Like, the plural of "hero" is "heroes", and "heroe" and "heros" are both wrong
However, the plural of "gyro" (the sandwich, rhymes with "hero") is "gyros" [1]. Oddly, though, the plural of "gyro" (short for "gyroscope") is also listed as "gyros", though I would think it should be "gyroes"
When I say them out loud, I can hear a long sound like "oes" in "heroes", where I hear a more clipped "os" in "gyros" -- though maybe that's just my trying to add a Greek accent. When I say "gyroes" out loud, emphasizing the "y" with a Texas drawl, it really sounds like an "oes". And my co-workers look over the cube walls to see what form of dementia I'm currently exhibiting.
Potatoes, gyros, heroes... All this posting is making me hungry. Time for lunch.
Why would you want to do that if you can give it a hundred-dollar LCD? I don't see how a flexible panel helps there.
Good point, but there are places you'd like to mount something on a non-flat surface. In the late '80s, I worked at Texas Instruments when they were the contractor for the HARM (High-speed Anti Radar missle), and you wouldn't believe the space and geometry constraints! Our drafting group designed flexible circuit boards for places where you didn't have the clearance to run a wiring harness.
I never had the sort of clearance to actually see where the flex circuits went, but I can imagine that you could easily make the case for a screen that bends. Imagine opening a panel on the missile and having a screen behind it that's cylindrical instead of flat -- that's so many cm^2 more room for wiring (or explosive).
Interestingly, you now find flexible boards like the ones we were building in everything now, from cell phones to giveaway McDonald's toys. I like to think that, in addition to turning Saddam's radar installations into molten slag, we helped build the volume and technology for the next generation of consumer products (for better or for worse).
[Plasma may be] but rather a transference state between gas and Bose-Einstienian condensate
We're trending off-topic, but I'm curious. As I understand (imperfectly), a gas becomes a plasma by becoming completely ionized at high temperature. But a Bose-Einstein condensate requires a temperature very close to absolute zero, so that the particles' velocity approaches zero and the atoms superimpose (Wiki make um smarter! Ugh!). How would plasma fit into that phase transition?
From the article:...and that a plume of super-heated plasma entering through that breach had destroyed the wing and triggered the destruction of the orbiter.
While original reports used the term "plasma", there's a good explanation at space.com's Columbia FAQ that explains that the hot gas that entered the shuttle's wing was *not* "plasma", as defined by science:
PLASMA: What is it?
[IMPORTANT NOTE: Officials now say that the hot gas that surrounded Columbia and appeared to breach the craft had probably not yet reached the plasma state.]
Plasma is sometimes called a fourth state of matter (in addition to solid, liquid, gas). It's created when gas is superheated and electrons are stripped out, leaving electrically charged particles.
Not to be a science nazi, but there's an important distinction between sci-fi-sounding "plasma" and the mundane -- but still deadly -- "very hot gas".
Intersesting concept, and just a road trip to Austin away. And there's the "buy 6 get one free" deal, which seems pretty cool. But check out this fine print:
* Request a postage prepaid mailer to be sent to them through the recycling link on the website. Upon receipt of the mailer, simply place up to
5 expired EZ-D discs in the envelope and send in any regular mailbox.
* Participate in our upcoming incentive program. Start saving your discs now and upon sending in six expired EZ-D discs, you will become eligible to receive one free EZ-D?. More details coming soon.
The way I see it, they've either taken counting lessons from the folks who brought us 8-pack buns and 10-pack hot dogs, or else they're trying to make it just a little bit harder than it has to be to recycle the discs -- while still getting credit for being green.
Still worth a try -- I'll have to check out the Slashdot article and see if anyone's done some "chemical hacking" on these babies. Seems like a coat of hairspray might do the trick, but that couldn't be good for the friggin' laser...
More's the pity. I suppose Joe and Jenny Idiot have to have their gadgets, but such horrendously disposable items will lead to a lot of unpleasant waste.
