What I assumed was that was the point of that specific Columbia launch. The SPACEHAB module, a platform for space research where the astronauts went inside, apparently isn't connected to the ISS. I made the foolish assumption that NASA was doing all their experiments on the ISS. Heaven forbid they do lab work in their orbiting research facility.
For those that want to read up on the STS-107, Look Here. Maybe you'll read that and understand my flawed assumption.
I'm guilty of a brain failure, too. I meant to say Edwards, but they have and can land at White Sands. I now wonder if Vandenberg has an air strip. It's probably not long enough if they do, but maybe they will make an aircraft carrier version of the Space Shuttle some day.
Another poster beat me to the assertion of the correction, but they have indeed landed at White Sands. Further, White Sands is an early shuttle facility, as they do training there, probably launched the Enterprise glider tests there, etc. I will not deny that Edwards is the more common landing site, although being further away from Florida, is it not the most expensive for launch recovery? The Shuttle glider pilots seem to prefer landing at Edwards AFB, perhaps it is easier? Edwards slipped my mind, or I wouldn't have mentioned White Sands at all.
I have a photo of the White Sands landing, and it is perhaps the coolest shuttle landing photo. Can we all agree that they don't land or launch the shuttle on the coast near Santa Barbara, at least? Check it out for yourself:
White Sands Space Harbor
Wait a minute, you folks are forgetting something: They could have stayed in orbit with the ISS. Okay, so now the shuttle has sensors to detect cracks and so forth, but the problem is, how easy is any of that to fix? An EVA walk with some glue and tiles would probably be enough for the average do-it-yourselfer astronaut, but what about when there's a serious problem, like a hole in the wing?
The general problem with the Space Shuttle orbiter module is that it is designed to fall really really fast. Nobody wants a Mach 3 glider... do they?
I sure hope Rutan's SS1 scales nicely. If they went for a larger wing surface area and stronger engines, wouldn't the White Knight be able to carry a larger vessel? Someone with aeronautics skills explain to me why those wings are so spindly on the White Knight. Do large wing surface areas not work in high altitude? I wonder what the operational ceiling and cargo capacity of the B2-Stealth is.
Vandenberg is on the coast, you must be confused. White Sands is where they do the landings. I'd be very impressed if any pilot could land a burning, falling rock (that's an official opinion I have read) like the space shuttle onto a small coastal facility used for rocket launches. Granted, they likely do a launch a month, but no one seems to know that in the media.
What are the odds now? 2 out of 3 fail? Forgive me for being pessimistic, but it's just dumb hardware up there, no AI or intelligent life at the helm. If we didn't hear from it in two tries, we won't hear from it on the 4th of January, and it's just really expensive junk now.
I'll refrain from bringing up the spirit of aerospace engineering in the 50's to the 60's and the spirit now, but gosh, they USED to get the job done. God willing, Scaled Composites will turn Boeing and Luckup on their heads, knock over a few anthills, and cheapen the cost to orbit.
They should have named it after a Golden Retriever; that's a much more reliable dog (Darwin homage aside).
These slashdot nicks, incredible...
It is a fake. ALthough the artist reproduced the halftoning of the print photo for the robot, they failed to accurately model the light source on the robot. Not the shadow of the robot indicates about a 3pm hour shadow coming from the left, and yet the specularity comes from behind the viewer, at nearly eye-level (sunset), which back then was probably not a do-able photograph due to the speed of chemicals involved.
Also, and maybe you missed this, the poster indicates they are fakes. I once got into a vast argument with the well-intentioned but incredibly wrong Allison Henyey, about such things. As we were but schoolchildren at the time, In retrospect, she probably found these Edisonade novels in her Dad's book collection, and was unware of the fictive nature. This during the tour of the ill-fated International Robomation Intelligence corporation, to which my father was employed as a machine vision scientist, an embarassment I will never forget.
The IRI P256 is a robot to be remembered. Its might and magesty, combined with the Vision module, is what throws out the rejects at the Ore-Ida potato factory, when making our beloved Tater-Tots.
The crap that NASA and the JPL churns out is frail, slow, and always a "prototype." It truly is a shame that they didn't go with a COTS model for Mars missions, like that deal they used in the caves in Afghanistan, or the one that climbed the shaft in the Pyramids at Gizeh (Khufu Pyramid, I believe).
