IANAP (I am not a physicist), but perhaps it's some relation between magnetic and gravitational fields? Certainly gravity is related to mass, so perhaps there is some relation or parallelism in magnetic fields?
Ahhh, and here I was going to comment that perhaps they were part of a budget learning collection, possibly sold near the sections of the supermarket where they have "Dr Skipper" cola and "Spritz Up" (actually the "Dr Skipper" isn't too bad though). I wonder what a Dr Susus book would look like. It might be a fun exercise to come up with one as a parody, something like these
It's not necessarily that being rich makes one an automatic ass, but often more that earning something means appreciating it more. When the cost of a car is equivalent to saving up a year or more's worth of hard work, it's a fairly natural reaction to try and preserve said vehicle.
A kid whose dad buys him a basic car isn't necessarily going to appreciate the *value* of the item any more than a kid handed the keys to a jag, but to others the jag is more obviously not the result of "working for one's ride" as it's a rare teenager indeed that could afford one based on the income-level for that age-group. On the other hand, the kid who is given a semi-beater is likely going to worry less about the occasional nick+scratch than the kid with the jag, and almost ANY kid is going to have to go through the paces of learning how to become a good driver, which usually comes at some detriment to the vehicle even if they don't intentionally drive like idiots.
What REALLY bothers me is not those who were given a car, my own first car was assisted by my family (though maintained/gassed/repaired by myself), but rather those that get continual handouts regardless of their attitude/performance. When your kid totals his car due to driving recklessly, it take a true degree of ignorance to just go out and buy him a shiny new replacement (or even another beater). As mentioned in an earlier post in regards to kids wrecking their toys, maybe it's time to STOP buying them replacement toys. As a lover of gadgets and gizmos myself I don't have a problem getting various items for my boy when I can afford to do so, but that'll come to a screeching halt if he abuses or breaks them (he knows that, and thus far he's been good about taking care of his toys).
I've had this one when fixing up a (private) client's PC. I hit the web to download some driver/antivirus/whatever files and the first "suggested" link from his history in the dropdown was "analtaboo.com"
There was a brief pause, and then he asked "can you clear those off there. I'll pay you an extra ten bucks if you can show ME how to clear/hide them from my wife".
I once had a program that kept coming up with a really odd numerical error. I ended up tracing it back by printing out various variables along the way so I could make sure that the interim calculations were correct.
However, when I printed out one particular variable, the code suddenly gave the correct result. Removed the other debug prints, and it still worked. However, if I once again removed the line that echoed out the variable-in-question, it would screw up.
I checked all around that statement to make sure there were no termination issues (aka it wasn't the "WRITE VAR1" statement at fault, but a higher-up that wasn't terminated until my debug WRITE) and there was nada. Even my prof had a look and found nothing, but the output was definitely bugged without that line.
We lost a few marks for having a debug line in our final output, but nobody ever was able to figure out why it wouldn't calculate properly without it.
One of the kudos I must give to EA is that they actually contributed to a third-party servers for Linux, etc. This is also despite the fact that they have a model where players *PAY* to rent servers.
So here we have EA - a company not known for being all that consumer-friendly - who actively provides a server which competes with their business model, and - despite the who "market penetration" issues - even provides a server daemon for Linux! I still happily use my BF1942 server and have private games with my friends without dealing with all the usual BS on the public servers, and it's even more fun when using services like TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/etc, and enjoy some of the nifty mods that are out there as well.
So how is that any less useful for a game of Starcraft (or the modern equivalent). All my friends have legit CD keys, and I'm sure we'd all enjoy having a custom server to hack around with more than having to go through battle.net etc, especially considering that back in the days where we *DID* regularly play Starcraft/Broodwar, it was sometimes a royal pain in the ASS to get a decent game without running into weird connection issues or getting knocked offline.
So NO, private servers are all "pirate servers." In fact, a lot of the clients out there for older games such as BF *ARE* private servers.
This is exactly the problem I'm having with Electronic Arts right now.
