Is there any live show left on TV or radio that does not have a delay (typically six seconds) and a "dump" button to avoid exactly this problem? If the engineer hears a banned word, regardless of the origin -- could be a caller, could be the host carelessly dropping an F-bomb -- he hits the dump button and everything in the delay cache is gone. Either there is a short span of "dead air" until the delay cache can fill up again, or (on the nicer systems) the system will cut straight ahead to real-time audio, slowly stretching out the audio until it once again has its six seconds of delay. (Obviously the latter works better on radio than with a video signal present.)
For sporting events, it is not uncommon to have each individual sound source on its own dump, so they can dump the announcer's indecency (or the player's tirade) and not go completely silent.
The problem is that the FCC is not a part of the Legislative branch, it is part of the Executive branch, and the Constitution clearly says that it is Congress that shall not make such a law. This means all the "strict constructionists" that support the "Unitary Executive" (in quotes because these two stances are mutually exclusive) will say that no violation of the Constitution is taking place.
Either that or they will just have a massive "failure to recall" when questioned on the point.
If a ship could drop a large number of "pods" containing people or supplies or machinery or whatever, each massing less than one metric ton, why couldn't the current methods work? It would be the Ikea way to get to Mars (some assembly required), but it would neatly dodge the problems of trying to land a single, larger ship. Some part of that ship could stay in orbit, and the contents of the pods (and maybe some recycled pod parts) could be stuck back together to generate the craft to return to the ship in orbit. That way the fuel used to get back to Earth is never landed on Mars, which saves the energy of having to get it back off Mars. Apollo 11 didn't land the entire craft on the moon, it only sent down the LEM. This would be more complex because the people would have to build their LEM once they are planetside, but the principle is much the same.
> Sorry to be a pedant, but what's the equivalent to FLAC?:)
That would be whatever data file(s) was/were used to print the book itself. With that, and the appropriate press and software, you could run perfect copies.
It looks like human OCR (a distributed typing effort) has bridged the gap though. Still, this did slow down the massive leakage slightly. I think it's time to turn lemons into lemonade and let the stores put it on the shelf unannounced, starting now. Those who really want it will tell each other where to find it -- at least until it's on display in every bookstore, which should take no more than 24 hours. Beat the party poopers to the punch and let stores sell whatever they already have on hand.
The fans won't want to read this low-quality capture, the non-fans weren't buying anyway (except as a gift, which they'll still do), and besides, reading the book has never hurt the movie that follows from it. Having a crap copy is either going to do (1) nothing, as it's not worth the effort, or (2)make someone want the book.
Now if someone OCR'd it to a text file, THAT might actually cut into sales a little bit. But in order to do that, the capture would have to not suck.
This is like a.MOD file vs. an.MP3 -- the latter is sometimes a suitable replacement for the medium it came from, but the former is not. It may get the point across, but it's just not the same thing.
Not really, haven't you ever owned a coffee table so low you can trip over it? The table in question stood about 18" from floor to tabletop. I don't remember the incident particularly well, but the table I do remember as I only got rid of it in 2000, when it was too beat up to survive being moved again and it wasn't worth rigging it back together. I wish I had furniture that solid now -- none of this particle board crap that surrounds me is going to last 30 years.
Any act you repeat frequently enough becomes partially hardwired into the nervous system, and we call it "muscle memory" (though of course it is neurons that retain the memories). If you have ever learned to play an instrument beyond the beginner level, you will know that you cannot possibly process everything that needs to be done, in real time, in the conscious mind. At some level, you have to just put it on autopilot. You need the conscious mind to read the chart or pick out the harmonies, but you expect that the skills necessary to translate your ideas into sound will just be there. If you're thinking "how do I play that note", it's already gone by.
If you want to play an instrument and sing at the same time, or play two independent instruments at once (piano and especially organ are close enough to qualify, as is something like a Chapman Stick or Megatar), you have to rely on muscle memory that much more, as you now have twice as much to deal with. Doing all that and singing at the same time is more difficult still, and there are plenty of great musicians who never learn this particular stunt. The only way I can play and sing at the same time is to drill one or the other (usually the instrument) until I can do it by habit alone, then layer the other one over it and hope it holds together. Fortunately, woodwind players are not frequently asked to sing while playing, or to play two instruments at once, and if I do have to sing while playing, it's not really an independent act but part of coaxing a particular sound from the instrument.
As is the case with walking, the trick is to practice (a lot) and to accept that you will fall down (a lot) until you get the hang of it. Most of us just don't remember how hard we had to work to learn to walk. Some have to re-learn and could tell you how tough it is, and others still bear the scars of learning in infancy -- I have a scar in one eyebrow from falling into the edge of a table while still learning to walk (and a matching one in the other eyebrow, from learning to fight, but that is another story).
