I agree with your effect, but disagree on the cause.
The reason the strats and les pauls are so popular is that they were once great guitars. Back when they were made in America with big, fat frets and big, fat pickups, all of which produced big, fat sound. Now most of them come from Korea and even the few still made in the US are inferior to their predecessors.
Also, there hasn't been much technology to improve. You had a big explosion during the 50s and 60s, guys like Hendrix and Pink Floyd and Zeppelin building their own effects boxes (okay, their engineers did it, whatever). But there just isn't a whole lot of room for the guitar field to grow. Once you dick with it too much it stops being a guitar and becomes something... um, else.
Yoooohoooo, where's my coffee? I don't even know if that was coherent.
What's really funny is that the one guy corrected me with a line from The Princess Bride, one of the other three in the Triumvirate.
There were three movies we'd watch endlessly as kids: The Three Amigos, The Princess Bride, and Willow. I could probably still do any one of those movies line for line. Labyrinth fit in occasionally, but even back then we knew there was just something wrong with David Bowie's pants.
I agree. My physics book was a hundred and thirty bucks, and I didn't mind since it was monstrous and was used for three semesters. There are books that are worth it.
Unfortunately, every author out there thinks that their "Functional Programming in Haskell" book (Gawd, that was horrible, I was absolutely sobbing for Lisp by the end that one) is as useful and should be the same price as three semesters's worth of physics or calculus, even if it's a third of the length and a fifth of the content. Argh.
It's utter bullshit. I'm a CS major, and books typically run between $90 and $130. I've got some teachers who've managed to dislodge their heads from their asses and have started using books that aren't marketed as "textbooks" as textbooks.
There are C textbooks out there that are $100 and not nearly as useful as "Teach yourself C in 24 hours." Admittedly, that's not a great example since those books are so common, but here's a better example. I'm taking a software testing class that called for two textboooks: one was an "actual textbook" that runs about $120, but it's half the length and half the content of the $40 "Managing the testing process." It's crap.
I'm sick of looking for music on the web only to find crappy JPG scans of the score that you can barely read. And if you can read them, you're still screwed because you have to print them. I might be able to comfortably play my guitar in front of a monitor, but my cello? Nope.
It'd be nice to be able to read and print a high fidelity score. The best I've seen so far are PDFs and TEFs (which I think are proprietary). Yahoo for standards.
Mario Golf as well. Neither me or my fiance golf, or even want to golf, but for some reason Mario Golf is WAY fun to play together.
BTW, the new Mario Kart is just about the same as the old one, there're only one or two minor differences, the game itself is almost exactly the same (modulo new characters and levels).
Not a bad idea. I like the "clean-room" aspect of keeping electronics seperate from the rest of the projects-- I've got a '69 Chevy C-10 stepside, along with the tools so I know all about the mess.
I think I saw the magazine you're talking about; it was the recent "Tools & Shops" edition of Fine Woodworking. The problem I had with that design is that he had his tools resting on those rolling units, and open shelves and drawers on the side of them. No dust collection system is perfect, and that seems like a mess to clean. I'd at least put some hinged doors to keep the majority of the crud out.
I think I might compromise the two ideas (since there's not enough room in the house). I might put the electronics stuff in a smallish corner of the garage (can also do clean jobs like carburetor rebuilding there), and a freestanding bench (similar to the one that same issue of Fine Woodworking) in the middle for messy things like finishing, hand planing, bearing packing and so on. I like the rolling bases idea-- maybe not for large tools like the tablesaw, but it's perfect for drillpresses, bandsaws, planers (and if I plan right, I can use the bench as long-stock support for the tablesaw and planer... hmmm.)
But you reminded me that I forgot the single most important part of the shop: the brewery. I'll have to look into that.
There's an old hollow tree
Down the road a here from me,
Where you lay down a dollar or two.
Come back again and when you come 'round the bend
There's a jug full a good ol mountain dew!
chorus They call it that old mountain dew, And them that refuse it are few. I'll hush up my mug if you'll fill up my jug With that good old mountain dew!
Well my old Uncle Nort,
He was sawed off an short
Only measured bout five foot two.
But he felt like giant when he got him a pint
Of that good old mountain dew!
it goes on for a while like that. I recommend Flatt & Scruggs version, from their Live at Carnegie Hall album.
What is the speed, of my Cox High-Speed Internet service?
Downstream data moving from the Internet to your computer is configured at 3 megabits/second (Mbps). Upstream data moving from your computer to the Internet is configured at 256 kilobits/second (Kbps). By setting the network equipment at these levels, we are able to deliver consistent high-speed Internet service.