Drop-ship 15 of those with one sensor apiece (rather than cram it all into one system), run WiFi from robots to a base module with an uplink to the orbiter module, and all of the sudden, you have the opportunity to employ swarm theory with the robots ("let's work together and get the job done faster"), and cooperative robotics ("help, I'm stuck on a rock, someone roll over here and give me a tug") as needed.
Maybe a well-intentioned plutocrat from Microsoft will see this as a worthwhile venture in his space quest.
Okay, not to scare anyone, but California just elected The Terminator/Mr. Freeze/Conan. Sure, the wealthy citizen has fewer special interest groups diving into his politic, but come on, the fantasy played a factor (or McClintock would have won).
When I was a teenager, I'd go off and buy video games, of course back then, they were too crude to be violent. No one stopped me, I just came in and paid with cash. There was this one game, Technocop, it was pretty brutal. You'd kill bad guys and they would turn into a twitching jambalaya of green ooze and body parts. What makes anyone think that the greedy faces at Electronics Boutique, and all the other "shop-sized" games stores are gonna cut sales because they have their own conscience?
Unless you make it illegal to sell these games to minors, and then create sting operations (like selling alcohol or cigarettes to minors) to catch and fine the merchants, nobody's going to play fair, except a few Wal-Marts, which I've noticed do listen to the letters they receive from shoppers.
Making the game outright illegal in California would probably do a ton to the market as a whole. Some of those games companies are IN California, for starters. Losing the market within the 35 Million residents would be a strong message. Sony Entertainment might start putting shirts back on the women in EverQuest. GTA 5 might be more of a GOOD driving simulator, which, frankly, would be a boost for the streets of Los Angeles. I can just see the speed traps in Liberty City, and the good samaritan subduing your attempts to force your will upon a bystander. Traffic cameras capture your face, your short-lived violent killing/crime spree is brought to a swift end, when you get to play virtual prisoner, with 9 hours of interactive stories, brutality, harsh language, and realistic prosecution and parole hearings. There's even a few mini-games where you can stamp license plates, do the prison laundry, and peel potatoes before the time runs out.
To be fair, these ubernanny laws are difficult to enforce. In my city (no joke), the environmentally obsessed have succeeded in banning phosphorous fertilizers. Don't ask why, it's based on some cock-eyed theory regarding lake pollution. Anyway, the merchants are complying, but if you want to get the illegal fertilizer, you need only drive out of the metro area, and you can get hooked up with the good stuff. There's a guy on my street, he's gotta be using illegal fertilizer, his lawn is immaculate. I know he waters every day, which is also illegal. I even think he's got an unregistered well, so he doesn't have to pay the city water and sewer prices. He is breaking half a dozen laws, and the city can't do a thing about it because they made laws they can't enforce. I bet he even rakes his leaves into the street, the cad! He would be just the sort of guy who would get some twisted kick out of selling M-rated video games to kids at school, out of the trunk of his car from the parking lot across the street. Like a drug dealer almost.
Payton: "Hey, Hunter, where'd you get GTA Vice City? I thought that was illegal?"
Hunter: "From Mr. Johnson; Taighler told me all about him. He sells all the good M-stuff. I think he also sells C-class fireworks, ring pops, and Red Bull energy drink."
Payton: "Boy, that Taighler always is the first kid to get hooked up! Do you think Mr. Johnson sells porn?"
Hunter: "No way! Cameron asked him that once, and Mr. Johnson got all defensive and yelled at Cameron because he thought Cameron was city vice. You can go to jail for that, you know."
I thought the American Express new "Blue" card had a chip in it, is that a smart card? My knowledge does not, on this topic, go beyond what the ads hinted at on TV.
As for Costco, yes, that does seem like all it was, but I believe there may have been a PIN involved, or it was tied to your member card, etc. Only useful within the store as I recall. I have had no interest in it, since they have one of those "print the info" systems for their checks at the register. Just gotta read it and sign. If MC / Visa / Amex networks can be just brought down entirely, and all the accounts just communicate with a bank directly, I have to believe that saves the banks money from those check cards. The credit card companies do charge a merchant fee. But then, who would make more of those clever Capital One ads?
Ahem.
Costco in the US and Canada has "chargeable" cash cards. I concur with the other person who has identified that the credit cards do sometimes come with your photo on them. I'm almost positive your post was meant as sarcasm. I thought in Norway you could buy soda pop with your cellular phone.
