Seems like it would make a hell of a lot more sense to put a bunch of (or one giant) solar reflector in the lagrange point between the earth and the sun.
"Reflector"? Oh, I thought you said, "refractor"! Sorry about that. Anyway, enjoy your space-borne planetary suicide ray!
Indeed, and if my mod points hadn't expired yesterday, you'd have them. The episode was "Changing Nature". The volcanos were detonated to make clouds to make it rain to make the forests regrow. Instead, here are some quotes from the episode:
Earl Sinclair: It's so easy to take advantage of nature because it's always there, and technology is so bright and shiny and new.
Charlene Sinclair: Your stupid spray wiped out every plant in the world last night. Earl Sinclair: What're you complaining about? You never liked salads anyway.
B.P. Richfield: Let's see, how can we make it rain? Earl Sinclair: Well, we could have everybody wash their cars. That usually makes it rain. Roy Hess: Or everybody could take a bath. No, that makes the phone ring. B.P. Richfield: OH SHUT UP.
Ethyl Phillups: [regarding Earl] I always knew he'd screw up, but I never thought he'd screw up this bad!
Fran: We understand, Earl. Baby: Understand what? Earl: Well, little guy, your daddy got put in charge of the world, and he didn't take very good care of it, and now it looks like there's not going to be much of a world to live in for you and your brother and sister. Baby: Are we gonna move? Earl: Well, no, there's no place to move to, this is the only world we got. Robbie: [to Baby] But no matter what happens, nobody's going to leave you. Charlene: That's right, little guy. Earl: Yeah, it'll be all right, you'll see. Dinosaurs have been around for millions of years, and it's not like we're all gonna just... disappear.
Howard Handupme: And taking a look at the long range forecast, continued snow, darkness, and extreme cold. This is Howard Handupme, good night... [pause]...good-bye...
(There were seven additional episodes that aired in syndication, produced before that final episode.)
Unless you hit that 30-second-skip button faster than twice a second, the fastest fast-forward speed gets you through the ads faster, and without hearing any of their sound.
And they seem pretty keen to make sure each commercial break isn't a precise multiple of 30 seconds, with a 15- or 10-second spot inserted somewhere, usually an ad for another show on the same channel, often for the local evening news.
Technically, it isn't so much that the commercials are louder but rather they have longer sustained volume. Constant music in the background of ads allows them to keep the volume high for the duration of the ad, getting more attention. A television show generally has more low sections, with the exception of sitcoms with studio audiences.
The televisions that try to control the volume react to loud sounds by turning down the volume, then slowly turning it back up during quiet sections, sometimes high enough that you can hear a hiss. Then the next sound comes out loud briefly and it ramps it down again. This auto-level behavior is too annoying for me to stand and I prefer to keep the volume level steady.
Of course, the volume buttons are the first ones to wear off their labels on my mother's remotes. She's always manually changing it, even when the TV's auto-leveler is on.
I hate those stupid pop-ups on the bottom of the screen.
They call them lower thirds, or more specifically "lower third ads", describing both their position and how much screen real-estate they can take. However, I've seen some intrude to half the screen with their flourishes.
My Tivo has 60x fast forward... so advertisers will have a 1 in 2 chance of me seeing their single frame!
Only if TiVo showed 60x fast-forward updating at only 1 frame per second would that be true. In fact, at 60x speed, out of a 30-second commercial TiVo shows you 15 frames of it in half a second.
To see only one frame of a 30-second commercial without still-storing the frame longer than the standard 1/30th of a second, you'd need 900x speed.
Is it government policy to author a document using a computer, print it out, then scan it, then convert the scanned image to PDF?
It should be for redacted documents (see first page). And probably for any text they want to bury by making it unsearchable. Instead some agencies think they can electronically redact by drawing black rectangles atop non-graphical text, as repeatedly reported on slashdot.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
"Ashes," he said. "Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed."
"But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it."
Roddenberry always said since the first movie with Klingons in it, they always looked like that, he just didn't have the budget to do them right back then. He also retconned all the books out of the official history and all of the animated series except some elements of the backstory of Spock's childhood. (Animated Klingons also looked human.)
