Two encounters I had with cops: Driving down busy road (Northern Boulevard, around Astoria, Queens, NYC) and was pulled over on labor day. I shut the engine off, turned the interior lights on (it was night time) and prepared my information. Officer along with lieutenant (white shirt) come along side my vehicle, officer on drivers side and lieutenant on passenger side. I was with two people, none of us had a drop to drink. Goes something like this (its been about 5 years so memory is a bit foggy) Cop: License and registration Me: here you go (hand him paperwork) Cop: Where are you going? Me: to the movies. Why am I being pulled over? Cop: your headlights are off Me: no they were on until I pulled over and I shut them off along with the engine. Cop: (to lieutenant) you hear this guy? Me: officer, I dont understand whats going on here. Cop: (laughs to lieutenant) This guy had no clue whats going on. (There was another insult and laughter but I forget what it was) Cop: Ill be right back. (cops brings my information to car, lieutenant waits by passenger side Passengers with me are saying WTF is going on here?) (cop comes back after only 2 or 3 min) Cop: Okay, you're all good. have a nice night. Both cops walk back to the cruiser. Both assholes leave. At that point I still had no idea why i was pulled over, they never told me why. I ask a friend who at the time was in the NYPD academy what the hell happened. His answer was a disturbing one: "The cop may have seen you make a suspicious move. He was either fucking with you in front of his lieutenant for brownie points and trying to get a rise out of you." WTF? Why would he do that? "So they have further cause of suspicion to search your vehicle, it is a holiday and people are drunk/high" All I was doing was driving in a straight line down a road.
Second encounter: Driving home late after work, maybe around 8/9PM. I back into my driveway and see a white car roll up in front of my driveway. Two white guys are in it staring me down hard, their facial expressions looked threatening. I keep my car running and just stare back with my phone ready to dial 911. Few seconds later they pull off but stop a few houses down. They begin to back up and at this point I am scared, in my mind I even thought maybe I should ram them or get out and run. I take my phone out and begin to dial 911 when they get out and I see badges hanging from their necks. I pause and the driver shines a flashlight at me. Cop: sir please shut your engine off Me: Are you guys cops or what? I am calling 911. Cop: (hold up his badge) I am a police officer. Did you already dial 911? Me: no Cop: Is this your house? do you live here? (at this point I see the other cop has a gun in a holster at his side with his hand on it) Me: Yes, I live here. Whats going on here? Cop: Can I see your license, registration and insurance please Me: Sure (i gather and hand them my paperwork while still sitting in my car in MY driveway) Cop: hold on please (both return to car and run my information.) (one cop gets out with my stuff) Cop:Looks like your insurance card is expired Me: oh crap, I just got the new one last week and I haven't gotten around to getting it in my car. (the truth) Cop: Okay then, make sure you do that tonight. Otherwise everything else is in order. Have a good night. (get sin car and drives off)
I again asked the same cop friend. Answer: "they are looking for someone and your vehicle may have matched the description". Oh good. I feel safer already. Why didn't they tell me that instead of a "have a good night" and driving off? Why couldn't they simply say "Sorry for the inconvenience. We are looking for a suspect and your car happened to match the description. Have a good night."?
So there. Two bizarre encounters in which I was never told why I was pulled over and the second time I was parked in my fucking driveway ready to go in my house. And the second encounter was terrifying during the first few
Its been said time and time again that ageism is tied to the belief that an older more experienced applicant will demand more money than a kid fresh out of grad school with a boatload of debt and no family. The younger engineer doesn't have a family and can work long hours without complaining about how he or she needs more time to spend with their family. I would also hazard a guess that there are older more experienced guys in silicon valley. But they are already in senior engineering positions, project leads or management and the younger, cheaper underlings do the brunt of the grunt work with the senior staff overseeing the development.
Getting rid of concert performers also removes any chance of improv.
One of the best parts of a show is the final acts encore in which they may elect to play more songs or simply screw around and play covers. I recently went to a show and saw Alestorm (pirate themed metal band, yargh!) and their encore was more like the second half of their set. They played various songs, messed around as well as played a cover of In the Navy by the Village People. They were accompanied by Trollfest (a hilarious Norwegian folk metal band) who are a comedic bunch who would prank the other bands on stage. (side-note: a band called Gypsy Hawk also played, fucking amazing band, live set was like a studio recording).
I saw Nine Inch Nails not too long ago and the live set was phenomenal. Thing is, Trent Reznor records all the music himself, there are no full time band members and no session band. But when on tour he has a backing band comprised of select musicians that gives the music a unique sound compared to the solo recorded studio albums.
A single singer with prerecorded music playing in a live show would suck balls. Fuck any concert that is nothing but a recording with someone who may or may not be actually singing.