I can just imagine the bill: 342 minutes peak air time, 506 night/weekend air time, 14 cans of Code Red Mountain Dew, and a slew of unauthorized charges by a phone cloner for services described with more scurrilous terms than are fit to print in slashdot. Don't doubt that they've thought of Instant Messages put to use for instant gratification:
Shaakit BB! $15
luv me 10der! $30
The devil has power over the world. People who serve money belong to the world. When this subdermal business becomes required upon pain of death, then you can start listening to the clamoring of the end-time-focused Christians' warnings. Until then, just listen to the message of love they are supposed to be sharing (instead of this doom and gloom stuff).
For those of you slashdotters living in that fated Los Angeles County (what's your city motto again? "Together, we're the best?"), try to remember Mr. Sandoval the next time you get your property tax statement. Just think to yourself: " probably a couple of these dollars go to that nit-wit's paycheck." Bah, Los Angeles needs to subdivide anyway. Maybe share the LAPD, if only for reputation's sake.
That's an immense amount of ammo there, mister! I think more accurately, you could reach the same wing length and mass measurements with fewer samples.
If you have a free afternoon and feel up to killing 26,000 avians, may I humbly recommend the Canada Goose? Several US States kill or displace thousands every year, costing several dollars per goose, which is paid by taxpayers. The geese border on pestilence now. Just TRY to walk across an office parking lot next to a lawn without stepping on a goose or their "fertilizer" waste-product.
I can just imagine the Egyptian Pharoah, faced with a North American set of ten plagues, including mosquitos, geese, and tornadoes. He would have backed down by #5 for sure. "I can't take any more of this crap, your people may go!"
I read through his site on all the projects that were bigger than a Nerf cannon(which probably never passed safety inspections anyway). Every one of them failed. Lack of investors, leaks, flawed designs, etc. He even failed to make a stretcher kit for the military, something about a lack of quality in aesthetics.
His ideas didn't stink (except a Nerf pressurized cannon, that just screams lawsuit), but his execution really choked. Inventor geeks need two friends: a gifted machinist and a die-hard salesman.
When I worked at Colorspan (before those evil bastards at corporate laid off most of R&D in favor of the "bottom line"), we used to refer to our $30K wide-format printers as "ink dispensers."
One might argue that the 8 1/2 x 11 printers are simply "ink holders" at this point. The Canon printer I have has ink reservoirs, with a permanent head set, and I refill with the slightly messy ink refill kits at Price Club/Costco for $15 for an ink set on the order of 8 oz. per color. Don't get much cheaper than that!
Those HP printer cartridges can push a liter of ink through the heads before the heads need servicing. Not 21 ml!!!!!
Since we are talking inks, some handy tips:
We cleaned the HP cartridge heads all the time with just wet paper towels (not the super-soft ones that disintegrate), using purified water, like what you'd put in a steam iron.
Those refill kits with the needles can damage the foil pouch inside, so insert slowly.
There is a proprietary technique of refilling the HP cartridges without having a ball bearing rattling around inside; I don't know the trick personally, but it has to do with creating a vacuum somewhere.
Printer ink comes off excellently with a mixture of water and bleach. Straight bleach and your hands corrode. There's also a paste you can buy, but it is far from easy to find, nor is it cheap.
Most printers do a power-up "dance" as I like to call it, before they can print. This squirts ink out into a sponge, assumedly to keep the heads clean. If your ink heads cap nicely on a rubber boot, they don't dry out. I've noticed HP printers have a drain/breathe hole in their boots, which seems to circumvent this purpose somewhat.
The main difference between consumer inks (as in those intended for mostly sheets of paper, not odd materials like plastic of vinyl or cloth) comes from print compatibility, not chemistry. Your printer has an ink "profile" which basically says "lay down this much ink for this color, on this kind of paper." There's a lot of math and some scientific measurement to create these profiles, but that's why refill kits sometimes produce pages which puddle a bit, or the color is slightly off. Buy a printer that takes profiles from external files, such as my beloved Canon S820 does. Chances are, you will run with the same crowd that makes these printers, and has websites with profiles for download, etc.
If the user interface is not designed by marketing, then they have a 'plant' position in the GUI group who serves only them. This planted individual probably draws everything in Photoshop, considers his work more important than the OS itself, and cannot even code in Macromedia Flash ActionScript which has a click-through GUI for writing functions.
