Funny, my first thought was of the scan visor from the Metroid Prime series. All you'd need would be to build in a universal remote control, and you're good to go.
Now, if they can just figure out how to stuff a 6' tall human into a 2' diameter armored beach-ball...
Good luck if you ever want to use wireless with that Ubuntu computer.
Ironically, one of the massive complaints I had with XP Home was the wireless support. Particularly on university WLANs, which have their own funky Web-based login procedures, the wireless connection would drop out at random intervals and with no indication from Wireless Connection Manager whatsoever. I wouldn't know anything was amiss until the VPN connection would drop and Groupwise would commit suicide at the same time. (Lose the Post Office Agent connection = "Groupwise will now exit" with no warning and no recovery. Spectacularly annoying, particularly if you'd been working on a complex email and the drop occurred before an auto-save.)
Ubuntu has never done that or anything like it to me, and works on any open wireless point I care to use. I can't imagine going back.
Funny, that - when Mom's old Gateway laptop locked up and had to be wiped two or three years ago, all she had to do was call Apple Support to get her songs back. They said "oh gosh, we're sorry to hear that, maybe you'd like to consider switching to a Mac? Anyway, we re-authorized all your purchases, but do be sure to back them up this time." Grant you, it wasn't a point-and-click service, but they didn't give her one ounce of grief about giving her access to the stuff she'd bought from them.
Ironically enough, she DID wind up buying a Mac when the Gateway finally went to the great tech shop in the sky. Gotta love that Apple customer care.
According to several of the replying posters on TFA's page, Microsoft no longer offers that program due to concerns about people "recycling" their MS Points (i.e. beating one set of games, getting their points back and then buying new games).
I don't have a 360 myself, so I'm not familiar with how the XBox Live system works, but I can't imagine why the support techs can't simply re-activate this gentleman's games. I've never run across an online marketplace that doesn't include some provision for restoring purchased content that the buyer can prove he purchased (and he clearly can, as the MS/XBox reps apparently had access to his entire Live purchasing history.)
Can anyone else confirm or deny that the program is still in operation, or that MS/XBox support has come up with some means of restoring content to owners of malfunctioning consoles?
+1 to that. My StarTac was absolutely bombproof - rode around in my backpack for four years of undergrad, got dropped into a toilet, fell down three flights of stairs, exposed to all kinds of chemical hazards (other student spilled H2SO4 on my backpack in chem lab), magnetic insults (rather memorable trip through an MRI) and temperature extremes (left in cars ranging from -10 to +105 F). It survived all of that in perfect working order, with just a few etches and scratches on the case to show for its adventures. Even better, I only had one broken antenna (phone was in a belt clip, antenna got ripped off by over-enthusiastic attempt at seat-belt buckling).
I've also not been able to kill my old PalmPilot Professional in twelve years of trying. That device got beat on even worse in its career, as it was my electronic notebook all through high school. (My handwriting was and still is spectacularly illegible, so I had to type my notes if I wanted anything I could actually study from at exam time. The Pilot with a peripheral keyboard was my salvation.) Over the years, I've been through a Palm Vx, two m505s, a Sony Clie something-or-other, and a Treo 650, all of which died within two years or less of purchase. Meanwhile, I pulled the old PP Pro out of the desk drawer a few weeks ago, popped in a fresh pair of AAA's and it was ready to go. Syncing is IR-only these days, as none of my home systems have a serial port for the old-style cradle, but it still runs like a champ.
The Y chromosome has very little on it, in terms of functioning gene packages - it carries SRY (the sex-determining region that codes for male primary and secondary sex characteristics) and that's about it. X, on the other hand, carries quite a bit of important information - genes pertaining to blood clotting, muscle tissue formation, neuron and myelin sheath formation, androgen receptor formation, white blood cell formation and color photoreceptor formation, just to name a few.
