While we might run out of cheap oil in the near future, I don't see a non-nuclear future, nor even a limited-consumption one.
Putting that aside for the moment, concrete roads can be made by hand. Build a road or harvest a crop? Easy: if it's harvest time, get the crop in. Otherwise, build a road. Build a road or heat hundreds of homes? If it's come to that, people will relocate somewhere with a milder winter -- or more likely, they'll have dug in deep, and live in multi-family earth-insulated things.
My point being that if an energy shortage gets so bad that we can't use heavy equipment, it still won't look like you imagine. People will move where a life without heavy equipment is more feasible, and if they have to do it on foot with carts, they will. People will build and maintain roads without heavy equipment, with wheelbarrows and shovels. They won't sit down and wait to die in deprivation. The people of the world have lived a low-oil low-energy life in centuries past, and if you imagine a future like that, you should look to history to see what that life will be like.
Your expectation of roadbuilding as a capital offense seems not only draconian but unreasonable. Roads make for efficient transport, and efficient transport reduces the energy cost of everything. Your imagined future has people sitting in roadless isolation, spending all their resources on winter heat, rather than building a road to trade for blankets.
There are many, many paving surfaces other than asphalt. Concrete, for example. Even the most disastrous of peak oil scenarios won't result in bad road - just more expensive, more durable road that has to cure before use.
I'll buy that future cars will be lighter-weight, and that wheels will be narrower than they are now. Current cars are heavy because of safety mandates, and I think future cars will get their safety from lighter materials and active computerized evasion of danger. Wheel width gives better grip, meaning more acceleration and cornering, but better materials will give us the same grip in a narrower package with less rolling resistance. Overall I think we'll see not much performance change from right now - when the computer is driving, the performance-feel of your car is less visceral and therefore less a part of the car selection process.
I'd say they'd be cheaper in terms of work-hours needed to buy one, but even if they aren't, computer driving makes it possible to run automated taxicabs very cheaply. The line between car rental and cab service blurs, especially for longer trips.
I hate to reply twice to the same post, but I just checked the Wikipedia entry you describe, and it does not say what you claim it does. Here's a link: Freedom House 2006 on Wikipedia.
On the Freedom House website, I found a PR (press) rating on a 0-40 scale, and a CL (civil liberties) rating on a 0-60 scale. You'll find that the USA gets a 37/40 for press, and 56/60 for civil liberties, exactly the same as Hungary. Italy gets a 39 and 53. France gets 38 and 55. Belgium, 39 and 58. The Scandinavian countries get perfect 40-60 results.
There is room for improvement there, but this is hardly pitiable.
Details can be seen on the subcategory page. That page includes a 1-7 rank for each country for both the Press and Civil scores. The US is ranked 1 in both areas, just like all of Europe. This may be a case in which Wikipedia has out-of-date or misleading information.
He was probably downloading porn and pulling his dong out in the car, thus scaring off customers.
Now we get to the real truth.
The implication in the local media reports of this incident, is that is exactly what he was doing.
I know this is slashdot, where freedom of the internets is considered vital, but this is not really a case about theft of wireless. This is a case about a guy who spent three months parked outside a business beating off.
I'm rather nearsighted, and have been wearing glasses every waking minute since I was about 6 years old. My vision "peaked" at about -3.5 diopters, when I was around 12.
Every exam since then has shown improvement, such that at age 30 my prescription was around -2.5 diopters. There's also 0.25 diopters of astigmatism, but only in one eye, and I suspect that was simply undiagnosed in my earlier tests.
My equally nearsighted coworker reports similar experiences. My father has gotten increasingly farsighted with age, and it seems that we are, too -- we might have normal vision when we're 60.
Germans may suck as human beings but they know how to make cars. Cars that actually just bloody work instead of needing to be fixed every ten miles.
Speaking as a man who used to own a 1995 VW Golf, I have to take issue with you on this.
Germans made a car that in theory was reliable and well-built and efficient. In fact it was continually breaking down, costly to fix, had exterior parts falling off every summer when the adhesive softened, and rarely got more than 25 miles to the gallon out of a gutless 2 liter engine. Also, the seats were uncomfortable, and my ignition switch assembly caught fire while I was driving one day.