That was the official canon until the DS9 episode, after Gene had no more say (being dead does that), and they found they still couldn't afford to CGI the Klingons.
And how can you watch "Mirror, Mirror" now knowing that despite Mirror-Spock reforming the Terran Empire, the human race ends up subjugated by an alliance of Klingons, Cardassians, and Bajorans?
or calling the new version "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
I remember Roddenberry's original explanation for the new look of Klingons in the movies was that Klingons were always intended to look this new way; they just didn't have the budget to do them right in the original series.
Or afford to pay for artists of sufficient skill capable of doing them that way for the animated series either, apparently.
("Heart rate too high, internal organs all wrong, pronounced ridges on the cranium-- Jim, this man's a Klingon!")
If it weren't for the retconning of DS9 and Enterprise, then I'd expect that in this remastered version, not only the Klingons, but also the R-r-r-omulans would have r-r-r-idges on their foreheads if these were "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
Will they be fixing the flying pizza bats in "Operation: Annihilate!" as well?
One component, two VGA, and a variety of composite and S-Video ins and out. Came with a free (through rebate) progressive DVD player that has become unreliable, and a little Nipper doll because of the delay in getting me the DVD player.
Also it's a 32" 4:3 HDTV tube which can only display 1080i video by filling the screen, so everything is taller and thinner with no options to adjust it. Not even an accessible manual v-size pot.
I was looking to get myself a better set, 42-50", but then Apple had to release the Mac Pro, so there went that plan.
I really want a set that's 42-50" with a tube because I prefer the black level you get with tubes (and don't want SD video to be smaller than on my 32"), and with S-Video, HDMI, component, and Firewire/IEEE 1394 so I can preview HD video projects from Final Cut Studio on the Mac directly to the TV. Preferably in multiplicity. A few other connection methods would be nice. Oh, and an RF coax connector for cable. If it has cablecard, I don't care if it has bidirectional support as I don't care about PPV.
Unfortunately most of the HDTV review sites don't tell you anything about Firewire/IEEE 1394 ports. All I know is the best chances to get a TV with them is to buy a Mitsubishi, with a few Sonys having them (though possibly not supporting HD video over them).
As to the Force, it was an advance alluding to my comparison to Star Wars. You analogized to D&D, I wanted to call up a different analogy. (And I always thought since Episode One that the talk of Anakin bringing "balance to the Force" pretty much was saying, with post-Episode 4 hindsight, "We've got it too good; we need someone evil to fight against.")
You shouldn't think that every response must derive solely from the points made in its antecedent posts or their posters. No one person gets to predetermine how each thread branches.
My point is just because Google hires someone who has done evil things doesn't mean they have hired them to do evil things for Google.
You're assuming that since they've done evil things that that's what Google has hired them to do for Google for which Google will do penance later. Google may just want them to use their powers for good and not just evil.
Female Judge Computer: The arch Heretic, pirate and rebel of the Ostral-B pair, Thodin. Thodin of the Ostral-B pair is accused of piracy in the first degree, of 26 counts of piracy, of influencing the minds of believers, of questioning His Shadow's truth and wisdom, and destroying 231 military vessels, loyal to His Shadow.
[A group of children arrive on the Cluster]
Guard: His Shadow bids welcome to the finest examples of youthful devotion in all of the 20,000 planets.
Computer: You young 50 have been selected from the best, the brightest and the most loyal of all His Shadow's subjects from thousand of planets among plain stones, you are bright, shining jewels. And after you receive your awards of merit today, you will return to your home planets, where you will dedicate the rest of your lives to helping His Shadow's light reach those unfortunate dark corners where it still does not fall.
[Back at Cobolt Stadium]
Female Judge Computer: Of training enemies of His Shadow military tactics, of slandering merits from 11 planets, and finally 6 counts of blasphemous, self-aggrandisement.
Male Judge Computer: Due to the severe and heinous nature of your crime, you Thodin of the Ostral B pair, are...
Computer:...recognised for selfless love and devotion to His Shadow.