I agree with you. I'm sure when they talk about "organics-based displays", they're not talking about the good kind of "organic". The term "organic chemistry" simply means that it's based on carbon instead of silicon. Unfortunately, the carbon compounds will be heavily doped with the same sort of toxic metals and other compounds that cause problems when disposing of traditional electronics.
But I do think the market will take off, given the right price point, for the same reason people talk on their disposable cell phones while driving their modified military vehicles. (And as soon as you can figure out what that reason is, please let me know!)
From the article: Further, "the life of our organic electronics displays has been already prolonged from ?hours to months," [Bas van Rens, general manager at Polymer Vision] added.
I'm trying to figure this one out... is he saying that this cool roll-up display, with four shades of grey and readable as paper, will self destruct after a few months?
And they're so hard to produce, that he can only make 5000 a year? Just to have ten engineers running the line at $100k/yr (or one executive at $1m/yr) would make each one cost $500 bucks.
No wonder he's targeting the military. Nobody else can afford to spend $500-$1000 on displays that don't last much longer than a gallon of milk in a wet paper sack. But I can envision plenty of 100% valid military applications -- after all, if you're going to blow up a million-dollar cruise missile, why not give it a thousand-dollar configuration panel?
Ideally, of course, the military money helps get the screen into the production levels required for the consumer market. Extend the lifespan to six months and drop the cost to under $60 bucks, and people will pay $10/month for disposable e-books.
And it makes an infinite amount more sense to use Metric than the US system.
I disagree that there's an automatic advantage in using.1 - 1 - 10 vs. 1/2 - 1 - 12. There's the entire issue of what it's used for.
In these days of digital scales and laser measuring, it's easy (in fact, easier) to measure distances in decimal parts of a meter, and weights in multiples of a gram. But these technologies have only been around, what, a few dozen years?:)
Putting aside the arbitrary notions of "the length of the king's foot" vs. "1x10-6 of the equator-polar distance through Paris", the issue is how to measure lengths in terms of the base unit. And base 12 is simply better -- for practical reasons.
I've got a bunch of eggs, and I want to sell them to people without calculators. If I group my eggs by the dozen, I can split a dozen it into two, three, four, or six equal pieces without having to sell any half-eggs. Feet (12 inches) are similarly divisible, and yards (3 feet) have similar properties. Half a yard = a foot and a half = 18 non-fractional inches.
Admittedly, using an all-decimal system may make you feel smarter than the average simian. But don't forget that the whole Metric thing came about because a particular country wanted to be non-standard in symbolic defiance of their oppressive arisocracy.
Gotta run... I've only got a millifortnight to get ready for the next meeting.
Niche software still safe?
on
Perens on Patents
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so.
I think Perens' statement may need to be modified to say "... to implement consumer software." I and my team write software that's never seen outside the headquarters of large national banks -- it's a niche market that we're very good at, and nobody else is likely to want to jump into.
So we're safe... "under the radar", perhaps.
On the other hand, we're tightly bound to Microsoft-based systems... so do we even count when Perens talks about "other people"?
By the way, did anyone else read "Perens on Patents" and visualize: (Patents)
Believe it or not, I was actually hoping to get modded funny for posting a goatse link. Oh well.
If it's any consolation, I got your comment in M2 and recognized your.sig. I can't believe I'm about to say that it was Unfair to mark a goatse link as Troll! Not to mention the fact that I'm sympathetic to a user with an expletive in his user name...
So, if it's no longer a trade secret in the US, does that mean that the Jon Johansen can finally quit worrying about the Norwegian government's appealing the second aquittal? Or can they claim that he's still guilty, if they prove it was a trade secret at the time he "hacked" it?
Good point. By your logic, women who are raped asked for it.
RTFP (Read The Fine Post). Many posters have suggested that the Dems "asked for it" by leaving a security hole, but that's not what I'm saying.