I have always wondered why drives couldn't be configured with two independent arm assemblies (in opposite corners of the drive so there is no risk of physical collision) that can function simultaneously, which would allow you to either double the read and write speeds, or cut your rotational latency in half, depending on how you used them. Random seek could also be greatly reduced if one set of heads was seeking for the next transfer while the current transfer is still under way. If the electronics are not able to keep up with two sets of heads, they can still be used to reduce latency and seek times. A two-armed 7200 rpm drive should, in theory at least, have latency similar to a 15k drive, and seek times considerably better with intelligent command queueing.
Another method I've wondered about would take far less re-tooling, although it would do nothing for latency or seek times. Read or write (or some mixture of the two perhaps) all of the heads on the drive simultaneously rather than sequentially. This would mean spindle speeds could be kept down but sustained transfer rates could be considerably better than single-platter 15k drives, and the drives would be physically unchanged. Even those 15k drives could be reconfigured to read/write both sides of their single platter simultaneously. The big catch, of course, is the difficulty of keeping ten heads in alignment at the same time. It might be necessary to sacrifice some of this speed to allow the whole stack to be read or written in two or more passes so that heads that slightly missed their mark can have another go at it. Even if it takes three rotations to read both sides of five platters, three is less than ten!
Finally, if each idea is good by itself, why not both together? Two sets of heads to reduce latency and seek times, and all the heads on a given arm active simultaneously to increase transfer speeds -- or the second seek arm could be used to pick up where the heads "missed" on that first pass.
I can see why crystallization might be a problem with freezing the mirror, but I am also willing to bet there is some exotic way to freeze mercury (maybe by doing it extremely quickly) that will prevent or minimize this.
As for transit telescopes, they are indeed useful, in large part because they can be made so much bigger than fully movable assemblies. For a radio example, take Arecibo. Of course, radio telescopes are a lot easier to construct because of the longer wavelengths involved, but that doesn't change the basic fact that fixed means potentially huge. It just explains why radio telescopes got there first.
I don't think there are any moon moths, but there might be these trying to get into your telescope. If they can't, they'll just stand on the front element and flip you the bird.
This is why everyone should switch to a major of Business or English Lit or Basket Weaving. Let 'em reap what they sow. Hasten the demise of the police state by the only means possible -- passive resistance.
Would the freezing of the mercury really be that much of a problem? How about a system where the mirror is formed of molten metal, then allowed to freeze (requiring no additional energy to hold its shape). If it gets scratched, chipped, warped, or otherwise marred, heat it up and shape it again.
The down side of such a system would be that you would lose the ability to change mirror dimensions "on the fly", but I'm not sure they're doing that anyhow. Also the mirror makers would have to account for the contraction of the metal on freezing, but at least they have the ability to retry if they don't get it quite right, or if the secondary mirrors (which presumably will be the standard glass type) turn out to be imperfect.
I also believe a telescope with a liquid mirror would have to be a "transit telescope", always pointed straight up relative to the local pull of gravity. Transit telescopes can track objects by moving their secondaries around, but not very far off-axis, and at the cost of focus and sensitivity. A solid-Hg mirror would remove this restriction, though it would possibly be too massive to reasonably move it around. Without this ability, observations would be at the mercy of whichever way the scope was pointed at any given time, give or take a few degrees.
It also seems to me the dust problem is relatively easy to solve using a positive pressure system. Any amount of gas in the telescope enclosure will be positive pressure compared to what's outside. Either the enclosure will not leak (and dust will have no way in), or it will leak slightly, forcing dust away from the leaks anyhow. Then maintaining a clean mirror is as simple as pumping in replacement gas.
I would wager that the manufacturers want some margin for error, as various factors aside from amount of printing could have effects on cartridge life. First, they may lose ink to evaporation through the nozzles, more to the "cleaning" that follows, and finally they aren't all quite the same to start with (something laser printers share). The level sensing technology has to be cheap since it gets tossed with the cartridge, so that limits its accuracy. Also they want to know you have enough ink to complete one worst-case page, so that you will not run out mid-page without warning.
That said, there is little doubt there are deliberate inefficiencies designed in, such as overly aggressive "cleaning" on every startup. There is also little doubt that as much is done to squelch competition as can be managed without running (too far) afoul of the law. Want to triple the lifetime of a cartridge? Get a rubber glove, a syringe, and a bottle of ink. It should work at least two refills on average (some won't but others will go three). With Mylar bag cartridges, it's getting them sealed up again without an air bubble that can be difficult. With tank-only cartridges, they usually can be tapped and filled easily but the seal at the printhead is a one-shot deal. A little plastic wrap and rubber cement takes care of this, or you can hack the printer so that you need not remove a cartridge to inject it with ink.
I've run a small office's all-in-one printer on three cartridges in rotation (later two in alternation when one got leaky) for 18 months, and used only half the refill kit ($20) in the process. The needle on the syringe lasted about three uses before it was as dull as your thumb, I had to use push-pins to open holes first, but I only used about 6 ounces of ink. As soon as one would run dry, or the printer would get seriously annoying about low ink, I would swap and later refill the one just removed. Done this way, it is no more disruptive than using throwaway cartridges. I never had to hold a print job to fill a cartridge, and could do the refill at my convenience (within reason). The caveat is that self-refills will dry out on the shelf faster than new ones, so this may only be worthwhile in a high-volume environment.
