Internet Billing Company, LLC (iBill) announced that the relocation of their corporate headquarters to more cost-efficient facilities has been completed.
Even after looking around, I can't determine where this move was to. Their contact info on the site lists Deerfield Beach, Florida as their location. Is it possible they moved all their transaction servers to a different country to avoid possible legal implications?
If you care to read more about iBill, you can check out their blog on G Spot. I didn't link the blog because it's not about the company; it's about trading buyers across all of its customer sites.
I wonder if this is a case of the company selling anything they could to escape dire financial straights or if it is the case of a disgruntled underpaid employee indulging.
Am I surprised such a shady company had its user's credit card info traded on the black market? Gosh, not really.
Shouldn't you be using something like an Nvidia Quadro or 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm for that kind of work?
Either of those are perfectly suitable for what I'm trying to do. However, the end goal isn't to have this be a one shot set-up. It's to eventually have this created over and over and over again (like profiting companies like to do). If I can assemble the system using 2x$600 cards per system and produce acceptable results, that saves me quite a bit of cash compared to spending $1800-$2000 on one card per system and producing nearly identical results.
I don't even want to get started on the comparisons I found on these different solutions. Let's just settle on the fact that I can get away with two 6800 XTs and it is nearly smooth to the human eye.
And yet another graphics card is released. Is it worth my money to upgrade my dual 6800 XTs? Let's find out by reading the review.
Unfortunately, I can't. I'm better off going to NVidia and trusting their product sheets. Why? Because I'm not looking to play Need for Speed Most Wanted or Quake Four or Half Life Two, I'm looking to do some actual graphics processing with an SLI setup. Yes, brace yourselves, I don't actually use these beasts for gaming.
If you read the reviews, it may look like these cards have no purpose other than to play the higher end games.
It is my responsibility to make a kind of "Google Earth on Steroids" for my employer. And this requires that five (yes, five) terabytes of mapping data be available for a multi-monitor (and by "multi" I mean many) display. What's my current choke point? Simply data bandwidth into the card.
Where does this review leave me? I now know intimately how high I can get my frame rate up in a first person shooter. Huzzah!
I know there are product sheets that tell me what kind of bandwidth I have but I'm more interested in what a non-interested third party has to say about it. Where are the real benchmarking tests? What about a simple program that loads up the card with as much data as possible as quickly as possible? I'm not even sure if the choking point is on the card or at the interface level with the motherboard (PCIe 16x).
Why can I not find objective reviews that aim to look at cold hard numbers?
It blames companies (Nintendo) and consoles (the PSP).
It lists developers at number five.
Can't we just admit that there's been a severe lack of imagination in video game design recently? We have no one to blame but the people who envision the games--and even then, we can't really blame them for not coming up with the latest and greatest concept.
Maybe we should be encouraging developers to think outside the box and have them attend liberal arts colleges instead of 2 year technical colleges where they only learn how to make clones out of already existing games?
All these ideas are entirely possible but it could simply be that Comcast doesn't provide the kind of broadband consistently necessary to use VoIP.
My experience with Comcast has been extensive and I am nothing but a little dissatisfied with how consistent my connection broadband width was. I'm not complaining that I lost connections (though I know people who have) but I will complain that my upload and download widths were anything but stable.
I eagerly await the broadband over power lines initiative that's inevitably going to be made available to everyone. Imagine paying for broadband but not having to pay also the cost of using an extensive cable network. Brilliant idea! Use rudimentary piggy backing techniques to deliver two signals through one line. It's actually not that difficult, I'm not sure why this took so long to develop and why it's taking even longer to make available to the public. Yes, I've heard of security concerns but there's got to be some encryption you can use.
If I ever live to see the day where cable is obsolete, I'm going to uncap my modem and host something huge to my friends. Anyone care to take a guess on how long I'd be able to keep that up before they shut me down?
Like the article says, the issue of dropping a mug to save coffee is entirely in the transfer of kinetic energy to the right places.
As the mug falls, it gathers velocity towards the ground (thank you, gravity) and upon impact it stops when it meets the resistance of cement. This resistance means that the prior amount of kinetic energy must be absorbed at some point in the mug or absorbed by the concrete (not too feasible).
I'm going to say that I'm not accounting for everything here... yes, there's entropy and blah blah blah going on but this is a cut and dried version of what you should focus on.
The strategy behind their solution is that they used a "crumple point" at the base of the mug. What they refer to as "the bomb" is really just a crushable base that sufficiently absorbs the energy. Therefore, the energy does not transfer to the coffee (which would thus splash it everywhere). This is a lot like the crumple points on modern car frames. My car's frame has points at which, if I run into something, the energy will be absorbed in the event of extreme energy transfer. This stops the energy from transferring to my body and causing me to splash everywhere. Let me tell you, you do not want to splash everywhere; it's quite messy and rather painful. As a car designer, you'd like to know precisely where energy will be transferred to in the event of an accident so you create crumple zones. If a car is in a sufficient collision, often times it will be necessary to have the vehicle "pulled" which means spending a lot of money to have some goof put it in a very expensive machine that pulls on the frame until everything is back to near perfect specs and calibration.
