The Value of a Drink
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"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the wine I drink I feel shame. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the vineyards and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this wine, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I sayto myself, "It is better that I drink this wine and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."
~ Jack Handy
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your bra and panties.
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"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day. "
~ Frank Sinatra
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people.
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"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
~ Henny Youngman
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you.
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"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not."
~ Stephen Wright
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing.
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"When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!"
~ Brian O'Rourke
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause pregnancy.
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"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
~ Benjamin Franklin
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a retard.
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"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
~ Dave Barry
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.
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"To some it's a six-pack, to me it's a Support Group. Salvation in a can!"
~ Dave Howell
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.
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And saving the best for last, as explained by Cliff Clavin,of Cheers. One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Clavin was explaining the Buffalo Theory to his buddy Norm. Here's how it went...
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Nerd Madness - The AMD and ATI Merger...
I'm still scratching my head trying to figure it all out. AMD just pissed on the gamers market. AMD just doesn't have it to wage war on two fronts. This ultimately means that ATI will slow down it video R&D. ATI will still be a player in the market but expect it to focus on the "consumer and business" value and mid range markets. nVidia will be happy with the slowed down pace and will finally be able to reap some profit out of the graphics market and focus on the high end market. nVidia will continue to produce chipsets for AMD to support it's high end video products.
I must admit the first thing that came to mind when I heard this was that AMD wanted both it's own chipset/motherboard designers, which ATI has much experience with, and that it wanted to integrate low end graphics on it's chipsets and to create processor/chipset/graphics integrated products. The more silicon produced the greater the economy of scale will be. So their is more bang for the buck in running their own foundry and it gives them a lot more clout when it comes to dealing with independent chip foundries.
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I still think that the future design of consumer and workstation computers will be something akin to short blade servers. Basically the motherboard becomes more like a back plane with various common I/O devices and control logic and the processor and memory will move off onto it's own processor card. Devices and processor cards will plug into the same type of slots; of course some motherboards will more higher capacity slots just like we now have some motherboards with 2 x16 PCI-Express slots. The graphics card just becomes a specialized processor card on par with a general CPU card.
So in a sense AMD just bought another co processing CPU architecture. It's easy then to imagine graphics houses buying up machines with one CPU card and all the other slots being filled with graphics processing cards.
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P.S. And since a GPU is now akin to a CPU architecture, I'm not positive now, but I strongly suspect that Linux, BSD and other operating-systems can expect full hardware specs on video chips so that they can write their own drivers within the year. AMD is a lot more open and they have bigger things to worry about than writing video drivers for lots of little operating systems.
I must admit the first thing that came to mind when I heard this was that AMD wanted both it's own chipset/motherboard designers, which ATI has much experience with, and that it wanted to integrate low end graphics on it's chipsets and to create processor/chipset/graphics integrated products. The more silicon produced the greater the economy of scale will be. So their is more bang for the buck in running their own foundry and it gives them a lot more clout when it comes to dealing with independent chip foundries.
---
I still think that the future design of consumer and workstation computers will be something akin to short blade servers. Basically the motherboard becomes more like a back plane with various common I/O devices and control logic and the processor and memory will move off onto it's own processor card. Devices and processor cards will plug into the same type of slots; of course some motherboards will more higher capacity slots just like we now have some motherboards with 2 x16 PCI-Express slots. The graphics card just becomes a specialized processor card on par with a general CPU card.
So in a sense AMD just bought another co processing CPU architecture. It's easy then to imagine graphics houses buying up machines with one CPU card and all the other slots being filled with graphics processing cards.
---
P.S. And since a GPU is now akin to a CPU architecture, I'm not positive now, but I strongly suspect that Linux, BSD and other operating-systems can expect full hardware specs on video chips so that they can write their own drivers within the year. AMD is a lot more open and they have bigger things to worry about than writing video drivers for lots of little operating systems.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Application: Cuddling
Strong, quiet, intellegent male with a penchant for getting happy drunk on the weekends is looking for a cute, pretty, talkative girl to take home at the end of the night and just cuddle. Tell your girlfriends.
Sunday, July 9, 2006
Loved Superman Returns
While I can understand how people might be bored expecting an all out action movie, Superman III+IV were comedy and action movies and that's why they sucked, especially IV. Superman fundamentally is and always shall be a human story. So for Superman Returns they pretend III and IV never happened. Superman Returns is technically Superman III.
Superman gave up his powers in Superman II so that he could have a normal human relationship with Lois Lane. Both to be devoted to her and not go off saving the world all the time (hence equal) and to have sex. But it's never that easy. Zod shows up and the world needs Superman. He is mankind's hope. He gives up his personal happiness to be the hero that he is. Hence he is the worlds savior.
(BTW I have to give props to the TV series for addressing the sex issue, imagine Superman getting some and then in the heat of the moment bam!, "Oh $..!+, sorry for breaking your pelvis honey". Sure he could have sex but he could never really let go and have at it and lose himself in the passion of the moment.)
Anyway, after that movie astronomers discover the supposed location of star where superman came from and Superman goes in search of signs of survivors from his destroyed home world. It's a two year journey one way and hence by the time he gets back it's been five years.
