With digital, you can take a hundred pictures for the cost of the charge in a set of batteries. To do the same with 35mm, you'll need roughly three rolls, plus processing, and you have to change film, are stuck with the type and speed of film in use, and can't see your results until they come back from the lab. Thus, learning to take good pictures with a digital camera is far cheaper and faster than learning to do it with film. Also, very few people will ever see your film directly. Either it must be printed or duplicated (with the ensuing generation loss), or it must be scanned in some way. At that point, you lose much of the benefit of shooting film in the first place -- particularly if you compare to shooting the same image at two different exposure levels for HDR rendering in the digital realm.
This is not to say digital has caught film on all fronts -- it clearly hasn't. But for most people in most applications, the advantages of digital (cost and convenience) seriously outweigh the drawbacks.
How on earth?? Oh.. It's not on the earth, we have ice out in space, on an otherwise solid rock. I'm not understanding first how and when this water actually made it to this location.
How about it being carried there by the same comet fragment that made the crater in the first place?
1. A few perfectly innocent people get targeted and all hell breaks loose
Well, it seems that close to thousand innocent people already got killed, including 175 children, and that's the official count: (statistics)
This is not due to the list, but due to "collateral damage" when attacking the target. What I meant is that the wrong targets entirely would be selected.
3. It remains officially in existence, but nobody actually uses it. They rely upon a separate list which may or may not be a subset of the polluted list.
President Obama already takes care of selecting the "sub-list" of people to be targeted from the official list: link
It's just the next step in the US governements Rule by Fear policy...and if this doesn't provoke an uprising by the american people, fascism has definitely won in the states...
Most people don't KNOW, because the media is complicit in this. Whether "liberal" or "conservative", both sides are avoiding shaking the two-party apple cart. If people don't KNOW, how can you expect them to be UPSET?
There is no technical reason digital displays can't be run at an arbitrary frame rate, unless the means for doing so were deliberately left out of the HDMI standard. DVI (which is the electrical foundation of HDMI) is capable of supporting any arbitrary frame rate up to its maximum bandwidth. For some odd reason, my system insists on running my monitors (dual-link DVI at 2048x1152) at 58 Hz even though the software says 60. 45 Hz is also an option, so 48 should be available as well. Of course I keep it turned up for general use, but I wouldn't object to it being dialed back when that better suits the content being displayed.
What we SHOULD be doing is working to get everyone and their dog onto the "kill" list, to the point that one of three things happens:
1. A few perfectly innocent people get targeted and all hell breaks loose, or 2. The people relying on that list are forced to abandon it as completely polluted, or 3. It remains officially in existence, but nobody actually uses it. They rely upon a separate list which may or may not be a subset of the polluted list.
Option 1 will force changes and most likely would result in a rather thorough rolling of heads at the top. That's why it is unlikely to happen. Option 2 would be little more than inconvenient, but the replacement list had better be relatively vetted and secure or it too will get polluted. Option 3 will reduce the list to being merely an embarrassment to those in power. All but a few paranoid types (justified or not) will forget about it.
It's like putting "kilo nuclear uranium jihad" in your signature file to crap up the ECHELON system.
Certainly there are ways to subvert this, but they're not much more likely than filing the serial number off a gun, and we all know how many guns used in crimes have them filed off (hint: not many). Gun crimes (like the vast majority of all crimes) are not well-planned by super-level-headed big brain geniuses that think of all possible outcomes, then coolly remember to execute everything flawlessly. Crime is sloppy by nature, with gun crimes even more so, so the utility of this goes up with the amount of sloppiness of the criminal. Hell, even "professional" mob hits are notoriously unprofessional.
People who get new guns (criminal or law-abiding alike) generally like to take them down to the range and fire them (or out to the desert, or in an abandoned warehouse, whatever). It doesn't take very long to wear the stamp off the firing pin -- one trip to the range can easily obliterate it. All the stamp is good for is identifying guns that have been used for the first time or nearly so. It will do nothing to identify those that actually see regular use. It sure won't do anything to catch people who use the same gun for multiple crimes, other than the first (maybe first few).