I, on the other hand, prefer loading it onto a flatbed trailer, attaching a hand winch to both axles and laying underneath it and winching until your friend tells you that the doors can open and they no longer touch the front quarter panels. Alignment? Oh, that's just for rich people and inspectors.
Now, what I don't like about this mug design is that it seems to be a one shot deal for the mug. Yes, you've saved your coffee but your mug is shot.
I'm reminded of when I used to work in a restaurant and ceramic plates and glass would occasionally drop by mistake from my hands and the hands of coworkers. Now, as time went on, I noticed that glass objects like drinking glasses would have one bounce. I do not know why but they would have one bounce and then SMASH... a million pieces. Ceramic plates were just a spider web on impact (quickly absorbing energy) but the glass seemed to almost always get one bounce.
Knowing this, if I saw an empty glass falling, I knew I had one bounce to try and save it but the bounces weren't always too high. Years of hacky sack training on sipas finally became useful. Now, there is a move I was taught that we called a "lazy man" that involved kicking the foot out but actually using the ankle movement to kick the bag up into the air. There were a few times when a glass dropped and after the first bounced I lazy manned it up and caught it and I was a god for 10 minutes at least in the back of the kitchen. Sure, there were times when it just looked like I was booting a glass into the wall but it was worth it. I always wondered if those saved glasses would ever get another bounce if they dropped again.
So this is kind of like when you go to a conference and they have door prizes being given away by companies.
You can register for said prizes; all you have to do is fill out your name, telephone number, address and date of birth. Then, after you don't win, you get to put up for the rest of your time at that residence with crap junk mail. May the lord have mercy on your soul if you give those people your e-mail address.
If you have to log in to use your favorite search engine, I'd suggest finding a different one.
This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.
How addicted? So addicted that we'll hire people skilled in it no matter where they live.
Don't believe me? Learn how to speak English and get an I.T. related degree. Bam! You're employed.
The United States is a developed nation. What do developed nations do? Just sit around on their hands waiting for the other nations to catch up? Not quite. Industrialized is one thing but to have a solid infrastructure and to lead the world in technological advances is the current goal in the game.
Everything is beginning to depend on computational devices. Maybe they aren't used in the end result but they're most certainly used in developing/researching any and all products. Even farming has many uses for computers. It's the new basis for information exchange and delivery. How much more important can an industry get?
Why then, is it news that the United States has a great job market for IT Workers? This shouldn't be surprising at all. These workers are needed everywhere and anyone who can't see that hasn't looked at the stock market recently.
Some of the licenses allow for people to charge for distributing the software. After all, they burned it to a disc and probably did all the labeling. You're paying for nothing more than the time and resources that went into this. Is it wrong to charge $10 per CD with Mozilla on it? Probably, but I don't think it's illegal. You simply have to disclose that there is no warranty and state that the software falls under the MPL.
As Section 3.5 states:
You must duplicate the notice in Exhibit A in each file of the Source Code. If it is not possible to put such notice in a particular Source Code file due to its structure, then You must include such notice in a location (such as a relevant directory) where a user would be likely to look for such a notice. If You created one or more Modification(s) You may add your name as a Contributor to the notice described in Exhibit A. You must also duplicate this License in any documentation for the Source Code where You describe recipients' rights or ownership rights relating to Covered Code. You may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligations to one or more recipients of Covered Code. However, You may do so only on Your own behalf, and not on behalf of the Initial Developer or any Contributor. You must make it absolutely clear than any such warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligation is offered by You alone, and You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and every Contributor for any liability incurred by the Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You offer.
Do not confuse the MPL with the GPL, folks.
'If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation.'
Well, Mozilla falls under the MPL. I'm not sure any other software falls under this license. For that reason, anyone distributing software that falls under other licenses should be investigated. I'm not sure how people distributing Mozilla legally at a charge prohibits you from arresting people who are distributing copyrighted software which they made their own copies of.
Anyone remember when Google did a very few things, like the search engine itself and Gmail, but did them spectacularly well? It's now doing many, many things with erratic results. Let's hope that its next step isn't to do an infinite number of things badly--a road that any number of growing technology companies have taken, sadly.
I believe what we are witnessing here is something of a bit of a "shotgun effect" where a company tries to offer many different things and invariably along the way gets something right.
Microsoft and Google have this in common. They both did one or two things extremely well which resulted in insane success. Soon after this, they both started producing products in all conceivable fields.