I feel your pain. I was diagnosed around 1991. Multiple tests involving psychologists, most finding I had a very high IQ (137+) but I had ADD. I was put on medication, Ritalin and then Dexedrine. My mother did not like the side effects and in order to avoid the side effects, I had to be drugged up all day long. the worse side effect was loss of appetite. My mother said to hell with that and took me off the medication and decided to dedicate a lot more of her time to helping me with my homework (along with my father) and well to be honest, do some of it for me. It helped and got my through grade school and high school but not without lots of summer school and help to prevent me from being left behind. I even lost my father the first month of high school which was a huge blow in life but thankfully the SPARK program in school had an amazing woman who helped me get through school (and life) by bargaining with my teachers to give me special assignments I could focus on to pass classes.
Of the few things I have learned over the years, hyperfocus and its addictive cycle is what has been crippling me. Its very detrimental and it's only recently, in my 30's, that I learned that I suffer from it. And how bad is hyper-focus overall? It takes over your thought and pushes things to the back burner. Important things like clean up, pay bills, remember appointments, basically the important small things in life. Hell it gets so bad, I hate to say this but screw it: I have actually wandered off in the middle of masturbating and 20 minutes later realize I am holding my flaccid dick in my hand. All of my friends know I have ADD and many time they have had to get my attention my shaking me or shouting my name. Your mind literally focuses so sharply on something that everything else is simply background noise that doesn't register. I even have problems processing sentences people speak to me as I am half in thought and half trying to pay attention to them. I have lost every girlfriend, the few I managed to hook up with, by forgetting dates, and important occasions. l lost one girl I was with for three years after she had enough of my shit. I forgot her birthday, I couldn't even remember the month. After that I couldn't stay in a relationship for more than a few months, I gave up and have been single for quite a while (I tried again last year but it didn't work out because of our work schedules, a bit of progress I suppose.). Hell, I have on a few occasions forgot my own birthday and received calls from friends asking "what are you doing tonight?" to which my reply was "why, what's going on tonight?" the reason isn't that I have a bad short term memory, its that those things aren't important, they get pushed aside in my head and forgotten.
It used to confuse me because I kept thinking to myself: "why the fuck can I come up with a good idea, lay out a blueprint but never even get around to "breaking ground"?" And I realized the hyperfocus mechanism in my brain created an addiction. The Hyperfocus addiction cycle that works like this: you get a "great idea" (for me, usually some electronics project) in your head and your mind runs away with it. I then spend hours/days/weeks researching, designing and then when it comes to the actual phase of implementing it - BOOM - brick wall. I can lay out a hardware/software project, even start laying out schematics, bits of code and even some PCB prototyping in CAD but almost never beyond that. You see its the research/design part that gets me so enthralled as it must trigger chemicals in my brain that causes euphoria. It makes me "high" so to speak. Its the challenge to solve a problem which gets me going. Its the "actual work" part that is the brick wall for me as it's no longer a "cheap thrill" and now becomes work. I have stayed up for hours, on work nights, causing me to suffer the next day. But I didn't care as long as the high was achieved. I knew I had to stop, kept telling myself "go to sleep, go to fucking sleep". But I couldn't stop. It wasn't until I was exhausted, delirious and a
After those two accidents, hands-on criticality experiments were stopped and the demon core was put in a nuke and detonated for the Crossroads Able test. Yield was 23kt. The Demon Core weighed only 6.2kg or 14 lbs.
My brother is in the closed beta and showed me the game at his place. It looked fun enough and the rounds are quick. And the quick rounds are what he likes as you need to use your strategy pretty quickly. He used to play magic in high school and then online when it was released. To him Hearthstone is a good balance between strategy and short play times.
Fun side note: In magic the gathering online he once used the cheezy squirrel deck to cream a player. It uses a combination of enchantments which compound damage to a dizzying amount. After he won we left the PC on to see how high the damage counter would go. Next day we found our answer: 65535. A 16bit unsigned int.
Another dumb thought. Imagine if this law passes or makes it high enough in the courts and republi-neo-right-winger spin machine will have a field day.They will be yammering about how this law will allow people to marry chimps and how people will be marrying dogs and cats and how it all started with letting the gays get married. That will be a fun, yet sad thing to watch.
During Sandy we needed a temporary backup generator at work. We have multiple electron beam welding machines, electric heat treating oven, laser welding machines etc. Our building service is 1200A 120/208 three phase which works out to roughly 432kW. We pull about half of the panel rated load, or 600 amps on average and close to 800 peak. A towed 500kW CAT genset was hooked up and had a 15 liter engine, same as a the average semi truck. Ran the whole building without breaking a sweat. So a semi truck can run a small factory.