I don't know how many rounds the average person fires at the range, but I do know how many *I* fire. A typical trip will consist of three or four people and at least as many guns, which we trade off throughout the session. The cheapest to fire (the.22 rifle) usually gets used for displays of marksmanship, since a box of 500 cartridges costs a few bucks. The others still get used though, and if one of the guns is particularly sweet, it's not at all uncommon to see 50 shots run through it by EACH PERSON in the group. Even those which are inconvenient to quick-load, such as revolvers, will typically end up with 50+ shots run through them because it's better than waiting for the coveted gun to become available. Thus, if we started with four brand new guns, we'd destroy the stamp on the firing pin on ALL FOUR in just ONE shooting session.
Also, revolvers don't drop their brass unless you deliberately dump them out on the ground when reloading. What's the point of putting a number on those? As much as I prefer semi-automatic pistols, few things are as reliable as a revolver. They JUST WORK, though there is a trade-off in both power and accuracy from the gap between cylinder and barrel, and they are good choices for defense weapons that are infrequently used (thus also likely to be stolen).
Similar for erotic movies. A bit less accepted by many people, the porn industry is thriving. And that also includes movies depicting rape and possibly other crimes. This again is also considered totally legal.
If I had a 15 year old daughter who was into computers and science, I would not think twice to take her to the show. If the whole booth babe thing is even an issue then it only serves as an example of what happens when you DON'T have the intelligence and/or motivation to do something you consider worthwhile. However, I would have to imagine that if she does any gaming at all, she already KNOWS that the scene is mostly sexually frustrated males and would only have that existing perception reinforced by the booth babes.
Personally, when I see booth babes, I make a point of asking something about the product they are displaying. If they can answer coherently with something more helpful than "ask that guy, he's the expert", then I'll stand around and talk. While most booth babes are exactly the eye candy they seem, a few are there because they are somehow connected to the business and they actually KNOW something. Those few generally seem to welcome the opportunity to show off the fact that they AREN'T just eye candy.
I have a low opinion of booth babes, and not for trying to push my buttons. It's that I can be almost sure that they don't know much about the technology and worse, don't give a crap about it. Anyone who is there ought to have a modicum of interest in the show.
I actually made this point to the Aizen booth at Winter NAMM 2010. They had a cute Asian gal (pretty sure she wasn't Japanese though) in a kimono, handing out flyers. This is all well and good -- her unusual attire certainly got attention without requiring leering, and made people pause long enough to take what she was offering -- but she knew NOTHING about the goods on display. I'm not saying she needs to know anything about musical instruments, or about music in general, but she should darn well know which people do what, and where things are stored. For anything other than being pretty, she was utterly useless, and that's just sad. I tried to make this point with one of the actual Aizen employees, but he didn't seem to give a shit. Maybe his grasp of English wasn't good enough to even know what I was saying, or he wasn't in a position to do anything and didn't like being asked to deliver bad news to his superiors, I don't know. So I brought it up with one of the people there who was clearly there (at least in part) because he DID speak perfect English. All he had to say was "Tell me about it. All she has to do is refer all questions to me, and she can't even do that."
It would have done them a lot more good to find themselves a female musician who might not be incredibly hot looking, but can actually demonstrate what they're selling. They're out there, and they can use the gigs. It's Southern California for fuck's sake!
When dealing with the U.S. legal system, yes he did.
Once the government establishes probable cause that the property is subject to forfeiture, the owner must prove on a "preponderance of the evidence" that it is not. The owner need not be judged guilty of any crime.
I don't know how other people hold these, but I don't see that a bezel an inch wide all the way around is helpful. Half an inch, sure. I know what happened with the Aspire One -- they took the same screen as the 10.6" model and stuck it in a larger shell. The smaller machine had the same display with a lot less wasted space. It also had a somewhat more cramped keyboard and a much more cramped trackpad, but the point is that the display bezel was driven by the need to accommodate the size of the display rather than choosing a display that best fits the form factor. I can understand that on a netbook, particularly on a large netbook that differs only in size from the next model down. I can't so much understand it on a tablet that's built from the ground up around that display.
It still has the same problem as the Aspire One of the same size (which it greatly resembles) -- the bezel is huge. there's a lot of could-be-screen space wasted around the outside. I'd take a bit lower pixel density to have the same number of pixels occupy a larger area. It IS nice though that it's not the same 1366x768, 18 bit panel as the Aspire 5253.