Also if you refill in an office, especially in an office building with shared bathrooms, you will get odd looks from people when they walk in on you holding a syringe while wearing oddly stained rubber gloves. That's always fun. It also pays to wear black on refill day.
Practically any contract worth the paper it's written on will have a severability clause, stating that if part of the contract is ruled invalid, that does not invalidate the entire contract. That is also why contracts are written as a series of clauses and are often convoluted -- if a contract term is thrown out, this limits the damage.
Like code recycling, this practice also makes time-tested clauses appear in many different kinds of contracts. Some of the clauses in a Cargo Insurance policy date back to the 17th century. Standard Fire clauses go back to the 1850's. There is power in a piece of code (be it legal code or software) for which the meaning and interpretation is precisely known. I am certain there are antiquated clauses in every line of contract law (though I can only speak of insurance contracts), but they stick around because there is no debate about what they mean.
The priority now should be to show that the contract terms of the DVDCCA are inherently one-sided and unfair, though I don't hold much hope of this in today's pro-corporate atmosphere. Chances are, the clauses are deliberately written so as to leave little or no wiggle room, so Kaleidoscope probably can't poke holes in them -- they have to get them invalidated entirely.
Build that machine using thiotimoline. If you refuse to add the water after the machine has already tripped a positive response, expect your pipes to burst, or your house to be swamped in a flood, because the mixing of the thiotimoline and water has already happened/must happen. Computer says yes!
No matter what your profession, half of your colleagues are below average. That could include you. But in most professions, you don't have to be the best, or even close to the best, to be better than an unknown quantity. This is why those dim bulbs still surround you.
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that! -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
The flip side of this is that people need to accept responsibility for their own actions. Fact is, some people become complete asshats when using. The only way legalization can work is if the cost of being an asshat remains high. Some people seem to fall into the logical fallacy that if heroin was legal, then shooting heroin and driving would be legal. Uh, no. Alcohol is legal, drinking and driving is not. I don't see the difference -- use of a drug can be separated from the stupid shit you do while on the drug.
I worked with a guy who got caught smoking crack in his car -- twice. In the same place and the same car, a couple months apart. I didn't see him again after the second time, but when he explained the first incident (yes he remained employed, his father was a big client) I wanted to smack him in the back of the head. This guy was a pretty dim bulb anyhow, but his story reached astonishing levels of stupidity, even for him.
He'd gone off to Carl's, Jr. for lunch, and on the way back he parked in front of our building because he was afraid of the parking valet seeing him. Problem is, this meant parking illegally on a major surface street (El Segundo Blvd.). First DUH... yeah the parking valet was a fink, but I'd rather deal with one fink than unknown numbers driving by -- and pissing everyone off by blocking a lane they expect to be open. Besides, there were network closets frequently left unlocked all through the building -- smoke in there, idiot! They smell like pot for a reason, nobody gives a shit if you smoke crack instead (except that parking valet that fancied himself a security guard, and he wouldn't be poking in closets), and he doesn't have to drive while fucked up. If the network guys caught him they'd bitch him out for being in the network closet, and maybe bitch to our boss. But as long as he didn't break anything, that was about the worst he had to worry about.
One of the network closets was behind an unmarked (and usually unlocked) door on the same hallway as the floor's main bathroom. I wandered into it once completely accidentally and almost choked on the purple haze. Nobody was in there but the evidence said they had been recently. Then again this is the same network company that greeted me with an obviously armed guard when I tried to pay a $10 domain registry fee in person. They hosted a lot of spammers and had a lot of enemies, not that I knew that at the time, but the grunt-level guys were generally good people -- and those guys didn't stick around long. Probably had to smoke in the network closets just to survive the day.
This is at least partly attributable to the fact that alcoholics and nicotine fiends can steal from the store and skip that inefficient middle step of stealing-and-pawning, but it is also attributable to the cost of taxation being much less than the cost of having to obtain (or distill) contraband. If a bottle of rotgut cost $100 due to the taxes, people would run moonshine again. There's some tipping point, and the current cost of alcohol and tobacco taxes currently sit below that tipping point. What this would mean for regulated sales of currently illicit drugs is that the government squeeze needs to be less than the dealer's squeeze (or perception thereof).
But why do it cheaply, in the open, when it can be so much more lucrative on the black market? Follow the money. In the end, it's all just one more way to pick our pockets.
> Hockey just doesn't televise well in standard def, its not because of not being able to see the puck, its because you can't see the play develop and the action off the puck.
Damn straight! When actually at games, I find I am not looking the same place the main camera is (or would be) a good portion of the time. I'm not watching the forward on the breakaway when he's still at the blue line -- I'm watching the goalie. I'm not watching the scrum along the boards, I'm watching the guys setting up camp in front of the net or ten feet behind the scrum. I'm looking for hits away from the play. I'm looking for a mismatch. I'm looking for an odd man rush just waiting to happen because the defensemen are pinching. You just don't see that on television as it stands now, where you might see five people in the picture. There are eleven guys to watch (neglecting the goalie behind the play), in some cases twelve. By necessity, you are missing half the game, because there aren't enough pixels to go around. It does help to mute the TV and put on the radio broadcast, as they do a lot more play-by-play and a lot less "color". This helps you see what you aren't being shown.
