There is definate "low-fidelity", so high-fidelity is a given. It relates to either the fidelity (accuracy) of a recording, or the ability of equipmen to re-produce high-fidelity (high accuracy) sounds from those high-fidelity recordings.

Also, your statement implies that you cannot hear a difference between mono, sterio, and/or other multi-track audio playback (Sterio+Subwoofer, Sterio+Center, Quadraphonic, or any combination thereof).

Sterio may be standard now, but it does not make the word meaningless.

That's cool.

It doesn't even have to do that, it could just ignore everything that returns 127.0.0.1 that isn't localhost, and only THEN query the DNS server. Or, it could keep it's own small file of Google's own ad serving addresses, and translate those into IP Addresses before the request even hits the hosts file. This would have the advantage of never allowing THEIR ads to be blocked, while allowing their competitors to be blocked.

And since most Google ads (AFAIK) are graphics and flash light, this might even be acceptable to most Chrome (and now Blink) users.

Since I actually like the free website model mostly in use today, I only ever block ads when they begin effecting my web browsing speed, browser stability, or my privacy. So, yeah, I block all flash advertising, always.

Why is it that I find when a company says that it's providing me with "more value", that I find that they are in reality removing things that I actually value, and / or adding things I do not value, and are probably charging me more for the priviledge?

For example:
I called a company complaining about a new juice bottle that, because the bottom was concave, held 1/2 an ounce less than the previous bottle, but they had not lowered their already high price. The person had the nerve to tell me that the change had been made because market research showed that their consumers wanted it. She didn't have much to say when I replied, "So you can show me surveys where people say that they either want to pay more for their juice, or get less of it, right?"

Oh, and keep in mind that the users of Google and Chrome are NOT Googles customers. Google sells targeted ads to advertisers. To be a customer really requires some kind of payment to be exchanged for a good or service.

The consumers of Google's free products are not customers, they are the product that Google sells to it's paying customers, it's advertisers.

The easy answer is precision.

Electroconvulsive therapy is the mental / medical equivilent of pounding on the TV to "fix" it, and is a last ditch treatment used when the simptoms cannot be treated any other way.

It, as the name implies, creates a seizure in the paitent by applying voltages across rather wide areas of the brain. Originally uncontrolled voltages (because it came through skin, bone, etc) into, nearly random brain tissues (because it was applied in ignorance, through multiple barriers, with no guarentee as to where the potentially (and often actually) damaging current went. Just as pounding on older electronics minutely shifted ALL components, sometimes cleaning a little bit of oxidation, or closing a curcit board crack, allowing current to flow where it had been blocked.

Today, the seisures are usually limited to purely electrical storms in the brain, and usually do not present themselves as convulsions, or uncontrolled muscle spasms.

I assume that the procedure has improved over the years, but I do know for a fact that ECT, to this very day, often destroys short and mid-term memory. Who knows what subtler damage it can cause?

On the other hand, Stimulating one, or a small group of cells, is nothing like ECT.

In fact brain surgeons will stimulate small pockets of brain cells before and during surgery (invoking memories, sights, sounds, tastes, sensations and smells) to minimise the chance of damaging or removing cells unrelated to the surgery. Something like that could never be done with ECT.

I can see a whole new branch of science comming out of Answering this simple question:

"What things, when shot into the brain, do NOT eliminate addiction?"

Ramping up the chemical rocket process to deal with containing and redirecting plasma is not the only way to take advantage of nuclear processes.

Fission could be used to produce what is basically a steam rocket. Water would be relitively cheap, since it is one of the most plentiful things on earth. Water is also one of the best shealds against radioactivity, so we could use water as fuel that had previously shielded our astronauts against cosmic and solar radiation in the second half of the trip out, to brake the ship for Mars orbit.

A more 'out there' option is to use nuclear bombs (either fission or fusion), to directly push the ship. The drawbacks to this is a probably jarring ride, and the probable resulting damages to ship, crew and cargo that would go with it. A 'continous' stream of micro-bombs that might be able to simulate a 'smooth' ride would present a whole new set of problems, starting with making bombs small enough, and reliable enough, with enough power to move the ship, all the way up to creating a system that could reliabily move enough of them continously for months without a single catistrophic break-down.

I forgot plasma, but it's basically like the heat exchange version, only with more magnetic shealding.

Without reading the article:

Accelleration is easy, depending on the technique you use to capture / redirect the energy.

1) Heat exchange: You use the heat of the process to vaporise a substance (like water), and that is released out the back of the vehicle.

2) Direct physical redirection. Small bombs are released behind the vehicle and a physical sheild that redirects the explosion, and protects the vehicle. The force of the explosion pushes the vehicle forward. Unless the people are stupid, the bombs will vary in size so that the initial explosion (or any others) will not kill the astronauts, but still allows for reaching enourmous speeds.

Decelleration / beaking / slowing down is simply a matter of spinning the the ship 180 degrees, and do the same things you did to accelerate. Start this early enough, and you will slow down in time to orbit mars.

There is little difference between an explosion and a rocket. Don't believe me? Cut the end off a firecracker or ladyfinger, lay it on the ground and light the fuse. A flame will shoot out the cut end, and push the explosive in the oppisite direction. What makes a loud, forcefull explosion is (usually) a restriction around the explosive. Remove the restriction in one direction and the force will all rush out that side. The resistance is what causes the pressure to build up to the point where it breaks it's enclosure. The "bang" is created because the pressure builds up to the point that the pressure wave moves faster than the speed of sound.

Lastly, there is little lingering radioactivity from anything other than a ground explosion because the amount of material that can pick up radioactivity is limited to the bomb and shell it'self and a little bit of atmosphere. In a ground explosion, dust and dirt (and whatever has been pulverised) can carry vast amounts of radioactivity, and carry leathal amounts for melinia.

Luckily, a burst in space could only irradiate it's own mass, and the little bit of fallout that is created will be pulled by the earth's magnetosphere tword the poles, to become aroras. That which falls into the atmosphere will travel through and be disperced by the various winds, like all the other radioactive particles from the sun and beyond that rain down from the heavens every second of every day since the earth first solidified.

... and old news (ancient in fact), will get you a free ticket to "No shit'sville".

The idea of using either fusion OR fission as a rocket "fuel" is nearly as old as the theiories of fusion and fission!

Some atomic rockets engines have even been tested. What's kept them out of space has been the attempt to proactively demilitarise space (to keep weapons out of space, especially nuclear weapons), and a fear of radioactive materials falling out of orbit for whatever reason, into your back yard.

You should remove ANY program that needlessly access's ANY network, whether you suspect DRM enforcement or not.

Why? It's spying on you, installing malware, rootkits, pop-ups, or advertising on your computer. I lock my doors and draw my drapes to keep people from easily spying on, stealing from, or setting up, me. Not that I'm paranoid (not that I'm not, either), but why should I assist anyone who wants to spy, etc, on me?

I'm old enough to have a sence of privacy, and to believe that nobody has any business checking up on anybody else without GOOD reason.

That you are paranoid, curious, or want to make money ARE NOT good reasons to violate my privacy. And certianlly not as part of some kind of systematic, wide-field snooping.

And if being a user of your products is sufficiant grounds to tag me as a theif, then what does that say about YOU?

It might not be DRM, maybe the new SimCity is simply collecting information about every user, every user's computer, it's use, and the users computer habits.

Spying on you does not have to be a function of DRM. It just makes enforcing DRM easier.

And if the spying is labled 'market research', then any boon to their efforts at enforcing DRM can be called an unintentional "side effect" of their "market research".

Somebody +1 this insightful fast!

Fox and Universal!

While reading this thread? Of boredom!