Yeah things get kinda all shook up going up in a rocket in space. NASA has a tester for this. So if you put the iPAD on it and it still works then it's space worthy I guess. I wonder if an iPhone would work?
The roaming charges on the iPhone would be pretty astronomical...
A friend related an even better and faster way to get rid of them: next time they come a-knockin' be sure to greet them straight out of the shower, "accidentally" drop your towel when they start sermonizing you (bonus if they have one of their teen sons along, which they almost always do), then after quickly picking it up and covering yourself again, feign a sudden change of heart and earnestly ask when their next meeting is and you'd very much like to join them to talk more.
The two JWs practically ran over each other to leave his property, and haven't been back since.
The Baroness' behaviour sounds positively tame compared to former Canadian Conservative MP Helena Guergis's temper tantrum when trying to catch a flight home earlier this year, going so far as throwing insults and her boots at security officials:
I won't contest your assertions about the BSG finale because, frankly, I'm on the fence about it myself. However...
(G'kar and Londo make totally up for it though in my opinion)
Egads. They were the least believable characters! What's next: a gurgling puddle of slime in the staring role?
Excuse me, but what!? I'll admit G'Kar became a little too comical in season 5, but watch season 2's "The Long Twilight Struggle", in particular the council chamber scene where G'Kar is forced to give up his seat after his race surrenders to the Centauri. His proud, defiant exit speech utterly robs Londo of any sense of victory, and you see it in Londo's face.
I'm a huge B5 fan and was solidly against DS9 for their blatant plagiarism back in the day, but I'm going to have to ask for serious citation about the lawsuit Paramount supposedly lost and had sealed (!?) and showing B5 trailers at Trek conventions.
My memory is fuzzy after a decade so I've tried googling for this, but the closest I got was J. Michael Straczynski (B5's creator) quoted as declining to have Paramount sued, as it would draw too much attention and resources away from producing B5.
The "close" button in the lifts at my new condo (built 2007) do something all right--they delay the doors closing. Usually I stand there almost 10 seconds waiting for the lift to close, pressing any button actually adds another second or two. I've taken to jabbing at the close button anyway (when alone) because if I'm going to wait that long anyway, I'm going to vent the day's frustrations on something (yes, I'm passive aggressive, sue me).
On the other hand, pressing any floor buttons in the lifts at work really does start closing the doors immediately, instead of counting off 5 seconds since something last passed the sensors.
One estimate in 2007 put the cost of the Iraq war as high as $720M a day. Watching cockroaches mate in zero gravity, or "bringing democracy" to a region that isn't culturally ready for it and is costing thousands of lives on top of that... I know what I'd cut first.
(Yes I know focus has shifted to Afghanistan and doesn't cost as much money, the point remains)
Reminds me of a Top Gear episode where they discovered that changing out an engine of a car took less time than a group of women getting ready to go out for the evening.
The series ran until the story ended, then it ended. May god grant that happens more often.
Amen, brother!
Too many people are still overwrought about cancellations of great shows, like Firefly. The thing is, if they kept riding that horse, it'd just have ended up becoming another Star Trek Voyager.
Maybe, maybe not. All I know is, halfway through the first and only season of Firefly, I felt I knew far more about all its characters, than I did Voyager's characters through its entire 7 year run.
From your CNET link: "Until Apple explains why it has included this function, or an application appears on the blacklist and is wiped from someone's phone, it's all just the usual leaping to conclusions on a sleepy Thursday in August"
It's also 2-year old *speculation*. Googling "iphone kill switch" reveals *zero* times this has actually been used, and there are plenty of apps that Apple has pulled for violating whatever rules it had at the time, but remain in your iTunes downloads and still run fine on normal, non-jailbroken iPhones and iPods.
Meanwhile, Android and Kindle have both already used their kill switches to remove apps and books from the user's own devices, and Microsoft have declared this a possibility too.
Apple, meanwhile, has remained mum on this. The technology is there in case it's needed, but just like the TPM in Intel Macs, Apple might just end up not using it.
