You can't just "sign up" to be a Neilson "family". They have to contact you. They study demographics and then invite only certain qualifying households to participate.
The nice thing is, though, if you have any problems with your TVs or cable (etc) service, they will send someone over to repair or fix the problem. Anything to keep you watching... We got free service on our TVs that way.
A negative is that you start to become a slave to your TV, because you're "voting" for your favorite shows. Gotta stay home and watch, you know. I always wondered how many Neilson "families" would turn on the TV to certain shows/channels, even when no one was physically there in ffront of the TV to watch.
?.Jly has accumulated about 4 different sets of Tinker Toys in various incarnations. My three kids play with them often. Anything that they can use their creativity with is good. Other classic toys that my kids like include:
Tinker Toys
Playdoh
Building blocks
Lincoln Logs
Legos
K'nex (not necessarily a classic, but will be)
"Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal."
Grinding your workers down with twelve hour days/7days a week for months at a time for low pay so that just a few people can reap the millions of profit shows an unfortunate reality. The widening gap between the richest and the ever poorer middle class will only stir up discontent. Sorta reminds me of America's revolution against the British for taking all the riches of the promising new frontier for themselves. Boston Tea Party, anyone?
Why don't you compare and contrast for us the merits of the hydrogen fuel station 50 yards away from the school with what's likely the natural gas line and furnace that likely runs driectly to and resides inside the school?
In all honesty I would prefer it if schools didn't need to have natural gas lines running directly to and residing within them, but they do and I understand why - it's a calculated risk that most can live with. Schools do not have large underground tanks of natural gas on or near their properties, though. Zoning laws usually require that storage of highly flammable substances is sequestered in areas where the public is least exposed to its risk. IMHO, 50 yards is too close for a gas station, too. Children are not expendible to me...
And yes, I do know that this is off-topic, but while I would be first in line for affordable alternative transportation, we also need to consider potential safety issues related to any new technology.
There is still a debate, however, as to whether the fabric itself or the hydrogen used for bouyancy was the fuel for the initial fire... "flammable fabric" theory
So it's still a theory, one of three plausible ones that I could see at the wikipedia article. Also from the wikipedia article:
Others (http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.h tm) suggest that present-day proponents of hydrogen as a transportation fuel have forwarded a revisionist "flammable fabric" analysis of the fire in order to deflect public concern about the safety of hydrogen.
Cosmos 1 will orbit the Earth at an altitude of over 800 kilometers. It will gradually raise its orbit by solar sailing -- the pressure of light particles from the Sun upon its luminous sails.
For a while after deployment the giant blades will be kept in a fixed position, giving mission controllers a chance to carefully observe the spacecraft's behavior. Only after a few days will the Cosmos 1 team begin shifting the blades' angles towards the Sun or perpendicular to it, in a controlled program to increase the orbit energy. Gradually, the continuous pressure of reflecting sunlight will raise the spacecraft into a higher orbit above the Earth.
The flight of Cosmos 1 will not last long. Within a month the mylar sails will begin to degrade in the harsh sunlight, and the tubes supporting the blades will be losing pressure. It is possible that by this time the spacecraft will have risen to a high enough orbit that it will remain there, forever orbiting the Earth. It is more likely, however, that the orbit will slowly decay, and Cosmos 1 will end its days as a fireball in the Earth's atmosphere.
I seem to recall something from the 80's during President Reagan's administration, the 'Star Wars' missile defense system or SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) as it came to be known. Various presidents and congresses have kept it alive, moving it forward for over 20 years now and it has yet to happen. I don't see how we can pin the blame on G. W. Bush for something that has been in planning for so long.
There is an article today at space.com where an expert says that weapon platforms in space could be easily defeated by cheaper, mine-like microsatellites which could be easily launched by any country with a space program. Just get the satellites within 10-100 meters of the platform and BOOM!, no more fancy-pants space missiles.