Spread a wide-angle shot on a wall 6 feet wide, at 1080p, and let me decide where I want to look -- that would be the perfect televised game. Unfortunately, that probably would hurt ticket sales, as the HDTV view would be better than the nosebleed seats, without the parking and the high volume sound system (physically painful kind of loud) and the people walking in front of you, and... I think you get the point. Maybe people would hang out in areas with huge HD displays and cheer along, much like the Australian (tennis) Open, but it is unlikely they would pay for the privilege. They will probably buy overpriced beer and hot dogs though; they already do at sports bars.
Pranks don't generally extend to inconveniencing yourself! As mentioned, any good done will undoubtedly be taken care of soon enough, since the hinges are still free to slide back toward the tank. The whole point is to keep it from annoying you for the remainder of that visit.
A proper Discordian prank might involve rigging the toilet so that the lid falls every time the toilet is flushed. This would be both creative (preventing a shitstorm) and disruptive (as it runs counter to expectation). I can imagine a few rather easy ways to do this with time and a few tools, but not generally ones I carry away from home. Better still would be to eliminate the flush handle entirely, using the lid in its place -- when business is concluded, lower the lid and the toilet flushes. I'd even be willing to replace the "1 Hour Parking" sign over the toilet with "Lower Lid to Flush".
I know you wouldn't want to do this in a public restroom, but the cure for this is simple -- move the hinges away from the tank. Even if it's not your bathroom, the owners will not figure out you spotted and fixed a problem, they'll just notice the damn thing doesn't fall any more.
What, you don't carry a Swiss army knife at all times?
Seriously though, sometimes all it takes is to grab the seat and wiggle it away from the tank. If it's mounted any tighter than that, and it's not yours, well then it really isn't your problem, is it? It will soon be pushed back as far as it will go by the cumulative impact of people sitting on it, but at least it won't annoy you any more for that particular visit.
Or one could put up a window graphic like those seen on taxis and shuttle vans. You can see out from the inside as they are dotted with holes about 1 mm wide, and are effectively about 50% transparent -- but from the outside, the graphic is dominant. They are also used in some cases to simply disguise a window, by printing the graphic a solid color that matches the vehicle or building.
If people are really concerned about others looking into their houses, these will probably get popular. A loss of half the incoming light is only one stop in photographic terms, and to the human eye looks a lot less dramatic than would be imagined.
What I don't understand is how MPG has not gone up in the last 15 years. My car is from the early 90s and it gets the same, if not better, mileage than newer cars of its class. How has engine technology stagnated for over a decade?
It hasn't. Instead of efficiency, the designers have worked on squeezing more power out of the same amount of displacement without overtly harming fuel economy. Power-to-displacement for most mass-market cars is way up from 10 years ago -- sometimes 50% or 100%. This is just the direction the engineering is going.
I drive a 1989 Subaru XT6, which was rated at 18 city/24 hwy when it was new. It still does about the same. It still did about the same right up until the last engine self-destructed. Power got worse as the engine ate itself up, but economy was not seriously impacted. The replacement engine gets me an extra 0.5 mpg or so, and a considerably smoother power curve, but it still has some burps in it because the fuel system is not quite up to the task.
Compare that to a late-model Subaru with a 3.0L H-6 -- it'll produce 300 hp but just about the same mileage, or slightly improved due to a more efficient drivetrain (AWD, not 4WD). I get 150 hp on a good day, and it's not just because it's old. That's just what it was built to do.
In real world use, it stands to reason that having 300 hp makes it a lot more tempting to actually use it, further cutting into fuel economy. I know I would, when the situation justified it. There are times (like short freeway onramps with meters) when I'm hard pressed to get up to the necessary 60-65 mph to merge cleanly, even running each gear up to or slightly over 5000 rpm. Twice the power would be really, really nice at times like these. I could spend more time scanning the traffic and less time glancing at the tachometer.
Why does this have to be an either/or situation? Why can't a hybrid car have lookahead capability as well? For example, it might use the capability to determine whether it is worthwhile to start the engine when running on battery power. If it's open road and green lights, then start the engine in preparation to accelerate. If it's two miles of brake lights, only start the engine if the charge state justifies it. Also, if it's all assholes-to-elbows as far as the eye can see, eliminate the 15 mph threshold for starting the engine. Even if the car exceeds 15 mph, it won't be for very long.
(I don't know if 15 mph is common to most hybrids, only that it's what the Prius does.)
