We live in a rural area, and commute to the local urban center. I have myself plus the five kids that I drop off to school in town in my Taurus. I then go the rest of the way to work and then home by myself. My wife goes to school by herself, and then picks up all five kids in the van and brings them home.
On the weekends, we are all in the van. If somebody needs to do an errand by themselves, or with only one or two kids, then they take the Taurus.
I can't believe that I am defending myself to somebody with a higher/. user ID than me.
started doing zig zags, figure 8s, circles, box shapes and moved in other unsatelliteish ways for about 20-30 minutes
So, even aliens have problems with teenage and drunk drivers.
Imagine you are an alien exploring Earth: "Hey, dude. Look at that Earthling. I will fly in all sorts of crazy patterns to get his attention while you lube up the anal probe. Remind me again why we are doing this? Buttholes stink."
I do absolutely agree with you. There is a difference between "want" and "need." A few "need" and a lot "want." The problem is, however, who determined the difference? Raising gas prices by an insane amount would certainly drive people to cheaper cars, but it would have a disproportional impact on people like me who legitimately NEED a larger vehicle. Should you have to show proof that you need a larger car before buying one?
Honesty, I think that $3.63/gallon right now where I live is certainly an incentive in what you buy. I remember when I was younger, people really did not even pay attention to the gas mileage rating of a car. Now, it is a selling point, so a lot of people are getting it.
Part of what you say is true, but that is not the whole story.... Some people don't just WANT large inefficient cars, they NEED large gas-guzzling vehicles.
Take, for example, me. I have five kids (three are adopted, so no preaching about overpopulating the Earth). Add the wife, and I need a vehicle to carry at least seven people. Good luck finding a 50 MPG car that can do that. If the whole world drove tiny 50 MPG cars, I would need TWO of them to get anywhere on the weekend -- making an effective 25 MPG.
Look at it this way: on the weekend, I typically have 7 or 8 people in my average 18.8 MPG van. Not great gas mileage, but that works out to be 150 miles/gallon/PERSON. To match that, you would have to cram four people in a Prius.
Don't get me wrong. I would love to have better fuel efficienty. If my wife and I did not have any kids, I would likely get a smart car or some other little econo-box. But that simply will not work for my family. I live in a rural area. It is pretty common to see a pickup pulling a trailer with a couple of tons of hay for horses/cattle. How many trips woult that take in a Volt with the back seat crammed full of hay? Sometimes, bugger IS better.
I am worried about the day when fuel efficiency is mandated such that larger vehicles are essentially no longer produced.
When viewing the art, you should still keep your hands on your wallet.
Also, this version of Jobs works great with your current eyes. However, they will be upgrading it next year, forcing you to to use smaller, more symmetric eyes. You can buy a special pair of adapter glasses for $30.
Good luck with that. When the tough get going, they hibernate (well, not quite hibernation, but close enough). In order for things to happen, the conditions eventually have to improve. I suspect that they would just hibernate on Mars indefinitely.
I think that you are mixing up "average" and "median." I suspect that they are close in this case, but I would not be surprised if the median were somewhat below the average.
It is EASY to create the world's shortest laser pulse: emit a single photon. It is monochromatic, coherent (so it meets the laser defninition), and has the shortest possible pulse. Of course, one single photon is not really good for much, You really need a lot of photons to do anything useful.
Since when is 1080 low-res for television. I do admit that 1080p is not good enough for a computer monitor (I run 2560 x 1600 at home and at work), but my televisions at home are all 720. I am middle-aged, so looking at a 50" screen at 8 feet, I doubt that I could even tell the difference between 1080 and 720.
Computer monitors are meant to display information, and you sit up close. A larger display with more information is a good thing, as you can easily shift your focus from one part of the screen to another.
A television, on the other hand, you sit back from. You do not really focus exclusively on one part of the display, but you tend to look at the whole thing. Now, a case COULD be made for a higher-resolution standard for home-theater fanatics who install a projector and a six-foot screen on the wall. WIth a setup like that, you probably COULD notice an appreciable increase in resolution. Those people (who probably have too much time and money on their hands), however, are a small minority of the television-watching public.
