I didn't "get" it either when I was having to watch it piece-meal on Fox. I thought "Western in space. I hate westerns. Ooh, 'The Dead Zone' is on!" A friend lent me the Firefly series DVDs a couple of weeks ago and I finally got around to popping them in over the weekend.
Wow.
Had me hooked from the pilot episode, which by the way, Fox didn't air as the first ep. If they had, and I had seen it, I would probably have stuck with the series. I'm still singing along with "Jaynestown" in my head:)
M.O.
Re:New raffle -- Mars Rover Lake Thaw Drop
on
Ice Lake on Mars
·
· Score: 1
But there's no kobolds on Mars.. that we know of!
note to mods - "American Gods", Neil Gaiman.
While you are correct in your assertation that the new object is dimmer than Pluto when both are viewed from Earth, in terms of their albedo, or reflectivity when viewed from the same distance, the new object is indeed 25% brighter than Pluto.
Sadly, that won't work if you have a Microsoft-powered cell phone/PDA combo. Apparently, allowing the cell phone network to change your time as you cross timezones will screw up Outlook badly enough (more CPU work required?) they decided against adding that functionality.
Thanks, Microsoft, for ensuring I never buy a cell phone with your OS in it.
Something people don't mention is HP's IA64 server line, running HP-UX 11.23 . Why on earth would anyone want to run x86 apps on a box that's clearly designed for multi-threaded 64-bit apps? Use the server for the purpose it is designed for, don't malign it for not being able to run something it's not intended to. The Itanium is a processor meant for enterprise markets, not for the PC hobbyist market.
Intel finally makes a chip that REALLY IS for the server market, doesn't that make John Dvorak's head explode or something?:)
Now that the general commentary is out of the way, I have a question for the parent poster - you mention Oracle+everyone else, why not Oracle+HP? I work in an enterprise IT shop and we have numerous HP-UX PA-RISC servers running Oracle quite contentedly. We also have a number of SUN Solaris 7-8 servers running Oracle. Each department we're buying and building servers for has a different processing need and budget, so we get Solaris and HP-UX orders in varying numbers. Then again, we're known for claiming we're trying to match the rest of the industry then doing whatever the hell we want. Maybe we're the only shop running Oracle on HP-UX?
Probably not.
That being said, I don't particularly like the IA64 servers we've received, but that's more due to lack of support for our old-and-busted backup methods and the extremely painful process we have to undertake to mirror a root drive.
We're talking about corporate antivirus at the desktop level. You can't first reasonably expect any user who is not intimately familiar with the names of all process threads running on their PC to sift through msconfig looking for what shouldn't be there. Secondly, even if you work in a shop of Windows brainaics, the amount of productivity lost due to users checking their processes is huge compared to the minor inconvenience of a poorly-timed antivirus scan.
To skip loading the movies, go to:
[install directory]\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies
and ZIP/move/delete all the files there. You'll go directly to the game when you next start it.
DST is fine, just don't put us on EASTERN DST. I prefer to have actual daylight saved in winter. If we go EDST then we see no change in the winter, but in summer it's daylight until after 9pm. NOT COOL.
M.O.
Another poster in this thread mentioned these batteries were not standard 1.5v but were actually 1.7v. I know engineers build in a percentage of tolerance to allow for slightly out-of-spec parts but this is greater than 10% for only 1 battery. What about electronic devices that use several AAs in series? Won't the voltage get too far out of spec in that instance and cause the device to misbehave or even stop working?
Not disagreeing with you about the EBay fees, but I do want to set you straight about the telco residential line vs. business line, circa 1996. Until the phone network is completely packet-switched from F2 (generally the box closest to the customer) to the CO (telco central office switch) there's always going to be this situation:
There aren't enough lines for everyone.
The phone network was set up on the premise that if most of the lines will not be used most of the time, why build a dedicated line for each home? Instead, you have switches (seen those old operator switchboards? Same general principle here) that allow a few users at a time access to the phone network. For residential users, this was not a problem, except for holidays and national disasters (Mother's Day and Kennedy assasination are oft-quoted events). There was about a 50-to-one ratio of homes to lines in most areas.
Businesses on the other hand were using their phones A LOT, for much longer than the average user. So where residential might be 50-to-one, business lines' ratio would be more like 10-to-one. They're using more services, and the telco has to dedicate that much more equipment and bandwidth to a business. That's where your 5x pricing for a business line comes in to play.
Residential phone lines were money-losers but the Bells were forced to offer service at low rates and to EVERYONE. There's no incentive in an open market for the Bells to provide service to John Farmer in Outer Elbonia, the cost to run service there and maintain the lines is more than the revenue.
Now, the Bells' basic phone line charges were constrained by the regulatory commissions of their operating states, but the ADD-ONS to your service were not. Why do you think those operators would try to sell you caller ID every time you called to report your phone line out or had a question on your bill? Because it costs the telcos VERY little to offer that service, and they're allowed to make all the profit they want on them.
Again, that was circa 1996, when I worked for what is now SBC. Nowadays, the telcos industry is in disarray and you can see this in the Bells' mergers and acquisitions of cellular phone companies. My best crystal ball for these changes went away with Boardwatch Magazine (a most excellent magazine, originator of the famous "BillGatus of Borg" pic).
