jamotto

Link quote: LONDON (Reuters) - Drivers may soon have no excuse for ignoring road signs. Australian scientists have invented an electronic driver's assistant system, similar to the back-seat driver who forever points out road signs and warns against speeding. "The Australian invention is part of a global effort to make drivers more aware of road signs, especially those concerned with safety," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. The new driver's assistance system (DAS) developed by National Information and Communications Technology Australia (NICTA) in Canberra detects road signs and warns drivers to slow down. "DAS uses three cameras: one to scan the road ahead and a pair to monitor where the driver is looking," the magazine said. A computer system fitted behind the dashboard collates the information with data on the speed the car is going. If it appears the driver has not seen a sign or has not slowed down, a warning is issued. In preliminary tests, DAS performed "pretty well" even at high speeds, according to its developers. They plan to test it in full-scale road trials with many types of road signs soon.

quote:Originally posted by Shingen: OK, you're back in Jamotto. Good to have ya back. Good to be back. quote:WB jamotto! We'll chat about otherwise silly stuff on the channel available to us.looking forward to it Chavik.

A car that was for sale on e-bay Have to give this person credit for being creative as far as trying to sell this car

quote:Originally posted by Shingen: Kewl! You'll need to reapply in the database though.done.

quote:Originally posted by Shingen: Do you want back in or not?absolutely

Looks like NASA didn't escape the storms wrath. Hurricane Jeanne Damages Shuttle Building quote:By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The third hurricane to hit NASA's spaceport in just over a month blew out more panels and left more gaping holes in the massive shuttle assembly building, but overall damage was not as severe as feared, a space agency official said Sunday. "Where there's obviously some more damage, it doesn't look appreciably worse than it did," said NASA spokesman George Diller, part of a 206-member team that spent the night barricaded inside the Kennedy Space Center (news - web sites). "We just had a prayer service with the base chaplain because we all felt so relieved that we came out as well as we did," he said later in the morning. Hurricane Jeanne struck the space center ÔÇö still recovering from Hurricanes Charley and Frances ÔÇö with 79 mph wind, according to unofficial reports. It would have been more ferocious if the storm had come ashore just a little farther north. All three space shuttles were reported safe in their hangars on Sunday. All space station equipment and new building blocks awaiting launch to the orbiting outpost were also said to be fine. But chunks of roofing were spotted around the base, along with mangled aluminum panels from the Vehicle Assembly Building, Diller said. At one point, Diller and some others opened a door of the adjacent launch control center, where they were huddled, and peeked outside. "We could see (the panels) fluttering down," he said. The 525-foot-high structure was built in the mid-1960s to accommodate the towering Apollo moon rockets. It is where space shuttles are attached to their boosters and external fuel tanks prior to liftoff. Charley tore off about 40 of the 4-foot-by-16-foot exterior panels from the assembly building in mid-August, and Frances ripped away another 820 over Labor Day weekend, turning the pieces into flying shrapnel. About 200 of those missing panels also lost the underlying insulation, leaving gaping holes in the southern side of the building. NASA did not have enough time before Jeanne to plug the holes. All workers could do was put netting inside, behind the holes, to catch any flying debris. A huge hole in the roof, also the work of Frances, was covered with tarps and sandbags in preparation for Jeanne. Two other critical buildings lost entire sections of roof during Frances, and workers patched them the best they could. Anxious to see the latest damage, the space center's director, James Kennedy, took a 45-minute drive with his emergency director late Sunday morning. "He thought that things don't look too bad," Diller reported. Nevertheless, the space center will remain closed Monday. Jeanne is yet another setback to NASA's effort to resume space shuttle flights in the spring, following a more than two-year stand-down in the wake of the Columbia accident. Shuttle managers are expected to decide in the next week or two whether they will have to delay a Discovery launch planned for March or April.

