DOS had virtual desktops!! And I think it worked with Win 3.1 as well. I just ran it under DOS in order to run a multiline BBS. IIRC it worked a lot the same way that Alt-F1... does under Linux for virtual consoles. Each session got a virtual machine to run in.
First off: Go to Steve's Digicams and check the ratings for batteries; they have done extensive testing using a custom test jig that simulates actual use.
Now my comments: I use two different varieties, for different purposes.
NiMH - The *best* for high drain devices, and stuff that you will use for a short period of time then shelf. Digital cameras, FRS radios, gameboys in our house all use these.
Pros: Great power delivery, great capacity. Actually lasts several times longer than alkaline in some devices such as digital cameras. Can be recharged hundreds of times, especially if charged in a high quality charger. Landfillable (though you should still recycle them).
Cons: Self-discharges; charge them up, put them on the shelf, a month later they're half dead. Only deliver 1.2V so some (very few, actually) devices think they're nearly dead when you put them in. However, they stay at 1.2v until they're about totally dead.
Rechargable alkaline (Ray-O-Vac Renewals) - I use these in low drain devices, and things that must sit around for a long time before being used. Palm pilot, remote controls, flashlights get these.
Pros: puts out full 1.5v, some devices like these better. Long charged shelf life; can be charged and still retain most of the charge months later.
Cons: proprietary system, somewhat expensive. You must buy Ray-O-Vac's charger, and it's not a very good charger. Can only be charged tens of times. As toxic as alkalines; should be taken to recycling.
Also still around are NiCad. Don't bother. Lower capacity than NiMH, not much cheaper, all the cons, not all of the pros, plus they're toxic (cadmium) and should DEFINITELY be recycled rather than landfilled.
To make rechargable alkalines last longest, you should recharge them when they're no more than half full when possible; top them off when you get the chance. Running them totally dead really kicks their ass; I've had them last only 10 charges when doing that.
The vast majority of my use is NiMH. Not all are the same, and many mAh ratings lie. Best source of really good chargers and batteries is Thomas Distributing. The Maha charger they have, with both 110v and 12v charging options, is awesome.
I can't imagine why more people don't use rechargables. I'm a pretty disorganized person, but I'm able to keep a plastic box full of charged batteries, ready for use in the house. It kind of makes me sick to see the huge bulk packs of AA cells in the store, on the endcaps in every department, moving like hell, while the rechargables are hidden on the bottom rack in the back of the photo department.
What's really sickening is when I go to the recycling center; they fill four 30 gallon trash cans with alkalines every week. Consider that this is mid-sized town (Ann Arbor, MI), and that probably, at best, 5% of the batteries make it there (AA is a pretty green town, but even so 5% is almost certainly high). This means there are probably millions of tons of batteries hitting the landfills every year.
(disclaimer; I have no affiliation with sites mentioned in this post, I'm just a happy customer)
Agree WinME is completely useless crap. If you need a 9x variant for games, Win98 2nd ed is the way to go. ME seems to go out of its way to cause pain.
WinXP is only slow until you shut off all the fisher-price playdoh crap GUI "enhancements" - once you do that, it's nearly indestinguishable from W2K, except it's got a few new programs (movie maker, etc) and it says "Windows XP" on the start menu.
I was JUST 2 HOURS AGO out at directv.com - I am currently a Dish Network subscriber, and I was thinking about switching because of DirecTiVO - the integrated DirecTV/TiVO combo. Dish Network has a PVR but no TiVO functionality. (yes, a regular TiVO will integrate but only one tuner).
I was very close to ordering DirecTiVO and signing up. I like Dish Network better in general, but TiVO swung the decision for me.
I'm glad this was posted. No way in hell am I switching to DirecTV now. This swung it WAY back the other way.
I actually respected DirecTV/Hughes when I read about the very clever hack they pulled on card reprogrammers a couple of years ago (story here). That's just clever, and I salute them. Technical solutions are fine.
However, anybody starts shotgunning lawyers, they just lost me.
having a friend as a lawyer to write you up a nice letter can save thousands of dollars
I've never needed it, but a friend has told me that in the vast majority of cases, if some company is giving you hassles, paying $100 to a lawyer to draft a 10 minute letter will get them to cut it out IMMEDIATELY almost all the time.
