About two weeks ago I decided to try and install Linux on my old K6-2 450mhz machine gathering dust in the basement. A friend of mine gave me a few cd's that had something called 'Mandrake' on it.
He said "This is supposed to be the most user-friendly 'distro' out there. Give it a try."
So with trepidation about wiping out my beloved win98se install on the old machine, I jumped right in.
On firing up the install disk, the Man-drake installer asked me if I wanted to remove the win98se partition that already existed. After pondering this for several minutes I though, 'what the hell, I can always reinstall it!' So I let it fly.
After what seemed like 45 minutes of swapping cd's in-and-out of the drive, the man-drake (isn't that some sort of bird?) installer ask me what I wanted to use this linux machine for. So many choices! games, office, mail server, web server, about 2 dozen choices flooded my screen. This is madness! So after carefully considerating my options I decided to choose them all! I would be a Linux power-user to end all linux power-users!
So after this decision was made I waited. And waited. And waited. During this I started to wonder. My Windows XP Home intallation on my other Peecee didn't ask me thse kind of questions, and it easily has the all the abilities that man-drake advertised to have. After all, I paid for WinXP Home. Sigh, I guess this it the price one pays for being part of the linux elite.
Approximately 50 mintues later I get another prompt from the man-drake installer asking me what kind of GUI I wanted to use, KDE or GNOME. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! I selected both and let it fly.
After only about 20 mintues this time it appeared the install was completed. The mandrake installer told me it was going to reboot and then I would revel in Linux goodness. I waited with baited breath while the reboot churned away, eagerly waiting the opportuntity to use the KDE/GNOME interface. Page after page of command line stuff flew by my screen, seeming to get faster and faster as the time of my linux deliverance approached. Then, the screen flashed black (kinda like those scenes from the movie Wargames). I gasped and was presented with something like this:
bsh: blah/blah/blah/ ____
What the hell was this? Wasn't this man-drake linux supposed to be user friendly? Instead of the friendly confines of a WinXP like GUI instead I was given an ugly DOS like prompt, which looked supiciously like the TRS-80 system I first learned BASIC on in high school. Is this all the farther the great open-source movement has progressed?
After serveral minutes of sobbing and knashing of teeth, I came to a decision. All the linux fags out there were not going to defeat me! They were not going to cry "Bend over WinXP boy, you're going to take linux OUR WAY and like it!".
I quickly found my old musty copy of 'Unix in a Nutshell' from my college days and got to work. In a few hours I found out how to start the KDE GUI. This made life so much easier. After several days I was able to get the machine's 14.4 internal modem working with man-drake and connected to the internet, using a browser called Mozilla. Where oh where were the glorious pop-ups that appeared as I was surfing porn sites? Those bastards!
After several more days I was starting to feel somewhat comfortable. Using something called Gimp to manipulate my growing collection of adult images was becoming a habit. And because I was ashamed to let my friends and neighbors know I was using a gasp! free operating system like mandrake, I kept the pee-cee in the basement. Now my wife things the sounds emanating from below are me just woodworking or lifting weights. I guess linux has freed me after all!
Remember, posting in bold can be construed as screaming. There is no need to scream.
In case of slashdotting, here's the text.......
on
G5 PowerBook "Challenge"
·
· Score: -1, Informative
G5 PowerBook 'a challenge'
Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering at Apple, spoke to Macworld UK about the Apple G5. While declining to comment on unannounced products, he did concede that the possibility of a G5 PowerBook was simply "an issue of good, solid engineering".
He made it clear, however, that the current crop of G5 processors are designed for desktop machines, and a cooler-running version of the processor would be needed for a PowerBook. But he did point to the fact that a few years ago, nobody thought it would be possible to get a G4 processor in a PowerBook.
Rubinstein also spoke of the capabilities of the G5 processor. He suggested that improving the performance of software to take advantage of the new powerful processor should be relatively easy. The tools Apple provides to developers can help them find the parts of their applications that would benefit most from recompiling with the G5 in mind. Some developers claim to have doubled the performance of their programs using these tools.
Ken Bereskin was also on hand to reveal some more details of the upcoming Panther release of OS X. Like previous versions of OS X, PDF is an integral part of the operating system. But Panther will allow specific settings such as PDF/X, a standard for PDF for print. Panther will also support Dolby Digital 5.1 sound when used with the G5 optical audio output.
