"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once, when I was six, I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal." --Maximilian Cohen, PI
I actually did this when I was six. My mom told me I'd go blind and I was thinking "no way" so I sat there staring at the sun for like 30 seconds, maybe a minute, till everything else disappeared. Believing in magical reality, I hoped it was some big secret, like if you actually did it and weren't afraid then you'd see some incredible truth. All it really did was some funky stuff to my vision. Then afterwards all I could see was a big circle wherever I looked. I could see it a little bit if I wasn't looking at anything else for years afterwards.
I don't think I'd really like to be six again. I was pretty stupid.
Google does essentially the same thing as Microsoft. They've expanded their services to all sorts of things not web searching and put links to these on their main search page.
If Microsoft integrated somebody else's search into their browser, whose would it be? Wouldn't they be giving that other search engine preference then? Or, if they left out search then everyone would say their browser is lacking that feature. Damned if they do and damned if they don't. It's not easy to be at the top, everyone always wants to criticize.
I do get a little frustrated when people treat computers as some kind of magical or animate object. I've heard (albeit incompetent) computer professions say things like, "The computer/program is _confused_". Its probably just projection:)
It's the same thing we might say about Grandma, even if we happen to be a medical professional. We're not going to give some technical description of Alzheimer's every time we describe the condition. Nobody wants to hear this especially if they already know it.
Diesel was cheaper than gas until the crude prices started to spike. My guess is the higher diesel prices may be based on what the market will bear. The majority of diesel consumption is for trucks and home heating, things people can not cut back on too much due to increasing cost. Gasoline consumption is (proportionally) more due to optional or recreational driving, so will decrease more with increased cost. Gasoline prices have been kept low by raising diesel prices, to maximize overall profit for the companies selling them.
Mandatory fingerprinting would have caused an uproar at some time long ago too. Now parents get their kids fingerprinted to _protect_ them. Well I say 'now' but I'm not sure. I haven't been a kid for a while but when I was, in the 80's, this was a big thing. They were having free fingerprinting for kids to protect them all over the place, and mine made me.
All you need to do is put enough scary stuff on the news, then convince people that they need to give up X Y or Z freedom to make it go away. It's avoidance conditioning.
There was something long ago about the US Congress having the exclusive power to declare war. Well they haven't in a long while -- WW2 was the last time -- yet we still seem to keep having these wars. Everybody seems to accept it as normal.
The main point of the military offering internet access to troops overseas is so you can communicate with your family, check and update military records, pay your bills, etc. Censorship doesn't seem to be to prevent people from seeing particular stuff but to limit bandwidth, by restricting fluff sites with pictures/movies/etc that are getting a lot of traffic.
I remember reading comments by the designer that the spearmen vs tank odds were adjusted in Civ (whichever one) to make the game(s) more interesting, and last longer. In the real world different sides stay about the same by espionage and information leak, which does not happen so quickly in the Civ games.
Spearmen could take out a tank though, when it runs out of gas or food or empty lavatory containers. The crew has to come out sometime.
I find everything multimedia runs much smoother on my Linux box than on my nearly identical XP box (both AMD 2800 or so). Movies which stutter on explosions etc in XP never seem to on Linux.
My guess is it's just the higher interactivity and better scheduler in Linux, and that the players tend to be more lightweight. There's been an improvement with 2.6 kernels.
I agree with you MPlayer is great. That the interface is light is a good thing. Most of the functionality is there (plus some) in the keyboard commands. Have you tried playing a movie faster/slower (+/-)? It speeds up or slows down the sound too. Frame advance plays a frame of sound. WTF on Win-* does this? You can play video directly to frames (then rebuild a new movie in your choice of format). You can grab video directly into the GIMP. Other features that aren't available in _any_ Win-* media player. Yeah, there's a steep learning curve. RTFM
There was a comment (below) suggesting worse performance on Linux might be due to not having a preemptible kernel. I didn't have preemptible kernel until a few months ago though and performance was equally good before, but the other poster said it was night & day. Maybe try recompiling with a preemptible kernel and see if it makes a difference.
Not always. Some animals have evolved to be cute and fuzzy like cats. They survive better _not_ being afraid of humans.
Cats have an added advantage surviving in a human dominated environment. As my Chinese friend told me when I asked whether Chinese people really eat cats: "No!! Cat sour."
The problem is that people confuse need and want. Once you've gotten used to something being available you think you need it. Really it's just that life is "easier" with it, or possibly that you have become addicted to the presence of it through habituation. You want it because it's familiar and makes you comfortable.
You know what we really need out here? An -mart. (insert your choice of big box store here).
Humanity replicates familiar environments, not because we need them, but because the presence of familiarity reduces stress. Any species would do the same thing. Ants build anthills. Cats mark their territories. Humans build highways and cities and suburbs and strip malls. It's our "thing".
I've bought more music & movies since I've been able to download stuff. Some stuff I've d/l'd I didn't like that much but knew someone who would, and I've bought a few of these as gifts. I wouldn't buy music or a movie as a gift if I hadn't seen or heard it first, and a lot of that stuff I'd never have seen or heard if I couldn't download it.