He has done this several times; company jerks him around, won't give him info, won't do what they said, he has his laywer write a letter, suddenly they're all about customer service.
He's never had to go to court or anything; just getting a letter from a lawyer wakes people up and generally gets them to calm down/go away/leave you alone. They're looking for the soft targets, or just hoping you'll cave without talking to a lawyer.
Irritating that stuff like that is necessary, but it's the truth.
We're getting on its case because it's so good. It's ALMOST THERE as an MS Office killer. We all want to be able to deploy it in place of MS Office.
If your attitude is "It's free so it's OK for it to suck" then do you not think there's any reason to make open source software that's as good or better than commercial stuff?
It's fine that it's good enough for small companies and schools. But it'll be even better when, one day, it's good enough to displace MS Office in really large enterprises! It won't get there if everyone is just saying "It's good enough for gramma to write letters, let's stop working on it."
Secondly its annoying that it naggs you if you save in.doc format and tries to make you use its own proprietary format.
Tools / Options / Load/Save / General. Edit to your heart's content. Been there since 1.0.1 IIRC.
For me, that's NOT what I want. I want the DEFAULT to be OO format, but if I open up a word.DOC file and try to save it again, I want it to just save it, not pester me every time.
It's been available in the *nix versions for a long time. It's not been available in the Windows version up to now. I just tried it in Windows and it works fine in this release.
Many people feel like this until they have children.
Honestly, I was very uncertain about having kids. Scared, in fact. My kids are now 11 and 6.
At some point after the first kid was born, I realized "THIS is what it's all about. This is IT, I wan't even living before. I had no idea what life was about before now."
I now live in a greatly expanded world that I wouldn't even have known if I'd followed my initial feelings. Just like I'm sure you are thinking right now as you read this, when I heard people talking like this before, I thought "there goes a whipped idiot." I won't argue with you, because nobody would believe it until they've been there, so I'd be wasting my time.
I have friends without kids, and they're happy. I have kids, and I'm happy. Whatever works for you, that's great, but realize that (I think, for most people, certainly for me) kids are absolutely the best thing that has or will ever happen to me.
When I talk to older people, in their 80's and 90's, one thing that they often talk about is that ALL of their friends are dead. People sometimes live 10 or 20 years past when most/all of their friends are gone. Those unlucky enough to be on that end of the bell curve, AND who don't have kids, will typically spend their last decade or so lonely and lost, staring into space in a world that they no longer have any connection to, and that, finally, they realize that they have left no lasting impression on.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to live vicariously through my kids, but in the end, kids are the only way (short of the improbable chance of becoming a billionaire or making a world-changing breakthrough) to have a real, positive effect on the future. Just as we live with such wonderful advantages because of our ancestors, I think it's important to do something to make sure that future generations are in some way positively impacted by your life.
I didn't have kids specifically to leave a legacy, nor do I think about it from day to day, but those who have kids have a duty to both them and the world in general to try to help the kids understand that we all have a responsibility to try to make things better. Very few people can do enough within the span of their own lives to make any real difference. But if you continue a line of a family in which each generation does a little bit of good, the "compound interest" will start adding up.
Well, if the phone is completely incapable of producing these sounds, then this ringtone will be every bit as effective as any other ultrasonic pest repeller.
Yes, I saw a tv report on these something like 15 years ago. They had a big sheet of vinyl on a drum, and a printhead that consisted of computer-controlled airbrush pens that slowly crept down the drum as the drum rotated. The could print photorealistic (from the right distance) stuff at a fraction of the setup time that it normally took.
I'm running onboard audio and video. I'm not a gamer, I don't even play solitare on this machine, it's strictly web/email and video editing. I've got a new Abit mainboard with the nVidia chipset. I have no problems with it. I did throw a demo of a 3D game on it, and it looked pretty cool. Played it for 5 minutes then wiped it.
