So IANAGE (I am not a genetic engineer), but this animal appears to be a cross between a pig and a jellyfish. Is it still considered to be a pig? Granted the 'jellyfish' part of it's DNA is small. How much of a change can you make to the DNA of something before it's considered a new species/family/phylum or whatever? Can there ever be a clear distinction now between pigness and non-pigness?
That's reason enough for their government to keep a closer eye on them. Maybe having Big Brother watching them all the time will stifle the out-of-control European breeding instinct.
Whether or not I want to be informed about potential security problems with my personal or financial data depends on how often these kinds of alerts happen.
Of course there is a benefit in informing people of a security breach, you have the chance to do something about it, change your cards etc. But it's also a big hassle, and the theft of a huge block of IDs does not necessarily mean you are likely to be targeted personally, as the article points out.
So basically if these types of alerts are things that happen once every couple of years (which is the frequency I've experienced with this personally so far), I am willing to take the extra precaution of reissuing everything and setting up new auto payments etc. and dealing with all the hassle of it. If it's something that happens like every week, I don't want to be alerted because the value of the data (increased precaution/safety vs. effort of remedial action) is low when it happens too often.
Mission controllers John and Maureen Robinson briefly left the control room to attend to an unforseen family crisis involving their children, Judy, William and Penny. Mission scientist Dr. Zachary Smith was left in charge of the lander. When chief mission controller Major Don West came into the control room an hour later to relieve Dr. Smith, the probe was found to have drifted off the asteroid after faulty commands were sent from one of the mission computers. Investigators later found a giant magnet stuck to the computer. Dr. Smith's only comment on the mission was that the robot was a "clattering craft of clinking computerized clumps"!
DAZ started life as a content provider for MetaCreations' Poser software (now owned by Curious Labs); DAZ made (and still makes) human figures with superior morph capability and texture detail vs. what comes with Poser, along with other content from various independent modelers who use their site to sell their models.
Lately they've been delving into selling actual applications; they bought the Mimic software for lip synching for instance which complements Poser by providing automated.wav to pose conversion to synchronize models' lips and facial expressions to a sound clip in an automated way.
This latest offering will put them squarely in competition with Curious Labs, which I would say is a good thing. Poser is simultaneously one of the most amazing applications, and most annoying applications I've used. The program produces fantastic human figure graphics and animation, but is also incredibly buggy, slow, and memory/resource intensive. Still, it's much cheaper than the higher end competition which is priced out of the hobbyist market, so it is currently the only game in town. Having another choice in the low end would be very good, providing it's halfway useable.
Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
on
10 Computer Mishaps
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Well if you're looking for the 10 best, you have to include the famous Digital Equipment Corp tale about the monkey that got fried when field service calibrated the PDP-12 it was hooked up to in some bio lab. Thus leading to the phrase 'Always Mount a Scratch Monkey'..
I remember this one going around DEC 20 yrs ago in the NOTES files.
This borders on urban legend it's so old / well distributed, but should probably be included. google for it or check out:
scratch-mokey.html
Consider yourself lucky - at least you have something.
I'm in a similar situation; I live an hour west of Boston in a town w/o cable as well, at lots of satellite-blocking hills and trees.
...and oh yeah, my house is 24,000 feet from the central office, so no DSL is possible in my neighborhood either. I'm lucky if I can connect above 28.8K on the phone lines w/ dialup.
It's a rural area but it's not like the middle of Alaska or something, there are major population centers nearby like Worcester and Springfield so you'd think there would be broadband of some sort.
I think a lot of people have also fallen thru the cracks of the DSL/cable net as well, even in relatively populated areas.
Broadband is not a neccessity, but it's surely put a dent in what services are available. I can't telecommute effectively because VNC wont work. No VoIP, no on-demand video, no Bit Torrent, even windows updates or downloading patches to things I buy takes days. I've actually considered moving because of this but it seems stupid to have to move from a town I otherwise love just for broadband!
I've heard this as well. A friend of mine is in the AF satellite launch services and he mentioned the removal of freon from the insulation as a known cause.
he's also *amazed* that nasa would launch with a unknown fault such as the fuel tank sensor. he says his Air Force bosses would never approve a launch under those conditions and they don't even launch people..