Spam said to make up half of all e-mails sent The UK has made spam a criminal offence to try to stop the flood of unsolicited messages.
Under the new law, spammers could be fined 5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury.
But they would not be sent to jail, according to the new measures introduced by Communications Minister Stephen Timms.
Spam has become the bane of internet users, with junk messages making up more than half of all e-mails sent.
Permission to send
"It's crucial that people feel safe and have confidence in utilising electronic communication technologies," said Mr Timms.
"These regulations will help combat the global nuisance of unsolicited e-mails and texts by enshrining in law rights that give consumers more say over who can use their personal details. "
The measures take effect on 11 December and will be enforced by the Information Commissioner.
Under the new law, companies will have to get permission from an individual before they can send them an e-mail or text message.
But the regulations do not cover business e-mail addresses, despite some calls for a blanket ban on spam.
The British measures are not as drastic as Italian anti-spam laws.
Earlier this month Italy imposed tough regulations to fine spammers up to 90,000 euros (66,000) and impose a maximum prison term of three years.
EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.
Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach.
The EU legislation leaves it to each member state how to enforce the legislation, as long as the enforcement is "effective".
The UK legislation also sets guidelines for the use of cookies, electronic tags that help websites keep track of visitors.
In future, people will be able to insist that sites do not store their personal information.
CHICAGO - A high school senior in the U.S. has dealt a blow to the gastronomic principle known as the five-second rule.
The rule states if food falls on the floor and remains there for five seconds or less then it's fine to pick it up and polish it off.
Jillian Clarke of Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences put the rule to the test.
Clarke says the rule was started by Genghis Khan. He apparently considered food safe to eat so long as it had been on the floor for 20 hours or less.
As part of her seven-week internship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she tested the five-second rule around campus.
The researchers tested how many microorganisms transferred onto food from rough and smooth tiles. Gummy bears and fudge-type cookies were tested - the two-most commonly dropped and eaten snacks.
The campus floors were actually quite clean. They found fewer than 20 so-called colony-forming units of E. coli on the floors. The lower limit for detecting the microbes is 25 colony-forming units.
When the researchers purposely inoculated food with bacteria, they found it doesn't take long for the bugs to contaminate a morsel.
"People think if it made contact for only five seconds then it is OK to eat but it's false because if you do drop anything full of microorganisms such as E.coli, it will transfer and transfer immediately," Clarke told CBC Radio's As It Happens.
The texture of the food and floor tiles also made a difference, she found. Microbes transfer faster on smooth foods like gummy bears falling on smooth tiles compared to rough tiles or fudgey cookies.
Star devours planets By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor
The mystery of an erupting star may be explained by the realisation that it has been engulfing planets.
Last year, the usually well behaved star V838 Monocerotis dramatically brightened three times, and astronomers were at a loss to explain why.
The latest suggestion is that the expanding red-giant star was swallowing three gas planets that were orbiting it.
Astronomers are looking carefully at the observations as what happened to those planets may one day also happen to the Earth.
Previously unexplained
V838 Monocerotis is located about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn).
The outbursts were detected last year by Australian amateur astronomer Nicholas Brown.
The star was seen to brighten to more than 600,000 times our Sun's luminosity.
Astronomers had previously been unable to explain what transformed a dim star into the brightest, cool, supergiant star in the Milky Way.
The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys had earlier recorded a dramatic image detecting a burst of light spreading into space and reflecting off shells of dust around the troubled star.
Now, in research soon to be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr Alon Retter and Dr Ariel Marom, from Sydney University, suggest the activity can be explained by the expanding star swallowing nearby planets.
Three planets, three meals
The researchers say that V838 Monocerotis flared because it was fuelled as it engulfed three orbiting planets. It could be the first evidence for an event that had been predicted but not knowingly observed.
Support for this assessment, say the astronomers, is provided by the study of the shape of the light curve and comparison between the observed properties of the star and several theoretical studies.
In addition to the gravitational energy generated by the process, there may also have been a rapid release of nuclear energy as fresh hydrogen was driven into the hydrogen-burning region of the star.
Some researchers believe that planet swallowing may be common and may explain why so many stars have enhanced levels of metals in their surface regions. The metals may have come from engulfed planets.
quoted from above: "The first of these products, Royal LineaLX, is scheduled to ship in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2003 for less than $300, the companies said, cheaper than Taco's ass."
