Minecraft is not just LEGO, it's also a train set and a 200-in-1 electronics kit from Radio Shack. Oh, and creepers.

It was alt.binaries.pictures.grotesque, and believe it or not we did strive for accuracy -- even that time Rusty posted the Di Death Pics hoax. Once the media got hold of that she tried to 'fess up that it was a fake but nobody was listening.

Maybe not, but either they'll have to have a human watching them to make the occasional decision, or they'll have to be made smart enough to make their own decisions -- and that decision may end up being to say "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me". Revolutions tend to be bloody, but machines have no blood to spill except ours.

Interesting, I had parakeets (one smart, one quite stupid) that would fly up to the floor-to-ceiling mirror and hover there for a few seconds before turning away. Not once did they run into the mirror. Unlike a window, flying toward a mirror will produce the appearance of an imminent collision.

We'd also confuse the cats with the same kind of mirrors (different room). Use a laser pointer, at some distance from the mirror. The cat will lock on to the dot and not notice that there is also a dot in the mirrored reflection. Then you work the dot toward the mirror, with the cat in pursuit. It will still fail to notice the approaching reflection of the dot. Then you move the dot ONTO the mirror where it suddenly appears to split in two, causing the cat much consternation about which one to chase.

One thing that's readily apparent and not disputed is that our planet's temperature takes wild swings. It's seldom stable, which it seems to have been for several thousand years now. Perhaps our resolution isn't good enough or there's too much noise in the historical data, but it would seem that we live in exceptional times. For the whole system to be able to oscillate that widely, and on relatively short timescales, it MUST be sensitive to positive feedback loops. Runaway processes are apparently the rule rather than the exception.

This is not to say anything one way or the other about the forcing mechanism. I do believe humans have had an awful lot to do with it this time around. What we didn't realize is that it's like Sisyphus rolling the stone uphill. Either he's rolling it slowly and steadily upward, or it's inexorably moving downhill when he loses control. It may start slowly at first, but once it gets going it's nearly impossible to stop.

I don't think we as a species are totally fucked, but I do think a whole lot of people are going to die before this all settles out.

When Chuck Norris throws an exception, it is always fatal.

The bird I had to coddle in a towel until it recovered from its collision-induced dizziness is a conure. I've also had to do this with a cockatiel for the same reason, but I am well aware that they just aren't all that bright.The conure, however, is quite intelligent and does not seem to be suffering any long-term effects. He had a bald patch over one eye for a couple of months though.

The event that startled the conure (and two parakeets that were also out and I had to chase down) was the wind-induced slamming of an internal door. It was strong enough to make ME jump, and shook the walls. The window he flew into was one where he had sat on the windowsill on numerous occasions, and under less panicked conditions he has flown up to but not into the same window. He just had the bad luck to be on top of the cage, about three feet from and facing the window, when the door slammed. He basically launched himself straight into it before he could get his bearings. I suspect that if he had been a little closer he would have lacked sufficient speed to hurt himself, and if he had been further away he would have had time to change direction.

I didn't realize the poor guy had a concussion until he kept trying to fly for no apparent reason (he's more of a climber normally) and couldn't stand up without swaying. Since I had to corral the parakeets before the cat could get to them (the cat is not allowed where the birds are but they had flown over a wall of bookcases), the best I could do was to cover him with a sheet and pin it down with books. Once I collected the other two birds (named Herp and Derp, that should tell you what we think of their intelligence level) I was able to calm the conure down. It took about 20 minutes for the dizziness to wear off, and he vomited a couple times. It wasn't voluntary regurgitation like birds are prone to do, he wasn't doing any of the throat pumping that goes with that. Luckily it was just seeds and bits of mandarin orange.

If he had had his wings clipped, he MIGHT have lacked the speed to hurt himself, but I doubt it. I think most of his speed came from the leap from the cage. He just would have had a downward trajectory at the time rather than an upward one.

When a bird is in a panic, it will forget that the window glass is there -- even if it's consciously aware (under normal circumstances) of that glass. When startled, they will reflexively launch and head for a visually open passage. They may or may not gather their wits fast enough to remember it's actually a window. Fly first, navigate later. This reflex probably makes them harder most predators to catch, but it's also exploitable and many (human) hunters have used the startle reflex of birds to get them to fly directly into nets or flush them out to be shot.

I've had birds fly into windows or mirrors on a few occasions, and in every case, it was because they were startled or frightened. I've had to wrap the bird in a towel because it has a concussion and consequent dizziness and keeps trying to fly because it feels like it's falling.

I like Minecraft largely because it ISN'T an MMO. I've had players request server plug-ins (namely Factions) and have repeatedly said no... and yet they continued to nag until I made a public announcement that NO YOU CAN'T HAVE FACTIONS, IF YOU WANT AN MMO, GO PLAY ONE... SOMEWHERE ELSE. They got WorldGuard, and although that is inconvenient (admins have to do all the setup), it DOES work. On the most recent iteration of the true survival world, I gave everyone a 19x19 plot protected bedrock to sky, and a house. There is also a protected Trading Center. That's it, everything else is a free-for-all and no protection requests will even be considered. Even myself and fellow admins get only the same 19x19 plot as everyone else.

