C'mon. What has SETI actually accomplished in all the time that it has spent scouring the static for patterns? NOTHING. When/If aliens decide to present themselves it probably won't be because they accidentally blurted out some frequency that was picked up by SETI. It will probably be either by delegation or by an armada of Earth scorching death ships. Why don't we save a buck and let SETI drift off into the romantic imaginary world of what could have been... There are more possibilities for it in that realm than the real one.
I didn't even remember that thing until I read this post... That really takes me way back. I am only 28 and left Ontario before the '90s but it was definitely there until the late 80's. I am feeling very nostalgic...
Forget about the fact the we are racing towards an barter based economy where wealth will be measured by lumps of coal and sacks of grain hoarded in your garage as we burn oil cans for warmth in the wintertime surrounded by the great withering monuments built by our once great civilization. IF ONLY WE HAD BUILT THE ELECTRIC CAR SOONER!! Maybe this could have all been averted. Forgive me if I am wrong but this whole bailout deal is sorta to prevent us from ending up in a post-cataclysm type of Mad Max like future. Why has an affordable electric car been chosen as the imaginary panacea for the systemic failure that is rotting away the foundation of our lives?
And those five banks all have deposit insurance... How's all that banking competition going to help you out when your mickey mouse mom n'pop bank fails and doesn't have deposit insurance? Too many banks in the US has left them substantially worse off in this crisis.
My gf recently recently opened a pile of unattended bills that had been piling up. Since all of her bills are paid automatically, she doesn't need to be concerned about late or missed payments and subsequent bills sent in the mail are really just records of payment that need to be simply filed away. As such she discovered that she had been paying for two Electrical Utility bills, neither of which belongs to her, and she had been paying them for months. After several calls to the Hydro company and several customer rep's with varying degrees of skill and aptitude we thought we had it dealt with until we continued receiving bills for the offending accounts. Anyways, we are now going to cancel any automated payments and start "pay as you go" to prevent this from continuing on. Some companies cannot be trusted to handle automatic billing properly and cutting them off at their source is the only way to ensure the problem gets dealt with in a timely manner.
There is absolutely no reason why carbon fiber cannot be manufactured as cheaply as steel plates and used for car bodies... Especially with todays commodity prices. The only reason why we don't is because all of North American factories are already set up for shaping and manufacturing metal body parts for cars. The capital investment required to retrofit the factories has been the reason that carbon fiber hasn't been introduced in a bigger way. Having a carbon fiber car with a stock engine will likely be similar to a standard car with a hybrid engine.
A couple of years ago I read the case of a Canadian pedophile who was under scrutiny by the courts for his penning and online publishing of written stories of child rape. Usually featuring boys who would thank the rapist afterwards for providing such a healthy and formative experience. It really challenged my "Zero Tolerance" attitude towards anything anti-freespeech. This guy is being persecuted for penning fictional stories, the nature of which ought to be illegal... But then do I become an advocate of the Thought Police?
Free speech is free speech... Even if it is drawings or stories about things that no adult should reasonably be engaging their mind with. If somebody is deep down a pedophile, that may never change... Like somebody who is thoroughly heterosexual or homosexual, you can't change your nature. The problem is that they are so demonized they are probably more likely to become twisted people on the fringes of society rather than productive adults with a mental illness. Remember all the serial killer homosexuals from the last half-century?
If society can give them therapy for their problem rather then blanket condemnation and scorn then there may be more pedophiles willing and able to engage therapy as a solution. The question is, could it be accepted that the creation of fictional pornography, in which no children are actually exploited, be used as a means of therapy?
Do we care what style of justice they got, so long as justice was served...? Where's the justice is taking credit for the work of a group of volunteers, and then shaking everybody down for protection money? Not to mention how much time and money was wasted on their failed business model. And we can of course overlook my own personal conspiracy theory that they may just be a kamikaze business ran by a suicidal CEO hellbent on destroying their enemy and funded by something actually much larger and more sophisticated than just a simple patent troll company. Actually I was disappointed that there wouldn't be any use of a public gallows in the ruling.