The 2006 VWs may be better, but my sister-in-law bought a 2004 Jetta, new, and it was totalled when the electric seat heater caught fire.
BMW, on the other hand, is fine. I have fond memories of my Dad's 1984 318i, and wish I still had it.
The location finding is pretty bad: I can find Portland State University with Google Maps, but Google Transit has no idea what I'm talking about. Likewise "Clackamas Town Center", a shopping mall with a transit center that really ought to be included.
The bus lines up into Vancouver don't seem to be covered, even though they should be.
The big annoyance, though: while it shows a dollar-cost estimate of the difference between mass transit and driving, it doesn't include a TIME comparison. While it's great to know that this bus trip is $1.35, compared to $3.97 assuming the IRS-approved $0.405 per mile, it should also say 33 minutes compared to 9 minutes, so by taking the bus I'm spending 24 minutes of time.
Googling for the string "($3.97 - $1.35) / 24 minutes in dollars per hour" gives $6.55 dollars per hour. This would also be nice to have there; it might make more sense to work another hour each day, assuming you'd get paid for it, and your car is already a sunk cost.
According to the article you'll be able to "pause and rewind live television broadcasts" and record shows. There is no mention of any ability to fastforward or skip commericals. Thus it is highly unlikely that any such feature exists.
How do you propose to "fast forward" over live television?
If there were any issues with it not being able to fast forward over recorded commercials, somone at AVSForum would surely say something. Nobody has yet.
Mmmm, secure HDTV. Don't want any of those pesky users exercizing their rights! Let's make sure that we can keep them from recording what you don't want them to. That way you can target them with even MORE advertising because they will be forced to watch what WE want them to watch.
Timeshifting be damned!
"Sell and Secure HDTV Homes" means "get people who use HDTV to use our cable system, and keep them from switching to satellite". This should be clear from the context, as the next sentance reads "Microsoft TV Foundation 1.7 helps you attract and retain your most valuable consumers by highlighting high-definition TV programming".
Your rant about timeshifting rights is poorly informed. People who actually HAVE a Motorola DCT6412 set-top unit (the kind being used with the MSTVF1.7 rollout) report that it allows recording to the built-in hard drive for all content, and allows HD transfers out to other devices over Firewire.
Sure, there might be a gotcha in there somewhere about 5C or broadcast flags, but none is mentioned anywhere I've found. Care to tell us what it is? Is it any different if the DCT6412 has, say, Pioneer Passport, or iGuide, on it instead of MSTVF?
I have quite a bit of music stored digitally. Some is mp3, but anything I rip off of cd gets archived as an APE (Monkey's Audio) lossless file, one file per disc, with an embedded cuesheet. On my PC, I can't hear the difference, but if I make a cd from mp3s for listening in my car, or on my good stereo, I can hear compression artifacts in certain passages. This wouldn't be enough by itself to make me waste the disk space for lossless, but I also like the convenience of having a single file represent a single CD in my collection. At some point I will probably batch-convert all my APEs to AAC - most likely when I get an iPod. This also factors into my decision to use a lossless format for now; transcoding from one lossy format to another is never good, and often really bad for quality.
Of course all the stuff I download is mp3, and there's no point in converting it.
I would probably download more mp3s if they were better ripped and converted. Here are a few tips for anyone who is ripping for sharing purposes:
1. Rip with Exact Audio Copy, or a similar secure ripper 2. Encode with a recent build of LAME, using --alt-preset-standard 3. Tag correctly
This minimizes artifacts hugely, and makes it more fun for everyone.
Like many writers, Mr Stephenson subscribes to a name-generating service. For a reasonable fee, a quarterly list of names is sent to him. If he sees a name he likes, he calls the service and tells them which one he intends to use. The service checks to see if any other author has already claimed that name, and if not, Neal gets to use it.
As Mr Stephenson is a very forward-thinking, technology-adept sort of person, I imagine he uses one of the more modern name services, with web access.
