I found it in 1992 playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. It blew up shortly after we discovered it, so I doubt there's anything left to find.
Hey, at least its a good excuse to take a vacation to Mexico, and, oh btw, stock up on presription meds like Amoxycilin. Drugs are dirt cheap down there. You'll have to check how much you are legally allowed to bring back though.....
What worries me is when will the, umm, prescription, umm, drugs that I import from Colombia have RFID tags?
I believe that transformers tend to hum at harmonics of the AC frequency (60 Hz in America, 50 Hz in Europe) because the magnetic domains in the core of the transformer change in size slightly with the fields. Read this for an explanation.
The fact that Google has close to a monopoly on searching means there is too much of a chance that people will try to exploit its ranking system to push pages up the listings. Of course, I'm sure they are continually tweaking the ranking system to try to detect these pages, but if there were more search engines in popular use then it would be harder to find a way of exploiting them all at once.
I've never found a reliable way of getting a word count in LaTeX. You can't just parse the source as some words will be generated by commands in the body. All the methods I've tried for counting the words of the finished PDF/PS fall down on counting things like equations and page numbers.
Worryingly, Safari is also fooled by the bug - the status bar shows http://www.microsoft.com/ before you click on the link, but the address bar in the resulting window correctly shows http://www.google.com/.
I had a throttle stick once (broken spring) and I didn't want to blow the engine. Plan ahead on what to do. Pratice it. I calmly turned the key one click only. Problem solved. Nothing broken.
I once drove my old clapped out manual car 100 miles with a throttle that never fully closed. I suppose it was probably a bit dangerous, but I was in a real hurry so couldn't take the time out to fix it until the next day. Every time I wanted to stop, I just knocked the car into neutral, used the brakes to slow down while turning off the engine. This did engage the steering lock, so I turned the key back as soon as the engine had spun down enough that it wouldn't restart, releasing the steering lock.
To go at a constant slow speed, I just abused the clutch and brakes a bit, but was mindful that I didn't want to destroy either so erred on the side of turning the engine off and coasting.
The cool thing was that most of it was motorway driving anyway, and it was like having cruise control, except in a twenty year old banger.
Although annoyingly, it takes a long time if you're a cash-strapped picky bastard. My bike isn't worth stealing, but it took a while to find someone selling it. I'm more worried about some drunk people vandalizing it when I leave it on the street.
Re:Everyone has lost their minds
on
GNOME 2.8 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The parent post makes some very good points. I've used Windows, Linux and OSX quite a bit, one of the things I really don't like is the way the Desktop is used. I always feel I'm fighting against the computer to persuade it to use the Desktop as what it should be - a temporary working area.
I don't want to launch programs from it, even commonly used ones. That's what a programs menu is for [skip to the last paragraph now if you're skimming], though it is convenient to have a shorter route to the commonly used ones, so it's a good idea to have a toolbar next to the complete menu. Gnome does quite well in this regard, in the default setup you get a programs menu next to launch bars, Windows is close to getting it right, but you have the Quicklaunch bar, the recently used start menu bit, the Internet/Email bit, the top level of the Programs bit, which is overload. If you drag Applications to the Dock in OSX, then you get a launch menu too.
Then I remove all the icons from the desktop that shouldn't be there. By hard disks, home folder and any applications have no place there - I'll launch a Explorer/Nautilus/Finder to navigate them. As directory/folder navigation is important, I might like to be able to have several special places to start off in set up, as subitems of the file navigator icon. XFCE allows for this quite neatly.
Then, clearly separate (oposite sides of the screen in Gnome and XFCE) I like to have some way of navigating open windows (and multiple desktops). OSX gets this a bit confused, as the Dock launches and resorts, on top of that Expose performs this function.
Anyway, I like the Desktop to be a sort of in-basket. If it doesn't have anything on it except a pretty background, I have achieved a sense of calm. Stuff on it is awaiting filing somewhere else in my home folder, or deleting. I don't want anything else to be in my face. This is the computer analogue of my real world desk (well, the half of it not occupied by equipment).