1HP is roughly 746 electrical watts. the Nissan Leaf has a 110HP motor which uses ~80,000 watts at peak output. The average American home has a 100 or 200 amp 120/240 electrical service. 240V * 200A = 48,000 Watts, which isn't used constantly but with enough creature comforts, consumption can run pretty high (AC, electronics, lights, appliances, pool filters etc.). So when you put your foot down in the Leaf, you are pulling 2x - 3x+ more current than a household can provide. Gives you some perspective.
WTF? What the hell are you going on about here? The free blacks were human beings and once freed had the ability to make a living for themselves.
The issue here is giving a person status to a chimp to allow existing laws meant for human beings to now apply to the chimps. This would make testing on them illegal and also other forms of torture illegal.
They speak of freeing them but what do they consider free? If being confined to a small cage cruelty/torture? Where do they go, a bigger cage? How big does the cage have to be in order to be considered not cruel? And that is where the problem lies. If a chimp is a person and given the same rights as a human can they legally be confined at all? If a chimp person can be placed in a zoo than why not a human person? Can a cage big enough to be considered not cruel for a chimp also be not cruel to lock a human in? It becomes a duality of law where the chimp has the rights of a human but is not a human and can not function in a human society.
Either way the chimps have to be confined to a habitat which at the end of the day is a cage. They can never truly be free unless released back into the wild where they will surely die.
I have a friend who is a former US customs agent who worked at a major international airport. We used to meet up every weekend and he would tell me all sorts of funny stories about working in customs.
They normally target people travelling back from countries which are known for various illegal activities. An obvious example is to search people returning from Jamaica trying to smuggle marijuana. Usually it's a small amount for personal use, an ounce or so. Another thing they do is turn away late term pregnant women on visitor visas who are most likely looking to have anchor babies. But sometimes they do pick random people based on observation of behaviour or simply because they sense something to be off. One such story was one of the female agents saw a guy on the line who gave her a bad vibe. She picked him out for a "random" check where they take you into a room for an interview and a search of your possessions. He was returning from Thailand and everything was in order but there was a CD book filled with bootleg movies and porn. She flipped through each page and the book was divided, the first half were bootlegs and the second half was porn. That is not illegal but one DVD stuck out. It had pictures of kids on it but was in the porn section. She took the dvd out and asked him why it was in that section and he claimed he had no idea. She told him "this better not be what I think it is" and took it to a room to be viewed. She came back not a few minutes later and confirmed it was indeed child porn. They arrested the man for possession of child pornography. All on a based on a bad feeling.
I bet the content creator is hoping that a bunch of the "infringers" pay up before the suit is tossed and they walk away with a few hundred grand. 10,000 * 250 EUR is about 3.44 million USD. Even if a tenth of the users pay and the lawyers take a third then they stand to make about a quarter million. And that is taking into account a single 250 EUR charge per defendant.
My friend ordered a tablet from Amazon and it never arrived. FedEX tracking records show it was delivered. Since FedEX likes to leave packages on porches out in the open he figured someone walked off with it. He disputed the problem through Amazon and another tablet was sent which he wound up receiving. A month later an older man stopped by his house to give him his tablet that was sitting on his back porch for a few weeks while he was on vacation. The guy lived 5 minutes from my friend so the FedEX driver wasn't even close to the right address. I told him to return it but he instead sold it on ebay recouping his costs.
It makes no sense as the chimps have been in captivity. There is no possible way to reintegrate them back into existing, indigenous, wild African chimp societies. Its like forcing a family to adopt someone, it won't work.
And what is their definition of freed from captivity? An animal is either wild or in captivity. So we do what, turn them loose into the streets? Maybe they can get a job at walmart as a greeter. A zoo is still captivity and chimps privately owned are still in captivity just like dogs and house cats.
I understand the idea behind the suit but this is such a stupid case that it almost sounds like a prank. I cant explain it any other way.
I am not a cryptologist or crypto expert but what about the seed methods using a video camera looking at a lava lamp? I have also heard of pointing it out a busy window as the randomness of traffic, people, animals, tree movement etc. is quite random. Is it too slow or not random enough? What about a camera looking at a busy highway? I did a bit of googling and only found that the lavarand site is long gone but it was started by SGI back in the 90's. Another article described a cmos camera with the lens cap on and the sensor gain cranked up so the noise picked up by the sensor was used as a seed.
I realize these methods aren't always practical or available but from a technical point, are they viable?
Most of the power supplies are switching which means the AC is filtered and converted to DC before it hits any transformers. A switching IC then turns the resulting high voltage DC into a PWM or square wave using a transistor and that goes through a high frequency transformer which is much much smaller and cheaper than a laminated steel core 60Hz transformer. Switching frequencies can be in the tens to hundreds of kilohertz. Smaller DC-DC switchers are in the megahertz range and are really small.
