I have an older (1989) car that has lots of reasons to be inefficient -- 4WD and a 6 cylinder engine for starters. But they didn't lie about it. The original mileage rating of the car was 18 city, 24 highway, and that is what it still gets to this day, 167,000 miles later.
When did the EPA testing become so out of touch with reality?
(1) My first thought wouldn't be brute force. I think I'd try a few tentative swings or whatever to see what happens then go from there.
Other posters on this article have already said things like "I have to whip the Wiimote around on its leash to get 100 mph fastballs, I don't know any other way." This proves that SOME people, at least, will resort to the first means they can find that works, even if they are somewhat aware a better solution probably exists. Until someone points out a better method, they are going to use the one they have found to work.
(2) I assume the strap frays a bit or something before it snaps - people couldn't notice that?
Maybe, maybe not. If it goes from looking intact to frayed to snapping within a single abusive session, that could easily evade detection -- players are looking at the screen, not at the Wiimote.
Even if they notice, I mentioned this before -- if it looks a bit fuzzy around the edges, that doesn't equal "about to break" in the average person's mind. If a cord has four filaments, and two are broken, your Joe Sixpack probably thinks that means it's half as strong. Any engineer could tell you that really means imminent failure.
(3) This would make the controller extremely touchy, I'd think. Haven't you ever moved your mouse and had it go farther than you'd expected? Frustrating when playing a game.
That is why I said "user-controlled". What is your priority -- pinpoint control or a 104 mph fastball? There's a reason most real-life power pitchers are a little bit on the wild side. Putting a little something extra on a pitch means the margin of error on the release gets even smaller, and the greater muscle tension involved (not to mention mechanical arm stress) makes it much more difficult to be that precise. Is it really a problem if the game is making you face the same decision?
There are also those who espouse the view that free will must exist because of the lack of supernatural beings, aside from existing in the imaginations of humans. The fact that it is possible to hold this view and kick ass at the same time makes it all the more appealing.
For those of you who would point out that Neil Peart was reading lots of Ayn Rand at the time -- I already know this. At least he chose to be influenced by the parts that make sense.
(1) From what I understand, the games do NOT require "insane amounts of speed". I don't have one, but from what I've read, simple hand motions are enough to get it to react properly. You don't need to do 100 mph fast pitches or whatever to get a fast pitch in the game.
No, they don't... if you know how to perform the right motion. But if they don't show what that motion is, and it's not intuitive, why is it any surprise people will turn to the brute force method?
(2) This is likely to cause more problems than it'd solve. Besides, the people already have a deterrent: the controller could slip out of their hand and break something. If people couldn't see that as a possible outcome, then how is that Nintendo's fault?
Because they (wrongly) assume that just because the wrist strap stops them from flinging the Wiimote once or twice, it will ALWAYS do so. Humans (with the possible exception of trained professionals) are notoriously bad at detecting cumulative damage until something actually fails. Someone who builds bridges would know that when one strand in a cable frays, the whole thing is likely to snap. The rest of us generally don't think that way.
(3) I'm not sure what this means. I know what the "user controlled acceleration" in mice is, the faster you push it the farther it relatively goes...also I'm not sure HOW you'd do that considering it's all accelerometers; the Wiimote doesn't have linear frame of reference like your mouse/trackball does.
Acceleration off -- 1 m/s in real life equals 1 m/s in game terms. 8 m/s still equals 8 m/s. Medium acceleration -- 1 m/s may still mean 1 m/s in game, but 2 m/s gives you 3 m/s in game, and 8 m/s may give you 20 in game. You retain fine control while not having to ramp up the power so much. High acceleration -- forget fine control, it's all twitch gaming here.
Basically you get to set a gamma curve on how real motion translates into game motion. This can remain a linear relationship in a simple "double everything" mode (until the game physics max out) if you want, or it could be more like your typical monitor gamma -- the bottom end ramps up pretty quickly, then things flatten out.
I can imagine how this might leave you halfway across the room if your quick (but short) motions are taking you one way and your slow motions are taking you another, which is not so bad with a mouse (just pick it up and set it back down in the middle of the pad) but would be problematic for something that you can't afford to switch off to re-center, however briefly. I have to imagine there would be some sort of trick that would work, but it is probably non-obvious and non-intuitive and likely to be detrimental to game immersion. Maybe motion below some threshold could be completely ignored so that you can slowly drift back to the front of the TV.
Of course you are aware that after you successfully hit a baseball, you're supposed to drop the bat and run, aren't you?
Also at sporting events (at least those of a large, organized nature), precautions are taken regarding flying objects if they are a known hazard. At a baseball game you will find netting over the first tier of seats behind home plate, as many foul balls go essentially straight back at more or less the pitched speed. At a hockey game there will be netting extending above the glass because deflected shots can kill. At basketball games you have to watch for diving players and the occasional sucker-punch or thrown beer/chair/other object within reach, but that is another matter entirely.
Sure there are warnings posted that you have to be on the lookout for flying objects, but how many people are capable of carrying their maximum allowed two beers down a steep flight of stairs and be watching for a ball or puck coming at them at 100 miles an hour? What about those going up the stairs with their backs turned, even without beers? If there is even a small chance of a disaster occurring, and enough events occur, there eventually will be a disaster. It only makes sense to protect against the foreseeable ones and to try to anticipate those that haven't happened yet.
