When I read "For residential wiring, some basic rules given in the NEC are:" in the Wikipedia article, I assumed that meant that those referred to AC. I could be wrong. What makes you think that the wikipedia article is talking about DC vs AC wiring?
As long as you get voiced quest text, and I get the option to see subtitles and/or skip them when I've read them (or done them already), I think we'd be happy with the same game. Few things are annoying in the same way as having to listen to the whole story all over again when you start a second character.
Knights of the Old Republic did a great job of this, so I have good expectations for SW:ToR. Unfortunately, with Cataclysm out soon, when would I play it?:)
This has some frightening ramifications for how much we believe video. Videos similar to the ones Wikileaks leaked, or news videos "live" on scene, could be doctored in near enough to real time that we consumers might never know it. Scary.
despite the prohibition on ex post facto laws, the Supreme Court ruled that a bought-off Congress could keep extending "copyright term" ad infinitum
A lawyer can correct me, but I believe you misunderstand "ex post facto" laws.
The prohibition is on laws which make illegal things which used to be legal, and then punish people for things they did in the past. (e.g., if they made abortion illegal, and then fined/imprisoned people that had gotten abortions last year.) The prohibition is NOT on making laws which legalize things which used to be illegal.
Sure, they've done it with radar telescopes. Sure, the CIA probably has done this for twenty years.
It's still impressive. I couldn't build it. Perhaps with several years of specialized experience, but then I'd still need to get the setup going. Most importantly, being able to go back and do it later from staored data makes it more impressive. It's non-trivial. It's awesome. It's not novel, but it's still impressive.
Note that I'd say the same thing about someone having built their house out of small marble cubes. Not exactly novel, but an impressive (and nerdy!) endeavour.
I think that's a result of the small audience, though. If Slashdot were only populated by geeks from the Bay Area, we'd see more bay area politics represented. As it is, most things are USA-centric. In a local paper, there are not enough volume of people so that a small minority can post Insightful or Interesting stuff, a smaller minority can troll away, another small minority can moderate, and a vast majority can read and consume.
Slashdot's moderation system works because we have so many readers, among other reasons. I get to moderate about once a week, and tend to blow it on a single article or two, sifting for interesting or informative stuff. I nearly never post (I rarely have something I feel is worth saying;)), because several others have already said it better, or because I don't know anything about the topic, but there is a large enough pool of knowledge that SOMEONE will know about particle physics, or the legal aspects of DMCA takedown notices, or research into talking yogurt. And, enough people will be moderating it that good stuff will float eventually.
"I found this attached to my car. Here are some photos I took of it. I don't think it's dangerous, but it's not mine. Someone must have lost this, can I fill out some 'I found this weird thing' paperwork, so that we can help find out who it belongs to?"
- If the police know it's an FBI tracking device, it's still not on your car. - You've done your due diligence in terms of handing Finding Strange Things that Aren't Yours (you're not keeping/destroying/ebaying it) - After a month, if they haven't found the owner... let them keep it or dispose of it as they see fit.
From what I read, he said that now that he's left three employers, he is unable to get a job with a new one. In the meantime everyone admonishes him to get a job, which he is already trying to do. "Get a job" isn't really helpful advice if one can't get one.
...initially available as something that costs more than a decent HTPC...
You translated $300 as "more than a decent HTPC". Can you tell me how you price out an HTPC for so little? I've been wanting to build one, but never seem to get it anywhere below $300, let alone below $500. Are there good guides out there on how to do it? My wife and I are looking to ditch DirectTV, but it's hard to convince myself I should build/buy an HTPC, esp when TIVO is similar and still perceived as expensive.
I did some more testing with Cleartype enabled and disabled yesterday, and with different fonts. It appears that Cleartype actually helps the legibility. (As one would hope.) I wish I could edit my original post, in fact.
That said, some fonts seem easier to read than others. On my normal monitor, Consolas looks fantastic. On the rotated one, not so much. Courier New looks slightly better but still annoying (but MUCH more legible with ClearType on!). I found the best looking font, for me, was Lucida Sans Typewriter (or Lucida Console). Lucida Console fits more text on my screen, but it is denser... I'm not sure which of the two I prefer. My only regret is that the ^ character is less distinctive from the other letters, but perhaps I am just not used to it.
It definitely looks enough better with Cleartype ON that when I turned it off I nearly exclaimed "gah! turn it back on!".
The imaginary line around the city does not absolve people in the fire department from their moral obligation to help anyone who needs help.
Imagine that there's a man who is stuck, injured, in a mineshaft on your neighbor's property. Perhaps it's your neighbor. Surely, common decency would suggest that we'd do what we could to help them. At what distance does the cost/risk of going there outweigh the benefit you are willing to do? A mile? Ten miles? Across the continent?