I bought an 'unlimited' service. I asked you if the Cox High-Speed Internet service is rate limited, and you said no. This doesn't sound like the 'unlimited' service I signed up for. What happened?
Cox provides, as advertised, unlimited access to the Internet. However, Cox neither advertises nor provides unlimited service; as bandwidth is a finite commodity. Cox High Speed Internet is still advertised as being "downstream speeds up to 100 times faster than a 28.8 telephone modem" and remains the best service, quality, features, and speed for the price.
1. Maximum downstream speed: 3 megabits per second
2. Maximum upstream speed: 256 kilobits per second
3. Maximum monthly consumption cap: 30 gigabytes downstream; 7.5 gigabytes upstream
4. Size per email message: 5 megabytes
5. Size per email account/address: 10 megabytes
6. Personal WebSpace account size: 10 megabytes of disk space per email address
7. Personal WebSpace traffic: 300 megabytes of traffic per month (for visitors viewing your pages)
Nope. The best example I can think of is my linear algebra class about two years ago.
The teacher would allow any calculator you wanted, short of a laptop (I think the the TI-92+ was okay). So you had a calculator capable of doing any matrix manipulation you needed, but if you 1) couldn't figure out how to use the Gaussian Poo Function or 2) Couldn't figure out what the answer meant in the frame of the question, you were hosed.
This meant a lot more theoretical, no-calculating-type questions, as well as tougher questions that aren't simply "What is [some matrix] carried to the fourth power?" I think it's great since you don't spend your entire test time doing menial calculations.
Another type of question they'll ask do dodge the calculator bullet is, "Show the first five steps of this calculation," or "Show the intermediate result of this calculation." The point is that you can do grunt-math on the calc but still have to understand the processes.
TEachers won't dig that. It was hard enough to get teachers to accept graphing calculators at all, let alone something that teachers will see as a full-fledged computer.
Of course, all it means is that the teachers have to give tests that prove you know HOW to do something with formulae, not just that you can memorize them. I always hated that "Memorize the first four pages of your integral table book" shit. If it's a common integral, you remember it. If it's not, well, that's why they wrote the book. Personally, I think all this technology in the classroom is great.
The whoop is that MD5 is often used for "fingerprinting" or other unique identification on the internet (et al). Since we all know that what can go wrong will, the question is the definition and accuracy of the infamous phrase "computationally infeasible."
Basically, in a world where everything was based on a thumbprint, would you want even the smallest chance, no matter how statistically unlikely, that someone else had the same thumbprint as you?
Along those lines, I worked in an arcade for a while in high school. If you go in on a slow rainy day and ask the monkey behind the counter nicely, I'm sure he'll open up the machine and let you take a look at the guts, as well as take whatever measurements you need. I did the same thing with a foosball table once, the guy was amazed I was going to build one and was totally helpful.
Depending on how purty and robust you want it, look into laminate bending with plywood. It's the same thing they do with skateboards. The radius at the "jump" might be a bit much for plywood, I can't remember how steep it is, but use some nice hardwood ply (personally, I like dark wood... mahogany or walnut would be nice, if you can find & afford it) and you'll have something much cooler than, for example, fiberglassing it. Put a nice hard finish on it and it'll last forever.
Long URLs let you easily bookmark shit. POST data, session stuff, whatever else, don't. That in mind, how many books does amazon carry? Millions maybe? You need 6 digits for that. How many customers? Millions? 6 more digits. Unique orders? Millions? 6 more digits. How much other identifying data that might be needed to bookmark a page? Add more parameters. It piles up real quickly.
Yup. Anytime a black dude in a red shirt went on an away mission, you knew he was toast. The hot chicks in the blue shirts always ended up safe, but had to go through some sort of plot twist first (e.g. the "Apollo" episode) and then get rescued by the crew.
Ahh, if you want that stuff we can import it. If you want to be a writer or musician (I am a musician myself), that's what hobbies are for.
You're right, history would probably have to be studied. Maybe we do this by not just studying a long string of events, but put them in a context: "The technicological advancements that came out of World War I included...", "Today we will study atomic weaponry and its effects on the world..." and so on?
Hm, you're right, I haven't thought this through. So let's see.