Those microshutters kinda look like a DLP mirror array, except used to pass/block light rather than reflect/deflect it. Everything is in line rather than at a near-180-degree angle. I have to wonder if there is any commonality to their development, and possibly to their application -- could these shutters be used to make a better, brighter projector for consumers? The R&D is already done and it can't be THAT groundbreaking or we wouldn't be reading about it here -- the military would want to sit on anything truly game-changing.
What laptop doesn't have a webcam these days? I thought those were integrated in just about everything since I bought my Acer Aspire One over three years ago (which is still working just fine, battery life and all). The AAO is shit for upgrading (it's maxed out at 1.5 GB of RAM and of course the Intel graphics suck) but it did pack a bunch of features into its tiny shell and they all work. The Atheros wifi is replaceable, if you find it to be too flaky.
On the non-netbook side, I got an Aspire 5253 (1.6 GHz E350, so 2 cores and a Radeon all on-die). Frankly, 2 GB was disappointing for everything but light gaming or running Cubase in a live setting (which is what I bought it for) until upgraded to 8 GB. I ended up trading it with a friend in exchange for a similarly specced Dell, except that it has Intel video (which is fine, I *never* game on this dedicated unit). He drags the Acer around everywhere, unless the Dell does something it doesn't (like drive S-Video output) and I have to lend it back. The HD in the Acer was also disappointing in speed terms (250 GB was OK in space terms) but when I found my 500 GB external drive to be too small and replaced it with a 1 TB drive, we reassigned the drive to the Acer. After these two upgrades, the Acer performs quite admirably for most tasks. I wouldn't want to use it for encoding video because I have a 6-core desktop machine, but it's only marginally slower than the 2.4 GHz dual-core desktop machine I had previously (which ALSO still works just fine, I lent it out when my cousin's laptop died).
Basically, get something that's built solidly enough to take the knocks you expect to dish out and has the features you need (or the known ability to add them, if it's short on RAM). I don't see that it's worth worrying about much else.
If you want to know if an upgrade is possible, don't ask around IF you can do it. Ask HOW. If it CAN be done, chances are very good that someone already HAS.
I think that's one reason hockey isn't more popular as a spectator sport. Other big sports come in bite-size chunks, good for both the casual watcher who wants to have a social event AND the stats-obsessed geek. Hockey might go 10 seconds from face-off to having the puck deflected out of play, or it might have 5 minutes of continuous end-to-end action during which it is hard to talk AND pay attention sufficiently to understand the flow of the game. Soccer suffers from much the same problem. I have a feeling that's just TOO MUCH WORK for most people, and they consequently find these sports "boring". It's not that there isn't enough going on, it's that it requires dedicated watching that most people don't want to give. It's also why following a play-by-play commentary on radio is taxing if you know the names of the players on at least one team, and downright incomprehensible if you don't. The small size of the puck used to be a problem for televised hockey, but it's much less of an issue in HD. HD has also allowed the cameras to take a wider angle and show action significantly away from the puck. (This is also a great boon for football and basketball, or any other sport with significant strategic happenings away from the ball. It's NICE with baseball but doesn't really contribute that much to comprehension, as baseball is very "quantized".)
Baseball has innings and at-bats and individual pitches. Basketball doesn't stay stopped for very long early in the game, but at the end of a close game (the only time most people REALLY watch closely), there are many stoppages. Football has plays, and also has similar stoppage tendencies at the end of a close game. Both "goal" sports feature fairly high levels of scoring, so it's pretty easy to tell which team is out-playing the other (where both hockey and soccer can fall into a defensive "wait for the other team to make a mistake" mode which is highly effective but DULL). They also are all fairly amenable to verbal description of the action and thus radio-friendly.
For me it depends how familiar I am with the music. If it's cheesy pop, I can be familiar with the song by the time they get through the first verse -- the rest of the song is essentially the same shit with sometimes different lyrics. If it's complex, I may require years and dozens or hundreds of listenings to be able to call it familiar. Once I get to that level, I can use it as background music, because I can mentally fill in anything I missed due to attention to another task.
What really drives me nuts is watching a plot-and-dialog-driven TV show or movie, with other people in the same room who insist on talking about tangents the entire time. First I move closer to the TV, and if that doesn't work well enough to let me follow what's going on, I leave. I'd rather give up and miss the whole thing than catch bits and pieces of it and not know what is going on or why. If it's broadcast TV or a DVR, I'll probably retreat to another room and complete it there. I've given up complaining, but when someone finds I'm in another room watching the same thing they are, ALONE, they can usually figure it out.