Maple leaves fall, eh? Molson from state liquor store Worker's Paradise
Re:Didn't Salyut 3 do this first?
on
Weapons in Space
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Hate to reply to my own post, but I found a reference (it's Wikipedia, but that's something - even if I'm wrong, I'm not the only one):
Salyut 3 was launched on June 25, 1974. It was another Almaz military space station, this one launched successfully. It tested a wide variety of reconnaissance sensors, returning a canister of film for analysis. On January 24, 1975 trials of the on-board 23mm Nudelmann aircraft cannon (other sources say it was a Nudelmann NR-30 30mm gun) were conducted with positive results at ranges from 3000 m to 500 m. Cosmonauts have confirmed that a target satellite was destroyed in the test. The next day, the station was ordered to deorbit. Only one of the three intended crews successfully boarded and manned the sation, brought by Soyuz 14; Soyuz 15 attempted to bring a second crew but failed to dock. Nevertheless, Salyut 3 was an overall success.
Also, Astronautix has a couple of inconclusive pictures (the purported gun is in the lower left, and while clearly not axially mounted, is at least aligned with the long axis of the craft): large inconclusive piczoomed in inconclusive pic. For comparison, here's a good picture of an NR-23 autocannon: Nudelmann-Richter 23mm Cannon.
Re:Didn't Salyut 3 do this first?
on
Weapons in Space
·
· Score: 1
In many orbits, you have a fair amount of leeway to change to other stable orbits, so the fact that your orbit will change is no big deal. Here are some other mitigating factors:
You can mount a projectile weapon axially, and aim by pointing the whole vehicle where you want to shoot. This means that while you do change your velocity (and therefore orbit) when firing, you do so in a stable, predictable, and slow manner that doesn't affect the orientation of your ship.
Have you calculated how much recoil force is involved yet, for a 23mm shell, an autocannon action, and a Salyut-type space station? I bet it's less than you initially estimated.
What recoil force there is can be totally compensated by firing another shot in the opposite direction, possibly even at the same time.
Also note that delta-V is "change in velocity", so firing doesn't alter your delta-V, it gives you delta-V, or as most people would say it, changes your V.
Didn't Salyut 3 do this first?
on
Weapons in Space
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
There have been persistent rumors that Salyut-3 had a 23mm autocannon mounted, and occasional denials.
On another level, any reaction drive is useful as a weapon in proportion to its efficiency, which was the topic of a Larry Niven story some years back.
I'll see your cybernetic estoppel and raise you one affidavit of positronic imbalance.
This is way more fun than the tv show is, I bet. Just sitting around making up future law show stuff.
Your Honor, I object! The precedent set in United Posidyne vs General Subatomics clearly establishes that transmissions by tachyon mail cannot be used as an affirmative defense against a charge of q-spectrum barratry!
Objection sustained. The bailiffbot will mindwipe the jury regarding the last piece of evidence, and counsel will approach the hoverbench.
From each according to their worth, to each according to their need. It's classic socialism, in its best and most effective sense.
No, no. Free software is more like "From each according to whim, to each according to whim".
I am free to contribute code and time to the free software movement, or not, regardless of my skill or ability. Nobody is going to force me to write code for XEmacs, or even tax me a single cent to pay someone else to do so.
Also, I am free to use free software as much as I like, regardless of my "need" for it. As there is no scarcity in software that can be copied perfectly forever, needs-testing potential users would be absurd.
Equal weaponry, yes. But the axis team has a serious advantage on all but one map. If you want to be a nice guy and use auto-team, more often than not, you'll end up on the camped-against allies.
Axis static defense strategies can nearly always be defeated by the proper Allied class mix and proper teamwork.
Medics (after they get enough XP) are too powerful. Likewise for panzerfaust wielders. Weapons like the machinegun, mortar, and flamethrower are only useful in a few situations.
High-rank medics are quite powerful, and a popular class choice, but medics alone cannot win a map. Their self-healing and adrenaline abilities make them no more powerful in a short sharp firefight than a top-rank engineer, who has bonus grenades and a flak jacket.
Panzerfaust soldiers are limited in several ways: the heavy weapons server cap, the low number of pf tubes issued per ammo box, slowness in moving with a heavy weapon equipped, and the class-specific-skill recharge rate. The latter two disadvantages are somewhat reduced as XP is gained, but only heavy weapons XP counts toward those. There's also the 2-second firing delay with the panzerfaust, during which the firer is quite vulnerable.
The machinegun is the cornerstone of playing defense, if you have some backup. The panzerfaust (or an engineer with rifle grenades) is how you defeat a well-placed machinegunner. The mortar is great if you have good field ops spotting, or if you have worked out bearings and elevations for your favorite firing points and targets in advance.
