I was able to sit in on an open heart surgery at one point in my life. After the surgeon cracked the chest open, he inserted a surgical glove full of (I think) normal saline, tied off at the wrist. Called it a 'helping hand'. The heart continued to beat merrily away on top of it, and they used a device called an octopus to hold the pertinent section of the heart still.
To date, remains one of the coolest things I have ever seen.
I had an Airport Express go missing from a bag checked at the Airport. I was flying Alaska at the time, but I'm doubtful that they were the ones that actually took it, especially based on this article. Nevertheless, I don't absolve them of responsibility - when I complained, they sent the report up to corporate so they could avoid any law hassles, and then sent me a rebate in the order of 50 bucks on the next flight, about half of what the item was worth. The justification was they have an extensive list of items that they absolve themselves of responsibility for.
Lesson learned. I don't fly anymore if I can help it, and when I can't help it, nothing but carry on for me. I hate to be the guy that takes up the overhead space, but I need to be able to arrive without some TSA employee taking his cut of my stuff. Worst case, I'm not leaving it up to them anymore to decide if the police are informed.
I'd have to disagree on the 'first language' part. Learning to write code for the first time can be extremely frustrating for some (most?) folks; I was one of them. My first language was Java, and one of the best things about learning in that was the quick turnaround to positive feedback; specifically, positive feedback that looked useful in something other than a non-academic setting. It whetted my appetite, and gave me a bit more of a foundational base to actually understand what was going on when I first wrote in assembly, and how it fit into the grander scheme of things.
I would agree that they should look at it eventually, though, for reasons you've already specified.
My first introduction to their practices was a Time magazine article my friend dug up from 1991, when I was trying to figure out what they were all about. It won an award, and is worth a look for those folks to don't understand the vitriol.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972865,00.html
I've recently become a fan of Google Calendar ever since I found out that it could be read from and written to within Thunderbird (using the Lightning calendar extension, and the Provider for Google Calendar add on). I wouldn't suggest it as a business solution, but for personal use, it works well. I'm not really a fan of the google calendar web interface, but now I don't really have to deal with it, and my changes are replicated to anywhere I've got the plugins installed.
I heard in biology class awhile back. It was about a parasite that had an incredibly convoluted life cycle, parts of which involved affecting the behavior of other living species so they would suicide, allowing the parasite to pass onto its ultimate host. I think this article on the Toxoplasma parasite might be relevant. I wonder if that's how they isolated the behavior?
From the article:
For decades, most scientists believed that people with healthy immune systems had no effects from Toxoplasma. But some studies in recent years have hinted that the parasite can exert surprising effects on behavior, at least in animals.
In 2000, British scientists demonstrated that rats infected with Toxoplasma lost their fear of cats. They proposed that this strategy increased the parasite's chances of getting into its final host.
Scientists at Stanford University recently followed up on these experiments, studying rats and mice. "They actually show a mild attraction to the cat odor," said Ajai Vyas, a Stanford neurobiologist. "It's not just the loss of an old behavior. A new behavior is being induced."
I'll second that. We have a windows RDC dedicated box where I work for testing web apps in IE, but lately I've run into some strange issues with sessions not working properly, which I didn't have time to figure out just then. Also, there's days when I telecommute, and the network latency on a Remote Desktop, even with the eye-candy features turned off, can be a real pain. Having Parallels to rely on locally for testing in explorer is pretty nice.
The Lexus (in the US) has that feature. The BMW does too, although I'm not sure if that version is available in the US. You can see a video of it in action here.
You'd be wrong. When I was stationed in Turkey, there were tax exemptions for being in a combat zone, as well as some other benefits like free mail.
An earlier post linked to the relevant page from the IRS (Thx, El Torico). See Tables 1 and 2.
There was a Times article awhile back that involved the mating habits of Neanderthals and humans. It made that assumption from the analysis of the skeleton of a boy found in Portugal that had hybrid characteristics of the two groups. From the article:
"This skeleton demonstrates that early modern humans and Neanderthals are not all that different," said Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "They intermixed, interbred and produced offspring."
You just reminded me of one of my favorite George Carlin bits.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.
I have really been waiting for this build of Thunderbird. It finally includes message tagging, which is something that I've been wanting natively in Thunderbird for a long time. Tagging now also apparently works with IMAP connections, although at least some users are having some problems with that feature. (Bug #344290).