You want to talk about how all Muslims are terrorists and all black people are criminals and Barack Hussein Obama is an al-Qaeda robot sent back from the future to terminate American liberties and ensure the rise of the Kenyan cyber-hegemony? Bye now, and don't let the virtual door hit you in the virtual ass on the way out.
Do you challenge them on these beliefs? Do you tell them that their beliefs (and hatred and bigotry) are why you're no longer willing to consider them a friend?
While I doubt that your friends are deliberately trolling you (or others) by posting extreme things which they do not actually believe, it may be that they've never thought it through and seen the holes... or perhaps never had to defend the position. It's possible that challenging them may make them ignore you, or even re-hide their inner beliefs, but some of them might really be able to grow in their perception of the world.
I'm using Win XP with dual monitors, one is portrait and the other is the traditional landscape, and it's damned hard to tell the difference between the text. I finally looked really, really close and saw that they were both using alpha blending of some sort. Really, unless you put your nose on the monitor it's really hard to tell the difference.
I see a very noticeable difference between text on my two monitors.
It may be a matter of font choice, now that I think about it. XEmacs (right monitor), which I use for main code editing, is using Courier New; my other editor (UltraEdit32), which I normally keep on the other monitor, uses Consolas. When I drag UE32 over to my right monitor, the text is noticeably harder to read... but I think you may be right that Cleartype isn't to blame. (Sorry!)
I've verified that without Cleartype, it's even worse... so I think it's just that I don't enjoy looking at pixels with stacked subpixels?:) Ah well, sorry for my initial ire. Even better, it looks like Lucida Sans Typewriter looks better than Courier New did. I am kicking myself for not trying this one sooner.
If they confiscate your computer, I would expect any competent forensic analyst (IANAFA?) to image the drive, and probably physically remove it from your computer to prevent any such bricking.
Now, if it required a key generated by an outside service (log in with your current key, get a new one, all keys have an X day life on the server, so if you log in late they don't know who you are and can't give you a new key), that might work. (Interesting service to sell, but I don't think I'd want the customers it would attract.) That said, if your encryption key changed every week, you'd need to re-encrypt the data (drive?) every time too, right? Sounds inconvenient.
The trouble with turning an LCD monitor sideways is that text looks terrible. I use a widescreen monitor rotated for code visibility purposes. The excess cruft of IDE subwindows is much less disruptive. However, text (and even code) is significantly more readable (and less painful) on the smaller, non-rotated monitor.
Windows doesn't seem to properly do sub-pixel rendering on a rotated monitor -- all of the ClearType profiles are based on the configuration of subpixels in a normally-oriented monitor. Moreover, the settings don't seem to be on a per-monitor basis, which means that I would get to choose to have one of my two monitors look terrible and one be legible. Does anyone know of a ClearType (or similar) tool for Windows which properly adjusts to rotated screens? (I'm off to Google it... maybe it's easier to find this year?)
Then there's the issue of viewing angles -- most LCDs have a wide horizontal viewing range, but a narrow vertical viewing angle range. Rotating the monitor flips that. (It's not as big of a deal as you'd think, in that I sit in generally the same place, but it makes it harder to read stuff there if someone is sitting next to me.)
If they gave this as the reason for letting you go, I imagine you'd have grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Unfortunately, the likelihood of them telling you WHY they are letting you go is slim. Instead, they'd say, "sorry, our budget doesn't let us keep you", and you'd never know that the real reason was that they mistakenly thought you were a crack dealer / drunk driver / kitten murderer.
I know you jest, but I would imagine that the perfect match for someone who would rickroll their spouse would be someone who would get up and sing it with them too.... Darn you for getting that song stuck back in my head.:)
I like that the example given was VERY well suited for an obviously legal operation (fixing a corrupted Linux ISO) and NOT well suited for grabbing a movie. It's a genuinely useful and neat trick.
But for that guy at the very end, it's still a human decision that can be overridden by natural desires to protect human life. He can make up something about the target being obscured. He can stop it if he really thinks it's not achieving an objective. He knows intuitively that he will pay a high price for taking this life, because he has to take that memory home with him.
I read an interesting article in a mainstream magazine about Air Force drone pilots. Basically, they sit in Nevada and control drones in Afghanistan. I was expecting to read about how jaded and eager they were to press buttons at the drop of the hat, but what I found was the opposite.
The drones are capable of staying in the air for days at a time, monitoring a target (person). They have cameras running, and multiple shifts of human crews watching the video feeds and analyzing what's going on. In the process, they are able to ascertain with frightening accuracy that yes, this particular man is a terrorist: Here's the video feed of him buying some weapons, and here's the part X hours later where we just watched him create a roadside IED. Being able to keep someone under direct video surveillance (including thermal, if I recall correctly, so being indoors didn't help a lot) meant that for at least some targets, they were very sure that that person was a bad guy.
