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Comment It does work (Score 5, Interesting) 219

by SlickNic (#46630509) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Experiences With Free To Air Satellite TV?
I grew up with this as my only source of TV in the 80s and 90s (we were too far from town and lived in the mountains to use local over the air tv). We had an 8' dish though and it must have weighed well in excess of 26lbs so yes your dish is quite light. We never seemed to have issues finding channels with something to watch and were able to pickup news, cartoons (very important), shows, and movies. The main issue was that the channels had to be scanned manually then. There were two sets of numbers, the first number if I remember correctly would physically rotate the dish outside then the second number would scan the channel options available available at that dish angle. This took a lot of time and ended up with us writing down the common locations for shows that we wanted to watch. Today I would hope there is an auto-scan feature that would allow you to just scan the channels to see what you're able to receive and store those. Unfortunately I haven't used this system in more than 10 years so I'm not very knowledgeable on what the system is like to use today. Hopefully something in my post was useful to you or someone else reading through.

Comment Re:Gingrich & Huckabee Weigh In (Score 1) 1168

by SlickNic (#42349505) Attached to: School Shooting Prompts Legislation To Study Violent Video Games

And yet countries that ban ownership of assault rifles and handguns by the average person don't have these crimes. They just don't.

We need to be MORE like these countries, not less. We need to ban all assault rifles, and severely restrict the ownership of handguns. One per person, that's it, no more.

Yes because crazy people will stop if they can't find a gun. In China 22 children were stabbed recently. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248054/China-stabbing-22-children-elderly-woman-stabbed-outside-primary-school-Chinese-knifeman.html Don't forget the deadliest attacks in America did not involve guns (911 and Oklahoma City Bombings). I personally think one of the more dangerous substances currently sold to anyone in our country is gasoline. Cheap, highly flamable, explosive when contained, and it's available in VERY large quantity everywhere. So should we ban gasoline or should we work on the real problem, mental health?

Comment Civilization (Score 1) 64

by SlickNic (#42266815) Attached to: Learning Rocket Science With Video Games
The Civilization games are quite educational, you gain some understanding of a broad array of topics through your tech tree choices. While it's not science exactly you certainly need to understand the different forms of government and religion in order to grow your cities and your civilization.

Comment Re:JCVH? (Score 3, Funny) 336

by SlickNic (#40494431) Attached to: Who's Your Favorite Vampire Hunter?

A zombie is an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means, such as witchcraft or from illness, disease or plague.

  • It has lowered consciousness, mobility, and agility.
  • It immediately begins to decay and decompose with no cessation.
  • It is easily barred from forward movement by basic blockades of physical impediments.

The resurrection body, which is the type that Christ had after His resurrection according to Biblical Scriptures, possess several properties

  • immortality
  • entirety, implying the restitution of the limbs, the distinction of the sexes and the perfection of the senses;
  • the excellent physique and physical beauty (natural prerogative).
  • incorruptibility, freedom from decay, or impassibility, freedom from pain, deriving from the perfect submission of the body to the soul
  • clarity or glory: the bodies of saints will reflect the light, the inner splendor of the soul, therefore, in the body they will conform to the Incarnate Word;
  • agility, so that the body of the saint, once free from the natural heaviness (imponderability), will be able to move rapidly from one place to another in the cosmos;
  • subtility, the faculty to penetrate everything: the glorious body penetrates, without difficulty nor mutual damage, the other bodies in the Universe.

  • Zombies clearly are completely different from a resurrected, glorified or incorruptible body.

You're right, definitely not a zombie. Sounds more like a vampire or maybe a vampire hybrid AKA "day walker". He certainly has a thing for blood, seeing as he makes all of his followers drink it.
Technology

Submission + - Scientists Achieve New Anti-Icing Breakthrough With Nanotechnology (gereports.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists from GE Global Research announced this morning yet another breakthrough in an ongoing project to develop new anti-icing applications from coatings created in the lab using nanotechnology, which involves the science of materials at a very tiny scale (a nanometer is one-billionth of one meter). At the nano-level, materials behave differently than they do at a normal scale, and GE material scientists have focused on creating superhydroponic, or extremely water repellent, materials as coatings for surfaces that could prevent icing. The new research presented today shows that in addition to dramatically reducing ice adhesion on surfaces, the experimental “nanotextured” coatings also delay ice from forming under simulated atmospheric icing conditions in the lab. While a non-coated surface will experience ice formation almost immediately under those conditions, the GE researchers found that a surface with the nanotextured coating won’t for approximately 80 seconds.
Google