Old account with old email/password and some games Newer account with newer email/password and some other games
There is NO way to transfer a game from one account to another, and also no apparent way to change the email address/account the game itself is locked to. Not only does this make it a huge PITA to remember the accounts/emails used, but it also means that you cannot consolidate if you have two accounts, a lost email-address and/or password means a boned account (and lost licenses) and you CANNOT transfer a game you have legally purchased because the account is tied to the CD-Key, which cannot be untied.
Key tied to account, account un-transferable = game cannot be resold. Lame.
It was better in some ways and worse in others. The worse was that the population tended be rather more heavily skewed towards geeks, who as we know tend to be rather strongly attached to their opinions and often rather egocentric. The better was that at least many of those geeks had semi-educated (if differing) opinions, and tended not to go towards lame lawsuits etc. The problems online tended to be those of a certain segment of society.
Now we have everyone on the internet, which opens it to everyone's problems. Whereas before I saw the major immaturity of a small number of individuals, now I tend to run into the more widespread immaturity of a larger group. Try playing an FPS/RTS online, for example. Where in the past you might have run into the odd jerk, it now seems to have become a festival of annoying idiots. That's not to say that non-geeks are generally non-idiots, but rather that now we have a greater population of annoying idiots to choose from, and it gets a lot more difficult to filter them out. Add to that the marketroids, scammers, and everything else, and it's become a pretty big mess.
That we have the lawsuit-happy over-sensitive variety of idiot is not surprising, but it is sad and was much less an issue with the original/earlier internet.
This is a bit different but similar in nature to what the RIAA was doing to discover the identities of filesharers: going after them with one charge to get their identity, drop that charge, and sue them once you have their name(s).
Actually, I seem to remember reading some time back that a lot of high-res/color printers *do* embed some form of unique indentifier in micro-print so as to identify where counterfeit money was printed (other printers would actually refuse to print something that looked money-like but identifying certain key symbols).
So if you printed something outing the local cops/politicians/etc and billboarded it, and they later tagged it to your printer because it had the same micro-print as a separate letter to your kids' school, or whatever, would the printer manufacturer (HP/Canon/etc) be on the hook if such functionality was not disclosed?
I've got an iPhone, and it's got a SIP application and a calling-card application. However, the "apple store" SIP app doesn't work over edge/3G, though the jailbroken one does.
My guess is that, if GV does do VOIP or SIP, they weren't willing to cripple it to wifi-only for Apple's stupid contracts with AT&T etc.
Uh? Apple doesn't sell phone calls, they sell phones, which are used to make phone-calls. Seems anything that allows one to better make calls would sell more phones, which should be a plus for Apple.
Other than the apps that don't work in 10.3/10.4 of course. I'm not really a mac user myself, but I do remember the headache of "oh, this app only works on OSX 10.5, you'll need to find another"
Off the top of my head, front-ends for OpenVPN come to mind, though there were others as well.
It seems to me that since they plan on releasing the game episodes in a per-race manner, but allowing multiplayer play for all three races, that they expect single-player play to drive game sales.
If not, people would only be buying a single episode, and playing in multiplayer (which means little-to-no sales of the other two releases).
Unless they plan on adding extra multiplayer goodies to the subsequent "episode", then the real driver to buy anything after the first one would have to be a nice, solid single player-experience and plot-line.
And yes, every day we hear articles about unreasonable employers, discriminatory practices, and abuse of employees (particularly in IT, that being a large portion of the site visitors).
When your employer has you working salary with constant unpaid overtime, calling you after hours, on weekends, or even on holidays, what do you do? When you're stuck working said OT because the company refuses to purchase adequate equipment and you're constantly fixing broken crap, what do you do? When your employee circumvents safe-practises at work (resulting in more OT and general stress), what do you do? When you're fired because your boss decided to outsource from [cheap country X], hire his brother's son instead, or maybe because you complained about having to work OT while your wife and kids are ready to leave (because you're never there), what do you do?
Well, one option is to find another job. The problem is that when you're already working massive OT, where do you find the time to update resumes, job-search, and attend interviews, even in a market that's not depressed as it is in many cases now? Often enough [new job] might be as bad or worse than [old job]. For the same reasons you have no time/cash/etc for upgrading your education to get [better job].
Another option is to sue. You might even win, but when you've gone nearly bankrupt because you're unemployed and your employer has a LOT more money and better lawyers than you, that doesn't work so well either. They can afford to drag their feet in court, whereas you can't.