Whereas there's probably a platoon of GUI programmers who spend their entire day coding all the routines that this marketing dummy introduces with his flashy drawings.
"I want the Start! button to grow when there aren't any applications running."
"You mean like a malignant epithelial growth?"
"Um, yeah, sure, whatever that is. Make it blink, nonono... strobe slowly when it is left alone for too long."
"Like the power button on your powerMac?"
"Yes, oh! Shhhh! Don't get me into trouble, I'm not supposed to have that in your, I mean, our group."
Don't you people realize those "strange markings" are always harmless doodles and decorations put in place by mechanical engineers with a diminished sense of role or identity? Were I involved in a space project, I'd try to win management into allowing me to decorate an exterior face of the device with cuneiform, just for the funny factor.
Fundamentalists are those who adhere to the rules or laws to which they believe, take things seriously, etc. The fear of law-abiding fundamentalists comes from the laws, not the people, really. Holy War, or Jihad, that's something many Muslims are not fundamental about, or they interpret it as an internal struggle, not an actual war (anyone care to start a thread on the word Jihad for me?). The ones that do consider it a war, well, look out. I wouldn't lump the handful of "Christian" wackos who go around plinking baby-killing doctors into the category of fundamentalism, because at the root, the wackos are disobedient to their set of laws. The Bible says to leave vengance up to God, and not to take matters into your own hands. I'd say playing sniper counts as vengance. And FWIW (Re: the t-shirt comment), God loves all people, regardless of their sins. Its the sin that is hated, not the sinner. People with such t-shirts are zealots, not fundamentalists.
Zealots aren't necessarily fundamentalists, and those zealots that are, eventually compromise the fundamentals involved, and just keep on fighting blindly. I'd like to borrow from the world of Amiga users to define Zealot (and then contrast with Linux).
Amiga users historically fell into two categories of interest and enthusiasm: an Amiga is a well-designed computer, or the Amiga is the most innovative system ever conceived. In today's Amiga world, there are two categories of Amiga enthusiasts: it is still a nice computer to have around or emulate, or it will rise from its third (fourth?) round of ashes triumphantly, and return to its once-lived glory. The latter category of Amiga enthusiasts are zealots. They "fight" with visceral spirit in forums, striking down those who speak in opposition to the view of zealous Amiga enthusiasts. They rally to the defense of what they believe in, with no cause for their own well-being (go look up the Amiga 'Club' and see how that panned out in the last two years), and no regard for practicality. The world of Amiga is facing another demise, with the owner of Amiga, Inc. mired in court cases he seemingly cannot afford. Yet still, the Amiga zealots fiercely oppose Amiga offshoot technology, such as PegasOS. Since there's no consistent core of fundamental Amiga beliefs, there's no Amiga fundamentalist in existence. A purist, perhaps, but no more. Such a purist might reject the Amiga Operating Environment that ne'er saw the light of day.
Linux does differ from the world of Amiga. It has a core of beliefs in the form of the Open Source movement (not a fanatical devotion to 13-year-old hardware/OS principal designs). A Linux fundamentalist, however, cannot be against commercial Linux software and cite fundamentalism as his reason, since commercial Linux software is admissible within the 'canon' of the Open Source movement, merely not in support of it. Such a person might be tossed into the category of zealot, by seeing a black-and-white decision point when there is none. Clearly, a doctrinal departure.
In general, what I call platform zealotry (remember the smug Mac Zealots?) is a manifestation of either intolerance, envy, or distrust of other platforms. I further condemn the Taliban and Al Quaeda not as fundamentalists (for they depart on several points from Islam), but as zealots. The Muslim fundamentalists I see as a threat are the clerics in Iraq which are intolerant of a new government which is controlled not by the church, but by the people; IIRC, it is (in one of the sects) a Muslim belief that government should be controlled by the clerics. Such a government may likely foster the development of zealots that pursue the genocide of non-Islamics in Iraq, as we have already seen in Africa.
I can see a portion of that 16% saying "hey, if we buy the Enterprise version (no relation to the Scott Bakula tv series) of Redhat Linux that comes with that service agreement, that means they will deal with SCO for us." I can see another portion saying: "let's not publicize what we are doing with Linux, all our lawyers say this is BS anyway." What I can't see is anyone other than a Microsoft whippingboy change their mind and pay for Microsoft; Solaris or AIX? Maybe.
Re:you play skittles indoors!