Link quote:By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer KARACHI, Pakistan - Police stepped up patrols around foreign consulates and government offices in this volatile city on Monday, fearing a backlash after Pakistani forces killed a suspected top al-Qaida operative wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Amjad Hussain Farooqi, also accused in two attempts on the life of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, died in a four-hour shootout Sunday at a house in the southern town of Nawabshah. Two or three other men, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested. Like Farooqi, they are all Pakistanis. Authorities hailed the operation as a breakthrough and on Monday the investigation expanded to include the arrest of three other suspected Islamic militants, all brothers, in Sukkur, a town not far from Nawabshah. One was identified as Khalid Ansari, alleged to have ties to the Sunni Muslim group Jaish-e-Mohammed. Police said the men were blindfolded and led away by intelligence officials as security forces using loudspeakers warned residents to stay indoors. Fayyaz Leghari, deputy chief of police in Karachi, a hotbed for Islamic militants, said the city was on "red alert." As well as stepping up patrols around foreign consulates and key government offices, police posted more plainclothes officers at sensitive locations. Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism and has arrested more than 600 al-Qaida suspects, including several senior figures in the terror network. Many have been handed over to U.S. authorities. In Washington, a U.S. official who described Farooqi as a key al-Qaida figure said the government could not yet confirm he had been killed but that appeared to be the case. Pakistani officials said they were awaiting the results of DNA tests but had little doubt the body was that of Farooqi. Farooqi was believed to have been an associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed al-Qaida No. 3 captured in Pakistan last year. He had been missing since Pearl was abducted in Karachi in January 2002. Pearl's captors beheaded the journalist and released a videotape of the killing. Four Islamic militants have been convicted of his kidnapping but seven other suspects ÔÇö including those who allegedly slit his throat ÔÇö remain at large. Farooqi, thought to be 32, was born in a village in eastern Punjab province. His family says he was radicalized by a visit to Kashmir, where he trained with Islamic militants fighting against Indian security forces. He later visited Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (news - web sites). In May, security officials identified him as an organizer, with Libyan al-Qaida suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi, of two attempts to assassinate Musharraf last December by blowing up his motorcade in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad. Musharraf, who has enraged Islamic militants with his support for Washington's campaign against terrorism, escaped injury both times but several other people were killed. Al-Libbi remains at large. Farooqi is also suspected of taking part in the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999 that resulted in a hostages-for-prisoners exchange that freed British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh from an Indian prison. Sheikh has been sentenced to death for his role in setting up the Pearl abduction. Dozens of police and paramilitary rangers blocked access Monday to the scene of Sunday's four-hour raid in Nawabshah, 125 miles northeast of the main southern city of Karachi. Authorities said they acted on a tip that Farooqi was hiding there. A paramilitary official said that at one point Farooqi shouted he preferred death to capture. Officials have yet to disclose the identities of those arrested. But an intelligence official in Nawabshah, 125 miles northeast of Karachi, said one was Abdul Rehman, a teacher at a local Islamic seminary who had rented the house for Farooqi two months ago. Another intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said a second suspect as Yaqoob Farooqi. It was unclear if he was related to the dead suspect. Authorities seized a computer, CDs, militant literature, some grenades, a wire cutter and several photos from the house, the source said. One neighbor, Zainul Abideen, recounted seeing Farooqi. "He is the same man whose pictures we saw today in the newspapers. I have seen him going and coming on his bicycle," he said. Pakistan says it has arrested at least 70 terror suspects since mid-July, including Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged al-Qaida computer expert, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa that killed more than 200 people.