To use your pithy analogy, it's more like a woman (who has been a victim before) putting a Uzi under her dress and waiting to be assaulted -- so she can blow the b@st@rd away. But that analogy fails on so many levels, it's pathetic.
As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem.
While it sounds like the Dems' tech guy is missing his distro of Clue, I wonder... what if he/she left the backdoor open on purpose?
Here's a scenario:
1. Repo tech tells Demo tech about security problem. 2. Demo tech realizes that any security breach could bite the Repos in the butt if discovered. 3. Optional: Tech tells Demo leadership about the plan. 4. Demo tech keeps an eye on traffic through the breach, letting the Repos pull info until... 5.... they get caught with both hands in the honey pot.
Step 3 is optional because it assumes cluefulness on the part of political leadership, which I wouldn't want to assume. But there are some tech-savvy members of Congress (surely!) who might understand the honeypot concept.
I just learned more about the Dixie Chicks than I ever wanted to know.:)
Don't you hate it when that happens?
You've gotta remember that the music industry views mp3 as the sole work of the devil, and articles like the one you linked don't help much (it said that mp3s were CD-quality, and they're not). So it's entirely possible that had you used a different, less useful format, they wouldn't have complained so badly
In 1998, "mp3" was the big buzzword. It was the first time you could encode full CD-quality tracks in a file size small enough to move around on the 'net. I did have one full-length cut, but it and all the others were purposely encoded at a low quality setting -- nowhere near CD quality, probably below FM.
But "mp3" = "evil" was firmly entrenched, and the lawyers clearly had no idea of the technical issues.
I think your wife will like the Chicks newest sound, if she was a fan back in '95. Put aside (or embrace) the political mess and check out "Home", or their new Live CD. You'll hear a great bluegrass/roots/alt.country sound that's nothing like the Nashville sellouts that have benefitted from the Chicks' radio demise.
Also, y'all might want to check out this Dallas indie radio station. There used to be substance in country music, and it's still around... under the radar.
And we are now so far off-topic, I can't even remember what the original topic was. I'm going to hit "Submit" before I cheat and look at the story header.:)
The following line blows my criteria for a Mom-ready Linux distro:
Price: Xandros Standard $39.95, Xandros Deluxe $89
Yes, I'm cheap. But I got Knoppix from these guys for like three bucks, and that's just 'cause I was too lazy to configure the CD burner to do it myself.
When I screw something up on the Linux box, my wife shakes her head and says "You get what you pay for." On the other hand, she's not too excited about shelling out $100+ for Windows, and I'm not too excited about shelling out $40+ for Linux. Besides, if I weren't screwing up my installation all the time, how would I learn?
Of course, I could always do what one of my relatives did. He downloaded a pirated copy of WinXP Professional, and doesn't feel the least bit guilty. He was amused when he tried to apply a patch and got a message like "Dude! It's pirated! Go look for another download!". As a programmer (who enjoys getting *paid* to code), I just smile, while trying not to breathe through my nose... at least he doesn't ask me for tech support.
I have had the unarmored address in my sig, and it gets NOTHING!
Try using it to register a domain name. I use domains at littlecutie dot net for nothing -- absolutely nothing -- but domain registrations. I cleaned it out last week, and it now has 162 messages. One is a renewal notice on a domain. The rest are spam.
I may change my domain registration email to domspam at littlecutie dot net and see what happens, though!
I know it takes millions of dollars to run the science behind Hubble, or any other space project. Apparently, it takes a whole team of rocket scientists just to keep the thing from crashing into Tucson or something.
But why can't NASA just give the telescope to Wingo's company and be done with it? Just give them the keys and be done with it. Sign something requiring that they drop it in the Pacific (or in the Sun, or something) when they're done.
If Orbital Recovery can make a go selling science time to astronomers, then let them try it. Or they can sell time to people looking for the Face on Mars. Or they can fly up the next Survivor crew with some duct tape and an oxygen tank to play "voted off the Hubble". Whatever the free market wants.
