newton's method, developing it, and so forth, as an example. I'd scale back the adversarialness of the Socratic method and encourage other people to contribute too.
You know, the thing I have enjoyed most about law school so far is the fact that everyone is prepared for class. Woe unto the student who is not.
When everyone knows what is going on, you can get some extraordinarily insightful and interesting discourses going.
Interesting. None of the 10 odd law professors I've had allowed recording devices of any kind.
Moose is just an irregular plural. Anything that applies to a -s plural applies to an irregular plural in English.
One moose. Many moose. Fewer moose.
No one ever said English isn't bizarre.
In English, the word you use depends on whether the thing you are describing is countable or uncountable. If English isn't your first language, that is the best way to think about it. Native speakers, of course, don't stop to think about it (and often get it wrong, for that matter :-) )
Some examples:
Countable:
A cow
"I have three cows"
You can see individual cows; you can't divide a single cow into other cows.
Uncountable:
Water is uncountable*
You don't say "I have waters" (unless you are being strangely poetic)
instead, you say "I have some water."
If you divide up some water, each piece is still just "water".
How does this affect language?
"I have many cows, and I have much water."
"I have few cows. I have little water."
"I have fewer cows than Michael. I have less water than Michael"
Hope that helps.
*Water itself is uncountable, but you can count the quantities it is in.
"I much water" vs. "I have many litres of water"
>>If the ions involved are Fe ions, then you wouldn't expect to get any energy from fusion from them.
:-)
>>
If they got fusion from Fe ions, I'd be capering around the room
IIRC, Fe has the highest binding energy per nucleon of any element.
>>You mean "Nintendo Power, Volume 1, Issue 1"?
>>
>>The Nintendo Fan Club newsletters that preceded that issue did not use the name >>Nintendo Power.
Yeah. I just found three of my old Nintendo Fan Club newsletters this past fall, but they were in color. What was the GParent thinking of, that was in black and white?
My parents pay something like $20/mo for 3.0Mb/s DSL.
I, on the other hand, live in an area where Sprint still has a monopoly and the other monopoly - the cable company - won't service my street. Period. As I've had broadband in one form or another since, oh, 1997, I refused to go to dial up. To justify the price of DSL here (and crappy DSL at that...) I have to cut other expenses considerably.
$25/mo Cheapest possible telephone service (required)
$38/mo for claimed 1.5Mb DSL. I think it is really 768kb. And that's the discount price.
$35/mo in access fees and taxes. Yes: nearly 40% of my bill is taxes
= $100/mo to have terrible broadband.
Oh, and despite having my own, I had to buy their modem, which was $125 added to the first bill. %*&$!@#
You mean like this?
(Sorry, it's angelfire and might notlike hot-linking, but if you enter the URL directly, it ought to work...)