I've been known to wear headphones at the poker table, without bothering to run a signal through them. I'll also hum vaguely, and "dance" a bit in the chair to music that's not there. It's amazing how much people are willing to say on the assumption that I can't hear them.
Isolation booths big enough to house a person doing narration can be had for a few thousand dollars. Ones big enough to hold an entire large drum kit, maybe $10k. Sure it's not free, but it fits in a normal residence and pays off quickly when compared to studio time.
MHz? Try just plain Hz. A "tick" (the minimum unit in redstone circuitry) is 100 ms. If you set up a circuit to run on both the rising and falling edges of the clock, you get a whopping 10 Hz.
That's vanilla Minecraft, it appears the mod may double the speed. It also appears that the 6502 emulator can run multiple operations per clock, but you're still talking about something a couple orders of magnitude slower than the original 6502 in operation. I don't use any of these mods since I'm almost exclusively a Multiplayer player (which means such mods have to be server-side) but have designed plenty of redstone circuits in the vanilla game. Even something as simple as a binary counter still has significant latency problems -- my 5-bit counter would take up to three or four seconds for all bits to stabilize after it was incremented, and in a worst-case scenario, a five-second reset signal was required to flip all bits to zero (otherwise the low bits flipping to zero after the high bits had already cleared could cause the high bits to flip again). Redstone is S-L-O-W.
We're talking about struggling against a system that lacks due process. Sometimes it is necessary to fight as dirty (or dirtier than) the established forces if you want to accomplish your goal.
If the U.S. government likes you while you do it, you're a Freedom Fighter. If they don't, you're a Terrorist.
Slashdot Mirror
With digital, you can take a hundred pictures for the cost of the charge in a set of batteries. To do the same with 35mm, you'll need roughly three rolls, plus processing, and you have to change film, are stuck with the type and speed of film in use, and can't see your results until they come back from the lab. Thus, learning to take good pictures with a digital camera is far cheaper and faster than learning to do it with film. Also, very few people will ever see your film directly. Either it must be printed or duplicated (with the ensuing generation loss), or it must be scanned in some way. At that point, you lose much of the benefit of shooting film in the first place -- particularly if you compare to shooting the same image at two different exposure levels for HDR rendering in the digital realm.
This is not to say digital has caught film on all fronts -- it clearly hasn't. But for most people in most applications, the advantages of digital (cost and convenience) seriously outweigh the drawbacks.
How on earth?? Oh.. It's not on the earth, we have ice out in space, on an otherwise solid rock. I'm not understanding first how and when this water actually made it to this location.
How about it being carried there by the same comet fragment that made the crater in the first place?
If you find out you're on the list and can't get removed from it... might as well do the very things you stand accused of!
1. A few perfectly innocent people get targeted and all hell breaks loose
Well, it seems that close to thousand innocent people already got killed, including 175 children, and that's the official count: (statistics)
This is not due to the list, but due to "collateral damage" when attacking the target. What I meant is that the wrong targets entirely would be selected.
3. It remains officially in existence, but nobody actually uses it. They rely upon a separate list which may or may not be a subset of the polluted list.
President Obama already takes care of selecting the "sub-list" of people to be targeted from the official list: link
It's just the next step in the US governements Rule by Fear policy...and if this doesn't provoke an uprising by the american people, fascism has definitely won in the states...
Most people don't KNOW, because the media is complicit in this. Whether "liberal" or "conservative", both sides are avoiding shaking the two-party apple cart. If people don't KNOW, how can you expect them to be UPSET?
There is no technical reason digital displays can't be run at an arbitrary frame rate, unless the means for doing so were deliberately left out of the HDMI standard. DVI (which is the electrical foundation of HDMI) is capable of supporting any arbitrary frame rate up to its maximum bandwidth. For some odd reason, my system insists on running my monitors (dual-link DVI at 2048x1152) at 58 Hz even though the software says 60. 45 Hz is also an option, so 48 should be available as well. Of course I keep it turned up for general use, but I wouldn't object to it being dialed back when that better suits the content being displayed.