Female Judge Computer: Of 26 counts of piracy-- piracy-- piracy.
Male Judge Computer: You, Thodin of the Ostral B pair...
Computer:...you are hereby given an award of merit.
[The children are receiving their award]
Computer: A shining example for every planet. You are hereby-- sentenced to be devoured by Cluster Lizards such sentence to be executed immediately.
It isn't a matter of bringing balance to the Force, but real life is also not like Star Wars where once you start down the path of evil you can only ever do evil things. Even evil people can do some good now and then. It doesn't necessarily redeem them, but being evil doesn't mean an incapacity for doing good.
And in all practicality, if you're needing to counter dirty tricks, you need someone who knows them all.
Having always presumed it a foregone conclusion that the processors would be swappable, I opted for the standard 2.66GHz configuration and an eventual upgrade as it becomes necessary.
Had I presumed that, I would have saved US$200 (and tax) by going to the 2.0 GHz BTO configuration. That alone pays for the hard drive upgrade from Apple (though you can get 500 GB drives for less than their upgrade from 250 GB).
Still, I'll certainly be wary about installing any firmware updates from Apple on my Mac Pro. I remember when they had an update for the the B&W G3 that prevented people from just dropping in a G4 processor (until the upgrade makers found a way around it).
But here's a thought: can you get away with installing only one quad-core processor, leave the other one bare, and use the extra space for more internal hard drives? There are two more SATA connectors on the motherboard (albeit hard to get at under the fan housing). (There would be a performance hit from having an idle bridge.)
Slashdot Mirror
Micro$oft looks rubbish spelt as Micro£oft
Maybe so, but Microso£t isn't a bad alternative.
Seems like it would make a hell of a lot more sense to put a bunch of (or one giant) solar reflector in the lagrange point between the earth and the sun.
"Reflector"? Oh, I thought you said, "refractor"! Sorry about that. Anyway, enjoy your space-borne planetary suicide ray!
Indeed, and if my mod points hadn't expired yesterday, you'd have them. The episode was "Changing Nature". The volcanos were detonated to make clouds to make it rain to make the forests regrow. Instead, here are some quotes from the episode:
...good-bye...
Earl Sinclair: It's so easy to take advantage of nature because it's always there, and technology is so bright and shiny and new.
Charlene Sinclair: Your stupid spray wiped out every plant in the world last night.
Earl Sinclair: What're you complaining about? You never liked salads anyway.
B.P. Richfield: Let's see, how can we make it rain?
Earl Sinclair: Well, we could have everybody wash their cars. That usually makes it rain.
Roy Hess: Or everybody could take a bath. No, that makes the phone ring.
B.P. Richfield: OH SHUT UP.
Ethyl Phillups: [regarding Earl] I always knew he'd screw up, but I never thought he'd screw up this bad!
Fran: We understand, Earl.
Baby: Understand what?
Earl: Well, little guy, your daddy got put in charge of the world, and he didn't take very good care of it, and now it looks like there's not going to be much of a world to live in for you and your brother and sister.
Baby: Are we gonna move?
Earl: Well, no, there's no place to move to, this is the only world we got.
Robbie: [to Baby] But no matter what happens, nobody's going to leave you.
Charlene: That's right, little guy.
Earl: Yeah, it'll be all right, you'll see. Dinosaurs have been around for millions of years, and it's not like we're all gonna just... disappear.
Howard Handupme: And taking a look at the long range forecast, continued snow, darkness, and extreme cold. This is Howard Handupme, good night... [pause]
(There were seven additional episodes that aired in syndication, produced before that final episode.)
who would seriously take their ipod into a combat situation?
Rent Iron Eagle.
Phishing seems to be good advertising for banks. I'd never heard of Fifth Third Bank until I was suddenly getting 5 phishing e-mails a day for it.
"Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover!"
Unless you hit that 30-second-skip button faster than twice a second, the fastest fast-forward speed gets you through the ads faster, and without hearing any of their sound.
And they seem pretty keen to make sure each commercial break isn't a precise multiple of 30 seconds, with a 15- or 10-second spot inserted somewhere, usually an ad for another show on the same channel, often for the local evening news.
