"they would have to get that info from the card issuer"
No, not really.
I worked for a telephone services company some years ago and developed their customer information system. We would only get one of two possible pieces of information from a transaction: the telephone number they called a 1-900 number from, or the Credit card number they used if they called a 1-800 number.
We wanted to get the customer information so we could send them related advertising.
There are vendors out there that will supply all available subscriber information for a telephone number, and others that will provide all available information given a Credit Card number.
Telephone numbers are not super reliable as they can be re-used, but for 5 cents we would (about 60% of the time) get a result which would give us the subscriber name and address. For 20 cents we would get about a 90% match. We sent all phone numbers to the 5 cent vendor and for those that didn't get a result we would send them to the 20 cent vendor.
Credit Card numbers are quite reliable and for 1 dollar we would get *all* of the information on the card holder. This included name, address, age, spouse's name and age, children's names and ages, your income, and various demographic information for your neighbourhood.
Given that big box stores likely get thousands of 'Card only' purchases a day I am sure they also have similar agreements with vendors, or contract with 3rd parties to do it for them.
"Smalltalk users are too busy getting things done and enjoying themselves to be concerned with who likes or hates their language most of the time"
It's a great pity that more people haven't been exposed to the fun of developing in Smalltalk.
We develop using VisualAge Smalltalk and use GemStone as our OODB and application server.
You just can't have more fun than coming up with a crazy idea on how to do something, knock up a quick model in Smalltalk and be able to persist those objects as actual objects. Not quite right? Then simply change it. No 'typing', no DB mapping and no memory management to worry about.
I've developed in numerous languages and environments over many years and IMHO Smalltalk really is the most fun you can have developing commercial stuff.
'There is a small suburb in Aberdeenshire called "Cults"'
Totally offtopic, but that reminded me of when I used to live in Kent (in SE England).
I once did some research into the history of Kent and found that the name became common after (I think the Vikings or some such) referred to the people living there as 'the kents'.
I figure the pronunciation has changed over the years.
"Tell me one legitimate and lawful purpose that an ordinary person needs these types of high powered lasers?"
Green lasers (which are the ones at issue here) are used by astronomers and astronomy teachers/students to point out constellations and stars at night. The green beam is visible in air while red beams are not.
Are you telling us that astronomy should be illegal?
"I've never seen the original. I've seen the directors cut and the final cut in theatres.
SEE IT IN THE THEATRE.
If you ever have a chance, see the final cut on the big screen, it will blow your mind."
Hear! Hear!
I saw the Final Cut a few weeks ago at the Cinerama in Seattle. Absolutely worth every second of it. I've seen them all and the final cut is a great movie, you won't be able to take your eyes away from the screen.
"but I do know that at live concerts, it's very loud"
Actually at indoor concerts it often isn't that loud, although at some concerts it certainly is.
I saw Dire Straits live at Wembley Arena maybe 15 years ago and it wasn't at all loud. But the sound quality was absolutely superb. Simply the best sounding concert I have ever been to by a wide margin.
I also saw AC/DC at the Pond in Anaheim about 10 years ago, and if you ask me they weren't loud enough! But I've also been to outdoor AC/DC concerts and they are *LOUD*. And I mean ear-splitting loud.
But other outdoor concerts (U2, Pink Floyd, Madonna, etc.) the sound levels were very acceptable. Loud, but not in the range of doing any damage to your hearing. All were outstanding concerts.
Wayne Parker (of Glass Tiger) is also an Astronomer. He owns a company called SkyShed which recently released a new Personal Observatory Dome called (you guessed it...) a POD. They are getting great reviews are are remarkably affordable (we're talking under $1500!). I am seriously thinking about getting one.
And no, I have no relationship with the company (I'm not sure I even know any of Glass Tiger's songs...), but any amateur Astronomers out there looking for a home observatory should check it out.
Actually there are a lot of old Warner Bros cartoons which will never be shown again on tv. There are many more which have been censored (like the one you mention).
The reason for the ban on some is that they are considered 'not politically correct' and as Ted Turner owns the rights to them he refuses to allow them to ever be shown again.
Some of these are classics, like 'Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs', the 'Inki and the Mynah Bird' cartoons, even some of the wartime Bugs Bunny cartoons caricaturing the Japanese and Germans. Remember those?
"The Maldive Islands are 2.3m above sea level, on average. A worst case rise of 19cm in the next 50 years then, would certainly have an impact. It is utter hyperbole though to suggest that they'll disappear under the ocean."