I would also like to see the "smart car" recommend getting off the freeway when it's truly a good idea (as opposed to just exchanging slow-and-go for red lights), or even say "Hey aren't you hungry? It might be a good time to pull off and get a sandwich and a soda because it's going to be a long trip home." The source of motive power is completely irrelevant here of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there any live show left on TV or radio that does not have a delay (typically six seconds) and a "dump" button to avoid exactly this problem? If the engineer hears a banned word, regardless of the origin -- could be a caller, could be the host carelessly dropping an F-bomb -- he hits the dump button and everything in the delay cache is gone. Either there is a short span of "dead air" until the delay cache can fill up again, or (on the nicer systems) the system will cut straight ahead to real-time audio, slowly stretching out the audio until it once again has its six seconds of delay. (Obviously the latter works better on radio than with a video signal present.)
For sporting events, it is not uncommon to have each individual sound source on its own dump, so they can dump the announcer's indecency (or the player's tirade) and not go completely silent.
Mal-2
The problem is that the FCC is not a part of the Legislative branch, it is part of the Executive branch, and the Constitution clearly says that it is Congress that shall not make such a law. This means all the "strict constructionists" that support the "Unitary Executive" (in quotes because these two stances are mutually exclusive) will say that no violation of the Constitution is taking place.
Either that or they will just have a massive "failure to recall" when questioned on the point.
Mal-2
If a ship could drop a large number of "pods" containing people or supplies or machinery or whatever, each massing less than one metric ton, why couldn't the current methods work? It would be the Ikea way to get to Mars (some assembly required), but it would neatly dodge the problems of trying to land a single, larger ship. Some part of that ship could stay in orbit, and the contents of the pods (and maybe some recycled pod parts) could be stuck back together to generate the craft to return to the ship in orbit. That way the fuel used to get back to Earth is never landed on Mars, which saves the energy of having to get it back off Mars. Apollo 11 didn't land the entire craft on the moon, it only sent down the LEM. This would be more complex because the people would have to build their LEM once they are planetside, but the principle is much the same.
Mal-2
> Sorry to be a pedant, but what's the equivalent to FLAC? :)
That would be whatever data file(s) was/were used to print the book itself. With that, and the appropriate press and software, you could run perfect copies.
It looks like human OCR (a distributed typing effort) has bridged the gap though. Still, this did slow down the massive leakage slightly. I think it's time to turn lemons into lemonade and let the stores put it on the shelf unannounced, starting now. Those who really want it will tell each other where to find it -- at least until it's on display in every bookstore, which should take no more than 24 hours. Beat the party poopers to the punch and let stores sell whatever they already have on hand.
Mal-2
The fans won't want to read this low-quality capture, the non-fans weren't buying anyway (except as a gift, which they'll still do), and besides, reading the book has never hurt the movie that follows from it. Having a crap copy is either going to do (1) nothing, as it's not worth the effort, or (2)make someone want the book.
.MOD file vs. an .MP3 -- the latter is sometimes a suitable replacement for the medium it came from, but the former is not. It may get the point across, but it's just not the same thing.
Now if someone OCR'd it to a text file, THAT might actually cut into sales a little bit. But in order to do that, the capture would have to not suck.
This is like a
Mal-2
Not really, haven't you ever owned a coffee table so low you can trip over it? The table in question stood about 18" from floor to tabletop. I don't remember the incident particularly well, but the table I do remember as I only got rid of it in 2000, when it was too beat up to survive being moved again and it wasn't worth rigging it back together. I wish I had furniture that solid now -- none of this particle board crap that surrounds me is going to last 30 years.
Mal-2
Any act you repeat frequently enough becomes partially hardwired into the nervous system, and we call it "muscle memory" (though of course it is neurons that retain the memories). If you have ever learned to play an instrument beyond the beginner level, you will know that you cannot possibly process everything that needs to be done, in real time, in the conscious mind. At some level, you have to just put it on autopilot. You need the conscious mind to read the chart or pick out the harmonies, but you expect that the skills necessary to translate your ideas into sound will just be there. If you're thinking "how do I play that note", it's already gone by.
If you want to play an instrument and sing at the same time, or play two independent instruments at once (piano and especially organ are close enough to qualify, as is something like a Chapman Stick or Megatar), you have to rely on muscle memory that much more, as you now have twice as much to deal with. Doing all that and singing at the same time is more difficult still, and there are plenty of great musicians who never learn this particular stunt. The only way I can play and sing at the same time is to drill one or the other (usually the instrument) until I can do it by habit alone, then layer the other one over it and hope it holds together. Fortunately, woodwind players are not frequently asked to sing while playing, or to play two instruments at once, and if I do have to sing while playing, it's not really an independent act but part of coaxing a particular sound from the instrument.
As is the case with walking, the trick is to practice (a lot) and to accept that you will fall down (a lot) until you get the hang of it. Most of us just don't remember how hard we had to work to learn to walk. Some have to re-learn and could tell you how tough it is, and others still bear the scars of learning in infancy -- I have a scar in one eyebrow from falling into the edge of a table while still learning to walk (and a matching one in the other eyebrow, from learning to fight, but that is another story).