In an XY individual, you only have one chance to get working copies of those genes, which is why certain disorders pertinent to those systems show up much more often in males than in females (hemophilia and other hematologic disorders, various muscular dystrophies, myopathies and neuropathies, a few immune disorders, pattern baldness, color blindness et al). Without any X at all, as you'd have in a YY, all those genes are gone completely. Hopefully you can see why an individual with non-functional muscles and nerves, no ability to clot and no immune function wouldn't be viable.:-)
I'm reminded of an old BOFH episode in which the Bastard Operator straps a mobile SNMP controller to the boss's motorized wheelchair, and then lets another manager take a crack at his new "video game." All's fun and games till you miss that jump over the open manhole...
Nice try, but no. That was a lovely info-dump from Psychology 103 though. I'm glad to see you retained at least a slight amount of neuroanatomy.
Several studies have addressed what happens when you have subjects play games during EEG, PET or near-IR spectroscopy evaluation. Frontal cortex deactivation never occurred once in any of the subjects. In fact, every study found increased prefrontal cortex activation relative to control.
Next time, you may want to consider checking PubMed or PSYCLIT before you go spouting medicobabble. I've heard it does wonders for your prefrontal cortex. Might even make you more intelligent.
That was precisely my thought - where exactly does this differ from GVH? Any time you have a mismatch between HLA haplotypes on immune cells and other tissue cells, you're going to have an immune reaction, regardless of whose immune cells initiate it. It's rather unique that this occurred in the context of a solid organ transplant - you usually see it with bone marrow - but the underlying process doesn't look any different.
Of course, ABC News isn't exactly a peer-reviewed journal, so I'll reserve full analysis for such time as this patient is written up in the literature, but I'm not seeing anything outside the realms of modern medicine here.
If fights with your girlfriend have already become so acrimonious that you feel the need to provide an independent recorded confirmation of what you both said in order to prove her wrong, then cut your losses and get out now. Relationships don't survive for long when one or both parties cannot A) admit wrong, or B) compromise with the other.
Would you be so kind as to clarify: who has the right to watch over whom?
I'd be apt to think that those being overseen, and their parents/guardians in the case of minor children, have the right to surveil the overseers to determine that the overseers aren't abusing their powers. In those cases, the surveillance is at least partly acceptable because in the case of one party accusing another of some misdeed, it provides an independent record to either confirm or deny the accuser's statement.
However, in the case of adults shopping in a store, the store is already surveilling the would-be shopper, either with or without permission. Even if the shopper sees the "this property protected by video monitoring" sign, turns around and leaves, he/she has still been videotaped for the period of time it took to read the sign, and most big-box stores include cameras in the parking lot as well, so the surveillance was going on before the shopper even stepped onto store property. In light of the fact that our hypothetical third party has already been videotaped, and possibly illegally at that, why shouldn't that person have the ability to produce an independent confirmation of events by creating his/her own video or still-photo record?
Do you not have a local station that broadcasts NHL games? If you're in or near a city that has an NHL team, you should be able to pick up at least some games OTA. (Grant you, we live and breathe hockey here in metro Detroit, but even when I lived in Vermont, the local Fox affiliate would simulcast Bruins and Canadiens games on a regular basis.) Alternately, if you don't mind listening rather than watching, XM has the entire NHL package and a bunch of other sports besides for $13 a month (less if you sign up for a year or more).
For Australian Rules football, though, I can't help you. Perhaps it might be worth it to sign up with one of the satellite providers for the three-month trial or whatever similar deal is on offer, and then cancel at the end of the season. (I've been going through the same problem trying to find the rugby league World Cup. Good luck with that in this country.)
I, too, experienced a similar event on a 757, flying American from DTW to ORD in 2004. We were flying a normal approach when we suddenly pulled up, poured on the power and executed what felt like a very severe turn - things came out of the overhead bins, and the "down" wing appeared to be pointing quite sharply at the ground. (As parent poster mentioned, it was probably only a 5-10 degree bank, but it was steep enough and executed quickly enough to toss briefcases and purses across the cabin, so take that as you will.)
Once we leveled out and the passengers stopped making noise, the pilot came on the PA, just as cool as you please, and informed us that a flight taking off had intruded into our airspace from below. ATC ordered us to evade, the other plane missed, no harm no foul.