Goofy of course. And if we decide to de-planetize Pluto, it'd be OK. I was never clear on why Disney needed 2 stupid dogs in their character library anyway.
You got it wrong - it's not even standing on a big rock covered with dust, it's looking at one from 100 miles up.
That I would agree isn't worth the money (let alone risk), even if you had it to burn.
Actually landing on the moon, being the first moon tourist, might. Moon walkers are still an elite club, (MJ not withstanding). I'd imagine the book/movie options, lecture circuit, proceeds from selling moon rocks on ebay etc. would get some of that money back.
So I don't have cable in my town, and frankly don't watch enough TV to pay $45/month for satellite with local channels. I do want to watch a few things on a regular basis, the news, sometimes a network show occasionally. These are all currently free and crystal clear in analog broadcast; (ive got a large rooftop antenna and the house has near line of sight to several cities that broadcast.)
I bought the new digital-capable TV, check. I'm now getting both analog and digital versions of channels for the stations already broadcasting in digital (a majority of the 20+ broadcast channels I pick up, actually)
While the digital channels look really nice, and the HDTV broadcasts even nicer, there is a basic problem. The weaker of these channels routinely break up, pixelate, or freeze and are totally unwatchable in digital, where in analog, they are a little snowy, but perfectly OK to watch. In bad weather, some channels may have a little snow or ghost in analog, but the digital signal breaks up in a hurry.
When this switchover happens, I'll go from getting like 20 channels to maybe 2, and those 2 will not be very reliable.
So people who still rely on broadcast TV are going to have a tough time with this I suspect, even if they can get a cheap digital TV.
I used to work for Digital, designing Alpha workstations. When they couldn't break a profit in that market, we fell back and concentrated on the higher-margin server market only. When that didn't work, we fell back again to making alpha-based storage servers.
The rest of course is history, wasn't long before the Compaq buyout, retirement of the Digital brand, and end of production of the Alpha chip altogether; ie total company death.
I also live in a town with no cable and too far for DSL. I just tried the wireless internet experiment myself, signing up for Verizon NationAccess. It was $80/month but my boss offered to split it with me, making it a more reasonable $40/month.
I didn't expect to get the EVDO 6mb/sec bandwidth as it's not available in my area, but I was hoping for a more modest 80-100kb/sec which would be double or triple dialup (im lucky to get a 30k baud connect).
Verizon set me up with essentially a free wireless PCMCIA card after rebate, but since it was for home, I wanted to plug it into a USB pod on my home computer. I ran into several problems here, including the pins on the card being too big for the PCMCIA pod for some reason. Evert smart card Ive tried fits in it well, but not this. Eventually I got it to seat correctly and windows recognized it as a modem, but the Verizon software would not install correctly in this config.
So I then tried it in my laptop, figuring I'd have to have it or some other be my network hub. This installed OK and I got a signal, but it was very unreliable. I had bursts up to 160kb, but an equal number of periods with no connection. I only had about a 58% signal so perhaps I was bouncing between sites or something.
I sadly had to return it (Verizon gives 14 days to return no questions asked) before I was locked into the 2 year contract. I could have spent another couple hundred for an external yagi antenna and adapter for the card (these are available online) but I didn't want to spend the money to buy and install this, keep a laptop on my home net at all times, and commit to a 1 or 2 yr contract.
So I can't say it worked for me. But it may be worth trying. If you can get a better signal you may have a better chance.
Theres an even simpler financial incentive for them than the analog hole issue.
Once we go fully digital, people like me who live in a rural area and who really only care about local broadcast channels (for news, etc.) will be forced to pay for to watch TV:
I have a digital/HDTV-enabled TV now, so I can receieve both analog and digital local channels over the air. The analog channels are pretty good quality but occasionally ghost or get slightly fuzzy depening on weather, etc. (Still better than most analog cable channels Ive seen though)
The digital versions of these channels are perfect when conditions are good, but about 30-40% of the time, they are pixelated/jumpy/unwatchable due to signal issues. Some weaker channels I can't pull in the digital versions at all.
