... but I won't rush out and buy the theatrical version on DVD. I'll wait for the 4 DVD set. I could have endured an extra seven minutes to see Saruman cast down, and I agree with others that there we'll no doubt be treated to many *more* minutes of gloriously-rendered battle scenes. I can understand needing to change the flow of the story to translate from book to screen, and this is a relatively minor omission, but I was hoping after the warg-riding, Faramir-baiting, Oedipal Arwen interludes in Two Towers we'd somehow find our way back to the story as written by Tolkein. No such luck, apparently.:(
Wait, wait. protein + fiber != hacker food groups
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 1
I thought the four food groups were:
Caffeine
Chocolate
Take Out
Microwavable
In all seriousness, this is one hacker who recently bought the Atkins book and is preparing himself to try the "lifestyle", but so often sustenance is basically what is available quick and easy. Food that requires thought or preparation doesn't fit in well with the groove you can find yourself in when you're working on an intense project.
I think that fits within their parameters. I question the merit of any software that has to trick unsuspecting users in order to be installed. So it's not "spyware". Great. Rings the bells, throw ticker tape, and post the news on the front page of every newspaper. Gator's software is still software that is installed on the sly, that uses system resources, that causes the system to perform differently, and that can be difficult to uninstall.
If a person came over to visit, let themselves in pretending to be someone else, helped themselves to a plate of your evening meal, copied a key so they could get back in your home when they wanted, and refused to leave when you asked them nicely you'd at least call them an intruder. Anyone for "intruder-ware"?
"This technology isn't going to go away. In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing."
And in the brave new world of cameras embedded in "intimate clothing", you answer your clothingphone only to have the caller say "you dumbass, your underwear is on inside out, and the weather must be really cold..."
article, and the microwave plasmoids, doesn't it?/. seems to have this thing for promoting geek sterility. Are you sure you folks aren't actually a secret society made up of the jocks who used to make our lives a living hell in high school? I always suspected there was something more sinister going on...
I prefer the wooden mirror.
on
Mirror, Mirror
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It seems more organic, in its frame it looks almost like a piece of furniture. To me it looks like something you'd see in a wizard's study. Just from the movie the sound was neat, it must be amazing in real life.
... don't show that the surgeons are really attempting to remove the active holographic plastic projection sheet that is somehow lodged in their patient's midsection. Their holodeck was obviously operating with its safeties disengaged.
"To obtain high-resolution photos of HoloTouch in action, visit http://www.holotouch.biz/pressroom.htm."
The images on that page aren't even cleverly disguised fakes. This is Pixelon repackaged. Go to the LED site, http://www.3dtv.tv/ referenced from their licensee's site. We get more creative imagery. Where's a real working product, again?
The jealous wife sits outside the bar ...
on
Another Beer Please
·
· Score: 3, Funny
... monitoring hubby's beer glass. At glass seven he gets a call on his cell phone. "Harcourt? Harcourt Fenton Mudd, you're drinking again!? This is your seventh glass of beer! You KNOW how you get when you've had too much to drink!" And of course the prosecutor, may it please the court, can provide records showing exactly the number of drinks H. Mudd had to drink when he's brought up for public intoxiation charges.
Petunia, my rat, lives in my computer room. She is my company when I'm working. She's very fond of people, and of my three cats -- she loves chasing them. Your pix of Miriel and Arwen made me grab Petunia and snuggle with her for a few minutes. Rats really can be extraordinary little creatures.
(Attn: FBI, this is a thought exercize, I cannot solder two pieces of metal together, much less a circuit board, and when I rewired a switch a few years back I electrified the house's plumbing and almost qualified for a Darwin award.)
Since you're talking abut 30 watts or so at the receiving end, you'd need basically a diffuse directional source focused by a LARGE dish. Might one be able to use a smaller Fresnel type reflector instead of a dish to acheive the same effect? Say, a Fresnel reflector made out of steel and wood, placed on a house roof. I remember seeing plans for something similar in Popular Science back in the early 80's using wire window screen, to focus a signal for C-band reception.
As for Gitmo, three squares a day, tropical weather, government healthcare...:/
As for the comment "it's a shame they couldn't get the original keyboard to work", ya know, that's the only thing I didn't like about my 800. The keys didn't follow a standard layout, and I wasn't very fond of their feel.