I've been on a lot of flights, and seen a lot of interesting mid-air maneuvers, but that one stuck in my head mostly for the pilot's degree of nonchalance after the fact.
Wrong unit of measure - the school bus is the accepted unit for items longer than a Beetle but smaller than a football field. 1/3 field = 1 bus = 3 Beetles. Alternately, 30 meters equals about 60% of the height of the Library of Congress' dome.
Figures aren't available on how many light bulbs it will power, though.
It's a bone fixation plate for use in hand and wrist fractures - e.g. a Colles' or Smith's fracture, or some other fracture of the distal radius (wrist end of the outermost bone in your forearm). How you got hold of one, though, I'm not sure I want to know. They're not exactly cheap, and hospitals track their stock of orthopedic implantable items extremely closely, both due to their expense and due to the fact that they frequently have to be custom ordered.
Orthopedic implants are almost exclusively titanium or 316L alloy, with a few items (articulating surface liners, implant shaft sleeves, etc) made of PTFE or various ceramics. We prefer to use titanium or titanium/ceramic devices in younger patients and active older adults, as they have a much longer working lifespan and they'll take a lot more damage before they require replacement.
Yes, I knew that. However, I have an overriding problem: Labradors.
Any time I sit on the couch, I'm guaranteed that at least one dog will join me there within 3 seconds of the time my butt hits the cushion. Let me tell you, attempting to shoot Space Pirates with 80 lb of highly energetic canine in your face adds a whole new meaning to "Hypermode." Worse yet, the nunchuck "grapple" movement, to a dog, looks like "human threw something - go fetch it!" At least if I'm standing, I can fend them off.
Sometimes their enthusiasm for gaming works to my benefit, though, as on rainy days when I'd rather not take them outside to play. Fire up a two-player game of baseball and they get almost the same amount of exercise they would in a real game of fetch.
Ironically, the same thing happens in nursing, which has hitherto been perceived as a female-biased profession. Both my mother and I have unisex given names, and both of us routinely receive professional mail and phone calls addressed with male honorifics. You'd think that the bias would be toward assuming that a nurse is a woman, but it isn't - every day brings at least one item addressed to "Mr. (name), R.N." Even other nurses, some of whom have daughters with either my name or hers, somehow manage to assume that one or both of us is male.
Occasionally we've both encountered people who insist that WE must be mistaken about our own identities. Mom had a sad, yet hilarious experience with that particular brand of stupidity when a sales rep called her office and then refused to speak to her, repeatedly demanding to speak to "the director." Apparently in his misogynistic little world, staff nurses are all female, but the director of surgical nursing for a major hospital system MUST be a man.
I wonder where that line really diverges, is it bad on say 19" TV, but Sweet at 42"+ ? Dunno.
MP3's controls were just fine on our 32" CRT. I stand about 6-8' away from the TV when I play, and while I will admit that the nunchuck's accelerometer is a bit twitchy (e.g. when trying to grapple a shield off something), I never once had a problem with the aiming.
You're absolutely right - their phone is a Globalstar. They couldn't get Iridium because there isn't a dealer anywhere in their metro area (Detroit, MI). Iridium isn't a whole lot better, though - sure, you can bounce calls from satellite to satellite, but they all eventually still have to be routed through a ground station. Sigh.
Funny, that. My parents purchased a sat-phone for remote area travel (they do a lot of fishing and hunting in extremely remote locations, both in the US and internationally), with the understanding that the phone would work anywhere you could see the sky. Wrong - there also needs to be a ground uplink station somewhere within a thousand miles of your location. That little caveat came back to haunt them in northern Alaska, and then again in Labrador. Satellites all over the place, but they couldn't get a signal from the ground station, which rendered the sat-phone a $600 brick (and I do mean brick - the blasted thing weighs about a pound and comes in a bright yellow Pelican case that looks like it could hold a nuclear device).
Sat-phones also don't work particularly well in storms or heavy cloud cover, nor do they work at sea (see above about ground stations). In short, they're fairly useless in just about every situation where you'd need them the most. Ham radio has no such restrictions - there's always a way to get a signal through. If I were going to the boonies and had the choice of a radio or a sat-phone, I'd take the radio every time.