The market idea is that purchase of a large new 3D TV will drive the old HDTV into bedrooms, ideally creating a keep-up-with-the-Joneses mentality regarding bigscreen flat HDTVs in bedrooms
Ironically, from an end-user perspective a new 3DTV is far better suited to the bedroom than the old HDTV
there will only be one or two people watching it at any time (barring your toddler kids who want to snuggle, I suppose)--no need to buy extra glasses for all your guests
it will be watched from the exact same spot all the time, instead of anywhere around a room
use your imagination;-)
I suppose one downside is falling asleep, and breaking the glasses when you roll over, but I have yet to hear of a single friend or family member who has bought a 3DTV, period.
I've been noticing technology trending towards biological models, either intentionally or otherwise. Genetic algorithms. Adaptable AIs. Computer viruses, even.
The rise of the internet and the web models this, too. Much like our own DNA, there's a lot of redundancy, legacy functionality that borders on harmful, and amazing features that are the result of (tech/biological) hacks upon hacks, but they survived not because they were necessarily the best, but because they allowed earlier iterations (ancestors/early web) to be more flexible and adaptable, so it flourished.
I have a small problem with the Jupiter-as-shield theory. I don't doubt Jupiter has protected us before, but it only orbits the sun once every 12 years. There's a lot of space, and even if we assume asteroids, comets, etc are orbiting the sun roughly along the 2-dimensional plane of the solar system (instead of coming at us from "above") that's a lot of time for an object to sail by Jupiter's orbit without it being there.
Isn't it far more likely that an object would be perturbed by Jupter's gravity rather than crashing into it? And if so, it stands to reason there's as much chance this is a bad thing for us, as it is good, i.e. an object that *wasn't* ever going to crash into us is perturbed enough so its orbit eventually intersects with Earth.
The lack of a large moon may have indirectly caused Mars' thin atmosphere.
There's evidence that Mars used to have ample atmosphere and water, but after its molten iron core stopped churning and solidified, its magnetic field collapsed, allowing the solar winds and radiation to bombard the planet directly and eventually strip away most of its atmosphere and water.
Our moon creates tidal forces not just of our oceans, but Earth's molten core as well, helping to keep things churning. It's not to say Earth wouldn't have a molten core without the moon, but it would probably be much weaker and less able to protect Earth (and life as we know it) from the effects of the sun.
I agree with what you're saying, but the GP isn't wrong either.
Intra-country free trade is entirely dependent on rules and laws, established by national government. State/province and even local laws may differ (e.g. minimum wages, labour laws), but major disagreements will be settled by the supreme court and punitive actions (fines or even jail time) are enforced to ensure minimum standards and obligations are met.
This doesn't work at the international level. In theory, treaties like NAFTA and organizations like the WTO are analogous to government and supreme court respectively, in practice countries will happily ignore their stipulations and judgements when it suits them. In the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the USA for instance, almost all international trade bodies including the WTO sided with Canada and ordered the US to pay back all collected tariffs. The US refused.
What teeth do the trade bodies have? They can fine the country, possibly impose sanctions against it (fat lot of good that'll do against the US), but they can't arrest and jail national leaders for failing to abide by treaties or verdicts.
It was Apple's after-tax money to spend as they wished, not the local, state, or federal governments'. Without a major building there, Apple couldn't care less about the roads in that area. Now that they have a presence, governments get money from taxing datacentre workers salaries, the property, and operations (power consumption, bandwidth, capital costs, etc), as well as the income from these building contractors.
If major roads are that shoddy, the problem is with the government(s), and/or the people who vote for them. Either taxes are too low, or the people/government actually don't care enough about the condition of the roads.
You're absolutely correct. Geeksquad didn't exist in 1998. Those were the prices I pulled from their (Canadian) website.
I still see people walking to the checkout with antivirus and anti-malware software in hand.
And a friend inherited a year-old good laptop last year because it was running "too slowly." Turns out the hardware was perfectly fine, there was no malware to speak of, it was Vista that was running like a dying dog (10 seconds to start populating the control panel window!??). Once I installed Ubuntu it screamed, and did all the Aero-like visual effects that Vista claimed the laptop wasn't capable of handling. Saved my friend buying either a new laptop or a Windows 7 upgrade license.