The long nights I spent poking display list interrupts into the 1536 memory block, and making the 8k Atari basic do things it wasn't meant to do. Good old 6502 assembly language. My first tape drive. My first floppy drive. A geek's first love.:)
Any chance you still have the Microsoft Basic cartridge hanging around? I have mine. Oh the memories.:)
Experts have been talking about the space elevator for a few years. Someone at NASA comes up with the ! brilliant idea "what if we make it shorter to save money?" This is a Rube Goldberg solution to a problem that demands greater simplicity.
A space elevator can (theoretically) last a relatively long time with with little maintenance, and is fairly easy to keep operational once we get it constructed. It experiences atmospheric drag, but not at supersonic speeds, and an aborted launch most likely means a stuck elevator car. The elevator can be easily copied simply by weaving new cables along side it. After we make the first one, constructing duplicate systems becomes easier, and requires MUCH less energy, allowing for new elevators to be quickly created for other terrestrial, lunar, and even Martian sites.
I suspect Nasa's idea of a short spinning tether is another boondoggle. It will constantly need to be boosted to a higher orbit (boosted by what system?). It will suffer from material degradation due to heating during the scooping maneuver. It must be manufactured entirely on the ground and must be lofted into orbit. It can only be replaced by launching an entirely new one. It still relies on rockets to get the payload to scooping altitude. In short, it's an energy hog that never gets any easier to maintain.
Safety is not a concern -- regarding catastrophic failures, this is not much of an issue for either system. Both systems can be designed to fragment safely into smaller segments that do little harm on reentry.
I suspect Nasa's going for the quick cheap fix with this one. I ask, what makes a small projectile fueled by explosives any less likely to go kaboom than a big projectile? As long as rockets are a part of the launch solution, the risks to payloads will remain high. If Nasa goes with this solution the U.S. is looking at another twenty to thirty years of being beholden to a complex, short-sighted, fiscally-wreckless, and bureaucratically-expedient non-solution.
... but but this would be more of a biological mission. It's not a question of power, remember the probe's sensors would be radiation hardened, not radiation proof. Every second these sensors work in the high radiation Jovian environment is one less second left in their life span. Even a one week orbit of Io is one week less (plus wasted transit time and fuel) spent studying Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, which are far more interesting from the (exo)biologist's viewpoint.
... printed by Anchor Books, edited by Eliot Wigginton. These are an extraordinary compilation of folk knowledge from rural American mountain people. I only have volumes 1 through 6. The wild plant food sections are incredible. Some of the information presented is anecdotal, and there's quite a bit of very quaintly written folklore, but there are also many useful tutorials of "simple" skills like cider making, cabin building, canning, tanning hides, spinning yarn, churning butter, weaving cloth, and metalworking.
... with the idea that they will be the ones reporting it (if you're the IT person they'll most likely ask for your assistance.) You let them know the seriousness of the crime, and make it clear that they must act. If they don't, then you take matters into your own hands, but one of the best reasons for going to your employer first is that the chancers are good that they already have an attorney or two on retainer. Besides which, the company, and the policies are under their control, not yours.
On the other hand, if you are the employer then you make certain you protect yourself in advance by having clearly-written lawyer-vetted policies in place for everything from fair company resource use (including the company network) to employee conduct, and procedures for filing a grievance if another employee is messing up. If there's a comprehensive, well-written policy then there's no question, the employee would know how to handle any situation.
"C'mon babe, I know my slashcode really turns you on, but I can't have sex right now. The kernel team is having a fit over a patch I suggested for QOS issues, I have some project notes to update on Sourceforge, I have a chapter to read in the latest O'Reilly camel book, and I want to recompile the new Doom source. You're going to have to wait."
"Yes, I know Linus Torvalds has children. I don't have as much time as he does."
Don't forget the fame. The late night stints on Letterman and Leno. The crazy autograph signings. The lucrative pizza and soft drink sponsorships. Sure, the groupy hax0r-chicks chasing you to your hotel room every night are great, but you gotta keep those other perks in mind too.
I admit it, I didn't read the article, I skimmed the subject quickly, which brought to mind this story. To the comment's author, if you are inclined to participate as more than just a critic, why did you not provide the link yourself and demonstrate to the world + dog why your suggested approach is superior? Your comment makes sense, and in retrospect I would have done so if I'd have thought of it at the time.
I worked for Ellison very briefly in college -- I sold books at one of his speaking engagements after a conversation lasting several hours the previous evening. I suspect that he would prefer readers wanting to explore his works purchase them directly from the author. From my own experience he's a parsimonious fellow who guards his income jealously, and he appreciates direct sales.:)
As far as I know there is no + mod to my comment other than a karma bonus I forgot to remove. Whatever, mods giveth and taketh as they will.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html is the starting point. At 12:50 AM Eastern they're streaming live in RealVideo.
