"Chameleo-browser" - A new plugin for firefox which will allow porn pages, when seen from a distance to blend in with spreadsheets and become unnoticable.
Done and done (but not as a plugin). Introducing Ghostzilla!
almost doubled my mark result by upgrading drivers for GPU.
Which almost certainly means that newer drivers detect the benchmark's presence, and are designed to optimize certain specific functions in order to give a high result. I seem to recall some sort of fiasco related to this a couple of years ago.
Of course, this is why I don't trust benchmarks. Give me FPS from actual gameplay averaged over several different games. Much harder to fake.
Hamsters don't sink apparently, but float in water.
They float in water? Hmm.... What else floats? Ducks.
And what weighs the same as a duck? A witch.
And what do you do with witches? Burn them, of course.
And what else do you burn aside from witches? More Witches!
Yes, yes, but aside from witches. What else do you burn? Wood?
Yes! And what do you do with wood aside from burning it? Build bridges out of it, of course.
And there you go. Irrefutible proof that hamsters can be used as cheap, self reproducing construction material. Just think of the possibilities!
??????
Profit!
Why is everyone so gung-ho to ensure that children have access to violent and or filthy materials?
Do you think that it's GOOD that kids should be seeing this sort of trash?
What sort of trash? Is entertainment that references alcohol or drug use trash? What about promiscuity? Violence? Homosexuality? Who gets to decide what "filthy materials" are?
The answer, of course, is the parents. An outright ban on the sale of violent or "filthy" materials to children ignores the fact that different parents have differing levels of comfort with what their children are exposed to. As long as the material in question isn't going to harm the child (i.e. showing real snuff videos to kindergartners or some such) then the parents should be allowed to make that decision.
The question is, do you ban everything and require specific parental consent for exceptions, or do you permit everything and rely on the parents to keep track of what their kids are doing? Personally, I'm in favor of the latter, and for that to work, children must have access to materials that some parents find offensive.
Or better yet, a battery that can charge off the mechanical work of the drive spindle, so you can pop it out and plug in some headphones to use it like a normal MP3 player. Need to recharge? Hook it up to your computer to charge over USB, or pop it in any tape deck and hit RW or FF. Brilliant.
My only problem is that my car has a CD player without a line-in, and no casette deck. I've tried the FM tuner thing, and the quality sucks, and sucks hard. I wonder if it would be possible to create an MP3 player in the shape of a flat disc, with a rotation sensor at the center that could snap over the hub of a CD player (it would detect rotation by the CD player, but wouldn't roatate the disc itself). Have some optical sensors on the underside that can sense the general area of the player's laser, and can mechanically rotate an LED over the laser to fake reflections off the disc.
Hmm, doesn't sound too feasible after all. Still, anyone who invents something like this will make a fortune.
The original Halo never dropped a cent below 69.99 on average and it was a launch title. Go to a game seller tomorrow, it probably still will be. Everything below $30 these days is all the stuff that was either just an uninspired rip off of something, or a failed experiment. Period.
You should probably do some research before making statements like that. The original Halo now sells for $20. Heck, Halo 2 is selling for $30. In fact, most of the best-sellers from previous years are at the $20-$30 level now.
Why the hell shouldn't they [loiter]? Is standing around in a public space illegal these days or something?
I don't know about the UK (which this aricle is about), but in the US the answer to your question would be, "Yes, loitering is, in many jurisdictions, illegal."
When the issue in question is teenagers blowing all of their money on stuff that they don't really need just because they think that they need all of the stuff to be "cool", then no, I don't blame the media. I blame the teenagers for not engaging their brains, and I blame the parents for not teaching their kids how to handle money.
Of course advertisements are going to present their product in the best possible light. They're going to do their best to convince you that you need "brand x", as you said. But advertisers aren't brainwashing people into buying stuff, for crying out loud. It's not like television commercials are some sort of irresistible force. Anyone who is so thoroughly convinced to buy whatever is being advertised, to the point that they end up spending all of their money while setting none aside for later, is someone who, quite frankly, is either an idiot, or who has absolutely no willpower, neither of which is the fault of the media.
I'd rather have to listen to a high-pitched squeal for the 5 seconds it takes to enter the store than have a bunch of punks yell obscenities at me. And based on the article, this would be exactly the choice this quy was faced with.
I was merely pointing out that if it were simply a case of external influences, then we wouldn't have ended up with such different attitudes. So saying that the media, an external influence, is to blame is just plain wrong. Media may have some influence, but the question I posed at the end of my post was, "how much?"
You can't discourage somebody from entering your store based on their age
But this device is outside the store. If anything, it's encouraging teens to stop loitering (which is illegal) and either go away or come inside and shop. In other words, it's not discriminating against anyone who isn't already breaking the law.