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I think you've figured out why M&M/Mars calls their candy that. They invented a hard candy that can be used for bar games.
Re:Origin (Horatio Hornblower)
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your post exceeds what I found at Dictionary.com:
skittles. Thanks for posting. I think I'll go buy an OLD book instead of a new one on futzing around with TiVo. Old books are cool. Those people sure know their spelling and grammar, I will say that much! Maybe when I'm done reading, I will be able to enjoy watching the Simpsons when it broadcasts, instead of waiting for it to come up on my PVR.
Yeah, there is something going on here. How naive, though. If they can digitally add red dots, then gosh, can't they digitally remove them, too? There's a digital process to remove scratches, stains, fingerprints, etc. That technology is much older than whatever they've "invented" to add random red dots. I'm sure any lackey gamer's "screen-scraper utility" coder can dash off the code to look for a pattern of red dots. Remember, you recording industry execs out there: hackers are invariably smarter than you, and have copious spare time.
An algorithm to look for random red dot patterns isn't tricky; what might be tricky is doing it single-pass. If I recall correctly, MPEG compression uses "delta" components between frames, and applies an algorithm to simulate that change. If something doesn't fit very well at all in this algorithm, but it does match the RIAA "evil dots," how hard is it, really, to just throw out the offending content, and apply no delta to the region of the dots? So, in the end, a modified MPEG (or whatever is used) algorithm is probably all that needs to be written. Why, I'd even bet it's been done by now, if in secret.
Bah, you just startled him, and he exhibited control over you by overreacting (and making you rue the day you struck him). Some kids don't need spanking. The social ones can't stand being away from social activities, and time-outs really work.
I've used a mixture of punishments. One of my more favorite mechanisms is a negotiable bedtime. I think the trick is to balance punishment with due rewards.
Now, if there was only a way to keep that wife of mine in line, and get her to stop talking back... Spankings don't work the way you'd expect, and going to bed early isn't a punishment at all. Time by herself is a precious thing, so time-outs really don't work there either. I think the only punishment I've concocted is spending too much time in the Slashdot forums.
I'm so glad you posted! I've known for a long time that those spots had to do with changing reels.
someone should yank this entire topic, noted as "submission was a hoax, and no one caught it in time." Still, it's entertaining to see some people make conjectures about the recoverability of a compression algorithm in certain scenarios.
Slashdot Mirror
For those that want to read up on the STS-107, Look Here. Maybe you'll read that and understand my flawed assumption.
I'm guilty of a brain failure, too. I meant to say Edwards, but they have and can land at White Sands. I now wonder if Vandenberg has an air strip. It's probably not long enough if they do, but maybe they will make an aircraft carrier version of the Space Shuttle some day.
I have a photo of the White Sands landing, and it is perhaps the coolest shuttle landing photo. Can we all agree that they don't land or launch the shuttle on the coast near Santa Barbara, at least? Check it out for yourself: White Sands Space Harbor
The general problem with the Space Shuttle orbiter module is that it is designed to fall really really fast. Nobody wants a Mach 3 glider... do they?
I sure hope Rutan's SS1 scales nicely. If they went for a larger wing surface area and stronger engines, wouldn't the White Knight be able to carry a larger vessel? Someone with aeronautics skills explain to me why those wings are so spindly on the White Knight. Do large wing surface areas not work in high altitude? I wonder what the operational ceiling and cargo capacity of the B2-Stealth is.
Vandenberg is on the coast, you must be confused. White Sands is where they do the landings. I'd be very impressed if any pilot could land a burning, falling rock (that's an official opinion I have read) like the space shuttle onto a small coastal facility used for rocket launches. Granted, they likely do a launch a month, but no one seems to know that in the media.
I'll refrain from bringing up the spirit of aerospace engineering in the 50's to the 60's and the spirit now, but gosh, they USED to get the job done. God willing, Scaled Composites will turn Boeing and Luckup on their heads, knock over a few anthills, and cheapen the cost to orbit.
They should have named it after a Golden Retriever; that's a much more reliable dog (Darwin homage aside).
It is a fake. ALthough the artist reproduced the halftoning of the print photo for the robot, they failed to accurately model the light source on the robot. Not the shadow of the robot indicates about a 3pm hour shadow coming from the left, and yet the specularity comes from behind the viewer, at nearly eye-level (sunset), which back then was probably not a do-able photograph due to the speed of chemicals involved.
