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Re:My thoughts by TubeSteak · 2004-07-10 07:45 · Score: 1 · on How To Make Friends on the Telephone

Look at her and tell me she doesn't look like she's up to mischief. Just from her face & that title I would have guessed it was a porn story about a lonely housewife.

My thoughts by Twid · 2004-07-10 07:10 · Score: 4, Informative · on How To Make Friends on the Telephone

Well, if you knew what the link was (which you won't from the terrible description) you would understand why it's slashdotted already. It's scans of an old telephone etiquette booklet. Graphics heavy, just begging to be slashdotted. Maybe we need a "slashdot story posting etiquette" booklet. :)

Here's an archive.org snapshot of the first page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030602171945/http://c ontactsheet.org/junk/telephone1.html"

I've been working with sales people for a long time, and I've learned a few things about voice mail etiquette:

leave your name, phone number, and a very brief description of what you want FIRST, then go on to any details

leave your return number SLOW ENOUGH THAT SOMEONE CAN WRITE IT DOWN. I can't tell you how many people actually SPEED UP TO AUCTION CALLER SPEEDS when leaving their number. If I have to play your number back five times to get it, I'm not going to bother. A good tip is to write your number down on scrap paper as you say it.

if your name is hard to spell, SPELL IT. Or at least say it SLOWLY.

Also, what's with people making phone calls from the public toilet? When I was at WWDC this year, I saw tons of people doing this, usually they were european. (No pun intended, but it's tempting.) Is this a cultural thing that I as an american don't understand? Seems to me the sound of background flushing would be a bit off-putting to a co-worker or potential customer.

Re:I don't understand ... by jdunlevy · 2004-07-08 03:44 · Score: 2, Interesting · on FCC to Require Broadcasters to Keep Tapes of Shows

If you have done nothing wrong, why not keep a record of what you have done? You only destroy evidence when you are guilty, right?

It costs money to make and keep recordings of broadcasts. In practice, a lot of stations do make and keep recordings to protect themselves, but I think it's pretty unusual for smaller (i.e. low-budget) broadcasters to do that. (I worked for a while for a family-owned commercial broadcaster that did keep tapes -- two-weeks worth of 8-hour VHS taps of audio; and I currently do a show on a noncommercial station that doesn't currently have the means to make and keep recordings of its broadcasts.)

On a side-note (this may be nothing), the RIAA-interpretation of webcasting rules (RIAA Webcasting FAQ, Q7):

Q7. What about the copies of sound recordings that must be made in the webcaster's server to transmit the sound recordings? Does a webcaster have to pay separately for those copies? A.These copies are sometimes referred to as "ephemeral recordings." The new law grants an exemption for one ephemeral recording if (1) the webcasting service making that recording is licensed to transmit it (e.g., it has a statutory license to transmit the recordings), and (2) meets the conditions of the exemption, such as that the copies may only be used by the webcaster and must be destroyed within six months.

So the FCC wants stations to keep recordings (which cost money to make, keep), the RIAA and webcasting rules don't want recording to be kept too long, and extra fees may go into effect for keeping more than one copy for more than a certain period. ??

Re:Smells fishy by sporktoast · 2004-07-07 02:34 · Score: 5, Informative · on Rare "Corpse Flower" Set To Bloom

Fishy is an awfully kind way to describe the smell of the blossom.

You are probably thinking of the one that bloomed in Germany in May, 2003. Slash also reported on one back in 2001 in Wisconsin.

I wouldn't call three specimens in four years blooming "all the time". There have been only about 15 recorded blooms in the United States. That's not blooms in a year, that is blooms at all. This is not a garden variety daylily we're talking about.

I like this one by SomeGuyFromCA · 2004-07-06 16:38 · Score: 5, Funny · on Large User Groups Cause Spontaneous Greying

Only one hemisphere of the planet Mercury has a bitmap surface. The other hemisphere is a smooth gray surface.

Their explanation: The planet textures used in Space Simulator are compiled from NASA photographs and reference material. The NASA data on Mercury is incomplete, covering only one hemisphere of the planet. One hemisphere was therefore intentionally left blank, reflecting this lack of data.