While I tend to agree with you in general, I had a really positive experience with Ubuntu recently autodetecting an old turtle beach sound card after a machine shutdown and restart. That experience sort of made my day, and also marked the end of my uncle's transition from his horribly spyware ridden W98 install to a recent kubuntu build on the same ancient hardware.
It's certainly still fairly hard at times for the average joe to set up a linux machine (for reasons such as you mention), and perhaps there are maintenance issues down the line that he'll have problems with, but he otherwise seems quite comfy on his new OS.
So, I guess that while I agree with you, for what he does with his machine, it seems to be working just great, as long as he didn't have to deal with the actual install procedure.
A bit offtopic, but I found this interesting: I hadn't realized that he and Jonathan Coulton knew each other. From your Onion AV link:
This also reveals something about me, I suppose. [Comedic songwriter] Jonathan Coulton and I met in college. We went to Yale University. He was a Whiffenpoof [a member of a Yale men's singing group referenced in The Areas Of My Expertise], and was into Cole Porter, and I was not a member of any singing group--mainly out of resentment of their tuxedos. There's probably a part of me that yearns to be one, and that's why I tend to, on one hand, make fun of Jonathan Coulton relentlessly for being a Whiffenpoof, and on the other hand, secretly own Cole Porter compilations.
In case anyone forgot or missed it, he (coulton) was a./ topic a short while ago
"Listen closely. I'd like to help you but I can't. I'd like to say take a copy of your policy to Norma Wilcox on... Norma Wilcox, W-I-L-C-O-X... on the third floor, but I can't.
I also do not advise you to fill out and file a WS2475 form with our legal department on the second floor. I would not expect someone to get back to you to resolve the matter quickly. I'd like to help, but there's nothing I can do. Thank you ma'm, I know you are upset!
[very softly] Pretend to be upset!
Slashdot Mirror
That was a new one on me; I hadn't encountered that award before. Would something like:
<REPORT_NAME sed 's/[^a-z0-9,.-]//gi' > REPORT.out
be preferable in this instance?
I was able to sit in on an open heart surgery at one point in my life. After the surgeon cracked the chest open, he inserted a surgical glove full of (I think) normal saline, tied off at the wrist. Called it a 'helping hand'. The heart continued to beat merrily away on top of it, and they used a device called an octopus to hold the pertinent section of the heart still.
To date, remains one of the coolest things I have ever seen.
I had an Airport Express go missing from a bag checked at the Airport. I was flying Alaska at the time, but I'm doubtful that they were the ones that actually took it, especially based on this article. Nevertheless, I don't absolve them of responsibility - when I complained, they sent the report up to corporate so they could avoid any law hassles, and then sent me a rebate in the order of 50 bucks on the next flight, about half of what the item was worth. The justification was they have an extensive list of items that they absolve themselves of responsibility for.
Lesson learned. I don't fly anymore if I can help it, and when I can't help it, nothing but carry on for me. I hate to be the guy that takes up the overhead space, but I need to be able to arrive without some TSA employee taking his cut of my stuff. Worst case, I'm not leaving it up to them anymore to decide if the police are informed.
...but they are willing to offer a deal in exchange for an I.P. agreement.
According to their sources, these commercials are still a go.
I'd have to disagree on the 'first language' part. Learning to write code for the first time can be extremely frustrating for some (most?) folks; I was one of them. My first language was Java, and one of the best things about learning in that was the quick turnaround to positive feedback; specifically, positive feedback that looked useful in something other than a non-academic setting. It whetted my appetite, and gave me a bit more of a foundational base to actually understand what was going on when I first wrote in assembly, and how it fit into the grander scheme of things.
I would agree that they should look at it eventually, though, for reasons you've already specified.
My first introduction to their practices was a Time magazine article my friend dug up from 1991, when I was trying to figure out what they were all about. It won an award, and is worth a look for those folks to don't understand the vitriol. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972865,00.html
I've recently become a fan of Google Calendar ever since I found out that it could be read from and written to within Thunderbird (using the Lightning calendar extension, and the Provider for Google Calendar add on). I wouldn't suggest it as a business solution, but for personal use, it works well. I'm not really a fan of the google calendar web interface, but now I don't really have to deal with it, and my changes are replicated to anywhere I've got the plugins installed.