Not only is Aluria certifying WhenU with its "Spyware SAFE Certification Program", but it is also providing WhenU with a spyware removal tool too. This helps give WhenU an "air of respectability."
What I don't get, though is why anyone would consciously agree to have adware installed on their desktop that would examine keywords, URLs and search terms. Even if no data is collected and all is kept encrypted, why would anyone want ads popping up while they are working (or whatever) on their computer?
Website tells if Diebold is being used at your...
on
Election Day Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Informative
...polling place.
MyPollingPlace.com will tell you what voting equipment is being used at your polling place, as well as instructions on how to use it. It will also give you the location for where you vote based on your street address and zip code if you are unsure of where to go to vote.
Not only will the Cassini be taking pictures, but its ion and neutral mass spectrometer will "scoop up" and sample Titan's atmosphere as it passes at a distance of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles).
"One important goal of this flyby is to confirm scientists' model of Titan's atmosphere to prepare for the Huygens probe descent," according to this article at SpaceDaily.com.
Just imagine this: people on the road could have a "SnitchCam" on the back of their rearview mirror that they could use to record your bad driving habits and then send it to the police department for $$$ (as suggested in the article). Is there ANYONE who has not broken some traffic law at one time or another? We'd all be getting fines sent to us in the mail on a regular basis, probably.
Then again, just like the photo-radar, people could just say, "Yeah, that's my car... but that's not me driving it!" Uh, sure...
Another thought, who is going to wade through the millions of hours of snitched data? Police departments don't have enough manpower as it is.
Looking at the games listed at the Full Armor website, I'd have to say that the adware companies are taking advantage of the most gullible consumers: children. Granted, $20 is kinda steep for these games, but if the adware is bundled with the "free" demos...
Kids are not so picky about whether or not sneaky programs slide into their computers via these "trojans". They won't read the user agreements, just click the buttons to get to the game faster. It's the same thing that happens with the free screensavers. The kids just go for the "fun" or the "cool" factor and don't realize that there is a price.
I remember watching old black & white Godzilla movies as a kid on Saturday mornings. Watching Godzilla stomping on all those toy buses, trains, and buildings was great fun. The best though was when all the Japanese actors would be talking (or yelling and screaming) and the English words never matched their mouths. Great "B" movies never die, just like Godzilla.
True - this thinking only applies where the outdoor temperature is warmer than the indoor temperature. As I live in Arizona, my mind may be fried by the summer heat.
I find that my productivity goes down when I'm too busy trying warm up my frozen fingers AND I can still fall asleep if its cold.
Another thing to think about... for every degree colder that the thermostat is set, the air conditioner has to work that much harder to cool the air which translates into more electricity used and more $$$ spent for it. For every degree the thermostat is raised, 2-3% is saved on the electricity bill and you have the added benefit of conserving resources.
Seven-Elevens had tube testers as late as the mid-Seventies.
I remember those! Our neighborhood 7/11 still had a tube tester until the very early eighties when they replaced it with video game machines (Space Invaders and Pac Man, I think). God, do I feel old now...
Amazing picture of a very early transistor...
on
Transistor Radio Turns 50
·
· Score: 4, Informative
...USA research scientists of Bell Laboratories, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain managed, in December 1947, to invent a solid state device that they called THE TRANSISTOR. They succeeded in creating a completely new amplifying device just by adding a second contact point to the already popular CRYSTAL DIODE based on a piece of germanium crystal with a pointed "cat's whisker" touching its surface. In 1956 in recognition for their extraordinary work they were awarded the Nobel Prize. (Can't tell from the website if this one pictured was the very first one invented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Laboratories.)
Transistor inventors Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain were awarded a Nobel prize for their work in 1956. It's amazing how something so primitive went on to revolutionize the electronics industry.
...we would be looking to $ue the pants off anyone and everyone involved. And the lawyers would be calling, wanting a $hare. I guess some would still consider that to be good luck.