This is slipped in there quite nicely. Huzzah to you sir!
Not to mention the fact that CmdrTaco must be a very rich man!
quote from story: "The overall economic damage in August from overt and covert attacks as well as viruses and worms stood at an all-time high of $28.2-billion, about as much as Cmdr Taco makes per year as a male prostitute."
A firecracker accident which left a 26-year-old man incontinent and unable to have sex has prompted warnings from police and health authorities about imitating stunts from the cult prankster film Jackass.
It is not known whether the Illawarra man had been imitating Jackass, in which men place firecrackers in their buttocks and fire them into the air.
They also stick toy cars up their buttocks, snort wasabi and apply electrical muscle stimulators to their genitals.
The movie carries a warning not to imitate the actions.
The man suffered a fractured pelvis and severe burns to his genital area after a firecracker exploded between the cheeks of his buttocks.
An ambulance was called to Dapto's Reed Park about 2.30am on August 10 after reports that the man was haemorrhaging from the buttocks. He was transported to Wollongong Hospital in a serious but stable condition, and he is expected to remain in hospital for several months.
The man suffered extensive injuries from the explosion and required emergency surgery. He now has a colostomy and a catheter, and is sexually dysfunctional.
He will be assessed by a colorectal surgeon to determine whether his injuries can be corrected.
Illawarra Health emergency surgeon Dr Robert McCurdie, who operated on the man when he was taken to Wollongong Hospital, likened the man's condition to "a war injury".
Dr McCurdie said he believed the man had stumbled while the firecracker was in his buttocks, and fell down on it.
"By virtue of the fact that the explosion was confined in an upward direction, it went up into his pelvis, blasted a great hole in the pelvis, ruptured the urethra, injured muscles in the floor of the pelvis which rendered him incontinent.
"His pelvis was also fractured," Dr McCurdie said.
He said he had never seen a similar injury to the genital area before.
"I have seen instances... where people have tried to remove items from their rectum and rupture the sphincter muscles, but not anything like this," he said.
Dr McCurdie said young people were particularly susceptible to imitating movies like Jackass.
"I think films like that can influence people, particularly younger people," he said.
"Firecrackers really are quite dangerous. In years gone by, firecrackers were in common usage and people were always warned about how to use them. Now the authorities have taken over and public displays are common."
Acting Senior Sergeant John Klepczarek said police received reports every year about injuries caused by firecrackers, which are illegal in NSW.
While some injuries were minor, he said in some cases people received severe burns and fingers had been lost.
"The warnings are out there for a reason. People still have the mentality it won't happen to them, but it does," he said.
The danger with movies like Jackass, he said, was that some people were tempted to try the stunts at home.
"They're putting themselves at risk, and other people.
"We do caution people strongly against following these acts," he said.
Mild-mannered cartoonist Scott McCloud is fighting for freedom and justice. Working from an office in California, the 40-ish father of two is using his Wacom graphics tablet, and Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash software to free his comic books from the confines of the printed page. Many are following his example.
McCloud, regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on comics, has taken his fight online because he believes the web can liberate comics by offering an "infinite canvas". He is one of many authors using the web to breathe new life into comics - transforming the familiar genre into a colourful, dynamic and interactive experience.
Online, comics fill pages of almost any size, allowing artists to ignore the conventional pattern of sequential panels read left-to-right and framed in a rectangle.
"When digital media comes into collision with an art form like comics, it has the ability to bring out what is unique about the medium," McCloud says. "In comics, things change right away. You're no longer confined to a rectangle. You can create a map of time that you move into and navigate through in ways unlike any other art form."
McCloud's work offers excellent examples of his theories. One of his web comics, My Obsession with Chess, tells the story of how his teenage obsession with chess led indirectly to his career in comics. The story scrolls downwards for over five metres, moves from side to side in a chessboard pattern and is engaging, if only because readers must work out how to read the comic at the same time as digesting the thoroughly interesting story.
Another of his works, The Right Number, adopts a new form for comics. Produced in Macromedia Flash - a tool that adds animation and interactivity to web pages and requires the reader's browser to have a Flash plug-in installed - each panel of the comic appears from within the previous panel. The concept of pages has been abandoned in favour of a tunnelling effect, with each new panel zooming out towards the reader and awaiting a further click to progress to the next part of the story. "As a graphic designer might put it, we've moved off the X and Y axis to the Z axis," McCloud says.