I just happen to think that a new "standard" that requires such a high-resolution display that nobody even knows how to build one yet is useless. By the time somebody figures out how to make one affordable (or even make one), the codecs will be antiquated.
I am in my low-fourties (starting to get up there in age). I cannot even HEAR anything above a certain frequency (around 14 KHz as I recall). My kids can go up higher. Do you think that I can tell the difference between two sounds that I cannot even hear? I went to a few concerts as a youth, and I used to turn up the stereo in the car, but I am hardly unusual in that respect. I consider my hearing to be at least typical for a person my age.
If a person claims to be able to hear 22 KHz, then they are either still in diapers, or as full of crap as a diaper is.
Meh. I got a Mobile Wireless Mouse 4000 a couple of years ago. Complete garbage due to the "nano" receiver. It burned out, and the receiver was too hot to even touch. I got a warranty replacement, and it suffered the same fate after a couple of months. Into the trash it went, and I now use a Logitech M305, which has been rock solid.
It is a shame, too. I rather liked the design, since the receiver snapped into the bottom (no need to remove the battery cover like you do with most of the Logitech mice).
I do suspect that Microsoft has fixed this bug by now, but it is too late for me. To make a nano-receiver that doubles as a space heater is sloppy design. I suspect that they also learned this lesson on the early models of the X-Box 360 too.
This is the truth. I do not expect a $100 safe to keep out a world-class safe cracker, or even stop an adult with power tools, but I **SHOULD** expect it to stop a 6-year-old.
The purpose of a safe is to protect the contents from anything, including fire, flood, tornado, as well as the occasional thief. The porpose of a lockbox is simply to stop a child from accessing the contents. That is the ONE REASON for a gun lock box, and apparently, they cannot do even that one thing right.
Yes, but can you imagine how much harder it would be to properly secure laser-toting sharks??? A gun safe is easy by compairson, as you do not have to provide water, oxygen, food, temperature regulation, etc.
If everyone in that theater was armed and had at least rudimentary firearms safety training... how far do you think the crazy guy would have gotten?
This is actually a rather sticky problem. I am, in general, again gun control in any form. However, it is easier for police to deal with things because you can GENERALLY assume that uniform+gun = good guy, and no-uniform+gun = bad guy. This formula works well enough 99% of the time.
In that theater, if everybody had a gun, I would not have been surprised if the friendly-fire casualties were higher than the ones committed by that lunatic. Differentiating friend from foe is a crowded, darkened theater (especially with some in costume) would be MUCH harder than in a case of a bank robbery where the bad guys come in wearing masks and waving guns in a well-lit building.
Yes. In fact, the summary fails to mention that much of the AR15 is already plastic. Has been since it was introduced. What we're seeing here is a different method of construction, not necessarily a different construction material.
Huh? AFAIK, the receiver has always been metal. Some of the furniture is plastic.
Even Glocks, which are the original "plastic pistol" have metal slide rails. Plastic makes sense for PARTS of a receiver, but not the whole thing.
I would not want to own a plastic AR receiver. If you look at the picture in TFA, I would worry about the threaded portion in the front where the barrel goes. 200 rounds might be OK, but I would not want to put 2000 through it. One problem with something like this is that when it fails, it may fail rather spectacularly, and I would not want to be near it when it happens.
They are in the business to sell advertising. If you do not buy advertising, then you have probably never paid a dime directly to Google. I hate to say it, but invading privacy is just part of the business. How MUCH a part of the business is definitely open for debate, however.
It is a balancing act. No invasion of privacy = no money. Too much = evil.
I admit that everything that they have done has NOT been perfect, and there have been many mis-steps. However, for a company of their size, they do indeed manage to be the least evil. To me, Apple is very very evil. Microsoft is evil. Sony is evil. Google is fairly benign.
Name another company that size that is as friendly to open source software. Name another one that gives you as much stuff for free (yes, I know -- paid for by advertising to you). Name another company that actually CARES about not being evil. Apple and Microsoft simply care about the bottom line -- period.
No, Google is not perfect, but they could be a LOT worse, and they seem to actually care.
Great plan. You don't like Google, so of COURSE they did something wrong.