I'm not usually one to say the "free market" is better at making decisions, but NASA has gotten its investment back. Instead of plowing it into the seabed, give it away -- think of it as the new-frontier version of salvage rights.
Dude, I'm not a lawyer, but I read about your stuff, and it looks like you really screwed up. Sorry.:(
Well, as I said, I'd know better now. And besides, I found a sympathetic ear at the Dallas Observer (an alternative newsweekly, owned by New Times). If you're interested, here's a link to the story (I haven't updated the links on my site in ages). Yeah, I got lucky...
Opening a restaurant called MickDonalds wouldn't be acceptable nor would a WaltMart.
Actually, on I-20 between Terrell and Canton, Texas, there's a barbeque joint named "McDonald's", or possibly "Mac Donald's", that has nothing to do with any golden arches. It's a fair assumption that they serve hamburgers and fries as well.
The signs for the joint are rather small, and make no reference to any other hamburger joint. And I haven't been able to locate the place online -- the closest I've come is a place called the Interstate Cafe that looks like it's in the right location (Superpages link).
It's entirely possible that the joint has been contacted by the "other" McD and entered into some sort of agreement. But they probably got their lawyers involved from the get-go, a suggestion noted by many in this discussion.
I didn't hire a lawyer when I got my own Cease and Desist letter. I did the same thing as this poor guy... sent my own non-vetted letter back, and contacted the media. My situation worked out fine -- I never heard back from the lawyers -- but I'll be more careful if it ever happens again.
But I've seen cathedral windows that weren't just a different thickness at the bottom, they were sagging open at the top!
On the other hand, as one of the links points out, you can disprove the theory by simple mathematics.
Cathedral window age = 500 years Cathedral window sag = 1 cm Theoretical sag rate = 500 years/cm
Egyptian/Greek/Whatever glass vessel age = 3000 years Theoretical sag rate = 500 years/cm Expected sag of 300 year old glass = 6 cm
As the link notes, if glass flowed over time, all the old glassware in museums would show definite signs of puddling -- even taking into account differences in formulae. At the very least, the broken edges would have smoothed themselves like ripped-apart Silly Putty.
I wasn't convinced until I read the link. I had completely bought into the sagging glass idea!
Here's an alternate theory for the cathedral glass. When the window was made, using old-school techniques, they ended up with some imperfect pieces. Do you put those at the bottom, where the bishop will see them... or put them at the top, and let God decide if He cares?
Using drain cleaner to dispose of potentially hazardous meat and bone is a method apparently pioneered by a Belgian dude named Andras Pandy, who used it to dispose of several hundred pounds' worth of potentially hazardous proteins.
Unfortunately, the proteins he needed to get rid of were formerly in the form of people. The hazard was getting caught, not getting sick, so YMMV.
(I know the radical peta'ns might equate cow slaughter with serial murder, but as a serial hamburger killer myself, I can't make that connection.)
Isn't this the same phenomenon that makes cats' eyes "glow" at the right angles?
No, cats don't have "light produced by symbiotic bacteria" coming out of their eyes. Their eyes only glow when your headlights shine into them. But not for long.
(No animals were harmed by this comment, though the humor-impaired may have flinched a bit. I'm in a foul mood, and my wit seems to be affected.)
I'll stop now so that the moderators among you can show your ignorance by moderating this post as "off topic" or "flame bait".
Do I count as "ignorant" by meta-moderating the "Informative" mod as "Unfair"?:>
A tough one to M2, really. It's an interesting point, but it's still 100% offtopic. I don't think it should be a -1, but it doesn't really deserve a +5, either. And I'm not willing to wimp out and select the "in between" M2 option.
Besides... that LED-lit apartment was butt-ugly, anyway.
So if Beagle sees its shadow, we'll get 6 more weeks of silence..?