What we SHOULD be doing is working to get everyone and their dog onto the "kill" list, to the point that one of three things happens:
1. A few perfectly innocent people get targeted and all hell breaks loose, or
2. The people relying on that list are forced to abandon it as completely polluted, or
3. It remains officially in existence, but nobody actually uses it. They rely upon a separate list which may or may not be a subset of the polluted list.
Option 1 will force changes and most likely would result in a rather thorough rolling of heads at the top. That's why it is unlikely to happen.
Option 2 would be little more than inconvenient, but the replacement list had better be relatively vetted and secure or it too will get polluted.
Option 3 will reduce the list to being merely an embarrassment to those in power. All but a few paranoid types (justified or not) will forget about it.
It's like putting "kilo nuclear uranium jihad" in your signature file to crap up the ECHELON system.
Certainly there are ways to subvert this, but they're not much more likely than filing the serial number off a gun, and we all know how many guns used in crimes have them filed off (hint: not many). Gun crimes (like the vast majority of all crimes) are not well-planned by super-level-headed big brain geniuses that think of all possible outcomes, then coolly remember to execute everything flawlessly. Crime is sloppy by nature, with gun crimes even more so, so the utility of this goes up with the amount of sloppiness of the criminal. Hell, even "professional" mob hits are notoriously unprofessional.
People who get new guns (criminal or law-abiding alike) generally like to take them down to the range and fire them (or out to the desert, or in an abandoned warehouse, whatever). It doesn't take very long to wear the stamp off the firing pin -- one trip to the range can easily obliterate it. All the stamp is good for is identifying guns that have been used for the first time or nearly so. It will do nothing to identify those that actually see regular use. It sure won't do anything to catch people who use the same gun for multiple crimes, other than the first (maybe first few).
I don't know how many rounds the average person fires at the range, but I do know how many *I* fire. A typical trip will consist of three or four people and at least as many guns, which we trade off throughout the session. The cheapest to fire (the .22 rifle) usually gets used for displays of marksmanship, since a box of 500 cartridges costs a few bucks. The others still get used though, and if one of the guns is particularly sweet, it's not at all uncommon to see 50 shots run through it by EACH PERSON in the group. Even those which are inconvenient to quick-load, such as revolvers, will typically end up with 50+ shots run through them because it's better than waiting for the coveted gun to become available. Thus, if we started with four brand new guns, we'd destroy the stamp on the firing pin on ALL FOUR in just ONE shooting session.
Also, revolvers don't drop their brass unless you deliberately dump them out on the ground when reloading. What's the point of putting a number on those? As much as I prefer semi-automatic pistols, few things are as reliable as a revolver. They JUST WORK, though there is a trade-off in both power and accuracy from the gap between cylinder and barrel, and they are good choices for defense weapons that are infrequently used (thus also likely to be stolen).
Similar for erotic movies. A bit less accepted by many people, the porn industry is thriving. And that also includes movies depicting rape and possibly other crimes. This again is also considered totally legal.
Try explaining that to Max Hardcore.
If I had a 15 year old daughter who was into computers and science, I would not think twice to take her to the show. If the whole booth babe thing is even an issue then it only serves as an example of what happens when you DON'T have the intelligence and/or motivation to do something you consider worthwhile. However, I would have to imagine that if she does any gaming at all, she already KNOWS that the scene is mostly sexually frustrated males and would only have that existing perception reinforced by the booth babes.
Personally, when I see booth babes, I make a point of asking something about the product they are displaying. If they can answer coherently with something more helpful than "ask that guy, he's the expert", then I'll stand around and talk. While most booth babes are exactly the eye candy they seem, a few are there because they are somehow connected to the business and they actually KNOW something. Those few generally seem to welcome the opportunity to show off the fact that they AREN'T just eye candy.
I have a low opinion of booth babes, and not for trying to push my buttons. It's that I can be almost sure that they don't know much about the technology and worse, don't give a crap about it. Anyone who is there ought to have a modicum of interest in the show.