McCloud is far from alone with his online experiments. Dilbert creator Scott Adams included the www.dilbert.com address in each of his daily comic strips and found their presence in newspapers quickly built the audience that helped turn his anthologies into bestsellers. Rob Malda also scripts his homosexual adventures daily at slashdot.org.
The hyperactive Wachowski brothers, writers/directors of The Matrix trilogy, were also early users of web comics. The first Matrix film was accompanied by online comics that fleshed out their dystopian universe with material perhaps too dark to have the broad appeal of the movie, but more than capable of building loyalty among fans.
Thousands of web comics have since sprung up, with one site, OnlineComics.net, linking to more than 1700. The comics range from short comic strips updated daily to sprawling graphic novels published in unscheduled but eagerly awaited chunks several pages long. And they are growing in popularity: McCloud's The Right Numbers was read by more than 1500 paying readers within weeks of publication. Electric Sheep counts its readers in the tens of thousands.
Superheroes have muscled in on the action, too. The Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil and Marvel's familiar crew take on a whole new dimension in Marvel's dotcomics. The site uses Macromedia's Flash plug-in to replace the familiar process of turning the page with an interactive experience that helps get you inside the hero's head.
Every panel of the dotcomics is clickable, making speech balloons an insight into the characters' thoughts as you progress. Pop-up mini-profiles of each comic's heroes and villains enhance the action too, creating a new experience unimaginable in the offline world.
Web comics offer many other new reading experiences, alt
The questions answered in this FAQ are: 1) Where can I download scenarios from? 2) Do I need the Scenario Builder to use new scenarios? 3) Where do I get patches? 4) How can I edit random maps?
---------
1) Where can I download scenarios from?
wuarchive.wustl.edu:/pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/games/warlords_II lupan.byu.ed u:/site/ibmstuff/Games/Warlords_II www site - http://werple/apana.org.au/~elee/index.hmtl
The www site tends to be faster and is less likely to be busy.
(Of course, the quickest way to get lots of nice scenarios is to buy the scenario builder, since it comes with about two dozen.)
2) Do I need the Scenario Builder to use new scenarios?
No. All you need is the 1.11 patch.
3) Where do I get patches?
The sites mentioned in question 1 (lupan and wuarchive) have them.
4) How can I edit random maps?
Let's say I want to create a random scenario called "Sample": (Any other name would do - but no more than *7* characters)
i) Run WARSCEN. STAMP (say). Sample.. (Any other scenario should do instead of STAMP.)
ii) Run WARLORD2. Choose , and select desired options - even a different terrain set. You can exit as soon as you get to choose who is Human etc, but you will probably want to look at the map first. Go ahead and look. If you don't like it - generate another one. It doesn't matter whether you leave everyone as Human or not at this stage. . You don't need to save the game.
iii) At the DOS prompt:
From the Warlord2 subdirectory type:
COPY..\RANDOM\RANDOM.*..\SAMPLE\SAMPLE.*
(I'm sure you can figure out the corresponding commands from other directories.)
iv) Run WARSCEN. The "Sample" scenario now appears. it. It is now the random map. When you save, the information on the number of cities and ruins should be updated. Note that a different terrain set may look a bit odd when you first load it - just move around a bit and it should look OK. Change what you like, and remember to save often.
That's it! One edited random scenario.
SSG _explicitly_ say not to use DOS commands to play with the files.
They do this for a reason. If it stuffs up, don't blame them.
Be careful - it is quite possible to create problems. You probably
should back up any saved games, in case you need to reinstall.
Slashdot Mirror
And I thought puting metal objects in the microwave was the only way to have fun. That and my sister's new kitten.......
About two weeks ago I decided to try and install Linux on my old K6-2 450mhz machine gathering dust in the basement.
A friend of mine gave me a few cd's that had something called 'Mandrake' on it.
He said "This is supposed to be the most user-friendly 'distro' out there. Give it a try."
So with trepidation about wiping out my beloved win98se install on the old machine, I jumped right in.
On firing up the install disk, the Man-drake installer asked me if I wanted to remove the win98se partition that already existed. After pondering this for several minutes I though, 'what the hell, I can always reinstall it!' So I let it fly.