We have people halfway around the globe pushing buttons to kill people about whom we have reams of (video) evidence showing hostile behavior. I think that's better informed killing than having combat teams need to go in and do the same killing on foot, with potentially faulty intelligence, and without (at times) being able to mount multi-day uninterrupted surveillance.
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When I read "For residential wiring, some basic rules given in the NEC are:" in the Wikipedia article, I assumed that meant that those referred to AC. I could be wrong. What makes you think that the wikipedia article is talking about DC vs AC wiring?
As long as you get voiced quest text, and I get the option to see subtitles and/or skip them when I've read them (or done them already), I think we'd be happy with the same game. Few things are annoying in the same way as having to listen to the whole story all over again when you start a second character.
Knights of the Old Republic did a great job of this, so I have good expectations for SW:ToR. Unfortunately, with Cataclysm out soon, when would I play it? :)
Sounds like a fun read -- do you remember the title or author? (or perhaps even the character name for Googling?)
This has some frightening ramifications for how much we believe video. Videos similar to the ones Wikileaks leaked, or news videos "live" on scene, could be doctored in near enough to real time that we consumers might never know it. Scary.
A lawyer can correct me, but I believe you misunderstand "ex post facto" laws.
The prohibition is on laws which make illegal things which used to be legal, and then punish people for things they did in the past. (e.g., if they made abortion illegal, and then fined/imprisoned people that had gotten abortions last year.) The prohibition is NOT on making laws which legalize things which used to be illegal.
I'd say that it IS technically impressive.
Sure, they've done it with radar telescopes.
Sure, the CIA probably has done this for twenty years.
It's still impressive. I couldn't build it. Perhaps with several years of specialized experience, but then I'd still need to get the setup going. Most importantly, being able to go back and do it later from staored data makes it more impressive. It's non-trivial. It's awesome. It's not novel, but it's still impressive.
Note that I'd say the same thing about someone having built their house out of small marble cubes. Not exactly novel, but an impressive (and nerdy!) endeavour.
To avoid using a good tool, simply because no one has written a Free alternative, is myopic. Can you give a Free alternative?
I think that's a result of the small audience, though. If Slashdot were only populated by geeks from the Bay Area, we'd see more bay area politics represented. As it is, most things are USA-centric. In a local paper, there are not enough volume of people so that a small minority can post Insightful or Interesting stuff, a smaller minority can troll away, another small minority can moderate, and a vast majority can read and consume.
Slashdot's moderation system works because we have so many readers, among other reasons. I get to moderate about once a week, and tend to blow it on a single article or two, sifting for interesting or informative stuff. I nearly never post (I rarely have something I feel is worth saying ;)), because several others have already said it better, or because I don't know anything about the topic, but there is a large enough pool of knowledge that SOMEONE will know about particle physics, or the legal aspects of DMCA takedown notices, or research into talking yogurt. And, enough people will be moderating it that good stuff will float eventually.
Better yet, walk into your local police station.
"I found this attached to my car. Here are some photos I took of it. I don't think it's dangerous, but it's not mine. Someone must have lost this, can I fill out some 'I found this weird thing' paperwork, so that we can help find out who it belongs to?"
- If the police know it's an FBI tracking device, it's still not on your car. ... let them keep it or dispose of it as they see fit.
- You've done your due diligence in terms of handing Finding Strange Things that Aren't Yours (you're not keeping/destroying/ebaying it)
- After a month, if they haven't found the owner
From what I read, he said that now that he's left three employers, he is unable to get a job with a new one. In the meantime everyone admonishes him to get a job, which he is already trying to do. "Get a job" isn't really helpful advice if one can't get one.
You translated $300 as "more than a decent HTPC". Can you tell me how you price out an HTPC for so little? I've been wanting to build one, but never seem to get it anywhere below $300, let alone below $500. Are there good guides out there on how to do it? My wife and I are looking to ditch DirectTV, but it's hard to convince myself I should build/buy an HTPC, esp when TIVO is similar and still perceived as expensive.
I did some more testing with Cleartype enabled and disabled yesterday, and with different fonts. It appears that Cleartype actually helps the legibility. (As one would hope.) I wish I could edit my original post, in fact.
That said, some fonts seem easier to read than others. On my normal monitor, Consolas looks fantastic. On the rotated one, not so much. Courier New looks slightly better but still annoying (but MUCH more legible with ClearType on!). I found the best looking font, for me, was Lucida Sans Typewriter (or Lucida Console). Lucida Console fits more text on my screen, but it is denser... I'm not sure which of the two I prefer. My only regret is that the ^ character is less distinctive from the other letters, but perhaps I am just not used to it.
It definitely looks enough better with Cleartype ON that when I turned it off I nearly exclaimed "gah! turn it back on!".
That could be pretty financially troublesome. They'd probably be forced to mortgage their home to cover it...