But more importantly is the bullshit XP system they've implemented. If you're playing a three-map campaign and you join towards the end, you're faced with opponents who have skills much higher than you. Don't even bother playing a six-map campaign unless you start from the beginning.
See, what you are missing is this: it's a team game. So you have opponents who are pumped up? You also have teammates that are buffed. You can make a valuable contribution to the team's success regardless of your current XP level, once you know the map well.
You aren't really making an apples-to-apples comparison. The 722 has two XLR connectors, allowing balanced connection to microphones, and can also provide phantom power. To get an MD unit with this capability, you have to look at something like the HHb PortaDisc, which sells for about $1350. Otherwise you'd want to get an outboard mic preamp for your mics, and provide it with power, and then it's no longer a one-box solution.
So, now the question is what do you get for that last $500? The 722 has 24bit/96khz recording, as opposed to something rather less than 16/44.1 for MD, and 722 records raw digital, as opposed to MD compressed.
What about the 744T, Sonic Devices' $4000 unit? It can record 4 tracks at a time (2 analog and 2 digital). The next step up from that might be the HHb PortaDrive, which can record 8 tracks at once.
The cool thing about this is that it offers 2 tracks of 24/96 direct to HD recording. The people who want 24-bit words, the people who want that resolution, are the last people who would store their stuff as MP3. It makes WAVs (or BWFs, to get around the file size limit), which you can then mess with at home.
Did you miss that it's portable, and tiny, and runs on a camcorder-type rechargable battery pack? That if you need more than 3 hours at a shot it has a 5-18 volt locking DC input? The high-quality onboard mic preamps?
This is in a totally different category than a Mackie HD2496. The Mackie recorder is excellent for a studio, but I cannot fit it in my pocket, and if I could, how much extra gear would I need to keep it supplied with delicious power out in the field?
If I'm going to tape a concert, or make a documentary, or just go out and get samples for something, I'll go for a Sound Devices 722, and the presence or absence of MP3 support will have nothing to do with that.
There are several ways to make swordfighting safe for practice purposes. You can use real swords, blunted, and avoid swinging for the head (Empire of Chivalry and Steel does this). You can use foam swords of various degrees of hardness, and then armor is almost unnecessary. You can use a wooden sword with padding on it (like the Historical Armored Combat Association), and light armor. Or, as in the SCA, you use hard wooden swords, and heavy metal and / or plastic armor.
None of these systems can accurately reproduce all the nuances of real to-the-death sword combat.
For safety reasons, live steel is out. Foam swords are far too light; you wind up moving them in ways that real swords simply don't. SCA swords bounce off armor exactly wrong, and they tend to be round, making it hard to tell when you are throwing flat (the aerodynamics of a real broadsword make this obvious), and SCA rules prohibit shots below the knee. The padded wood swords that HACA uses feel right and swing right, and with heavy armor you can even play full-speed, full-force (HACA members often say they can go full-speed and pull your shots, which just demonstrates that they are used to going slow, I think).
The HACA system would be the best combination of safety and accuracy, but it is not popular enough to have the critical mass of players needed for advancement of the style. Last I checked, it was still low-speed cut-and-thrust stuff straight from the books, and a giant chip on their collective shoulder about it.
The inherent problem with the HACA system is that, like all these, the sword doesn't cut, and that matters. Take the Viking Holmgang style - three light center-boss round shields per combatant, and the sagas tell us it was quite common for blows to cut through the shield, and the leg beyond it. Therefore, correct use of a light Holmgang round shield would be to block with the boss, and probably try to bind your opponent's blade in the wood of your shield. This can only be done with a sharp sword. QED, no system of swordplay can be both safe and accurate.
We had a company that did outsourced corporate training. We faxed a list of our upcoming classes to our former customers once a week. Our customer list grew, and I think that our marketing people started buying lists of fax numbers and adding them to the database.
