Well, I was being serious. It's an interesting topic, and one worth knowing about. I remember reading an article where some archaeologists had discovered a prehistoric skull with an iron tooth implant still attached. I find that kind of stuff amazing, and any kind of practical scientific knowledge we can glean from this kind of stuff would be worth it, IMO.
If I remember, ground penetrating radar doesn't work well in areas with high sodium in the soil. The Egyptian desert may not be able to support that method of discovery.
I'm just glad the officials were able to nab the robbers before any damage was done or any items were stolen. Hopefully we can learn a bit more about how dental care was done in Egypt back then.
"Second, the video card shouldn't have to have 256MB Of memory - video cards have supported resolutions higher than 1920x1080 ("1080p") for years, so video memory should be a minor concern."
So you're telling me that you firmly believe that in 1998 you could have run full-screen 1024x768 video and sound through software without a problem?
Rendering full-screen 1920x1080 progressive scan (i.e. the full screen 60times a second) is going to take a ton more computer power than standard DVD video.
I'm sure you could "run" HD content on many new computers, but I doubt it would be anything approaching acceptable performance.
Don't forget that desktop computers couldn't handle DVD video when DVD drives were coming out. Just like with old-school 3d rendering for video games (Hello $200 Canopus Voodoo1 daughterboard!) you needed a daughterboard to do the processing.
When you're dedicating a piece of hardware to do something, you don't NEED as much general processing power. In a home theatre component you've got a bunch of specialized tools working together in the same way, all the time, each perfectly syncronised with each other. In a desktop computer, you've got a pretty much random assortment of chips, cards, and software that have to be forced to work together by a central piece of software. It's a lot more load-intensive.
You're ALWAYS going to see better performance in a job-specific device over a general-use device. It's why you can't really run a Sony PS2 emulator on anything but the best computers: because they're not optomised for it, whereas the PS2 has been around for YEARS, playing PS2 games like they're no big deal.
In 7 years, nobody is going to think twice about all this stuff. It'll be pretty much bundled in with all but the cheapest computer systems, and all this whinging will be aimed at the next cutting edge tech that no one can run at the time.
Well, now we know that even someone like George Lucas can be influenced by the promise of a ton of money. Well... probably not Lucas himself but all the people who can influence him.
So now we'll have the opportunity to purchase yet another copy, bringing some people up to 5 seperate copies of the same set of movies.
Do you recognise the Lego blocks you played with as a child? Or maybe the Apple IIe you might have used around 20 years ago? How about the little "robot in a kit" you might have assembled back then?
What about the vacuum cleaner your mom used when you were 10? The hammer your dad might have used?
No? Why not? Oh, because they were beneath the level of attention you gave other, more important, things. The Star Wars world is FULL of such things. In ANH there are like 3 or 4 protocol droids shuffling around in Princess Leia's ship, and I'm sure it's the same with R2 units.
Just because important things happened to people while some "things" are around doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be remembered decades later. Not even the contexts were the same.
Lucas is guilty of a lot of stuff when it comes to plot holes, retconning storylines, and dumb editing, but this one is always trotted out as a prime example of his hubris, when to me it's just another statement of the ubiquitous nature of robotic assistants in his world.
There is no reason for Vader to remember R2D2 or C3P0, because they're just tools, despite their personalities or presence during important events.
They probably changed the silver slippers to ruby for pure aesthetic reasons. You've got this wonderful technicolor film you're creating, are you going to let a simple detail like that inhibit your using this new technology to its fullest?
The director probably said something like, "Silver? That's stupid! Let's get something that will really catch the eye of the audience!"
New Orleans wasn't under sea level when it was founded. The reason it is sinking is that the Mississippi River can't flood and redeposit silt any more.
The Mississippi River delta was always sinking, because it's all going out into the Gulf of Mexico. The regular floods would simply replace on top what is being taken from the bottom.
With those levies in place, though, the river can't flood, and the delta is now shrinking (I believe it's receded over 30 miles since the levies were installed.
But it would be good advice to not build a city on silt, but it's not like they knew that back when New Orleans was founded.
While some slight increase in storm severity may be attributable to global warming, hurricanes have been around for much longer than the industrial revolution. Hurricanes haven't spawned out of the ocean fully formed from Mother Nature's head like some kind of Athenean monstrosity, here to punish us for our filthy habits. Yes, global warming MAY have some affect on hurricane's severity, but it is NOT the cause of them. Let's put it this way: if you rewind 100 years and put take away the what, half degree water temp increase, Katrina would have still been a Category 4 or 5 storm. So before you get back up on your soapbox, please think about what you're saying.