I also played Neopets with my kids. We have two computers side-by-side, both hooked up to the internet, and the kids can only "surf" and play Neopets on one computer while I am supervising them while sitting at the other computer. Then I can keep an eye on what they are doing, answer their questions, help them if they need it, and guide them.
I have to say that I ended up being the biggest Neo-addict. To be able to anything on their site, you need to earn thousands of neopoints and the most desirable items for psuedo-purchase cost 200,000 neopoints or more usually. My kids lost interest quickly because games give out paltry points and the "games of chance" (read: gambling) aren't very rewarding.
I think that this would be a perfect way to let kids learn that "games of chance" don't pay off. It's better for them to learn it now, with non-existent money (the neopoints) than later with real money.
The information contained in this news release applies only to the Japanese market.
This will probably go over big in Japan. CNET has an article about how gadget-hungry they are there.
New "My Yahoo" page says Netscape recommended
on
Netscape Turns 10
·
· Score: 1
Since the "My Yahoo" page has upgraded to use RSS, I am trying the beta version on a Mac OS 9.2.2 (sorry, I'm behind the times, I guess) with IE 5.1. My experience with the new "My Yahoo" page is that it has been very buggy. I would switch back to the old version if I could just figure out how.
Now, today, I started receiving the error message: "You are currently using Netscape UNKNOWN. For the best experience using Yahoo!, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest version of Netscape. Get the latest version now." So it would seem that in order to use the new page properly they are requiring the latest Netscape.
The experiment, under management of Columbia University, was for a group of eight men and women to live for two years in a sealed environment, growing their own food and recycling their water, with no outside supplies. They couldn't make it all the way through without fresh supplies and all the participants lost a lot of weight during their two-year stint.
Quote from wikipedia: "Despite expenditure of over $150 million, this attempt at a new biosphere [could] not sustain eight humans, [even] for a limited time..."
Slashdot Mirror
You can't just "sign up" to be a Neilson "family". They have to contact you. They study demographics and then invite only certain qualifying households to participate.
The nice thing is, though, if you have any problems with your TVs or cable (etc) service, they will send someone over to repair or fix the problem. Anything to keep you watching... We got free service on our TVs that way.
A negative is that you start to become a slave to your TV, because you're "voting" for your favorite shows. Gotta stay home and watch, you know. I always wondered how many Neilson "families" would turn on the TV to certain shows/channels, even when no one was physically there in ffront of the TV to watch.
?.Jly has accumulated about 4 different sets of Tinker Toys in various incarnations. My three kids play with them often. Anything that they can use their creativity with is good. Other classic toys that my kids like include:
Tinker Toys
Playdoh
Building blocks
Lincoln Logs
Legos
K'nex (not necessarily a classic, but will be)
The ea_spouse article covers this:
"Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal."
Grinding your workers down with twelve hour days/7days a week for months at a time for low pay so that just a few people can reap the millions of profit shows an unfortunate reality. The widening gap between the richest and the ever poorer middle class will only stir up discontent. Sorta reminds me of America's revolution against the British for taking all the riches of the promising new frontier for themselves. Boston Tea Party, anyone?
Why don't you compare and contrast for us the merits of the hydrogen fuel station 50 yards away from the school with what's likely the natural gas line and furnace that likely runs driectly to and resides inside the school?
In all honesty I would prefer it if schools didn't need to have natural gas lines running directly to and residing within them, but they do and I understand why - it's a calculated risk that most can live with. Schools do not have large underground tanks of natural gas on or near their properties, though. Zoning laws usually require that storage of highly flammable substances is sequestered in areas where the public is least exposed to its risk. IMHO, 50 yards is too close for a gas station, too. Children are not expendible to me...
And yes, I do know that this is off-topic, but while I would be first in line for affordable alternative transportation, we also need to consider potential safety issues related to any new technology.
There is still a debate, however, as to whether the fabric itself or the hydrogen used for bouyancy was the fuel for the initial fire... "flammable fabric" theory
h tm) suggest that present-day proponents of hydrogen as a transportation fuel have forwarded a revisionist "flammable fabric" analysis of the fire in order to deflect public concern about the safety of hydrogen.