Yes, there are plenty of bad points to unions. They have power, and power can corrupt. When they're asking for stupid things, feel free to complain. But bitching about them just because they don't have to work in the same shit conditions you do is not cool either.
One argument is that union workers are lazy/overpaid. I made a significant more money working private. I was also on the verge of relationship collapse and my hair was literally turning prematurely grey/white. I went back to a public-sector job because they treat me LIKE A HUMAN BEING. When I work, I am more than happy to put in my full effort during work hours (and beyond, as special circumstances warrant). What I don't want to do is be constantly working like a dog during MY TIME, and constantly fighting fires because it's cheaper for most companies to overwork their current employees than retain adequate staff, equipment or standards. Whatever your complains about unions, those are the things that stand against, and why I was happy to take a pay cut for an increased quality-of-life.
And before you call me lazy, or whatever. My previous (private-sector) manager many times stated I was one of the best workers he had. Unfortunately that meant I was generally handed the "heavy lifting" because I could be expected to get it done. I don't blame the guy - he worked more hours than anyone in the company - but management above him always seemed to have the opinion that employees were expendable resources.
As somebody who has a recently RROD'ed 360, I think I have a decent perspective on this:
In regards to buying a new console, it's a weight of costs. I have plenty of games for the 360 , as well as controllers etc. They won't work on different consoles, so I'm either stuck with a bunch of useless games/controllers, or replacing a 360.
That being said, the other option is to fix the damn thing (or get it fixed). I fixed mine - though I'm not sure how long that will hold up - and was pretty disgusted to see how MS puts these things together.
There are only two fans in the unit, both at the back, which blow through a wind-tunnel. Neither the CPU/GPU heatsinks have an actual fan on the heatsink. The CPU gets most of the wind from the wind-tunnel fans. The CPU is covered by the DVD-ROM which traps heat, and has a heat-pipe to a small frontal GPU that gets little air-flow after the CPU. This design is SHIT, and it's no wonder they have high failure rates.
What's a fix? Well, basically you can replace a bunch of the heatsinks etc. If you have an existing RROD it appears to be due to some bad soldering around the overheating GPU, and of-times forcibly causing the GPU to heat up (blocking air-flow from the fan), while keeping the CPU cooled can give it enough re-flow to - at least for awhile - get the solder back in the proper place. For mine I've also added some extra internal fans to keep the bugger cooler.
My understanding is that later models (falcon/jasper) handle heat better, though I'm not sure if this is due to better solder design, fans, or a more efficient CPU/GPU combination. If my existing 360 goes tits-up again I will *NOT* replace it with a new one, but might consider getting a used version of the newer model so my collection of 360 games will not become coasters.
One major result of this though. I can understand people replacing boned 360's because they have existing games. However, I would hope that they would follow my thoughts and NOT buy any future MS consoles. Between the major RROD issues, as well as the other reported issues such as disc scratching it seems that MS is all too willing to cut corners and screw the consumer, as usual.
I know a lot of shipping companies won't let you change the shipping address without sender authorization. I've run into this with packages which I once had to get redirected to my work address. I was able to get the destination address updated, but it required authorization from the shipper first.
I've never understood the concept of Pinyin. In most euro-derived languages I know (and Europe being the original of that character set), "sh" pronounces the same sound, as does the letter "Q", etc. Obviously some things vary and certain characters may be added for various languages, but there are some fairly strong commonalities that Pinyin just seems to break.
so why would Pinyin use "Xi", (such as in Xiao, with "X" pronounced as 'sh'), or Qi pronounced as 'Ch'? Is there some standard for this, or did some person way back them just decide "well, we should use these symbols but pronounce them differently"
My girlfriend is Chinese, as well as many of my friends, but nobody seems to know the origin of this.
Yes, and plenty of the information that stalkers *I* have had personal experience with was public too. Does that give them a right to follow me around taking note of my every move whenever I leave the house?
Unfortunately there is no easy answer to a lot of this, but regardless of the court outcomes it seems that the woman in question is seriously damaged, and hopefully can be dealt with in a *legal* manner to overcome her illness.