So in summary, line noise wouldn't make much of a difference with today's efficient switching power supplies. Unless it was high voltage spikes that the switcher couldn't cope with but then you have bigger problems.
I'll just go down to my shop and use my Northwood dual table CNC router and start milling right away. Oh wait, sold that business a decade ago. Never mind. I know! I'll just go ask my neighbor to borrow their CNC router for a few hours..... Darn. I asked my neighbor to use their CNC router and he called the police. He also looked scared and confused. Maybe I need to ask a beekeeper since obviously the project is aimed at beekeepers who all seem to have CNC machines.
Sometimes the maker community can be dumber than a bag of hammers. If they want a simple open source beehive then sit down with a few good episodes of The New Yankee Workshop and draw up plans someone can download in PDF and follow using a minimal amount of power and hand tools. Many people have power tools and easy access to cheap woodworking tools at home improvement centers. Hell many people already have basic woodworking tools they bought for home improvement projects or to build that table they always wanted to build but never get around to. Most of the work can be done using hand tools. A router should be the most expensive tool needed. The electronics should be bundled as a kit and come pre assembled ready for installation.
Its a nice design but not enough people will be interested if the CNC part sits between them and a hive. Some will say then find a shop with a CNC and they will do it for you. You could but I bet that shop will charge you a nice "affordable" hourly machine rate and possibly charge for setup and tooling. If they think the design needs to be so complex a CNC is needed then sell the thing as a knocked down kit like Ikea. Might be a little costly but that is when you realize its a stupid idea and that people have been making beehives out of wood by hand for years.
Or how about the touch screen disables itself until the vehicle is at a full stop. My friends father had a Lexus hybrid crossover which did just that. When the vehicle was moving a message displayed that the screen was disabled. You had to stop to enter an address into the nav system or make a change.
My first encounter of doom was when browsing the shareware rack at the local computer shop. I already had Wolfenstein 3D and loved the game and I remember it was made by id. So this Doom game was also made by id and looked interesting. Installed it on my 486DX-33MHz with 4MB ram and was blown away. Didnt run smooth but that was fixed when my father bought a 486DX2-66MHz with 16MB of ram for CAD work. what an amazing game and it sucked up hous of my time.
In high school our computer lab consisted of 486's (either DX25's or SX25's) which were networked with 10base2 coax and network booted though they also had 3.5 floppy drives. The server was netware and there was a shared student directory with a directory for each student to store their work in. The teacher was also the head of IT and he was frequently absent for most of the class allowing us to goof off as much as possible. I then got an idea: could I install Doom on the server? So I brought in my floppies and installed doom in my shared directory under another directory to keep it "hidden". I tested it out and it worked! My friends were all going ape shit when they saw me playing doom in class. Of course any student could read and write the other students directories so the other students had no trouble running doom from my directory. It was my first experience playing true multiplayer over a network. Though it wasn't all that great with the slow PC's and it took forever to load the damn game over the sickly slow network. But we had a shitload of fun. That was around 1994/95. Good times.
If you read the wikipedia article on the FPS genre, Wolfenstein 3D was not the first FPS. Turns out that FPS games started in the 70's but were not released to the public (one was a US Army tank simulator). the first publicly released FPS was Battlezone released in 1980.
Wold 3D did however put the genre on the map. Doom had the privilege of being the first FPS with true modem and networked multiplayer.
The proposal for building an African space agency sounds too good to be true. Most likely it will go into the pockets of corrupt government officials and contractors who won't get anything done and the project will be scrapped afters years in an artificial limbo.
I would say its better to put the money into getting people fresh water, sewage treatment, waste disposal and training/equipment for sustainable farming. They have to learn to crawl before they can walk.
When I walk my dog, two stray cats join us for the walk. They happily follow us all around the block and were never afraid of the dog and the dog already lives with two house cats. So they may not walk on a leash but they will walk with you. I feed the two strays and provide outdoor shelter for them (plastic dog house I found in trash which I put a spare dog bed into). I would take them in if I already didn't already have two terrorists.
I had a manager who told me he wished Microsoft made all of the software we used. In his eyes the interoperability between excel, word, powerpoint outlook etc. made his life so much easier. He even wished our ERP software was MS made.
Some people just dont know any better and sadly, they get to make the decisions about where the money goes.
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Two encounters I had with cops:
Driving down busy road (Northern Boulevard, around Astoria, Queens, NYC) and was pulled over on labor day. I shut the engine off, turned the interior lights on (it was night time) and prepared my information. Officer along with lieutenant (white shirt) come along side my vehicle, officer on drivers side and lieutenant on passenger side. I was with two people, none of us had a drop to drink.