As to the OP, we need hurricanes, for these and more reasons: -they mix up the water so that nutrients can get to the various levels of the ocean -they clean the gunge (naturally occurring, not manmade) off coral beds, making them healthier -they bring a lot of much needed rain to the US Southeast, and Florida in particular, helping re-fill our primary sources for fresh water, in Florida's case, the aquifer -they give the Weather Channel something to go nuts about every year.
Incorrect. Squinting acts as a filter for scattered light (kind of like how those showboxes with the pinholes in them allow you to see an eclipse). There was a guy a number of years back who sold "sunglasses guarenteed to improve your sight!" and all it was was a opaque plastic lens with hundreds of tiny holes in it.
To do any kind of zooming, you need 2 lenses, I believe, otherwise it's just a shift in focal points.
Y'know... her tax bill is going to be rather larger because of this. 10,000 song card value: $9,900 10 x 50 song card value: $495 10 x iPod color 60gb: $3,990 4 Coldplay tickets and backstage passes: (no idea here, we'll go for $100 each): $400
Additional reported income: $14,785 Hopefully she'll be able to sell some of that stuff so she'll be able to pay taxes on the cash value. Apple is required to report the maximum possible value of these to the IRS, and it'll be included as income for 2005.
Maybe she's a housewife or a dependant and doesn't have much income for this to get tacked onto.
You can check your local newspaper or the pawn shops. Sometimes people don't care what they get for something, they just want to be rid of it.
Of course, buying anything like that can be risky, so if you have a jeweler friend, have them show you a little about diamond shopping, and if you can get the stone appraised before paying, do so.
I'd guess it's a lot like antique shopping. You've got to know a bit about what you're looking for, or you can get burned.:-)
This was a very interesting article and has made me afraid of buying diamonds. It's like buying a car and having it depreciate faster than the stock market crash.
Very few diamonds have any resale value. Only high profile (the Hope diamond, royal jewels, etc) or "fancy" (pink, bright yellow, black, etc) stones have any investment value. For most of those kinds of stones, you'd wind up paying more for the history of the stone than the stone itself.
Everyday people will rarely is ever see any positive return on their diamond purchase. The second-hand diamond market is nearly nonexistant. If you don't believe me, go to your local pawn shop and see how much they'll give you for a diamond ring.
If you're buying a diamond ring, you should go into it knowing that it will have very little monetary value once you've purchased it. You should purchase it for the pleasure that the recipient will have from getting it. Despite their negative reputation and horrid investment value, they're still pretty and have emotional value.
That's an awesome record, and I applaud your choosing to not join in. I think that Scott's entering is OK, simply because there's a chance that he'll mess up on something and oversleep or something, because he doesn't maintain a buffer.
If there were too many cartoonists like you entered into the contest, it would probably make it run on for years before someone slipped up.:-)
BTW, for anyone who doesn't know Howard Taylor, he's the guy who draws the excellent Schlock Mercenary comic. It's a funny and smart sci-fi comic that actually has a coherent plot!
When a company buys another company, they purchase both the assets and the liabilities. (For example, if Delta bought American Airways, they get not only the planes, routes, and airport space, they also get all those folks who paid $2 million for a lifetime of walk on tickets).
Probably because the voicemails aren't stored on your phone, but on a server somewhere.
It's simple enough to backup your voicemails, however.
Dial into your voicemail system with a modem and record the message using your modem audio input.
After you have it on your computer, you can encode it however you want.
Shoot, if you don't want to go through the trouble of that, I'm sure someone here could hack together a mobile phone to analog in adapter by chopping up an old hands free headset. You know, just clip off the earpiece and wire it onto a 1/8" miniplug going into your line in.
Think for yourselves, it's more fun, and you're less reliant on companies who very rarely have your best interests in mind.
This is incorrect according to Snopes.com. This page states that it was more of a "list of songs you may not want to play at the moment" than a "list of songs you will not play."
Clear Channel Communications is a huge corp that owns hundreds of radio stations all over the country. Ever since the FCC relaxed the regulations on how many stations a corp can own in a given market, CC has bought out most of their old competitors. IIRC, they own like 90% of the stations in some markets. These are some of the people to blame when you complain about the "Top 40" and "Boy Bands" that make so much money. They're the ones that put them on the air, for whatever reason.
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Well, I was being serious. It's an interesting topic, and one worth knowing about. I remember reading an article where some archaeologists had discovered a prehistoric skull with an iron tooth implant still attached. I find that kind of stuff amazing, and any kind of practical scientific knowledge we can glean from this kind of stuff would be worth it, IMO.
If I remember, ground penetrating radar doesn't work well in areas with high sodium in the soil. The Egyptian desert may not be able to support that method of discovery.
I'm just glad the officials were able to nab the robbers before any damage was done or any items were stolen. Hopefully we can learn a bit more about how dental care was done in Egypt back then.