Actually, the Groundhog Day reference put me in mind of the Bill Murray movie, and the Beagle engineers. Every day, they wake up to the same thing, over and over again:
Can you hear me now? Crap! Can you hear me now? Crap! Can you hear me now? Crap!
Slashdot Mirror
Like, the plural of "hero" is "heroes", and "heroe" and "heros" are both wrong
However, the plural of "gyro" (the sandwich, rhymes with "hero") is "gyros" [1]. Oddly, though, the plural of "gyro" (short for "gyroscope") is also listed as "gyros", though I would think it should be "gyroes"
When I say them out loud, I can hear a long sound like "oes" in "heroes", where I hear a more clipped "os" in "gyros" -- though maybe that's just my trying to add a Greek accent. When I say "gyroes" out loud, emphasizing the "y" with a Texas drawl, it really sounds like an "oes". And my co-workers look over the cube walls to see what form of dementia I'm currently exhibiting.
Potatoes, gyros, heroes... All this posting is making me hungry. Time for lunch.
Why would you want to do that if you can give it a hundred-dollar LCD? I don't see how a flexible panel helps there.
Good point, but there are places you'd like to mount something on a non-flat surface. In the late '80s, I worked at Texas Instruments when they were the contractor for the HARM (High-speed Anti Radar missle), and you wouldn't believe the space and geometry constraints! Our drafting group designed flexible circuit boards for places where you didn't have the clearance to run a wiring harness.
I never had the sort of clearance to actually see where the flex circuits went, but I can imagine that you could easily make the case for a screen that bends. Imagine opening a panel on the missile and having a screen behind it that's cylindrical instead of flat -- that's so many cm^2 more room for wiring (or explosive).
Interestingly, you now find flexible boards like the ones we were building in everything now, from cell phones to giveaway McDonald's toys. I like to think that, in addition to turning Saddam's radar installations into molten slag, we helped build the volume and technology for the next generation of consumer products (for better or for worse).
[Plasma may be] but rather a transference state between gas and Bose-Einstienian condensate
We're trending off-topic, but I'm curious. As I understand (imperfectly), a gas becomes a plasma by becoming completely ionized at high temperature. But a Bose-Einstein condensate requires a temperature very close to absolute zero, so that the particles' velocity approaches zero and the atoms superimpose (Wiki make um smarter! Ugh!). How would plasma fit into that phase transition?
While original reports used the term "plasma", there's a good explanation at space.com's Columbia FAQ that explains that the hot gas that entered the shuttle's wing was *not* "plasma", as defined by science:Not to be a science nazi, but there's an important distinction between sci-fi-sounding "plasma" and the mundane -- but still deadly -- "very hot gas".
Intersesting concept, and just a road trip to Austin away. And there's the "buy 6 get one free" deal, which seems pretty cool. But check out this fine print:The way I see it, they've either taken counting lessons from the folks who brought us 8-pack buns and 10-pack hot dogs, or else they're trying to make it just a little bit harder than it has to be to recycle the discs -- while still getting credit for being green.
Still worth a try -- I'll have to check out the Slashdot article and see if anyone's done some "chemical hacking" on these babies. Seems like a coat of hairspray might do the trick, but that couldn't be good for the friggin' laser...
More's the pity. I suppose Joe and Jenny Idiot have to have their gadgets, but such horrendously disposable items will lead to a lot of unpleasant waste.
I agree with you. I'm sure when they talk about "organics-based displays", they're not talking about the good kind of "organic". The term "organic chemistry" simply means that it's based on carbon instead of silicon. Unfortunately, the carbon compounds will be heavily doped with the same sort of toxic metals and other compounds that cause problems when disposing of traditional electronics.
But I do think the market will take off, given the right price point, for the same reason people talk on their disposable cell phones while driving their modified military vehicles. (And as soon as you can figure out what that reason is, please let me know!)