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Funny, my first thought was of the scan visor from the Metroid Prime series. All you'd need would be to build in a universal remote control, and you're good to go.
Now, if they can just figure out how to stuff a 6' tall human into a 2' diameter armored beach-ball...
Ironically, one of the massive complaints I had with XP Home was the wireless support. Particularly on university WLANs, which have their own funky Web-based login procedures, the wireless connection would drop out at random intervals and with no indication from Wireless Connection Manager whatsoever. I wouldn't know anything was amiss until the VPN connection would drop and Groupwise would commit suicide at the same time. (Lose the Post Office Agent connection = "Groupwise will now exit" with no warning and no recovery. Spectacularly annoying, particularly if you'd been working on a complex email and the drop occurred before an auto-save.)
Ubuntu has never done that or anything like it to me, and works on any open wireless point I care to use. I can't imagine going back.
As Emily Litella would say: "Oh. Oh, that's something quite different... Never mind!"
Funny, that - when Mom's old Gateway laptop locked up and had to be wiped two or three years ago, all she had to do was call Apple Support to get her songs back. They said "oh gosh, we're sorry to hear that, maybe you'd like to consider switching to a Mac? Anyway, we re-authorized all your purchases, but do be sure to back them up this time." Grant you, it wasn't a point-and-click service, but they didn't give her one ounce of grief about giving her access to the stuff she'd bought from them.
Ironically enough, she DID wind up buying a Mac when the Gateway finally went to the great tech shop in the sky. Gotta love that Apple customer care.
According to several of the replying posters on TFA's page, Microsoft no longer offers that program due to concerns about people "recycling" their MS Points (i.e. beating one set of games, getting their points back and then buying new games).
I don't have a 360 myself, so I'm not familiar with how the XBox Live system works, but I can't imagine why the support techs can't simply re-activate this gentleman's games. I've never run across an online marketplace that doesn't include some provision for restoring purchased content that the buyer can prove he purchased (and he clearly can, as the MS/XBox reps apparently had access to his entire Live purchasing history.)
Can anyone else confirm or deny that the program is still in operation, or that MS/XBox support has come up with some means of restoring content to owners of malfunctioning consoles?
+1 to that. My StarTac was absolutely bombproof - rode around in my backpack for four years of undergrad, got dropped into a toilet, fell down three flights of stairs, exposed to all kinds of chemical hazards (other student spilled H2SO4 on my backpack in chem lab), magnetic insults (rather memorable trip through an MRI) and temperature extremes (left in cars ranging from -10 to +105 F). It survived all of that in perfect working order, with just a few etches and scratches on the case to show for its adventures. Even better, I only had one broken antenna (phone was in a belt clip, antenna got ripped off by over-enthusiastic attempt at seat-belt buckling).
I've also not been able to kill my old PalmPilot Professional in twelve years of trying. That device got beat on even worse in its career, as it was my electronic notebook all through high school. (My handwriting was and still is spectacularly illegible, so I had to type my notes if I wanted anything I could actually study from at exam time. The Pilot with a peripheral keyboard was my salvation.) Over the years, I've been through a Palm Vx, two m505s, a Sony Clie something-or-other, and a Treo 650, all of which died within two years or less of purchase. Meanwhile, I pulled the old PP Pro out of the desk drawer a few weeks ago, popped in a fresh pair of AAA's and it was ready to go. Syncing is IR-only these days, as none of my home systems have a serial port for the old-style cradle, but it still runs like a champ.
I always knew I wasn't an average Slashdotter, but thank you for confirming it. :-)
The Y chromosome has very little on it, in terms of functioning gene packages - it carries SRY (the sex-determining region that codes for male primary and secondary sex characteristics) and that's about it. X, on the other hand, carries quite a bit of important information - genes pertaining to blood clotting, muscle tissue formation, neuron and myelin sheath formation, androgen receptor formation, white blood cell formation and color photoreceptor formation, just to name a few.