Anyways, my $.02. More directions here.
From the article:
For decades, most scientists believed that people with healthy immune systems had no effects from Toxoplasma. But some studies in recent years have hinted that the parasite can exert surprising effects on behavior, at least in animals.
.In 2000, British scientists demonstrated that rats infected with Toxoplasma lost their fear of cats. They proposed that this strategy increased the parasite's chances of getting into its final host.
Scientists at Stanford University recently followed up on these experiments, studying rats and mice. "They actually show a mild attraction to the cat odor," said Ajai Vyas, a Stanford neurobiologist. "It's not just the loss of an old behavior. A new behavior is being induced."
I'll second that. We have a windows RDC dedicated box where I work for testing web apps in IE, but lately I've run into some strange issues with sessions not working properly, which I didn't have time to figure out just then. Also, there's days when I telecommute, and the network latency on a Remote Desktop, even with the eye-candy features turned off, can be a real pain. Having Parallels to rely on locally for testing in explorer is pretty nice.
Not this time, Mr. Luthor. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my worthless house in "Otisburg".
The Lexus (in the US) has that feature. The BMW does too, although I'm not sure if that version is available in the US. You can see a video of it in action here.
You'd be wrong. When I was stationed in Turkey, there were tax exemptions for being in a combat zone, as well as some other benefits like free mail. An earlier post linked to the relevant page from the IRS (Thx, El Torico). See Tables 1 and 2.
I was curious about that too; the leaky cauldron fan site holds that it's the 10th anniversary of the pub date of book 1.
Then, of course, I felt a bit ashamed for going to look up the rationale of the release date. Put me in mind of a certain penny arcade cartoon.
There was a Times article awhile back that involved the mating habits of Neanderthals and humans. It made that assumption from the analysis of the skeleton of a boy found in Portugal that had hybrid characteristics of the two groups.
From the article:
"This skeleton demonstrates that early modern humans and Neanderthals are not all that different," said Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "They intermixed, interbred and produced offspring."
>> Anyone know who the author is
Ted Nancy? That sure seems like his style.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.
I have really been waiting for this build of Thunderbird. It finally includes message tagging, which is something that I've been wanting natively in Thunderbird for a long time. Tagging now also apparently works with IMAP connections, although at least some users are having some problems with that feature. (Bug #344290).
While I tend to agree with you in general, I had a really positive experience with Ubuntu recently autodetecting an old turtle beach sound card after a machine shutdown and restart. That experience sort of made my day, and also marked the end of my uncle's transition from his horribly spyware ridden W98 install to a recent kubuntu build on the same ancient hardware.
It's certainly still fairly hard at times for the average joe to set up a linux machine (for reasons such as you mention), and perhaps there are maintenance issues down the line that he'll have problems with, but he otherwise seems quite comfy on his new OS.
So, I guess that while I agree with you, for what he does with his machine, it seems to be working just great, as long as he didn't have to deal with the actual install procedure.
From your Onion AV link:
This also reveals something about me, I suppose. [Comedic songwriter] Jonathan Coulton and I met in college. We went to Yale University. He was a Whiffenpoof [a member of a Yale men's singing group referenced in The Areas Of My Expertise], and was into Cole Porter, and I was not a member of any singing group--mainly out of resentment of their tuxedos. There's probably a part of me that yearns to be one, and that's why I tend to, on one hand, make fun of Jonathan Coulton relentlessly for being a Whiffenpoof, and on the other hand, secretly own Cole Porter compilations.
In case anyone forgot or missed it, he (coulton) was a ./ topic a short while ago
.King Arthur: What?
Sir Galahad: He said they've already got one!
King Arthur: Are you sure he's got one?
French Soldier: Oh yes, it's very nice!
Read the November article you linked to, and found this gem in the comments...
Or if the controllers spiked your hands, or emitted powerful electric shocks
Dude, that's a feature.
"Listen closely. I'd like to help you but I can't. I'd like to say take a copy of your policy to Norma Wilcox on... Norma Wilcox, W-I-L-C-O-X... on the third floor, but I can't.
I also do not advise you to fill out and file a WS2475 form with our legal department on the second floor. I would not expect someone to get back to you to resolve the matter quickly. I'd like to help, but there's nothing I can do.
Thank you ma'm, I know you are upset!
[very softly] Pretend to be upset!
jibe with this?