My first reaction is split. On one hand, I think the leaders of the community should make the decision based solely on scientific merit-- whichever seems most beneficial (long-term? short-term? I don't know) to society gets chosen first. But I realize that leader immediately violate my no-politican law. My other thought leans dangerously close to socialism-- but if there's anywhere that could succeed, wouldn't it be in this sort of society? The problem is that we'd need an industrial base as well, and that sort of throws off the balance. But if we keep the industrial base sufficiently advanced as well, then we need scientists to run the machines. Workers at the rubber/plastic/metal plants work solely for the knowledge that they can open run of the grocery store after work. But then, who runs the grocery store? Robots? Possibly, it's not like we need checkers. The key would be to keep each sector dependent on at least one other. But when everything's automated, what happens to population increase and job decrease? You either have to have enough resources and room to expand forever or enforce birth control, which is WAY too political to get into.
So we need more room, the island won't cut it for long. Okay folks, here's the plan: we live on the island until we perfect space travel and terraforming, then we go grab one of those other planets that no one's using right now.
Crap, you're probably right, it's impossible to avoid politics. Maybe our theoretical framework and scientific analysis of politics, combined with a fresh slate (i.e. no status quo to fight with) will give us a working scenario. Maybe we just have to develop a scientific method for examining political situations and come up with an ideal way of solving problems. Maybe...
Slashdot Mirror
The reason the strats and les pauls are so popular is that they were once great guitars. Back when they were made in America with big, fat frets and big, fat pickups, all of which produced big, fat sound. Now most of them come from Korea and even the few still made in the US are inferior to their predecessors.
Also, there hasn't been much technology to improve. You had a big explosion during the 50s and 60s, guys like Hendrix and Pink Floyd and Zeppelin building their own effects boxes (okay, their engineers did it, whatever). But there just isn't a whole lot of room for the guitar field to grow. Once you dick with it too much it stops being a guitar and becomes something... um, else.
Yoooohoooo, where's my coffee? I don't even know if that was coherent.
Stench? The air is sweet, and fragrant!
There were three movies we'd watch endlessly as kids: The Three Amigos, The Princess Bride, and Willow. I could probably still do any one of those movies line for line. Labyrinth fit in occasionally, but even back then we knew there was just something wrong with David Bowie's pants.
Infamous is when you're more than famous. This desktop KDE, he's not just famous, he's infamous.
Unfortunately, every author out there thinks that their "Functional Programming in Haskell" book (Gawd, that was horrible, I was absolutely sobbing for Lisp by the end that one) is as useful and should be the same price as three semesters's worth of physics or calculus, even if it's a third of the length and a fifth of the content. Argh.
There are C textbooks out there that are $100 and not nearly as useful as "Teach yourself C in 24 hours." Admittedly, that's not a great example since those books are so common, but here's a better example. I'm taking a software testing class that called for two textboooks: one was an "actual textbook" that runs about $120, but it's half the length and half the content of the $40 "Managing the testing process." It's crap.
Crappety crap crap, as a matter of fact.
Sort of along those lines, be careful around #57. I learned that you have to be VERY careful when reading aloud about "Cunning Stunts."
A) Wanna go ride bikes?
It'd be nice to be able to read and print a high fidelity score. The best I've seen so far are PDFs and TEFs (which I think are proprietary). Yahoo for standards.
BTW, the new Mario Kart is just about the same as the old one, there're only one or two minor differences, the game itself is almost exactly the same (modulo new characters and levels).
I think I saw the magazine you're talking about; it was the recent "Tools & Shops" edition of Fine Woodworking. The problem I had with that design is that he had his tools resting on those rolling units, and open shelves and drawers on the side of them. No dust collection system is perfect, and that seems like a mess to clean. I'd at least put some hinged doors to keep the majority of the crud out.
I think I might compromise the two ideas (since there's not enough room in the house). I might put the electronics stuff in a smallish corner of the garage (can also do clean jobs like carburetor rebuilding there), and a freestanding bench (similar to the one that same issue of Fine Woodworking) in the middle for messy things like finishing, hand planing, bearing packing and so on. I like the rolling bases idea-- maybe not for large tools like the tablesaw, but it's perfect for drillpresses, bandsaws, planers (and if I plan right, I can use the bench as long-stock support for the tablesaw and planer... hmmm.)
But you reminded me that I forgot the single most important part of the shop: the brewery. I'll have to look into that.
L l
Down the road a here from me,
Where you lay down a dollar or two.
Come back again and when you come 'round the bend
There's a jug full a good ol mountain dew!
chorus
They call it that old mountain dew,
And them that refuse it are few.
I'll hush up my mug if you'll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew!
