The long term effects of looking at a computer monitor that is running at a different refresh rate than the flourescents causes eyestrain and headaches.
Buying a better grade of fluoro will get you a better phosphor coating with better energy retention, and hopefully less output dip in the gap between pulses. I really can't notice the flickering using ( relatively expensive ) compact fluorescent bulbs. I dunno, YMMV.
If you're worried about nefarious micropayment technologies stealing your privacy, don't use them. However, not everyone is on your crusade.
Spare us your naivete... Every single power we've given to the government to date has been abused.
And spare us the hyperbole, please. I can't recall horror stories of the United States Geological Survey raging out of control and abusing their powers, or the Treasury maliciously printing money at people. What about the Federal Power to establish Post offices? Ripe for civil rights violations, that one.
I'm so sick of you fools who always assume... ( blah blah blah )
Honest question - do you talk to people you meet in the street / in the Boardroom / in the coffeeshop like this? If so, do you have any friends at all? If not, why do you do it to people here?
All these one shot pieces seem ( to me ) to be flying in the face of what Lego is supposed to be about, anyway. Maybe some good ( apart from the loss of Mindstorms ) will come from this.
Now I better go down to the store and buy a MS set like I've been hedging on for years.
Their live show was one of the coolest I've ever seen. They had three huge video screens behind the stage playing sampled video, and this this weird podium thing that had two arms... On the front of the arms were TVs with yet more sampled video, and then later in the show, they arms spun around and had lasers or something on the other side.
Yeah, EBN were an amazing band pioneering all this kind of stuff, and still going sadly unrecognised to this day ( tip: Telecommunications Breakdown is probably one of the best albums of the 90's, and had all this k00l multimedia shit bundled with it too ).
The swinging apparatus you described was also at some points mounted on the station wagon - it can be seen configured like this in the documentary Sonic Outlaws, which is awesome, and first turned me on to EBN, Negativland and that style of music in general. Anyone with an interest in fair use rights should view this documentary, as it features extensive coverage of the Island Records / Negativland lawsuit.
YLFI
P.S. Am very jealous you were lucky enough to see them live.
Koalas at least, while sadly getting rarer are still present in some residential areas on New South Wales. Where I grew up, on the Northern Beaches, they weren't an uncommon sight, but land clearing breaks up tree corridors, which tends to disrupt their living patterns.
Diagonally across the block I grew up on is an old, pitted sign nailed up a tree warning that this area is a Koala sanctuary zone. But I haven't seen a Koala there for many years now.
If Google has a plan for the capital, fine. But if it doesn't, this could be very bad.
I am told that U.S. companies with more than a certain number N private investors ( 500? ) are required to open the door to all and sundry. I've also heard this is why Google is going to IPO - as a regulatory requirement.
True story? I don't know anything about the US Stock Market.
The hypocrisy of Forbes referring to Slashdot as an "echo chamber" is apparently lost on you.
Cows can recognise other cows. If Forbes is an 'echo chamber', it in no way invalidates their conclusion that Slashdot is the same.
YLFI
Re:Proud to be a Heretic!
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Unpopular opinions are moderated away as trolls or flamebait. Low Karma users don't get modpoints, and neither ( I think ) do those who have spent long periods plumbing the Karma abyss such as myself, even if they subsequently acquire truly rocking Karma.
Hence, the cycle perpetuates itself. 'Proper' opinion is indirectly rewared with the ability to silence dissenters ( which should make your skin crawl ), and people tired of having their opinions reduced to inaudibility by down moderation ( particularly cute is the unparryable 'overrated' on comments that have never been moderated up - is the implication that the commentator does not deserve to have a voice? ) will also go elsewhere. With some justification. I don't think it's any great mystery why this happens. In fact, I think it's by design, although perhaps the design is to promote harmonious interaction as opposed to a thought monoculture.
Slashdot is what slashdot is, and people behave the same way online as they do off. Cliques will form, certain ideas will be branded as heretical, others will be held up as the shining truth. I guess that's just the way it goes. My advice is to not take the internet so seriously, and look at it as a kid would look at playground full of interesting rides, things to do, bugs to find under leaves etc. It causes a lot less stress that way.
Imagine...Restraunts would flock to buy these $3000 plastic boxes for each and every one of their $3.50/hr plus tips waitresses. They would do it because it would be so much more efficient than constantly buying 59 cent order pad booklets once a week.
To my considerable astonishment, I've noticed that one of the noodle bars I sometimes eat in along the Cocklebay Wharf ( Wagamama ) uses something like this - they appear to be some kind of mutant palmpilots with wireless packs bolted on the back. I totally agree with your assessment, what a waste of money.