That said, Nintendo clearly anticipated their Wiimote would get out of a player's hand. What they did not anticipate is people using the strap as anything other than an emergency backup or as a way to carry the Wiimote when not in use. Seriously, they should have had people testing the units and games without instructions on how to use the Wiimote to see what people would come up with on their own. This would reasonably approximate what could be expected "in the wild", because let's face it, children don't read directions (even if they are capable, and some won't be). For that matter, neither do many adults. Once they saw the abuse the product took, they wouldn't fit it with something resembling the wrist strap on a point-and-shoot camera.
It could also have been written into the games to (1) not require insane amounts of speed to get desired results (which could still be implemented by amplifying motions in newly produced Wiimotes and letting current owners swap out), (2) make such activities counterproductive (for example, if you use the strap to swing the Wiimote when pitching, you would be insanely wild, hit batters, get thrown out of the game, etc.), and/or (3) implement user-controlled "acceleration" as has been standard practice with mouse drivers almost as long as there have been mice.
When people are stupid, it hurts. When corporations are stupid, it should hurt too, and money and sanctions are about the only way to inflict any pain on a corporation. In a just world, small acts of stupidity would hurt a little and large ones a lot. This seems like a small-to-moderate scale of stupidity to me.
He should get himself a Synclavier and save himself a lot of time with much the same results. Maybe he has one and used it, we don't actually know.
As for the "musician" question, I hold that "analog" instruments are just one skill set you can use to make music, and that technology opens up many new ones. These all intersect at the place called "music" but can be vastly different in execution. In the end, it's all about getting what you heard in your head into everyone else's heads. How you do it ultimately does not matter. If a device could directly "rip" sounds from your imagination, and you used this to create entirely new music, you would still be a musician. I would argue this would be the best possible musical instrument, capable of reproducing every imaginable sound with minimal effort.
Hillary would be more palatable without changing a single position, if she would just lose the ACK-ACK Mars Attacks! mode of speech. It would certainly encourage reasoned debate on her positions if you could stand to listen to them.
A friend of mine had an old hand-me-down TV set with the Space Command remote. It was noisy, but relatively reliable and never needed batteries. Unfortunately, it was also susceptible to being triggered by his stationary bicycle. After much lubrication and tinkering on the offending bicycle, it turned out the dead simple solution was to place two or three layers of masking tape over the sensor on the TV. The clicker was still strong enough to get through, but the bicycle noises no longer were. It looked a bit silly, but it worked.
We never did completely stop the bicycle from squeaking, much to the dog's dismay. Luckily for the dog, we all preferred getting on real bicycles outdoors whenever weather permitted, which is most of the time in Southern California. But we often joked about the "bicycle remote control" -- you really could get consistent results by varying your cadence, if the tape was removed from the TV.
This only addresses one particular vulnerability in houses, which is external stress. This may make a house last two or three hurricanes instead of one (presuming the absence of a massive flood), and there will still be lots of rebuilding as the roof tears off or the drywall has to be patched after a quake. It's obvious that builders cannot keep up if a region is totally flattened, why would they NOT welcome this? Not to mention the mold that follows a flood or hurricane generates plenty of business without disrupting the community so much. If the entire city is trashed, your rebuilding goes REALLY slowly because you can't get your supplies, or labor (everyone else is building too). If 30% of the city is uninhabitable, you hopefully still have a working city and plenty of work for everyone. If worse comes to worse, move to Las Vegas. Lots of construction, not many calamities.
Earthquake insurers have begun in the last few years to factor in the increased cost of construction following a catastrophic earthquake. Typically they triple the labor and materials cost to account for the scarcity of both. I think they are being optimistic. Even so, this is the excuse they'll give for the rates doubling or tripling or worse in the last two years. Really it's that they mingle the disaster funds -- my earthquake premiums and your windstorm premiums pay into the same pool. Thus Katrina, with assists from Rita and Dennis (on the power play) just about drained the tank, and they need to fill it up, fast, since there is a reasonable chance things are only going to get worse.
This also fails to address the "biological clock" that governs most house lifespans -- termites. That is killing the 30-40 year old wood-frame buildings in this area at least. There are 100+ year old wood frame houses left in Los Angeles county, but they have all seen extensive work over their lives. If it's not the wood, it's the plumbing, earthquake retrofitting, insulation, quite possibly replacement of flammable roofing that will limit the practical (read: economically viable) life of a plain vanilla house. Somehow they all have conspired to fall apart at roughly the same time or at an ever-accelerating rate, much like an old car. You can theoretically keep your car running forever, so long as you can get the parts and do it (or pay someone to do it for you), but at some point it becomes economically unviable to drive that '57 Chevy to work, 50 miles a day. You end up taking it around the block once a week and driving a car that just doesn't cost you so much to maintain.
The analogy breaks down since more people can afford two cars than two houses, and a house not used still can get blown over, catch fire, get flooded, etc., but it's all I can think of right now.
I had a video card (MSI, GeForce 2MX-200) that had "dual BIOS" -- that is, it had a copy of the firmware in EEPROM, and a copy in flash, and you could select which to use by jumper. At the time I got it, those two copies were the same, but I did flash it a couple times, knowing that at any point I could force it back to a prior version, as it let you flash the rewritable BIOS even if you were booting off the fixed BIOS. At the time I thought it a nifty gimmick, one that made me more willing to flash it with "tweaked" BIOS, but a gimmick nonetheless. Now it seems prescient and prudent. Perhaps other devices should be looking to implement such a system, with both flashable and non-flashable BIOS copies. It could mean the difference between an annoying self-repair job and a paperweight.