Now, I agree with the author in the case of Microsoft as they started making products that anyone would buy just because the name "Microsoft" was on them (Visual J++ anyone?). I just created my homepage and was frustrated with how little I could do. Oh well, what did I spend on this? Nothing, a few seconds of my time, that's all.
I'm completely happy with Google trying to re-invent everything because when they do, it's more or less free for me. There's no harm because I didn't pay a ton of money for the product like I would have in Microsoft's case.
There's inexperienced developers, and there's experienced developers.
Well, I've heard just as meaningless statements before (i.e. "a note is either on the beat or off the beat" or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...") and I must say that I think the difference between Dorian Richard's "inexperienced" and "experienced" is simply the "experienced" know what systems engineering (SE) is.
Now, of all topics, SE is one that I hate the most. You will not encounter such a dry and boring subject in a long while. But I will not deny that it certainly provides structure and security in managing projects and identifying milestones.
If you like what you heard in Richard's interview, then I suggest you skip the rest of what he says and go to INCOSE to check out the society that studies how to avoid the pitfalls of inexperienced developers. One good project manager should be able to protect your developers from hurting themselves or a project.
I certainly hope no one is putting together a team that is just going to sit down and wing it while developing a project. Perhaps Atari didn't believe there to be a need for project management... this would be quite telling of their latest financial woes.
... but I've never transferred any skill I've learned in video games to real life.
At an early age, my demon hunting skills were top notch in Doom but I never took the extra step to transfer those to the playground.
Probably because video games are a virtual reality meaning that different laws apply there. I have learned never to use the same strategy when different rules are in effect. That's been pretty useful.
Kudos to you for not putting up with the injustice, but "[Your] parents were making [you] pay for your own food"? Your first call should have been to social services, not the school cafeteria.
Yes, well said. Run to social services. Some of us grew up in areas where our entire youths were spent laboring away in fields. My medical insurance was MinnesotaCare. The food we ate in the summers were vegetables grown in a garden and meat from an actual butcher down the road.
Now I know these concepts are very difficult for the information age to understand but this was key to my survival.
Ever canned or frozen vegetables? Well, I have. No other way we could have made it through the winters.
Did you ever have to pick rock and bail hay summer after summer? Did you ever skip school to pour cement or frame houses? Ever have to do this during the day while bussing/waiting/bartending in a restaraunt at night?
Not all of us have had easy lives. My parents weren't making me buy my own food--there really wasn't another choice. I've bought my own clothes most of my life, taught myself how to cut my own hair and haven't ever thought twice about blaming my parents. I know what money really is.
Luckily, the job I work today is lucrative. My parents didn't provide me financial resources. They didn't provide me with contacts to get the perfect job. They didn't even provide me music or the arts. What they did instill on me was a sense of working hard without complaining and knowing that nothing outweighs the value of knowledge. Not even money. Grade school was hard, high school was hard, college was even worse (no garden!) but today I feel like I live like a king even though my idea of a great meal is a can of campbell's Steak and Potato soup with any kind of multi-grain bread. People ask me sometimes if a full time job is hard to juggle with full time grad school. Not at all. Hell, the buildings I work in are air conditioned.
I'm not claiming to have life as hard as The Grapes of Wrath and I don't mean to be preachy. I remember my childhood more as Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes more than anything else. There have been generations of Americans before me that lived off the land and there probably are many more out there that still do. If you think it is so abhoring to live life like that, you're mistaken. Sometimes I miss it so much, I'll most likely find myself an old man living in the middle of nowhere on a plot of land at the end of my life.
Kudos to you for thinking that I deserve "better," but I've never asked for it and I never would.
Ok, ok, I didn't think the result was really that important but...
I was working with three other guys to try and figure out what suggestions to make. And also let me say that this was a high school (not a gradeschool) and there were some insanely pricey healthy foods but super cheap candy and twinkies as you went up to the cash register.
We contacted Hy-Vee (our local grocery store) and asked them how difficult (and how expensive) it would be to make regular shipments of real fruit and real food to the cafeteria. It turned out to be quite a bit cheaper than shipping it 3 hours from the nearest metropolis--imagine that!
So when we approached them with this idea, they said it wasn't that simple. That they had contracts with their distributor and they couldn't break them--which was strange because they could bring in Dominos pizza every friday.
So, in the end, they made token price adjustments on the foods to make everyone happy. A nickel here, a dime there. But the prices kept going up until they were eventually were higher than they were before. They blame that on inflation. Then I graduated and just kind of accepted that crap like that happens in hick towns like the one where I grew up.
Frankly, I'm surprised the city tried to contest this at all.
Aside from the Freedom of Information Act, I could think of a ton of good reasons why this kid should get this or why anyone should be able to get a list like this. Whatever happened to the good old days where we were encouraged to snail mail every single person representing us in office?
