We never really use our inkjet at home. Most stuff gets sent to the ageing (7 y/o) Panasonic b/w laser printer, which was only 200UKP new - probably 120UKP for today's equivalent - and is on only its third toner cartridge.
Digital photos are printed on proper photographic paper using a web-based service which returns the (non-fading, and remarkably cheap) prints in the post two days later.
The BBC were running a story yesterday about the diminishing value of degrees. Basically, the UK Govt want 50% of people to go to university and the increase in lifetime earnings you can get as a graduate is falling proportionately. It doesn't help that half the universities are rebranded polytechnics (which used to be the weaker, more vocational alternative) and you can do degrees in really crappy and pointless subjects.
It annoys me because my 2:1 chemical engineering degree (1990) was almost full-time hours and it was HARD. These days employers expect every graduate to have a 2:1 and even then half of them need watering.
If you can't tell the difference between a 128k compressed version and the original CD, maybe that audiophile equipment is wasted on you. I know AAC is supposed to be better than MP3, but you're still throwing away *most* of the information in the track. Hell, I know people who don't think 44.1kHz CD is good enough and still listen to their old LPs on terrifyingly expensive Linn turntables.
I only have experience of MP3 personally, but I'd say that 128k is only good enough for the car, while 256k is good enough for serious listening. There are some people who can tell the difference between 256k and the original CD, but not me.
Shame the article doesn't mention the 50-100 items of anti-British/neo-Nazi spam many people received last month, which was believed to have been sent out by zombie PCs. I wouldn't be surprised if that was some kind of test of a new mass-mailing network; that many messages on one subject within a single day was unprecendented.
Oh yeah, and that worm icon - come on, timothy, it's a caterpillar, surely.
I think you underestimate the problems faced by the record companies. Due to aggressive anti-drug campaigns by the American and Colobian givenments, the price of cocaine remians at sky-high levels. Have you ever got a quote for a guitar-shaped swimming pool or a heated driveway recently? And face it, when you're the wrong side of 50 you have to buy those groupies a LOT of stuff before they'll put out.
Car alternators are around 90% efficient. They do this by having no permanent magnets, like the motor in the story (clue: a generator is just a motor in reverse), so they can carefully control the magnetic field as the shaft speed increases. The only downside is that the field coils need a small power source to initially excite them, which is why you can't bump-start a car with a *totally* dead battery - the alternator won't start producing electricity.
Bicycle generators [1] are nowhere near as efficient with their permanent magnets. My 110UKP (yes, really) German hub dynamo scrapes 60% efficiency at 15mph and gets worse at higher speeds.
Unfortunately the short-term effect of cheaper LCDs has been for people to toss out millions of perfectly good CRTs with years of useful life left in them - just for fashion, in most cases. It's a temporary effect, but it's very significant.
Just think, if that ape from "2001" had thought to patent "a method of killing opponents using a weapon", he'd now have all the bananas he could eat from EA and Activision;-)
...that the "best ones", i.e. hot chicks and celebs, escape onto the Internet, like the "Flash Mountain" site (which, for the uninitiated, contains pictures smuggled out of the Flash ride where people have, well, flashed).
According to the backstory, Tarkin was challenging Palpatine for Emperor at one point, so this could be correct.
What's more puzzling is why Palpatine keeps Vader on the payroll at all, when he allows the Death Star to be destroyed, lets Luke escape in ESB and is clearly treacherous ("join me, and we will rule the galaxy as father and son"). I'd have relegated him to droid-polishing duties after Ep IV.
MASTER STALLMAN: Not if anything to do with it I have!
A protracted light saber fight ensues, at the end of which the defeated MASTER STALLMAN escapes DARTH GEEKIOUS by crawling through a Unix pipe and going into self-imposed exile in the GNU system. There he waits until the New Hope, LINUS PENGUINSTALKER is ready to begin his training in the arts of the VI KNIGHTS.
It was the Death Star, but not right after the previous scene- a flash forward scene to the construction project a few years prior to the Battle of Yavin.
Nah...Grand Moff Tarkin is way too young. I think it's just a mistake, but it's still an incredibly cool scene for us ageing fans.
It's wartime. Everything is dirty and cheaply made. Look at Liberty Ships from WW2 or the state of British trains, which didn't get cleaned for 6 years (and all the nice streamlined engines had their shiny streamlining removed for easier maintenance).