As to the Second Life reference below... my Minecraft server has a dance club (with flashing lights, a potion bar, and a working, user-operable DJ booth) and multiple cinemas with redstone-powered screens and music. They're not in the survival world (Multiverse is a very nice thing to run) but the cinemas are not so resource-intensive that I couldn't build them in a pure Survival world. The disco is admittedly more of a Creative-mode-only thing, as it involves a huge excavation, LOTS of redstone and note blocks, and would have been extremely difficult to build without the ability to fly.

A smaller pupil means a greater depth of field to start with, so if the central "small pupil" part of the lens is the most "average", DOF will reduce accommodation requirements anyhow.

For that ONE PRODUCT, perhaps. And that assumes you trust my judgment and that of others. Maybe YOU have a mouthpiece/reed combo that is not subject to this issue. Some other sources say "metal mouthpieces will do this" -- and I note that both the one i brought and the one the owner normally uses are metal. However, I know mine at least is a fairly voluminous mouthpiece on the inside, and it is construction with a small chamber (not material) that makes most metal mouthpieces so bright and cutting. There are plastic mouthpieces just as incisive, like the Rico Metalite, and the Saxscape Downtown. (I own one of the latter, and have owned a couple of the former.)

But how would you go about finding out whether the horns at the Cecilio booth were worthwhile? My personal experience with the brand has been EXTREMELY mixed. I have a piccolo of theirs that is absolute crap, a complete waste of $200. When I played the bari at their booth, it too was absolute crap, and I said so (yet they still tried to sell it to me on the spot). However, I had come to the booth to try out the Sax Partner (basically a sound-insulated hard case with hand holes, so you can practice nearly silently), and it wasn't crap at all. In fact, but for one (fixable) design flaw, I was rather impressed with it. Possibly more surprisingly, I also liked the Cecilio-branded horn inside of it for the demo. It wasn't a GREAT horn, but it really wasn't bad at all. I was not really any happier with the Aizen I played an hour later that costs five times as much.

I also played a bari of the brand name "Ten-on" which was made in Vietnam, and was quite impressed. I also played some of their flutes, with varied results (some I liked a lot, one I totally hated). The Taiwanese company owners were personally present, not mere sales drones, and it was pretty apparent they have their supply chain issues more firmly in control than their mainland China counterparts. The M-22 bari at the Rheuben Allen booth was expensive (though I understand they cut list prices more than most), but it was a very good instrument. I also got to meet a certain personality in the sax-building world (with the initials "SG") who was amusing and knowledgeable, though I still don't think I'd buy anything from him personally. Another (Oleg) was arrogant, but tolerable in the short time I had to deal with him -- just long enough to get a turn on the Tubax, which was stationed in his booth though it belonged to someone else.

I also ran into a former bandmate, and we planned to get together after the close of the show but he got sidetracked by security for having insufficient documentation of some items he had bought and eventually I had to go on without him.

All this happened in a single day, and I spent more time at the booth that issued me the pass (acting like I worked for them, since I supposedly did) than I did roaming the floors. I met famous and less-famous but still interesting people that way too. Good luck getting an equivalent experience without just BEING THERE, and there's plenty I left out.

Every plasma display I've ever seen has taken serious burn-in damage within five years and is completely unusable not long after that. This is damage to the emitters themselves and is not repairable. Even if backlights go through a similar degradation process (and they probably do), it won't be so site-specific and hopefully will be fixable by replacing the part.

Admittedly I only ever see plasmas in big installations where they're on almost all the time, but using them less only delays the inevitable.

The Internet will never substitute for getting your hands on a product and trying it out yourself. Some things can be shipped for demos, but for the show I have attended (Winter NAMM), it would be highly impractical and in some cases impossible to distribute demo units to everyone who wants to try them out. It makes a lot more sense to set up once a year and let everyone come together.

The coolest thing I got to try out at Winter NAMM 2010 wasn't even for sale by anyone at the show. One of the exhibitors had brought along his personal Tubax and was giving demonstrations as well as letting people play it (on the stand -- it's not like you'd WANT to pick this thing up). I was lucky enough to have brought a baritone saxophone mouthpiece and reed and didn't have to play the owner's or borrow one from the booth I was representing. I found that while it is an interesting instrument and incredibly well-made, it's not something I would particularly want to buy. It is NOT a straight substitute for a contrabass saxophone. Mostly, it just hits a wall volume-wise somewhere around a strong mf. Any attempt to play louder than that just caused the tone to break up. I thought this might have been because I was using a setup not well-suited to the horn, but I have since received confirmation from other people who have rented or owned them that it's not just MY problem. They just don't like to be played loud.

This is not something you will ever be able to find out firsthand from any amount of electronic conferencing. Thus, certain types of trade shows are not particularly in danger.

It seems to me a light source that is inherently flat would be ideal for a display backlight. It probably won't make them much thinner than they already are, but it could make them less complex to produce and possibly more repairable (by replacing aged backlights).

Also, being able to attach these directly to walls and ceilings rather than mounting brackets or cutting holes for lamps would allow a wider placement of light sources than is currently practical. I'd probably have (at least) one on every wall plus some on the ceiling, to make sure that I could get an ideal spread of light sources for whatever work I might be doing.

For the moment at least, the only Americans still eating Wonder Bread are those who had the foresight to stock up and freeze it.