Goes something like this (its been about 5 years so memory is a bit foggy)
Cop: License and registration
Me: here you go (hand him paperwork)
Cop: Where are you going?
Me: to the movies. Why am I being pulled over?
Cop: your headlights are off
Me: no they were on until I pulled over and I shut them off along with the engine.
Cop: (to lieutenant) you hear this guy?
Me: officer, I dont understand whats going on here.
Cop: (laughs to lieutenant) This guy had no clue whats going on.
(There was another insult and laughter but I forget what it was)
Cop: Ill be right back.
(cops brings my information to car, lieutenant waits by passenger side Passengers with me are saying WTF is going on here?)
(cop comes back after only 2 or 3 min)
Cop: Okay, you're all good. have a nice night. Both cops walk back to the cruiser.
Both assholes leave. At that point I still had no idea why i was pulled over, they never told me why.
I ask a friend who at the time was in the NYPD academy what the hell happened. His answer was a disturbing one: "The cop may have seen you make a suspicious move. He was either fucking with you in front of his lieutenant for brownie points and trying to get a rise out of you." WTF? Why would he do that? "So they have further cause of suspicion to search your vehicle, it is a holiday and people are drunk/high" All I was doing was driving in a straight line down a road.
Second encounter:
Driving home late after work, maybe around 8/9PM. I back into my driveway and see a white car roll up in front of my driveway. Two white guys are in it staring me down hard, their facial expressions looked threatening. I keep my car running and just stare back with my phone ready to dial 911. Few seconds later they pull off but stop a few houses down. They begin to back up and at this point I am scared, in my mind I even thought maybe I should ram them or get out and run. I take my phone out and begin to dial 911 when they get out and I see badges hanging from their necks. I pause and the driver shines a flashlight at me.
Cop: sir please shut your engine off
Me: Are you guys cops or what? I am calling 911.
Cop: (hold up his badge) I am a police officer. Did you already dial 911?
Me: no
Cop: Is this your house? do you live here?
(at this point I see the other cop has a gun in a holster at his side with his hand on it)
Me: Yes, I live here. Whats going on here?
Cop: Can I see your license, registration and insurance please
Me: Sure (i gather and hand them my paperwork while still sitting in my car in MY driveway)
Cop: hold on please
(both return to car and run my information.)
(one cop gets out with my stuff)
Cop:Looks like your insurance card is expired
Me: oh crap, I just got the new one last week and I haven't gotten around to getting it in my car. (the truth)
Cop: Okay then, make sure you do that tonight. Otherwise everything else is in order. Have a good night. (get sin car and drives off)
I again asked the same cop friend. Answer: "they are looking for someone and your vehicle may have matched the description". Oh good. I feel safer already. Why didn't they tell me that instead of a "have a good night" and driving off? Why couldn't they simply say "Sorry for the inconvenience. We are looking for a suspect and your car happened to match the description. Have a good night."?
So there. Two bizarre encounters in which I was never told why I was pulled over and the second time I was parked in my fucking driveway ready to go in my house. And the second encounter was terrifying during the first few
Its been said time and time again that ageism is tied to the belief that an older more experienced applicant will demand more money than a kid fresh out of grad school with a boatload of debt and no family. The younger engineer doesn't have a family and can work long hours without complaining about how he or she needs more time to spend with their family. I would also hazard a guess that there are older more experienced guys in silicon valley. But they are already in senior engineering positions, project leads or management and the younger, cheaper underlings do the brunt of the grunt work with the senior staff overseeing the development.
Its all about money.
Getting rid of concert performers also removes any chance of improv.
One of the best parts of a show is the final acts encore in which they may elect to play more songs or simply screw around and play covers. I recently went to a show and saw Alestorm (pirate themed metal band, yargh!) and their encore was more like the second half of their set. They played various songs, messed around as well as played a cover of In the Navy by the Village People. They were accompanied by Trollfest (a hilarious Norwegian folk metal band) who are a comedic bunch who would prank the other bands on stage. (side-note: a band called Gypsy Hawk also played, fucking amazing band, live set was like a studio recording).
I saw Nine Inch Nails not too long ago and the live set was phenomenal. Thing is, Trent Reznor records all the music himself, there are no full time band members and no session band. But when on tour he has a backing band comprised of select musicians that gives the music a unique sound compared to the solo recorded studio albums.
A single singer with prerecorded music playing in a live show would suck balls. Fuck any concert that is nothing but a recording with someone who may or may not be actually singing.