But if she's outing the real names of undercover agents etc, she's not only putting the officers themselves are risk, but also their families etc.
Stalking is NOT cool, regardless of who is doing it and who it is being done to. As somebody who's had a stalker-ex I can attest that it's a pretty scary thing as you can never really tell how far an obsessive person will go.
I wonder about the average level of sleep we get nowadays, how much we need as we age, sanity issues, and more.
At the moment, sleep deprivation can lead to some nasty psychological issues. It says that the mice "recovered quicker from periods of sleep deprivation compared with regular mice", but does that mean that they just jumped to work quicker and less sluggishly, how about mental health? I'm guessing it becomes a quality VS quantity issue. I know that when my allergies act up, I don't breathe as well, and even though I sleep slightly longer durations I feel less rested than less sleep with clear sinuses. The breathing issues would then cause sleep-apnea related issues.
Another thing I would like to see here is the "depth of sleep", such as REM, etc. If the gene actually modifies it so that the mice hit an optimal sleep depth more quickly, that might more sense. I've often found that if I consistently go without enough sleep I get sluggish, but sometimes if I really wear myself down, stay up really late, and then hit the sack when I'm just about ready to drop, I sleep *EXTREMELY* deeply and feel more rested on 3-4h of sleep than 7-8 hours. On people that get by very well on low sleep, I'd be willing to bet they measure a noticeably different EEG frequency (and possibly other factors such as blood-oxyen level), with a pattern more like a sharper curve towards deep sleep.
This would indicate a "quality" issue rather than a quantity. It would also make sense in an evolutionary sense. Yes, longer sleep means perhaps a longer duration of potential vulnerability, but a longer less-deep sleep be trading depth for recoverability. E.G. if a large predator comes stomping up when you're at level 5/10 sleep, then you have a good chance of waking up and getting the f*** out of there even though you're out for approx 8h. Alternately, if you're out for a 3h super-nap, and at 9/10 depth for most of that, perhaps the potential for being gobbled up during that period is greatly increased?
I'm a Canadian who would strongly consider Aus if I were ever to relocate. About 4-5 years ago I went down there to visit some close friends, and found most things about the country wonderful. In terms of politics it seems that Australians were MUCH more in touch with political issues that might otherwise be ignored in Canada/USA. I'm not sure if the voter turnout is better, but I'm hoping that more-informed=more likely to vote (in an intelligent manner).
Sadly, Canada's system has gone downhill in that manner. While you can catch interesting pieces on CBC, general media on politics has little to do with political reality and plenty more to do with mudslinging and semi-slander. It used to be ads were more about "what I can do for you" than "my opponent eats kittens and evicts little old ladies", which I had viewed as a more American thing, but we've certainly moved more towards the latter in the last 1-2 decades. Aus seems to be a bit more clean-cut and clued-in, so hopefully they'll stay that way.
In theory one could also keep tabs on the local guy. You probably know some readily identifiable information on him, whereas ShadyCo may overall be a decent company, but overall you wouldn't know their staff overly well. A good manager is often in touch with his department, so you might catch on if "Bob Smith" from IT has a bad drug/gambling/etc habit and talk to him about it (and keep tabs on him) in order to catch any fishy business. Stan Doe from ShadyCo you don't know... so everything at that point is dependent on how strong your contract is with ShadyCo if he borks you servers or does something unethical... as well as their ability to pay VS declaring sudden bankruptcy and starting a new entity.
A disgruntled sysadmin could in theory plant all sorts of nasty backdoors in places that would well be well nigh impossible to remove without complete reinstall/reconfiguration, which is why knowing your employees (and/or treating them well) may very well be the most important part of having them on-hand. My former co-worker and I used to make a game out of breaking into each other's desktops, with success being shown by a few amusingly tweaked settings (desktop wallpaper, internet start page, language settings, hot-pink window manager theme,etc). It made me really appreciate how deeply a system could be penetrated in a truely serious situation.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but perhaps it's some relation between magnetic and gravitational fields? Certainly gravity is related to mass, so perhaps there is some relation or parallelism in magnetic fields?