From the article:
Further, "the life of our organic electronics displays has been already prolonged from ?hours to months," [Bas van Rens, general manager at Polymer Vision] added.
I'm trying to figure this one out... is he saying that this cool roll-up display, with four shades of grey and readable as paper, will self destruct after a few months?
And they're so hard to produce, that he can only make 5000 a year? Just to have ten engineers running the line at $100k/yr (or one executive at $1m/yr) would make each one cost $500 bucks.
No wonder he's targeting the military. Nobody else can afford to spend $500-$1000 on displays that don't last much longer than a gallon of milk in a wet paper sack. But I can envision plenty of 100% valid military applications -- after all, if you're going to blow up a million-dollar cruise missile, why not give it a thousand-dollar configuration panel?
Ideally, of course, the military money helps get the screen into the production levels required for the consumer market. Extend the lifespan to six months and drop the cost to under $60 bucks, and people will pay $10/month for disposable e-books.
And it makes an infinite amount more sense to use Metric than the US system.
.1 - 1 - 10 vs. 1/2 - 1 - 12. There's the entire issue of what it's used for.
:)
I disagree that there's an automatic advantage in using
In these days of digital scales and laser measuring, it's easy (in fact, easier) to measure distances in decimal parts of a meter, and weights in multiples of a gram. But these technologies have only been around, what, a few dozen years?
Putting aside the arbitrary notions of "the length of the king's foot" vs. "1x10-6 of the equator-polar distance through Paris", the issue is how to measure lengths in terms of the base unit. And base 12 is simply better -- for practical reasons.
I've got a bunch of eggs, and I want to sell them to people without calculators. If I group my eggs by the dozen, I can split a dozen it into two, three, four, or six equal pieces without having to sell any half-eggs. Feet (12 inches) are similarly divisible, and yards (3 feet) have similar properties. Half a yard = a foot and a half = 18 non-fractional inches.
Admittedly, using an all-decimal system may make you feel smarter than the average simian. But don't forget that the whole Metric thing came about because a particular country wanted to be non-standard in symbolic defiance of their oppressive arisocracy.
Gotta run... I've only got a millifortnight to get ready for the next meeting.
We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so.
I think Perens' statement may need to be modified to say "... to implement consumer software." I and my team write software that's never seen outside the headquarters of large national banks -- it's a niche market that we're very good at, and nobody else is likely to want to jump into.
So we're safe... "under the radar", perhaps.
On the other hand, we're tightly bound to Microsoft-based systems... so do we even count when Perens talks about "other people"?
By the way, did anyone else read "Perens on Patents" and visualize: ( Patents )
Believe it or not, I was actually hoping to get modded funny for posting a goatse link. Oh well.
.sig. I can't believe I'm about to say that it was Unfair to mark a goatse link as Troll! Not to mention the fact that I'm sympathetic to a user with an expletive in his user name...
If it's any consolation, I got your comment in M2 and recognized your
No wonder I haven't had any mod points in months!
So, if it's no longer a trade secret in the US, does that mean that the Jon Johansen can finally quit worrying about the Norwegian government's appealing the second aquittal? Or can they claim that he's still guilty, if they prove it was a trade secret at the time he "hacked" it?
en francais, aussi...
Karma to burn, and it hasn't been done yet (even at -1), so here goes:
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Hubble Telescope saves YOU!
Are the usual suspects asleep today?
Good point. By your logic, women who are raped asked for it.
RTFP (Read The Fine Post). Many posters have suggested that the Dems "asked for it" by leaving a security hole, but that's not what I'm saying.
To use your pithy analogy, it's more like a woman (who has been a victim before) putting a Uzi under her dress and waiting to be assaulted -- so she can blow the b@st@rd away. But that analogy fails on so many levels, it's pathetic.
I know... "YHBT. HAND."
As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem.
... they get caught with both hands in the honey pot.
