Podcast - This Is Only a Test

Episode 199 – The Eurasian Beaver – 1/30/2014

This week, Will, Norm, and special guest Jeremy Williams discuss the B-wing’s legacy in Star Wars, the rise of the Eurasian beaver, the non-existence of black holes, the sale of Motorola by Google, and how to protect yourself online. All that, plus your questions answered, what we’ve been testing, and fake outtakes. Enjoy!

Comments (30)

30 thoughts on “Episode 199 – The Eurasian Beaver – 1/30/2014

  1. I don’t believe if POTS service ends, those copper pairs are now useless. That’s just plain silly. They want to end POTS so that copper can be used solely for data. In San Francisco, DSL may not be popular, but for the vast majority of the US (minus large cities/population centers), DSL is the only option. You may have noticed that a company called Century link has been buying the rural telephone networks over the past decade. They’re making a great investment because they’re locking in to a group of customers that only have one choice…Centurylink DSL, or nothing.

    Just one tech spec. The copper buried underground is straight pairs with shield, not twisted-pair. Using twisted-pair does protect signal integrity, but it also makes the length of wire significantly longer. The longer the pair is, the higher capacitance there is on the line. So a straight pair that’s shielded provides the best results and is the standard.

    Really old lines have unshielded straight pair. Those are junk and can’t be used.

  2. Jeremy’s good, but Gary rocks! Please try to get more regular appearances by Tested’s semi-resident curmudgeon if possible.

    Gary Whitta is the Gordon Ung of Tested, and at least a few of us miss him.

    (edit: grammar)

  3. Thanks for the warm welcome!

    Believe me, no one is calling my number if Gary is available. I think he’s just really busy. I’m in the Whitta fan club too.

  4. The VR CAD thing sounds pretty cool until you think about how long most professional CAD people spend working on it and how much longer it would take to do anything. The best CAD accessory (at least for me) would be a mouse or preferably keyboard that has a trackball on top for pan/rotate view.

  5. RE: dark holes and event horizons, Brian Cox does a really good explanation of it in this video, which funnily enough discusses the physics of Doctor Who:

    It is sadly behind a paywall, but it was a pretty enlightening watch. Anyone not familiar with Brian Cox needs to check out some of his work 🙂

  6. Thanks for the warm welcome!

    Believe me, no one is calling my number if Gary is available. I think he’s just really busy. I’m in the Whitta fan club too.

    No way dude, love all of these Jeremy-casts. 4 man podcast with Will, Norm, Gary and yourself sounds awesome!

  7. Kind of personal but…

    I really hope there is a spoiler-cast about Her. While not one of my favorite movies of all time, the plot kind of hit home in an odd way. I met my wife online when we were 12 years old. We met in person when we were 20 (she was from New Zealand so that was a big step) and we have been married nearly 5 years at this point.

    Spending years of my life completely in love with this person, but never having anything physical to hold on to was terrible and in the movie I felt and understood the pain and the frustration they went through together. I don’t know if the director ever intended that, but there was a ton of parallels to my story and the story of ‘Her’.

  8. Will mentioned to get “the authenticator app” for protecting your services. Which app exactly was he talking about? I have an iPhone, does he just mean the “Google Authenticator” that I’m seeing on the app store?

  9. You can definitely see the B-Wing just before the attack on the Death Star on RotJ. There aren’t many of them, but they are visible.

    I seem to recall there being a scene that was never finished that showed a couple of B-Wings taking down a Star Destroyer in the Battle of Endor. Shame it never made it in.

  10. I have a sudden new respect for everyone in this podcast.. at first it was alot of starwars geekage which was like wow I am glad I normally avoid it.. However then you went to quake 3, and you climbed the ladder of respect 😀

  11. I know my dad needs to have a home phone line with a wired phone (not wireless) specifically to use to remote test his pacemaker. It’s a call that takes a couple of minutes every month or two instead of having to drive to the doctor’s office (which is like an hour each way if there is traffic). I wonder how “they” can continue to support this if the system goes digital.

  12. I’m new to phtography and bought the T3i with the kit lens a while back !

    Really like the camera !

    Glad Norm approves of this kit 🙂

  13. I don’t usually use a Mac, but I had to hook one up to a touch screen this week and was shocked OS X doesn’t have native touch support.

  14. With Jurassic Park action figures, only a few got figures with the first movie ones.

    Alan Grant got 3 of them

    Tim got 2

    Ellie got 2

    Nedry got 2

    Malcom got 1

    Generic Worker got 1 (In the big playset)

    Then there was a set of heroes and villains that were original to the toyline. And there were a few repacks for KB Toys…

    Ellie, Grant, and Malcom got additional ones from the other movies, or at least I think Ellie got one)

  15. No matter how much Norm says so I refuse to believe Her is worth seeing. A romantic movie about a creepy dude falling in love with a computer voice? Ugh, sounds so awful.

  16. No matter how much Norm says so I refuse to believe Her is worth seeing. A romantic movie about a creepy dude falling in love with a computer voice? Ugh, sounds so awful.

    It’s not only Norm, critics and the public find it good. The initial concept make it seem creepy and awkward, but that’s the trailer’s fault. The movie is much better constructed than that. And it’s more of a drama with sci-fi elements than a romantic movie.

  17. I was absolutely blown away by Norm’s camera recommendation – this from the same guy who demanded a full frame sensor and lenses costing $1000’s of dollars only months ago.

    I actually strongly agree with Norm’s suggestions, going with a used T3i and kit lens. The only caveat I say is to watch out for ISO performance and not to expect “magic” from the kit lens.

    1) ISO – I believe the ISO performance of the T4i is double the performance of the T3i which is essential when you’re trying to shoot still frames of an indoor low light performance (think kids church programs, kids recitals,etc) without using flash (which is probably useless from where you are sitting anyways)

    2) The kit lens – I’ve been using the kit lens on my Rebel XS for almost 2 years and I have to say it’s bad. If you want to take pictures while walking, don’t. You need to be standing still and it helps if you really get to know your camera and use manual mode to get the right colors and focus. A kit lens makes for a bad point and shoot camera is all I’m saying. I’ve used my father-in-law’s Nikon D70 (which I believe is very comparable to the Rebel XS) but he has a $700 lens on his camera and the difference is really quite striking in A-B comparisons. If you’re going to spend some dough on cameras, the lens is probably a good place to start.

    As with anything do your own homework before you buy and don’t trust what some random guy on the internet says 🙂

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