Ahhh, and here I was going to comment that perhaps they were part of a budget learning collection, possibly sold near the sections of the supermarket where they have "Dr Skipper" cola and "Spritz Up" (actually the "Dr Skipper" isn't too bad though).
I wonder what a Dr Susus book would look like. It might be a fun exercise to come up with one as a parody, something like these
It's not necessarily that being rich makes one an automatic ass, but often more that earning something means appreciating it more. When the cost of a car is equivalent to saving up a year or more's worth of hard work, it's a fairly natural reaction to try and preserve said vehicle.
A kid whose dad buys him a basic car isn't necessarily going to appreciate the *value* of the item any more than a kid handed the keys to a jag, but to others the jag is more obviously not the result of "working for one's ride" as it's a rare teenager indeed that could afford one based on the income-level for that age-group. On the other hand, the kid who is given a semi-beater is likely going to worry less about the occasional nick+scratch than the kid with the jag, and almost ANY kid is going to have to go through the paces of learning how to become a good driver, which usually comes at some detriment to the vehicle even if they don't intentionally drive like idiots.
What REALLY bothers me is not those who were given a car, my own first car was assisted by my family (though maintained/gassed/repaired by myself), but rather those that get continual handouts regardless of their attitude/performance. When your kid totals his car due to driving recklessly, it take a true degree of ignorance to just go out and buy him a shiny new replacement (or even another beater). As mentioned in an earlier post in regards to kids wrecking their toys, maybe it's time to STOP buying them replacement toys. As a lover of gadgets and gizmos myself I don't have a problem getting various items for my boy when I can afford to do so, but that'll come to a screeching halt if he abuses or breaks them (he knows that, and thus far he's been good about taking care of his toys).
I've had this one when fixing up a (private) client's PC. I hit the web to download some driver/antivirus/whatever files and the first "suggested" link from his history in the dropdown was "analtaboo.com"
There was a brief pause, and then he asked "can you clear those off there. I'll pay you an extra ten bucks if you can show ME how to clear/hide them from my wife".
I once had a program that kept coming up with a really odd numerical error. I ended up tracing it back by printing out various variables along the way so I could make sure that the interim calculations were correct.
However, when I printed out one particular variable, the code suddenly gave the correct result. Removed the other debug prints, and it still worked. However, if I once again removed the line that echoed out the variable-in-question, it would screw up.
I checked all around that statement to make sure there were no termination issues (aka it wasn't the "WRITE VAR1" statement at fault, but a higher-up that wasn't terminated until my debug WRITE) and there was nada. Even my prof had a look and found nothing, but the output was definitely bugged without that line.
We lost a few marks for having a debug line in our final output, but nobody ever was able to figure out why it wouldn't calculate properly without it.
One of the kudos I must give to EA is that they actually contributed to a third-party servers for Linux, etc. This is also despite the fact that they have a model where players *PAY* to rent servers.
So here we have EA - a company not known for being all that consumer-friendly - who actively provides a server which competes with their business model, and - despite the who "market penetration" issues - even provides a server daemon for Linux!
I still happily use my BF1942 server and have private games with my friends without dealing with all the usual BS on the public servers, and it's even more fun when using services like TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/etc, and enjoy some of the nifty mods that are out there as well.
So how is that any less useful for a game of Starcraft (or the modern equivalent). All my friends have legit CD keys, and I'm sure we'd all enjoy having a custom server to hack around with more than having to go through battle.net etc, especially considering that back in the days where we *DID* regularly play Starcraft/Broodwar, it was sometimes a royal pain in the ASS to get a decent game without running into weird connection issues or getting knocked offline.
So NO, private servers are all "pirate servers." In fact, a lot of the clients out there for older games such as BF *ARE* private servers.
This is exactly the problem I'm having with Electronic Arts right now.
Old account with old email/password and some games
Newer account with newer email/password and some other games
There is NO way to transfer a game from one account to another, and also no apparent way to change the email address/account the game itself is locked to. Not only does this make it a huge PITA to remember the accounts/emails used, but it also means that you cannot consolidate if you have two accounts, a lost email-address and/or password means a boned account (and lost licenses) and you CANNOT transfer a game you have legally purchased because the account is tied to the CD-Key, which cannot be untied.