I think the *AA are mistaken in where their lost revenues are going. It's more likely decreasing just because of the increase in diversity of entertainment available. Before music, there was just books. Before videotape, there was just music and books. Then it was just music and movies and books. Now it's music, movies, videogames, books, and probably a lot of other things I don't know about. There's just more to pick from.
Product placement is an example of the use of suggestion in marketing. You are watching
something which you are giving your whole attention to, and somewhere in the scene, there
is a commercial product you will recognize. Maybe you like a character in a movie. Well
that character uses (insert brand name here). You might not even think you notice.
Companies sometimes pay well for this.
Pretty much all television and radio advertising uses principles of hypnosis. The subject is not
put into a sleep state, but becomes hyperattentive. Your trance induction is via the program you
are watching. You pay rapt attention to this, and frequently allow your perception of reality to
be at least partially suspended in order to imagine a fictional world. Then in this vulnerable
state of mind you get advertisements uploaded into your brain, over and over again.
I'm not a dinosaurologist but, it sounds like some of these beasties had big herbivorous animal teeth. Maybe they're big enough to eat small animals whole, but they probably would have preferred grass, if they're anything like the herbivorous animals that exist today with similar teeth.
Apparently you can just keep voting on the same movie as many times as you want. Either by going to the top 10 list and clicking on the one you like then voting for it then going back to the list etc or by writing a script to sumbit your vote many times. I voted on 2001 about 100 times and it seems to be up to #3 now.;)
I don't know whether this actually changes anything, they might be smart enough to sort | uniq or something on URL. I'm tempted to vote on 'Return of the Jedi' until it disappears. The ewoks just bugged me, almost as bad as Jarjar.
Solaris (NOT the Clooney version) was the second movie that popped into my head, after 2001. One of my favorite movies. I doubt it's well enough known to make any top 10 lists though.
I don't know if a comet has electrical charge or not, but it should hold one pretty well if it had it, since it's ungrounded. If it has a charge, or you could give it one, then matching trajectory with the comet at close range would allow you to use electromagnetic force to either repel or attract the comet in a direction perpendicular to its trajectory, altering its course. Sort of a primitive tractor beam. While this might not amount to much, if it's done far enough out in the comet's approach, it might be directed towards a gravity well that would alter it's trajectory further in the desired direction.
What you agree done with the information is not necessarily all that will be done with it. Some things can be done without your consent or knowledge. Theft of the information, obviously, but also legislative change, or academic research, may result in your information being used in some way that doesn't require you signing a new EULA first.
Suppose some information was released for research and showed demographic X (who watches some group of TV shows fairly frequently) was n times as likely to be involved in some criminal activity. No names had been released to the researchers, but they will be released to law enforcement, since the research showed there was a public interest to be served. Depending on the severity of the criminal activity involved, and the correlation of group X to the criminal activity, action may range from nothing, to surveillance, to ???
Re:Schools that don't require expensive books?
on
Textbooks With EULAs
·
· Score: 1
I think textbook selection has something to do with school accreditation doesn't it? So that would make it difficult for schools desiring to maintain accreditation (with whatever accrediting body) to be text-free. I'm in a MS program in Computer Science and some of the professors don't use the textbooks, but the school requires them to have one listed for the course anyway, I think because of the accreditation thing.
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I actually did this when I was six. My mom told me I'd go blind and I was thinking "no way" so I sat there staring at the sun for like 30 seconds, maybe a minute, till everything else disappeared. Believing in magical reality, I hoped it was some big secret, like if you actually did it and weren't afraid then you'd see some incredible truth. All it really did was some funky stuff to my vision. Then afterwards all I could see was a big circle wherever I looked. I could see it a little bit if I wasn't looking at anything else for years afterwards.
I don't think I'd really like to be six again. I was pretty stupid.
Me: "It's a fingerprint keyed lock you'll never get the key from me!!"
Crook: "We'll have to do it the hard way..." (Gets out Lorena Bobbitt scissors and eyes my thumb meaningfully)
If Microsoft integrated somebody else's search into their browser, whose would it be? Wouldn't they be giving that other search engine preference then? Or, if they left out search then everyone would say their browser is lacking that feature. Damned if they do and damned if they don't. It's not easy to be at the top, everyone always wants to criticize.
It's the same thing we might say about Grandma, even if we happen to be a medical professional. We're not going to give some technical description of Alzheimer's every time we describe the condition. Nobody wants to hear this especially if they already know it.
Language is a shorthand.
Diesel was cheaper than gas until the crude prices started to spike. My guess is the higher diesel prices may be based on what the market will bear. The majority of diesel consumption is for trucks and home heating, things people can not cut back on too much due to increasing cost. Gasoline consumption is (proportionally) more due to optional or recreational driving, so will decrease more with increased cost. Gasoline prices have been kept low by raising diesel prices, to maximize overall profit for the companies selling them.
All you need to do is put enough scary stuff on the news, then convince people that they need to give up X Y or Z freedom to make it go away. It's avoidance conditioning.