The Nikon mount has never been radically changed, they just kept piling on electrical contacts and the occasional mechanical linkage. Thus your old manual lenses will mount. As someone else pointed out, the metering systems may not like them very much because they give back no information, but they will mount. Same goes for Pentax (and I believe Yashica, which used the same mount). However, if you cannot live without your favorite 100mm soft-focus portrait lens, you don't have to. You'll have to back up quite a bit to get the same effective image size, as it will act like a 160 mm lens, but at least it will still work.
The "problem" with Canon is that when they went to AF, they changed the mount. Why? Because they decided it was cheaper in the long run to put the AF motor in the camera body rather than the lens. This meant a need for a complex mechanical linkage that could not be reasonably retrofitted to the FD series mount. Thus, the switch to the EF mount. This is not to say that they didn't try it the other way -- the Canon T80 had AF lenses using an FD mount. It just proved commercially unviable.
I say "problem" because Canon has been proven right in the long run -- one high-quality AF motor in the camera body is both cheaper than and technically superior to lesser motors fitted to individual lenses. The motor is both beefier (from not having to cram it into a lens housing) and better protected, wide angle lenses are considerably simplified, and you don't have to pay for a new AF motor every time you buy a lens. It was clearly a correct, if somewhat painful, decision.
It's viable if you already have enough glass, especially if you can get a full-frame sensor (as used on the Canon 1D series) to eliminate the magnification factor entirely. If I had any Canon EF glass, I'd be looking at the 1D series almost exclusively. But I don't, I have FD glass.
I would be willing to buy a new digital body that accepts FD-mount lenses without extension tubes, however.
Assuming, of course, that your camera will do this for you (there's no way you're going to do it as fast manually). If doing it manually, you would probably want to go +2, +1, 0, -1, and -2 just because of the ease of dialing it in. What does a digital picture cost in terms of consumables? Nothing but the battery power used to take it.
You never know, there will probably be a fair number of Nikon F3 and Pentax K-1000s in service in 40 years precisely because they ARE all-mechanical. As long as they exist, someone will be able to figure out how to fix them. You may have to do without the light meter from inability to power it (or perhaps to fix it) but the camera body should stay serviceable as long as its parts don't rot.
I base this belief on the fact that it is still possible to get centuries-old musical instruments repaired and restored, and if you have a 100 year old watch, you can get that fixed as well.
By the way, the A-1, AE-1, and AE-1 Program have a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000. 1/2000 would be nice but I have never missed a shot because of the lack thereof. I typically don't shoot faster than 1/250 any more since I don't go to air shows any more, and don't bother dragging the camera to baseball games (mostly because the 200mm lens is FRIGGIN' HUGE). I even have a rifle stock for air shows but frankly I'm a bit afraid to use it these days as it's patterned off a real rifle. I'm not going to get myself shot over a camera grip.
Will the camera auto-bracket for you? If so, then the lack of metering is even less of an issue -- you just guess and let the camera shoot one and two stops either side of that. One of the five (or maybe two) will be close enough -- this isn't slide film. If not, then I guess you either have to have a light meter or find some other way to overcome the lack of stopped-down metering modes.
I guess this means the D50 is not well suited for a Lensbaby either. I will keep that in mind.
I once dropped my A-1 in a Mexican river while on this trip, and although it was a quick dunk (no water in the film compartment) and it worked the rest of the day, I had to replace the shutter coil once it had dried out. I also had to get the lens cleaned as it got just enough moisture inside to grow stuff. (28-85mm f/4, it was well worth fixing.)
Since I was on a cruise ship and didn't really want to send my camera off for however long, I found a TV repair shop in Puerto Vallarta and bought a spool of coil wire. My handwound coil is not quite up to spec, so there is a slight overexposure issue at 1/750 and 1/1000 shutter speeds as I had to weaken the spring that the coil opposes. But it works to this day, and I made that emergency repair over ten years ago.
For all the abuse that camera has takes, it has held up rather well. I've gone through multiple power winders, had lenses freeze up on me, had film come off the rewind spool (that's a fun one to fix without spoiling the roll), and once even had a battery go *pop*. The camera doesn't seem to care. It was close to 20 years old when I got it and has been my primary camera for a decade. Aside from the water damage, it has never failed. This is why I wish I could just convert it to a digital back. Instead it looks like I will have to start over, as far as the body and the glass are concerned.
If you were shooting film on a SLR before, didn't you already have the tripod, backpack, filters (maybe the wrong size, maybe not), and books, and maybe the flash as well? Those film SLR lenses will also serve well (after factoring in the +60% or so magnification factor) on the DSLR, though you are going to need specialized DSLR wide-angle lenses.
Personally I would like to get a digital back for my old manual-focus Canon A-1, but there aren't enough of us out there to get a product made. I prefer manual focus for the same reason I prefer a manual transmission -- it makes me pay attention to what I am doing. I will admit to using aperture-priority AE most of the time (or shutter-priority if stopping motion is critical), though I will go to full manual or force x-comp if the situation requires it.