Key tied to account, account un-transferable = game cannot be resold. Lame.
It was better in some ways and worse in others. The worse was that the population tended be rather more heavily skewed towards geeks, who as we know tend to be rather strongly attached to their opinions and often rather egocentric. The better was that at least many of those geeks had semi-educated (if differing) opinions, and tended not to go towards lame lawsuits etc. The problems online tended to be those of a certain segment of society.
Now we have everyone on the internet, which opens it to everyone's problems. Whereas before I saw the major immaturity of a small number of individuals, now I tend to run into the more widespread immaturity of a larger group. Try playing an FPS/RTS online, for example. Where in the past you might have run into the odd jerk, it now seems to have become a festival of annoying idiots. That's not to say that non-geeks are generally non-idiots, but rather that now we have a greater population of annoying idiots to choose from, and it gets a lot more difficult to filter them out. Add to that the marketroids, scammers, and everything else, and it's become a pretty big mess.
That we have the lawsuit-happy over-sensitive variety of idiot is not surprising, but it is sad and was much less an issue with the original/earlier internet.
This is a bit different but similar in nature to what the RIAA was doing to discover the identities of filesharers: going after them with one charge to get their identity, drop that charge, and sue them once you have their name(s).
Actually, I seem to remember reading some time back that a lot of high-res/color printers *do* embed some form of unique indentifier in micro-print so as to identify where counterfeit money was printed (other printers would actually refuse to print something that looked money-like but identifying certain key symbols).
So if you printed something outing the local cops/politicians/etc and billboarded it, and they later tagged it to your printer because it had the same micro-print as a separate letter to your kids' school, or whatever, would the printer manufacturer (HP/Canon/etc) be on the hook if such functionality was not disclosed?
I've got an iPhone, and it's got a SIP application and a calling-card application.
However, the "apple store" SIP app doesn't work over edge/3G, though the jailbroken one does.
My guess is that, if GV does do VOIP or SIP, they weren't willing to cripple it to wifi-only for Apple's stupid contracts with AT&T etc.
Uh? Apple doesn't sell phone calls, they sell phones, which are used to make phone-calls. Seems anything that allows one to better make calls would sell more phones, which should be a plus for Apple.
Other than the apps that don't work in 10.3/10.4 of course. I'm not really a mac user myself, but I do remember the headache of "oh, this app only works on OSX 10.5, you'll need to find another"
Off the top of my head, front-ends for OpenVPN come to mind, though there were others as well.
Aliens really do seem to take a lot of unjust blame for the anal probes.
Really, they're more than happy to use oral probes, it's just that most abduction candidates clench their teeth and refuse to accept them.
Of course, that could be due to probes being re-used between candidates, and seeing where it was used on the abductee ahead in line...
It seems to me that since they plan on releasing the game episodes in a per-race manner, but allowing multiplayer play for all three races, that they expect single-player play to drive game sales.
If not, people would only be buying a single episode, and playing in multiplayer (which means little-to-no sales of the other two releases).
Unless they plan on adding extra multiplayer goodies to the subsequent "episode", then the real driver to buy anything after the first one would have to be a nice, solid single player-experience and plot-line.
And yes, every day we hear articles about unreasonable employers, discriminatory practices, and abuse of employees (particularly in IT, that being a large portion of the site visitors).
When your employer has you working salary with constant unpaid overtime, calling you after hours, on weekends, or even on holidays, what do you do?
When you're stuck working said OT because the company refuses to purchase adequate equipment and you're constantly fixing broken crap, what do you do?
When your employee circumvents safe-practises at work (resulting in more OT and general stress), what do you do?
When you're fired because your boss decided to outsource from [cheap country X], hire his brother's son instead, or maybe because you complained about having to work OT while your wife and kids are ready to leave (because you're never there), what do you do?
Well, one option is to find another job. The problem is that when you're already working massive OT, where do you find the time to update resumes, job-search, and attend interviews, even in a market that's not depressed as it is in many cases now? Often enough [new job] might be as bad or worse than [old job]. For the same reasons you have no time/cash/etc for upgrading your education to get [better job].