I feel your pain. I was diagnosed around 1991. Multiple tests involving psychologists, most finding I had a very high IQ (137+) but I had ADD. I was put on medication, Ritalin and then Dexedrine. My mother did not like the side effects and in order to avoid the side effects, I had to be drugged up all day long. the worse side effect was loss of appetite. My mother said to hell with that and took me off the medication and decided to dedicate a lot more of her time to helping me with my homework (along with my father) and well to be honest, do some of it for me. It helped and got my through grade school and high school but not without lots of summer school and help to prevent me from being left behind. I even lost my father the first month of high school which was a huge blow in life but thankfully the SPARK program in school had an amazing woman who helped me get through school (and life) by bargaining with my teachers to give me special assignments I could focus on to pass classes.
Of the few things I have learned over the years, hyperfocus and its addictive cycle is what has been crippling me. Its very detrimental and it's only recently, in my 30's, that I learned that I suffer from it. And how bad is hyper-focus overall? It takes over your thought and pushes things to the back burner. Important things like clean up, pay bills, remember appointments, basically the important small things in life. Hell it gets so bad, I hate to say this but screw it: I have actually wandered off in the middle of masturbating and 20 minutes later realize I am holding my flaccid dick in my hand. All of my friends know I have ADD and many time they have had to get my attention my shaking me or shouting my name. Your mind literally focuses so sharply on something that everything else is simply background noise that doesn't register. I even have problems processing sentences people speak to me as I am half in thought and half trying to pay attention to them. I have lost every girlfriend, the few I managed to hook up with, by forgetting dates, and important occasions. l lost one girl I was with for three years after she had enough of my shit. I forgot her birthday, I couldn't even remember the month. After that I couldn't stay in a relationship for more than a few months, I gave up and have been single for quite a while (I tried again last year but it didn't work out because of our work schedules, a bit of progress I suppose.). Hell, I have on a few occasions forgot my own birthday and received calls from friends asking "what are you doing tonight?" to which my reply was "why, what's going on tonight?" the reason isn't that I have a bad short term memory, its that those things aren't important, they get pushed aside in my head and forgotten.
It used to confuse me because I kept thinking to myself: "why the fuck can I come up with a good idea, lay out a blueprint but never even get around to "breaking ground"?" And I realized the hyperfocus mechanism in my brain created an addiction. The Hyperfocus addiction cycle that works like this: you get a "great idea" (for me, usually some electronics project) in your head and your mind runs away with it. I then spend hours/days/weeks researching, designing and then when it comes to the actual phase of implementing it - BOOM - brick wall. I can lay out a hardware/software project, even start laying out schematics, bits of code and even some PCB prototyping in CAD but almost never beyond that. You see its the research/design part that gets me so enthralled as it must trigger chemicals in my brain that causes euphoria. It makes me "high" so to speak. Its the challenge to solve a problem which gets me going. Its the "actual work" part that is the brick wall for me as it's no longer a "cheap thrill" and now becomes work. I have stayed up for hours, on work nights, causing me to suffer the next day. But I didn't care as long as the high was achieved. I knew I had to stop, kept telling myself "go to sleep, go to fucking sleep". But I couldn't stop. It wasn't until I was exhausted, delirious and a
The infamous "Demon Core" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
After those two accidents, hands-on criticality experiments were stopped and the demon core was put in a nuke and detonated for the Crossroads Able test. Yield was 23kt. The Demon Core weighed only 6.2kg or 14 lbs.
My brother is in the closed beta and showed me the game at his place. It looked fun enough and the rounds are quick. And the quick rounds are what he likes as you need to use your strategy pretty quickly. He used to play magic in high school and then online when it was released. To him Hearthstone is a good balance between strategy and short play times.
Fun side note: In magic the gathering online he once used the cheezy squirrel deck to cream a player. It uses a combination of enchantments which compound damage to a dizzying amount. After he won we left the PC on to see how high the damage counter would go. Next day we found our answer: 65535. A 16bit unsigned int.
Another dumb thought. Imagine if this law passes or makes it high enough in the courts and republi-neo-right-winger spin machine will have a field day.They will be yammering about how this law will allow people to marry chimps and how people will be marrying dogs and cats and how it all started with letting the gays get married. That will be a fun, yet sad thing to watch.
But those "non-people" were human beings who were discriminated against. Chimps are wild animals. Big difference.
During Sandy we needed a temporary backup generator at work. We have multiple electron beam welding machines, electric heat treating oven, laser welding machines etc. Our building service is 1200A 120/208 three phase which works out to roughly 432kW. We pull about half of the panel rated load, or 600 amps on average and close to 800 peak. A towed 500kW CAT genset was hooked up and had a 15 liter engine, same as a the average semi truck. Ran the whole building without breaking a sweat. So a semi truck can run a small factory.