This was accomplished with two two-line Hayes JT Fax boards, IIRC, installed in an old 386 (for reference, this was the early Pentium era). I built the box, I ran the cable (a single strand of 8-wire cat 3) and kluged up four-headed RJ11 ends for it. We bought some software that could watch a directory for instruction files and pump out faxes accordingly. We would make a series of sequentially numbered.GIF files, one per page of the fax (normally two pages), and then run a little utility that took a file of numbers to send to, a file of numbers to NEVER EVER send to, and the name of the first.GIF file. It made all the control files, and I would leave for the weekend. 4000 numbers, 8000 pages, 4 lines, no problem.
Further technical note: about once a month I would go into serious log analysis mode, and remove the 50 slowest fax machines from my list. Most fax machines at the time were 9600 baud, with some 14.4kbaud, and a dwindling minority of 4800, 2400, and some 300 baud horrors. We only sent on the weekend, so it was in our interest to only target fast recipients.
Every Monday, we'd have a pile of response faxes, normally just "take me off your fax list", often with no phone number to reference, but sometimes we would get counter-spam numbering in the dozens of pages. We were happy to add anyone who wanted to the NEVER EVER send list.
The punchline: In almost a year of doing this, we had two or three people take classes because of our faxes - not nearly enough to cover the cost of the fax server, let alone my time maintaining the whole system (never less than 2 hours a week, often more like 4).
Spam is bad. It doesn't work. I can't figure out why people keep doing it. Is the word not getting out there? IT DOESN'T WORK.
Slashdot Mirror
Forgot to mention in my other reply that I agree totally about bicycles and pedicabs and streetcars in a low-energy future.
While we might run out of cheap oil in the near future, I don't see a non-nuclear future, nor even a limited-consumption one.
Putting that aside for the moment, concrete roads can be made by hand. Build a road or harvest a crop? Easy: if it's harvest time, get the crop in. Otherwise, build a road. Build a road or heat hundreds of homes? If it's come to that, people will relocate somewhere with a milder winter -- or more likely, they'll have dug in deep, and live in multi-family earth-insulated things.
My point being that if an energy shortage gets so bad that we can't use heavy equipment, it still won't look like you imagine. People will move where a life without heavy equipment is more feasible, and if they have to do it on foot with carts, they will. People will build and maintain roads without heavy equipment, with wheelbarrows and shovels. They won't sit down and wait to die in deprivation. The people of the world have lived a low-oil low-energy life in centuries past, and if you imagine a future like that, you should look to history to see what that life will be like.
Your expectation of roadbuilding as a capital offense seems not only draconian but unreasonable. Roads make for efficient transport, and efficient transport reduces the energy cost of everything. Your imagined future has people sitting in roadless isolation, spending all their resources on winter heat, rather than building a road to trade for blankets.
There are many, many paving surfaces other than asphalt. Concrete, for example. Even the most disastrous of peak oil scenarios won't result in bad road - just more expensive, more durable road that has to cure before use.
I'll buy that future cars will be lighter-weight, and that wheels will be narrower than they are now. Current cars are heavy because of safety mandates, and I think future cars will get their safety from lighter materials and active computerized evasion of danger. Wheel width gives better grip, meaning more acceleration and cornering, but better materials will give us the same grip in a narrower package with less rolling resistance. Overall I think we'll see not much performance change from right now - when the computer is driving, the performance-feel of your car is less visceral and therefore less a part of the car selection process.
I'd say they'd be cheaper in terms of work-hours needed to buy one, but even if they aren't, computer driving makes it possible to run automated taxicabs very cheaply. The line between car rental and cab service blurs, especially for longer trips.
I hate to reply twice to the same post, but I just checked the Wikipedia entry you describe, and it does not say what you claim it does. Here's a link: Freedom House 2006 on Wikipedia.
On the Freedom House website, I found a PR (press) rating on a 0-40 scale, and a CL (civil liberties) rating on a 0-60 scale. You'll find that the USA gets a 37/40 for press, and 56/60 for civil liberties, exactly the same as Hungary. Italy gets a 39 and 53. France gets 38 and 55. Belgium, 39 and 58. The Scandinavian countries get perfect 40-60 results.
There is room for improvement there, but this is hardly pitiable.
Details can be seen on the subcategory page. That page includes a 1-7 rank for each country for both the Press and Civil scores. The US is ranked 1 in both areas, just like all of Europe. This may be a case in which Wikipedia has out-of-date or misleading information.
The implication in the local media reports of this incident, is that is exactly what he was doing.