However, if I were to go with Nikon (or Pentax or other K-mount), I could shoot with manual focus glass if I so chose. Yes you can manually focus AF lenses, but it is just not the same thing. Plus I can grab old pawn shop lenses and do strange things to them (like opening the lens barrel and mounting one or more elements backward, or taking elements out). Of course just about any SLR, digital or otherwise, can mount Lensbabies.
From a biological perspective, this makes sense. How much energy and effort does a father expend in the procreation process? Not nearly as much as the mother. Therefore the father, at an instinctive level, wants his progeny to thrive and be at the top of the heap, even if it means some of the weaker ones get culled along the way. The mother just wants them to survive, by any means necessary.
This is offset somewhat by the fact that most people can think rationally (even if they refuse to do so) and equally important, learn from the mistakes of others without having to make them personally. Also, fathers have a considerable investment of time and energy (even if only in the form of money) in their progeny, just not at the level of bodily squeezing the little kneebiters out.
Your first idea will be rejected by most databases, but it's fun to imagine the hapless clerk repeatedly banging away with Feb. 29.
However, I think even most clueless register jockeys are aware that phone numbers do not begin with 0 or 1, and mismatching city-state-ZIP is a good way to make sure your poisoning of the well gets deleted rather than retained... and isn't having the bad data retained the whole point?
I have a few consistent sets of bad data that I use when pressed, because I can rattle them off just as easily as real data, which makes it much harder to detect that I'm bluffing. Pick a "home address" in the middle of downtown, and get the ZIP right, or use historical landmarks people should know (but usually don't). Use a telco loopback number (if you can still find one) for a telephone number. If not, use somebody's fax machine. Or, for shits and giggles, give the phone number of the place that is asking for yours and see if they accept it. If you have a good poker face, try giving "867-5309" for a phone number.
Though I personally use two very similar monitors, and at work have two nearly identical monitors (except that Sony changed the height of the base by about 3/8" when they changed models, requiring shims under one of them to keep them level), I wouldn't mind experimenting with a setup consisting of one large monitor and one relatively small monitor.
I remember long ago seeing (and briefly using) a desk where the monitor sat in a hole in the desk, angled back up at the user. This hole could be covered with glass, or not, as lighting necessitated. This concept (though not necessarily below the desk surface) could be combined with a large monitor on the desk to make the second display take up very little precious real estate. Your keyboard and main monitor are right where you expect them to be, and in between, maybe at a greater distance, is another monitor.
I would imagine that having the "status display" monitor at a greater distance would make it less distracting when you are not actively viewing it, as it would not only be in the periphery of your vision, but at a different focal length. It would also work well in action games, where you are already accustomed to looking up or down for a status display -- only now your main screen (turn on) can be devoted to full game immersion.
This is not unlike the idea of running a large monitor behind a laptop, except with the distances to the screens reversed.
I do not use any device, but I always make segment bets at roulette. Never once have I received any sort of undue attention from my betting strategy, even when other players have asked how I chose my numbers and I said "they're all together on the wheel". When I had the hot streak at the Sahara (where I went from $100 to $800 then back to $600 in 30 minutes), they only needed a pit boss to come over because I was cashing in on a series of high-odds bets and they are required to have a pit boss present for payouts in excess of some amount (I think it was $300). The pit boss did not have a problem with my segment betting either.
Segment betting and subsequently winning just might get that wheel yanked off the floor for inspection, so don't expect it to be there tomorrow. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with betting a segment of the wheel.
It is possible to still release the ball before betting, but conceal the inner rim where the ball rolls after it is released. Once the ball drops low enough to be visible to the player, it would be too late to time it, get a result, and place a bet.
If something along these lines is not acceptable to players, it most likely means the eventual end of roulette as we know it. The wheel will end up replaced by some other sort of randomization device, or perhaps by a wheel with four times as many slots and each number appearing four times (and a very tiny ball), so that the scatter effect dominates. The smaller and lighter the ball, the greater the scatter effect. It may add a few seconds to the time it takes for the ball to settle, but that would be a small price for a casino to pay to avoid being calculated out of fortunes.
It is entirely possible to exploit a biased wheel without the help of a computer or any predictive device. It just takes a larger bias that can be spotted by the human eye and mind. Would that be considered cheating? I certainly have to hope not, as I have done it more than once. The results were something like this:
Bahamas: turned $60 into $400, wheel taken out of play after the (losing) high-roller to my left departed. Las Vegas (Sahara): turned $100 into $600 and was up as high as $800, wheel had been trued by the following day. Las Vegas (Lady Luck): turned $50 into $400, wheel was in the parking garage the following day.
Sadly, I have lost more than that while trying to determine if wheels were biased or just running "streaky", so a device that could let me know whether a wheel is worth playing or not would be quite helpful -- especially if I could use it while standing around a full table waiting for a spot to open up and NOT have to use it in actual play -- or even use it from a distance by looking at the history board. This would be more of a statistical analyzer than predictive system, however, and is more a software problem than a hardware problem. I would imagine it could run on an unaltered phone, and almost certainly on a PDA.
There's nothing wrong with saying "don't share your Wi-Fi unwittingly, when you don't know what you are doing." The people who know enough to do it right are not the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I have an older (1989) car that has lots of reasons to be inefficient -- 4WD and a 6 cylinder engine for starters. But they didn't lie about it. The original mileage rating of the car was 18 city, 24 highway, and that is what it still gets to this day, 167,000 miles later.
When did the EPA testing become so out of touch with reality?