When I was younger, I was pretty dissatisfied with the insane food prices at my high school. Even worse was the fact that my parents were making me pay for my own food. So I threatened the school with the Freedom of Information Act and demanded to see all food related reciepts and documents including pay and taxes. They gave me two huge boxes full of crap and I spent one night sorting through everything. And, surprisingly enough, after I sorted through and found out how much they were paying Arrowmark or whoever the food service provider was--it just didn't make sense. The local grocery store had better prices.
Well, Terry Gilliamwas born in Minnesota (the only member born outside the UK). I'm also from Minnesota and I haven't forgotten about his origins.
Even though Python is known for being British Comedy, their films and shows are still purchased everywhere in the United States--they possibly have more sales in the United States than Britain just because of the population sizes. Perhaps they want to maximize exposure?
I caught the Kids in the Hall on tour in Minneapolis once and it was packed, I was deafened by laughter. Whether you believe it or not, foreign comedy like Monty Python or The Kids in the Hall are greatly appreciated by Minnesotans. I assume it's similar in other places around the United States.
It's interesting to see Schare become more humble since a November 2004 interview, when he questioned whether Firefox could attract more than just early adopters.
So this came up today at work. And I thought I'd clear up some things for people who are confused as to what the phrase 'early adopters' means.
'Early adopters' are what marketers call the first people to use your product. Now, let's say that there's some tiny percentage of people who initially use Firefox just because they had something to do with it or they need to run a web app that works best in Firefox. This 5% of the population is known as the 'early adopters' as it doesn't really matter what your product is; they're going to use it regardless.
Now, imagine a normal curve of the population of users. The early adopters are the ones on the far left who use it right away and the ones on the right are the crusty old-there's-nothing-better-than-IE-change-is-bad people who will refuse until the bitter end. If you make it past the early adopters and into the 35%-45% of the population range on the curve, then suddenly this product can stand on its own. To hell with the competition, it can now fend for itself in the market with that kind of user base backing it.
What he meant in that quote was that it had yet to be seen if Firefox would even make it past the initial 5% that would use it regardless and into a phenomenon that could potentially be a competitor with Internet Explorer.
In most of the applications a programmer undertakes, she or he must strive to encompass more than just early adopters if it is hoped for the product to last. This usually involves clever marketing gimmicks or commercials but, thank the lord, in Firefox's case it's just been sheer security and ingenuity of the product helping it over this curve.
Not only do I think it's well on its way past the early adopter phase, but I myself have moved to be an early adopter for most open source solutions I can find out there.
As much as scientists would like to do research that really matters...
Let's get one thing straight. There are two kinds of scientists. No, not mad and regular but instead pop and real. A pop scientist would be someone like the late Carl Sagan or Brian Greene who publish books, know how to speak to the masses, and are recognized as TV personalities who come on late night and say a few words.
A real scientist is one who actually devotes their life to their work and really doesn't care if it's ever exposed to the masses or brought out into the limelight. Some scientists are a bit of both (like Stephen Hawking). Oddly enough, the pop scientists are often teachers because they love the idea of instilling a copy of themselves into the mainstream. But they also cater to the lowest common denominator, hence their writings to the public.
But a discovery that plays well to the masses, despite being relative "fluff" in terms of scientific value or breaking very little new ground, can raise awareness of one's work, which can make it a lot easier to get funding for the research that does matter.
That's great, let's send these young students the message that science is really trying to get grant money and holding press releases before testing is even done on a drug. In fact, we should have a class for them on how to appeal to the lowest common denominator so that they can get exposure and the papers can run with a story on them.
Buzzword-compliance probably won't get them beyond a certain point career-wise...
On the contrary, buzzword compliance will get them very far in their careers but it won't do anything for their research or findings. Fancy words mean everything to companies and nothing to real scientists.
In closing, a pop scientist craves public attention and recognition. A real scientist craves knowledge and nothing more. Which one of these two are you most like?
So I've got a star on me and I'm just waiting for the heat to melt off me so I pull up alongside this "sex worker." She hops in and I am in serious need after that last shoot out. Do I do anything violent to her? No, I go out to a remote area of the park and when the car starts rocking, I exchange cash for life. Not a bad deal, people exchange money for their health at hospitals everyday.
So now we're done... what to do? I kind of have two choices:
A. Kill her and take my monies back.
B. Keep her around in the car to do more money exchange.
The way I see it, the game is encouraging me not to harm her because if I do, I'm going to get my monies back but I have to drive all the way back into town and I do not want the po-po on me right now.
Btw, I learned all this like five years ago from this game. Where was this "sex workers group" when the game came out? They're a bit late to stop it from being released.
I like how from TFA:
Though the organization admits to being "adamantly opposed to any and all forms of censorship,"
So let me get this straight... mammary glands and naked women shouldn't be censored (sales are up for the sex workers!) but violence should be (worker lifespan is down)?
A Day in the Life of Zonk & Taco
on
Uwe Boll Smash!