Also, and maybe you missed this, the poster indicates they are fakes. I once got into a vast argument with the well-intentioned but incredibly wrong Allison Henyey, about such things. As we were but schoolchildren at the time, In retrospect, she probably found these Edisonade novels in her Dad's book collection, and was unware of the fictive nature. This during the tour of the ill-fated International Robomation Intelligence corporation, to which my father was employed as a machine vision scientist, an embarassment I will never forget.
The IRI P256 is a robot to be remembered. Its might and magesty, combined with the Vision module, is what throws out the rejects at the Ore-Ida potato factory, when making our beloved Tater-Tots.
The crap that NASA and the JPL churns out is frail, slow, and always a "prototype." It truly is a shame that they didn't go with a COTS model for Mars missions, like that deal they used in the caves in Afghanistan, or the one that climbed the shaft in the Pyramids at Gizeh (Khufu Pyramid, I believe).
Drop-ship 15 of those with one sensor apiece (rather than cram it all into one system), run WiFi from robots to a base module with an uplink to the orbiter module, and all of the sudden, you have the opportunity to employ swarm theory with the robots ("let's work together and get the job done faster"), and cooperative robotics ("help, I'm stuck on a rock, someone roll over here and give me a tug") as needed.
Maybe a well-intentioned plutocrat from Microsoft will see this as a worthwhile venture in his space quest.
When I was a teenager, I'd go off and buy video games, of course back then, they were too crude to be violent. No one stopped me, I just came in and paid with cash. There was this one game, Technocop, it was pretty brutal. You'd kill bad guys and they would turn into a twitching jambalaya of green ooze and body parts. What makes anyone think that the greedy faces at Electronics Boutique, and all the other "shop-sized" games stores are gonna cut sales because they have their own conscience?
Unless you make it illegal to sell these games to minors, and then create sting operations (like selling alcohol or cigarettes to minors) to catch and fine the merchants, nobody's going to play fair, except a few Wal-Marts, which I've noticed do listen to the letters they receive from shoppers.
Making the game outright illegal in California would probably do a ton to the market as a whole. Some of those games companies are IN California, for starters. Losing the market within the 35 Million residents would be a strong message. Sony Entertainment might start putting shirts back on the women in EverQuest. GTA 5 might be more of a GOOD driving simulator, which, frankly, would be a boost for the streets of Los Angeles. I can just see the speed traps in Liberty City, and the good samaritan subduing your attempts to force your will upon a bystander. Traffic cameras capture your face, your short-lived violent killing/crime spree is brought to a swift end, when you get to play virtual prisoner, with 9 hours of interactive stories, brutality, harsh language, and realistic prosecution and parole hearings. There's even a few mini-games where you can stamp license plates, do the prison laundry, and peel potatoes before the time runs out.
To be fair, these ubernanny laws are difficult to enforce. In my city (no joke), the environmentally obsessed have succeeded in banning phosphorous fertilizers. Don't ask why, it's based on some cock-eyed theory regarding lake pollution. Anyway, the merchants are complying, but if you want to get the illegal fertilizer, you need only drive out of the metro area, and you can get hooked up with the good stuff. There's a guy on my street, he's gotta be using illegal fertilizer, his lawn is immaculate. I know he waters every day, which is also illegal. I even think he's got an unregistered well, so he doesn't have to pay the city water and sewer prices. He is breaking half a dozen laws, and the city can't do a thing about it because they made laws they can't enforce. I bet he even rakes his leaves into the street, the cad! He would be just the sort of guy who would get some twisted kick out of selling M-rated video games to kids at school, out of the trunk of his car from the parking lot across the street. Like a drug dealer almost.
Payton: "Hey, Hunter, where'd you get GTA Vice City? I thought that was illegal?"
Hunter: "From Mr. Johnson; Taighler told me all about him. He sells all the good M-stuff. I think he also sells C-class fireworks, ring pops, and Red Bull energy drink."
Payton: "Boy, that Taighler always is the first kid to get hooked up! Do you think Mr. Johnson sells porn?"
Hunter: "No way! Cameron asked him that once, and Mr. Johnson got all defensive and yelled at Cameron because he thought Cameron was city vice. You can go to jail for that, you know."