I actually made this point to the Aizen booth at Winter NAMM 2010. They had a cute Asian gal (pretty sure she wasn't Japanese though) in a kimono, handing out flyers. This is all well and good -- her unusual attire certainly got attention without requiring leering, and made people pause long enough to take what she was offering -- but she knew NOTHING about the goods on display. I'm not saying she needs to know anything about musical instruments, or about music in general, but she should darn well know which people do what, and where things are stored. For anything other than being pretty, she was utterly useless, and that's just sad. I tried to make this point with one of the actual Aizen employees, but he didn't seem to give a shit. Maybe his grasp of English wasn't good enough to even know what I was saying, or he wasn't in a position to do anything and didn't like being asked to deliver bad news to his superiors, I don't know. So I brought it up with one of the people there who was clearly there (at least in part) because he DID speak perfect English. All he had to say was "Tell me about it. All she has to do is refer all questions to me, and she can't even do that."
It would have done them a lot more good to find themselves a female musician who might not be incredibly hot looking, but can actually demonstrate what they're selling. They're out there, and they can use the gigs. It's Southern California for fuck's sake!
When dealing with the U.S. legal system, yes he did.
Once the government establishes probable cause that the property is subject to forfeiture, the owner must prove on a "preponderance of the evidence" that it is not. The owner need not be judged guilty of any crime.
Yeah, it's that fucked up.
I don't know how other people hold these, but I don't see that a bezel an inch wide all the way around is helpful. Half an inch, sure. I know what happened with the Aspire One -- they took the same screen as the 10.6" model and stuck it in a larger shell. The smaller machine had the same display with a lot less wasted space. It also had a somewhat more cramped keyboard and a much more cramped trackpad, but the point is that the display bezel was driven by the need to accommodate the size of the display rather than choosing a display that best fits the form factor. I can understand that on a netbook, particularly on a large netbook that differs only in size from the next model down. I can't so much understand it on a tablet that's built from the ground up around that display.
Um, not all land-based vertebrae have five digits. My cats all have 4 toes on the back paws, and I'm pretty sure dogs are the same way.
So maybe 4 toes is an optimum, at least for the (rear) feet not used for grasping, and we humans just haven't evolved to that point yet.
No, they have five. One of them simply doesn't reach the end.
It still has the same problem as the Aspire One of the same size (which it greatly resembles) -- the bezel is huge. there's a lot of could-be-screen space wasted around the outside. I'd take a bit lower pixel density to have the same number of pixels occupy a larger area. It IS nice though that it's not the same 1366x768, 18 bit panel as the Aspire 5253.
Those microshutters kinda look like a DLP mirror array, except used to pass/block light rather than reflect/deflect it. Everything is in line rather than at a near-180-degree angle. I have to wonder if there is any commonality to their development, and possibly to their application -- could these shutters be used to make a better, brighter projector for consumers? The R&D is already done and it can't be THAT groundbreaking or we wouldn't be reading about it here -- the military would want to sit on anything truly game-changing.
CTRL + click opens the link in a new tab.
What laptop doesn't have a webcam these days? I thought those were integrated in just about everything since I bought my Acer Aspire One over three years ago (which is still working just fine, battery life and all). The AAO is shit for upgrading (it's maxed out at 1.5 GB of RAM and of course the Intel graphics suck) but it did pack a bunch of features into its tiny shell and they all work. The Atheros wifi is replaceable, if you find it to be too flaky.
On the non-netbook side, I got an Aspire 5253 (1.6 GHz E350, so 2 cores and a Radeon all on-die). Frankly, 2 GB was disappointing for everything but light gaming or running Cubase in a live setting (which is what I bought it for) until upgraded to 8 GB. I ended up trading it with a friend in exchange for a similarly specced Dell, except that it has Intel video (which is fine, I *never* game on this dedicated unit). He drags the Acer around everywhere, unless the Dell does something it doesn't (like drive S-Video output) and I have to lend it back. The HD in the Acer was also disappointing in speed terms (250 GB was OK in space terms) but when I found my 500 GB external drive to be too small and replaced it with a 1 TB drive, we reassigned the drive to the Acer. After these two upgrades, the Acer performs quite admirably for most tasks. I wouldn't want to use it for encoding video because I have a 6-core desktop machine, but it's only marginally slower than the 2.4 GHz dual-core desktop machine I had previously (which ALSO still works just fine, I lent it out when my cousin's laptop died).
Basically, get something that's built solidly enough to take the knocks you expect to dish out and has the features you need (or the known ability to add them, if it's short on RAM). I don't see that it's worth worrying about much else.
If you want to know if an upgrade is possible, don't ask around IF you can do it. Ask HOW. If it CAN be done, chances are very good that someone already HAS.