Technically, it isn't so much that the commercials are louder but rather they have longer sustained volume. Constant music in the background of ads allows them to keep the volume high for the duration of the ad, getting more attention. A television show generally has more low sections, with the exception of sitcoms with studio audiences.
The televisions that try to control the volume react to loud sounds by turning down the volume, then slowly turning it back up during quiet sections, sometimes high enough that you can hear a hiss. Then the next sound comes out loud briefly and it ramps it down again. This auto-level behavior is too annoying for me to stand and I prefer to keep the volume level steady.
Of course, the volume buttons are the first ones to wear off their labels on my mother's remotes. She's always manually changing it, even when the TV's auto-leveler is on.
I hate those stupid pop-ups on the bottom of the screen.
They call them lower thirds, or more specifically "lower third ads", describing both their position and how much screen real-estate they can take. However, I've seen some intrude to half the screen with their flourishes.
My Tivo has 60x fast forward... so advertisers will have a 1 in 2 chance of me seeing their single frame!
Only if TiVo showed 60x fast-forward updating at only 1 frame per second would that be true. In fact, at 60x speed, out of a 30-second commercial TiVo shows you 15 frames of it in half a second.
To see only one frame of a 30-second commercial without still-storing the frame longer than the standard 1/30th of a second, you'd need 900x speed.
Is it government policy to author a document using a computer, print it out, then scan it, then convert the scanned image to PDF?
It should be for redacted documents (see first page). And probably for any text they want to bury by making it unsearchable. Instead some agencies think they can electronically redact by drawing black rectangles atop non-graphical text, as repeatedly reported on slashdot.
"It exists!" [Winston Smith] cried.
"No," said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
"Ashes," he said. "Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed."
"But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it."
"I do not remember it," said O'Brien.
they can't actually do it without breaking canon.
You mean the revised canon.
Roddenberry always said since the first movie with Klingons in it, they always looked like that, he just didn't have the budget to do them right back then. He also retconned all the books out of the official history and all of the animated series except some elements of the backstory of Spock's childhood. (Animated Klingons also looked human.)
That was the official canon until the DS9 episode, after Gene had no more say (being dead does that), and they found they still couldn't afford to CGI the Klingons.
And how can you watch "Mirror, Mirror" now knowing that despite Mirror-Spock reforming the Terran Empire, the human race ends up subjugated by an alliance of Klingons, Cardassians, and Bajorans?
Do you think people would shell out that kinda money for the original originals...
Done and done.
or calling the new version "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
I remember Roddenberry's original explanation for the new look of Klingons in the movies was that Klingons were always intended to look this new way; they just didn't have the budget to do them right in the original series.
Or afford to pay for artists of sufficient skill capable of doing them that way for the animated series either, apparently.
("Heart rate too high, internal organs all wrong, pronounced ridges on the cranium-- Jim, this man's a Klingon!")
If it weren't for the retconning of DS9 and Enterprise, then I'd expect that in this remastered version, not only the Klingons, but also the R-r-r-omulans would have r-r-r-idges on their foreheads if these were "the Star Trek we had always meant to make".
Will they be fixing the flying pizza bats in "Operation: Annihilate!" as well?
One component, two VGA, and a variety of composite and S-Video ins and out. Came with a free (through rebate) progressive DVD player that has become unreliable, and a little Nipper doll because of the delay in getting me the DVD player.
Also it's a 32" 4:3 HDTV tube which can only display 1080i video by filling the screen, so everything is taller and thinner with no options to adjust it. Not even an accessible manual v-size pot.
I was looking to get myself a better set, 42-50", but then Apple had to release the Mac Pro, so there went that plan.
I really want a set that's 42-50" with a tube because I prefer the black level you get with tubes (and don't want SD video to be smaller than on my 32"), and with S-Video, HDMI, component, and Firewire/IEEE 1394 so I can preview HD video projects from Final Cut Studio on the Mac directly to the TV. Preferably in multiplicity. A few other connection methods would be nice. Oh, and an RF coax connector for cable. If it has cablecard, I don't care if it has bidirectional support as I don't care about PPV.