Part of Java (from what I understand) is open-source. But, if Oracle is right, you could get sued for using it anyways. Well, if whoever owns the C language decides to sue, GCC could go bye-bye.
Oh. A couple more things about this monitor -- good and bad...
Good - You can adjust the aspect ratio. Play your old 4:3 games in the right aspect ratio. If you use DVI, you can force your video card to adjust that, but some cards can't do that, especially with an analog connection (but you NEED a digital connection to get the full resolution -- limitation of analog VGA).
Bad - Well, not too bad. Since the Del U3011 can scale the video itself, it adds some extra latency. From what I recall reading reviews, and extra 10-20ms of lag. For me, I don't care. If you are a hard-core FPS fan, HP makes a 2560x1600 also. It does NOT have a scaler, no HDMI inputs, not really ANYTHING extra. But it is a little cheaper, and has better lag numbers.
Dell U3011. I use one at work, AND one at home. If you are patient, you can grab one for around $1200 -- well worth it. The only real down side is that is uses fluorescent-tube backlighting, so it takes a minute or two in order to brighten up. Lots of input options, including two HDMI ports, with analog audio out.
Work: Red Hat running a pair of nVidia Quadro cards (overkill, since I do NOTHING 3-D). Home: XP-Pro with ATI 5550 -- Not great, but I generally game at lower resolutions. I got the monitor for those days when I work from home -- I get a LOT more done.
Riiiight. What if you need access to three or more windows, and need to switch back and forth between them quickly. Maybe copy-n-paste between them, and just plain compare them visually. I have three "meld" windows, and two bash windows open -- not to mention this browser and my windows-VM.
Right now, I arm running a 2560x1600 30" central monitor, and a pair of 1200x1600 (portrait mode) on either side. So, my desktop is 4960x1600 (almost 8 million pixels). I am using every square inch, and could probably use a little more.
I got so spoiled by this, I decided to buy a 2560x1600 for home use -- and I will never go back.
Slashdot Mirror
We live in a rural area, and commute to the local urban center. I have myself plus the five kids that I drop off to school in town in my Taurus. I then go the rest of the way to work and then home by myself. My wife goes to school by herself, and then picks up all five kids in the van and brings them home.
On the weekends, we are all in the van. If somebody needs to do an errand by themselves, or with only one or two kids, then they take the Taurus.
I can't believe that I am defending myself to somebody with a higher /. user ID than me.
So, even aliens have problems with teenage and drunk drivers.
Imagine you are an alien exploring Earth: "Hey, dude. Look at that Earthling. I will fly in all sorts of crazy patterns to get his attention while you lube up the anal probe. Remind me again why we are doing this? Buttholes stink."
I do absolutely agree with you. There is a difference between "want" and "need." A few "need" and a lot "want." The problem is, however, who determined the difference? Raising gas prices by an insane amount would certainly drive people to cheaper cars, but it would have a disproportional impact on people like me who legitimately NEED a larger vehicle. Should you have to show proof that you need a larger car before buying one?
Honesty, I think that $3.63/gallon right now where I live is certainly an incentive in what you buy. I remember when I was younger, people really did not even pay attention to the gas mileage rating of a car. Now, it is a selling point, so a lot of people are getting it.
Part of what you say is true, but that is not the whole story.... Some people don't just WANT large inefficient cars, they NEED large gas-guzzling vehicles.
Take, for example, me. I have five kids (three are adopted, so no preaching about overpopulating the Earth). Add the wife, and I need a vehicle to carry at least seven people. Good luck finding a 50 MPG car that can do that. If the whole world drove tiny 50 MPG cars, I would need TWO of them to get anywhere on the weekend -- making an effective 25 MPG.
Look at it this way: on the weekend, I typically have 7 or 8 people in my average 18.8 MPG van. Not great gas mileage, but that works out to be 150 miles/gallon/PERSON. To match that, you would have to cram four people in a Prius.
Don't get me wrong. I would love to have better fuel efficienty. If my wife and I did not have any kids, I would likely get a smart car or some other little econo-box. But that simply will not work for my family. I live in a rural area. It is pretty common to see a pickup pulling a trailer with a couple of tons of hay for horses/cattle. How many trips woult that take in a Volt with the back seat crammed full of hay? Sometimes, bugger IS better.
