We the people, pay for the National Weather Service in the form of our tax dollars (2003 $800M, 2004 $824M). "The National Weather Service provides weather, hydrologic and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and oceans." (blurb ripped from Washington Technology.com)
I see no reason that we should have to pay for Accuweather to make a pretty graphic or the like. By opening up the data on the Internet you provide researchers, hobbyists, and tinkerers with a means to get up-to-date and accurate weather information easily as well as historical data.
NWS also talks about their Information Quality guidelines here - detailing their information and what is available.
Who knows maybe someone will develop a Weather@Home model which runs on the same principle as SETI@Home. It would be pretty cool to start doing climate models outside of the governments and universties Research labs...
I wonder if someone can throw some Mad Cow tainted meat into the "neuron" production line and produce a whole generation of robots which "fall" down and act erratically...
OR
they could use faulty pentium processors and a Windows OS...
I went through the same problem of looking for a camera to record vacations and my children growing up. I ended up buying a SONY DCR-TRV50 when they came out a few years back. I still use it all the time.
I would recommend buying a collapsible tripod as well for those times you record long plays, talent shows, etc. (holding a camera for a long time can put your arm to sleep no matter how light they are)
Also, if you plan on doing digital editing on your computer (and who doesn't) get the fastest transfer capability from the videocam to the PC. The DCR-TRV50 has firewire which makes editing a snap.
Enjoy!
I have to agree with the others that the cable companies claims of signal loss are generally more BS than fact.
I have had DirectTV since early 1996 (BTW - I lived in an apartment at the time and had the dish on my balcony) and will never give it up. The satellite picture quality is far above cable (even digital in my area) - with an occasional artifact (very rare). I purchased a 57" 16:9 TV and the local channels (which are cable - I have Road Runner) come out fuzzy compared to the DirecTV signal. If you think about it, where do most cable providers get their signal from? Satellite...
The choice of stations is also far beyond cable. You get East Coast and West Coast versions of most major movie channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz!, etc.) as well as uncommon channels (Sundance, Independent Film Channel). It was also one of the few stations which carried BBC America, FX and SCI FI until the cable company picked some of them up as well. Cost of these channels from the cable company is usually around $50+ more than what you pay for from DirecTV.
I updated my satellite receiver to a Sony SAT-T60 DirectTivo a few years back and this thing rocks! With a little linux "magic" and Google searching you can have a large MPEG recorder that allows you to dump shows to your PC for editing (bye bye commercials) and burning to DVD or CD. The satellite signal comes in digital format to start so no analog to digital conversion is needed. You can also record two shows at a time or record a show and watch another...
The only downside was the lack of local channels in some markets, but this is being addressed for my area and local channels will soon be carried.
As for blackouts, does not happen unless you screw up the dish setup. As long as snow or rain or ice do not build up on the dish (which it shouldn't if mounted properly - you don't lose the signal, even in heavy storms.
I will never use cable for anything other than Internet access. I plan on upgrading to a HD DirectTV for the HD signals when a decent HD DirectTivo unit comes out.
BTW, if you have kids - there are always good kid shows on the Family Channels (Noggin, PBS Kids, The Science Channel, Nickelodeon, etc.)
BTW, if after all this you buy cable, tell them you are considering getting satellite cable instead and they will most likely cut you a good deal on your subscription costs...
At work, I use the category option within Outlook to assign categories to the various messages. Using the filters you can setup things to automatically categorize information.
In your example you could assign the category as:
Vendor, Projectname
You could then group and sort your email with one click by clicking on the Category Column.
I group my email in this fashion and do not have to use the Search feature that often. I get around 400 messages per day - from various projects I manage and system status messages (another 200-300 statuses get automatically deleted if there is no warning or failure key word in them)...
My.02
A search on Google shows that E_P_paper_v2.pdf is a file associated with his networkgeography site. Someone must have have pulled it down by now... All terrorists can't be stupid (otherwise 9/11 would not have occurred).
Having this information available to the government is good so they can put in redundancies at key choke points. If they sit on their arse forever and hope for the best, they are doing all of us a serious injustice. This information is mostly public domain and needs to be for construction purposes, city planning, etc.
If they were smart they should have leaked misinformation and used it catch the terrorists.