Actually that will depend on the size of the waves coming in.
A 2.1m wave now will likely crash on the beach. A 2.1m wave in 50 years might be crashing against the buildings inland.
That would be fairly equivalent to 'disappearing under the ocean'.
I will second the Grados. I have some Grado SR80 phones and the sound from them is excellent. They are also very efficient and easily driven by mobile devices like an iPod. They are, however, ugly as sin!
For home use I have a pair of AKG K340 phones (Electrostatic + Dynamic), driven via one of Tom Evans' original headphone amps. It actually takes a while to get used to them because you hear so much in the recordings that you don't actually hear the music. But once you have become acclimatised to them there is no better way to listen to music (at least at anything near the price!).
The previous software was cheesy but it had lots of options to customise how you used it. It didn't look pretty but it did a decent job.
I remember when Comcast were advertising that they were changing to the MS software. They claimed it would perform better and would have many great new features. It performs considerably worse, has no new features, and several features of the previous software were not available.
The MS software is really poor. Performance is terrible, navigation is a pain, options that should exist don't and it never does what you think it should.
I'm glad they are changing to something else, it *has* to be better than the MS guide.
The father of an old girlfriend of mine was a senior engineer who designed power stations in the UK/Europe many years ago. They had just designed and built 2 identical power stations in Ireland.
After the stations had been operational for a few weeks he got a phone call in the middle of the night telling him that one of the stations had 'blown up'. Lots of destruction, loss of life, that kind of thing.
He asked them what had caused it and they said they didn't know, but they were doing everything the same at the other station to try and find out...
"The light looks white to the human eye, because we only have red, green and blue receptors, but some other colors will look off because the light is not full-spectrum."
Interesting.
Any idea how that light would look to an animal? I believe cats are colourblind (right?) so how would they perceive the light from a CFL?
I have a cat and mostly CFL lighting so you have me wondering what she sees when the lights are on.
Re:Where's the need come from?
on
Water From Wind
·
· Score: 1
"Also we've got drop bears. If you seek shade beneath a tree, for god's sake, wear a hat."
Darn drop bears!
I have huge claw scars on both shoulders from one of the buggers that dropped on me one day. And they have never really fully healed either. Even 25 years later they occasionally cause me problems.
Although the women who have seen the scars are quite impressed by them (chicks dig scars), so it isn't all bad!
"we should expect alien technology to be roughly the same as ours, give or take a century or so"
Not really.
You need to allow for the mass extinctions in the Earth's past.
If the mass extinction 250 million years ago (Permian-Triassic) had not occurred then intelligent life may have evolved on this planet over 200 million years ago.
It would be quite possible for an alien race to be hundreds of millions of years more advanced than us just due to luck.
"One final comment - Voting breeds more informed voters."
Not only that, more people voting means that political parties have to appeal to more voters.
If only 60% of people vote then a party only needs to appeal to the rabid 31% of people to get a majority.
If 100% of people vote they have to appeal to far more people. They can't get by just motivating the rabid party supporters, they have to compromise on their hard-line positions in order to appeal to other non-party aligned voters.
Even if a voter is completely uninformed and can only make random choices on the ballot this time around, the fact that they have voted is going to cause the parties to have to appeal to more people next time.
I would buy the rights to cartoons which are no longer allowed to be shown.
For example Warner Bros 'Inki' cartoons (you might remember 'Inki and the Mynah bird'), and the Bugs Bunny cartoons from WWII which stereotyped the Japanese, etc. Also cartoons like 'Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs'.
These are all classic cartoons which can no longer be shown because they are not 'PC'. Ted Turner owns the rights and refuses to allow them to be distributed.
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fizzog (gmail)
Many thanks!
"they would have to get that info from the card issuer"
No, not really.
I worked for a telephone services company some years ago and developed their customer information system. We would only get one of two possible pieces of information from a transaction: the telephone number they called a 1-900 number from, or the Credit card number they used if they called a 1-800 number.
We wanted to get the customer information so we could send them related advertising.
There are vendors out there that will supply all available subscriber information for a telephone number, and others that will provide all available information given a Credit Card number.
Telephone numbers are not super reliable as they can be re-used, but for 5 cents we would (about 60% of the time) get a result which would give us the subscriber name and address. For 20 cents we would get about a 90% match. We sent all phone numbers to the 5 cent vendor and for those that didn't get a result we would send them to the 20 cent vendor.