As for Costco, yes, that does seem like all it was, but I believe there may have been a PIN involved, or it was tied to your member card, etc. Only useful within the store as I recall. I have had no interest in it, since they have one of those "print the info" systems for their checks at the register. Just gotta read it and sign. If MC / Visa / Amex networks can be just brought down entirely, and all the accounts just communicate with a bank directly, I have to believe that saves the banks money from those check cards. The credit card companies do charge a merchant fee. But then, who would make more of those clever Capital One ads?
I can just imagine the bill: 342 minutes peak air time, 506 night/weekend air time, 14 cans of Code Red Mountain Dew, and a slew of unauthorized charges by a phone cloner for services described with more scurrilous terms than are fit to print in slashdot. Don't doubt that they've thought of Instant Messages put to use for instant gratification:
Shaakit BB! $15
luv me 10der! $30
The devil has power over the world. People who serve money belong to the world. When this subdermal business becomes required upon pain of death, then you can start listening to the clamoring of the end-time-focused Christians' warnings. Until then, just listen to the message of love they are supposed to be sharing (instead of this doom and gloom stuff).
For those of you slashdotters living in that fated Los Angeles County (what's your city motto again? "Together, we're the best?"), try to remember Mr. Sandoval the next time you get your property tax statement. Just think to yourself: " probably a couple of these dollars go to that nit-wit's paycheck." Bah, Los Angeles needs to subdivide anyway. Maybe share the LAPD, if only for reputation's sake.
If you have a free afternoon and feel up to killing 26,000 avians, may I humbly recommend the Canada Goose? Several US States kill or displace thousands every year, costing several dollars per goose, which is paid by taxpayers. The geese border on pestilence now. Just TRY to walk across an office parking lot next to a lawn without stepping on a goose or their "fertilizer" waste-product.
I can just imagine the Egyptian Pharoah, faced with a North American set of ten plagues, including mosquitos, geese, and tornadoes. He would have backed down by #5 for sure. "I can't take any more of this crap, your people may go!"
If I had anything thoughtful to say on this off-topic thread, I'd put my name on it (and suffer the moderation).
His ideas didn't stink (except a Nerf pressurized cannon, that just screams lawsuit), but his execution really choked. Inventor geeks need two friends: a gifted machinist and a die-hard salesman.
One might argue that the 8 1/2 x 11 printers are simply "ink holders" at this point. The Canon printer I have has ink reservoirs, with a permanent head set, and I refill with the slightly messy ink refill kits at Price Club/Costco for $15 for an ink set on the order of 8 oz. per color. Don't get much cheaper than that!
Those HP printer cartridges can push a liter of ink through the heads before the heads need servicing. Not 21 ml!!!!!
Since we are talking inks, some handy tips:
- We cleaned the HP cartridge heads all the time with just wet paper towels (not the super-soft ones that disintegrate), using purified water, like what you'd put in a steam iron.
- Those refill kits with the needles can damage the foil pouch inside, so insert slowly.
- There is a proprietary technique of refilling the HP cartridges without having a ball bearing rattling around inside; I don't know the trick personally, but it has to do with creating a vacuum somewhere.
- Printer ink comes off excellently with a mixture of water and bleach. Straight bleach and your hands corrode. There's also a paste you can buy, but it is far from easy to find, nor is it cheap.
- Most printers do a power-up "dance" as I like to call it, before they can print. This squirts ink out into a sponge, assumedly to keep the heads clean. If your ink heads cap nicely on a rubber boot, they don't dry out. I've noticed HP printers have a drain/breathe hole in their boots, which seems to circumvent this purpose somewhat.
The main difference between consumer inks (as in those intended for mostly sheets of paper, not odd materials like plastic of vinyl or cloth) comes from print compatibility, not chemistry. Your printer has an ink "profile" which basically says "lay down this much ink for this color, on this kind of paper." There's a lot of math and some scientific measurement to create these profiles, but that's why refill kits sometimes produce pages which puddle a bit, or the color is slightly off. Buy a printer that takes profiles from external files, such as my beloved Canon S820 does. Chances are, you will run with the same crowd that makes these printers, and has websites with profiles for download, etc.Whereas there's probably a platoon of GUI programmers who spend their entire day coding all the routines that this marketing dummy introduces with his flashy drawings.
"I want the Start! button to grow when there aren't any applications running."
"You mean like a malignant epithelial growth?"
"Um, yeah, sure, whatever that is. Make it blink, nonono... strobe slowly when it is left alone for too long."
"Like the power button on your powerMac?"