So if the analog channels go away, I'll have to pay to get reliable reception. (eg. satellite). I'm not interested in paying $50 a month to watch the news; I don't want those other 800 channels really - (I've got netflix for the good stuff and it's much cheaper per month!)
While it's true that they've got a long way to go to make it to orbit or to make it economic vs. other entertainment diversions, what is significant is that it is a start. A brand new vista for private enterprise.
If the usual pattern holds, I would expect they would use the profits from this first meager fleet to scale things up to craft that hold more people (lower cost), or go further (closer to the orbital goal).
At some point the current rocket technology does not scale enough to get them to orbit, but the experience and $$$ generated by the first round will enable them to build newer, more capable systems. As long as there is an influx of cash here, the sky is not going to be the limit.
Slashdot Mirror
HR 5273
It's from Microsoft.
Check out the last pic in TFA. Nice to know the richest man on earth has the office with the pole in it. Thought it was only me.
So IANAGE (I am not a genetic engineer), but this animal appears to be a cross between a pig and a jellyfish. Is it still considered to be a pig? Granted the 'jellyfish' part of it's DNA is small. How much of a change can you make to the DNA of something before it's considered a new species/family/phylum or whatever? Can there ever be a clear distinction now between pigness and non-pigness?
Anyone else find it amusing that the warp engine story appears on 'scotsman.com'? James Doohan's probably smiling somewhere...
That's reason enough for their government to keep a closer eye on them. Maybe having Big Brother watching them all the time will stifle the out-of-control European breeding instinct.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/fundue.shtml
Of course there is a benefit in informing people of a security breach, you have the chance to do something about it, change your cards etc. But it's also a big hassle, and the theft of a huge block of IDs does not necessarily mean you are likely to be targeted personally, as the article points out.
So basically if these types of alerts are things that happen once every couple of years (which is the frequency I've experienced with this personally so far), I am willing to take the extra precaution of reissuing everything and setting up new auto payments etc. and dealing with all the hassle of it. If it's something that happens like every week, I don't want to be alerted because the value of the data (increased precaution/safety vs. effort of remedial action) is low when it happens too often.
Mission controllers John and Maureen Robinson briefly left the control room to attend to an unforseen family crisis involving their children, Judy, William and Penny. Mission scientist Dr. Zachary Smith was left in charge of the lander. When chief mission controller Major Don West came into the control room an hour later to relieve Dr. Smith, the probe was found to have drifted off the asteroid after faulty commands were sent from one of the mission computers. Investigators later found a giant magnet stuck to the computer. Dr. Smith's only comment on the mission was that the robot was a "clattering craft of clinking computerized clumps"!
Lately they've been delving into selling actual applications; they bought the Mimic software for lip synching for instance which complements Poser by providing automated .wav to pose conversion to synchronize models' lips and facial expressions to a sound clip in an automated way.
This latest offering will put them squarely in competition with Curious Labs, which I would say is a good thing. Poser is simultaneously one of the most amazing applications, and most annoying applications I've used. The program produces fantastic human figure graphics and animation, but is also incredibly buggy, slow, and memory/resource intensive. Still, it's much cheaper than the higher end competition which is priced out of the hobbyist market, so it is currently the only game in town. Having another choice in the low end would be very good, providing it's halfway useable.
I remember this one going around DEC 20 yrs ago in the NOTES files.
This borders on urban legend it's so old / well distributed, but should probably be included. google for it or check out: scratch-mokey.html
I'm in a similar situation; I live an hour west of Boston in a town w/o cable as well, at lots of satellite-blocking hills and trees.
It's a rural area but it's not like the middle of Alaska or something, there are major population centers nearby like Worcester and Springfield so you'd think there would be broadband of some sort.
I think a lot of people have also fallen thru the cracks of the DSL/cable net as well, even in relatively populated areas.
Broadband is not a neccessity, but it's surely put a dent in what services are available. I can't telecommute effectively because VNC wont work. No VoIP, no on-demand video, no Bit Torrent, even windows updates or downloading patches to things I buy takes days. I've actually considered moving because of this but it seems stupid to have to move from a town I otherwise love just for broadband!
he's also *amazed* that nasa would launch with a unknown fault such as the fuel tank sensor. he says his Air Force bosses would never approve a launch under those conditions and they don't even launch people..
