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Comment Re:That is why I frequently and easily lend out my (Score 1) 354

by Dimitrii (#39080259) Attached to: How Companies Learn Your Secrets

: TV shows just how desperate marketeers are to prove they matter, the program you are watching interrupted by ads, for the program you were trying to watch followed by overlays of the next program, so please stay tuned... I would if you didn't ruin the program with all this begging.

A few weeks ago the network had an ad half way through House that you could watch the pilot of some other show "Right Now" on their web page. It repeated "right now". I had to pause the TiVo to laugh about it with my wife. Of course with TiVo I could do it with out missing anything but encouraging someone to leave the show they are on if funny.
Games

The Murky Origins of Zork's Name 70

Posted by Soulskill from the murky-enough-for-a-grue dept.
mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."

Comment Re:watching commercials (Score 1) 297

by Dimitrii (#29955470) Attached to: DVRs Help Some TV Shows Improve Ratings

And yet if you had no pause button and needed to take a longer bathroom break you'd be SOL. So trying the "pause" button, and you can stop far a break for however long you need.

I like breaks where natural breaks happen. Sure, if the phone rings or someone is at the door I stop where I am. But otherwise I will take breaks at a commercial.

I have been known to hit the slow button at the beginning of a break to leave the room. That way I have much longer than the break and I am not burning anything into my screen. A few times I have gotten into a conversation and it has even gone into the show. But not so far that a few presses of the 8 seconds back button on my Tivo won't set me up.
Earth

Submission + - Green Cement Absorbs Carbon

Submitted by
Peace Corps Online
Peace Corps Online writes: "Concrete accounts for more than 5 percent of human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions annually, mostly because cement, the active ingredient in concrete, is made by baking limestone and clay powders under intense heat that is generally produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Now Scientific American reports that British start-up company Novacem has developed a "carbon-negative" cement that absorbs more carbon dioxide over its life cycle than it emits. The trick is to make cement from magnesium silicates rather than calcium carbonate, or limestone, since this material does not emit CO2 in manufacture and absorbs the greenhouse gas as it ages. "The building and construction industry knows it has got to do radical things to reduce its carbon footprint and cement companies understand there is not a lot they can do without a technology breakthrough," says Novacem Chairman Stuart Evans. Novacem estimates that for every ton of Portland cement replaced by its product, around three-quarters of a ton of CO2 is saved, turning the cement industry into a big emitter to a big absorber of carbon. Major cement makers have been working hard to reduce CO2 emissions by investing in modern kilns and using as little carbon-heavy fuel as possible, but reductions to date have been limited. Novacem has raised $1.7 M to start a pilot plant that should be up and running in northern England in 2011."

Comment Re:Ya I would compare it to long division (Score 1) 731

by Dimitrii (#27774785) Attached to: Old-School Coding Techniques You May Not Miss

Regardless of if you are in a math heavy career or not, you aren't going to waste your time doing it by hand, you'll use a calculator which is faster and more accurate.

Well, strictly not if that calculator gives you decimals instead of a remainder besides the whole number and that number has to be carried over elsewhere.

Or you need a better calculator or learn to better use the one you have. Even the MS Calculator has an Int function and a memory.

big/little = big / little MS = - Int = * MR =

The superior RPN is left to others.

Comment Re:Well... (Score 2, Interesting) 481

by Dimitrii (#27698077) Attached to: Opting Out Increases Spam?

Also, your email address increases in value when being sold inbetween spammers. Effectively, you make the A-list among spammers.

More like B-list. A-list is for those saps who actually buy the stuff. I've helped someone whose mother fell for a "charity" that ended up with more spam that I thought an individual could get. It even got to be a hassle dealing with tons of snail mail.
Networking

The Other Side of the Sprint Vs. Cogent Depeering 174

Posted by kdawson from the working-it-out dept.
Swoolley writes "A month back this community discussed the Sprint vs. Cogent depeering. Now a story I wrote for Forbes.com tells the inside story of the fight, based on the lawsuits the two companies filed against each other in Virginia state court. For once, thanks to those suits, the public gets to see the details of a confidential peering agreement between two of the Internet's largest autonomous systems, as well as the circumstances leading up to the depeering. (Which company is in the right? Read the facts and decide for yourself.) While some people have argued that the depeering is reason for more government regulation, the Forbes story makes the case that details of the recent Cogent vs. Sprint fight argue for exactly the opposite: keeping the Internet backbones free of government meddling."

Comment Re:INEXPENSIVE (Score 1) 372

by Dimitrii (#25733855) Attached to: Gadgets For a Budding Geek?

For a small one look for a violet wand, an old quack medical device that is a mini handheld tesla coil. They are still being made for "sensation enthusiasts" so most sites that sell them are very NSFW. Prices are all over the place, but can be cheap at rummage sales and flea markets. The older/cheaper ones had a wax core and would overheat with extended use the newer designs can run for very long times.

For building: look up plans and scrounge. Or go the route we went through and get your company to sponsor you for the fall festival haunted house.

 

Comment Re:Anyone ever have to carry 3 or more pagers? (Score 1) 584

by Dimitrii (#25720725) Attached to: Where Have All the Pagers Gone?

For a short while we had a rotating on call pager as well as our personal work pager. We changed companies on the personal ones while I had the on call. So I had 3 for a week of the overlap. Since I kept my pager on a silver chain leash (they leash me I leash it) I would just clip the other(s) to the chain.

I pulled the whole lot out to check the time at a SCA meeting and got a lot of questions about my collection. I told them I was taking donations, and ended up with 9 on the chain for the rest of the meeting. Wish I got a photo. None got a page while I had them.

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