Another option is to sue. You might even win, but when you've gone nearly bankrupt because you're unemployed and your employer has a LOT more money and better lawyers than you, that doesn't work so well either. They can afford to drag their feet in court, whereas you can't.
Yes, there are plenty of bad points to unions. They have power, and power can corrupt. When they're asking for stupid things, feel free to complain. But bitching about them just because they don't have to work in the same shit conditions you do is not cool either.
One argument is that union workers are lazy/overpaid. I made a significant more money working private. I was also on the verge of relationship collapse and my hair was literally turning prematurely grey/white. I went back to a public-sector job because they treat me LIKE A HUMAN BEING. When I work, I am more than happy to put in my full effort during work hours (and beyond, as special circumstances warrant). What I don't want to do is be constantly working like a dog during MY TIME, and constantly fighting fires because it's cheaper for most companies to overwork their current employees than retain adequate staff, equipment or standards.
Whatever your complains about unions, those are the things that stand against, and why I was happy to take a pay cut for an increased quality-of-life.
And before you call me lazy, or whatever. My previous (private-sector) manager many times stated I was one of the best workers he had. Unfortunately that meant I was generally handed the "heavy lifting" because I could be expected to get it done. I don't blame the guy - he worked more hours than anyone in the company - but management above him always seemed to have the opinion that employees were expendable resources.
As somebody who has a recently RROD'ed 360, I think I have a decent perspective on this:
In regards to buying a new console, it's a weight of costs. I have plenty of games for the 360 , as well as controllers etc. They won't work on different consoles, so I'm either stuck with a bunch of useless games/controllers, or replacing a 360.
That being said, the other option is to fix the damn thing (or get it fixed). I fixed mine - though I'm not sure how long that will hold up - and was pretty disgusted to see how MS puts these things together.
There are only two fans in the unit, both at the back, which blow through a wind-tunnel. Neither the CPU/GPU heatsinks have an actual fan on the heatsink. The CPU gets most of the wind from the wind-tunnel fans. The CPU is covered by the DVD-ROM which traps heat, and has a heat-pipe to a small frontal GPU that gets little air-flow after the CPU. This design is SHIT, and it's no wonder they have high failure rates.
What's a fix? Well, basically you can replace a bunch of the heatsinks etc. If you have an existing RROD it appears to be due to some bad soldering around the overheating GPU, and of-times forcibly causing the GPU to heat up (blocking air-flow from the fan), while keeping the CPU cooled can give it enough re-flow to - at least for awhile - get the solder back in the proper place. For mine I've also added some extra internal fans to keep the bugger cooler.
My understanding is that later models (falcon/jasper) handle heat better, though I'm not sure if this is due to better solder design, fans, or a more efficient CPU/GPU combination. If my existing 360 goes tits-up again I will *NOT* replace it with a new one, but might consider getting a used version of the newer model so my collection of 360 games will not become coasters.
One major result of this though. I can understand people replacing boned 360's because they have existing games. However, I would hope that they would follow my thoughts and NOT buy any future MS consoles. Between the major RROD issues, as well as the other reported issues such as disc scratching it seems that MS is all too willing to cut corners and screw the consumer, as usual.
I know a lot of shipping companies won't let you change the shipping address without sender authorization. I've run into this with packages which I once had to get redirected to my work address. I was able to get the destination address updated, but it required authorization from the shipper first.
In addition to 'life energy', the same pronunciation can also mean 'wife' or 'angry'.
Maybe ancient Chinese had that one right. Seems it would make it easy to point out that "my PMS'ing wife is sucking the life outta me" :-)
I've never understood the concept of Pinyin.
In most euro-derived languages I know (and Europe being the original of that character set), "sh" pronounces the same sound, as does the letter "Q", etc. Obviously some things vary and certain characters may be added for various languages, but there are some fairly strong commonalities that Pinyin just seems to break.
so why would Pinyin use "Xi", (such as in Xiao, with "X" pronounced as 'sh'), or Qi pronounced as 'Ch'? Is there some standard for this, or did some person way back them just decide "well, we should use these symbols but pronounce them differently"
My girlfriend is Chinese, as well as many of my friends, but nobody seems to know the origin of this.
Yes, and plenty of the information that stalkers *I* have had personal experience with was public too. Does that give them a right to follow me around taking note of my every move whenever I leave the house?