... but I won't rush out and buy the theatrical version on DVD. I'll wait for the 4 DVD set. I could have endured an extra seven minutes to see Saruman cast down, and I agree with others that there we'll no doubt be treated to many *more* minutes of gloriously-rendered battle scenes. I can understand needing to change the flow of the story to translate from book to screen, and this is a relatively minor omission, but I was hoping after the warg-riding, Faramir-baiting, Oedipal Arwen interludes in Two Towers we'd somehow find our way back to the story as written by Tolkein. No such luck, apparently. :(
I thought the four food groups were:
Caffeine
Chocolate
Take Out
Microwavable
In all seriousness, this is one hacker who recently bought the Atkins book and is preparing himself to try the "lifestyle", but so often sustenance is basically what is available quick and easy. Food that requires thought or preparation doesn't fit in well with the groove you can find yourself in when you're working on an intense project.
I think that fits within their parameters. I question the merit of any software that has to trick unsuspecting users in order to be installed. So it's not "spyware". Great. Rings the bells, throw ticker tape, and post the news on the front page of every newspaper. Gator's software is still software that is installed on the sly, that uses system resources, that causes the system to perform differently, and that can be difficult to uninstall.
If a person came over to visit, let themselves in pretending to be someone else, helped themselves to a plate of your evening meal, copied a key so they could get back in your home when they wanted, and refused to leave when you asked them nicely you'd at least call them an intruder. Anyone for "intruder-ware"?
article, and the microwave plasmoids, doesn't it? /. seems to have this thing for promoting geek sterility. Are you sure you folks aren't actually a secret society made up of the jocks who used to make our lives a living hell in high school? I always suspected there was something more sinister going on ...
It seems more organic, in its frame it looks almost like a piece of furniture. To me it looks like something you'd see in a wizard's study. Just from the movie the sound was neat, it must be amazing in real life.
Do you know where the wooden mirror is located?
It occured to me the headline for the story could have been "Chinese Scientists Develop New Habbit".
... don't show that the surgeons are really attempting to remove the active holographic plastic projection sheet that is somehow lodged in their patient's midsection. Their holodeck was obviously operating with its safeties disengaged.
... monitoring hubby's beer glass. At glass seven he gets a call on his cell phone. "Harcourt? Harcourt Fenton Mudd, you're drinking again!? This is your seventh glass of beer! You KNOW how you get when you've had too much to drink!" And of course the prosecutor, may it please the court, can provide records showing exactly the number of drinks H. Mudd had to drink when he's brought up for public intoxiation charges.
Petunia, my rat, lives in my computer room. She is my company when I'm working. She's very fond of people, and of my three cats -- she loves chasing them. Your pix of Miriel and Arwen made me grab Petunia and snuggle with her for a few minutes. Rats really can be extraordinary little creatures.
... from a microwave oven magnetron?
... :/
(Attn: FBI, this is a thought exercize, I cannot solder two pieces of metal together, much less a circuit board, and when I rewired a switch a few years back I electrified the house's plumbing and almost qualified for a Darwin award.)
Since you're talking abut 30 watts or so at the receiving end, you'd need basically a diffuse directional source focused by a LARGE dish. Might one be able to use a smaller Fresnel type reflector instead of a dish to acheive the same effect? Say, a Fresnel reflector made out of steel and wood, placed on a house roof. I remember seeing plans for something similar in Popular Science back in the early 80's using wire window screen, to focus a signal for C-band reception.
As for Gitmo, three squares a day, tropical weather, government healthcare
... Point it at your target satellite. Turn on the power. Wouldn't that do it?
-Joe G.
... looked really high tech. I wasn't fond of the machine's interior, but the brushed steel case was just downright pretty.
As for the comment "it's a shame they couldn't get the original keyboard to work", ya know, that's the only thing I didn't like about my 800. The keys didn't follow a standard layout, and I wasn't very fond of their feel.
:)
:)
The long nights I spent poking display list interrupts into the 1536 memory block, and making the 8k Atari basic do things it wasn't meant to do. Good old 6502 assembly language. My first tape drive. My first floppy drive. A geek's first love.
Any chance you still have the Microsoft Basic cartridge hanging around? I have mine. Oh the memories.
Experts have been talking about the space elevator for a few years. Someone at NASA comes up with the ! brilliant idea "what if we make it shorter to save money?" This is a Rube Goldberg solution to a problem that demands greater simplicity.