Link quote:By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell sees the situation in Iraq "getting worse" as planned elections approach, and the top U.S. military commander for Iraq says he expects more violence ahead. Their comments Sunday followed a week in which President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi spoke optimistically about the situation despite the beheadings of two more Americans and the deaths of dozens of people in car bombings. In its latest report, the military said four Marines died in separate incidents Friday, adding to a toll that has topped 1,000 since the U.S.-led invasion. Powell said the insurgency is only becoming more violent as planned January elections near. "It's getting worse," he said on ABC's "This Week." "They are determined to disrupt the election. They do not want the Iraqi people to vote for their own leaders in a free, democratic election." Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, warned that voting may not be possible in parts of Iraq where the violence is too intense. "I don't think we'll ever achieve perfection and when we look for perfection in a combat zone we're going to be sadly disappointed," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." Abizaid compared the situation in Iraq to the disputed U.S. presidential election in 2000 that put George W. Bush in the White House following a protracted Florida ballot fight that ended up in the Supreme Court. "I don't think Iraq will have a perfect election. And if I recall, looking back at our own election four years ago, it wasn't perfect either," he said. The goal in Iraq is to have successful voting in the "vast majority of the country," said Abizaid, who leads the U.S. Central Command. "We're going to have to fight our way all the way through elections," he said, "and there'll be a lot of violence between now and then." Abizaid spoke of a major offensive before the election, with U.S. and Iraqi forces doing "whatever's necessary to bring areas in Iraq under Iraqi control." Powell offered a road map to the coming offensive. He said the military likely will tackle the Sunni Triangle cities of Ramadi and Samarra before attempting to restore order in nearby Fallujah, which he called "the tough one." "We don't like the situation in Fallujah," Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition." "The other ones, I think, are more manageable," he added. "Ramadi and Samarra, I think we'll get those back under control, and then we'll have to deal with Fallujah." Powell said planning is under way for an Iraqi conference, possibly next month in Jordan or Egypt, of the world's leading industrialized nations and regional powers, including Iran and Syria. "This was a way to reach out to Iraq's immediate neighbors and persuade them that this is the time to help Iraq, so that the region can become stable," he said. Including the Group of Eight economic powers, Powell said, "adds a little bit more oomph to the conference" and brings in nations that could contribute "more in the way of resources." U.S. officials have expressed conflicting opinions about whether security will enable all Iraqis to vote in January. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Congress on Friday that the elections must be held throughout the country, including areas gripped by violence. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that if insurgents prevent Iraqis from voting in some areas, a partial vote would be better than none at all. Asked about Rumsfeld's comments, Powell repeated the State Department's assertion that all Iraqis must have the chance to vote if the election is to be credible. "You know, there will be polling stations that are shot at," he said. "There will be insurgents who will still be out there who will try to keep people from voting." "But I think what we have to keep shooting for and what is achievable is to give everybody the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election, to make the election fully credible, and something that will stand the test of the international community's examination."

quote:Originally posted by LostInSpace: Yea, that too. But the Jorneyman project fashioned itself after Myst. Capitalizing on the Myst game style concept which was not a bad idea.and all the while being a whole lot more fun to play than Myst. quote: Anyway, just finished the demo. What!? 197mb download for only one puzzle!? That blows. But the game is very cool all the same. Hopefully, the success of URU and Myst 4 will give life back to adventure games.I wouldn't hold my breath, all the games I see coming to the market are fps and strategy games. although Silent Hunter 3 is looking promising.

cool, reminds me of "The Journeyman Project" series of games.

quote:Most MP matches last for a few hours, twice a month on Sunday afternoons. If you cannot or will not support TDH is these matches, you have no reason to be in the fleet, so don't apply or resign your current membership!I read this to mean you had to be there for the whole match in it's entirety. However, like for todays meet I could have only been present for the very first match before having to leave. This could be true for all my Sundays for the foreseeable future. My availability would change on a weekly basis it appears. If you don't have problems with that then great, if you do then it would be best for me to wait until I have more free time available. [ 10-06-2004, 01:51 AM: Message edited by: Shingen ]

quote:Originally posted by Cruis.In: it says out of stock on chips bits, you just type in bridge commander, when it comes up, it has " - out of stock " next to it.Drat, I didn't see that quote: heh... yeah there's this extortionist guy on amazon wakefield something, who bought up a whole bunch and sells them at that high and says no where else has it, its a collectible so hence the high price, i say bullshit. I'll still never buy it at that price if it was the last copy on earth.I hope this extortionist like's the game a lot. He is going to be keeping his copies for a long time if he is the one selling it for $99 on amazon.