I think that's one reason hockey isn't more popular as a spectator sport. Other big sports come in bite-size chunks, good for both the casual watcher who wants to have a social event AND the stats-obsessed geek. Hockey might go 10 seconds from face-off to having the puck deflected out of play, or it might have 5 minutes of continuous end-to-end action during which it is hard to talk AND pay attention sufficiently to understand the flow of the game. Soccer suffers from much the same problem. I have a feeling that's just TOO MUCH WORK for most people, and they consequently find these sports "boring". It's not that there isn't enough going on, it's that it requires dedicated watching that most people don't want to give. It's also why following a play-by-play commentary on radio is taxing if you know the names of the players on at least one team, and downright incomprehensible if you don't. The small size of the puck used to be a problem for televised hockey, but it's much less of an issue in HD. HD has also allowed the cameras to take a wider angle and show action significantly away from the puck. (This is also a great boon for football and basketball, or any other sport with significant strategic happenings away from the ball. It's NICE with baseball but doesn't really contribute that much to comprehension, as baseball is very "quantized".)
Baseball has innings and at-bats and individual pitches. Basketball doesn't stay stopped for very long early in the game, but at the end of a close game (the only time most people REALLY watch closely), there are many stoppages. Football has plays, and also has similar stoppage tendencies at the end of a close game. Both "goal" sports feature fairly high levels of scoring, so it's pretty easy to tell which team is out-playing the other (where both hockey and soccer can fall into a defensive "wait for the other team to make a mistake" mode which is highly effective but DULL). They also are all fairly amenable to verbal description of the action and thus radio-friendly.
For me it depends how familiar I am with the music. If it's cheesy pop, I can be familiar with the song by the time they get through the first verse -- the rest of the song is essentially the same shit with sometimes different lyrics. If it's complex, I may require years and dozens or hundreds of listenings to be able to call it familiar. Once I get to that level, I can use it as background music, because I can mentally fill in anything I missed due to attention to another task.
What really drives me nuts is watching a plot-and-dialog-driven TV show or movie, with other people in the same room who insist on talking about tangents the entire time. First I move closer to the TV, and if that doesn't work well enough to let me follow what's going on, I leave. I'd rather give up and miss the whole thing than catch bits and pieces of it and not know what is going on or why. If it's broadcast TV or a DVR, I'll probably retreat to another room and complete it there. I've given up complaining, but when someone finds I'm in another room watching the same thing they are, ALONE, they can usually figure it out.
I've been known to wear headphones at the poker table, without bothering to run a signal through them. I'll also hum vaguely, and "dance" a bit in the chair to music that's not there. It's amazing how much people are willing to say on the assumption that I can't hear them.
Isolation booths big enough to house a person doing narration can be had for a few thousand dollars. Ones big enough to hold an entire large drum kit, maybe $10k. Sure it's not free, but it fits in a normal residence and pays off quickly when compared to studio time.
Why not reference the synopsis on Memory Alpha?
MHz? Try just plain Hz. A "tick" (the minimum unit in redstone circuitry) is 100 ms. If you set up a circuit to run on both the rising and falling edges of the clock, you get a whopping 10 Hz.
That's vanilla Minecraft, it appears the mod may double the speed. It also appears that the 6502 emulator can run multiple operations per clock, but you're still talking about something a couple orders of magnitude slower than the original 6502 in operation. I don't use any of these mods since I'm almost exclusively a Multiplayer player (which means such mods have to be server-side) but have designed plenty of redstone circuits in the vanilla game. Even something as simple as a binary counter still has significant latency problems -- my 5-bit counter would take up to three or four seconds for all bits to stabilize after it was incremented, and in a worst-case scenario, a five-second reset signal was required to flip all bits to zero (otherwise the low bits flipping to zero after the high bits had already cleared could cause the high bits to flip again). Redstone is S-L-O-W.
Also... which pet? And when? Pets get old and die, and I've had some online accounts longer than the lifespan of your average cat, dog, or parakeet.
We're talking about struggling against a system that lacks due process. Sometimes it is necessary to fight as dirty (or dirtier than) the established forces if you want to accomplish your goal.
If the U.S. government likes you while you do it, you're a Freedom Fighter. If they don't, you're a Terrorist.