Credit Card numbers are quite reliable and for 1 dollar we would get *all* of the information on the card holder. This included name, address, age, spouse's name and age, children's names and ages, your income, and various demographic information for your neighbourhood.
Given that big box stores likely get thousands of 'Card only' purchases a day I am sure they also have similar agreements with vendors, or contract with 3rd parties to do it for them.
"I have never been to Australia"
I'm an Aussie and I think the best quote I can give you was from an American traveller I met many years ago while travelling myself.
He said: 'Australia is an unspoiled America'.
"Smalltalk users are too busy getting things done and enjoying themselves to be concerned with who likes or hates their language most of the time"
It's a great pity that more people haven't been exposed to the fun of developing in Smalltalk.
We develop using VisualAge Smalltalk and use GemStone as our OODB and application server.
You just can't have more fun than coming up with a crazy idea on how to do something, knock up a quick model in Smalltalk and be able to persist those objects as actual objects. Not quite right? Then simply change it. No 'typing', no DB mapping and no memory management to worry about.
I've developed in numerous languages and environments over many years and IMHO Smalltalk really is the most fun you can have developing commercial stuff.
'There is a small suburb in Aberdeenshire called "Cults"'
Totally offtopic, but that reminded me of when I used to live in Kent (in SE England).
I once did some research into the history of Kent and found that the name became common after (I think the Vikings or some such) referred to the people living there as 'the kents'.
I figure the pronunciation has changed over the years.
"Tell me one legitimate and lawful purpose that an ordinary person needs these types of high powered lasers?"
Green lasers (which are the ones at issue here) are used by astronomers and astronomy teachers/students to point out constellations and stars at night. The green beam is visible in air while red beams are not.
Are you telling us that astronomy should be illegal?
"...left behind a note saying he was going to fight abroad ... Not so much a free speech issue as a suspected fucking terrorist issue."
So by your reasoning all of the Americans who went to Europe to fight against the Germans in 1939/40 (before the USA was in the war) were terrorists?
"I've never seen the original. I've seen the directors cut and the final cut in theatres.
SEE IT IN THE THEATRE.
If you ever have a chance, see the final cut on the big screen, it will blow your mind."
Hear! Hear!
I saw the Final Cut a few weeks ago at the Cinerama in Seattle. Absolutely worth every second of it. I've seen them all and the final cut is a great movie, you won't be able to take your eyes away from the screen.
If you can see it on a big screen then do so.
"but I do know that at live concerts, it's very loud"
Actually at indoor concerts it often isn't that loud, although at some concerts it certainly is.
I saw Dire Straits live at Wembley Arena maybe 15 years ago and it wasn't at all loud. But the sound quality was absolutely superb. Simply the best sounding concert I have ever been to by a wide margin.
I also saw AC/DC at the Pond in Anaheim about 10 years ago, and if you ask me they weren't loud enough! But I've also been to outdoor AC/DC concerts and they are *LOUD*. And I mean ear-splitting loud.
But other outdoor concerts (U2, Pink Floyd, Madonna, etc.) the sound levels were very acceptable. Loud, but not in the range of doing any damage to your hearing. All were outstanding concerts.
Speaking of Rock Star Astronomers...
Wayne Parker (of Glass Tiger) is also an Astronomer. He owns a company called SkyShed which recently released a new Personal Observatory Dome called (you guessed it...) a POD. They are getting great reviews are are remarkably affordable (we're talking under $1500!). I am seriously thinking about getting one.
And no, I have no relationship with the company (I'm not sure I even know any of Glass Tiger's songs...), but any amateur Astronomers out there looking for a home observatory should check it out.
http://www.skyshedpod.com/
Actually there are a lot of old Warner Bros cartoons which will never be shown again on tv. There are many more which have been censored (like the one you mention).
N ips
The reason for the ban on some is that they are considered 'not politically correct' and as Ted Turner owns the rights to them he refuses to allow them to ever be shown again.
Some of these are classics, like 'Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs', the 'Inki and the Mynah Bird' cartoons, even some of the wartime Bugs Bunny cartoons caricaturing the Japanese and Germans. Remember those?
The Censored Eleven: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven
Inki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inki
Bugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herr_Meets_Hare
Bugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugs_Bunny_Nips_the_
Some of them are becoming available on DVD in the 'Looney Tunes Golden Collection' volumes.
"The Maldive Islands are 2.3m above sea level, on average. A worst case rise of 19cm in the next 50 years then, would certainly have an impact. It is utter hyperbole though to suggest that they'll disappear under the ocean."