Well, how inconsiderate of them. They should have put THIS SIDE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK or something...

4*400Go Sata on Raid 5 by da5idnetlimit.com · 2004-07-05 11:23 · Score: 5, Informative · on Bulk Data Storage For The Common Man?

depending on the value of your data, you should try having a nice 4*400Go SATA in raid 5 *2, possibly using a distributed file system for redundancy...

Not the cheapest, but fast, simple and saves you the unholy pleasure of having 2-3 DLT boxes to archive/cycle each month...

You already have a linux cluster, so implementing a distributed file system, or even simply a nightly incremental mirror to the target server if you can afford losing one day work/computation...

It would help if you told us what sort of data you work with... from databases and to automated telescope tracking system, both need large amount of storage, but you won't need the same system array for each...

I seem to remember a /. story on a rackable Petabyte storage system

You don't need to go to the Petabyte capacuty but you will find some interesting comments on filesystems, disk virtualisation, 1U rack providers and so on....so a 1 Terabyte rack server is definetly possible...

Good luck...

Not perfect, but something by XMichael · 2004-07-04 10:10 · Score: 0 · on Photos Of Rutan's X-Prize Entry

Archive.org has something from 2003, it's not the exactly link posted, but if your interested you can at least see there normal website.

Arhive.org Rokits.org

Complete CCTV

Re:Apple Lossless by Hatta · 2004-07-04 04:19 · Score: 2, Informative · on Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?

He has no understanding of the expensive nightmare that housing and providing CD-sized tracks over the Internet presents.

Archive.org does it for free. Magnatune allows you to download flacs for $5 an album. Allofmp3.com charges $5 for 500 MB, be it FLAC, Vorbis or whatever. Apple is just being cheap.

FreeCache by Henry+Stern · 2004-07-02 08:22 · Score: 1 · on Use an iPod Mini to Broadcast Pirate Radio

It's a shame that people still have to resort to the Google cache when there is a great caching service, FreeCache provided by the Internet Archive. Just make your link like http://freecache.org/http://whatever...

Re:articles by critter_hunter · 2004-07-01 05:24 · Score: 1 · on Appeals Court OKs Microsoft Antitrust Settlement

Yes, mouse gestures are a Firefox innovation... except Opera has had mouse gestures since 2002. That's real good innovation there!

Re:When I see it by scrod98 · 2004-06-28 05:57 · Score: 4, Informative · on Sun to GPL Project Looking Glass

File JAVA and its promise of platform independance away with all those AT&T commercials from the mid 90's that promised you would soon be able to check out and read entire books via the internet, make video phone calls, and perform remote heart surgery with their new technology.

check out and read entire books via the internet

make video phone calls

perform remote heart surgery

Uh, done

mirror by Anonymous Coward · 2004-06-27 09:51 · Score: -1, Troll · on WA Bans Gift-Card Expirations, Fees

mirror

USMC / Marine DOOM by Geartest.com · 2004-06-25 19:31 · Score: 5, Informative · on U.S. Marine Corps Enters Videogame Arena

This sounds very much like Marine DOOM which was a WAD (mod) for DOOM II that the US Marine Corps Modeling and Simulation Management Office developed as a tactical training tool for four-man fire teams.

The mod is described as follows: "The game teaches concepts such as mutual fire team support, protection of the automatic rifleman, proper sequencing of an attack, ammunition discipline and succession of command."

I also remember watching an interview with a Marine officer who explained that playing the multiplayer game replicated the confusion and changes in situational awareness that soldiers experience in combat -- known as the fog of war -- as well as friendly fire and other important concepts.

Remember that Full Spectrum Warrior grew out of a combat simulation. Marine DOOM was a modification of a game that also served as a proof-of-concept training tool, which eventually led to the military version of FSW -- and was probably the precursor to it.

Unfortunately the site isn't online any longer, but thanks to Internet Archive, you can see the original Marine DOOM Homepage.

For more background you can also read "Doom Goes to War" by Rob Riddell which was the cover story in the Wired April 1997 issue.