Mal-2
I have always wondered why drives couldn't be configured with two independent arm assemblies (in opposite corners of the drive so there is no risk of physical collision) that can function simultaneously, which would allow you to either double the read and write speeds, or cut your rotational latency in half, depending on how you used them. Random seek could also be greatly reduced if one set of heads was seeking for the next transfer while the current transfer is still under way. If the electronics are not able to keep up with two sets of heads, they can still be used to reduce latency and seek times. A two-armed 7200 rpm drive should, in theory at least, have latency similar to a 15k drive, and seek times considerably better with intelligent command queueing.
Another method I've wondered about would take far less re-tooling, although it would do nothing for latency or seek times. Read or write (or some mixture of the two perhaps) all of the heads on the drive simultaneously rather than sequentially. This would mean spindle speeds could be kept down but sustained transfer rates could be considerably better than single-platter 15k drives, and the drives would be physically unchanged. Even those 15k drives could be reconfigured to read/write both sides of their single platter simultaneously. The big catch, of course, is the difficulty of keeping ten heads in alignment at the same time. It might be necessary to sacrifice some of this speed to allow the whole stack to be read or written in two or more passes so that heads that slightly missed their mark can have another go at it. Even if it takes three rotations to read both sides of five platters, three is less than ten!
Finally, if each idea is good by itself, why not both together? Two sets of heads to reduce latency and seek times, and all the heads on a given arm active simultaneously to increase transfer speeds -- or the second seek arm could be used to pick up where the heads "missed" on that first pass.
Mal-2
I can see why crystallization might be a problem with freezing the mirror, but I am also willing to bet there is some exotic way to freeze mercury (maybe by doing it extremely quickly) that will prevent or minimize this.
As for transit telescopes, they are indeed useful, in large part because they can be made so much bigger than fully movable assemblies. For a radio example, take Arecibo. Of course, radio telescopes are a lot easier to construct because of the longer wavelengths involved, but that doesn't change the basic fact that fixed means potentially huge. It just explains why radio telescopes got there first.
I don't think there are any moon moths, but there might be these trying to get into your telescope. If they can't, they'll just stand on the front element and flip you the bird.
Mal-2
This is why everyone should switch to a major of Business or English Lit or Basket Weaving. Let 'em reap what they sow. Hasten the demise of the police state by the only means possible -- passive resistance.
Mal-2
Would the freezing of the mercury really be that much of a problem? How about a system where the mirror is formed of molten metal, then allowed to freeze (requiring no additional energy to hold its shape). If it gets scratched, chipped, warped, or otherwise marred, heat it up and shape it again.
The down side of such a system would be that you would lose the ability to change mirror dimensions "on the fly", but I'm not sure they're doing that anyhow. Also the mirror makers would have to account for the contraction of the metal on freezing, but at least they have the ability to retry if they don't get it quite right, or if the secondary mirrors (which presumably will be the standard glass type) turn out to be imperfect.
I also believe a telescope with a liquid mirror would have to be a "transit telescope", always pointed straight up relative to the local pull of gravity. Transit telescopes can track objects by moving their secondaries around, but not very far off-axis, and at the cost of focus and sensitivity. A solid-Hg mirror would remove this restriction, though it would possibly be too massive to reasonably move it around. Without this ability, observations would be at the mercy of whichever way the scope was pointed at any given time, give or take a few degrees.
It also seems to me the dust problem is relatively easy to solve using a positive pressure system. Any amount of gas in the telescope enclosure will be positive pressure compared to what's outside. Either the enclosure will not leak (and dust will have no way in), or it will leak slightly, forcing dust away from the leaks anyhow. Then maintaining a clean mirror is as simple as pumping in replacement gas.
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I would wager that the manufacturers want some margin for error, as various factors aside from amount of printing could have effects on cartridge life. First, they may lose ink to evaporation through the nozzles, more to the "cleaning" that follows, and finally they aren't all quite the same to start with (something laser printers share). The level sensing technology has to be cheap since it gets tossed with the cartridge, so that limits its accuracy. Also they want to know you have enough ink to complete one worst-case page, so that you will not run out mid-page without warning.
That said, there is little doubt there are deliberate inefficiencies designed in, such as overly aggressive "cleaning" on every startup. There is also little doubt that as much is done to squelch competition as can be managed without running (too far) afoul of the law. Want to triple the lifetime of a cartridge? Get a rubber glove, a syringe, and a bottle of ink. It should work at least two refills on average (some won't but others will go three). With Mylar bag cartridges, it's getting them sealed up again without an air bubble that can be difficult. With tank-only cartridges, they usually can be tapped and filled easily but the seal at the printhead is a one-shot deal. A little plastic wrap and rubber cement takes care of this, or you can hack the printer so that you need not remove a cartridge to inject it with ink.
I've run a small office's all-in-one printer on three cartridges in rotation (later two in alternation when one got leaky) for 18 months, and used only half the refill kit ($20) in the process. The needle on the syringe lasted about three uses before it was as dull as your thumb, I had to use push-pins to open holes first, but I only used about 6 ounces of ink. As soon as one would run dry, or the printer would get seriously annoying about low ink, I would swap and later refill the one just removed. Done this way, it is no more disruptive than using throwaway cartridges. I never had to hold a print job to fill a cartridge, and could do the refill at my convenience (within reason). The caveat is that self-refills will dry out on the shelf faster than new ones, so this may only be worthwhile in a high-volume environment.