So it's still a theory, one of three plausible ones that I could see at the wikipedia article. Also from the wikipedia article:
Others (http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zf/LZ129fire.
The Hindenberg was the first thing to come to my mind, too. How could they put this 50 yards away from a school?
Still they have the pumps available even though the _affordable_ cars won't be available for another 5-6 years or more...
According to the official website:
Cosmos 1 will orbit the Earth at an altitude of over 800 kilometers. It will gradually raise its orbit by solar sailing -- the pressure of light particles from the Sun upon its luminous sails.
Also in another section of the website:
For a while after deployment the giant blades will be kept in a fixed position, giving mission controllers a chance to carefully observe the spacecraft's behavior. Only after a few days will the Cosmos 1 team begin shifting the blades' angles towards the Sun or perpendicular to it, in a controlled program to increase the orbit energy. Gradually, the continuous pressure of reflecting sunlight will raise the spacecraft into a higher orbit above the Earth.
The flight of Cosmos 1 will not last long. Within a month the mylar sails will begin to degrade in the harsh sunlight, and the tubes supporting the blades will be losing pressure. It is possible that by this time the spacecraft will have risen to a high enough orbit that it will remain there, forever orbiting the Earth. It is more likely, however, that the orbit will slowly decay, and Cosmos 1 will end its days as a fireball in the Earth's atmosphere.
Wikipedia has a good article on UWB
.pdf at Google about An Ultra Wide Bandwidth System for In-Home Wireless Networking has good background on UWB.
Also an interesting cached
I seem to recall something from the 80's during President Reagan's administration, the 'Star Wars' missile defense system or SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) as it came to be known. Various presidents and congresses have kept it alive, moving it forward for over 20 years now and it has yet to happen. I don't see how we can pin the blame on G. W. Bush for something that has been in planning for so long.
There is an article today at space.com where an expert says that weapon platforms in space could be easily defeated by cheaper, mine-like microsatellites which could be easily launched by any country with a space program. Just get the satellites within 10-100 meters of the platform and BOOM!, no more fancy-pants space missiles.
Not only is Aluria certifying WhenU with its "Spyware SAFE Certification Program", but it is also providing WhenU with a spyware removal tool too. This helps give WhenU an "air of respectability."
What I don't get, though is why anyone would consciously agree to have adware installed on their desktop that would examine keywords, URLs and search terms. Even if no data is collected and all is kept encrypted, why would anyone want ads popping up while they are working (or whatever) on their computer?
...polling place.
MyPollingPlace.com will tell you what voting equipment is being used at your polling place, as well as instructions on how to use it. It will also give you the location for where you vote based on your street address and zip code if you are unsure of where to go to vote.
Not only will the Cassini be taking pictures, but its ion and neutral mass spectrometer will "scoop up" and sample Titan's atmosphere as it passes at a distance of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles).
"One important goal of this flyby is to confirm scientists' model of Titan's atmosphere to prepare for the Huygens probe descent," according to this article at SpaceDaily.com.
Just imagine this: people on the road could have a "SnitchCam" on the back of their rearview mirror that they could use to record your bad driving habits and then send it to the police department for $$$ (as suggested in the article). Is there ANYONE who has not broken some traffic law at one time or another? We'd all be getting fines sent to us in the mail on a regular basis, probably.
Then again, just like the photo-radar, people could just say, "Yeah, that's my car... but that's not me driving it!" Uh, sure...
Another thought, who is going to wade through the millions of hours of snitched data? Police departments don't have enough manpower as it is.
Looking at the games listed at the Full Armor website, I'd have to say that the adware companies are taking advantage of the most gullible consumers: children. Granted, $20 is kinda steep for these games, but if the adware is bundled with the "free" demos...