While it sounds like the Dems' tech guy is missing his distro of Clue, I wonder... what if he/she left the backdoor open on purpose?
Here's a scenario:
1. Repo tech tells Demo tech about security problem.
2. Demo tech realizes that any security breach could bite the Repos in the butt if discovered.
3. Optional: Tech tells Demo leadership about the plan.
4. Demo tech keeps an eye on traffic through the breach, letting the Repos pull info until...
5.
Step 3 is optional because it assumes cluefulness on the part of political leadership, which I wouldn't want to assume. But there are some tech-savvy members of Congress (surely!) who might understand the honeypot concept.
I just learned more about the Dixie Chicks than I ever wanted to know. :)
:)
Don't you hate it when that happens?
You've gotta remember that the music industry views mp3 as the sole work of the devil, and articles like the one you linked don't help much (it said that mp3s were CD-quality, and they're not). So it's entirely possible that had you used a different, less useful format, they wouldn't have complained so badly
In 1998, "mp3" was the big buzzword. It was the first time you could encode full CD-quality tracks in a file size small enough to move around on the 'net. I did have one full-length cut, but it and all the others were purposely encoded at a low quality setting -- nowhere near CD quality, probably below FM.
But "mp3" = "evil" was firmly entrenched, and the lawyers clearly had no idea of the technical issues.
I think your wife will like the Chicks newest sound, if she was a fan back in '95. Put aside (or embrace) the political mess and check out "Home", or their new Live CD. You'll hear a great bluegrass/roots/alt.country sound that's nothing like the Nashville sellouts that have benefitted from the Chicks' radio demise.
Also, y'all might want to check out this Dallas indie radio station. There used to be substance in country music, and it's still around... under the radar.
And we are now so far off-topic, I can't even remember what the original topic was. I'm going to hit "Submit" before I cheat and look at the story header.
The following line blows my criteria for a Mom-ready Linux distro:
Price:
Xandros Standard $39.95, Xandros Deluxe $89
Yes, I'm cheap. But I got Knoppix from these guys for like three bucks, and that's just 'cause I was too lazy to configure the CD burner to do it myself.
When I screw something up on the Linux box, my wife shakes her head and says "You get what you pay for." On the other hand, she's not too excited about shelling out $100+ for Windows, and I'm not too excited about shelling out $40+ for Linux. Besides, if I weren't screwing up my installation all the time, how would I learn?
Of course, I could always do what one of my relatives did. He downloaded a pirated copy of WinXP Professional, and doesn't feel the least bit guilty. He was amused when he tried to apply a patch and got a message like "Dude! It's pirated! Go look for another download!". As a programmer (who enjoys getting *paid* to code), I just smile, while trying not to breathe through my nose... at least he doesn't ask me for tech support.
I have had the unarmored address in my sig, and it gets NOTHING!
Try using it to register a domain name. I use domains at littlecutie dot net for nothing -- absolutely nothing -- but domain registrations. I cleaned it out last week, and it now has 162 messages. One is a renewal notice on a domain. The rest are spam.
I may change my domain registration email to domspam at littlecutie dot net and see what happens, though!
I know it takes millions of dollars to run the science behind Hubble, or any other space project. Apparently, it takes a whole team of rocket scientists just to keep the thing from crashing into Tucson or something.
But why can't NASA just give the telescope to Wingo's company and be done with it? Just give them the keys and be done with it. Sign something requiring that they drop it in the Pacific (or in the Sun, or something) when they're done.
If Orbital Recovery can make a go selling science time to astronomers, then let them try it. Or they can sell time to people looking for the Face on Mars. Or they can fly up the next Survivor crew with some duct tape and an oxygen tank to play "voted off the Hubble". Whatever the free market wants.
I'm not usually one to say the "free market" is better at making decisions, but NASA has gotten its investment back. Instead of plowing it into the seabed, give it away -- think of it as the new-frontier version of salvage rights.