But when will it hit my doorstep at a reasonable rate?
All this talk of speedy internet access is great, but I'm still not seeing much benefit when it comes to what my ISP offers.
"Second, the video card shouldn't have to have 256MB Of memory - video cards have supported resolutions higher than 1920x1080 ("1080p") for years, so video memory should be a minor concern."
So you're telling me that you firmly believe that in 1998 you could have run full-screen 1024x768 video and sound through software without a problem?
Rendering full-screen 1920x1080 progressive scan (i.e. the full screen 60times a second) is going to take a ton more computer power than standard DVD video.
I'm sure you could "run" HD content on many new computers, but I doubt it would be anything approaching acceptable performance.
Don't forget that desktop computers couldn't handle DVD video when DVD drives were coming out. Just like with old-school 3d rendering for video games (Hello $200 Canopus Voodoo1 daughterboard!) you needed a daughterboard to do the processing.
When you're dedicating a piece of hardware to do something, you don't NEED as much general processing power. In a home theatre component you've got a bunch of specialized tools working together in the same way, all the time, each perfectly syncronised with each other. In a desktop computer, you've got a pretty much random assortment of chips, cards, and software that have to be forced to work together by a central piece of software. It's a lot more load-intensive.
You're ALWAYS going to see better performance in a job-specific device over a general-use device. It's why you can't really run a Sony PS2 emulator on anything but the best computers: because they're not optomised for it, whereas the PS2 has been around for YEARS, playing PS2 games like they're no big deal.
In 7 years, nobody is going to think twice about all this stuff. It'll be pretty much bundled in with all but the cheapest computer systems, and all this whinging will be aimed at the next cutting edge tech that no one can run at the time.
Because if you never grow up, the cool stuff will never come out!
Stop being so selfish!
I think the suit is complaining that MySpace didn't verify HER age and didn't do enough to protect HER from a 19 year old predator.
Well, now we know that even someone like George Lucas can be influenced by the promise of a ton of money. Well... probably not Lucas himself but all the people who can influence him.
So now we'll have the opportunity to purchase yet another copy, bringing some people up to 5 seperate copies of the same set of movies.
That's pretty impressive.
"How does Vader not recognize R2-D2 and C3P0?"
Do you recognise the Lego blocks you played with as a child? Or maybe the Apple IIe you might have used around 20 years ago? How about the little "robot in a kit" you might have assembled back then?
What about the vacuum cleaner your mom used when you were 10? The hammer your dad might have used?
No? Why not? Oh, because they were beneath the level of attention you gave other, more important, things. The Star Wars world is FULL of such things. In ANH there are like 3 or 4 protocol droids shuffling around in Princess Leia's ship, and I'm sure it's the same with R2 units.
Just because important things happened to people while some "things" are around doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be remembered decades later. Not even the contexts were the same.
Lucas is guilty of a lot of stuff when it comes to plot holes, retconning storylines, and dumb editing, but this one is always trotted out as a prime example of his hubris, when to me it's just another statement of the ubiquitous nature of robotic assistants in his world.
There is no reason for Vader to remember R2D2 or C3P0, because they're just tools, despite their personalities or presence during important events.
They probably changed the silver slippers to ruby for pure aesthetic reasons. You've got this wonderful technicolor film you're creating, are you going to let a simple detail like that inhibit your using this new technology to its fullest?
The director probably said something like, "Silver? That's stupid! Let's get something that will really catch the eye of the audience!"
New Orleans wasn't under sea level when it was founded. The reason it is sinking is that the Mississippi River can't flood and redeposit silt any more.
The Mississippi River delta was always sinking, because it's all going out into the Gulf of Mexico. The regular floods would simply replace on top what is being taken from the bottom.
With those levies in place, though, the river can't flood, and the delta is now shrinking (I believe it's receded over 30 miles since the levies were installed.
But it would be good advice to not build a city on silt, but it's not like they knew that back when New Orleans was founded.
While some slight increase in storm severity may be attributable to global warming, hurricanes have been around for much longer than the industrial revolution. Hurricanes haven't spawned out of the ocean fully formed from Mother Nature's head like some kind of Athenean monstrosity, here to punish us for our filthy habits.
Yes, global warming MAY have some affect on hurricane's severity, but it is NOT the cause of them. Let's put it this way: if you rewind 100 years and put take away the what, half degree water temp increase, Katrina would have still been a Category 4 or 5 storm.
So before you get back up on your soapbox, please think about what you're saying.
As to the OP, we need hurricanes, for these and more reasons:
-they mix up the water so that nutrients can get to the various levels of the ocean
-they clean the gunge (naturally occurring, not manmade) off coral beds, making them healthier
-they bring a lot of much needed rain to the US Southeast, and Florida in particular, helping re-fill our primary sources for fresh water, in Florida's case, the aquifer
-they give the Weather Channel something to go nuts about every year.