Mal-2
The question is, who is making these new brown clouds?"/a>
Better ask the philostopher and see what he says.
Mal-2
(1) My first thought wouldn't be brute force. I think I'd try a few tentative swings or whatever to see what happens then go from there.
Other posters on this article have already said things like "I have to whip the Wiimote around on its leash to get 100 mph fastballs, I don't know any other way." This proves that SOME people, at least, will resort to the first means they can find that works, even if they are somewhat aware a better solution probably exists. Until someone points out a better method, they are going to use the one they have found to work.
(2) I assume the strap frays a bit or something before it snaps - people couldn't notice that?
Maybe, maybe not. If it goes from looking intact to frayed to snapping within a single abusive session, that could easily evade detection -- players are looking at the screen, not at the Wiimote.
Even if they notice, I mentioned this before -- if it looks a bit fuzzy around the edges, that doesn't equal "about to break" in the average person's mind. If a cord has four filaments, and two are broken, your Joe Sixpack probably thinks that means it's half as strong. Any engineer could tell you that really means imminent failure.
(3) This would make the controller extremely touchy, I'd think. Haven't you ever moved your mouse and had it go farther than you'd expected? Frustrating when playing a game.
That is why I said "user-controlled". What is your priority -- pinpoint control or a 104 mph fastball? There's a reason most real-life power pitchers are a little bit on the wild side. Putting a little something extra on a pitch means the margin of error on the release gets even smaller, and the greater muscle tension involved (not to mention mechanical arm stress) makes it much more difficult to be that precise. Is it really a problem if the game is making you face the same decision?
Mal-2
There are also those who espouse the view that free will must exist because of the lack of supernatural beings, aside from existing in the imaginations of humans. The fact that it is possible to hold this view and kick ass at the same time makes it all the more appealing.
For those of you who would point out that Neil Peart was reading lots of Ayn Rand at the time -- I already know this. At least he chose to be influenced by the parts that make sense.
Mal-2
(1) From what I understand, the games do NOT require "insane amounts of speed". I don't have one, but from what I've read, simple hand motions are enough to get it to react properly. You don't need to do 100 mph fast pitches or whatever to get a fast pitch in the game.
No, they don't... if you know how to perform the right motion. But if they don't show what that motion is, and it's not intuitive, why is it any surprise people will turn to the brute force method?
(2) This is likely to cause more problems than it'd solve. Besides, the people already have a deterrent: the controller could slip out of their hand and break something. If people couldn't see that as a possible outcome, then how is that Nintendo's fault?
Because they (wrongly) assume that just because the wrist strap stops them from flinging the Wiimote once or twice, it will ALWAYS do so. Humans (with the possible exception of trained professionals) are notoriously bad at detecting cumulative damage until something actually fails. Someone who builds bridges would know that when one strand in a cable frays, the whole thing is likely to snap. The rest of us generally don't think that way.
(3) I'm not sure what this means. I know what the "user controlled acceleration" in mice is, the faster you push it the farther it relatively goes...also I'm not sure HOW you'd do that considering it's all accelerometers; the Wiimote doesn't have linear frame of reference like your mouse/trackball does.
Acceleration off -- 1 m/s in real life equals 1 m/s in game terms. 8 m/s still equals 8 m/s.
Medium acceleration -- 1 m/s may still mean 1 m/s in game, but 2 m/s gives you 3 m/s in game, and 8 m/s may give you 20 in game. You retain fine control while not having to ramp up the power so much.
High acceleration -- forget fine control, it's all twitch gaming here.
Basically you get to set a gamma curve on how real motion translates into game motion. This can remain a linear relationship in a simple "double everything" mode (until the game physics max out) if you want, or it could be more like your typical monitor gamma -- the bottom end ramps up pretty quickly, then things flatten out.
I can imagine how this might leave you halfway across the room if your quick (but short) motions are taking you one way and your slow motions are taking you another, which is not so bad with a mouse (just pick it up and set it back down in the middle of the pad) but would be problematic for something that you can't afford to switch off to re-center, however briefly. I have to imagine there would be some sort of trick that would work, but it is probably non-obvious and non-intuitive and likely to be detrimental to game immersion. Maybe motion below some threshold could be completely ignored so that you can slowly drift back to the front of the TV.
Of course you are aware that after you successfully hit a baseball, you're supposed to drop the bat and run, aren't you?
Also at sporting events (at least those of a large, organized nature), precautions are taken regarding flying objects if they are a known hazard. At a baseball game you will find netting over the first tier of seats behind home plate, as many foul balls go essentially straight back at more or less the pitched speed. At a hockey game there will be netting extending above the glass because deflected shots can kill. At basketball games you have to watch for diving players and the occasional sucker-punch or thrown beer/chair/other object within reach, but that is another matter entirely.
Sure there are warnings posted that you have to be on the lookout for flying objects, but how many people are capable of carrying their maximum allowed two beers down a steep flight of stairs and be watching for a ball or puck coming at them at 100 miles an hour? What about those going up the stairs with their backs turned, even without beers? If there is even a small chance of a disaster occurring, and enough events occur, there eventually will be a disaster. It only makes sense to protect against the foreseeable ones and to try to anticipate those that haven't happened yet.
