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Why does everyone seem to hate the sound of their own voice?
When people hear themselves speak, the voice they hear is transmitted to their ears through the vibrations of their bones. This is a different sound than what is communicated by air. So one spends his/her entire life thinking they sound one way when the rest of the world hears them in a different manner. Realizing that what they have “heard” their entire life isn’t their true voice (as perceived by others) can make one dislike what they hear.
– lolsmileyface4
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Why are AK47s so renowned? How do you make your weapons simpler and hardier than the other guy?
The simplicity mostly comes in the form of HUGE tolerances (clearances… sorry) between parts inside the receiver. If you open an AK up, there’s a ton of empty space inside the receiver, and very few moving parts in the trigger group. That allows you to put all kinds of dirt, gunk, snow, sand, pebbles, dust, etc. inside the thing without gumming up the works.
They’re also incredibly easy to maintain because of these loose tolerances and the relatively few parts. If you can open the receiver, dump out any crud that’s accumulated in there, and slather some motor oil over the moving parts, you’re good to go.
As to how they became so ubiquitous, that’s partly because of the easy manufacturing process (the receiver is stamped from a single sheet of metal and bent into form), and the fact that the USSR absolutely loved to stick its nose into other countries’ business; even moreso than the USA did. They had a habit of mass producing AKs and arming little pissant rebel groups all across the globe, and the gun worked quite well for that purpose because it’s so easy to maintain, and so resistant to damage and jamming. A barely-trained nobody could be turned from peasant to warrior with the addition of an AK.
So basically, it comes down to the fact that the AK was easy to make, easy to maintain, and tough as hell because that’s what it was designed to be. The USSR war ethic at the time was all about mass production of overwhelming force, and the AK was designed to fit in that niche.
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What’s bad about Internet Explorer?
Internet Explorer was actually very innovative (http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/08/22/the-innovations-of-internet-explorer/[1] ) in the early days of the Web. The major players in the Web space were Netscape and Internet Explorer. Netscape developed JavaScript – which is the primary language on the Web used to handle interface interactions and rich Web applications. JavaScript was a proprietary language owned by Netscape (not open source), and therefore in order to compete, Microsoft developed JScript – its own language similar to JavaScript but a different engine. This is important, because proprietary ownership is a big reason IE became what it is/was.
It was until a year after Internet Explorer 3 that Netscape submitted JavaScript to ECMA International for standardization. At this point IE already had their own version/engine and so did not/could not make the switch without major modification to Internet Explorer’s code. This is when JavaScript really became open sourced.
In 1999 AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape open sourced its browser – becoming the foundation for Mozilla and Firefox, an open source browser. 2 years later, another open source project KHTML was used to form the open source project Webkit, the foundation of Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome. Both Chrome and Safari based their JavaScript engines off the ECMA standard, not IE’s implementation. These three new browsers, based off of open source projects and lots of contributing developers, were able to/can move quickly to adapt to the rapid nature of the Web.
Because IE was proprietary to Microsoft it had 2 problems: 1) only Microsoft developers were working on IE and its JScript engine, 2) IE was important to the operation of Windows. Therefore, the update path for IE was tied directly to the update path of Windows – and operating systems traditionally require longer development cycles than browsers. It is the reason why you can’t install IE9 on a Windows XP machine. Windows XP only supports up to IE8. Microsoft didn’t see this as a problem at first – for a while IE was the only real player in the browser wars, but as adoption for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome grew, IE lost market share.
Since Microsoft used its own proprietary standards instead of the standards used by the other popular browsers, developers had to start making special exception in their code to support IE users. This led to a lot of frustration from the development community towards IE – and a lot of people rallying against using it.
IE9 tried to correct a lot of the problems of past IE by bringing its standards in line with Web standards. However, the damage to its brand and reputation is significant. Also, IE is still a Microsoft/Windows only product, which makes it difficult to test against if you are writing code on a machine other than windows. There is still a big frustration among developers and IE since many still do have to support IE8, since Windows XP is still in heavy use and their isn’t an upgrade path for those users to newer version of IE.
- dako97669
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Why do I never see cheese used in Asian Cuisine?