If I could just get my CueCat to work with Windows XP...I've tried Catnip and YourCueCat drivers with no success yet. (I wonder if it could have anything to do with how I use a USB keyboard, so just have the 'cat plugged into the PS/2 slot without any keyboard attached to its other end?)
I have never seen a cuecat, but back when I was an undergraduate in... 2000? I used to write point of sale software for a small house. I spent a lot of time screwing around with barcode readers. Now, if the Cuecat is a standard PS/2 or AT wedge device, the following idle speculation might be of some use to you.
Every now and then I run accross finicky motherboards that once you unplug the keyboard from them, absolutely refuse to recognise that there's one there until you reboot them, no matter how many times you plug it in again. One of my linux boxes used to do this, and it pissed me off because I wanted to use it with an input switcher. So I assume that at boot-time, and thereafter, the host occasionally 'pings' the keyboard to see if there's anything there, or checks a line voltage, or whatever.
I assume that the barcode reader does not mimic these responses so as not to confuse the host, so if you have no keyboard, the port is probably reporting back as 'unused'. So yeah, I'd plug a keyboard in ( in fact, I would have tested this in the first five minutes - surprised you haven't either ), and if it works, bust open a cheap keyboard to just separate the controller pcb, which is tiny, and the lead, and hook those up as a kind of PS/2 terminator.
Let me know how it turns out. Don't know what this deal is with drivers you mention, by the way, nearly all scanners of this type just pretend to be hitting buttons on a PS/2 keyboard - no drivers required.
X-files, Xtreme, Windows XP and X-Box are all part of this PR-powered phenomenon," said John Casnig of Kingston, Ontario.
The X-Files debuted in 1993, well ahead of the "PR-powered phenomonon" ( Phenomenon - now there's an overused word ) of using X in product branding. The X in "X-Games", "X-Box", "X-Wife" refers to 'extreme' ( which, yes, is a trite marketing cliche ). The X in "X-Files" is supposed to connote ideas of mystery or of an unknown quantity.
And of course, there's the following explanation, given in Season 5's Travelers:
Dales: X-Files?
Dorothy: Yes. Unsolved cases. I file them under 'X'.
Dales: Why don't you file them under 'U'... for Unsolved?
Dorothy: That's what I did until I ran out of room. Plenty of room in the 'X's.
Plenty of room in the 'X's indeed. Happy new year everyone.
On the other hand, you know you have someone who will probably follow you into the mouth of hell. While I agree that a certain level of ethics are required in a hire, this quality should not be overlooked, particularly if you have a bellicose internal corporate culture.
Btw, I have no problem with nine to fivers on my teams. I only want them to work with and for me - I'm not trying to take over their lives.
And since you've got all kinds of people contributing, you can sift through the info provided, and make your own decision.
Interesting. I would have thought that if I had the ability to make that call, I wouldn't need to read the Wikipedia article in question in the first place... ?
I love Treasure for games like "Mischief Makers", "Radiant Silvergun", and "Gaurdian Heroes" but this was a letdown.
Ikaruga was great also, possibly the best technical shooter I've ever played, and also produced by Treasure. ( Who I remember more for Bangai-O ).
To be frank, pretty much everything they touch turns to gold. I'd love to see some releases from them in 2004.
YLFI
P.S. This thing about 'non sequel games' is total bunk. Most original games are only 'original' in the sense that they're the first step in a franchise, not that they innovate in any way shape or form. My two favourite games at the moment ( Crimson Skies and MarioKart Doubledash ) both have ancedents on other systems, but they're still fantastic games.
A few people have wondered why the hell this was posted on Slashdot: I make no apologies about 'relevance' or whatever, but I'm looking for the opinions of people that have several years experience putting these bags through hell and seeing what holds up in the field, not just on the shop rack.
That guy with the suggestion about steel wire in the straps for instance - you're not going to hear that from a sales assistant in Best Buy.
The bag I had been using, while cheap, had stood up pretty well to a variety of abuse, and this stitching failure took me completely by surprise. This is the kind of pitfall I am hoping to avoid next-time.
After all the suggestions, I might swing by the local Crumpler retail store sometime - they seem to be a good mix of functionality and price, although the Al cases seem pretty nice too!
Allow publications on computer security to be done freely and thoroughly if tied to legitimate academic or corporate entities.
Woah, woah, woah! That sounds dangerously close to state vetting and approval of security professionals - and bang, there goes half of the field talent. "Oh, I'm sorry. We're running the DOE on AIX/Solaris boxes, so I'm afraid we're revoking your advisory license."
I'm 200+ pages into it (I bought it the day it came out and agree with the uphill battle comparision mentioned above) and it feels like no end is in sight.