I know this is slashdot, where freedom of the internets is considered vital, but this is not really a case about theft of wireless. This is a case about a guy who spent three months parked outside a business beating off.
I'm rather nearsighted, and have been wearing glasses every waking minute since I was about 6 years old. My vision "peaked" at about -3.5 diopters, when I was around 12.
Every exam since then has shown improvement, such that at age 30 my prescription was around -2.5 diopters. There's also 0.25 diopters of astigmatism, but only in one eye, and I suspect that was simply undiagnosed in my earlier tests.
My equally nearsighted coworker reports similar experiences. My father has gotten increasingly farsighted with age, and it seems that we are, too -- we might have normal vision when we're 60.
Speaking as a man who used to own a 1995 VW Golf, I have to take issue with you on this.
Germans made a car that in theory was reliable and well-built and efficient. In fact it was continually breaking down, costly to fix, had exterior parts falling off every summer when the adhesive softened, and rarely got more than 25 miles to the gallon out of a gutless 2 liter engine. Also, the seats were uncomfortable, and my ignition switch assembly caught fire while I was driving one day.
The 2006 VWs may be better, but my sister-in-law bought a 2004 Jetta, new, and it was totalled when the electric seat heater caught fire.
BMW, on the other hand, is fine. I have fond memories of my Dad's 1984 318i, and wish I still had it.
The location finding is pretty bad: I can find Portland State University with Google Maps, but Google Transit has no idea what I'm talking about. Likewise "Clackamas Town Center", a shopping mall with a transit center that really ought to be included.
The bus lines up into Vancouver don't seem to be covered, even though they should be.
The big annoyance, though: while it shows a dollar-cost estimate of the difference between mass transit and driving, it doesn't include a TIME comparison. While it's great to know that this bus trip is $1.35, compared to $3.97 assuming the IRS-approved $0.405 per mile, it should also say 33 minutes compared to 9 minutes, so by taking the bus I'm spending 24 minutes of time.
Googling for the string "($3.97 - $1.35) / 24 minutes in dollars per hour" gives $6.55 dollars per hour. This would also be nice to have there; it might make more sense to work another hour each day, assuming you'd get paid for it, and your car is already a sunk cost.
On Apple's specs page there is a section "Build-to-Order Options", and under there, under Wireless, you will see "Internal Bluetooth module".
According to the article you'll be able to "pause and rewind live television broadcasts" and record shows. There is no mention of any ability to fastforward or skip commericals. Thus it is highly unlikely that any such feature exists.
How do you propose to "fast forward" over live television?
If there were any issues with it not being able to fast forward over recorded commercials, somone at AVSForum would surely say something. Nobody has yet.
Mmmm, secure HDTV. Don't want any of those pesky users exercizing their rights! Let's make sure that we can keep them from recording what you don't want them to. That way you can target them with even MORE advertising because they will be forced to watch what WE want them to watch.
Timeshifting be damned!
"Sell and Secure HDTV Homes" means "get people who use HDTV to use our cable system, and keep them from switching to satellite". This should be clear from the context, as the next sentance reads "Microsoft TV Foundation 1.7 helps you attract and retain your most valuable consumers by highlighting high-definition TV programming".
Your rant about timeshifting rights is poorly informed. People who actually HAVE a Motorola DCT6412 set-top unit (the kind being used with the MSTVF1.7 rollout) report that it allows recording to the built-in hard drive for all content, and allows HD transfers out to other devices over Firewire.
Sure, there might be a gotcha in there somewhere about 5C or broadcast flags, but none is mentioned anywhere I've found. Care to tell us what it is? Is it any different if the DCT6412 has, say, Pioneer Passport, or iGuide, on it instead of MSTVF?
I have quite a bit of music stored digitally. Some is mp3, but anything I rip off of cd gets archived as an APE (Monkey's Audio) lossless file, one file per disc, with an embedded cuesheet. On my PC, I can't hear the difference, but if I make a cd from mp3s for listening in my car, or on my good stereo, I can hear compression artifacts in certain passages. This wouldn't be enough by itself to make me waste the disk space for lossless, but I also like the convenience of having a single file represent a single CD in my collection. At some point I will probably batch-convert all my APEs to AAC - most likely when I get an iPod. This also factors into my decision to use a lossless format for now; transcoding from one lossy format to another is never good, and often really bad for quality.