it's $19.95 here

Cool logo shingen

Link quote:By MARK PRATT, Associated Press Writer BOSTON - "Eat your spinach," Mom used to say. "It will make your muscles grow, power your laptop and recharge your cell phone... " OK. So nobody's Mom said those last two things. But researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have used spinach to harness a plant's ability to convert sunlight into energy for the first time, creating a device that may one day power laptops, mobile phones and more. Photosynthesis, the process by which plants use light beams for energy rather than eating food like animals, has been known to scientists for decades. But attempts to combine the organic with the electronic had always failed: Isolate the photosynthetic proteins that capture the energy from sunlight, and they die. Inject the water and salt needed to keep the proteins alive, and the electronic equipment is destroyed. That was until Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, discovered that protein building blocks called detergent peptides could be manipulated to keep the proteins alive up to three weeks while in contact with electronics. "Stabilizing the protein is crucial," said Zhang, who collaborated with researchers from MIT, the University of Tennessee and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, including electrical engineers, nanotechnology experts and biologists. "Detergent peptide turned out to be a wonderful material to keep proteins intact." The scientists, whose findings were first reported by in NanoLetters, a publication of the American Chemical Society, then created a "spinach sandwich." Why spinach? In reality, any number of plants could have been used. But the researchers chose spinach because "it is cheap and is easily available from the grocery store," Zhang said. The spinach was ground up and purified to isolate a protein deep within the spinach cells. A top layer of glass was coated underneath with a conductive material and a thin layer of gold to aid the chemical reaction. In the middle, the spinach-peptide mixture sits on a soft, organic semiconductor that prevents electrical shorts and protects the protein complexes from a bottom layer of metal. By shining laser light on the "sandwich," researchers were able to generate a tiny current. While one device by itself can't generate much energy, billions of them together could produce enough electricity to power a device. "It's like a penny," Zhang said. "One penny is not much use, but 1 billion pennies is a lot of money." Practical applications are still a decade or so away, but the advantages include the technology's lightweight qualities, portability and environmental friendliness. "There is no waste," Zhang said. The researchers suggest the technology could be used as a backup energy supply for battery-powered portable devices. "We have crossed the first hurdle of successfully integrating a photosynthetic protein molecular complex with a solid-state electronic device," said Marc Baldo, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.Maybe one day we won't need batteries.

quote:Originally posted by Cruis.In: someone said above it isn't scary, i guess im that sort of frightened person, because i find it jumpy, i hate when a monster attacks from behind and i spin and cannot see him because it's so dark... and in mine i heard footsteps from them. Your right Cruis.In I turned the speakers up more and they are there, a little faint. As for not being scary, I dunno the game just is not doing it for me.

Link quote:They may live in the land of the rising sun, but that doesn't mean they know anything about it. According to a survey by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, 42% of Japanese children believe that the Sun rotates around the Earth and 30% of children aged 11-14 do not not know that it sets in the west. "Both parents and children have fewer opportunities to experience nature, such as watching the sun go down," Hidehiko Agata, an associate professor at the observatory, said in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. "Nowadays they have access to all kinds of information, but fewer opportunities to learn about life's everyday phenomena." Earlier this year university researchers found that half Japan's primary and secondary school students had never seen a sunrise or sunset. The poor grasp of scientific fundamentals has been blamed on the increasing number of hours spent watching TV and playing video games. The children themselves are more likely to blame their heavy workload and attendance at evening cramming schools. Professor Agata, who wants the national curriculum revised, says some pupils do not know that the Sun, Moon and Earth are spherical. In a separate survey, 720 children were asked to name "a celestial object that revolves around the earth like a satellite". Only 39% said the Moon. But 47% knew that the Moon seems to change shap because of changes in its position relative to the Earth and the Sun.

I don't think they are trying to muddy his image. They are just trying to explain why he followed that plane on that fateful day. For all intents and purposes it was uncharacteristically wreak less of him to do so. He had been in the same situation as the day he was killed, the only difference is that on those days he chose not to pursue. What was different on the day he died? Why did he pursue the plane when we think it should had been obvious that he shouldn't have. It's a question that will never be conclusively answered.

I have finished the demo and was getting around 20fps at 1024x768 in low quality, I did leave all the advanced graphics options on except AA and V-sync. Graphics where good, I especially like the detail put into the faces of the people. The very short walk outside on Mars was cool with the sand storm like effect going on. The announcements over the PA really added a feeling of being ÔÇ£in the gameÔÇØ. Finally when all hell breaks loose listening to other marines and scientists meeting their demise over your radio was a nice touch. Now my nit picks of the game. It's not scary. There are no footsteps at least I didn't hear any. It would have been useful, as some of what you shoot likes to come up behind you. So your only warning is when that zombie starts giving you some ÔÇ£love patsÔÇØ on your back. The machine gun in the hands of a zombie is lethal but in your hands takes what feels like 500 rounds to take out an unarmored zombie. The shotgun has an extremely short range/wide firing pattern, you have to stand so close that some times you have arm wrestle the zombie to make it give your gun back. Lastly the zombies and other entities that you have to shoot are not that much smarter than what they were in the original quake. They don't dodge, however sometimes they will do a somersault through an open door but once they come to rest on their feet they don't move.