That said, Nintendo clearly anticipated their Wiimote would get out of a player's hand. What they did not anticipate is people using the strap as anything other than an emergency backup or as a way to carry the Wiimote when not in use. Seriously, they should have had people testing the units and games without instructions on how to use the Wiimote to see what people would come up with on their own. This would reasonably approximate what could be expected "in the wild", because let's face it, children don't read directions (even if they are capable, and some won't be). For that matter, neither do many adults. Once they saw the abuse the product took, they wouldn't fit it with something resembling the wrist strap on a point-and-shoot camera.
It could also have been written into the games to (1) not require insane amounts of speed to get desired results (which could still be implemented by amplifying motions in newly produced Wiimotes and letting current owners swap out), (2) make such activities counterproductive (for example, if you use the strap to swing the Wiimote when pitching, you would be insanely wild, hit batters, get thrown out of the game, etc.), and/or (3) implement user-controlled "acceleration" as has been standard practice with mouse drivers almost as long as there have been mice.
When people are stupid, it hurts. When corporations are stupid, it should hurt too, and money and sanctions are about the only way to inflict any pain on a corporation. In a just world, small acts of stupidity would hurt a little and large ones a lot. This seems like a small-to-moderate scale of stupidity to me.
Mal-2
He should get himself a Synclavier and save himself a lot of time with much the same results. Maybe he has one and used it, we don't actually know.
As for the "musician" question, I hold that "analog" instruments are just one skill set you can use to make music, and that technology opens up many new ones. These all intersect at the place called "music" but can be vastly different in execution. In the end, it's all about getting what you heard in your head into everyone else's heads. How you do it ultimately does not matter. If a device could directly "rip" sounds from your imagination, and you used this to create entirely new music, you would still be a musician. I would argue this would be the best possible musical instrument, capable of reproducing every imaginable sound with minimal effort.
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Hillary would be more palatable without changing a single position, if she would just lose the ACK-ACK Mars Attacks! mode of speech. It would certainly encourage reasoned debate on her positions if you could stand to listen to them.
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A friend of mine had an old hand-me-down TV set with the Space Command remote. It was noisy, but relatively reliable and never needed batteries. Unfortunately, it was also susceptible to being triggered by his stationary bicycle. After much lubrication and tinkering on the offending bicycle, it turned out the dead simple solution was to place two or three layers of masking tape over the sensor on the TV. The clicker was still strong enough to get through, but the bicycle noises no longer were. It looked a bit silly, but it worked.
We never did completely stop the bicycle from squeaking, much to the dog's dismay. Luckily for the dog, we all preferred getting on real bicycles outdoors whenever weather permitted, which is most of the time in Southern California. But we often joked about the "bicycle remote control" -- you really could get consistent results by varying your cadence, if the tape was removed from the TV.
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This only addresses one particular vulnerability in houses, which is external stress. This may make a house last two or three hurricanes instead of one (presuming the absence of a massive flood), and there will still be lots of rebuilding as the roof tears off or the drywall has to be patched after a quake. It's obvious that builders cannot keep up if a region is totally flattened, why would they NOT welcome this? Not to mention the mold that follows a flood or hurricane generates plenty of business without disrupting the community so much. If the entire city is trashed, your rebuilding goes REALLY slowly because you can't get your supplies, or labor (everyone else is building too). If 30% of the city is uninhabitable, you hopefully still have a working city and plenty of work for everyone. If worse comes to worse, move to Las Vegas. Lots of construction, not many calamities.
Earthquake insurers have begun in the last few years to factor in the increased cost of construction following a catastrophic earthquake. Typically they triple the labor and materials cost to account for the scarcity of both. I think they are being optimistic. Even so, this is the excuse they'll give for the rates doubling or tripling or worse in the last two years. Really it's that they mingle the disaster funds -- my earthquake premiums and your windstorm premiums pay into the same pool. Thus Katrina, with assists from Rita and Dennis (on the power play) just about drained the tank, and they need to fill it up, fast, since there is a reasonable chance things are only going to get worse.
This also fails to address the "biological clock" that governs most house lifespans -- termites. That is killing the 30-40 year old wood-frame buildings in this area at least. There are 100+ year old wood frame houses left in Los Angeles county, but they have all seen extensive work over their lives. If it's not the wood, it's the plumbing, earthquake retrofitting, insulation, quite possibly replacement of flammable roofing that will limit the practical (read: economically viable) life of a plain vanilla house. Somehow they all have conspired to fall apart at roughly the same time or at an ever-accelerating rate, much like an old car. You can theoretically keep your car running forever, so long as you can get the parts and do it (or pay someone to do it for you), but at some point it becomes economically unviable to drive that '57 Chevy to work, 50 miles a day. You end up taking it around the block once a week and driving a car that just doesn't cost you so much to maintain.
The analogy breaks down since more people can afford two cars than two houses, and a house not used still can get blown over, catch fire, get flooded, etc., but it's all I can think of right now.
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I had a video card (MSI, GeForce 2MX-200) that had "dual BIOS" -- that is, it had a copy of the firmware in EEPROM, and a copy in flash, and you could select which to use by jumper. At the time I got it, those two copies were the same, but I did flash it a couple times, knowing that at any point I could force it back to a prior version, as it let you flash the rewritable BIOS even if you were booting off the fixed BIOS. At the time I thought it a nifty gimmick, one that made me more willing to flash it with "tweaked" BIOS, but a gimmick nonetheless. Now it seems prescient and prudent. Perhaps other devices should be looking to implement such a system, with both flashable and non-flashable BIOS copies. It could mean the difference between an annoying self-repair job and a paperweight.