And what about Mac mouse navigation? On Windows and Linux Firefox, middle-clicking a link brings up a new tab, but this doesn't work on Mac. Also, there's a strange baby window that appears with Exposé and can't be gotten rid of. These faults are annoying enough to prevent my using it on my Mac. Sure, I know about Camino and Safari, but it would be less taxing on my mind if I could use the same browser on any platform, and I regularly use all three platforms.
Yep, I took physics and handwrote all my notes. Then when you revise, you get to see all the doodles you made in the margins, the cartoons of the lecturers you didn't like and so forth.
A really useful skill to learn is the ability to write, both words and equations, neatly-ish without looking at the paper. Equations especially are tricky to get fractions, integrals and stuff with all subscripts in the right place, but after four years of lectures, you get the skills.
If I ever get the time, I'd like to learn some sort of shorthand system for note taking.
Computerised notes just wouldn't be as satisfying either, unless you printed them all out. I revised by taping many of my notes to the walls (some lecture notes, and some revision notes) so I could wander around my room to revise some of the time. Made the room look pretty freaky though...
The best product for dissolving glues or other adhesives without damaging plastics is this stuff called Bestine, which I believe is actually hexane. It's sold in art supply shops as a thinner for rubber cement.
Bestine eh? I wonder if that would be useful for removing glue gunk from cables. My predecessor at work was very organized, and stuck masking tape labels on to most of the BNC/coax cables to say where the other end goes. Unfortunately, over a few years, the masking tape glue reacts in some way with the insulation of the cable, making a gunky mess.
By the way, my solution for BNC cables these days is zip ties with a little panel on them that can be written on with a marker pen. For the collection of cables I have for making temporary connections, I just make up cables with a variety of differently coloured stain relief thingies.
Well, that was way way off-topic, but never mind...
And to repeat his disclaimer, DRY ICE CAN BE DANGEROUS!
The freeze-burn danger is comparable to the heat-burn danger of boiling water. ALWAYS WEAR HEAVY GLOVES WHEN HANDLING DRY ICE OR LN2! Always treat them with at least as much respect as you would treat boiling water or boiling oil!
While liquid nitrogen is dangerous in various ways, I'd be happy to spash a little over my hands, but I wouldn't be happy to splash boiling water or oil over my hands. The liquid nitrogen will evapourate off of my hands a lot more quickly than boiling water, so very little heat will be transferred.
It seems Enlightenment has only gone halfway on dropping the leading 0 from the version numbers, as the news pages don't include it, but the tarballs do. It seems unlikely given how long E has been around that it'll ever reach 1.0, so perhaps eventually it will do an emacs, and drop the leading numeral (a 1 in emacs' case)
NO-CD patches are a blessing, and likely the only reason why people put up with the idiotic copy protection mechanisms.
Except that you often can't know for sure what the "no-cd" patching program does, so you can't be sure it isn't going to steal your precious CD-key / WONID and send it across the internet.
but surely it's better for everyone to have people paying for commercial software and not using illegal copies while those that won't pay for software just use free software instead.
I'm not sure if that part is necessarily true. Suppose there is some expensive commercial program, that some people pay for (generating income for the company who wrote this program), but that other people pirate (they can't or won't pay). There is also an open-source program performing a similar task.
If everyone uses the commercial program, it might become an industry standard, meaning all the people who pay for software buy that program. It's position as an industry standard might be weakened if some unbeatable copy-protection were added - the people who won't pay will be forced to switch to the open-source program, and if enough of them did, it may become the standard instead.
30 cm rulers are still common, but that's probably more because it's a convenient length
That's the whole point of Imperial measures: they're convenient. For day-to-day things, it really is much easier to use pounds, feet, pints and so forth. A foot is a really sensible length for a ruler - there aren't nearly as many practical uses for a metre rule. And if I'm not going into a pub ordering my beer in millilitres. I can feel a sense of achievement if I eat a pound of meat, but a kilogram would probably make me sick.
I am also a physics student, and I'll use SI units (and other metric derived systems) for calculations and measurements. For science, the metric system is the right tool for the job. (Except that the SI unit of mass is the kg rather than the g)
It seems that the two systems have their uses, but I don't really see any need to force people into adopting an unfamiliar system just so that a few lunatics in Brussells get to feel important.