Link

Link Needs quicktime and shockwave to play

quote:Originally posted by Shingen: Mainly cause he doesn't want to play MP as a fleet, so he can stay an Indie.Seems to me you didn't make it easy for him to participate in MP. Ah, no matter, if Cc goes I go. Please remove me from the fleet, thank you.

A good keyboard is hard to find. [ 09-20-2004, 03:16 PM: Message edited by: jamotto ]

and why have you kicked him out?

Link quote:By BRIAN MELLEY, Associated Press Writer SHASTA LAKE, Calif. - As darkness fell across the crescent-shaped Shasta Dam, eight barefoot Winnemem Wintu warriors armed with bows began the tribe's first war dance since 1887. Members of the tiny American Indian tribe began the four-day protest Sunday night to stop a potential expansion of the Shasta Dam, which would destroy sacred sites that had survived its original construction. "The war dance itself is a message, a message to the world that we can't stand to put up with this again," said Caleen Sisk-Franco, the chief who says she received the protest vision from the spirits of ancestors. "We've already lost too many sacred sites to the lake. To lose more is like cutting the legs off all the tribal members." For more than 20 years, there's been talk of raising the 602-foot high dam that holds back three rivers, including the Sacramento, the state's biggest. Multimillion-dollar studies are underway over the possibility of raising it as little as 6 1/2 feet and as much as 200 feet, and the Winnemem feel an imminent threat to their way of life. Three-quarters of the state's rain falls north of Sacramento, and Shasta Lake, with its 370-mile shore, is the largest catch basin. Electricity is produced as waters spill toward the Sacramento River, the water conduit for 22 million people and thousands of farms, said Jeff McCracken of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The bureau operates Shasta Dam, located about 110 miles south of the Oregon border. But as the state grows by 5 million people each decade and copes with water shortages, officials said they need more water. Of the potential choices, McCracken said, expanding Shasta is one of the most promising. Expanding the dam could help troubled salmon by ensuring steadier flows in the Sacramento River and keeping temperatures colder for fish as they head from the sea to their birthplaces to spawn, according to Bureau of Reclamation officials. But Craig Tucker, of the environmental group Friends of the River, said a bigger dam would further inundate the Sacramento, McCloud and Pit rivers upstream, jeopardizing world-class trout fishing and whitewater recreation. "Their goal isn't to help the fishery," Tucker said of the dam supporters. "Their goal is to hoard more and more water." The Winnemem Wintu population has dwindled to 125 members due to a combination of disease, disputes and departures by members who have abandoned the culture. The tribe last held a war dance in 1887 to protest a McCloud River hatchery that captured the salmon it relied on for its way of life. About 60 years ago, the tribe relocated the graves of 183 ancestors and abandoned many sacred sites as Shasta Lake swallowed its villages and ancient cemeteries. The tribe said it was promised land elsewhere in exchange, but the only plots received were in a cemetery below the dam. Sisk-Franco has likened the dam expansion to flooding the Vatican (news - web sites). His tribe is one of hundreds nationwide that are not officially recognized, which limits its clout while negotiating with the government. If the dam is raised, the tribe said it will forever lose Puberty Rock, where ceremonies are held for girls coming of age. Children's Rock, where young ones seek blessings and the gift of talents, would also disappear. One hundred fifty years ago settlers killed 42 tribe members in what is known as the massacre at Kaibai Creek, and the site also would be washed away. "When those places get threatened or occupied or expropriated or somehow taken from them, that calls for preparation for conflict," said Les Field, a University of New Mexico anthropologist. Chanting and letting out cries, each warrior held out a bow and arrows in their left hand, the only obvious gesture of war as they danced around the blazing fire ÔÇö with the dimly lit dam in the distance.