Phillip Brooks

The popper is on Engadget! Don't forget to use synchtube if you want to view the youtube video real time with your friends (my nephew will appreciate it)...

Jean-Luc also preferred real books... Picard's Syndrome

Exactly my thinking! Imagine tomorrow's JD Salinger (R.I.P.) being published only in electronic format. Years after the technology is disabled (EMP renders electronics useless/blank; big brother activates the 'revoke' function on your e-reader because the book questions current political thinking) and the story/concept/history is lost. Talk about irony; Amazon deleted Orwell's "Animal Farm" and "1984" from Kindles after they were paid for by trusting customers. Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle As I said, this is more about technology seeking money rather than improving the quality of our life. Rant over. If you want to discuss it further, write me a letter. I'm calling my mom now to make sure that our "Man walks on moon" issue of the Jamestown Post-Journal is still safely stored away...

Technical: I didn't spend a lot of time with them, but I looked at the Sony and nook readers just before Christmas. The nook seemed like the nicer unit to me, but I didn't get to hold it; there was a big crowd gathered around a sales person demonstrating the features. The sample Sony unit bolted to the kiosk was awful! The screen flickered when changing pages and the response time to menu selections was very slow. Social: To me, these devices are a solution looking for a problem. The only 'problem' they seem to solve is that of the distribution of wealth. According to reports, the publishers give up 30% of the price, but have no printing, inventory or distribution overhead; just marketing and editing prior to release. The publishers will make more because they certainly paid more than 30% in production costs. Lets say for the sake of argument that it is 50% (probably low). The 50% that used to be distributed amongst loggers, paper mills, printers, trucking companies and book stores provided income that was in turn used to pay mortgages; to buy cars, groceries and books . A free economy is like a well architected LabVIEW application; it depends upon flow. The 30% redirected to the new business model seemingly goes to support the infrastructure to distribute the books. This is false because as a user you must pay subscription fees for access (cellular, broadband, etc...). The human part of this support is not being done by the displaced business model; it is being performed by 'the lowest bidder'. The 20% savings by the publishing house is still highly contested between the publishers and the authors and will likely be split between them in the end.

What does this say about Alfa? (or more importantly, me since I'm discussing people)

I'm depressed. I want to visit Pandora, but the prostitutes won't tell me how to get their because I might try to steal some of the Unobtainium...

There's a Uranus joke in this somewhere

Years ago I told my Irish friend "On St. Patrick's Day, EVERYBODY is Irish." He replied, "No, everybody WISHES they were Irish." So; is everyone an Aussie on International Australia Day, or do we just WISH we were?

You're beginning to sound like alfa

feedback node Jeff's wire crop circles

I've successfully tinkered with this socket setting to deal with port exhaustion. You can use the get raw object vi Mark mentioned to modify the LabVIEW TCP ref and set the socket variable 'TcpTimedWaitDelay'. There are conflicting entries on MSDN as to the minimum value; some state zero and others 30. We used 30 for our port exhaustion problem with success but I never tried a lower value. The concern would be DoS attacks on a given port, but your connection seems to be isolated so it shouldn't hurt to try. I would refrain from placing this in the registry though; I believe it would apply to all sockets and might make your computer vulnerable on any other network interfaces...

That's why I selected a netbook with 768 vertical resolution. Just before I bought my netbook, Darren had posted his experience with LabVIEW on a netbook in this blog entry. Based on the CES press releases I've been reading, many of the newer netbooks offer 1366 x 768 on 10.1 or 11.6 screens, so LabVIEW should be good to go.

I bought an Acer One 751h last summer ($384) and it came with 2GB of ram and a 250 GB drive. It's OK, but the graphics (GMA500) combined with Vista make it a dog for Flash or video. The computer comes with Vista Basic, which was not eligible for the upgrade to Windows 7. If I had known that, I would have bought a 1 GB model loaded with XP and then upgraded the memory. Vista and the GMA500 just don't play well together. (Note: LabVIEW 8.6 runs reasonably well!) Linux SUCKS on this combo, but there is a variant of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (JoliCloud) that merges some older GMA kernel drivers with 9.10 and it works fairly well; I boot it from a 16GB SDHC card in under a minute. I would look at the 11.6 size screens as these are 1336 x 768 rather than the 1024x600. At 600 pix high, you scroll way to much when reading web pages. Acer seems to be waiting for the new Atom processors and Ion 2 to come out before upgrading their line. I would choose something that has an Ion graphics processor, Windows 7, 2GB of ram. (EDIT Maybe this one? Asus 1201n) When I pay off my Xmas bills and find one like this, I will replace the current 751h; the kids will be happy to take it!

The bat should contain a kinetic charging device like those flashlights that you shake. The more hitting with the bat, the more power you get!

Ever want to share a video with your friend or family, but wish you were there with them to watch so you could enjoy the moment together? synchtube solves this problem by allowing you to share a video in real-time. Simply paste a YouTube link and create a room. You can share this room with others, and watch videos in real-time... well enough talking, just try it already!

Just thinking about the last year and wondered: o TIOBE index is based on various search engine results for a language o LAVA was down June/July time frame o LabVIEW's TIOBE index drops precipitously in the following months o LabVIEW is slowly climbing back up the ladder (48 to 46) One could assume that LAVA contributes significantly to the popularity index of LabVIEW

Retrieve Shell Icon.vi (LabVIEW 8.6.1)

Just saw this keyboard and thought of this thread. (Lenovo PN 57Y6336) Review and more pics here..

If the remote device is sending you a value that is the number of seconds since 1/1/1970 00:00:00, then create a timestamp constant on the block diagram, and set the value to 1/1/1970 00:00:00. Use the add primitive to combine the epoch with the DLL seconds. LabVIEW tip: easy relative timestamp calculations

I think this cartoon sums up how I feel (and possibly PaulG also)... http://www.theweek.com/cartoons/index/104112/Truth_and_the_global_warming_debate

Have a webcam? Submit your climate debate question to CNN via YouTube. They will probably only accept questions that allow them to show associated background video of devastation and suffering, but hey; who knows? If you do, share a link to your video question! (There are already many ClimateGate questions posted; mark them up or down as you see fit)

Then this must be true too: Found this when I Googled "Zyrtec vision" http://www.askapatie...835&name=zyrtec Lots of serious stuff, then this: 3 Allergies First few doses were well tolerated. After a week, thought I had lost vision completely...the zyrtec caused me to initially feel better which made me drink more beer and I passed out under my stairs where there is no light...not a safe drug at all! Vision problems continued a few more times without much warning. Do not take with more than a 12 pack or so...not safe!

Some subjective testing last night indicates that the performance difference was negligible between Google and OpenDNS. I did notice that the Google home page and sites that make heavy use of Google Ads seemed to perform better; I wonder why? I returned the settings to OpenDNS to preserve the filtering that Google does not (currently) offer. I think its only a matter of time before they do...

I use OpenDNS on my router at home too. I like that it helps keep the kiddies from finding malware / porn / LAVA posts /etc... but my wife has complained that things are slower when she follows links...

Don't forget the black eye that the media received after Dan Rather reported on "W"'s military record. That ended his career; I don't think the mainstream is going to start reporting until more is discovered. This is big stuff; stuff that ends careers, changes elections and long-term business decisions that represent billions of dollars.