1HP is roughly 746 electrical watts. the Nissan Leaf has a 110HP motor which uses ~80,000 watts at peak output. The average American home has a 100 or 200 amp 120/240 electrical service. 240V * 200A = 48,000 Watts, which isn't used constantly but with enough creature comforts, consumption can run pretty high (AC, electronics, lights, appliances, pool filters etc.). So when you put your foot down in the Leaf, you are pulling 2x - 3x+ more current than a household can provide. Gives you some perspective.
WTF? What the hell are you going on about here? The free blacks were human beings and once freed had the ability to make a living for themselves.
The issue here is giving a person status to a chimp to allow existing laws meant for human beings to now apply to the chimps. This would make testing on them illegal and also other forms of torture illegal.
They speak of freeing them but what do they consider free? If being confined to a small cage cruelty/torture? Where do they go, a bigger cage? How big does the cage have to be in order to be considered not cruel? And that is where the problem lies. If a chimp is a person and given the same rights as a human can they legally be confined at all? If a chimp person can be placed in a zoo than why not a human person? Can a cage big enough to be considered not cruel for a chimp also be not cruel to lock a human in? It becomes a duality of law where the chimp has the rights of a human but is not a human and can not function in a human society.
Either way the chimps have to be confined to a habitat which at the end of the day is a cage. They can never truly be free unless released back into the wild where they will surely die.
I have a friend who is a former US customs agent who worked at a major international airport. We used to meet up every weekend and he would tell me all sorts of funny stories about working in customs.
They normally target people travelling back from countries which are known for various illegal activities. An obvious example is to search people returning from Jamaica trying to smuggle marijuana. Usually it's a small amount for personal use, an ounce or so. Another thing they do is turn away late term pregnant women on visitor visas who are most likely looking to have anchor babies. But sometimes they do pick random people based on observation of behaviour or simply because they sense something to be off. One such story was one of the female agents saw a guy on the line who gave her a bad vibe. She picked him out for a "random" check where they take you into a room for an interview and a search of your possessions. He was returning from Thailand and everything was in order but there was a CD book filled with bootleg movies and porn. She flipped through each page and the book was divided, the first half were bootlegs and the second half was porn. That is not illegal but one DVD stuck out. It had pictures of kids on it but was in the porn section. She took the dvd out and asked him why it was in that section and he claimed he had no idea. She told him "this better not be what I think it is" and took it to a room to be viewed. She came back not a few minutes later and confirmed it was indeed child porn. They arrested the man for possession of child pornography. All on a based on a bad feeling.
I bet the content creator is hoping that a bunch of the "infringers" pay up before the suit is tossed and they walk away with a few hundred grand. 10,000 * 250 EUR is about 3.44 million USD. Even if a tenth of the users pay and the lawyers take a third then they stand to make about a quarter million. And that is taking into account a single 250 EUR charge per defendant.
That is only if you knew I had your package.
My friend ordered a tablet from Amazon and it never arrived. FedEX tracking records show it was delivered. Since FedEX likes to leave packages on porches out in the open he figured someone walked off with it. He disputed the problem through Amazon and another tablet was sent which he wound up receiving. A month later an older man stopped by his house to give him his tablet that was sitting on his back porch for a few weeks while he was on vacation. The guy lived 5 minutes from my friend so the FedEX driver wasn't even close to the right address. I told him to return it but he instead sold it on ebay recouping his costs.
It makes no sense as the chimps have been in captivity. There is no possible way to reintegrate them back into existing, indigenous, wild African chimp societies. Its like forcing a family to adopt someone, it won't work.
And what is their definition of freed from captivity? An animal is either wild or in captivity. So we do what, turn them loose into the streets? Maybe they can get a job at walmart as a greeter. A zoo is still captivity and chimps privately owned are still in captivity just like dogs and house cats.
I understand the idea behind the suit but this is such a stupid case that it almost sounds like a prank. I cant explain it any other way.
I am not a cryptologist or crypto expert but what about the seed methods using a video camera looking at a lava lamp? I have also heard of pointing it out a busy window as the randomness of traffic, people, animals, tree movement etc. is quite random. Is it too slow or not random enough? What about a camera looking at a busy highway? I did a bit of googling and only found that the lavarand site is long gone but it was started by SGI back in the 90's. Another article described a cmos camera with the lens cap on and the sensor gain cranked up so the noise picked up by the sensor was used as a seed.
I realize these methods aren't always practical or available but from a technical point, are they viable?
You need to see a shrink about your multiple personality disorder.