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The Nikon mount has never been radically changed, they just kept piling on electrical contacts and the occasional mechanical linkage. Thus your old manual lenses will mount. As someone else pointed out, the metering systems may not like them very much because they give back no information, but they will mount. Same goes for Pentax (and I believe Yashica, which used the same mount). However, if you cannot live without your favorite 100mm soft-focus portrait lens, you don't have to. You'll have to back up quite a bit to get the same effective image size, as it will act like a 160 mm lens, but at least it will still work.
The "problem" with Canon is that when they went to AF, they changed the mount. Why? Because they decided it was cheaper in the long run to put the AF motor in the camera body rather than the lens. This meant a need for a complex mechanical linkage that could not be reasonably retrofitted to the FD series mount. Thus, the switch to the EF mount. This is not to say that they didn't try it the other way -- the Canon T80 had AF lenses using an FD mount. It just proved commercially unviable.
I say "problem" because Canon has been proven right in the long run -- one high-quality AF motor in the camera body is both cheaper than and technically superior to lesser motors fitted to individual lenses. The motor is both beefier (from not having to cram it into a lens housing) and better protected, wide angle lenses are considerably simplified, and you don't have to pay for a new AF motor every time you buy a lens. It was clearly a correct, if somewhat painful, decision.
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It's viable if you already have enough glass, especially if you can get a full-frame sensor (as used on the Canon 1D series) to eliminate the magnification factor entirely. If I had any Canon EF glass, I'd be looking at the 1D series almost exclusively. But I don't, I have FD glass.
I would be willing to buy a new digital body that accepts FD-mount lenses without extension tubes, however.
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By which time the moment is gone. Better to just fire off 5 shots as fast as your camera can take them, in the following order:
* Chosen exposure
* +1 stop
* -1 stop
* +2 stops
* -2 stops
Assuming, of course, that your camera will do this for you (there's no way you're going to do it as fast manually). If doing it manually, you would probably want to go +2, +1, 0, -1, and -2 just because of the ease of dialing it in. What does a digital picture cost in terms of consumables? Nothing but the battery power used to take it.
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You never know, there will probably be a fair number of Nikon F3 and Pentax K-1000s in service in 40 years precisely because they ARE all-mechanical. As long as they exist, someone will be able to figure out how to fix them. You may have to do without the light meter from inability to power it (or perhaps to fix it) but the camera body should stay serviceable as long as its parts don't rot.
I base this belief on the fact that it is still possible to get centuries-old musical instruments repaired and restored, and if you have a 100 year old watch, you can get that fixed as well.
By the way, the A-1, AE-1, and AE-1 Program have a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000. 1/2000 would be nice but I have never missed a shot because of the lack thereof. I typically don't shoot faster than 1/250 any more since I don't go to air shows any more, and don't bother dragging the camera to baseball games (mostly because the 200mm lens is FRIGGIN' HUGE). I even have a rifle stock for air shows but frankly I'm a bit afraid to use it these days as it's patterned off a real rifle. I'm not going to get myself shot over a camera grip.
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Will the camera auto-bracket for you? If so, then the lack of metering is even less of an issue -- you just guess and let the camera shoot one and two stops either side of that. One of the five (or maybe two) will be close enough -- this isn't slide film. If not, then I guess you either have to have a light meter or find some other way to overcome the lack of stopped-down metering modes.
I guess this means the D50 is not well suited for a Lensbaby either. I will keep that in mind.
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I once dropped my A-1 in a Mexican river while on this trip, and although it was a quick dunk (no water in the film compartment) and it worked the rest of the day, I had to replace the shutter coil once it had dried out. I also had to get the lens cleaned as it got just enough moisture inside to grow stuff. (28-85mm f/4, it was well worth fixing.)
Since I was on a cruise ship and didn't really want to send my camera off for however long, I found a TV repair shop in Puerto Vallarta and bought a spool of coil wire. My handwound coil is not quite up to spec, so there is a slight overexposure issue at 1/750 and 1/1000 shutter speeds as I had to weaken the spring that the coil opposes. But it works to this day, and I made that emergency repair over ten years ago.
For all the abuse that camera has takes, it has held up rather well. I've gone through multiple power winders, had lenses freeze up on me, had film come off the rewind spool (that's a fun one to fix without spoiling the roll), and once even had a battery go *pop*. The camera doesn't seem to care. It was close to 20 years old when I got it and has been my primary camera for a decade. Aside from the water damage, it has never failed. This is why I wish I could just convert it to a digital back. Instead it looks like I will have to start over, as far as the body and the glass are concerned.
Ah well, the price of progress...
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If you were shooting film on a SLR before, didn't you already have the tripod, backpack, filters (maybe the wrong size, maybe not), and books, and maybe the flash as well? Those film SLR lenses will also serve well (after factoring in the +60% or so magnification factor) on the DSLR, though you are going to need specialized DSLR wide-angle lenses.
Personally I would like to get a digital back for my old manual-focus Canon A-1, but there aren't enough of us out there to get a product made. I prefer manual focus for the same reason I prefer a manual transmission -- it makes me pay attention to what I am doing. I will admit to using aperture-priority AE most of the time (or shutter-priority if stopping motion is critical), though I will go to full manual or force x-comp if the situation requires it.