I am worried about the day when fuel efficiency is mandated such that larger vehicles are essentially no longer produced.
When viewing the art, you should still keep your hands on your wallet.
Also, this version of Jobs works great with your current eyes. However, they will be upgrading it next year, forcing you to to use smaller, more symmetric eyes. You can buy a special pair of adapter glasses for $30.
Good luck with that. When the tough get going, they hibernate (well, not quite hibernation, but close enough). In order for things to happen, the conditions eventually have to improve. I suspect that they would just hibernate on Mars indefinitely.
I think that you are mixing up "average" and "median." I suspect that they are close in this case, but I would not be surprised if the median were somewhat below the average.
Also, how powerful was the pulse?
It is EASY to create the world's shortest laser pulse: emit a single photon. It is monochromatic, coherent (so it meets the laser defninition), and has the shortest possible pulse. Of course, one single photon is not really good for much, You really need a lot of photons to do anything useful.
Since when is 1080 low-res for television. I do admit that 1080p is not good enough for a computer monitor (I run 2560 x 1600 at home and at work), but my televisions at home are all 720. I am middle-aged, so looking at a 50" screen at 8 feet, I doubt that I could even tell the difference between 1080 and 720.
Computer monitors are meant to display information, and you sit up close. A larger display with more information is a good thing, as you can easily shift your focus from one part of the screen to another.
A television, on the other hand, you sit back from. You do not really focus exclusively on one part of the display, but you tend to look at the whole thing. Now, a case COULD be made for a higher-resolution standard for home-theater fanatics who install a projector and a six-foot screen on the wall. WIth a setup like that, you probably COULD notice an appreciable increase in resolution. Those people (who probably have too much time and money on their hands), however, are a small minority of the television-watching public.
I just happen to think that a new "standard" that requires such a high-resolution display that nobody even knows how to build one yet is useless. By the time somebody figures out how to make one affordable (or even make one), the codecs will be antiquated.
That quote is a complete load of bull.
I am in my low-fourties (starting to get up there in age). I cannot even HEAR anything above a certain frequency (around 14 KHz as I recall). My kids can go up higher. Do you think that I can tell the difference between two sounds that I cannot even hear? I went to a few concerts as a youth, and I used to turn up the stereo in the car, but I am hardly unusual in that respect. I consider my hearing to be at least typical for a person my age.
If a person claims to be able to hear 22 KHz, then they are either still in diapers, or as full of crap as a diaper is.
It doesn't. That domain does not even exist. Thanks for the non-existent tip.
Oh, and the "we used Wikipedia as a reference to verify the accuracy of Wikipedia" part.
>diff wikipedia wikipedia
Look, it matches!!!
Meh. I got a Mobile Wireless Mouse 4000 a couple of years ago. Complete garbage due to the "nano" receiver. It burned out, and the receiver was too hot to even touch. I got a warranty replacement, and it suffered the same fate after a couple of months. Into the trash it went, and I now use a Logitech M305, which has been rock solid.
It is a shame, too. I rather liked the design, since the receiver snapped into the bottom (no need to remove the battery cover like you do with most of the Logitech mice).
I do suspect that Microsoft has fixed this bug by now, but it is too late for me. To make a nano-receiver that doubles as a space heater is sloppy design. I suspect that they also learned this lesson on the early models of the X-Box 360 too.
This is the truth. I do not expect a $100 safe to keep out a world-class safe cracker, or even stop an adult with power tools, but I **SHOULD** expect it to stop a 6-year-old.
The purpose of a safe is to protect the contents from anything, including fire, flood, tornado, as well as the occasional thief. The porpose of a lockbox is simply to stop a child from accessing the contents. That is the ONE REASON for a gun lock box, and apparently, they cannot do even that one thing right.
Yes, but can you imagine how much harder it would be to properly secure laser-toting sharks??? A gun safe is easy by compairson, as you do not have to provide water, oxygen, food, temperature regulation, etc.
Wow. Somebody should tell the olympics. It seems that they are not aware of this fact.