Most of the power supplies are switching which means the AC is filtered and converted to DC before it hits any transformers. A switching IC then turns the resulting high voltage DC into a PWM or square wave using a transistor and that goes through a high frequency transformer which is much much smaller and cheaper than a laminated steel core 60Hz transformer. Switching frequencies can be in the tens to hundreds of kilohertz. Smaller DC-DC switchers are in the megahertz range and are really small.
So in summary, line noise wouldn't make much of a difference with today's efficient switching power supplies. Unless it was high voltage spikes that the switcher couldn't cope with but then you have bigger problems.
I'll just go down to my shop and use my Northwood dual table CNC router and start milling right away. Oh wait, sold that business a decade ago. Never mind. I know! I'll just go ask my neighbor to borrow their CNC router for a few hours..... Darn. I asked my neighbor to use their CNC router and he called the police. He also looked scared and confused. Maybe I need to ask a beekeeper since obviously the project is aimed at beekeepers who all seem to have CNC machines.
Sometimes the maker community can be dumber than a bag of hammers. If they want a simple open source beehive then sit down with a few good episodes of The New Yankee Workshop and draw up plans someone can download in PDF and follow using a minimal amount of power and hand tools. Many people have power tools and easy access to cheap woodworking tools at home improvement centers. Hell many people already have basic woodworking tools they bought for home improvement projects or to build that table they always wanted to build but never get around to. Most of the work can be done using hand tools. A router should be the most expensive tool needed. The electronics should be bundled as a kit and come pre assembled ready for installation.
Its a nice design but not enough people will be interested if the CNC part sits between them and a hive. Some will say then find a shop with a CNC and they will do it for you. You could but I bet that shop will charge you a nice "affordable" hourly machine rate and possibly charge for setup and tooling. If they think the design needs to be so complex a CNC is needed then sell the thing as a knocked down kit like Ikea. Might be a little costly but that is when you realize its a stupid idea and that people have been making beehives out of wood by hand for years.
Next time your package is accidentally delivered to my house, i'll simply keep it.
Whats that? You want it back? Tough shit. Finders keepers.
Or how about the touch screen disables itself until the vehicle is at a full stop. My friends father had a Lexus hybrid crossover which did just that. When the vehicle was moving a message displayed that the screen was disabled. You had to stop to enter an address into the nav system or make a change.
My first encounter of doom was when browsing the shareware rack at the local computer shop. I already had Wolfenstein 3D and loved the game and I remember it was made by id. So this Doom game was also made by id and looked interesting. Installed it on my 486DX-33MHz with 4MB ram and was blown away. Didnt run smooth but that was fixed when my father bought a 486DX2-66MHz with 16MB of ram for CAD work. what an amazing game and it sucked up hous of my time.
In high school our computer lab consisted of 486's (either DX25's or SX25's) which were networked with 10base2 coax and network booted though they also had 3.5 floppy drives. The server was netware and there was a shared student directory with a directory for each student to store their work in. The teacher was also the head of IT and he was frequently absent for most of the class allowing us to goof off as much as possible. I then got an idea: could I install Doom on the server? So I brought in my floppies and installed doom in my shared directory under another directory to keep it "hidden". I tested it out and it worked! My friends were all going ape shit when they saw me playing doom in class. Of course any student could read and write the other students directories so the other students had no trouble running doom from my directory. It was my first experience playing true multiplayer over a network. Though it wasn't all that great with the slow PC's and it took forever to load the damn game over the sickly slow network. But we had a shitload of fun. That was around 1994/95. Good times.
If you read the wikipedia article on the FPS genre, Wolfenstein 3D was not the first FPS. Turns out that FPS games started in the 70's but were not released to the public (one was a US Army tank simulator). the first publicly released FPS was Battlezone released in 1980.
Wold 3D did however put the genre on the map. Doom had the privilege of being the first FPS with true modem and networked multiplayer.
The proposal for building an African space agency sounds too good to be true. Most likely it will go into the pockets of corrupt government officials and contractors who won't get anything done and the project will be scrapped afters years in an artificial limbo.
I would say its better to put the money into getting people fresh water, sewage treatment, waste disposal and training/equipment for sustainable farming. They have to learn to crawl before they can walk.
When I walk my dog, two stray cats join us for the walk. They happily follow us all around the block and were never afraid of the dog and the dog already lives with two house cats. So they may not walk on a leash but they will walk with you. I feed the two strays and provide outdoor shelter for them (plastic dog house I found in trash which I put a spare dog bed into). I would take them in if I already didn't already have two terrorists.
I had a manager who told me he wished Microsoft made all of the software we used. In his eyes the interoperability between excel, word, powerpoint outlook etc. made his life so much easier. He even wished our ERP software was MS made.
Some people just dont know any better and sadly, they get to make the decisions about where the money goes.