:-)
In an XY individual, you only have one chance to get working copies of those genes, which is why certain disorders pertinent to those systems show up much more often in males than in females (hemophilia and other hematologic disorders, various muscular dystrophies, myopathies and neuropathies, a few immune disorders, pattern baldness, color blindness et al). Without any X at all, as you'd have in a YY, all those genes are gone completely. Hopefully you can see why an individual with non-functional muscles and nerves, no ability to clot and no immune function wouldn't be viable.
Hope this helps!
I'm reminded of an old BOFH episode in which the Bastard Operator straps a mobile SNMP controller to the boss's motorized wheelchair, and then lets another manager take a crack at his new "video game." All's fun and games till you miss that jump over the open manhole...
Several studies have addressed what happens when you have subjects play games during EEG, PET or near-IR spectroscopy evaluation. Frontal cortex deactivation never occurred once in any of the subjects. In fact, every study found increased prefrontal cortex activation relative to control.
Next time, you may want to consider checking PubMed or PSYCLIT before you go spouting medicobabble. I've heard it does wonders for your prefrontal cortex. Might even make you more intelligent.
God, I hope she isn't running Vista - her life will become a hell of elevation prompts...
"The program "Liver" has made changes to protected files in C:\Program Files\Immune System. Continue/Cancel?"
Of course, ABC News isn't exactly a peer-reviewed journal, so I'll reserve full analysis for such time as this patient is written up in the literature, but I'm not seeing anything outside the realms of modern medicine here.
Oh, if it were only that easy!
If fights with your girlfriend have already become so acrimonious that you feel the need to provide an independent recorded confirmation of what you both said in order to prove her wrong, then cut your losses and get out now. Relationships don't survive for long when one or both parties cannot A) admit wrong, or B) compromise with the other.
Would you be so kind as to clarify: who has the right to watch over whom?
I'd be apt to think that those being overseen, and their parents/guardians in the case of minor children, have the right to surveil the overseers to determine that the overseers aren't abusing their powers. In those cases, the surveillance is at least partly acceptable because in the case of one party accusing another of some misdeed, it provides an independent record to either confirm or deny the accuser's statement.
However, in the case of adults shopping in a store, the store is already surveilling the would-be shopper, either with or without permission. Even if the shopper sees the "this property protected by video monitoring" sign, turns around and leaves, he/she has still been videotaped for the period of time it took to read the sign, and most big-box stores include cameras in the parking lot as well, so the surveillance was going on before the shopper even stepped onto store property. In light of the fact that our hypothetical third party has already been videotaped, and possibly illegally at that, why shouldn't that person have the ability to produce an independent confirmation of events by creating his/her own video or still-photo record?
Do you not have a local station that broadcasts NHL games? If you're in or near a city that has an NHL team, you should be able to pick up at least some games OTA. (Grant you, we live and breathe hockey here in metro Detroit, but even when I lived in Vermont, the local Fox affiliate would simulcast Bruins and Canadiens games on a regular basis.) Alternately, if you don't mind listening rather than watching, XM has the entire NHL package and a bunch of other sports besides for $13 a month (less if you sign up for a year or more).
For Australian Rules football, though, I can't help you. Perhaps it might be worth it to sign up with one of the satellite providers for the three-month trial or whatever similar deal is on offer, and then cancel at the end of the season. (I've been going through the same problem trying to find the rugby league World Cup. Good luck with that in this country.)
I, too, experienced a similar event on a 757, flying American from DTW to ORD in 2004. We were flying a normal approach when we suddenly pulled up, poured on the power and executed what felt like a very severe turn - things came out of the overhead bins, and the "down" wing appeared to be pointing quite sharply at the ground. (As parent poster mentioned, it was probably only a 5-10 degree bank, but it was steep enough and executed quickly enough to toss briefcases and purses across the cabin, so take that as you will.)
Once we leveled out and the passengers stopped making noise, the pilot came on the PA, just as cool as you please, and informed us that a flight taking off had intruded into our airspace from below. ATC ordered us to evade, the other plane missed, no harm no foul.