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Scene: CmdrTaco is sitting at his desk looking utterly depressed.
Enter: Zonk.
Zonk: Hey there, sport, why do you look so down?
*CmdrTaco remains silent*
Zonk: Still depressed about how your Valentine's date actually turned out to be a 38 year old Slashdot fan who still lives with his mom? CmdrTaco: [dejectedly] Yeah... Zonk: Well, by golly, I know what'll cheer you up! Another Uwe Boll story on Slashdot! CmdrTaco: Nah, the readers are tired of making fun of the same damned guy over and over... it's too easy for them. Zonk: Oh, come on! Then we'll put it in sectional content!
*Zonk finds an Uwe Boll interview that he hasn't posted before and runs the story*
Zonk: There! That should cheer you up! Just sit back and laugh as the replies roll in.
These storms (and their cycles) are old news. Hubble spotted them back in 1990, the only new information we have today is how strong the lightening is. From the Solar Views article:
Although these events were separated by about 57 years (approximately 2 Saturnian years) there is yet no explanation why they apparently follow a cycle -- occurring when it is summer in Saturn's northern hemisphere.
Now that'd be interesting to know how these storms work on a two planet year cycle as our monsoons and other weather phenomenon seem to primarily operate on single planet year cycles. This area has been nicknamed "Storm Alley."
The planet's got 30 named satellites and the most prominent feature a belt of dust and debris. I'm sure there's a lot of factors at play here--probably more than our own atmosphere. There's a lot of talk about cosmic rays actually being the cause of lightning on both Jupiter and Saturn but this topic is heavily debated.
Funny the U.S. government targets Phil Zimmermann for three years but hardly raises so much as an eye when an encryption enabled OS is distributed. From Mr. Zimmermann's homepage:
Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, an email encryption software package. Originally designed as a human rights tool, PGP was published for free on the Internet in 1991. This made Zimmermann the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread worldwide.
I think that his "criminal activity" was creating an encryption tool that allowed messages to be encrypted beyond what the United States government was capable of deciphering in a timely manner. Does anyone know if this is still enforced? Does anyone know what the max key length is now if it is? I think it was something like 128 bits (that the government could crack) around the time of PGP.
Slashdot Mirror
If you care to read more about iBill, you can check out their blog on G Spot. I didn't link the blog because it's not about the company; it's about trading buyers across all of its customer sites.
I wonder if this is a case of the company selling anything they could to escape dire financial straights or if it is the case of a disgruntled underpaid employee indulging.
Am I surprised such a shady company had its user's credit card info traded on the black market? Gosh, not really.
I don't even want to get started on the comparisons I found on these different solutions. Let's just settle on the fact that I can get away with two 6800 XTs and it is nearly smooth to the human eye.
And yet another graphics card is released. Is it worth my money to upgrade my dual 6800 XTs? Let's find out by reading the review.
Unfortunately, I can't. I'm better off going to NVidia and trusting their product sheets. Why? Because I'm not looking to play Need for Speed Most Wanted or Quake Four or Half Life Two, I'm looking to do some actual graphics processing with an SLI setup. Yes, brace yourselves, I don't actually use these beasts for gaming.
If you read the reviews, it may look like these cards have no purpose other than to play the higher end games.
It is my responsibility to make a kind of "Google Earth on Steroids" for my employer. And this requires that five (yes, five) terabytes of mapping data be available for a multi-monitor (and by "multi" I mean many) display. What's my current choke point? Simply data bandwidth into the card.
Where does this review leave me? I now know intimately how high I can get my frame rate up in a first person shooter. Huzzah!
I know there are product sheets that tell me what kind of bandwidth I have but I'm more interested in what a non-interested third party has to say about it. Where are the real benchmarking tests? What about a simple program that loads up the card with as much data as possible as quickly as possible? I'm not even sure if the choking point is on the card or at the interface level with the motherboard (PCIe 16x).
Why can I not find objective reviews that aim to look at cold hard numbers?
This article is a joke.
It blames the Germans.
It blames companies (Nintendo) and consoles (the PSP).
It lists developers at number five.
Can't we just admit that there's been a severe lack of imagination in video game design recently? We have no one to blame but the people who envision the games--and even then, we can't really blame them for not coming up with the latest and greatest concept.
Maybe we should be encouraging developers to think outside the box and have them attend liberal arts colleges instead of 2 year technical colleges where they only learn how to make clones out of already existing games?
All these ideas are entirely possible but it could simply be that Comcast doesn't provide the kind of broadband consistently necessary to use VoIP.
My experience with Comcast has been extensive and I am nothing but a little dissatisfied with how consistent my connection broadband width was. I'm not complaining that I lost connections (though I know people who have) but I will complain that my upload and download widths were anything but stable.