Dude, I'm not a lawyer, but I read about your stuff, and it looks like you really screwed up. Sorry. :(
Well, as I said, I'd know better now. And besides, I found a sympathetic ear at the Dallas Observer (an alternative newsweekly, owned by New Times). If you're interested, here's a link to the story (I haven't updated the links on my site in ages). Yeah, I got lucky...
(and your site's great... hug the kids...)
Opening a restaurant called MickDonalds wouldn't be acceptable nor would a WaltMart.
Actually, on I-20 between Terrell and Canton, Texas, there's a barbeque joint named "McDonald's", or possibly "Mac Donald's", that has nothing to do with any golden arches. It's a fair assumption that they serve hamburgers and fries as well.
The signs for the joint are rather small, and make no reference to any other hamburger joint. And I haven't been able to locate the place online -- the closest I've come is a place called the Interstate Cafe that looks like it's in the right location (Superpages link).
It's entirely possible that the joint has been contacted by the "other" McD and entered into some sort of agreement. But they probably got their lawyers involved from the get-go, a suggestion noted by many in this discussion.
I didn't hire a lawyer when I got my own Cease and Desist letter. I did the same thing as this poor guy... sent my own non-vetted letter back, and contacted the media. My situation worked out fine -- I never heard back from the lawyers -- but I'll be more careful if it ever happens again.
But I've seen cathedral windows that weren't just a different thickness at the bottom, they were sagging open at the top!
On the other hand, as one of the links points out, you can disprove the theory by simple mathematics.
Cathedral window age = 500 years
Cathedral window sag = 1 cm
Theoretical sag rate = 500 years/cm
Egyptian/Greek/Whatever glass vessel age = 3000 years
Theoretical sag rate = 500 years/cm
Expected sag of 300 year old glass = 6 cm
As the link notes, if glass flowed over time, all the old glassware in museums would show definite signs of puddling -- even taking into account differences in formulae. At the very least, the broken edges would have smoothed themselves like ripped-apart Silly Putty.
I wasn't convinced until I read the link. I had completely bought into the sagging glass idea!
Here's an alternate theory for the cathedral glass. When the window was made, using old-school techniques, they ended up with some imperfect pieces. Do you put those at the bottom, where the bishop will see them... or put them at the top, and let God decide if He cares?
Using drain cleaner to dispose of potentially hazardous meat and bone is a method apparently pioneered by a Belgian dude named Andras Pandy, who used it to dispose of several hundred pounds' worth of potentially hazardous proteins.
Unfortunately, the proteins he needed to get rid of were formerly in the form of people. The hazard was getting caught, not getting sick, so YMMV.
(I know the radical peta'ns might equate cow slaughter with serial murder, but as a serial hamburger killer myself, I can't make that connection.)
Isn't this the same phenomenon that makes cats' eyes "glow" at the right angles?
No, cats don't have "light produced by symbiotic bacteria" coming out of their eyes. Their eyes only glow when your headlights shine into them. But not for long.
(No animals were harmed by this comment, though the humor-impaired may have flinched a bit. I'm in a foul mood, and my wit seems to be affected.)
I'll stop now so that the moderators among you can show your ignorance by moderating this post as "off topic" or "flame bait".
:>
Do I count as "ignorant" by meta-moderating the "Informative" mod as "Unfair"?
A tough one to M2, really. It's an interesting point, but it's still 100% offtopic. I don't think it should be a -1, but it doesn't really deserve a +5, either. And I'm not willing to wimp out and select the "in between" M2 option.
Besides... that LED-lit apartment was butt-ugly, anyway.
So if Beagle sees its shadow, we'll get 6 more weeks of silence..?
Actually, the Groundhog Day reference put me in mind of the Bill Murray movie, and the Beagle engineers. Every day, they wake up to the same thing, over and over again:
Can you hear me now? Crap!
Can you hear me now? Crap!
Can you hear me now? Crap!