Worse yet, Stephenson never seem to leave enough room at the end of the book to tie things up - you suddenly realise there's only six pages left under your right thumb, and there's no possible way the story can be wrapped up in time. I felt this way about Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. I have seen a friend literally throw Cryptonomicon down after realising this same point while reading it. Has this problem been solved in Quicksilver?
However, if you want an uphill novel battle experience that will never ever end, I suggest Atlas Shrugged. I read in response to a criticism that I should read it all the way through before bashing it, and that bastard stole nine months of my life.
Slashdot Mirror
Buying a better grade of fluoro will get you a better phosphor coating with better energy retention, and hopefully less output dip in the gap between pulses. I really can't notice the flickering using ( relatively expensive ) compact fluorescent bulbs. I dunno, YMMV.
YLFIIf you're worried about nefarious micropayment technologies stealing your privacy, don't use them. However, not everyone is on your crusade.
Spare us your naivete ... Every single power we've given to the government to date has been abused.
And spare us the hyperbole, please. I can't recall horror stories of the United States Geological Survey raging out of control and abusing their powers, or the Treasury maliciously printing money at people. What about the Federal Power to establish Post offices? Ripe for civil rights violations, that one.
I'm so sick of you fools who always assume ... ( blah blah blah )
Honest question - do you talk to people you meet in the street / in the Boardroom / in the coffeeshop like this? If so, do you have any friends at all? If not, why do you do it to people here?
YLFIAll these one shot pieces seem ( to me ) to be flying in the face of what Lego is supposed to be about, anyway. Maybe some good ( apart from the loss of Mindstorms ) will come from this.
Now I better go down to the store and buy a MS set like I've been hedging on for years.
-- YLFIYeah, EBN were an amazing band pioneering all this kind of stuff, and still going sadly unrecognised to this day ( tip: Telecommunications Breakdown is probably one of the best albums of the 90's, and had all this k00l multimedia shit bundled with it too ).
The swinging apparatus you described was also at some points mounted on the station wagon - it can be seen configured like this in the documentary Sonic Outlaws, which is awesome, and first turned me on to EBN, Negativland and that style of music in general. Anyone with an interest in fair use rights should view this documentary, as it features extensive coverage of the Island Records / Negativland lawsuit.
YLFIP.S. Am very jealous you were lucky enough to see them live.
Koalas at least, while sadly getting rarer are still present in some residential areas on New South Wales. Where I grew up, on the Northern Beaches, they weren't an uncommon sight, but land clearing breaks up tree corridors, which tends to disrupt their living patterns.
Diagonally across the block I grew up on is an old, pitted sign nailed up a tree warning that this area is a Koala sanctuary zone. But I haven't seen a Koala there for many years now.
-- YLFIIf you liked SM, you should try out Ikaruga, another Treasure game. It's out for Dreamcast and Gamecube, and there was an arcade version too.
I played it on Dreamcast. Great game, amazed they managed to fit it into 17mb.
-- YLFII am told that U.S. companies with more than a certain number N private investors ( 500? ) are required to open the door to all and sundry. I've also heard this is why Google is going to IPO - as a regulatory requirement.
True story? I don't know anything about the US Stock Market.
YLFICows can recognise other cows. If Forbes is an 'echo chamber', it in no way invalidates their conclusion that Slashdot is the same.
YLFIUnpopular opinions are moderated away as trolls or flamebait. Low Karma users don't get modpoints, and neither ( I think ) do those who have spent long periods plumbing the Karma abyss such as myself, even if they subsequently acquire truly rocking Karma.
Hence, the cycle perpetuates itself. 'Proper' opinion is indirectly rewared with the ability to silence dissenters ( which should make your skin crawl ), and people tired of having their opinions reduced to inaudibility by down moderation ( particularly cute is the unparryable 'overrated' on comments that have never been moderated up - is the implication that the commentator does not deserve to have a voice? ) will also go elsewhere. With some justification. I don't think it's any great mystery why this happens. In fact, I think it's by design, although perhaps the design is to promote harmonious interaction as opposed to a thought monoculture.
Slashdot is what slashdot is, and people behave the same way online as they do off. Cliques will form, certain ideas will be branded as heretical, others will be held up as the shining truth. I guess that's just the way it goes. My advice is to not take the internet so seriously, and look at it as a kid would look at playground full of interesting rides, things to do, bugs to find under leaves etc. It causes a lot less stress that way.
YLFIWell, mark it down as overrated if you must, this comment made me laugh out loud.
To my considerable astonishment, I've noticed that one of the noodle bars I sometimes eat in along the Cocklebay Wharf ( Wagamama ) uses something like this - they appear to be some kind of mutant palmpilots with wireless packs bolted on the back. I totally agree with your assessment, what a waste of money.
