The free earplugs they hand out at concerts suck, get something a bit better instead, you might like it. Midrange plugs start at $30 to $50 per set, individually fit ones run $200 to $350 or so. Multi-use and intended for DJs, technicians or orchestra members. If you can't find a store near you, Jrenum and Elacin are two brands that might get you started.
Good luck.
Ships with wheels.
He doesn't sample the water, but from what I've gathered he analyses the contents of the rake type thing that filters out condoms, cardboard pieces and whatever else shouldn't be flushed but still is and ends up in the treatment plant.
On a related note: A few days ago on of the local papers had an interview with a guy responsible for a rather large water purification plant. Apart from emphasizing once again what one should or shouldn't flush down the toilet, he remarked on there being spikes in the number of condoms they filter out right around the time of power outages. Just a random anecdote, but it's sourced from the guy who should know best.
Sending free stuff to the press isn't purely a thing of gadget and software markets, it's been around for quite a long time before that. Magazines reporting on concerts get free tickets for their reporters plus in some cases tickets to give away. Radio stations, too, along with free CDs (well, until they're forced to pay royalties for each "performance", but that's a new development). The Academy receives free screeners of nominated movies. Oh, and to get the car analogy in: Those car reviews in newspapers and magazines, they get to try those rides for free, too.
As long as expensive toys need to be returned after the review (does not apply to services like concert tickets), this doesn't strike me as any problem at all. Anything more than that starts to blur the line to bribery, and that is where it starts getting problematic.
Building the robotics and image processing bits of an automated testing environment would take an (expensive) Engineer a bunch of weeks, even more for a more complicated setup. Quadruple digits at least.
Paying a college student for four days of work is approximately 32 hours at $8 or so; that's some $250.
Which one seems cheaper?
You raise an interesting point.
A standard 2-D movie is basically a succession of I-frames (full images) and B-frames (delta information). Seeing how the I-frames are expensive in terms of storage space, the standard (e.g. left eye) track could be left as normal, but an alternative path of B-frames for the right eye could branch off after each I-frame. Alternatively, each right-eye frame could be branched off it's corresponding left-eye frame with that path staying intact, again.
The former would work better for heavier differences in the two channels; the latter would conserve more space in case of lots of change on screen.
Though I guess both mightn't be as visually great as the one possibility where the additional channel gets it's own set of I-frames. Almost, sure, but probably not exactly as good.
I'm pretty sure there will be a live fast/die young trade off.
Sounds quite right. Triple the metabolism means triple cell replacement means triple aging.
OTOH, apparently, we tend to sleep way too much. Sleep was (in the hunter & gatherer days) a very useful way to expend less energy. Sleep less, eat more. The same may be true for the mutation mentioned in TFA. A faster metabolism will build more muscle and so on, but (as even mentioned in TFS) require a higher amount of energy intake. In a world of limited supplies, Liam might've died of hunger quite quickly. In our situation of abundance, his particular mutation might prove useful, if only for decorative purposes; but well, decorative purposes are what keeps peacocks colourful, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them.
They test DirectX 9 against DirectX 11. Version 9 is the latest available on XP and can be perfectly emulated by 10, which is the one Vista ships with. Also, of course by 11, which is what Windows 7 ships with.
I'm guessing (educated, but still a guess) there's a "compatibility mode" that runs features available in DirectX 9 (directly or through 10 or 11, doesn't really matter) which includes everything from "Low" to "High" and a "quality mode" that'll max out the details with DirectX 11's features. The former makes the game run on XP, the latter makes it look prettier on Windows 7 and, if you manage to skip the DirectX 11 setup, Vista. Oh, I almost forgot: The level also depends on what kind of GPU is used. Windows 7 on a DirectX 9 GPU will probably disable the "Ultra" setting (or make it unplayably slow as all the tesselation would need to be done by the CPU.)
If I'm not mistaken, High sets the game to use the highest quality rendering it can get using only DirectX 9 features while Ultra is the only setting that actually enables stuff specific to DirectX 11. The article doesn't mention there being two cards or different installs or anything, so they probably just ran the game twice on the same box, first with DirectX-9-style rendering (done through DiretX 11 and only then switched on DirectX 11's full visual splendor (Ultra quality).
My guess would be he's referring to the largest (uncovered) infiltration of the U.S. gov't.
spending the money on the hardware necessary to control access by IP.
Huh? Controlling access by IP is probably the most simple and quick way to do it; all you need is a database capable of storing two 32-Bit* integers per row. First column takes the IP address, second the Unix timestamp. Before each (free) access, you check if there are five (or however many stories you're "giving away") or more entries for that address already. If so, block the request. If not, let it through and add the necessary row. Throw in a cronjob that deletes everything older than 24 hours and Shazam, you're done.
* I realize a (very) few people out there use IPv6, which would make addresses longer than 32 bits. Either widen that column or (smart answer) ignore them. They blog and twitter and whatnot, so letting them get their news free could very well pay off in more hits. Also, they tend to be the folks who get around technical measures, so don't even try.
I also realize Unix timestamps will overflow 32 bits in the near future (i.e. 29 years). Doesn't matter as the system isn't going to live that long.
Firebug, according to this guy.
I know I wasn't, but at least I tried, aye?
About the API, I'm guessing that it'll focus on feeding Google News, including News results in Google Web Search, but not GWS itself. I'm also guessing that many a publisher will be too lazy to make the 5 articles a day properly and instead just stick to the behaviour where coming from or being Google gets you the full text for free, but anything else (including clicking any of the internal links you see on that free page) would go behind a paywall. Should my guess prove true, the methods as described above will get you free full articles.
And for those papers who actually implement a five-a-day-free, it'll either be done with cookies (flush 'em for another five free stories), your IP address (reset your router, use TOR, use CoralCDN (.nyud.net), use a proxy) or tied to your Google Account (very unlikely, but solvable with more Google Accounts.)
Most 'papers like Google and the visitors Google sends them; so the Google Bot and hits with a google.com Referer tend to get a free pass. Use this to your advantage:
The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]