Submission + - Google, Motorola Ordered to Provide Android Info to Apple (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "A U.S. judge has ordered Motorola Mobility and Google to turn over information to Apple on Google's acquisition in 2005 of Android, its development of the Android OS and the proposed acquisition of Motorola. According to Motorola, the information Apple seeks regarding Google's acquisition of Motorola and Android is not relevant to any damages asserted in the case."
NASA

Submission + - What to do about an asteroid that has a 1 in 625 chance of hitting us in 2040? (discovermagazine.com) 1

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "The asteroid 2011 AG5 is 140 meters across: football-stadium-sized. Its orbit isn't nailed down well enough to say yet, but using what's currently known, there's a 1 in 625 chance it will impact the Earth in 2040. It's behind the Sun until September 2013, and more observations taken then will probably reduce the odds of impact to something close to 0. But does it make sense to wait until then to start investigating a mission to deflect it away our planet? Astronomers are debating this right now, and what they conclude may pave the way for how we deal with an asteroid threat in the future."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is an acceptable broadband latency 1

Submitted by holmedog
holmedog writes: A simple questions with a lot of answers (I hope). I recently had issues with my DSL broadband at home and after a month of no resolution I was told 300ms latency (to their test servers) was the acceptable range for Centurylink 10.0Mbps. This got a shock reaction out of me to say the least. I would think anything over 125ms to be in the unacceptable range. So I have come to you to ask: What do you consider to be an acceptable broadband latency and why?
Idle

Submission + - Father was arrested for his daughter's drawing of a gun at school (calgaryherald.com) 2

Submitted by SlickNic
SlickNic writes: Jessie Sansone, 26 stopped at his children's school just like every other day to pickup his children but was instead arrested due to a drawing of a toy gun that was kept in the home by his children. Due to a severe over reaction by a school teacher and Canadian Family and Children's services Jessie was arrested and strip searched and his family including 4 children and pregnant wife were brought into the police station for questioning.

Submission + - Regulating Marijuana Like Alcohol in 2012 (norml.org)

Submitted by MoldySpore
MoldySpore writes: With the news that there is now a second state where measures specific to legalizing cannabis will appear on the electoral ballot this year, is it time for a more serious national debate on the decriminalization or legalization of Marijuana on the federal level? NORML believes it is, saying “This is a very exciting prospect for marijuana law reform advocates...Coloradans have already set the example for how to properly implement a state medical marijuana program and now they have the opportunity to lead the country yet again by being the first to end cannabis prohibition in their state."

With Marijuana usage on the decline, while prescription and other hard drug abuse is again on the climb, in addition to the numerous studies coming out in the past few years disproving assumptions many long believed to be true about Marijuana, might it finally be time to start putting our tax money to better use?
Censorship

Submission + - Paypal Forces E-Book Sellers to censor Erotic Content. (zdnet.com)

Submitted by hey!
hey! writes: On February 18 of this year, global giant payment processor PayPal sent eBook publisher Smashwords an ultimatum: if Smashwords didn't remove all eBooks with certain erotic content from its catalog in the next several days, PayPal would immediately stop handling payments.

Smashword's TOS already precluded child pornography, but now PayPal wants them to also censor depictions of consenting, non-related adults acting out incest fantasies. Likewise fantasy novels in which human characters transform into non-humans are affected if those characters have sex. ZDNet has a summary of the impact of these changes, which would among other things ban Vladmir Nabokov's *Lolita*.

As outrage mounts, finger pointing is in full swing. Smashwords blames PayPal, and PayPal blames the banks it deals with. The crux seems to be that erotica buyers have a higher rate of "chargebacks" — customers who buy stuff then demand their money back. Fair enough, but is a customer really more likely to return a book because it depicts one kind of fantasy between consenting adults vs. another? Perhaps the problem is just the quality of writing.
AMD

Submission + - Does AMD spur Intel to innovate? (jstor.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A newly released article in the Journal of Political Economy discusses the impact AMD has on Intel and consumers. Economists from the University of Chicago and Columbia University estimate that AMDs presence actually lowers the rate of innovation from Intel. Without AMD, Intel would be able to charge a higher price and those higher margins would encourage more frequent innovation. The authors note "[c]onsistent with Schumpeter, we find that the rate of innovation in product quality would be 4.2 percent higher without AMD present". However, if Intel held a monopoly in consumer CPUs, it would lower consumer surplus by $12 per year.

A non-gated version can be found here

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