I've been on a lot of flights, and seen a lot of interesting mid-air maneuvers, but that one stuck in my head mostly for the pilot's degree of nonchalance after the fact.
Pardon me, but your Freudian slip is showing...
Wrong unit of measure - the school bus is the accepted unit for items longer than a Beetle but smaller than a football field. 1/3 field = 1 bus = 3 Beetles. Alternately, 30 meters equals about 60% of the height of the Library of Congress' dome.
Figures aren't available on how many light bulbs it will power, though.
It's a bone fixation plate for use in hand and wrist fractures - e.g. a Colles' or Smith's fracture, or some other fracture of the distal radius (wrist end of the outermost bone in your forearm). How you got hold of one, though, I'm not sure I want to know. They're not exactly cheap, and hospitals track their stock of orthopedic implantable items extremely closely, both due to their expense and due to the fact that they frequently have to be custom ordered.
Orthopedic implants are almost exclusively titanium or 316L alloy, with a few items (articulating surface liners, implant shaft sleeves, etc) made of PTFE or various ceramics. We prefer to use titanium or titanium/ceramic devices in younger patients and active older adults, as they have a much longer working lifespan and they'll take a lot more damage before they require replacement.
Yes, I knew that. However, I have an overriding problem: Labradors.
Any time I sit on the couch, I'm guaranteed that at least one dog will join me there within 3 seconds of the time my butt hits the cushion. Let me tell you, attempting to shoot Space Pirates with 80 lb of highly energetic canine in your face adds a whole new meaning to "Hypermode." Worse yet, the nunchuck "grapple" movement, to a dog, looks like "human threw something - go fetch it!" At least if I'm standing, I can fend them off.
Sometimes their enthusiasm for gaming works to my benefit, though, as on rainy days when I'd rather not take them outside to play. Fire up a two-player game of baseball and they get almost the same amount of exercise they would in a real game of fetch.
Ironically, the same thing happens in nursing, which has hitherto been perceived as a female-biased profession. Both my mother and I have unisex given names, and both of us routinely receive professional mail and phone calls addressed with male honorifics. You'd think that the bias would be toward assuming that a nurse is a woman, but it isn't - every day brings at least one item addressed to "Mr. (name), R.N." Even other nurses, some of whom have daughters with either my name or hers, somehow manage to assume that one or both of us is male.
Occasionally we've both encountered people who insist that WE must be mistaken about our own identities. Mom had a sad, yet hilarious experience with that particular brand of stupidity when a sales rep called her office and then refused to speak to her, repeatedly demanding to speak to "the director." Apparently in his misogynistic little world, staff nurses are all female, but the director of surgical nursing for a major hospital system MUST be a man.
MP3's controls were just fine on our 32" CRT. I stand about 6-8' away from the TV when I play, and while I will admit that the nunchuck's accelerometer is a bit twitchy (e.g. when trying to grapple a shield off something), I never once had a problem with the aiming.
You're absolutely right - their phone is a Globalstar. They couldn't get Iridium because there isn't a dealer anywhere in their metro area (Detroit, MI). Iridium isn't a whole lot better, though - sure, you can bounce calls from satellite to satellite, but they all eventually still have to be routed through a ground station. Sigh.
Funny, that. My parents purchased a sat-phone for remote area travel (they do a lot of fishing and hunting in extremely remote locations, both in the US and internationally), with the understanding that the phone would work anywhere you could see the sky. Wrong - there also needs to be a ground uplink station somewhere within a thousand miles of your location. That little caveat came back to haunt them in northern Alaska, and then again in Labrador. Satellites all over the place, but they couldn't get a signal from the ground station, which rendered the sat-phone a $600 brick (and I do mean brick - the blasted thing weighs about a pound and comes in a bright yellow Pelican case that looks like it could hold a nuclear device).
Sat-phones also don't work particularly well in storms or heavy cloud cover, nor do they work at sea (see above about ground stations). In short, they're fairly useless in just about every situation where you'd need them the most. Ham radio has no such restrictions - there's always a way to get a signal through. If I were going to the boonies and had the choice of a radio or a sat-phone, I'd take the radio every time.