Also if you refill in an office, especially in an office building with shared bathrooms, you will get odd looks from people when they walk in on you holding a syringe while wearing oddly stained rubber gloves. That's always fun. It also pays to wear black on refill day.
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Practically any contract worth the paper it's written on will have a severability clause, stating that if part of the contract is ruled invalid, that does not invalidate the entire contract. That is also why contracts are written as a series of clauses and are often convoluted -- if a contract term is thrown out, this limits the damage.
Like code recycling, this practice also makes time-tested clauses appear in many different kinds of contracts. Some of the clauses in a Cargo Insurance policy date back to the 17th century. Standard Fire clauses go back to the 1850's. There is power in a piece of code (be it legal code or software) for which the meaning and interpretation is precisely known. I am certain there are antiquated clauses in every line of contract law (though I can only speak of insurance contracts), but they stick around because there is no debate about what they mean.
The priority now should be to show that the contract terms of the DVDCCA are inherently one-sided and unfair, though I don't hold much hope of this in today's pro-corporate atmosphere. Chances are, the clauses are deliberately written so as to leave little or no wiggle room, so Kaleidoscope probably can't poke holes in them -- they have to get them invalidated entirely.
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...the horse is in Beijing. Good luck with "Operation Barn Door".
Build that machine using thiotimoline. If you refuse to add the water after the machine has already tripped a positive response, expect your pipes to burst, or your house to be swamped in a flood, because the mixing of the thiotimoline and water has already happened/must happen. Computer says yes!
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No matter what your profession, half of your colleagues are below average. That could include you. But in most professions, you don't have to be the best, or even close to the best, to be better than an unknown quantity. This is why those dim bulbs still surround you.
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that! -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
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The flip side of this is that people need to accept responsibility for their own actions. Fact is, some people become complete asshats when using. The only way legalization can work is if the cost of being an asshat remains high. Some people seem to fall into the logical fallacy that if heroin was legal, then shooting heroin and driving would be legal. Uh, no. Alcohol is legal, drinking and driving is not. I don't see the difference -- use of a drug can be separated from the stupid shit you do while on the drug.
I worked with a guy who got caught smoking crack in his car -- twice. In the same place and the same car, a couple months apart. I didn't see him again after the second time, but when he explained the first incident (yes he remained employed, his father was a big client) I wanted to smack him in the back of the head. This guy was a pretty dim bulb anyhow, but his story reached astonishing levels of stupidity, even for him.
He'd gone off to Carl's, Jr. for lunch, and on the way back he parked in front of our building because he was afraid of the parking valet seeing him. Problem is, this meant parking illegally on a major surface street (El Segundo Blvd.). First DUH... yeah the parking valet was a fink, but I'd rather deal with one fink than unknown numbers driving by -- and pissing everyone off by blocking a lane they expect to be open. Besides, there were network closets frequently left unlocked all through the building -- smoke in there, idiot! They smell like pot for a reason, nobody gives a shit if you smoke crack instead (except that parking valet that fancied himself a security guard, and he wouldn't be poking in closets), and he doesn't have to drive while fucked up. If the network guys caught him they'd bitch him out for being in the network closet, and maybe bitch to our boss. But as long as he didn't break anything, that was about the worst he had to worry about.
One of the network closets was behind an unmarked (and usually unlocked) door on the same hallway as the floor's main bathroom. I wandered into it once completely accidentally and almost choked on the purple haze. Nobody was in there but the evidence said they had been recently. Then again this is the same network company that greeted me with an obviously armed guard when I tried to pay a $10 domain registry fee in person. They hosted a lot of spammers and had a lot of enemies, not that I knew that at the time, but the grunt-level guys were generally good people -- and those guys didn't stick around long. Probably had to smoke in the network closets just to survive the day.
Whoa, there was a point in there somewhere.
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This is at least partly attributable to the fact that alcoholics and nicotine fiends can steal from the store and skip that inefficient middle step of stealing-and-pawning, but it is also attributable to the cost of taxation being much less than the cost of having to obtain (or distill) contraband. If a bottle of rotgut cost $100 due to the taxes, people would run moonshine again. There's some tipping point, and the current cost of alcohol and tobacco taxes currently sit below that tipping point. What this would mean for regulated sales of currently illicit drugs is that the government squeeze needs to be less than the dealer's squeeze (or perception thereof).
But why do it cheaply, in the open, when it can be so much more lucrative on the black market? Follow the money. In the end, it's all just one more way to pick our pockets.
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> Hockey just doesn't televise well in standard def, its not because of not being able to see the puck, its because you can't see the play develop and the action off the puck.