A space elevator can (theoretically) last a relatively long time with with little maintenance, and is fairly easy to keep operational once we get it constructed. It experiences atmospheric drag, but not at supersonic speeds, and an aborted launch most likely means a stuck elevator car. The elevator can be easily copied simply by weaving new cables along side it. After we make the first one, constructing duplicate systems becomes easier, and requires MUCH less energy, allowing for new elevators to be quickly created for other terrestrial, lunar, and even Martian sites.
I suspect Nasa's idea of a short spinning tether is another boondoggle. It will constantly need to be boosted to a higher orbit (boosted by what system?). It will suffer from material degradation due to heating during the scooping maneuver. It must be manufactured entirely on the ground and must be lofted into orbit. It can only be replaced by launching an entirely new one. It still relies on rockets to get the payload to scooping altitude. In short, it's an energy hog that never gets any easier to maintain.
Safety is not a concern -- regarding catastrophic failures, this is not much of an issue for either system. Both systems can be designed to fragment safely into smaller segments that do little harm on reentry.
I suspect Nasa's going for the quick cheap fix with this one. I ask, what makes a small projectile fueled by explosives any less likely to go kaboom than a big projectile? As long as rockets are a part of the launch solution, the risks to payloads will remain high. If Nasa goes with this solution the U.S. is looking at another twenty to thirty years of being beholden to a complex, short-sighted, fiscally-wreckless, and bureaucratically-expedient non-solution.
... but but this would be more of a biological mission. It's not a question of power, remember the probe's sensors would be radiation hardened, not radiation proof. Every second these sensors work in the high radiation Jovian environment is one less second left in their life span. Even a one week orbit of Io is one week less (plus wasted transit time and fuel) spent studying Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, which are far more interesting from the (exo)biologist's viewpoint.
... printed by Anchor Books, edited by Eliot Wigginton. These are an extraordinary compilation of folk knowledge from rural American mountain people. I only have volumes 1 through 6. The wild plant food sections are incredible. Some of the information presented is anecdotal, and there's quite a bit of very quaintly written folklore, but there are also many useful tutorials of "simple" skills like cider making, cabin building, canning, tanning hides, spinning yarn, churning butter, weaving cloth, and metalworking.
... with the idea that they will be the ones reporting it (if you're the IT person they'll most likely ask for your assistance.) You let them know the seriousness of the crime, and make it clear that they must act. If they don't, then you take matters into your own hands, but one of the best reasons for going to your employer first is that the chancers are good that they already have an attorney or two on retainer. Besides which, the company, and the policies are under their control, not yours.
On the other hand, if you are the employer then you make certain you protect yourself in advance by having clearly-written lawyer-vetted policies in place for everything from fair company resource use (including the company network) to employee conduct, and procedures for filing a grievance if another employee is messing up. If there's a comprehensive, well-written policy then there's no question, the employee would know how to handle any situation.
Bardencj started the chick thread, I just riffed on his very funny lead and forgot to remove my karma bonus when I posted.
"C'mon babe, I know my slashcode really turns you on, but I can't have sex right now. The kernel team is having a fit over a patch I suggested for QOS issues, I have some project notes to update on Sourceforge, I have a chapter to read in the latest O'Reilly camel book, and I want to recompile the new Doom source. You're going to have to wait."
"Yes, I know Linus Torvalds has children. I don't have as much time as he does."
Don't forget the fame. The late night stints on Letterman and Leno. The crazy autograph signings. The lucrative pizza and soft drink sponsorships. Sure, the groupy hax0r-chicks chasing you to your hotel room every night are great, but you gotta keep those other perks in mind too.
-Joe G.
I admit it, I didn't read the article, I skimmed the subject quickly, which brought to mind this story. To the comment's author, if you are inclined to participate as more than just a critic, why did you not provide the link yourself and demonstrate to the world + dog why your suggested approach is superior? Your comment makes sense, and in retrospect I would have done so if I'd have thought of it at the time.
:)
I worked for Ellison very briefly in college -- I sold books at one of his speaking engagements after a conversation lasting several hours the previous evening. I suspect that he would prefer readers wanting to explore his works purchase them directly from the author. From my own experience he's a parsimonious fellow who guards his income jealously, and he appreciates direct sales.
As far as I know there is no + mod to my comment other than a karma bonus I forgot to remove. Whatever, mods giveth and taketh as they will.
I so badly want to see this performed live. It's brilliant. :)