What exactly was your point about it not being 1998 anymore?
Clock speed is not an absolute measure of computer speed, and for what most people do on their computers these days (email/web browsing), any modern computer is enormous overkill.
Until they hit their Flash games or video--instant jump in CPU usage. 720p h.264 video occasionally chokes my 2GHz C2D Macbook, too, though maybe it's not be an issue with the new Air's more powerful GPU.
Assuming for simplicity that those 10,000 are all web-only readers (though print subscribers also have free online access), that's 10,000 x £2/week = £20,000, or just over £1 million a year.
Even if only half of those are web-only readers, half a million pounds/year is probably more than they were making on web ads when it was free.
They also have less load on their servers and less bandwidth costs by serving 1000x fewer viewers.
The upside is that there's fewer people reading Murdoch-sponsored news.
Many cell service providers are offering USB internet sticks that run off their data networks, and many have cell phone tethering options too. With the exception of phone calls, an ordinary computer can hit the cell network with far more data traffic and connections than the cell phone can. There is nothing the companies can do to mandate what's installed and running on your computer, like P2P programs, VOIP, video chats, etc.
Given this, why the hell are they so concerned about apps on a phone "damaging" the cell network?
Personally, I don't think the phone company should be allowed to charge anything without an explicit declaration of price and agreement on the part of the customer. Even on POTS. When I dial a number, *any number*, I want to be quoted a rate and given a chance to decline.
My carrier has the next-best thing. I have no long distance plan, so the one time I had to make one for work, after dialing I got a recorded message saying something like "this is a long distance call. To accept this call stay on the line; or, hang up."
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Yeah things get kinda all shook up going up in a rocket in space. NASA has a tester for this. So if you put the iPAD on it and it still works then it's space worthy I guess. I wonder if an iPhone would work?
The roaming charges on the iPhone would be pretty astronomical...
A friend related an even better and faster way to get rid of them: next time they come a-knockin' be sure to greet them straight out of the shower, "accidentally" drop your towel when they start sermonizing you (bonus if they have one of their teen sons along, which they almost always do), then after quickly picking it up and covering yourself again, feign a sudden change of heart and earnestly ask when their next meeting is and you'd very much like to join them to talk more.
The two JWs practically ran over each other to leave his property, and haven't been back since.
The Baroness' behaviour sounds positively tame compared to former Canadian Conservative MP Helena Guergis's temper tantrum when trying to catch a flight home earlier this year, going so far as throwing insults and her boots at security officials:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/airport-worker-says-guergis-meltdown-among-worst-hes-seen/article1482043/
Any of us little people would've been tasered, handcuffed and carried away after a stunt like that. Power certainly hath its privileges.
I won't contest your assertions about the BSG finale because, frankly, I'm on the fence about it myself. However...
(G'kar and Londo make totally up for it though in my opinion)
Egads. They were the least believable characters! What's next: a gurgling puddle of slime in the staring role?
Excuse me, but what!? I'll admit G'Kar became a little too comical in season 5, but watch season 2's "The Long Twilight Struggle", in particular the council chamber scene where G'Kar is forced to give up his seat after his race surrenders to the Centauri. His proud, defiant exit speech utterly robs Londo of any sense of victory, and you see it in Londo's face.
I'm a huge B5 fan and was solidly against DS9 for their blatant plagiarism back in the day, but I'm going to have to ask for serious citation about the lawsuit Paramount supposedly lost and had sealed (!?) and showing B5 trailers at Trek conventions.
My memory is fuzzy after a decade so I've tried googling for this, but the closest I got was J. Michael Straczynski (B5's creator) quoted as declining to have Paramount sued, as it would draw too much attention and resources away from producing B5.
The "close" button in the lifts at my new condo (built 2007) do something all right--they delay the doors closing. Usually I stand there almost 10 seconds waiting for the lift to close, pressing any button actually adds another second or two. I've taken to jabbing at the close button anyway (when alone) because if I'm going to wait that long anyway, I'm going to vent the day's frustrations on something (yes, I'm passive aggressive, sue me).