Damn straight! When actually at games, I find I am not looking the same place the main camera is (or would be) a good portion of the time. I'm not watching the forward on the breakaway when he's still at the blue line -- I'm watching the goalie. I'm not watching the scrum along the boards, I'm watching the guys setting up camp in front of the net or ten feet behind the scrum. I'm looking for hits away from the play. I'm looking for a mismatch. I'm looking for an odd man rush just waiting to happen because the defensemen are pinching. You just don't see that on television as it stands now, where you might see five people in the picture. There are eleven guys to watch (neglecting the goalie behind the play), in some cases twelve. By necessity, you are missing half the game, because there aren't enough pixels to go around. It does help to mute the TV and put on the radio broadcast, as they do a lot more play-by-play and a lot less "color". This helps you see what you aren't being shown.
Spread a wide-angle shot on a wall 6 feet wide, at 1080p, and let me decide where I want to look -- that would be the perfect televised game. Unfortunately, that probably would hurt ticket sales, as the HDTV view would be better than the nosebleed seats, without the parking and the high volume sound system (physically painful kind of loud) and the people walking in front of you, and... I think you get the point. Maybe people would hang out in areas with huge HD displays and cheer along, much like the Australian (tennis) Open, but it is unlikely they would pay for the privilege. They will probably buy overpriced beer and hot dogs though; they already do at sports bars.
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Pranks don't generally extend to inconveniencing yourself! As mentioned, any good done will undoubtedly be taken care of soon enough, since the hinges are still free to slide back toward the tank. The whole point is to keep it from annoying you for the remainder of that visit.
A proper Discordian prank might involve rigging the toilet so that the lid falls every time the toilet is flushed. This would be both creative (preventing a shitstorm) and disruptive (as it runs counter to expectation). I can imagine a few rather easy ways to do this with time and a few tools, but not generally ones I carry away from home. Better still would be to eliminate the flush handle entirely, using the lid in its place -- when business is concluded, lower the lid and the toilet flushes. I'd even be willing to replace the "1 Hour Parking" sign over the toilet with "Lower Lid to Flush".
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I know you wouldn't want to do this in a public restroom, but the cure for this is simple -- move the hinges away from the tank. Even if it's not your bathroom, the owners will not figure out you spotted and fixed a problem, they'll just notice the damn thing doesn't fall any more.
What, you don't carry a Swiss army knife at all times?
Seriously though, sometimes all it takes is to grab the seat and wiggle it away from the tank. If it's mounted any tighter than that, and it's not yours, well then it really isn't your problem, is it? It will soon be pushed back as far as it will go by the cumulative impact of people sitting on it, but at least it won't annoy you any more for that particular visit.
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Or one could put up a window graphic like those seen on taxis and shuttle vans. You can see out from the inside as they are dotted with holes about 1 mm wide, and are effectively about 50% transparent -- but from the outside, the graphic is dominant. They are also used in some cases to simply disguise a window, by printing the graphic a solid color that matches the vehicle or building.
If people are really concerned about others looking into their houses, these will probably get popular. A loss of half the incoming light is only one stop in photographic terms, and to the human eye looks a lot less dramatic than would be imagined.
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Or not. (Very NSFW.)
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It hasn't. Instead of efficiency, the designers have worked on squeezing more power out of the same amount of displacement without overtly harming fuel economy. Power-to-displacement for most mass-market cars is way up from 10 years ago -- sometimes 50% or 100%. This is just the direction the engineering is going.
I drive a 1989 Subaru XT6, which was rated at 18 city/24 hwy when it was new. It still does about the same. It still did about the same right up until the last engine self-destructed. Power got worse as the engine ate itself up, but economy was not seriously impacted. The replacement engine gets me an extra 0.5 mpg or so, and a considerably smoother power curve, but it still has some burps in it because the fuel system is not quite up to the task.
Compare that to a late-model Subaru with a 3.0L H-6 -- it'll produce 300 hp but just about the same mileage, or slightly improved due to a more efficient drivetrain (AWD, not 4WD). I get 150 hp on a good day, and it's not just because it's old. That's just what it was built to do.
In real world use, it stands to reason that having 300 hp makes it a lot more tempting to actually use it, further cutting into fuel economy. I know I would, when the situation justified it. There are times (like short freeway onramps with meters) when I'm hard pressed to get up to the necessary 60-65 mph to merge cleanly, even running each gear up to or slightly over 5000 rpm. Twice the power would be really, really nice at times like these. I could spend more time scanning the traffic and less time glancing at the tachometer.
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Why does this have to be an either/or situation? Why can't a hybrid car have lookahead capability as well? For example, it might use the capability to determine whether it is worthwhile to start the engine when running on battery power. If it's open road and green lights, then start the engine in preparation to accelerate. If it's two miles of brake lights, only start the engine if the charge state justifies it. Also, if it's all assholes-to-elbows as far as the eye can see, eliminate the 15 mph threshold for starting the engine. Even if the car exceeds 15 mph, it won't be for very long.
(I don't know if 15 mph is common to most hybrids, only that it's what the Prius does.)
I would also like to see the "smart car" recommend getting off the freeway when it's truly a good idea (as opposed to just exchanging slow-and-go for red lights), or even say "Hey aren't you hungry? It might be a good time to pull off and get a sandwich and a soda because it's going to be a long trip home." The source of motive power is completely irrelevant here of course.
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