Unfortunately there is no easy answer to a lot of this, but regardless of the court outcomes it seems that the woman in question is seriously damaged, and hopefully can be dealt with in a *legal* manner to overcome her illness.
But if she's outing the real names of undercover agents etc, she's not only putting the officers themselves are risk, but also their families etc.
Stalking is NOT cool, regardless of who is doing it and who it is being done to. As somebody who's had a stalker-ex I can attest that it's a pretty scary thing as you can never really tell how far an obsessive person will go.
I wonder about the average level of sleep we get nowadays, how much we need as we age, sanity issues, and more.
At the moment, sleep deprivation can lead to some nasty psychological issues. It says that the mice "recovered quicker from periods of sleep deprivation compared with regular mice", but does that mean that they just jumped to work quicker and less sluggishly, how about mental health? I'm guessing it becomes a quality VS quantity issue. I know that when my allergies act up, I don't breathe as well, and even though I sleep slightly longer durations I feel less rested than less sleep with clear sinuses. The breathing issues would then cause sleep-apnea related issues.
Another thing I would like to see here is the "depth of sleep", such as REM, etc. If the gene actually modifies it so that the mice hit an optimal sleep depth more quickly, that might more sense. I've often found that if I consistently go without enough sleep I get sluggish, but sometimes if I really wear myself down, stay up really late, and then hit the sack when I'm just about ready to drop, I sleep *EXTREMELY* deeply and feel more rested on 3-4h of sleep than 7-8 hours. On people that get by very well on low sleep, I'd be willing to bet they measure a noticeably different EEG frequency (and possibly other factors such as blood-oxyen level), with a pattern more like a sharper curve towards deep sleep.
This would indicate a "quality" issue rather than a quantity. It would also make sense in an evolutionary sense. Yes, longer sleep means perhaps a longer duration of potential vulnerability, but a longer less-deep sleep be trading depth for recoverability.
E.G. if a large predator comes stomping up when you're at level 5/10 sleep, then you have a good chance of waking up and getting the f*** out of there even though you're out for approx 8h. Alternately, if you're out for a 3h super-nap, and at 9/10 depth for most of that, perhaps the potential for being gobbled up during that period is greatly increased?
I'm a Canadian who would strongly consider Aus if I were ever to relocate. About 4-5 years ago I went down there to visit some close friends, and found most things about the country wonderful. In terms of politics it seems that Australians were MUCH more in touch with political issues that might otherwise be ignored in Canada/USA. I'm not sure if the voter turnout is better, but I'm hoping that more-informed=more likely to vote (in an intelligent manner).
Sadly, Canada's system has gone downhill in that manner. While you can catch interesting pieces on CBC, general media on politics has little to do with political reality and plenty more to do with mudslinging and semi-slander.
It used to be ads were more about "what I can do for you" than "my opponent eats kittens and evicts little old ladies", which I had viewed as a more American thing, but we've certainly moved more towards the latter in the last 1-2 decades. Aus seems to be a bit more clean-cut and clued-in, so hopefully they'll stay that way.
In theory one could also keep tabs on the local guy. You probably know some readily identifiable information on him, whereas ShadyCo may overall be a decent company, but overall you wouldn't know their staff overly well. A good manager is often in touch with his department, so you might catch on if "Bob Smith" from IT has a bad drug/gambling/etc habit and talk to him about it (and keep tabs on him) in order to catch any fishy business. Stan Doe from ShadyCo you don't know... so everything at that point is dependent on how strong your contract is with ShadyCo if he borks you servers or does something unethical... as well as their ability to pay VS declaring sudden bankruptcy and starting a new entity.
A disgruntled sysadmin could in theory plant all sorts of nasty backdoors in places that would well be well nigh impossible to remove without complete reinstall/reconfiguration, which is why knowing your employees (and/or treating them well) may very well be the most important part of having them on-hand. My former co-worker and I used to make a game out of breaking into each other's desktops, with success being shown by a few amusingly tweaked settings (desktop wallpaper, internet start page, language settings, hot-pink window manager theme,etc). It made me really appreciate how deeply a system could be penetrated in a truely serious situation.