I see people making blanket statements like "on-board audio is not good enough" - I'd have to believe that there is a WIDE range of quality in on-board audio. After all, there's no reason a manufacturer couldn't build an Audigy into a mainboard if they wanted to. There's nothing magic about having the chips on a separate board.
Most on-board audio is pretty lousy but there are better ones. The newer ones even have SPDIF outputs so you can run digital into a 5.1 surround system; both the last couple of mainboards that I bought have this.
http://www.beverage-digest.com/editorial/970801.ht ml
How produced? "It's reverse osmosis and carbon filtered. Reverse osmosis takes out impurities and carbon filtration (removes) any odors... Aquafina is (produced at) 11 sites in the US. (Not all) soft drink bottlers can run it... It's a high tech, state-of-the-art purification system."
All that said, I gotta tell you, I bought a case of Aquafina in Michigan City, Indiana a couple of weekends ago, and it was pretty vile. By contrast, the Aquafina here in Michigan is fine, though I generally buy a bottle when I'm hard up for some water, then refill it out of the tap, since the tap water in Ann Arbor tastes just as good as the Aquafina.
The stuff I like best is the unsoftened stuff out of our well. It's a little chunky (high minerals incl iron) but I like it like that. The city tap water at work is OK too, tastes good, not nearly the mineral content.
R. A. Heinlein, _The Roads Must Roll_ And it was a 5 MPH difference between lanes. Every lane has to have separate motors, etc, so you don't want too many of them. 5 MPH is a brisk walk so it's not hard to move from one to the next.
They did an episode on bottled water. It turns out that bottled water is NOT tested or regulated by any government agency unless it crosses state lines, but tap water is constantly tested. The federal government has over 100 people that test tap water, but less than one person to test bottled water.
In an independent study that they quoted, more than half the brands of bottled water would not have passed tap water quality specs.
The funny part of the ep was when they went to a NYC restaurant and had a "water steward" BS'ing people into paying $8 for a bottle of water from the hose in the alley with a phony label on it; people were making up all kinds of BS about how "sparkling" and "crisp" it was, and how they each had a different character even though we knew they all came from the same hose.
Around here (Ann Arbor, MI), the tap water is VERY good tasting; I bought some bottled water in Chicago a couple of weekends ago and it tasted FAR worse than what comes out of the tap here. I actually think the tap water tastes better than the bottled stuff, but people still buy the bottles.
Also, Aquafina/etc is NOT distilled, it's merely filtered. Taste distilled water sometime; it's nasty. Aquafina is just Pepsi with no carbonation or flavoring; really, it comes from the same lines, it's the water that they normally use to mix soda. So you can pay $1 for a bottle of Pepsi, or $1 for a bottle of Pepsi without the additives.
As has been stated in this thread several times already, the radiometer won't work in a vacuum. It absorbs the photons on the black side, but then the energy is used to kick molecules away, providing a thrust. In a vacuum, the plate just gets hot, there's no air molecules hitting it to kick.
A solar sail will have to work totally differently than a radiometer.
According to the sheet that came with mine, those work because the black side heats up, and the air molecules that come in contact with it bounce off harder than those that hit the white side.
IOW, they work in a partial vacuum, not a complete vacuum. If you evacuated all the air from one, it wouldn't work.
There was a discovery channel special on the engineering behind the Boeing 777. It showed some high-speed footage of bird carcasses being neatly sliced into chicken steaks as they went through the turbine.
They did all kinds of crap to those engines. They wanted to prove that they were so much more safe than previous engines that two of them was actually safer than 3 or 4 of the existing types of engines (less large engines being more fuel efficient than more smaller engines).
It's only primarily visual because it's become so. It's not by its nature visual. You can make web sites that are very accessible by blind people, or you can make them completely unusable by blind people. The most common product to screw up handicapped access is also reviled by many sighted people: Flash animations. I'm sure many people would cheer if all-flash websites were outlawed.
Actually, the vast majority of the people that I know pronounce it the same way that I do.
There's no overriding reason that I can think of to pronounce it one way or the other, so I go with the definition.
I also go and look up words in the dictionary to find out how they're supposed to be pronounced; I don't generally think of that as "bowing to authority."