Unfortunately most of the HDTV review sites don't tell you anything about Firewire/IEEE 1394 ports. All I know is the best chances to get a TV with them is to buy a Mitsubishi, with a few Sonys having them (though possibly not supporting HD video over them).
As to the Force, it was an advance alluding to my comparison to Star Wars. You analogized to D&D, I wanted to call up a different analogy. (And I always thought since Episode One that the talk of Anakin bringing "balance to the Force" pretty much was saying, with post-Episode 4 hindsight, "We've got it too good; we need someone evil to fight against.")
You shouldn't think that every response must derive solely from the points made in its antecedent posts or their posters. No one person gets to predetermine how each thread branches.
My point is just because Google hires someone who has done evil things doesn't mean they have hired them to do evil things for Google.
You're assuming that since they've done evil things that that's what Google has hired them to do for Google for which Google will do penance later. Google may just want them to use their powers for good and not just evil.
[Cobolt Stadium, Thodin's Trial]
...recognised for selfless love and devotion to His Shadow.
...you are hereby given an award of merit.
Female Judge Computer: The arch Heretic, pirate and rebel of the Ostral-B pair, Thodin. Thodin of the Ostral-B pair is accused of piracy in the first degree, of 26 counts of piracy, of influencing the minds of believers, of questioning His Shadow's truth and wisdom, and destroying 231 military vessels, loyal to His Shadow.
[A group of children arrive on the Cluster]
Guard: His Shadow bids welcome to the finest examples of youthful devotion in all of the 20,000 planets.
Computer: You young 50 have been selected from the best, the brightest and the most loyal of all His Shadow's subjects from thousand of planets among plain stones, you are bright, shining jewels. And after you receive your awards of merit today, you will return to your home planets, where you will dedicate the rest of your lives to helping His Shadow's light reach those unfortunate dark corners where it still does not fall.
[Back at Cobolt Stadium]
Female Judge Computer: Of training enemies of His Shadow military tactics, of slandering merits from 11 planets, and finally 6 counts of blasphemous, self-aggrandisement.
Male Judge Computer: Due to the severe and heinous nature of your crime, you Thodin of the Ostral B pair, are...
Computer:
Female Judge Computer: Of 26 counts of piracy-- piracy-- piracy.
Male Judge Computer: You, Thodin of the Ostral B pair...
Computer:
[The children are receiving their award]
Computer: A shining example for every planet. You are hereby-- sentenced to be devoured by Cluster Lizards such sentence to be executed immediately.
It isn't a matter of bringing balance to the Force, but real life is also not like Star Wars where once you start down the path of evil you can only ever do evil things. Even evil people can do some good now and then. It doesn't necessarily redeem them, but being evil doesn't mean an incapacity for doing good.
And in all practicality, if you're needing to counter dirty tricks, you need someone who knows them all.
If you want the candidate that is the perfect mirror image of your own views, the only solution is to run yourself.
We tried that once already. It was called the California Recall Election.
Know your RWQs.
Anybody calling it insightful doesn't belong here.
Surely anyone who can confuse "insightful" with "inciteful" does belong here!
Having always presumed it a foregone conclusion that the processors would be swappable, I opted for the standard 2.66GHz configuration and an eventual upgrade as it becomes necessary.
Had I presumed that, I would have saved US$200 (and tax) by going to the 2.0 GHz BTO configuration. That alone pays for the hard drive upgrade from Apple (though you can get 500 GB drives for less than their upgrade from 250 GB).
Still, I'll certainly be wary about installing any firmware updates from Apple on my Mac Pro. I remember when they had an update for the the B&W G3 that prevented people from just dropping in a G4 processor (until the upgrade makers found a way around it).
But here's a thought: can you get away with installing only one quad-core processor, leave the other one bare, and use the extra space for more internal hard drives? There are two more SATA connectors on the motherboard (albeit hard to get at under the fan housing). (There would be a performance hit from having an idle bridge.)
Anti-cubicle missile system?
It shoots down cubicles with missiles? I'd expect such a thing only in my Tetris-induced dreams.