After what seemed like 45 minutes of swapping cd's in-and-out of the drive, the man-drake (isn't that some sort of bird?) installer ask me what I wanted to use this linux machine for. So many choices! games, office, mail server, web server, about 2 dozen choices flooded my screen. This is madness! So after carefully considerating my options
I decided to choose them all! I would be a Linux power-user to end all linux power-users!
So after this decision was made I waited. And waited. And waited. During this I started to wonder. My Windows XP Home intallation on my other Peecee didn't ask me thse kind of questions, and it easily has the all the abilities that man-drake advertised to have. After all, I paid for WinXP Home. Sigh, I guess this it the price one pays
for being part of the linux elite.
Approximately 50 mintues later I get another prompt from the man-drake installer asking me what kind of GUI I wanted to use, KDE or GNOME. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! I selected both and let it fly.
After only about 20 mintues this time it appeared the install was completed. The mandrake installer told me it was going to reboot and then I would revel in Linux goodness. I waited with baited breath while the reboot churned away, eagerly waiting the opportuntity to use the KDE/GNOME interface. Page after page of command line
stuff flew by my screen, seeming to get faster and faster as the time of my linux deliverance approached. Then, the screen flashed black (kinda like those scenes from the movie Wargames). I gasped and was presented with something like this:
bsh: blah/blah/blah/ ____
What the hell was this? Wasn't this man-drake linux supposed to be user friendly? Instead of the friendly confines of a WinXP like GUI instead I was given an ugly DOS like prompt, which looked supiciously like the TRS-80 system I first learned BASIC on in high school. Is this all the farther the great open-source movement has progressed?
After serveral minutes of sobbing and knashing of teeth, I came to a decision. All the linux fags out there were not going to defeat me! They were not going to cry "Bend over WinXP boy, you're going to take linux OUR WAY and like it!".
I quickly found my old musty copy of 'Unix in a Nutshell' from my college days and got to work. In a few hours I found out how to start the KDE GUI. This made life so much easier. After several days I was able to get the machine's 14.4 internal modem working with man-drake and connected to the internet, using a browser called Mozilla. Where oh where were the glorious pop-ups that appeared as I was surfing porn sites? Those bastards!
After several more days I was starting to feel somewhat comfortable. Using something called Gimp to manipulate my growing collection of adult images was becoming a habit. And because I was ashamed to let my friends and neighbors know I was using a gasp! free operating system like mandrake, I kept the pee-cee in the basement. Now my wife things the sounds emanating from below are me just woodworking or lifting weights. I guess linux has
freed me after all!
Remember, posting in bold can be construed as screaming. There is no need to scream.
G5 PowerBook 'a challenge'
Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering at Apple, spoke to Macworld UK about the Apple G5. While declining to comment on unannounced products, he did concede that the possibility of a G5 PowerBook was simply "an issue of good, solid engineering".
He made it clear, however, that the current crop of G5 processors are designed for desktop machines, and a cooler-running version of the processor would be needed for a PowerBook. But he did point to the fact that a few years ago, nobody thought it would be possible to get a G4 processor in a PowerBook.
Rubinstein also spoke of the capabilities of the G5 processor. He suggested that improving the performance of software to take advantage of the new powerful processor should be relatively easy. The tools Apple provides to developers can help them find the parts of their applications that would benefit most from recompiling with the G5 in mind. Some developers claim to have doubled the performance of their programs using these tools.
Ken Bereskin was also on hand to reveal some more details of the upcoming Panther release of OS X. Like previous versions of OS X, PDF is an integral part of the operating system. But Panther will allow specific settings such as PDF/X, a standard for PDF for print. Panther will also support Dolby Digital 5.1 sound when used with the G5 optical audio output.
UK bans spam messages
Spam said to make up half of all e-mails sent
The UK has made spam a criminal offence to try to stop the flood of unsolicited messages.
Under the new law, spammers could be fined 5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury.
But they would not be sent to jail, according to the new measures introduced by Communications Minister Stephen Timms.
Spam has become the bane of internet users, with junk messages making up more than half of all e-mails sent.
Permission to send
"It's crucial that people feel safe and have confidence in utilising electronic communication technologies," said Mr Timms.