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DOS had virtual desktops!! And I think it worked with Win 3.1 as well. I just ran it under DOS in order to run a multiline BBS. IIRC it worked a lot the same way that Alt-F1... does under Linux for virtual consoles. Each session got a virtual machine to run in.
Hope you don't have your swap file on there, or it's probably going to be dead quickly. You can't write to CF an unlimited number of times.
Is it really that hard to get these units right?
Possibly, since it seems to be difficult for him to spell "lose" properly, as well; he's using the completely different word "loose" instead.
First off:
Go to Steve's Digicams and check the ratings for batteries; they have done extensive testing using a custom test jig that simulates actual use.
Now my comments:
I use two different varieties, for different purposes.
NiMH - The *best* for high drain devices, and stuff that you will use for a short period of time then shelf. Digital cameras, FRS radios, gameboys in our house all use these.
Pros: Great power delivery, great capacity. Actually lasts several times longer than alkaline in some devices such as digital cameras. Can be recharged hundreds of times, especially if charged in a high quality charger. Landfillable (though you should still recycle them).
Cons: Self-discharges; charge them up, put them on the shelf, a month later they're half dead. Only deliver 1.2V so some (very few, actually) devices think they're nearly dead when you put them in. However, they stay at 1.2v until they're about totally dead.
Rechargable alkaline (Ray-O-Vac Renewals) - I use these in low drain devices, and things that must sit around for a long time before being used. Palm pilot, remote controls, flashlights get these.
Pros: puts out full 1.5v, some devices like these better. Long charged shelf life; can be charged and still retain most of the charge months later.
Cons: proprietary system, somewhat expensive. You must buy Ray-O-Vac's charger, and it's not a very good charger. Can only be charged tens of times. As toxic as alkalines; should be taken to recycling.
Also still around are NiCad. Don't bother. Lower capacity than NiMH, not much cheaper, all the cons, not all of the pros, plus they're toxic (cadmium) and should DEFINITELY be recycled rather than landfilled.
To make rechargable alkalines last longest, you should recharge them when they're no more than half full when possible; top them off when you get the chance. Running them totally dead really kicks their ass; I've had them last only 10 charges when doing that.
The vast majority of my use is NiMH. Not all are the same, and many mAh ratings lie. Best source of really good chargers and batteries is Thomas Distributing. The Maha charger they have, with both 110v and 12v charging options, is awesome.
I can't imagine why more people don't use rechargables. I'm a pretty disorganized person, but I'm able to keep a plastic box full of charged batteries, ready for use in the house. It kind of makes me sick to see the huge bulk packs of AA cells in the store, on the endcaps in every department, moving like hell, while the rechargables are hidden on the bottom rack in the back of the photo department.
What's really sickening is when I go to the recycling center; they fill four 30 gallon trash cans with alkalines every week. Consider that this is mid-sized town (Ann Arbor, MI), and that probably, at best, 5% of the batteries make it there (AA is a pretty green town, but even so 5% is almost certainly high). This means there are probably millions of tons of batteries hitting the landfills every year.
(disclaimer; I have no affiliation with sites mentioned in this post, I'm just a happy customer)
Agree WinME is completely useless crap. If you need a 9x variant for games, Win98 2nd ed is the way to go. ME seems to go out of its way to cause pain.
WinXP is only slow until you shut off all the fisher-price playdoh crap GUI "enhancements" - once you do that, it's nearly indestinguishable from W2K, except it's got a few new programs (movie maker, etc) and it says "Windows XP" on the start menu.
I was JUST 2 HOURS AGO out at directv.com - I am currently a Dish Network subscriber, and I was thinking about switching because of DirecTiVO - the integrated DirecTV/TiVO combo. Dish Network has a PVR but no TiVO functionality. (yes, a regular TiVO will integrate but only one tuner).
I was very close to ordering DirecTiVO and signing up. I like Dish Network better in general, but TiVO swung the decision for me.
I'm glad this was posted. No way in hell am I switching to DirecTV now. This swung it WAY back the other way.