Imagine that there's a man who is stuck, injured, in a mineshaft on your neighbor's property. Perhaps it's your neighbor. Surely, common decency would suggest that we'd do what we could to help them. At what distance does the cost/risk of going there outweigh the benefit you are willing to do? A mile? Ten miles? Across the continent?
Do you challenge them on these beliefs? Do you tell them that their beliefs (and hatred and bigotry) are why you're no longer willing to consider them a friend?
While I doubt that your friends are deliberately trolling you (or others) by posting extreme things which they do not actually believe, it may be that they've never thought it through and seen the holes... or perhaps never had to defend the position. It's possible that challenging them may make them ignore you, or even re-hide their inner beliefs, but some of them might really be able to grow in their perception of the world.
I see a very noticeable difference between text on my two monitors.
It may be a matter of font choice, now that I think about it. XEmacs (right monitor), which I use for main code editing, is using Courier New; my other editor (UltraEdit32), which I normally keep on the other monitor, uses Consolas. When I drag UE32 over to my right monitor, the text is noticeably harder to read... but I think you may be right that Cleartype isn't to blame. (Sorry!)
I've verified that without Cleartype, it's even worse... so I think it's just that I don't enjoy looking at pixels with stacked subpixels? :) Ah well, sorry for my initial ire. Even better, it looks like Lucida Sans Typewriter looks better than Courier New did. I am kicking myself for not trying this one sooner.
I seem to recall having used that, but thank you for linking that. I'll try it again and see if it helps.
If they confiscate your computer, I would expect any competent forensic analyst (IANAFA?) to image the drive, and probably physically remove it from your computer to prevent any such bricking.
Now, if it required a key generated by an outside service (log in with your current key, get a new one, all keys have an X day life on the server, so if you log in late they don't know who you are and can't give you a new key), that might work. (Interesting service to sell, but I don't think I'd want the customers it would attract.) That said, if your encryption key changed every week, you'd need to re-encrypt the data (drive?) every time too, right? Sounds inconvenient.
Sure, you just risk getting harassed and assaulted by them as a result.
The trouble with turning an LCD monitor sideways is that text looks terrible. I use a widescreen monitor rotated for code visibility purposes. The excess cruft of IDE subwindows is much less disruptive. However, text (and even code) is significantly more readable (and less painful) on the smaller, non-rotated monitor.
Windows doesn't seem to properly do sub-pixel rendering on a rotated monitor -- all of the ClearType profiles are based on the configuration of subpixels in a normally-oriented monitor. Moreover, the settings don't seem to be on a per-monitor basis, which means that I would get to choose to have one of my two monitors look terrible and one be legible. Does anyone know of a ClearType (or similar) tool for Windows which properly adjusts to rotated screens? (I'm off to Google it... maybe it's easier to find this year?)
Then there's the issue of viewing angles -- most LCDs have a wide horizontal viewing range, but a narrow vertical viewing angle range. Rotating the monitor flips that. (It's not as big of a deal as you'd think, in that I sit in generally the same place, but it makes it harder to read stuff there if someone is sitting next to me.)
Keeping in mind that most people of us are less competent than we think we are, it's an especially good warning. :)
If they gave this as the reason for letting you go, I imagine you'd have grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Unfortunately, the likelihood of them telling you WHY they are letting you go is slim. Instead, they'd say, "sorry, our budget doesn't let us keep you", and you'd never know that the real reason was that they mistakenly thought you were a crack dealer / drunk driver / kitten murderer.
I know you jest, but I would imagine that the perfect match for someone who would rickroll their spouse would be someone who would get up and sing it with them too.... Darn you for getting that song stuck back in my head. :)
I like that the example given was VERY well suited for an obviously legal operation (fixing a corrupted Linux ISO) and NOT well suited for grabbing a movie. It's a genuinely useful and neat trick.
I read an interesting article in a mainstream magazine about Air Force drone pilots. Basically, they sit in Nevada and control drones in Afghanistan. I was expecting to read about how jaded and eager they were to press buttons at the drop of the hat, but what I found was the opposite.
The drones are capable of staying in the air for days at a time, monitoring a target (person). They have cameras running, and multiple shifts of human crews watching the video feeds and analyzing what's going on. In the process, they are able to ascertain with frightening accuracy that yes, this particular man is a terrorist: Here's the video feed of him buying some weapons, and here's the part X hours later where we just watched him create a roadside IED. Being able to keep someone under direct video surveillance (including thermal, if I recall correctly, so being indoors didn't help a lot) meant that for at least some targets, they were very sure that that person was a bad guy.
We have people halfway around the globe pushing buttons to kill people about whom we have reams of (video) evidence showing hostile behavior. I think that's better informed killing than having combat teams need to go in and do the same killing on foot, with potentially faulty intelligence, and without (at times) being able to mount multi-day uninterrupted surveillance.