On the other hand, pressing any floor buttons in the lifts at work really does start closing the doors immediately, instead of counting off 5 seconds since something last passed the sensors.
One estimate in 2007 put the cost of the Iraq war as high as $720M a day. Watching cockroaches mate in zero gravity, or "bringing democracy" to a region that isn't culturally ready for it and is costing thousands of lives on top of that... I know what I'd cut first.
(Yes I know focus has shifted to Afghanistan and doesn't cost as much money, the point remains)
Reminds me of a Top Gear episode where they discovered that changing out an engine of a car took less time than a group of women getting ready to go out for the evening.
The series ran until the story ended, then it ended. May god grant that happens more often.
Amen, brother!
Too many people are still overwrought about cancellations of great shows, like Firefly. The thing is, if they kept riding that horse, it'd just have ended up becoming another Star Trek Voyager.
Maybe, maybe not. All I know is, halfway through the first and only season of Firefly, I felt I knew far more about all its characters, than I did Voyager's characters through its entire 7 year run.
From your CNET link: "Until Apple explains why it has included this function, or an application appears on the blacklist and is wiped from someone's phone, it's all just the usual leaping to conclusions on a sleepy Thursday in August"
It's also 2-year old *speculation*. Googling "iphone kill switch" reveals *zero* times this has actually been used, and there are plenty of apps that Apple has pulled for violating whatever rules it had at the time, but remain in your iTunes downloads and still run fine on normal, non-jailbroken iPhones and iPods.
Meanwhile, Android and Kindle have both already used their kill switches to remove apps and books from the user's own devices, and Microsoft have declared this a possibility too.
Apple, meanwhile, has remained mum on this. The technology is there in case it's needed, but just like the TPM in Intel Macs, Apple might just end up not using it.
Instead of noticing that we loathe any and all of the ads, they are going to ask: "Which one did you enjoy the most?"
This assumes that we enjoyed any of the ads.
We don't, but that's not what they're measuring is it...
Elections usually run on the same principle. Why should marketing surveys be any different?
The market idea is that purchase of a large new 3D TV will drive the old HDTV into bedrooms, ideally creating a keep-up-with-the-Joneses mentality regarding bigscreen flat HDTVs in bedrooms
Ironically, from an end-user perspective a new 3DTV is far better suited to the bedroom than the old HDTV
I suppose one downside is falling asleep, and breaking the glasses when you roll over, but I have yet to hear of a single friend or family member who has bought a 3DTV, period.
I've been noticing technology trending towards biological models, either intentionally or otherwise. Genetic algorithms. Adaptable AIs. Computer viruses, even.
The rise of the internet and the web models this, too. Much like our own DNA, there's a lot of redundancy, legacy functionality that borders on harmful, and amazing features that are the result of (tech/biological) hacks upon hacks, but they survived not because they were necessarily the best, but because they allowed earlier iterations (ancestors/early web) to be more flexible and adaptable, so it flourished.
I have a small problem with the Jupiter-as-shield theory. I don't doubt Jupiter has protected us before, but it only orbits the sun once every 12 years. There's a lot of space, and even if we assume asteroids, comets, etc are orbiting the sun roughly along the 2-dimensional plane of the solar system (instead of coming at us from "above") that's a lot of time for an object to sail by Jupiter's orbit without it being there.
Isn't it far more likely that an object would be perturbed by Jupter's gravity rather than crashing into it? And if so, it stands to reason there's as much chance this is a bad thing for us, as it is good, i.e. an object that *wasn't* ever going to crash into us is perturbed enough so its orbit eventually intersects with Earth.
The lack of a large moon may have indirectly caused Mars' thin atmosphere.
There's evidence that Mars used to have ample atmosphere and water, but after its molten iron core stopped churning and solidified, its magnetic field collapsed, allowing the solar winds and radiation to bombard the planet directly and eventually strip away most of its atmosphere and water.
Our moon creates tidal forces not just of our oceans, but Earth's molten core as well, helping to keep things churning. It's not to say Earth wouldn't have a molten core without the moon, but it would probably be much weaker and less able to protect Earth (and life as we know it) from the effects of the sun.