Asian cultures did not historically raise cattle, and therefore few people are lactose tolerant. European culture has led to adult tolerance of lactose in a larger part of the western population. The normal human condition is to lose tolerance for lactose in adolescence. But we whiteys love us some titty juice.
- PM_ME_YER_THIGH_GAP
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How does Jurrasic Park, a 22 year old movie, have some of the best CG I’ve ever seen?
It’s all because Spielberg knows how to use VFX. He is very clever and made some smart choices in the filmmaking:
He shot in a flat ratio (1.85:1) instead of scope, which creates a larger vertical frame, thus making the effects seem more impressive to the eye.
Most of the key CGI scenes (the T-Rex chase, the kids with the raptors) took place in dark and/or rainy environments. Believe it or not this helps make CGI more impressive, as your eyes are fooled more easily in low light.
Stop-motion animators, who were originally going to do the dinosaur effects before CGI was decided upon, created a DID (Dinosaur Input Device) so that they could translate their hand animations into computer animations. You hadlegendary stop-motion animators like Phil Tippet providing input for the CGI creations through the device, and the result was some very realistic movement and animation, which helped to sell CGI that much more. Nowadays we have CGI animators, but back then it was brand new tech, and the solution he came up with was novel and it worked brilliantly.
And probably most important, he had arguably the best puppet designer (Stan Winston) that ever lived making the live-action dinosaur puppets, and he was committed to using both CGI and puppets seamlessly. His skill in matching the CGI shots to the puppet shots is probably what makes the dinosaurs so memorable, tactile, and indelible.
- I_am_the_cloud
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How does ISIS keep finding Westerners to hold hostage? Why do Westerners keep going to areas where they know there is a risk of capture?
They are usually journalists, documenting wars, coups, and disasters. The only way first world nations get involved in these issues is if someone makes people give a shit about the people there. The only way to do that is to print stories in the media until people notice and complain, which makes politicians give a shit.
The journalists go over and report the stories that make people give a shit about the awful things that happen there, in the hopes of forcing politicians to give a shit which might make a difference.
They are often subjected to the awful things they are documenting
- Beetin
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Why do computers insist that we “safely” eject USB drives?
Imagine that you worked in a filing facility – Your job is to take documents provided by various places and store them in your facility.
Since you can’t be there 24/7, you have a “work area” which consists of a desk where people can drop files off. When people have a document for you to file away, they leave it on this desk, and then when you see it you take it and place it back in storage.
However, frequently people need to one: Get their document back, and two: Make changes and then send the file back to storage. This process is quite slow though: The person first has to leave a ‘document request’ form on the desk telling you what document they need. Then, when you come in and see it, you have to go back into storage, find the document, and leave it on the desk for them. Then they can take the document, make changes, and leave it back on the desk for you to find and store away again.
The above isn’t a huge problem if it’s only a few documents, but you quickly find that lots of your customers are grabbing the same document over and over again, only to make a small change and put it back. This seems like a waste of time to you, because you end-up going to get the document from storage over and over again when-ever they need it. Thus, to remedy the problem, you add a ‘fast-access’ area to your desk, where you leave the most commonly or recently edited documents from each customer. That way, when a customer needs that document, they can just grab it right from there without having to go back into storage to get it. This all works fine to speed things up, and everybodies happy that the time to get a lot of their most recently used documents has gone from a day to instant access.
But then a problem happens: The storage facility you’re using decided to pack-up and move to a different location. It’s not a huge problem, you just open a location for people to go and get their documents over there instead. However, some of your customers start complaining that you don’t have all their documents. When you think about it, when the storage facility moved you never took all of the documents in the ‘fast-access’ area! Thus, you lost all those documents. To remedy the situation, you decide that the facility owner has to ‘notify’ you if they’re going to move so you have time to move all of the documents in the ‘fast-access’ area into storage to prepare for the move.
The above is basically how the OS handles your USB drive (the storage facility). USB drive access is fairly slow, with portable hard-drives even slower. To try and speed things up, the OS realizes that you have a few files that you either just edited, or are frequently editing, and keeps those files in memory (fast-access) instead of constantly writing it to your USB drive (which is slow). The problem is that if you remove your USB drive (move the storage facility), you lose the file’s currently stored in memory unless you (the storage facility owner) notify the OS (the person handling the storage facility) that you’re about to move the USB drive somewhere else.