I eagerly await the broadband over power lines initiative that's inevitably going to be made available to everyone. Imagine paying for broadband but not having to pay also the cost of using an extensive cable network. Brilliant idea! Use rudimentary piggy backing techniques to deliver two signals through one line. It's actually not that difficult, I'm not sure why this took so long to develop and why it's taking even longer to make available to the public. Yes, I've heard of security concerns but there's got to be some encryption you can use.
If I ever live to see the day where cable is obsolete, I'm going to uncap my modem and host something huge to my friends. Anyone care to take a guess on how long I'd be able to keep that up before they shut me down?
Like the article says, the issue of dropping a mug to save coffee is entirely in the transfer of kinetic energy to the right places.
... yes, there's entropy and blah blah blah going on but this is a cut and dried version of what you should focus on.
... a million pieces. Ceramic plates were just a spider web on impact (quickly absorbing energy) but the glass seemed to almost always get one bounce.
As the mug falls, it gathers velocity towards the ground (thank you, gravity) and upon impact it stops when it meets the resistance of cement. This resistance means that the prior amount of kinetic energy must be absorbed at some point in the mug or absorbed by the concrete (not too feasible).
I'm going to say that I'm not accounting for everything here
The strategy behind their solution is that they used a "crumple point" at the base of the mug. What they refer to as "the bomb" is really just a crushable base that sufficiently absorbs the energy. Therefore, the energy does not transfer to the coffee (which would thus splash it everywhere). This is a lot like the crumple points on modern car frames. My car's frame has points at which, if I run into something, the energy will be absorbed in the event of extreme energy transfer. This stops the energy from transferring to my body and causing me to splash everywhere. Let me tell you, you do not want to splash everywhere; it's quite messy and rather painful. As a car designer, you'd like to know precisely where energy will be transferred to in the event of an accident so you create crumple zones. If a car is in a sufficient collision, often times it will be necessary to have the vehicle "pulled" which means spending a lot of money to have some goof put it in a very expensive machine that pulls on the frame until everything is back to near perfect specs and calibration.
I, on the other hand, prefer loading it onto a flatbed trailer, attaching a hand winch to both axles and laying underneath it and winching until your friend tells you that the doors can open and they no longer touch the front quarter panels. Alignment? Oh, that's just for rich people and inspectors.
Now, what I don't like about this mug design is that it seems to be a one shot deal for the mug. Yes, you've saved your coffee but your mug is shot.
I'm reminded of when I used to work in a restaurant and ceramic plates and glass would occasionally drop by mistake from my hands and the hands of coworkers. Now, as time went on, I noticed that glass objects like drinking glasses would have one bounce. I do not know why but they would have one bounce and then SMASH
Knowing this, if I saw an empty glass falling, I knew I had one bounce to try and save it but the bounces weren't always too high. Years of hacky sack training on sipas finally became useful. Now, there is a move I was taught that we called a "lazy man" that involved kicking the foot out but actually using the ankle movement to kick the bag up into the air. There were a few times when a glass dropped and after the first bounced I lazy manned it up and caught it and I was a god for 10 minutes at least in the back of the kitchen. Sure, there were times when it just looked like I was booting a glass into the wall but it was worth it. I always wondered if those saved glasses would ever get another bounce if they dropped again.
So this is kind of like when you go to a conference and they have door prizes being given away by companies.
You can register for said prizes; all you have to do is fill out your name, telephone number, address and date of birth. Then, after you don't win, you get to put up for the rest of your time at that residence with crap junk mail. May the lord have mercy on your soul if you give those people your e-mail address.
If you have to log in to use your favorite search engine, I'd suggest finding a different one.
This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.
How addicted? So addicted that we'll hire people skilled in it no matter where they live.
Don't believe me? Learn how to speak English and get an I.T. related degree. Bam! You're employed.
The United States is a developed nation. What do developed nations do? Just sit around on their hands waiting for the other nations to catch up? Not quite. Industrialized is one thing but to have a solid infrastructure and to lead the world in technological advances is the current goal in the game.
Everything is beginning to depend on computational devices. Maybe they aren't used in the end result but they're most certainly used in developing/researching any and all products. Even farming has many uses for computers. It's the new basis for information exchange and delivery. How much more important can an industry get?
Why then, is it news that the United States has a great job market for IT Workers? This shouldn't be surprising at all. These workers are needed everywhere and anyone who can't see that hasn't looked at the stock market recently.
As Section 3.5 states: Do not confuse the MPL with the GPL, folks. Well, Mozilla falls under the MPL. I'm not sure any other software falls under this license. For that reason, anyone distributing software that falls under other licenses should be investigated. I'm not sure how people distributing Mozilla legally at a charge prohibits you from arresting people who are distributing copyrighted software which they made their own copies of.
Microsoft and Google have this in common. They both did one or two things extremely well which resulted in insane success. Soon after this, they both started producing products in all conceivable fields.