Kids are not so picky about whether or not sneaky programs slide into their computers via these "trojans". They won't read the user agreements, just click the buttons to get to the game faster. It's the same thing that happens with the free screensavers. The kids just go for the "fun" or the "cool" factor and don't realize that there is a price.
I remember watching old black & white Godzilla movies as a kid on Saturday mornings. Watching Godzilla stomping on all those toy buses, trains, and buildings was great fun. The best though was when all the Japanese actors would be talking (or yelling and screaming) and the English words never matched their mouths. Great "B" movies never die, just like Godzilla.
True - this thinking only applies where the outdoor temperature is warmer than the indoor temperature. As I live in Arizona, my mind may be fried by the summer heat.
I find that my productivity goes down when I'm too busy trying warm up my frozen fingers AND I can still fall asleep if its cold.
Another thing to think about... for every degree colder that the thermostat is set, the air conditioner has to work that much harder to cool the air which translates into more electricity used and more $$$ spent for it. For every degree the thermostat is raised, 2-3% is saved on the electricity bill and you have the added benefit of conserving resources.
Seven-Elevens had tube testers as late as the mid-Seventies.
I remember those! Our neighborhood 7/11 still had a tube tester until the very early eighties when they replaced it with video game machines (Space Invaders and Pac Man, I think). God, do I feel old now...
A Transistor radio mini-history has a picture of an early transistor circa 1947. From the website:
...USA research scientists of Bell Laboratories, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain managed, in December 1947, to invent a solid state device that they called THE TRANSISTOR. They succeeded in creating a completely new amplifying device just by adding a second contact point to the already popular CRYSTAL DIODE based on a piece of germanium crystal with a pointed "cat's whisker" touching its surface. In 1956 in recognition for their extraordinary work they were awarded the Nobel Prize. (Can't tell from the website if this one pictured was the very first one invented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Laboratories.)
Transistor inventors Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain were awarded a Nobel prize for their work in 1956. It's amazing how something so primitive went on to revolutionize the electronics industry.
Google cache page to save the website from being /.ed:
Christmas lights
...we would be looking to $ue the pants off anyone and everyone involved. And the lawyers would be calling, wanting a $hare. I guess some would still consider that to be good luck.
I also played Neopets with my kids. We have two computers side-by-side, both hooked up to the internet, and the kids can only "surf" and play Neopets on one computer while I am supervising them while sitting at the other computer. Then I can keep an eye on what they are doing, answer their questions, help them if they need it, and guide them.
I have to say that I ended up being the biggest Neo-addict. To be able to anything on their site, you need to earn thousands of neopoints and the most desirable items for psuedo-purchase cost 200,000 neopoints or more usually. My kids lost interest quickly because games give out paltry points and the "games of chance" (read: gambling) aren't very rewarding.
I think that this would be a perfect way to let kids learn that "games of chance" don't pay off. It's better for them to learn it now, with non-existent money (the neopoints) than later with real money.
Small disclaimer on the Olympus website:
The information contained in this news release applies only to the Japanese market.
This will probably go over big in Japan. CNET has an article about how gadget-hungry they are there.
Since the "My Yahoo" page has upgraded to use RSS, I am trying the beta version on a Mac OS 9.2.2 (sorry, I'm behind the times, I guess) with IE 5.1. My experience with the new "My Yahoo" page is that it has been very buggy. I would switch back to the old version if I could just figure out how.
Now, today, I started receiving the error message: "You are currently using Netscape UNKNOWN. For the best experience using Yahoo!, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest version of Netscape. Get the latest version now." So it would seem that in order to use the new page properly they are requiring the latest Netscape.
...the Biosphere 2 in Tucson, AZ.
The experiment, under management of Columbia University, was for a group of eight men and women to live for two years in a sealed environment, growing their own food and recycling their water, with no outside supplies. They couldn't make it all the way through without fresh supplies and all the participants lost a lot of weight during their two-year stint.
Quote from wikipedia: "Despite expenditure of over $150 million, this attempt at a new biosphere [could] not sustain eight humans, [even] for a limited time..."