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What AOL actually does, in 2015?
They’re a lot like Yahoo, they produce web content for people to enjoy. They don’t really DO much of anything under their own name anymore (other than maintain a disappearing, antique dial-up system that I can’t imagine is making them much money anymore) but they own a lot of websites you probably use. Engadget, TUAW (RIP dudes), etc…
Just like Yahoo owns Flickr, for example. Or Google owns pretty much everything else. It’s all the same basic business model, start with the search site, and purchase/design supporting products to go along with it.
The reason you didn’t know that is because AOL continues to do everything both badly AND much later than everyone else. They were years late to the web content game because they…I really don’t know what they thought was going to happen. I guess someone was banking that broadband internet would just be a fad. So they kept AOL the service provider going, like some kind of horribly slow, buggy ISP version of Weekend at Bernies. Finally, years later, they snapped out of it and went “Wait, what? Where is everyone?” and got with the program.
They only run 1.3% of all web searches, and they’ve tried to make inferior versions of pretty much every other web service out there. Well, I say they try to “make” crappier versions of things, whereas what they really did was WILDLY succeed at BUYING crappier versions of things everyone else had perfected years ago.
Remember the smash-hit social media website Bebo? Of course you don’t, no one outside of Ireland (where they briefly actually did pretty good) does. That didn’t stop AOL from buying them for 850 million in 2008, only to sheepishly sell it to a hedge fund operator in 2010 for a whopping 10 million dollars. That doesn’t include the cost of flying in the world’s greatest sad-trombone-sound-making-guy to really call attention to how idiotic that move was. For those of you playing at home, that is a staggering ROI of -98.8%. It directly cost the CEO at the time his job, apparently.
Lest you think the hedge fund managers scored some kind of killer deal, Bebo then went bankrupt in 2013. I know, I know, how the heck could that have happened, right?! Nothing makes sense for me anymore either, after I learned that. Calculating the overall ROI various Bebo owners have combined for now breaks math as we know it, so later in 2013 someone picked up Bebo’s former shell of itself for a song and dance. Who was this? THE FOUNDERS OF THE SITE WHO SOLD IT FOR 850 MILLION TO AOL FIVE YEARS PRIOR. They just restarted it in 2015 and with AOL’s luck it will cure cancer.
So currently, in 2015, AOL spends its days handling a tiny percentage of the world’s search traffic, paying some guy named Rusty 10 bucks an hour to watch over the cobweb infested shack that houses AOL’s dial up network, and watching “You’ve Got Mail” while it cries cheap tears and drinks Popov, thinking of the good old days.
- Agentbolt
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How are sexual fetishes developed?
The mind becomes attached to great moments in life and finds something to bring that memory back, like hair or feet. Same thing with great trauma unfortunately.
Trauma leaves an imprint on the brain that often becomes the main source of attraction. Basically, trauma is subconsciously interpreted as unfinished business, which is why victims of abuse usually are entrenched with perpetrators of abuse as a way of attempting to resolve (“fix”) their issues.
So how does this relate to fetishes?
In cases of physical trauma, sometimes the imprint left on the brain creates an association between physically aggressive acts and feelings of intimacy and things like choking, spanking, whipping, slapping, etc. are extremely arousing because they evoke those feelings – it’s more or less creating an emotional “connection” with the other person in a way they may not otherwise be able to.
- wandering_bear
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Why is it tough to sleep at night even when you’re tired, but easy to fall back asleep in the morning when you’ve just had a good night’s sleep?
It has to do with your heart-rate. When you’re going to bed after 16hrs without sleep your heart is probably still pumping blood around pretty quick. Especially if you’ve had coffee, an energy drink or some other form of caffeine to keep you awake. However when you wake up after having been asleep for a solid night of rest, your heart is beating at a much lower pace and until you raise your heart-rate back up (by doing some physical activity such as standing up out of bed or masturbating) you’ll find it’s very easy to go back to sleep.
- Camsy34
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