I have never seen a cuecat, but back when I was an undergraduate in ... 2000? I used to write point of sale software for a small house. I spent a lot of time screwing around with barcode readers. Now, if the Cuecat is a standard PS/2 or AT wedge device, the following idle speculation might be of some use to you.
Every now and then I run accross finicky motherboards that once you unplug the keyboard from them, absolutely refuse to recognise that there's one there until you reboot them, no matter how many times you plug it in again. One of my linux boxes used to do this, and it pissed me off because I wanted to use it with an input switcher. So I assume that at boot-time, and thereafter, the host occasionally 'pings' the keyboard to see if there's anything there, or checks a line voltage, or whatever.
I assume that the barcode reader does not mimic these responses so as not to confuse the host, so if you have no keyboard, the port is probably reporting back as 'unused'. So yeah, I'd plug a keyboard in ( in fact, I would have tested this in the first five minutes - surprised you haven't either ), and if it works, bust open a cheap keyboard to just separate the controller pcb, which is tiny, and the lead, and hook those up as a kind of PS/2 terminator.
Let me know how it turns out. Don't know what this deal is with drivers you mention, by the way, nearly all scanners of this type just pretend to be hitting buttons on a PS/2 keyboard - no drivers required.
YLFIHoly crap, is it really 4am?
The X-Files debuted in 1993, well ahead of the "PR-powered phenomonon" ( Phenomenon - now there's an overused word ) of using X in product branding. The X in "X-Games", "X-Box", "X-Wife" refers to 'extreme' ( which, yes, is a trite marketing cliche ). The X in "X-Files" is supposed to connote ideas of mystery or of an unknown quantity.
And of course, there's the following explanation, given in Season 5's Travelers:
Plenty of room in the 'X's indeed. Happy new year everyone.
YLFII reckon! Much further and he would have fallen off the side of the flat earth!
YLFIOn the other hand, you know you have someone who will probably follow you into the mouth of hell. While I agree that a certain level of ethics are required in a hire, this quality should not be overlooked, particularly if you have a bellicose internal corporate culture.
Btw, I have no problem with nine to fivers on my teams. I only want them to work with and for me - I'm not trying to take over their lives.
YLFIAll These Worlds Are Yours - Except Europa^H^H^H^H^H^HMars. Attempt No Landings There.
( Shamelessly stolen from Fark )Interesting. I would have thought that if I had the ability to make that call, I wouldn't need to read the Wikipedia article in question in the first place... ?
YLFIIkaruga was great also, possibly the best technical shooter I've ever played, and also produced by Treasure. ( Who I remember more for Bangai-O ).
To be frank, pretty much everything they touch turns to gold. I'd love to see some releases from them in 2004.
YLFIP.S. This thing about 'non sequel games' is total bunk. Most original games are only 'original' in the sense that they're the first step in a franchise, not that they innovate in any way shape or form. My two favourite games at the moment ( Crimson Skies and MarioKart Doubledash ) both have ancedents on other systems, but they're still fantastic games.
A few people have wondered why the hell this was posted on Slashdot: I make no apologies about 'relevance' or whatever, but I'm looking for the opinions of people that have several years experience putting these bags through hell and seeing what holds up in the field, not just on the shop rack.
That guy with the suggestion about steel wire in the straps for instance - you're not going to hear that from a sales assistant in Best Buy.
The bag I had been using, while cheap, had stood up pretty well to a variety of abuse, and this stitching failure took me completely by surprise. This is the kind of pitfall I am hoping to avoid next-time.
After all the suggestions, I might swing by the local Crumpler retail store sometime - they seem to be a good mix of functionality and price, although the Al cases seem pretty nice too!
YLFIBah! I bemoan it constantly. :-P
YLFIHis problem is that he didn't separate out his comment out from the quoted chunk - he also wrote:
that would be a good reminder for the editors, too...Do you have stairs in your house?
YLFIWoah, woah, woah! That sounds dangerously close to state vetting and approval of security professionals - and bang, there goes half of the field talent. "Oh, I'm sorry. We're running the DOE on AIX/Solaris boxes, so I'm afraid we're revoking your advisory license."
YLFIWorse yet, Stephenson never seem to leave enough room at the end of the book to tie things up - you suddenly realise there's only six pages left under your right thumb, and there's no possible way the story can be wrapped up in time. I felt this way about Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. I have seen a friend literally throw Cryptonomicon down after realising this same point while reading it. Has this problem been solved in Quicksilver?
However, if you want an uphill novel battle experience that will never ever end, I suggest Atlas Shrugged. I read in response to a criticism that I should read it all the way through before bashing it, and that bastard stole nine months of my life.
YLFIBleah, no it's not, sorry.
YLFI