"These regulations will help combat the global nuisance of unsolicited e-mails and texts by enshrining in law rights that give consumers more say over who can use their personal details. "
The measures take effect on 11 December and will be enforced by the Information Commissioner.
Under the new law, companies will have to get permission from an individual before they can send them an e-mail or text message.
But the regulations do not cover business e-mail addresses, despite some calls for a blanket ban on spam.
The British measures are not as drastic as Italian anti-spam laws.
Earlier this month Italy imposed tough regulations to fine spammers up to 90,000 euros (66,000) and impose a maximum prison term of three years.
EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.
Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach.
The EU legislation leaves it to each member state how to enforce the legislation, as long as the enforcement is "effective".
The UK legislation also sets guidelines for the use of cookies, electronic tags that help websites keep track of visitors.
In future, people will be able to insist that sites do not store their personal information.
Five-second food rule fails microbiology test
CHICAGO - A high school senior in the U.S. has dealt a blow to the gastronomic principle known as the five-second rule.
The rule states if food falls on the floor and remains there for five seconds or less then it's fine to pick it up and polish it off.
Jillian Clarke of Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences put the rule to the test.
Clarke says the rule was started by Genghis Khan. He apparently considered food safe to eat so long as it had been on the floor for 20 hours or less.
As part of her seven-week internship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she tested the five-second rule around campus.
The researchers tested how many microorganisms transferred onto food from rough and smooth tiles. Gummy bears and fudge-type cookies were tested - the two-most commonly dropped and eaten snacks.
The campus floors were actually quite clean. They found fewer than 20 so-called colony-forming units of E. coli on the floors. The lower limit for detecting the microbes is 25 colony-forming units.
When the researchers purposely inoculated food with bacteria, they found it doesn't take long for the bugs to contaminate a morsel.
"People think if it made contact for only five seconds then it is OK to eat but it's false because if you do drop anything full of microorganisms such as E.coli, it will transfer and transfer immediately," Clarke told CBC Radio's As It Happens.
The texture of the food and floor tiles also made a difference, she found. Microbes transfer faster on smooth foods like gummy bears falling on smooth tiles compared to rough tiles or fudgey cookies.
Star devours planets
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
The mystery of an erupting star may be explained by the realisation that it has been engulfing planets.
Last year, the usually well behaved star V838 Monocerotis dramatically brightened three times, and astronomers were at a loss to explain why.
The latest suggestion is that the expanding red-giant star was swallowing three gas planets that were orbiting it.
Astronomers are looking carefully at the observations as what happened to those planets may one day also happen to the Earth.
Previously unexplained
V838 Monocerotis is located about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn).
The outbursts were detected last year by Australian amateur astronomer Nicholas Brown.
The star was seen to brighten to more than 600,000 times our Sun's luminosity.
Astronomers had previously been unable to explain what transformed a dim star into the brightest, cool, supergiant star in the Milky Way.
The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys had earlier recorded a dramatic image detecting a burst of light spreading into space and reflecting off shells of dust around the troubled star.
Now, in research soon to be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr Alon Retter and Dr Ariel Marom, from Sydney University, suggest the activity can be explained by the expanding star swallowing nearby planets.
Three planets, three meals
The researchers say that V838 Monocerotis flared because it was fuelled as it engulfed three orbiting planets. It could be the first evidence for an event that had been predicted but not knowingly observed.
Support for this assessment, say the astronomers, is provided by the study of the shape of the light curve and comparison between the observed properties of the star and several theoretical studies.
In addition to the gravitational energy generated by the process, there may also have been a rapid release of nuclear energy as fresh hydrogen was driven into the hydrogen-burning region of the star.
Some researchers believe that planet swallowing may be common and may explain why so many stars have enhanced levels of metals in their surface regions. The metals may have come from engulfed planets.
quoted from above: "The first of these products, Royal LineaLX, is scheduled to ship in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2003 for less than $300, the companies said, cheaper than Taco's ass."
This is slipped in there quite nicely. Huzzah to you sir!
Apparently he has stolen this identity:
MSNBC
Can't you all see the resemblence?
Not to mention the fact that CmdrTaco must be a very rich man!
quote from story: "The overall economic damage in August from overt and covert attacks as well as viruses and worms stood at an all-time high of $28.2-billion, about as much as Cmdr Taco makes per year as a male prostitute."