Goofy of course. And if we decide to de-planetize Pluto, it'd be OK. I was never clear on why Disney needed 2 stupid dogs in their character library anyway.
That I would agree isn't worth the money (let alone risk), even if you had it to burn.
Actually landing on the moon, being the first moon tourist, might. Moon walkers are still an elite club, (MJ not withstanding). I'd imagine the book/movie options, lecture circuit, proceeds from selling moon rocks on ebay etc. would get some of that money back.
I bought the new digital-capable TV, check. I'm now getting both analog and digital versions of channels for the stations already broadcasting in digital (a majority of the 20+ broadcast channels I pick up, actually) While the digital channels look really nice, and the HDTV broadcasts even nicer, there is a basic problem. The weaker of these channels routinely break up, pixelate, or freeze and are totally unwatchable in digital, where in analog, they are a little snowy, but perfectly OK to watch. In bad weather, some channels may have a little snow or ghost in analog, but the digital signal breaks up in a hurry.
When this switchover happens, I'll go from getting like 20 channels to maybe 2, and those 2 will not be very reliable.
So people who still rely on broadcast TV are going to have a tough time with this I suspect, even if they can get a cheap digital TV.
The rest of course is history, wasn't long before the Compaq buyout, retirement of the Digital brand, and end of production of the Alpha chip altogether; ie total company death.
Sounds a lot like that.
I didn't expect to get the EVDO 6mb/sec bandwidth as it's not available in my area, but I was hoping for a more modest 80-100kb/sec which would be double or triple dialup (im lucky to get a 30k baud connect).
Verizon set me up with essentially a free wireless PCMCIA card after rebate, but since it was for home, I wanted to plug it into a USB pod on my home computer. I ran into several problems here, including the pins on the card being too big for the PCMCIA pod for some reason. Evert smart card Ive tried fits in it well, but not this. Eventually I got it to seat correctly and windows recognized it as a modem, but the Verizon software would not install correctly in this config.
So I then tried it in my laptop, figuring I'd have to have it or some other be my network hub. This installed OK and I got a signal, but it was very unreliable. I had bursts up to 160kb, but an equal number of periods with no connection. I only had about a 58% signal so perhaps I was bouncing between sites or something.
I sadly had to return it (Verizon gives 14 days to return no questions asked) before I was locked into the 2 year contract. I could have spent another couple hundred for an external yagi antenna and adapter for the card (these are available online) but I didn't want to spend the money to buy and install this, keep a laptop on my home net at all times, and commit to a 1 or 2 yr contract.
So I can't say it worked for me. But it may be worth trying. If you can get a better signal you may have a better chance.
Best of Luck!
Once we go fully digital, people like me who live in a rural area and who really only care about local broadcast channels (for news, etc.) will be forced to pay for to watch TV:
I have a digital/HDTV-enabled TV now, so I can receieve both analog and digital local channels over the air. The analog channels are pretty good quality but occasionally ghost or get slightly fuzzy depening on weather, etc. (Still better than most analog cable channels Ive seen though)
The digital versions of these channels are perfect when conditions are good, but about 30-40% of the time, they are pixelated/jumpy/unwatchable due to signal issues. Some weaker channels I can't pull in the digital versions at all.
So if the analog channels go away, I'll have to pay to get reliable reception. (eg. satellite). I'm not interested in paying $50 a month to watch the news; I don't want those other 800 channels really - (I've got netflix for the good stuff and it's much cheaper per month!)
They should call it Macadamia! Just a nutty suggestion..
How long before the Sentinels detect his signal and rip him into itty bits?
"Everyone should believe in something; I believe I'll have another drink." W.C. Fields
If the usual pattern holds, I would expect they would use the profits from this first meager fleet to scale things up to craft that hold more people (lower cost), or go further (closer to the orbital goal).
At some point the current rocket technology does not scale enough to get them to orbit, but the experience and $$$ generated by the first round will enable them to build newer, more capable systems. As long as there is an influx of cash here, the sky is not going to be the limit.
Apollo capsules had chutes too. If they didn't they would also have ended up in itty bitty pieces, only at the bottom of the ocean.
and I for one welcome our new Comet-Dust Overlords!