I actually respected DirecTV/Hughes when I read about the very clever hack they pulled on card reprogrammers a couple of years ago (story here). That's just clever, and I salute them. Technical solutions are fine.
However, anybody starts shotgunning lawyers, they just lost me.
having a friend as a lawyer to write you up a nice letter can save thousands of dollars
I've never needed it, but a friend has told me that in the vast majority of cases, if some company is giving you hassles, paying $100 to a lawyer to draft a 10 minute letter will get them to cut it out IMMEDIATELY almost all the time.
He has done this several times; company jerks him around, won't give him info, won't do what they said, he has his laywer write a letter, suddenly they're all about customer service.
He's never had to go to court or anything; just getting a letter from a lawyer wakes people up and generally gets them to calm down/go away/leave you alone. They're looking for the soft targets, or just hoping you'll cave without talking to a lawyer.
Irritating that stuff like that is necessary, but it's the truth.
We're getting on its case because it's so good. It's ALMOST THERE as an MS Office killer. We all want to be able to deploy it in place of MS Office.
If your attitude is "It's free so it's OK for it to suck" then do you not think there's any reason to make open source software that's as good or better than commercial stuff?
It's fine that it's good enough for small companies and schools. But it'll be even better when, one day, it's good enough to displace MS Office in really large enterprises! It won't get there if everyone is just saying "It's good enough for gramma to write letters, let's stop working on it."
For me, that's NOT what I want. I want the DEFAULT to be OO format, but if I open up a word
It's been available in the *nix versions for a long time. It's not been available in the Windows version up to now. I just tried it in Windows and it works fine in this release.
Many people feel like this until they have children.
Honestly, I was very uncertain about having kids. Scared, in fact. My kids are now 11 and 6.
At some point after the first kid was born, I realized "THIS is what it's all about. This is IT, I wan't even living before. I had no idea what life was about before now."
I now live in a greatly expanded world that I wouldn't even have known if I'd followed my initial feelings. Just like I'm sure you are thinking right now as you read this, when I heard people talking like this before, I thought "there goes a whipped idiot." I won't argue with you, because nobody would believe it until they've been there, so I'd be wasting my time.
I have friends without kids, and they're happy. I have kids, and I'm happy. Whatever works for you, that's great, but realize that (I think, for most people, certainly for me) kids are absolutely the best thing that has or will ever happen to me.
When I talk to older people, in their 80's and 90's, one thing that they often talk about is that ALL of their friends are dead. People sometimes live 10 or 20 years past when most/all of their friends are gone. Those unlucky enough to be on that end of the bell curve, AND who don't have kids, will typically spend their last decade or so lonely and lost, staring into space in a world that they no longer have any connection to, and that, finally, they realize that they have left no lasting impression on.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to live vicariously through my kids, but in the end, kids are the only way (short of the improbable chance of becoming a billionaire or making a world-changing breakthrough) to have a real, positive effect on the future. Just as we live with such wonderful advantages because of our ancestors, I think it's important to do something to make sure that future generations are in some way positively impacted by your life.
I didn't have kids specifically to leave a legacy, nor do I think about it from day to day, but those who have kids have a duty to both them and the world in general to try to help the kids understand that we all have a responsibility to try to make things better. Very few people can do enough within the span of their own lives to make any real difference. But if you continue a line of a family in which each generation does a little bit of good, the "compound interest" will start adding up.
Well, if the phone is completely incapable of producing these sounds, then this ringtone will be every bit as effective as any other ultrasonic pest repeller.
Yes, I saw a tv report on these something like 15 years ago. They had a big sheet of vinyl on a drum, and a printhead that consisted of computer-controlled airbrush pens that slowly crept down the drum as the drum rotated. The could print photorealistic (from the right distance) stuff at a fraction of the setup time that it normally took.
I'm running onboard audio and video. I'm not a gamer, I don't even play solitare on this machine, it's strictly web/email and video editing. I've got a new Abit mainboard with the nVidia chipset. I have no problems with it. I did throw a demo of a 3D game on it, and it looked pretty cool. Played it for 5 minutes then wiped it.