I agree with what you're saying, but the GP isn't wrong either.
Intra-country free trade is entirely dependent on rules and laws, established by national government. State/province and even local laws may differ (e.g. minimum wages, labour laws), but major disagreements will be settled by the supreme court and punitive actions (fines or even jail time) are enforced to ensure minimum standards and obligations are met.
This doesn't work at the international level. In theory, treaties like NAFTA and organizations like the WTO are analogous to government and supreme court respectively, in practice countries will happily ignore their stipulations and judgements when it suits them. In the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the USA for instance, almost all international trade bodies including the WTO sided with Canada and ordered the US to pay back all collected tariffs. The US refused.
What teeth do the trade bodies have? They can fine the country, possibly impose sanctions against it (fat lot of good that'll do against the US), but they can't arrest and jail national leaders for failing to abide by treaties or verdicts.
It was Apple's after-tax money to spend as they wished, not the local, state, or federal governments'. Without a major building there, Apple couldn't care less about the roads in that area. Now that they have a presence, governments get money from taxing datacentre workers salaries, the property, and operations (power consumption, bandwidth, capital costs, etc), as well as the income from these building contractors.
If major roads are that shoddy, the problem is with the government(s), and/or the people who vote for them. Either taxes are too low, or the people/government actually don't care enough about the condition of the roads.
You're absolutely correct. Geeksquad didn't exist in 1998. Those were the prices I pulled from their (Canadian) website.
I still see people walking to the checkout with antivirus and anti-malware software in hand.
And a friend inherited a year-old good laptop last year because it was running "too slowly." Turns out the hardware was perfectly fine, there was no malware to speak of, it was Vista that was running like a dying dog (10 seconds to start populating the control panel window!??). Once I installed Ubuntu it screamed, and did all the Aero-like visual effects that Vista claimed the laptop wasn't capable of handling. Saved my friend buying either a new laptop or a Windows 7 upgrade license.
What exactly was your point about it not being 1998 anymore?
They just don't pay as much to be stupid.
You're modded funny, but sure they do:
Clock speed is not an absolute measure of computer speed, and for what most people do on their computers these days (email/web browsing), any modern computer is enormous overkill.
Until they hit their Flash games or video--instant jump in CPU usage. 720p h.264 video occasionally chokes my 2GHz C2D Macbook, too, though maybe it's not be an issue with the new Air's more powerful GPU.
Assuming for simplicity that those 10,000 are all web-only readers (though print subscribers also have free online access), that's 10,000 x £2/week = £20,000, or just over £1 million a year.
Even if only half of those are web-only readers, half a million pounds/year is probably more than they were making on web ads when it was free.
They also have less load on their servers and less bandwidth costs by serving 1000x fewer viewers.
The upside is that there's fewer people reading Murdoch-sponsored news.
Many cell service providers are offering USB internet sticks that run off their data networks, and many have cell phone tethering options too. With the exception of phone calls, an ordinary computer can hit the cell network with far more data traffic and connections than the cell phone can. There is nothing the companies can do to mandate what's installed and running on your computer, like P2P programs, VOIP, video chats, etc.
Given this, why the hell are they so concerned about apps on a phone "damaging" the cell network?
Not that I'm disagreeing with your premise, but...
Compromise: release full video, with time indices of video they want to highlight, and viewers can jump to the times in question.
It's not like we're watching this on VHS tapes.
Personally, I don't think the phone company should be allowed to charge anything without an explicit declaration of price and agreement on the part of the customer. Even on POTS. When I dial a number, *any number*, I want to be quoted a rate and given a chance to decline.
My carrier has the next-best thing. I have no long distance plan, so the one time I had to make one for work, after dialing I got a recorded message saying something like "this is a long distance call. To accept this call stay on the line; or, hang up."
I can't wait until you can buy different models of cars that have different quality self-driving systems. "Buy BMW we only crash 5% of the time."
Unfortunately I'll still be stuck with the low end Toyotas which crash 80% of the time.
I think you meant Ford.
(Hey, not my fault they decided to partner with Microsoft!)