Don't blame the media for this one. Any parent worth his or her salt will do their best instill a sense of monetary responsibility in their offspring. Some kids catch on, and some don't. Myself, I've always saved money; even as a kid I'd think long and hard about spending any money I received as a gift. As long as I've been employed, I've never had my monetary outflow exceed my income (with the exception of car and student loans). In short, I know how to save money.
Now take my brother. Same parents, same media influence, but he spends money like it's burning a hole in his pocket. I've lost track of the number of times he's overdrawn his checking account. So the big question is, how much is nature, and how much is nurture?
So anyhow, I didn't RTFA but if they're talking about using this device on a long-term basis to keep teens away from somewhere, this is tantamount to torture. I think anybody considering using this for anything other than security in imminent danger (e.g. teens harassing you) deserves to lose the rest of their hearing too.
First of all, if this is being used on someone's property, and you can just walk away, then it's not torture. Second, the very reason this is being used is because of teens harassing people.
Being 20, my opinion of anybody that uses one of these things is that they are idiots. I mean, how else am I supposed to react to somebody using a device to selectively annoy people my age?
Well, people your age are selectively annoying this shopkeeper's customers, so what do you expect him to do? If he were having problems with retirees loitering outside his store and harassing his clientele, would you be upset if he blared rap music to encourage them to disperse?
Homey, regardless of my brain development, had you said this to my face
If someone who is relatively young (i.e., under, say, 25-30) is reading this and thinks I'm full of crap, then you're not qualified to have an opinion. Your brain hasn't finished developing yet. Sorry.
I would fucking knock your overweight ass into next week.
I don't exactly agree with the GP, but you seem to be doing your best to prove his point for him. I could never understand the whole "you insulted me so I'll respond with physical violence" mentality. Sure, if it's in self defense then physical force may be necessary. But in response to a (poorly thought out) verbal insult?! Grow the fuck up! It's not that the GP is a glowing beacon of rationality, but attitudes like yours are exactly the reason that people like the GP have such a low opinion of the younger generation.
You seem to suggest that planting a device to annoy them in a targetted fashion is reasonable and somehow that "poor parenting" is not involved?
The only poor parenting involved here is the parenting that prompted these teenagers to loiter around in front of a store, drinking, smoking, and harassing customers. This device is not an issue for anyone who is simply shopping at the store. It's only an issue for teenager who are breaking the law by loitering. And frankly, if these particular teens feel compelled to show a lack of respect to their fellow human beings by "...shouting rude words as customers," for no apparent reason other than that they find it amusing, then they deserve just as little respect in return.
As a teen, having gone through very frustrating and annoying shit just because of my age, I'd love to know why the fuck this was modded funny.
Probably for several reasons, one of which being that discrimination against teens is legal and state-sponsored. Can a 13-year-old drive a car? Buy a handgun? Drink alcohol? Buy cigarettes? Vote? There you go, state-sponsored and, many would argue, valid age discrimination. So there's a certain amount of humor for someone to say, obviously tongue-in-cheek, that you can't discriminate against teens.
If the guys are annoying, call the cops on the fuckers. Don't take it out on everyone who just happen to be the same age.
The sound is only annoying with constant exposure, and the only way someone is going to be constantly exposed is if they're loitering around outside the store. It will have no effect on people who are legitimate customers entering or leaving the store. No one, regardless of age, should be loitering outside this guy's store. And if there's a simply way to encourage a group not to loiter, especially when the loiterers are pretty much exclusively composed of that group, then I say "go for it!"
Did you actually RTFA? This is to help prevent teenagers from loitering in front of stores and harassing the other customers. Apparantly "...surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside."
The owner actually had originally planned to pipe loud classical music outside for the same effect, but the inventor of the device in question supplied some for free.
How you got from that to poor parenting I can't even begin to guess.
No, but you could probably add another RFID tag, with a larger antenna and stronger signal....
The problem is, there's an actual underlying protocol that keeps RFID tags from interfering with each other. You could have 2, 20, or 200 tags all in the same LEGO box, and the scanner would read them all.
You could use some sort of jamming device to block all RFID tags in a small area, but if the store can't read the RFID tag they'll have to do the equivalent of "Price check on aisle 5!", which will reveal the actual price of the item, thus nullifying all of your efforts.
You should probably read up on RFID. Since RFID tags don't need to be visible to scan them (unlike optical barcodes) they could be:
embedded in the packaging, so that the only way to get rid of it is to either get rid of the packaging, or mutilate it trying to find the tag, bvoth of which would make store employees pay greater attention to you, which is exactly what you don't want.
embedded in one of the bricks inside the package. The only way to get rid of it then would be to take all of the bricks out and use some sort of handheld RFID scanner to find the magic brick and discard it. This is probably not an option if you're hoping to go unnoticed.