I see people making blanket statements like "on-board audio is not good enough" - I'd have to believe that there is a WIDE range of quality in on-board audio. After all, there's no reason a manufacturer couldn't build an Audigy into a mainboard if they wanted to. There's nothing magic about having the chips on a separate board.
Most on-board audio is pretty lousy but there are better ones. The newer ones even have SPDIF outputs so you can run digital into a 5.1 surround system; both the last couple of mainboards that I bought have this.
All that said, I gotta tell you, I bought a case of Aquafina in Michigan City, Indiana a couple of weekends ago, and it was pretty vile. By contrast, the Aquafina here in Michigan is fine, though I generally buy a bottle when I'm hard up for some water, then refill it out of the tap, since the tap water in Ann Arbor tastes just as good as the Aquafina.
The stuff I like best is the unsoftened stuff out of our well. It's a little chunky (high minerals incl iron) but I like it like that. The city tap water at work is OK too, tastes good, not nearly the mineral content.
In **Heinlein**'s (not Asimov's) story, yes, they had seats, but heck, they also had DINERS on the long-haul tracks.
Obviously, no hand rails, unless they can be attached to the track itself.
R. A. Heinlein, _The Roads Must Roll_
And it was a 5 MPH difference between lanes. Every lane has to have separate motors, etc, so you don't want too many of them. 5 MPH is a brisk walk so it's not hard to move from one to the next.
They did an episode on bottled water. It turns out that bottled water is NOT tested or regulated by any government agency unless it crosses state lines, but tap water is constantly tested. The federal government has over 100 people that test tap water, but less than one person to test bottled water.
In an independent study that they quoted, more than half the brands of bottled water would not have passed tap water quality specs.
The funny part of the ep was when they went to a NYC restaurant and had a "water steward" BS'ing people into paying $8 for a bottle of water from the hose in the alley with a phony label on it; people were making up all kinds of BS about how "sparkling" and "crisp" it was, and how they each had a different character even though we knew they all came from the same hose.
Around here (Ann Arbor, MI), the tap water is VERY good tasting; I bought some bottled water in Chicago a couple of weekends ago and it tasted FAR worse than what comes out of the tap here. I actually think the tap water tastes better than the bottled stuff, but people still buy the bottles.
Also, Aquafina/etc is NOT distilled, it's merely filtered. Taste distilled water sometime; it's nasty. Aquafina is just Pepsi with no carbonation or flavoring; really, it comes from the same lines, it's the water that they normally use to mix soda. So you can pay $1 for a bottle of Pepsi, or $1 for a bottle of Pepsi without the additives.
As has been stated in this thread several times already, the radiometer won't work in a vacuum. It absorbs the photons on the black side, but then the energy is used to kick molecules away, providing a thrust. In a vacuum, the plate just gets hot, there's no air molecules hitting it to kick.
A solar sail will have to work totally differently than a radiometer.
According to the sheet that came with mine, those work because the black side heats up, and the air molecules that come in contact with it bounce off harder than those that hit the white side.
IOW, they work in a partial vacuum, not a complete vacuum. If you evacuated all the air from one, it wouldn't work.
There was a discovery channel special on the engineering behind the Boeing 777. It showed some high-speed footage of bird carcasses being neatly sliced into chicken steaks as they went through the turbine.
They did all kinds of crap to those engines. They wanted to prove that they were so much more safe than previous engines that two of them was actually safer than 3 or 4 of the existing types of engines (less large engines being more fuel efficient than more smaller engines).
This would discriminate against morons who don't know what a vowel is and cain't get on with the addin' up.
It's only primarily visual because it's become so. It's not by its nature visual. You can make web sites that are very accessible by blind people, or you can make them completely unusable by blind people. The most common product to screw up handicapped access is also reviled by many sighted people: Flash animations. I'm sure many people would cheer if all-flash websites were outlawed.
Actually, the vast majority of the people that I know pronounce it the same way that I do.
There's no overriding reason that I can think of to pronounce it one way or the other, so I go with the definition.
I also go and look up words in the dictionary to find out how they're supposed to be pronounced; I don't generally think of that as "bowing to authority."
There's no additional cost. You've paid for it already, might as well use it.