However, if I were to go with Nikon (or Pentax or other K-mount), I could shoot with manual focus glass if I so chose. Yes you can manually focus AF lenses, but it is just not the same thing. Plus I can grab old pawn shop lenses and do strange things to them (like opening the lens barrel and mounting one or more elements backward, or taking elements out). Of course just about any SLR, digital or otherwise, can mount Lensbabies.
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From a biological perspective, this makes sense. How much energy and effort does a father expend in the procreation process? Not nearly as much as the mother. Therefore the father, at an instinctive level, wants his progeny to thrive and be at the top of the heap, even if it means some of the weaker ones get culled along the way. The mother just wants them to survive, by any means necessary.
This is offset somewhat by the fact that most people can think rationally (even if they refuse to do so) and equally important, learn from the mistakes of others without having to make them personally. Also, fathers have a considerable investment of time and energy (even if only in the form of money) in their progeny, just not at the level of bodily squeezing the little kneebiters out.
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Your first idea will be rejected by most databases, but it's fun to imagine the hapless clerk repeatedly banging away with Feb. 29.
However, I think even most clueless register jockeys are aware that phone numbers do not begin with 0 or 1, and mismatching city-state-ZIP is a good way to make sure your poisoning of the well gets deleted rather than retained... and isn't having the bad data retained the whole point?
I have a few consistent sets of bad data that I use when pressed, because I can rattle them off just as easily as real data, which makes it much harder to detect that I'm bluffing. Pick a "home address" in the middle of downtown, and get the ZIP right, or use historical landmarks people should know (but usually don't). Use a telco loopback number (if you can still find one) for a telephone number. If not, use somebody's fax machine. Or, for shits and giggles, give the phone number of the place that is asking for yours and see if they accept it. If you have a good poker face, try giving "867-5309" for a phone number.
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Though I personally use two very similar monitors, and at work have two nearly identical monitors (except that Sony changed the height of the base by about 3/8" when they changed models, requiring shims under one of them to keep them level), I wouldn't mind experimenting with a setup consisting of one large monitor and one relatively small monitor.
I remember long ago seeing (and briefly using) a desk where the monitor sat in a hole in the desk, angled back up at the user. This hole could be covered with glass, or not, as lighting necessitated. This concept (though not necessarily below the desk surface) could be combined with a large monitor on the desk to make the second display take up very little precious real estate. Your keyboard and main monitor are right where you expect them to be, and in between, maybe at a greater distance, is another monitor.
I would imagine that having the "status display" monitor at a greater distance would make it less distracting when you are not actively viewing it, as it would not only be in the periphery of your vision, but at a different focal length. It would also work well in action games, where you are already accustomed to looking up or down for a status display -- only now your main screen (turn on) can be devoted to full game immersion.
This is not unlike the idea of running a large monitor behind a laptop, except with the distances to the screens reversed.
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When you get a robot to do what Keith Richards does, let me know.
I think I can build a coconut-harvesting robot that falls out of trees, are you interested?
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I do not use any device, but I always make segment bets at roulette. Never once have I received any sort of undue attention from my betting strategy, even when other players have asked how I chose my numbers and I said "they're all together on the wheel". When I had the hot streak at the Sahara (where I went from $100 to $800 then back to $600 in 30 minutes), they only needed a pit boss to come over because I was cashing in on a series of high-odds bets and they are required to have a pit boss present for payouts in excess of some amount (I think it was $300). The pit boss did not have a problem with my segment betting either.
Segment betting and subsequently winning just might get that wheel yanked off the floor for inspection, so don't expect it to be there tomorrow. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with betting a segment of the wheel.
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It is possible to still release the ball before betting, but conceal the inner rim where the ball rolls after it is released. Once the ball drops low enough to be visible to the player, it would be too late to time it, get a result, and place a bet.
If something along these lines is not acceptable to players, it most likely means the eventual end of roulette as we know it. The wheel will end up replaced by some other sort of randomization device, or perhaps by a wheel with four times as many slots and each number appearing four times (and a very tiny ball), so that the scatter effect dominates. The smaller and lighter the ball, the greater the scatter effect. It may add a few seconds to the time it takes for the ball to settle, but that would be a small price for a casino to pay to avoid being calculated out of fortunes.
It is entirely possible to exploit a biased wheel without the help of a computer or any predictive device. It just takes a larger bias that can be spotted by the human eye and mind. Would that be considered cheating? I certainly have to hope not, as I have done it more than once. The results were something like this:
Bahamas: turned $60 into $400, wheel taken out of play after the (losing) high-roller to my left departed.
Las Vegas (Sahara): turned $100 into $600 and was up as high as $800, wheel had been trued by the following day.
Las Vegas (Lady Luck): turned $50 into $400, wheel was in the parking garage the following day.
Sadly, I have lost more than that while trying to determine if wheels were biased or just running "streaky", so a device that could let me know whether a wheel is worth playing or not would be quite helpful -- especially if I could use it while standing around a full table waiting for a spot to open up and NOT have to use it in actual play -- or even use it from a distance by looking at the history board. This would be more of a statistical analyzer than predictive system, however, and is more a software problem than a hardware problem. I would imagine it could run on an unaltered phone, and almost certainly on a PDA.
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There's nothing wrong with saying "don't share your Wi-Fi unwittingly, when you don't know what you are doing." The people who know enough to do it right are not the problem.
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