My dad has worked extensively with computers since the mid-late seventies. One of his treasured possessions is a 10 lb computer bearing assembly that looks like it could of been a wheel bearing for a Toyota. I can't remember what exactly this bearing spun, but I do remember back in the eighties visiting my dad at his office and seeing rows and rows of refrigerator sized cabinets with spinning tape reels inside. I am also proud to say that I was surfing BBS's through a dialup modem back in the early nineties when I was a young teenager. I was on the internet before it was called the internet. Yea antiquity!
Linux is like an ant hill. It was assembled by thousands of seperate bodies working together to create a very complex and intricate system. Unless you are familiar with its construction, then you'll just be lost in the dark.
Anyone who enjoys Neil Gaiman will love the Sandman series. While technically a comic book, it is done intelligently enough to keep the interest of even the discerning reader. There are ten in all (11 now I think) the whole series cost me about $300 to buy, and it was worth every penny (and I am not a rich man).
Re:Surely some of it is an interface problem
on
KISS
·
· Score: 1
One of the problems I think is that you have techies building things for non-techie people.
Take the digital camera for instance. I have a fairly solid background in amateur photography with 35mm SLR cameras. When my girlfriend brought a digital camera back from Taipei I was eager to try it out. Much to my dismay I discovered many many layers of menus to control simple functions that any other camera has a simple external knob to control. As a result it takes too much time to photograph anything except a perfectly still landscape or a very very patient person.
Kudos to Pixar for dropping Disney.
I would really like to see Pixar team up with some of the old animators who left Disney a long time ago. Don Bluth specifically because he made some fine material after leaving Disney.
On a side note, seeing some Pixar/Terry Gilliam collaborations would be enough to drag me out to a theater.
Seeing that they have isolated the brainwaves responsible for creating a meditative state, it seems to reason that this neural feedback is like a reward system for meditation. You sit and stare at a screen while a computer reads your brainwaves, and when those alpha waves (I'm assuming that's the paydirt in this instance) come flooding down, it rewards you with pleasing eye candy. That actually sounds pretty cool. I don't have ADD or any variants thereof, but I wouldn't mind taking a spin on one...
How long before they hit the malls?
C'mon. What has SETI actually accomplished in all the time that it has spent scouring the static for patterns? NOTHING. When/If aliens decide to present themselves it probably won't be because they accidentally blurted out some frequency that was picked up by SETI. It will probably be either by delegation or by an armada of Earth scorching death ships. Why don't we save a buck and let SETI drift off into the romantic imaginary world of what could have been... There are more possibilities for it in that realm than the real one.
I didn't even remember that thing until I read this post... That really takes me way back. I am only 28 and left Ontario before the '90s but it was definitely there until the late 80's. I am feeling very nostalgic...
Forget about the fact the we are racing towards an barter based economy where wealth will be measured by lumps of coal and sacks of grain hoarded in your garage as we burn oil cans for warmth in the wintertime surrounded by the great withering monuments built by our once great civilization. IF ONLY WE HAD BUILT THE ELECTRIC CAR SOONER!! Maybe this could have all been averted. Forgive me if I am wrong but this whole bailout deal is sorta to prevent us from ending up in a post-cataclysm type of Mad Max like future. Why has an affordable electric car been chosen as the imaginary panacea for the systemic failure that is rotting away the foundation of our lives?
And those five banks all have deposit insurance... How's all that banking competition going to help you out when your mickey mouse mom n'pop bank fails and doesn't have deposit insurance? Too many banks in the US has left them substantially worse off in this crisis.
My gf recently recently opened a pile of unattended bills that had been piling up. Since all of her bills are paid automatically, she doesn't need to be concerned about late or missed payments and subsequent bills sent in the mail are really just records of payment that need to be simply filed away. As such she discovered that she had been paying for two Electrical Utility bills, neither of which belongs to her, and she had been paying them for months. After several calls to the Hydro company and several customer rep's with varying degrees of skill and aptitude we thought we had it dealt with until we continued receiving bills for the offending accounts. Anyways, we are now going to cancel any automated payments and start "pay as you go" to prevent this from continuing on. Some companies cannot be trusted to handle automatic billing properly and cutting them off at their source is the only way to ensure the problem gets dealt with in a timely manner.