And keep in mind that RFID tags are small. We're talking smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice small. Of course, larger reading distances require larger antennas, but there are techniques that can use the package printing process and special ink so that the antenna can be printed directly on the packaging without looking anything like an antenna. So in short, swapping out the RFID tags is probably not an option.
Slashdot Mirror
It's driving me nuts!
Nah, if you want an updated version of loderunner, try N at http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/downloads.html . Imagine loderunner with a ninja an 500 levels.
Hamsters don't sink apparently, but float in water.
They float in water? Hmm.... What else floats?
Ducks.
And what weighs the same as a duck?
A witch.
And what do you do with witches?
Burn them, of course.
And what else do you burn aside from witches?
More Witches!
Yes, yes, but aside from witches. What else do you burn?
Wood?
Yes! And what do you do with wood aside from burning it?
Build bridges out of it, of course.
And there you go. Irrefutible proof that hamsters can be used as cheap, self reproducing construction material. Just think of the possibilities!
??????
Profit!
The answer, of course, is the parents. An outright ban on the sale of violent or "filthy" materials to children ignores the fact that different parents have differing levels of comfort with what their children are exposed to. As long as the material in question isn't going to harm the child (i.e. showing real snuff videos to kindergartners or some such) then the parents should be allowed to make that decision.
The question is, do you ban everything and require specific parental consent for exceptions, or do you permit everything and rely on the parents to keep track of what their kids are doing? Personally, I'm in favor of the latter, and for that to work, children must have access to materials that some parents find offensive.
Or better yet, a battery that can charge off the mechanical work of the drive spindle, so you can pop it out and plug in some headphones to use it like a normal MP3 player. Need to recharge? Hook it up to your computer to charge over USB, or pop it in any tape deck and hit RW or FF. Brilliant.
My only problem is that my car has a CD player without a line-in, and no casette deck. I've tried the FM tuner thing, and the quality sucks, and sucks hard. I wonder if it would be possible to create an MP3 player in the shape of a flat disc, with a rotation sensor at the center that could snap over the hub of a CD player (it would detect rotation by the CD player, but wouldn't roatate the disc itself). Have some optical sensors on the underside that can sense the general area of the player's laser, and can mechanically rotate an LED over the laser to fake reflections off the disc.
Hmm, doesn't sound too feasible after all. Still, anyone who invents something like this will make a fortune.
Oh, and IANAL.
When the issue in question is teenagers blowing all of their money on stuff that they don't really need just because they think that they need all of the stuff to be "cool", then no, I don't blame the media. I blame the teenagers for not engaging their brains, and I blame the parents for not teaching their kids how to handle money.
Of course advertisements are going to present their product in the best possible light. They're going to do their best to convince you that you need "brand x", as you said. But advertisers aren't brainwashing people into buying stuff, for crying out loud. It's not like television commercials are some sort of irresistible force. Anyone who is so thoroughly convinced to buy whatever is being advertised, to the point that they end up spending all of their money while setting none aside for later, is someone who, quite frankly, is either an idiot, or who has absolutely no willpower, neither of which is the fault of the media.
I'd rather have to listen to a high-pitched squeal for the 5 seconds it takes to enter the store than have a bunch of punks yell obscenities at me. And based on the article, this would be exactly the choice this quy was faced with.
I was merely pointing out that if it were simply a case of external influences, then we wouldn't have ended up with such different attitudes. So saying that the media, an external influence, is to blame is just plain wrong. Media may have some influence, but the question I posed at the end of my post was, "how much?"
Don't blame the media for this one. Any parent worth his or her salt will do their best instill a sense of monetary responsibility in their offspring. Some kids catch on, and some don't. Myself, I've always saved money; even as a kid I'd think long and hard about spending any money I received as a gift. As long as I've been employed, I've never had my monetary outflow exceed my income (with the exception of car and student loans). In short, I know how to save money.
Now take my brother. Same parents, same media influence, but he spends money like it's burning a hole in his pocket. I've lost track of the number of times he's overdrawn his checking account. So the big question is, how much is nature, and how much is nurture?
Did you actually RTFA? This is to help prevent teenagers from loitering in front of stores and harassing the other customers. Apparantly "...surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside."
The owner actually had originally planned to pipe loud classical music outside for the same effect, but the inventor of the device in question supplied some for free.
How you got from that to poor parenting I can't even begin to guess.
You could use some sort of jamming device to block all RFID tags in a small area, but if the store can't read the RFID tag they'll have to do the equivalent of "Price check on aisle 5!", which will reveal the actual price of the item, thus nullifying all of your efforts.
And keep in mind that RFID tags are small. We're talking smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice small. Of course, larger reading distances require larger antennas, but there are techniques that can use the package printing process and special ink so that the antenna can be printed directly on the packaging without looking anything like an antenna. So in short, swapping out the RFID tags is probably not an option.