This is actually a rather sticky problem. I am, in general, again gun control in any form. However, it is easier for police to deal with things because you can GENERALLY assume that uniform+gun = good guy, and no-uniform+gun = bad guy. This formula works well enough 99% of the time.
In that theater, if everybody had a gun, I would not have been surprised if the friendly-fire casualties were higher than the ones committed by that lunatic. Differentiating friend from foe is a crowded, darkened theater (especially with some in costume) would be MUCH harder than in a case of a bank robbery where the bad guys come in wearing masks and waving guns in a well-lit building.
Huh? AFAIK, the receiver has always been metal. Some of the furniture is plastic.
Even Glocks, which are the original "plastic pistol" have metal slide rails. Plastic makes sense for PARTS of a receiver, but not the whole thing.
I would not want to own a plastic AR receiver. If you look at the picture in TFA, I would worry about the threaded portion in the front where the barrel goes. 200 rounds might be OK, but I would not want to put 2000 through it. One problem with something like this is that when it fails, it may fail rather spectacularly, and I would not want to be near it when it happens.
Righto. One study proves approximately nothing, plus or minus almost nothing.
To me, this will be news when multiple studies consistently produce similar results.
Well, I, for one, support Google.
They are in the business to sell advertising. If you do not buy advertising, then you have probably never paid a dime directly to Google. I hate to say it, but invading privacy is just part of the business. How MUCH a part of the business is definitely open for debate, however.
It is a balancing act. No invasion of privacy = no money. Too much = evil.
I admit that everything that they have done has NOT been perfect, and there have been many mis-steps. However, for a company of their size, they do indeed manage to be the least evil. To me, Apple is very very evil. Microsoft is evil. Sony is evil. Google is fairly benign.
Name another company that size that is as friendly to open source software. Name another one that gives you as much stuff for free (yes, I know -- paid for by advertising to you). Name another company that actually CARES about not being evil. Apple and Microsoft simply care about the bottom line -- period.
No, Google is not perfect, but they could be a LOT worse, and they seem to actually care.
Great plan. You don't like Google, so of COURSE they did something wrong.
Part of Java (from what I understand) is open-source. But, if Oracle is right, you could get sued for using it anyways. Well, if whoever owns the C language decides to sue, GCC could go bye-bye.
Oh. A couple more things about this monitor -- good and bad...
Good - You can adjust the aspect ratio. Play your old 4:3 games in the right aspect ratio. If you use DVI, you can force your video card to adjust that, but some cards can't do that, especially with an analog connection (but you NEED a digital connection to get the full resolution -- limitation of analog VGA).
Bad - Well, not too bad. Since the Del U3011 can scale the video itself, it adds some extra latency. From what I recall reading reviews, and extra 10-20ms of lag. For me, I don't care. If you are a hard-core FPS fan, HP makes a 2560x1600 also. It does NOT have a scaler, no HDMI inputs, not really ANYTHING extra. But it is a little cheaper, and has better lag numbers.
Dell U3011. I use one at work, AND one at home. If you are patient, you can grab one for around $1200 -- well worth it. The only real down side is that is uses fluorescent-tube backlighting, so it takes a minute or two in order to brighten up. Lots of input options, including two HDMI ports, with analog audio out.
Work: Red Hat running a pair of nVidia Quadro cards (overkill, since I do NOTHING 3-D).
Home: XP-Pro with ATI 5550 -- Not great, but I generally game at lower resolutions. I got the monitor for those days when I work from home -- I get a LOT more done.
Some good information to be found HERE. Note that the 4th entry down might be JUST what you are looking for...
Riiiight. What if you need access to three or more windows, and need to switch back and forth between them quickly. Maybe copy-n-paste between them, and just plain compare them visually. I have three "meld" windows, and two bash windows open -- not to mention this browser and my windows-VM.
Right now, I arm running a 2560x1600 30" central monitor, and a pair of 1200x1600 (portrait mode) on either side. So, my desktop is 4960x1600 (almost 8 million pixels). I am using every square inch, and could probably use a little more.
I got so spoiled by this, I decided to buy a 2560x1600 for home use -- and I will never go back.