There is absolutely no reason why carbon fiber cannot be manufactured as cheaply as steel plates and used for car bodies... Especially with todays commodity prices. The only reason why we don't is because all of North American factories are already set up for shaping and manufacturing metal body parts for cars. The capital investment required to retrofit the factories has been the reason that carbon fiber hasn't been introduced in a bigger way. Having a carbon fiber car with a stock engine will likely be similar to a standard car with a hybrid engine.
A couple of years ago I read the case of a Canadian pedophile who was under scrutiny by the courts for his penning and online publishing of written stories of child rape. Usually featuring boys who would thank the rapist afterwards for providing such a healthy and formative experience. It really challenged my "Zero Tolerance" attitude towards anything anti-freespeech. This guy is being persecuted for penning fictional stories, the nature of which ought to be illegal... But then do I become an advocate of the Thought Police? Free speech is free speech... Even if it is drawings or stories about things that no adult should reasonably be engaging their mind with. If somebody is deep down a pedophile, that may never change... Like somebody who is thoroughly heterosexual or homosexual, you can't change your nature. The problem is that they are so demonized they are probably more likely to become twisted people on the fringes of society rather than productive adults with a mental illness. Remember all the serial killer homosexuals from the last half-century? If society can give them therapy for their problem rather then blanket condemnation and scorn then there may be more pedophiles willing and able to engage therapy as a solution. The question is, could it be accepted that the creation of fictional pornography, in which no children are actually exploited, be used as a means of therapy?
Do we care what style of justice they got, so long as justice was served...? Where's the justice is taking credit for the work of a group of volunteers, and then shaking everybody down for protection money? Not to mention how much time and money was wasted on their failed business model. And we can of course overlook my own personal conspiracy theory that they may just be a kamikaze business ran by a suicidal CEO hellbent on destroying their enemy and funded by something actually much larger and more sophisticated than just a simple patent troll company. Actually I was disappointed that there wouldn't be any use of a public gallows in the ruling.
So that everyone on this forum can personally email this guy and call him a troll.
My dad has worked extensively with computers since the mid-late seventies. One of his treasured possessions is a 10 lb computer bearing assembly that looks like it could of been a wheel bearing for a Toyota. I can't remember what exactly this bearing spun, but I do remember back in the eighties visiting my dad at his office and seeing rows and rows of refrigerator sized cabinets with spinning tape reels inside. I am also proud to say that I was surfing BBS's through a dialup modem back in the early nineties when I was a young teenager. I was on the internet before it was called the internet. Yea antiquity!
Linux is like an ant hill. It was assembled by thousands of seperate bodies working together to create a very complex and intricate system. Unless you are familiar with its construction, then you'll just be lost in the dark.
Anyone who enjoys Neil Gaiman will love the Sandman series. While technically a comic book, it is done intelligently enough to keep the interest of even the discerning reader. There are ten in all (11 now I think) the whole series cost me about $300 to buy, and it was worth every penny (and I am not a rich man).
One of the problems I think is that you have techies building things for non-techie people.
Take the digital camera for instance. I have a fairly solid background in amateur photography with 35mm SLR cameras. When my girlfriend brought a digital camera back from Taipei I was eager to try it out. Much to my dismay I discovered many many layers of menus to control simple functions that any other camera has a simple external knob to control. As a result it takes too much time to photograph anything except a perfectly still landscape or a very very patient person.
Kudos to Pixar for dropping Disney. I would really like to see Pixar team up with some of the old animators who left Disney a long time ago. Don Bluth specifically because he made some fine material after leaving Disney. On a side note, seeing some Pixar/Terry Gilliam collaborations would be enough to drag me out to a theater.
Is it just me, or does Darl McBride share a striking resemblence to Biff from Back to the Future?
Seeing that they have isolated the brainwaves responsible for creating a meditative state, it seems to reason that this neural feedback is like a reward system for meditation. You sit and stare at a screen while a computer reads your brainwaves, and when those alpha waves (I'm assuming that's the paydirt in this instance) come flooding down, it rewards you with pleasing eye candy. That actually sounds pretty cool. I don't have ADD or any variants thereof, but I wouldn't mind taking a spin on one... How long before they hit the malls?