There was something long ago about the US Congress having the exclusive power to declare war. Well they haven't in a long while -- WW2 was the last time -- yet we still seem to keep having these wars. Everybody seems to accept it as normal.
The computer was probably bought by the military, for laptops they seem to get a lot of Dells.
The main point of the military offering internet access to troops overseas is so you can communicate with your family, check and update military records, pay your bills, etc. Censorship doesn't seem to be to prevent people from seeing particular stuff but to limit bandwidth, by restricting fluff sites with pictures/movies/etc that are getting a lot of traffic.
Spearmen could take out a tank though, when it runs out of gas or food or empty lavatory containers. The crew has to come out sometime.
But nobody would be able to read the play because the universe would compress to a singularity instantaneously under the weight of infinite monkeys.
My guess is it's just the higher interactivity and better scheduler in Linux, and that the players tend to be more lightweight. There's been an improvement with 2.6 kernels.
I agree with you MPlayer is great. That the interface is light is a good thing. Most of the functionality is there (plus some) in the keyboard commands. Have you tried playing a movie faster/slower (+/-)? It speeds up or slows down the sound too. Frame advance plays a frame of sound. WTF on Win-* does this? You can play video directly to frames (then rebuild a new movie in your choice of format). You can grab video directly into the GIMP. Other features that aren't available in _any_ Win-* media player. Yeah, there's a steep learning curve. RTFM
There was a comment (below) suggesting worse performance on Linux might be due to not having a preemptible kernel. I didn't have preemptible kernel until a few months ago though and performance was equally good before, but the other poster said it was night & day. Maybe try recompiling with a preemptible kernel and see if it makes a difference.
This is the most important one.
Cats have an added advantage surviving in a human dominated environment. As my Chinese friend told me when I asked whether Chinese people really eat cats: "No!! Cat sour."
You know what we really need out here? An -mart. (insert your choice of big box store here).
Humanity replicates familiar environments, not because we need them, but because the presence of familiarity reduces stress. Any species would do the same thing. Ants build anthills. Cats mark their territories. Humans build highways and cities and suburbs and strip malls. It's our "thing".
Science is a religion.
I think the *AA are mistaken in where their lost revenues are going. It's more likely decreasing just because of the increase in diversity of entertainment available. Before music, there was just books. Before videotape, there was just music and books. Then it was just music and movies and books. Now it's music, movies, videogames, books, and probably a lot of other things I don't know about. There's just more to pick from.
You can see a few examples. I guess Undercover Marketing is the term for this when you're not supposed to notice it. Product Placement.
Pretty much all television and radio advertising uses principles of hypnosis. The subject is not put into a sleep state, but becomes hyperattentive. Your trance induction is via the program you are watching. You pay rapt attention to this, and frequently allow your perception of reality to be at least partially suspended in order to imagine a fictional world. Then in this vulnerable state of mind you get advertisements uploaded into your brain, over and over again.
I'm not a dinosaurologist but, it sounds like some of these beasties had big herbivorous animal teeth. Maybe they're big enough to eat small animals whole, but they probably would have preferred grass, if they're anything like the herbivorous animals that exist today with similar teeth.
It's hard to get grass to jump into a tar pit.
Apparently you can just keep voting on the same movie as many times as you want. Either by going to the top 10 list and clicking on the one you like then voting for it then going back to the list etc or by writing a script to sumbit your vote many times. I voted on 2001 about 100 times and it seems to be up to #3 now. ;)
I don't know whether this actually changes anything, they might be smart enough to sort | uniq or something on URL. I'm tempted to vote on 'Return of the Jedi' until it disappears. The ewoks just bugged me, almost as bad as Jarjar.
Solaris (NOT the Clooney version) was the second movie that popped into my head, after 2001. One of my favorite movies. I doubt it's well enough known to make any top 10 lists though.
I don't know if a comet has electrical charge or not, but it should hold one pretty well if it had it, since it's ungrounded. If it has a charge, or you could give it one, then matching trajectory with the comet at close range would allow you to use electromagnetic force to either repel or attract the comet in a direction perpendicular to its trajectory, altering its course. Sort of a primitive tractor beam. While this might not amount to much, if it's done far enough out in the comet's approach, it might be directed towards a gravity well that would alter it's trajectory further in the desired direction.
Suppose some information was released for research and showed demographic X (who watches some group of TV shows fairly frequently) was n times as likely to be involved in some criminal activity. No names had been released to the researchers, but they will be released to law enforcement, since the research showed there was a public interest to be served. Depending on the severity of the criminal activity involved, and the correlation of group X to the criminal activity, action may range from nothing, to surveillance, to ???
hat size. 8 1/4 is like a pumpkin.
I think textbook selection has something to do with school accreditation doesn't it? So that would make it difficult for schools desiring to maintain accreditation (with whatever accrediting body) to be text-free. I'm in a MS program in Computer Science and some of the professors don't use the textbooks, but the school requires them to have one listed for the course anyway, I think because of the accreditation thing.