Well my old Uncle Nort,
He was sawed off an short
Only measured bout five foot two.
But he felt like giant when he got him a pint
Of that good old mountain dew!
it goes on for a while like that. I recommend Flatt & Scruggs version, from their Live at Carnegie Hall album.
(Offtopic? What's that?)
Here are some tidbits from their stuff:
The teacher would allow any calculator you wanted, short of a laptop (I think the the TI-92+ was okay). So you had a calculator capable of doing any matrix manipulation you needed, but if you 1) couldn't figure out how to use the Gaussian Poo Function or 2) Couldn't figure out what the answer meant in the frame of the question, you were hosed.
This meant a lot more theoretical, no-calculating-type questions, as well as tougher questions that aren't simply "What is [some matrix] carried to the fourth power?" I think it's great since you don't spend your entire test time doing menial calculations.
Another type of question they'll ask do dodge the calculator bullet is, "Show the first five steps of this calculation," or "Show the intermediate result of this calculation." The point is that you can do grunt-math on the calc but still have to understand the processes.
Of course, all it means is that the teachers have to give tests that prove you know HOW to do something with formulae, not just that you can memorize them. I always hated that "Memorize the first four pages of your integral table book" shit. If it's a common integral, you remember it. If it's not, well, that's why they wrote the book. Personally, I think all this technology in the classroom is great.
A hundred thousand pesos, to do a personal appearance with this guy El Guapo, who is probably the biggest actor to ever come out of Mexico!
Do two violations make a compliance?
These are the questions that plague mankind...
Basically, in a world where everything was based on a thumbprint, would you want even the smallest chance, no matter how statistically unlikely, that someone else had the same thumbprint as you?
Along those lines, I worked in an arcade for a while in high school. If you go in on a slow rainy day and ask the monkey behind the counter nicely, I'm sure he'll open up the machine and let you take a look at the guts, as well as take whatever measurements you need. I did the same thing with a foosball table once, the guy was amazed I was going to build one and was totally helpful.
Depending on how purty and robust you want it, look into laminate bending with plywood. It's the same thing they do with skateboards. The radius at the "jump" might be a bit much for plywood, I can't remember how steep it is, but use some nice hardwood ply (personally, I like dark wood... mahogany or walnut would be nice, if you can find & afford it) and you'll have something much cooler than, for example, fiberglassing it. Put a nice hard finish on it and it'll last forever.
Long URLs let you easily bookmark shit. POST data, session stuff, whatever else, don't. That in mind, how many books does amazon carry? Millions maybe? You need 6 digits for that. How many customers? Millions? 6 more digits. Unique orders? Millions? 6 more digits. How much other identifying data that might be needed to bookmark a page? Add more parameters. It piles up real quickly.
Yup. Anytime a black dude in a red shirt went on an away mission, you knew he was toast. The hot chicks in the blue shirts always ended up safe, but had to go through some sort of plot twist first (e.g. the "Apollo" episode) and then get rescued by the crew.
You're right, history would probably have to be studied. Maybe we do this by not just studying a long string of events, but put them in a context: "The technicological advancements that came out of World War I included...", "Today we will study atomic weaponry and its effects on the world..." and so on?
My first reaction is split. On one hand, I think the leaders of the community should make the decision based solely on scientific merit-- whichever seems most beneficial (long-term? short-term? I don't know) to society gets chosen first. But I realize that leader immediately violate my no-politican law. My other thought leans dangerously close to socialism-- but if there's anywhere that could succeed, wouldn't it be in this sort of society? The problem is that we'd need an industrial base as well, and that sort of throws off the balance. But if we keep the industrial base sufficiently advanced as well, then we need scientists to run the machines. Workers at the rubber/plastic/metal plants work solely for the knowledge that they can open run of the grocery store after work. But then, who runs the grocery store? Robots? Possibly, it's not like we need checkers. The key would be to keep each sector dependent on at least one other. But when everything's automated, what happens to population increase and job decrease? You either have to have enough resources and room to expand forever or enforce birth control, which is WAY too political to get into.
So we need more room, the island won't cut it for long. Okay folks, here's the plan: we live on the island until we perfect space travel and terraforming, then we go grab one of those other planets that no one's using right now.
Crap, you're probably right, it's impossible to avoid politics. Maybe our theoretical framework and scientific analysis of politics, combined with a fresh slate (i.e. no status quo to fight with) will give us a working scenario. Maybe we just have to develop a scientific method for examining political situations and come up with an ideal way of solving problems. Maybe...