Does this mean independant people can take these sources, remaster them, and release them on dvd for a fee?
RTFA:
By applying a CC-type license to the content, the BBC will enable individuals in the UK to download released content to their computers, share it, edit it and create new content.
Commercial reuse of the content will not be allowed.
So it sounds like the for a fee bit wouldn't be permissible.
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I found it in 1992 playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. It blew up shortly after we discovered it, so I doubt there's anything left to find.
What worries me is when will the, umm, prescription, umm, drugs that I import from Colombia have RFID tags?
I believe that transformers tend to hum at harmonics of the AC frequency (60 Hz in America, 50 Hz in Europe) because the magnetic domains in the core of the transformer change in size slightly with the fields. Read this for an explanation.
The fact that Google has close to a monopoly on searching means there is too much of a chance that people will try to exploit its ranking system to push pages up the listings. Of course, I'm sure they are continually tweaking the ranking system to try to detect these pages, but if there were more search engines in popular use then it would be harder to find a way of exploiting them all at once.
I've never found a reliable way of getting a word count in LaTeX. You can't just parse the source as some words will be generated by commands in the body. All the methods I've tried for counting the words of the finished PDF/PS fall down on counting things like equations and page numbers.
Worryingly, Safari is also fooled by the bug - the status bar shows http://www.microsoft.com/ before you click on the link, but the address bar in the resulting window correctly shows http://www.google.com/.
I once drove my old clapped out manual car 100 miles with a throttle that never fully closed. I suppose it was probably a bit dangerous, but I was in a real hurry so couldn't take the time out to fix it until the next day. Every time I wanted to stop, I just knocked the car into neutral, used the brakes to slow down while turning off the engine. This did engage the steering lock, so I turned the key back as soon as the engine had spun down enough that it wouldn't restart, releasing the steering lock.
To go at a constant slow speed, I just abused the clutch and brakes a bit, but was mindful that I didn't want to destroy either so erred on the side of turning the engine off and coasting.
The cool thing was that most of it was motorway driving anyway, and it was like having cruise control, except in a twenty year old banger.
Although annoyingly, it takes a long time if you're a cash-strapped picky bastard. My bike isn't worth stealing, but it took a while to find someone selling it. I'm more worried about some drunk people vandalizing it when I leave it on the street.
The parent post makes some very good points. I've used Windows, Linux and OSX quite a bit, one of the things I really don't like is the way the Desktop is used. I always feel I'm fighting against the computer to persuade it to use the Desktop as what it should be - a temporary working area.
I don't want to launch programs from it, even commonly used ones. That's what a programs menu is for [skip to the last paragraph now if you're skimming], though it is convenient to have a shorter route to the commonly used ones, so it's a good idea to have a toolbar next to the complete menu. Gnome does quite well in this regard, in the default setup you get a programs menu next to launch bars, Windows is close to getting it right, but you have the Quicklaunch bar, the recently used start menu bit, the Internet/Email bit, the top level of the Programs bit, which is overload. If you drag Applications to the Dock in OSX, then you get a launch menu too.
Then I remove all the icons from the desktop that shouldn't be there. By hard disks, home folder and any applications have no place there - I'll launch a Explorer/Nautilus/Finder to navigate them. As directory/folder navigation is important, I might like to be able to have several special places to start off in set up, as subitems of the file navigator icon. XFCE allows for this quite neatly.
Then, clearly separate (oposite sides of the screen in Gnome and XFCE) I like to have some way of navigating open windows (and multiple desktops). OSX gets this a bit confused, as the Dock launches and resorts, on top of that Expose performs this function.
Anyway, I like the Desktop to be a sort of in-basket. If it doesn't have anything on it except a pretty background, I have achieved a sense of calm. Stuff on it is awaiting filing somewhere else in my home folder, or deleting. I don't want anything else to be in my face. This is the computer analogue of my real world desk (well, the half of it not occupied by equipment).