Now, I agree with the author in the case of Microsoft as they started making products that anyone would buy just because the name "Microsoft" was on them (Visual J++ anyone?). I just created my homepage and was frustrated with how little I could do. Oh well, what did I spend on this? Nothing, a few seconds of my time, that's all.
I'm completely happy with Google trying to re-invent everything because when they do, it's more or less free for me. There's no harm because I didn't pay a ton of money for the product like I would have in Microsoft's case.
Now, of all topics, SE is one that I hate the most. You will not encounter such a dry and boring subject in a long while. But I will not deny that it certainly provides structure and security in managing projects and identifying milestones.
If you like what you heard in Richard's interview, then I suggest you skip the rest of what he says and go to INCOSE to check out the society that studies how to avoid the pitfalls of inexperienced developers. One good project manager should be able to protect your developers from hurting themselves or a project.
I certainly hope no one is putting together a team that is just going to sit down and wing it while developing a project. Perhaps Atari didn't believe there to be a need for project management
... but I've never transferred any skill I've learned in video games to real life.
At an early age, my demon hunting skills were top notch in Doom but I never took the extra step to transfer those to the playground.
Probably because video games are a virtual reality meaning that different laws apply there. I have learned never to use the same strategy when different rules are in effect. That's been pretty useful.
Now I know these concepts are very difficult for the information age to understand but this was key to my survival.
Ever canned or frozen vegetables? Well, I have. No other way we could have made it through the winters.
Did you ever have to pick rock and bail hay summer after summer? Did you ever skip school to pour cement or frame houses? Ever have to do this during the day while bussing/waiting/bartending in a restaraunt at night?
Not all of us have had easy lives. My parents weren't making me buy my own food--there really wasn't another choice. I've bought my own clothes most of my life, taught myself how to cut my own hair and haven't ever thought twice about blaming my parents. I know what money really is.
Luckily, the job I work today is lucrative. My parents didn't provide me financial resources. They didn't provide me with contacts to get the perfect job. They didn't even provide me music or the arts. What they did instill on me was a sense of working hard without complaining and knowing that nothing outweighs the value of knowledge. Not even money. Grade school was hard, high school was hard, college was even worse (no garden!) but today I feel like I live like a king even though my idea of a great meal is a can of campbell's Steak and Potato soup with any kind of multi-grain bread. People ask me sometimes if a full time job is hard to juggle with full time grad school. Not at all. Hell, the buildings I work in are air conditioned.
I'm not claiming to have life as hard as The Grapes of Wrath and I don't mean to be preachy. I remember my childhood more as Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes more than anything else. There have been generations of Americans before me that lived off the land and there probably are many more out there that still do. If you think it is so abhoring to live life like that, you're mistaken. Sometimes I miss it so much, I'll most likely find myself an old man living in the middle of nowhere on a plot of land at the end of my life.
Kudos to you for thinking that I deserve "better," but I've never asked for it and I never would.
Ok, ok, I didn't think the result was really that important but ...
I was working with three other guys to try and figure out what suggestions to make. And also let me say that this was a high school (not a gradeschool) and there were some insanely pricey healthy foods but super cheap candy and twinkies as you went up to the cash register.
We contacted Hy-Vee (our local grocery store) and asked them how difficult (and how expensive) it would be to make regular shipments of real fruit and real food to the cafeteria. It turned out to be quite a bit cheaper than shipping it 3 hours from the nearest metropolis--imagine that!
So when we approached them with this idea, they said it wasn't that simple. That they had contracts with their distributor and they couldn't break them--which was strange because they could bring in Dominos pizza every friday.
So, in the end, they made token price adjustments on the foods to make everyone happy. A nickel here, a dime there. But the prices kept going up until they were eventually were higher than they were before. They blame that on inflation. Then I graduated and just kind of accepted that crap like that happens in hick towns like the one where I grew up.
Frankly, I'm surprised the city tried to contest this at all.
Aside from the Freedom of Information Act, I could think of a ton of good reasons why this kid should get this or why anyone should be able to get a list like this. Whatever happened to the good old days where we were encouraged to snail mail every single person representing us in office?
When I was younger, I was pretty dissatisfied with the insane food prices at my high school. Even worse was the fact that my parents were making me pay for my own food. So I threatened the school with the Freedom of Information Act and demanded to see all food related reciepts and documents including pay and taxes. They gave me two huge boxes full of crap and I spent one night sorting through everything. And, surprisingly enough, after I sorted through and found out how much they were paying Arrowmark or whoever the food service provider was--it just didn't make sense. The local grocery store had better prices.
Well, Terry Gilliam was born in Minnesota (the only member born outside the UK). I'm also from Minnesota and I haven't forgotten about his origins.
Even though Python is known for being British Comedy, their films and shows are still purchased everywhere in the United States--they possibly have more sales in the United States than Britain just because of the population sizes. Perhaps they want to maximize exposure?