Like virtual hot babes wanting to have sex with my mage and his +24 wand of lubrication.
Over and over and over again......
Firecracker stunt backfires on man
... where people have tried to remove items from their rectum and rupture the sphincter muscles, but not anything like this," he said.
A firecracker accident which left a 26-year-old man incontinent and unable to have sex has prompted warnings from police and health authorities about imitating stunts from the cult prankster film Jackass.
It is not known whether the Illawarra man had been imitating Jackass, in which men place firecrackers in their buttocks and fire them into the air.
They also stick toy cars up their buttocks, snort wasabi and apply electrical muscle stimulators to their genitals.
The movie carries a warning not to imitate the actions.
The man suffered a fractured pelvis and severe burns to his genital area after a firecracker exploded between the cheeks of his buttocks.
An ambulance was called to Dapto's Reed Park about 2.30am on August 10 after reports that the man was haemorrhaging from the buttocks. He was transported to Wollongong Hospital in a serious but stable condition, and he is expected to remain in hospital for several months.
The man suffered extensive injuries from the explosion and required emergency surgery. He now has a colostomy and a catheter, and is sexually dysfunctional.
He will be assessed by a colorectal surgeon to determine whether his injuries can be corrected.
Illawarra Health emergency surgeon Dr Robert McCurdie, who operated on the man when he was taken to Wollongong Hospital, likened the man's condition to "a war injury".
Dr McCurdie said he believed the man had stumbled while the firecracker was in his buttocks, and fell down on it.
"By virtue of the fact that the explosion was confined in an upward direction, it went up into his pelvis, blasted a great hole in the pelvis, ruptured the urethra, injured muscles in the floor of the pelvis which rendered him incontinent.
"His pelvis was also fractured," Dr McCurdie said.
He said he had never seen a similar injury to the genital area before.
"I have seen instances
Dr McCurdie said young people were particularly susceptible to imitating movies like Jackass.
"I think films like that can influence people, particularly younger people," he said.
"Firecrackers really are quite dangerous. In years gone by, firecrackers were in common usage and people were always warned about how to use them. Now the authorities have taken over and public displays are common."
Acting Senior Sergeant John Klepczarek said police received reports every year about injuries caused by firecrackers, which are illegal in NSW.
While some injuries were minor, he said in some cases people received severe burns and fingers had been lost.
"The warnings are out there for a reason. People still have the mentality it won't happen to them, but it does," he said.
The danger with movies like Jackass, he said, was that some people were tempted to try the stunts at home.
"They're putting themselves at risk, and other people.
"We do caution people strongly against following these acts," he said.
a Beowulf cluster of..... oops sorry!
Jetform is dead? Who killed it? Props to the CLIT for this FP!
The rebirth of comics
Mild-mannered cartoonist Scott McCloud is fighting for freedom and justice. Working from an office in California, the 40-ish father of two is using his Wacom graphics tablet, and Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash software to free his comic books from the confines of the printed page. Many are following his example.
McCloud, regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on comics, has taken his fight online because he believes the web can liberate comics by offering an "infinite canvas". He is one of many authors using the web to breathe new life into comics - transforming the familiar genre into a colourful, dynamic and interactive experience.
Online, comics fill pages of almost any size, allowing artists to ignore the conventional pattern of sequential panels read left-to-right and framed in a rectangle.
"When digital media comes into collision with an art form like comics, it has the ability to bring out what is unique about the medium," McCloud says. "In comics, things change right away. You're no longer confined to a rectangle. You can create a map of time that you move into and navigate through in ways unlike any other art form."
McCloud's work offers excellent examples of his theories. One of his web comics, My Obsession with Chess, tells the story of how his teenage obsession with chess led indirectly to his career in comics. The story scrolls downwards for over five metres, moves from side to side in a chessboard pattern and is engaging, if only because readers must work out how to read the comic at the same time as digesting the thoroughly interesting story.
Another of his works, The Right Number, adopts a new form for comics. Produced in Macromedia Flash - a tool that adds animation and interactivity to web pages and requires the reader's browser to have a Flash plug-in installed - each panel of the comic appears from within the previous panel. The concept of pages has been abandoned in favour of a tunnelling effect, with each new panel zooming out towards the reader and awaiting a further click to progress to the next part of the story. "As a graphic designer might put it, we've moved off the X and Y axis to the Z axis," McCloud says.