And what about Mac mouse navigation? On Windows and Linux Firefox, middle-clicking a link brings up a new tab, but this doesn't work on Mac. Also, there's a strange baby window that appears with Exposé and can't be gotten rid of. These faults are annoying enough to prevent my using it on my Mac. Sure, I know about Camino and Safari, but it would be less taxing on my mind if I could use the same browser on any platform, and I regularly use all three platforms.
I like Cyberduck for FTP/SFTP, partly because of its rather cute icon.
Which impairs the ability to think straight more? The caffeine or coding games in assembly language?
Then you actually do need the duct tape top cover the <blink>12:00</blink>
Firmware can be changed in some cases, but otherwise you can spoof it: wikipedia explains it all better than I can be bothered to type
Yep, I took physics and handwrote all my notes. Then when you revise, you get to see all the doodles you made in the margins, the cartoons of the lecturers you didn't like and so forth.
A really useful skill to learn is the ability to write, both words and equations, neatly-ish without looking at the paper. Equations especially are tricky to get fractions, integrals and stuff with all subscripts in the right place, but after four years of lectures, you get the skills.
If I ever get the time, I'd like to learn some sort of shorthand system for note taking.
Computerised notes just wouldn't be as satisfying either, unless you printed them all out. I revised by taping many of my notes to the walls (some lecture notes, and some revision notes) so I could wander around my room to revise some of the time. Made the room look pretty freaky though...
Bestine eh? I wonder if that would be useful for removing glue gunk from cables. My predecessor at work was very organized, and stuck masking tape labels on to most of the BNC/coax cables to say where the other end goes. Unfortunately, over a few years, the masking tape glue reacts in some way with the insulation of the cable, making a gunky mess.
By the way, my solution for BNC cables these days is zip ties with a little panel on them that can be written on with a marker pen. For the collection of cables I have for making temporary connections, I just make up cables with a variety of differently coloured stain relief thingies.
Well, that was way way off-topic, but never mind...
My experience with Linux + ACPI + nVidia:
While liquid nitrogen is dangerous in various ways, I'd be happy to spash a little over my hands, but I wouldn't be happy to splash boiling water or oil over my hands. The liquid nitrogen will evapourate off of my hands a lot more quickly than boiling water, so very little heat will be transferred.
It seems Enlightenment has only gone halfway on dropping the leading 0 from the version numbers, as the news pages don't include it, but the tarballs do. It seems unlikely given how long E has been around that it'll ever reach 1.0, so perhaps eventually it will do an emacs, and drop the leading numeral (a 1 in emacs' case)
Except that you often can't know for sure what the "no-cd" patching program does, so you can't be sure it isn't going to steal your precious CD-key / WONID and send it across the internet.
but surely it's better for everyone to have people paying for commercial software and not using illegal copies while those that won't pay for software just use free software instead.
I'm not sure if that part is necessarily true. Suppose there is some expensive commercial program, that some people pay for (generating income for the company who wrote this program), but that other people pirate (they can't or won't pay). There is also an open-source program performing a similar task.
If everyone uses the commercial program, it might become an industry standard, meaning all the people who pay for software buy that program. It's position as an industry standard might be weakened if some unbeatable copy-protection were added - the people who won't pay will be forced to switch to the open-source program, and if enough of them did, it may become the standard instead.
That's the whole point of Imperial measures: they're convenient. For day-to-day things, it really is much easier to use pounds, feet, pints and so forth. A foot is a really sensible length for a ruler - there aren't nearly as many practical uses for a metre rule. And if I'm not going into a pub ordering my beer in millilitres. I can feel a sense of achievement if I eat a pound of meat, but a kilogram would probably make me sick.
I am also a physics student, and I'll use SI units (and other metric derived systems) for calculations and measurements. For science, the metric system is the right tool for the job. (Except that the SI unit of mass is the kg rather than the g)
It seems that the two systems have their uses, but I don't really see any need to force people into adopting an unfamiliar system just so that a few lunatics in Brussells get to feel important.
What about people spoofing their browser as MSIE to fool sites not quite as standards-compliant as yours?
RTFA:
So it sounds like the for a fee bit wouldn't be permissible.