Of course all the stuff I download is mp3, and there's no point in converting it.
I would probably download more mp3s if they were better ripped and converted. Here are a few tips for anyone who is ripping for sharing purposes:
1. Rip with Exact Audio Copy, or a similar secure ripper
2. Encode with a recent build of LAME, using --alt-preset-standard
3. Tag correctly
This minimizes artifacts hugely, and makes it more fun for everyone.
Like many writers, Mr Stephenson subscribes to a name-generating service. For a reasonable fee, a quarterly list of names is sent to him. If he sees a name he likes, he calls the service and tells them which one he intends to use. The service checks to see if any other author has already claimed that name, and if not, Neal gets to use it.
As Mr Stephenson is a very forward-thinking, technology-adept sort of person, I imagine he uses one of the more modern name services, with web access.
Maple leaves fall, eh?
Molson from state liquor store
Worker's Paradise
In many orbits, you have a fair amount of leeway to change to other stable orbits, so the fact that your orbit will change is no big deal. Here are some other mitigating factors:
Also note that delta-V is "change in velocity", so firing doesn't alter your delta-V, it gives you delta-V, or as most people would say it, changes your V.
There have been persistent rumors that Salyut-3 had a 23mm autocannon mounted, and occasional denials.
On another level, any reaction drive is useful as a weapon in proportion to its efficiency, which was the topic of a Larry Niven story some years back.
I'll see your cybernetic estoppel and raise you one affidavit of positronic imbalance.
This is way more fun than the tv show is, I bet. Just sitting around making up future law show stuff.
Your Honor, I object! The precedent set in United Posidyne vs General Subatomics clearly establishes that transmissions by tachyon mail cannot be used as an affirmative defense against a charge of q-spectrum barratry!
Objection sustained. The bailiffbot will mindwipe the jury regarding the last piece of evidence, and counsel will approach the hoverbench.
No, no. Free software is more like "From each according to whim, to each according to whim".
I am free to contribute code and time to the free software movement, or not, regardless of my skill or ability. Nobody is going to force me to write code for XEmacs, or even tax me a single cent to pay someone else to do so.
Also, I am free to use free software as much as I like, regardless of my "need" for it. As there is no scarcity in software that can be copied perfectly forever, needs-testing potential users would be absurd.
Axis static defense strategies can nearly always be defeated by the proper Allied class mix and proper teamwork.
Medics (after they get enough XP) are too powerful. Likewise for panzerfaust wielders. Weapons like the machinegun, mortar, and flamethrower are only useful in a few situations.
High-rank medics are quite powerful, and a popular class choice, but medics alone cannot win a map. Their self-healing and adrenaline abilities make them no more powerful in a short sharp firefight than a top-rank engineer, who has bonus grenades and a flak jacket.
Panzerfaust soldiers are limited in several ways: the heavy weapons server cap, the low number of pf tubes issued per ammo box, slowness in moving with a heavy weapon equipped, and the class-specific-skill recharge rate. The latter two disadvantages are somewhat reduced as XP is gained, but only heavy weapons XP counts toward those. There's also the 2-second firing delay with the panzerfaust, during which the firer is quite vulnerable.
The machinegun is the cornerstone of playing defense, if you have some backup. The panzerfaust (or an engineer with rifle grenades) is how you defeat a well-placed machinegunner. The mortar is great if you have good field ops spotting, or if you have worked out bearings and elevations for your favorite firing points and targets in advance.
But more importantly is the bullshit XP system they've implemented. If you're playing a three-map campaign and you join towards the end, you're faced with opponents who have skills much higher than you. Don't even bother playing a six-map campaign unless you start from the beginning.
See, what you are missing is this: it's a team game. So you have opponents who are pumped up? You also have teammates that are buffed. You can make a valuable contribution to the team's success regardless of your current XP level, once you know the map well.
So, now the question is what do you get for that last $500? The 722 has 24bit/96khz recording, as opposed to something rather less than 16/44.1 for MD, and 722 records raw digital, as opposed to MD compressed.
What about the 744T, Sonic Devices' $4000 unit? It can record 4 tracks at a time (2 analog and 2 digital). The next step up from that might be the HHb PortaDrive, which can record 8 tracks at once.