While watching ANH last night, I thought "what's the point of getting the Death Star plans to the rebels, seeing as you're already on board? Just get R2D2 to stick a virus in the central computer so it flies upside down into the nearest planet". Then my wife pointed out that that wouldn't have made a very exciting film.
DeBeers was actually the name of the Afrikaner farmers who originally owned the land on which the diamond pipe was found. The company that bought the land and exploited the pipe was run by Cecil Rhodes, but the name DeBeers was kept for one of the mines and eventually the whole company was named DeBeers, although the DeBeers family had nothing to do with it.Wikipedia article
Slashdot Mirror
Digital photos are printed on proper photographic paper using a web-based service which returns the (non-fading, and remarkably cheap) prints in the post two days later.
It annoys me because my 2:1 chemical engineering degree (1990) was almost full-time hours and it was HARD. These days employers expect every graduate to have a 2:1 and even then half of them need watering.
You are the Comic Shop Guy from The Simpsons and ICMFP.
I only have experience of MP3 personally, but I'd say that 128k is only good enough for the car, while 256k is good enough for serious listening. There are some people who can tell the difference between 256k and the original CD, but not me.
...if it leaves that cool spiralling trail in the air.
Oh yeah, and that worm icon - come on, timothy, it's a caterpillar, surely.
DMCA? Surely this is doomed unless the server is hosted somewhere out of reach of the US jurisdiction.
Sounds like all men over the age of 30 ;-)
I think you underestimate the problems faced by the record companies. Due to aggressive anti-drug campaigns by the American and Colobian givenments, the price of cocaine remians at sky-high levels. Have you ever got a quote for a guitar-shaped swimming pool or a heated driveway recently? And face it, when you're the wrong side of 50 you have to buy those groupies a LOT of stuff before they'll put out.
- What's yellow and lives off dead beetles?
- Yoko Ono.
Why not simply turn away anyone who has bad teeth, a parrot on their shoulder, large gold earrings (if male) and says "Yarrr!" a lot?
Ha ha!
Bicycle generators [1] are nowhere near as efficient with their permanent magnets. My 110UKP (yes, really) German hub dynamo scrapes 60% efficiency at 15mph and gets worse at higher speeds.
[1] still alternators; they make AC
Unfortunately the short-term effect of cheaper LCDs has been for people to toss out millions of perfectly good CRTs with years of useful life left in them - just for fashion, in most cases. It's a temporary effect, but it's very significant.
Just think, if that ape from "2001" had thought to patent "a method of killing opponents using a weapon", he'd now have all the bananas he could eat from EA and Activision ;-)
...that the "best ones", i.e. hot chicks and celebs, escape onto the Internet, like the "Flash Mountain" site (which, for the uninitiated, contains pictures smuggled out of the Flash ride where people have, well, flashed).
According to the backstory, Tarkin was challenging Palpatine for Emperor at one point, so this could be correct.
What's more puzzling is why Palpatine keeps Vader on the payroll at all, when he allows the Death Star to be destroyed, lets Luke escape in ESB and is clearly treacherous ("join me, and we will rule the galaxy as father and son"). I'd have relegated him to droid-polishing duties after Ep IV.
I nominate Billie Piper to play the Gelfling heroine. She doesn't even need makeup.
A protracted light saber fight ensues, at the end of which the defeated MASTER STALLMAN escapes DARTH GEEKIOUS by crawling through a Unix pipe and going into self-imposed exile in the GNU system. There he waits until the New Hope, LINUS PENGUINSTALKER is ready to begin his training in the arts of the VI KNIGHTS.
...it gave us the world's first example of -35 day warez.
Nah...Grand Moff Tarkin is way too young. I think it's just a mistake, but it's still an incredibly cool scene for us ageing fans.
It's wartime. Everything is dirty and cheaply made. Look at Liberty Ships from WW2 or the state of British trains, which didn't get cleaned for 6 years (and all the nice streamlined engines had their shiny streamlining removed for easier maintenance).
By the way, I thought ROTS r0X0red.
Google for "jewel bearings"...
DeBeers was actually the name of the Afrikaner farmers who originally owned the land on which the diamond pipe was found. The company that bought the land and exploited the pipe was run by Cecil Rhodes, but the name DeBeers was kept for one of the mines and eventually the whole company was named DeBeers, although the DeBeers family had nothing to do with it.Wikipedia article