Slashdot Mirror
I see no reason that we should have to pay for Accuweather to make a pretty graphic or the like. By opening up the data on the Internet you provide researchers, hobbyists, and tinkerers with a means to get up-to-date and accurate weather information easily as well as historical data.
NWS also talks about their Information Quality guidelines here - detailing their information and what is available.
Who knows maybe someone will develop a Weather@Home model which runs on the same principle as SETI@Home. It would be pretty cool to start doing climate models outside of the governments and universties Research labs...
Links to the old reviews captured at mlcsmith and another set of old reviews and finally a trial test at the toy factory
Wasn't (isn't) there still a run on this toy... Read the reviews... At Amazon's Toyrus section - the Nimbus Broom
OR
they could use faulty pentium processors and a Windows OS...
http://www.steves-digicams.com/digvideo.html
I went through the same problem of looking for a camera to record vacations and my children growing up. I ended up buying a SONY DCR-TRV50 when they came out a few years back. I still use it all the time.
I would recommend buying a collapsible tripod as well for those times you record long plays, talent shows, etc. (holding a camera for a long time can put your arm to sleep no matter how light they are)
Also, if you plan on doing digital editing on your computer (and who doesn't) get the fastest transfer capability from the videocam to the PC. The DCR-TRV50 has firewire which makes editing a snap. Enjoy!
If Pee Wee Herman used the station before you came in... It's probably not glue on the keyboards...
I have had DirectTV since early 1996 (BTW - I lived in an apartment at the time and had the dish on my balcony) and will never give it up. The satellite picture quality is far above cable (even digital in my area) - with an occasional artifact (very rare). I purchased a 57" 16:9 TV and the local channels (which are cable - I have Road Runner) come out fuzzy compared to the DirecTV signal. If you think about it, where do most cable providers get their signal from? Satellite...
The choice of stations is also far beyond cable. You get East Coast and West Coast versions of most major movie channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz!, etc.) as well as uncommon channels (Sundance, Independent Film Channel). It was also one of the few stations which carried BBC America, FX and SCI FI until the cable company picked some of them up as well. Cost of these channels from the cable company is usually around $50+ more than what you pay for from DirecTV.
Here is a program listing of channels available:
DirectTV Programming Options
I updated my satellite receiver to a Sony SAT-T60 DirectTivo a few years back and this thing rocks! With a little linux "magic" and Google searching you can have a large MPEG recorder that allows you to dump shows to your PC for editing (bye bye commercials) and burning to DVD or CD. The satellite signal comes in digital format to start so no analog to digital conversion is needed. You can also record two shows at a time or record a show and watch another...
The only downside was the lack of local channels in some markets, but this is being addressed for my area and local channels will soon be carried.
As for blackouts, does not happen unless you screw up the dish setup. As long as snow or rain or ice do not build up on the dish (which it shouldn't if mounted properly - you don't lose the signal, even in heavy storms.
I will never use cable for anything other than Internet access. I plan on upgrading to a HD DirectTV for the HD signals when a decent HD DirectTivo unit comes out.
BTW, if you have kids - there are always good kid shows on the Family Channels (Noggin, PBS Kids, The Science Channel, Nickelodeon, etc.)
BTW, if after all this you buy cable, tell them you are considering getting satellite cable instead and they will most likely cut you a good deal on your subscription costs...
At work, I use the category option within Outlook to assign categories to the various messages. Using the filters you can setup things to automatically categorize information. In your example you could assign the category as: Vendor, Projectname You could then group and sort your email with one click by clicking on the Category Column. I group my email in this fashion and do not have to use the Search feature that often. I get around 400 messages per day - from various projects I manage and system status messages (another 200-300 statuses get automatically deleted if there is no warning or failure key word in them)... My .02
A search on Google shows that E_P_paper_v2.pdf is a file associated with his networkgeography site. Someone must have have pulled it down by now... All terrorists can't be stupid (otherwise 9/11 would not have occurred). Having this information available to the government is good so they can put in redundancies at key choke points. If they sit on their arse forever and hope for the best, they are doing all of us a serious injustice. This information is mostly public domain and needs to be for construction purposes, city planning, etc. If they were smart they should have leaked misinformation and used it catch the terrorists.
I guess this kills the auction for all those terrorists buying and selling nuclear, chemical, biological weapons online...