I caught the Kids in the Hall on tour in Minneapolis once and it was packed, I was deafened by laughter. Whether you believe it or not, foreign comedy like Monty Python or The Kids in the Hall are greatly appreciated by Minnesotans. I assume it's similar in other places around the United States.
'Early adopters' are what marketers call the first people to use your product. Now, let's say that there's some tiny percentage of people who initially use Firefox just because they had something to do with it or they need to run a web app that works best in Firefox. This 5% of the population is known as the 'early adopters' as it doesn't really matter what your product is; they're going to use it regardless.
Now, imagine a normal curve of the population of users. The early adopters are the ones on the far left who use it right away and the ones on the right are the crusty old-there's-nothing-better-than-IE-change-is-bad people who will refuse until the bitter end. If you make it past the early adopters and into the 35%-45% of the population range on the curve, then suddenly this product can stand on its own. To hell with the competition, it can now fend for itself in the market with that kind of user base backing it.
What he meant in that quote was that it had yet to be seen if Firefox would even make it past the initial 5% that would use it regardless and into a phenomenon that could potentially be a competitor with Internet Explorer.
In most of the applications a programmer undertakes, she or he must strive to encompass more than just early adopters if it is hoped for the product to last. This usually involves clever marketing gimmicks or commercials but, thank the lord, in Firefox's case it's just been sheer security and ingenuity of the product helping it over this curve.
Not only do I think it's well on its way past the early adopter phase, but I myself have moved to be an early adopter for most open source solutions I can find out there.
In the company I work for, misuse of e-mail may constitute a CLM.
That's a Career Limiting Move. Not to be confused with sleeping with the boss's daughter--a Career Ending Move.
A real scientist is one who actually devotes their life to their work and really doesn't care if it's ever exposed to the masses or brought out into the limelight. Some scientists are a bit of both (like Stephen Hawking). Oddly enough, the pop scientists are often teachers because they love the idea of instilling a copy of themselves into the mainstream. But they also cater to the lowest common denominator, hence their writings to the public. That's great, let's send these young students the message that science is really trying to get grant money and holding press releases before testing is even done on a drug. In fact, we should have a class for them on how to appeal to the lowest common denominator so that they can get exposure and the papers can run with a story on them. On the contrary, buzzword compliance will get them very far in their careers but it won't do anything for their research or findings. Fancy words mean everything to companies and nothing to real scientists.
In closing, a pop scientist craves public attention and recognition. A real scientist craves knowledge and nothing more. Which one of these two are you most like?
So now we're done
A. Kill her and take my monies back.
B. Keep her around in the car to do more money exchange.
The way I see it, the game is encouraging me not to harm her because if I do, I'm going to get my monies back but I have to drive all the way back into town and I do not want the po-po on me right now.
Btw, I learned all this like five years ago from this game. Where was this "sex workers group" when the game came out? They're a bit late to stop it from being released.
I like how from TFA: So let me get this straight
Scene: CmdrTaco is sitting at his desk looking utterly depressed.
... ... it's too easy for them.
Enter: Zonk.
Zonk: Hey there, sport, why do you look so down?
*CmdrTaco remains silent*
Zonk: Still depressed about how your Valentine's date actually turned out to be a 38 year old Slashdot fan who still lives with his mom?
CmdrTaco: [dejectedly] Yeah
Zonk: Well, by golly, I know what'll cheer you up! Another Uwe Boll story on Slashdot!
CmdrTaco: Nah, the readers are tired of making fun of the same damned guy over and over
Zonk: Oh, come on! Then we'll put it in sectional content!
*Zonk finds an Uwe Boll interview that he hasn't posted before and runs the story*
Zonk: There! That should cheer you up! Just sit back and laugh as the replies roll in.
RTFA, this was supposed to be a romantic Valentine's Day present for his girlfriend (complete with remote).
I'm sure his tombstone will read:
...
Chased a dream
... but never got around to
reading the second half of
Michael Chrichton's
"The Terminal Man."
For more information on how the bands that show up on Saturn reflect weather patterns, check out the weather section on this planet at NJU.
The planet's got 30 named satellites and the most prominent feature a belt of dust and debris. I'm sure there's a lot of factors at play here--probably more than our own atmosphere. There's a lot of talk about cosmic rays actually being the cause of lightning on both Jupiter and Saturn but this topic is heavily debated.
Oh, and there are a few people who also consider encryption a matter of freedom of speech.
Funny the U.S. government targets Phil Zimmermann for three years but hardly raises so much as an eye when an encryption enabled OS is distributed. From Mr. Zimmermann's homepage: I think that his "criminal activity" was creating an encryption tool that allowed messages to be encrypted beyond what the United States government was capable of deciphering in a timely manner. Does anyone know if this is still enforced? Does anyone know what the max key length is now if it is? I think it was something like 128 bits (that the government could crack) around the time of PGP.