McCloud is far from alone with his online experiments. Dilbert creator Scott Adams included the www.dilbert.com address in each of his daily comic strips and found their presence in newspapers quickly built the audience that helped turn his anthologies into bestsellers. Rob Malda also scripts his homosexual adventures daily at slashdot.org.
The hyperactive Wachowski brothers, writers/directors of The Matrix trilogy, were also early users of web comics. The first Matrix film was accompanied by online comics that fleshed out their dystopian universe with material perhaps too dark to have the broad appeal of the movie, but more than capable of building loyalty among fans.
Thousands of web comics have since sprung up, with one site, OnlineComics.net, linking to more than 1700. The comics range from short comic strips updated daily to sprawling graphic novels published in unscheduled but eagerly awaited chunks several pages long. And they are growing in popularity: McCloud's The Right Numbers was read by more than 1500 paying readers within weeks of publication. Electric Sheep counts its readers in the tens of thousands.
Superheroes have muscled in on the action, too. The Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil and Marvel's familiar crew take on a whole new dimension in Marvel's dotcomics. The site uses Macromedia's Flash plug-in to replace the familiar process of turning the page with an interactive experience that helps get you inside the hero's head.
Every panel of the dotcomics is clickable, making speech balloons an insight into the characters' thoughts as you progress. Pop-up mini-profiles of each comic's heroes and villains enhance the action too, creating a new experience unimaginable in the offline world.
Web comics offer many other new reading experiences, alt
Can't we all just get along?
Is this differenct from the flux capacitor in the Delorean? How many gigawatts does it take to operate?
This is a FP. There are others like it, but this one is mine. Props to the CLIT!
You're the only failure I see around here, AC ASSWIPE!!!!
This is a fp. There are others like it, but this one is mine. Thank you very much.
Wierd Science was my favorite movie of all time. Does this mean the chick wasn't real?
Warlords II frequently asked questions list:
/pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/games/warlords_IId u: /site/ibmstuff/Games/Warlords_II
.
..\RANDOM\RANDOM.* ..\SAMPLE\SAMPLE.*
The questions answered in this FAQ are:
1) Where can I download scenarios from?
2) Do I need the Scenario Builder to use new scenarios?
3) Where do I get patches?
4) How can I edit random maps?
---------
1) Where can I download scenarios from?
wuarchive.wustl.edu:
lupan.byu.e
www site - http://werple/apana.org.au/~elee/index.hmtl
The www site tends to be faster and is less likely to be busy.
(Of course, the quickest way to get lots of nice scenarios is to buy
the scenario builder, since it comes with about two dozen.)
2) Do I need the Scenario Builder to use new scenarios?
No. All you need is the 1.11 patch.
3) Where do I get patches?
The sites mentioned in question 1 (lupan and wuarchive) have them.
4) How can I edit random maps?
Let's say I want to create a random scenario called "Sample":
(Any other name would do - but no more than *7* characters)
i) Run WARSCEN. STAMP (say). Sample.
(Any other scenario should do instead of STAMP.)
ii) Run WARLORD2. Choose , and select desired options -
even a different terrain set. You can exit as soon as you get to
choose who is Human etc, but you will probably want to look at
the map first. Go ahead and look. If you don't like it - generate
another one. It doesn't matter whether you leave everyone as Human
or not at this stage. . You don't need to save the game.
iii) At the DOS prompt:
From the Warlord2 subdirectory type:
COPY
(I'm sure you can figure out the corresponding commands from other
directories.)
iv) Run WARSCEN. The "Sample" scenario now appears. it. It is now
the random map. When you save, the information on the number of cities
and ruins should be updated. Note that a different terrain set may look
a bit odd when you first load it - just move around a bit and it should
look OK. Change what you like, and remember to save often.
That's it! One edited random scenario.
SSG _explicitly_ say not to use DOS commands to play with the files.
They do this for a reason. If it stuffs up, don't blame them.
Be careful - it is quite possible to create problems. You probably
should back up any saved games, in case you need to reinstall.
Hah Hah Hah! You loser you!
Heh Heh Heh. You said Probed. Heh Heh Heh......
First postest to the mostest! As for the old tree being cloned, maybe this will help with the world paper shortage?