Actually that will depend on the size of the waves coming in.
A 2.1m wave now will likely crash on the beach. A 2.1m wave in 50 years might be crashing against the buildings inland.
That would be fairly equivalent to 'disappearing under the ocean'.
I will second the Grados. I have some Grado SR80 phones and the sound from them is excellent. They are also very efficient and easily driven by mobile devices like an iPod. They are, however, ugly as sin!
For home use I have a pair of AKG K340 phones (Electrostatic + Dynamic), driven via one of Tom Evans' original headphone amps. It actually takes a while to get used to them because you hear so much in the recordings that you don't actually hear the music. But once you have become acclimatised to them there is no better way to listen to music (at least at anything near the price!).
Not sure why the parent is Flamebait.
The previous software was cheesy but it had lots of options to customise how you used it. It didn't look pretty but it did a decent job.
I remember when Comcast were advertising that they were changing to the MS software. They claimed it would perform better and would have many great new features. It performs considerably worse, has no new features, and several features of the previous software were not available.
The MS software is really poor. Performance is terrible, navigation is a pain, options that should exist don't and it never does what you think it should.
I'm glad they are changing to something else, it *has* to be better than the MS guide.
Talking about power stations...
The father of an old girlfriend of mine was a senior engineer who designed power stations in the UK/Europe many years ago. They had just designed and built 2 identical power stations in Ireland.
After the stations had been operational for a few weeks he got a phone call in the middle of the night telling him that one of the stations had 'blown up'. Lots of destruction, loss of life, that kind of thing.
He asked them what had caused it and they said they didn't know, but they were doing everything the same at the other station to try and find out...
"The light looks white to the human eye, because we only have red, green and blue receptors, but some other colors will look off because the light is not full-spectrum."
Interesting.
Any idea how that light would look to an animal? I believe cats are colourblind (right?) so how would they perceive the light from a CFL?
I have a cat and mostly CFL lighting so you have me wondering what she sees when the lights are on.
"Also we've got drop bears. If you seek shade beneath a tree, for god's sake, wear a hat."
Darn drop bears!
I have huge claw scars on both shoulders from one of the buggers that dropped on me one day. And they have never really fully healed either. Even 25 years later they occasionally cause me problems.
Although the women who have seen the scars are quite impressed by them (chicks dig scars), so it isn't all bad!
"we should expect alien technology to be roughly the same as ours, give or take a century or so"
Not really.
You need to allow for the mass extinctions in the Earth's past.
If the mass extinction 250 million years ago (Permian-Triassic) had not occurred then intelligent life may have evolved on this planet over 200 million years ago.
It would be quite possible for an alien race to be hundreds of millions of years more advanced than us just due to luck.
I live in the US and I can't even get internet radio coverage of the tests!
All of the stations (ABC, BBC, etc.) test for your location and if you are in the US they won't stream to you.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve this?
Please help! I'm suffering from cricket withdrawal!
"and spread while still warm with real dairy butter"
And Vegemite.
You can't have toast without Vegemite.
I don't feel the need to get violent.
But I do take advantage of when the ads are on to go and make room for more beer...
"One final comment - Voting breeds more informed voters."
Not only that, more people voting means that political parties have to appeal to more voters.
If only 60% of people vote then a party only needs to appeal to the rabid 31% of people to get a majority.
If 100% of people vote they have to appeal to far more people. They can't get by just motivating the rabid party supporters, they have to compromise on their hard-line positions in order to appeal to other non-party aligned voters.
Even if a voter is completely uninformed and can only make random choices on the ballot this time around, the fact that they have voted is going to cause the parties to have to appeal to more people next time.
Get out and vote people!
I would buy the rights to cartoons which are no longer allowed to be shown.
For example Warner Bros 'Inki' cartoons (you might remember 'Inki and the Mynah bird'), and the Bugs Bunny cartoons from WWII which stereotyped the Japanese, etc. Also cartoons like 'Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs'.
These are all classic cartoons which can no longer be shown because they are not 'PC'. Ted Turner owns the rights and refuses to allow them to be distributed.
"I have just the body part im mind for Ken Lay and all of the other crooked CEO bastards!!!"
We could have an auction - I need a new tobacco pouch!
Actually there are some good deals out there.
I recently saw (online) a 56" Samsung DLP TV, which is 1080p and includes the HD tuner for under $1700.
And my credit card is feeling quite nervous...