"Yes, oh! Shhhh! Don't get me into trouble, I'm not supposed to have that in your, I mean, our group."
Don't you people realize those "strange markings" are always harmless doodles and decorations put in place by mechanical engineers with a diminished sense of role or identity? Were I involved in a space project, I'd try to win management into allowing me to decorate an exterior face of the device with cuneiform, just for the funny factor.
Zealots aren't necessarily fundamentalists, and those zealots that are, eventually compromise the fundamentals involved, and just keep on fighting blindly. I'd like to borrow from the world of Amiga users to define Zealot (and then contrast with Linux).
Amiga users historically fell into two categories of interest and enthusiasm: an Amiga is a well-designed computer, or the Amiga is the most innovative system ever conceived. In today's Amiga world, there are two categories of Amiga enthusiasts: it is still a nice computer to have around or emulate, or it will rise from its third (fourth?) round of ashes triumphantly, and return to its once-lived glory. The latter category of Amiga enthusiasts are zealots. They "fight" with visceral spirit in forums, striking down those who speak in opposition to the view of zealous Amiga enthusiasts. They rally to the defense of what they believe in, with no cause for their own well-being (go look up the Amiga 'Club' and see how that panned out in the last two years), and no regard for practicality. The world of Amiga is facing another demise, with the owner of Amiga, Inc. mired in court cases he seemingly cannot afford. Yet still, the Amiga zealots fiercely oppose Amiga offshoot technology, such as PegasOS. Since there's no consistent core of fundamental Amiga beliefs, there's no Amiga fundamentalist in existence. A purist, perhaps, but no more. Such a purist might reject the Amiga Operating Environment that ne'er saw the light of day.
Linux does differ from the world of Amiga. It has a core of beliefs in the form of the Open Source movement (not a fanatical devotion to 13-year-old hardware/OS principal designs). A Linux fundamentalist, however, cannot be against commercial Linux software and cite fundamentalism as his reason, since commercial Linux software is admissible within the 'canon' of the Open Source movement, merely not in support of it. Such a person might be tossed into the category of zealot, by seeing a black-and-white decision point when there is none. Clearly, a doctrinal departure.
In general, what I call platform zealotry (remember the smug Mac Zealots?) is a manifestation of either intolerance, envy, or distrust of other platforms. I further condemn the Taliban and Al Quaeda not as fundamentalists (for they depart on several points from Islam), but as zealots. The Muslim fundamentalists I see as a threat are the clerics in Iraq which are intolerant of a new government which is controlled not by the church, but by the people; IIRC, it is (in one of the sects) a Muslim belief that government should be controlled by the clerics. Such a government may likely foster the development of zealots that pursue the genocide of non-Islamics in Iraq, as we have already seen in Africa.
Zealotry is imperfection or disobedience.
I think you've figured out why M&M/Mars calls their candy that. They invented a hard candy that can be used for bar games.
your post exceeds what I found at Dictionary.com: skittles. Thanks for posting. I think I'll go buy an OLD book instead of a new one on futzing around with TiVo. Old books are cool. Those people sure know their spelling and grammar, I will say that much! Maybe when I'm done reading, I will be able to enjoy watching the Simpsons when it broadcasts, instead of waiting for it to come up on my PVR.
An algorithm to look for random red dot patterns isn't tricky; what might be tricky is doing it single-pass. If I recall correctly, MPEG compression uses "delta" components between frames, and applies an algorithm to simulate that change. If something doesn't fit very well at all in this algorithm, but it does match the RIAA "evil dots," how hard is it, really, to just throw out the offending content, and apply no delta to the region of the dots? So, in the end, a modified MPEG (or whatever is used) algorithm is probably all that needs to be written. Why, I'd even bet it's been done by now, if in secret.
I've used a mixture of punishments. One of my more favorite mechanisms is a negotiable bedtime. I think the trick is to balance punishment with due rewards.
Now, if there was only a way to keep that wife of mine in line, and get her to stop talking back... Spankings don't work the way you'd expect, and going to bed early isn't a punishment at all. Time by herself is a precious thing, so time-outs really don't work there either. I think the only punishment I've concocted is spending too much time in the Slashdot forums.
Your Serve.
someone should yank this entire topic, noted as "submission was a hoax, and no one caught it in time." Still, it's entertaining to see some people make conjectures about the recoverability of a compression algorithm in certain scenarios.