He left to find someone like him, to not feel so alone. To not feel the weight of the world squarely on his shoulders. And by the end of the movie he finds out he isn't alone. He finds the very person and purpose he has been looking for here on earth.
The script might have been better but to you can't satisfy everyone. The movie is primarily a rebirth and foundation for more movies. The big problem for me was everyone looking so young, specifically Lois but let me say she is way prettier than Margo Kitter ever was.
I've always wondered about Superman's powers. I think his powers and abilities are not strength (though he is very strong) but rather the ability to warp the laws of physics. Specifically if you think in "Star Trek" terms he has... the ability to change the mass of an object (i.e. "inertial dampening" and magnifying). He can impart "structural integrity", so if he carries someone flying at supersonic speed they won't burn up from friction or freeze to death and he can lift cars by their roofs without necessarily ripping off the canopy, or why his clothes don't get torn up too badly even if they are a super advanced material. As far as his X-ray vision and heat vision he is sensing and affecting subatomic particles maybe in ways similar to his inertial and integrity abilities.
As far as X-ray vision he doesn't generate X-rays as that would actually be lethal. More than likely he might be affecting neutrinos or another subatomic particle to artificially increase their mass in a harmless way such that they give off infrared radiation when they collide with ordinary matter which he can see and detect. Whatever radiation superman is projecting it would have mass and behave like X-rays and hence lead would be too dense.
To fly he isn't generating anti gravity but rather gripping the fabric of space in some special way. If he did generate anti gravity then lifting something like the artificial island the size of New Jersey in the latest film or moving something like the moon would affect earths orbit. It would also mean he could only push up and not sideways or down. Not to say that he couldn't produce artificial gravity but for flying there is just more to it than that.
Lastly he gets his powers from the yellow sun. By and large we are not really talking about visible light (except for maybe a small portion) but rather his powers come from subatomic particles like neutrino which are produced in a sun. A red sun is a colder star than a yellow star, so it is entirely possible that back on Krypton Superman's people still had the same abilities but they just weren't as profound.
For all we know Krypton might have been a white dwarf (dead star, extremely dense, extreme gravity) circling a red star, hence an inherent ability to modify the laws of physics would be vital.
Superman gave up his powers in Superman II so that he could have a normal human relationship with Lois Lane. Both to be devoted to her and not go off saving the world all the time (hence equal) and to have sex. But it's never that easy. Zod shows up and the world needs Superman. He is mankind's hope. He gives up his personal happiness to be the hero that he is. Hence he is the worlds savior.
(BTW I have to give props to the TV series for addressing the sex issue, imagine Superman getting some and then in the heat of the moment bam!, "Oh $..!+, sorry for breaking your pelvis honey". Sure he could have sex but he could never really let go and have at it and lose himself in the passion of the moment.)
Anyway, after that movie astronomers discover the supposed location of star where superman came from and Superman goes in search of signs of survivors from his destroyed home world. It's a two year journey one way and hence by the time he gets back it's been five years.
He left to find someone like him, to not feel so alone. To not feel the weight of the world squarely on his shoulders. And by the end of the movie he finds out he isn't alone. He finds the very person and purpose he has been looking for here on earth.
The script might have been better but to you can't satisfy everyone. The movie is primarily a rebirth and foundation for more movies. The big problem for me was everyone looking so young, specifically Lois but let me say she is way prettier than Margo Kitter ever was.
I've always wondered about Superman's powers. I think his powers and abilities are not strength (though he is very strong) but rather the ability to warp the laws of physics. Specifically if you think in "Star Trek" terms he has... the ability to change the mass of an object (i.e. "inertial dampening" and magnifying). He can impart "structural integrity", so if he carries someone flying at supersonic speed they won't burn up from friction or freeze to death and he can lift cars by their roofs without necessarily ripping off the canopy, or why his clothes don't get torn up too badly even if they are a super advanced material. As far as his X-ray vision and heat vision he is sensing and affecting subatomic particles maybe in ways similar to his inertial and integrity abilities.
As far as X-ray vision he doesn't generate X-rays as that would actually be lethal. More than likely he might be affecting neutrinos or another subatomic particle to artificially increase their mass in a harmless way such that they give off infrared radiation when they collide with ordinary matter which he can see and detect. Whatever radiation superman is projecting it would have mass and behave like X-rays and hence lead would be too dense.
To fly he isn't generating anti gravity but rather gripping the fabric of space in some special way. If he did generate anti gravity then lifting something like the artificial island the size of New Jersey in the latest film or moving something like the moon would affect earths orbit. It would also mean he could only push up and not sideways or down. Not to say that he couldn't produce artificial gravity but for flying there is just more to it than that.
Lastly he gets his powers from the yellow sun. By and large we are not really talking about visible light (except for maybe a small portion) but rather his powers come from subatomic particles like neutrino which are produced in a sun. A red sun is a colder star than a yellow star, so it is entirely possible that back on Krypton Superman's people still had the same abilities but they just weren't as profound.
For all we know Krypton might have been a white dwarf (dead star, extremely dense, extreme gravity) circling a red star, hence an inherent ability to modify the laws of physics would be vital.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
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