Incorrect. Squinting acts as a filter for scattered light (kind of like how those showboxes with the pinholes in them allow you to see an eclipse).
There was a guy a number of years back who sold "sunglasses guarenteed to improve your sight!" and all it was was a opaque plastic lens with hundreds of tiny holes in it.
To do any kind of zooming, you need 2 lenses, I believe, otherwise it's just a shift in focal points.
Y'know... her tax bill is going to be rather larger because of this.
10,000 song card value: $9,900
10 x 50 song card value: $495
10 x iPod color 60gb: $3,990
4 Coldplay tickets and backstage passes: (no idea here, we'll go for $100 each): $400
Additional reported income: $14,785
Hopefully she'll be able to sell some of that stuff so she'll be able to pay taxes on the cash value. Apple is required to report the maximum possible value of these to the IRS, and it'll be included as income for 2005.
Maybe she's a housewife or a dependant and doesn't have much income for this to get tacked onto.
You can check your local newspaper or the pawn shops. Sometimes people don't care what they get for something, they just want to be rid of it.
:-)
Of course, buying anything like that can be risky, so if you have a jeweler friend, have them show you a little about diamond shopping, and if you can get the stone appraised before paying, do so.
I'd guess it's a lot like antique shopping. You've got to know a bit about what you're looking for, or you can get burned.
This was a very interesting article and has made me afraid of buying diamonds. It's like buying a car and having it depreciate faster than the stock market crash.
Very few diamonds have any resale value. Only high profile (the Hope diamond, royal jewels, etc) or "fancy" (pink, bright yellow, black, etc) stones have any investment value. For most of those kinds of stones, you'd wind up paying more for the history of the stone than the stone itself.
Everyday people will rarely is ever see any positive return on their diamond purchase. The second-hand diamond market is nearly nonexistant. If you don't believe me, go to your local pawn shop and see how much they'll give you for a diamond ring.
If you're buying a diamond ring, you should go into it knowing that it will have very little monetary value once you've purchased it. You should purchase it for the pleasure that the recipient will have from getting it. Despite their negative reputation and horrid investment value, they're still pretty and have emotional value.
That's an awesome record, and I applaud your choosing to not join in. I think that Scott's entering is OK, simply because there's a chance that he'll mess up on something and oversleep or something, because he doesn't maintain a buffer. If there were too many cartoonists like you entered into the contest, it would probably make it run on for years before someone slipped up. :-)
BTW, for anyone who doesn't know Howard Taylor, he's the guy who draws the excellent Schlock Mercenary comic. It's a funny and smart sci-fi comic that actually has a coherent plot!
When a company buys another company, they purchase both the assets and the liabilities. (For example, if Delta bought American Airways, they get not only the planes, routes, and airport space, they also get all those folks who paid $2 million for a lifetime of walk on tickets).
Probably because the voicemails aren't stored on your phone, but on a server somewhere.
It's simple enough to backup your voicemails, however.
Dial into your voicemail system with a modem and record the message using your modem audio input.
After you have it on your computer, you can encode it however you want.
Shoot, if you don't want to go through the trouble of that, I'm sure someone here could hack together a mobile phone to analog in adapter by chopping up an old hands free headset. You know, just clip off the earpiece and wire it onto a 1/8" miniplug going into your line in.
Think for yourselves, it's more fun, and you're less reliant on companies who very rarely have your best interests in mind.
Here's what I found:
Low-End:
1.5GhzP4 or equivalent
512MB Ram
Geforce4 Ti 4800 or Radeon 9500
Mid-Range:
2.4GhzP4 or equivalent
1GB RAM
Geforce5950 or Radeon 9800 Pro/XT
High_End: Aka Hardware that doesn't exist, but best guess anyway
3.4GhzP4 or AMD equivalent
2GB RAM
GeForce 6800 Ultra or Radeon X800 XT PE
As Andrew S. Tanenbaum put it: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes hurling down the highway"
This is incorrect according to Snopes.com. This page states that it was more of a "list of songs you may not want to play at the moment" than a "list of songs you will not play."
Clear Channel Communications is a huge corp that owns hundreds of radio stations all over the country.
Ever since the FCC relaxed the regulations on how many stations a corp can own in a given market, CC has bought out most of their old competitors. IIRC, they own like 90% of the stations in some markets.
These are some of the people to blame when you complain about the "Top 40" and "Boy Bands" that make so much money. They're the ones that put them on the air, for whatever reason.
I mean, after they went nucking futs over the donkey bomb in the middle east, this is going to be insane.
Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Belgium will get some letters and protesters real quick.