The cool thing about this is that it offers 2 tracks of 24/96 direct to HD recording. The people who want 24-bit words, the people who want that resolution, are the last people who would store their stuff as MP3. It makes WAVs (or BWFs, to get around the file size limit), which you can then mess with at home.
Did you miss that it's portable, and tiny, and runs on a camcorder-type rechargable battery pack? That if you need more than 3 hours at a shot it has a 5-18 volt locking DC input? The high-quality onboard mic preamps?
This is in a totally different category than a Mackie HD2496. The Mackie recorder is excellent for a studio, but I cannot fit it in my pocket, and if I could, how much extra gear would I need to keep it supplied with delicious power out in the field?
If I'm going to tape a concert, or make a documentary, or just go out and get samples for something, I'll go for a Sound Devices 722, and the presence or absence of MP3 support will have nothing to do with that.
There are several ways to make swordfighting safe for practice purposes. You can use real swords, blunted, and avoid swinging for the head (Empire of Chivalry and Steel does this). You can use foam swords of various degrees of hardness, and then armor is almost unnecessary. You can use a wooden sword with padding on it (like the Historical Armored Combat Association), and light armor. Or, as in the SCA, you use hard wooden swords, and heavy metal and / or plastic armor.
None of these systems can accurately reproduce all the nuances of real to-the-death sword combat.
For safety reasons, live steel is out. Foam swords are far too light; you wind up moving them in ways that real swords simply don't. SCA swords bounce off armor exactly wrong, and they tend to be round, making it hard to tell when you are throwing flat (the aerodynamics of a real broadsword make this obvious), and SCA rules prohibit shots below the knee. The padded wood swords that HACA uses feel right and swing right, and with heavy armor you can even play full-speed, full-force (HACA members often say they can go full-speed and pull your shots, which just demonstrates that they are used to going slow, I think).
The HACA system would be the best combination of safety and accuracy, but it is not popular enough to have the critical mass of players needed for advancement of the style. Last I checked, it was still low-speed cut-and-thrust stuff straight from the books, and a giant chip on their collective shoulder about it.
The inherent problem with the HACA system is that, like all these, the sword doesn't cut, and that matters. Take the Viking Holmgang style - three light center-boss round shields per combatant, and the sagas tell us it was quite common for blows to cut through the shield, and the leg beyond it. Therefore, correct use of a light Holmgang round shield would be to block with the boss, and probably try to bind your opponent's blade in the wood of your shield. This can only be done with a sharp sword. QED, no system of swordplay can be both safe and accurate.
Well, kind of.
.GIF files, one per page of the fax (normally two pages), and then run a little utility that took a file of numbers to send to, a file of numbers to NEVER EVER send to, and the name of the first .GIF file. It made all the control files, and I would leave for the weekend. 4000 numbers, 8000 pages, 4 lines, no problem.
We had a company that did outsourced corporate training. We faxed a list of our upcoming classes to our former customers once a week. Our customer list grew, and I think that our marketing people started buying lists of fax numbers and adding them to the database.
This was accomplished with two two-line Hayes JT Fax boards, IIRC, installed in an old 386 (for reference, this was the early Pentium era). I built the box, I ran the cable (a single strand of 8-wire cat 3) and kluged up four-headed RJ11 ends for it. We bought some software that could watch a directory for instruction files and pump out faxes accordingly. We would make a series of sequentially numbered
Further technical note: about once a month I would go into serious log analysis mode, and remove the 50 slowest fax machines from my list. Most fax machines at the time were 9600 baud, with some 14.4kbaud, and a dwindling minority of 4800, 2400, and some 300 baud horrors. We only sent on the weekend, so it was in our interest to only target fast recipients.
Every Monday, we'd have a pile of response faxes, normally just "take me off your fax list", often with no phone number to reference, but sometimes we would get counter-spam numbering in the dozens of pages. We were happy to add anyone who wanted to the NEVER EVER send list.
The punchline: In almost a year of doing this, we had two or three people take classes because of our faxes - not nearly enough to cover the cost of the fax server, let alone my time maintaining the whole system (never less than 2 hours a week, often more like 4).
Spam is bad. It doesn't work. I can't figure out why people keep doing it. Is the word not getting out there? IT DOESN'T WORK.