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't "get" it either when I was having to watch it piece-meal on Fox. I thought "Western in space. I hate westerns. Ooh, 'The Dead Zone' is on!" A friend lent me the Firefly series DVDs a couple of weeks ago and I finally got around to popping them in over the weekend.
:)
Wow.
Had me hooked from the pilot episode, which by the way, Fox didn't air as the first ep. If they had, and I had seen it, I would probably have stuck with the series. I'm still singing along with "Jaynestown" in my head
M.O.
But there's no kobolds on Mars.. that we know of! note to mods - "American Gods", Neil Gaiman.
While you are correct in your assertation that the new object is dimmer than Pluto when both are viewed from Earth, in terms of their albedo, or reflectivity when viewed from the same distance, the new object is indeed 25% brighter than Pluto.
Are you a Canadian citizen? Then, according to TFA, you're not affected.
Sadly, that won't work if you have a Microsoft-powered cell phone/PDA combo. Apparently, allowing the cell phone network to change your time as you cross timezones will screw up Outlook badly enough (more CPU work required?) they decided against adding that functionality.
Thanks, Microsoft, for ensuring I never buy a cell phone with your OS in it.
M.O.
http://www.madocowain.com/
http://www.playmaille.com/
Something people don't mention is HP's IA64 server line, running HP-UX 11.23 . Why on earth would anyone want to run x86 apps on a box that's clearly designed for multi-threaded 64-bit apps? Use the server for the purpose it is designed for, don't malign it for not being able to run something it's not intended to. The Itanium is a processor meant for enterprise markets, not for the PC hobbyist market.
:)
Intel finally makes a chip that REALLY IS for the server market, doesn't that make John Dvorak's head explode or something?
Now that the general commentary is out of the way, I have a question for the parent poster - you mention Oracle+everyone else, why not Oracle+HP? I work in an enterprise IT shop and we have numerous HP-UX PA-RISC servers running Oracle quite contentedly. We also have a number of SUN Solaris 7-8 servers running Oracle. Each department we're buying and building servers for has a different processing need and budget, so we get Solaris and HP-UX orders in varying numbers. Then again, we're known for claiming we're trying to match the rest of the industry then doing whatever the hell we want. Maybe we're the only shop running Oracle on HP-UX?
Probably not.
That being said, I don't particularly like the IA64 servers we've received, but that's more due to lack of support for our old-and-busted backup methods and the extremely painful process we have to undertake to mirror a root drive.
We're talking about corporate antivirus at the desktop level. You can't first reasonably expect any user who is not intimately familiar with the names of all process threads running on their PC to sift through msconfig looking for what shouldn't be there. Secondly, even if you work in a shop of Windows brainaics, the amount of productivity lost due to users checking their processes is huge compared to the minor inconvenience of a poorly-timed antivirus scan.
To skip loading the movies, go to: [install directory]\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies and ZIP/move/delete all the files there. You'll go directly to the game when you next start it.
DST is fine, just don't put us on EASTERN DST. I prefer to have actual daylight saved in winter. If we go EDST then we see no change in the winter, but in summer it's daylight until after 9pm. NOT COOL. M.O.
Another poster in this thread mentioned these batteries were not standard 1.5v but were actually 1.7v. I know engineers build in a percentage of tolerance to allow for slightly out-of-spec parts but this is greater than 10% for only 1 battery. What about electronic devices that use several AAs in series? Won't the voltage get too far out of spec in that instance and cause the device to misbehave or even stop working?
The appropriate quote is, from the Cardassian interregator to Picard: "No, you must be mistaken. There are FIVE lights."
Not disagreeing with you about the EBay fees, but I do want to set you straight about the telco residential line vs. business line, circa 1996. Until the phone network is completely packet-switched from F2 (generally the box closest to the customer) to the CO (telco central office switch) there's always going to be this situation:
There aren't enough lines for everyone.
The phone network was set up on the premise that if most of the lines will not be used most of the time, why build a dedicated line for each home? Instead, you have switches (seen those old operator switchboards? Same general principle here) that allow a few users at a time access to the phone network. For residential users, this was not a problem, except for holidays and national disasters (Mother's Day and Kennedy assasination are oft-quoted events). There was about a 50-to-one ratio of homes to lines in most areas.
Businesses on the other hand were using their phones A LOT, for much longer than the average user. So where residential might be 50-to-one, business lines' ratio would be more like 10-to-one. They're using more services, and the telco has to dedicate that much more equipment and bandwidth to a business. That's where your 5x pricing for a business line comes in to play.
Residential phone lines were money-losers but the Bells were forced to offer service at low rates and to EVERYONE. There's no incentive in an open market for the Bells to provide service to John Farmer in Outer Elbonia, the cost to run service there and maintain the lines is more than the revenue.
Now, the Bells' basic phone line charges were constrained by the regulatory commissions of their operating states, but the ADD-ONS to your service were not. Why do you think those operators would try to sell you caller ID every time you called to report your phone line out or had a question on your bill? Because it costs the telcos VERY little to offer that service, and they're allowed to make all the profit they want on them.
Again, that was circa 1996, when I worked for what is now SBC. Nowadays, the telcos industry is in disarray and you can see this in the Bells' mergers and acquisitions of cellular phone companies. My best crystal ball for these changes went away with Boardwatch Magazine (a most excellent magazine, originator of the famous "BillGatus of Borg" pic).
Be careful with those UV lights, as they will fade normal paints and plastics - don't want to ruin your nice control panel overlays and marquees!