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I found this interesting, but check out the links as well. Walmart has really gotten some people angry and bitter.

http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/walmart.html

here. Hopefully being /.'d won't cause problems for that page.

You DID know charitable contributions count towards tax breaks in the US, didn't you? Out of all Gates' billions stolen from you and me and every poor person on the planet, he donates a penny (to him) to get himself some extra tax-dodging ammo, and everybody fawns all over him like he was a Saint. PS, I installed a rootkit with this post, which writes the word "gullible" in your Windows system registry. Go look.

Oh, and I know they only cost $20 sans P/S but they also forgot a case. Idiots.

Who needs a case? See?

are you high? please give me mod points? You're a troll, just move on to the next account.
http://home.comcast.net/~everettpf3/moderation.jpg

C=64 BASIC
MacOS QBASIC
AmigaOS QBASIC
translate AmigaOS QBASIC to MacOS QBASIC for a simple word processor (yes, a number of idiosyncracies in both)
a little AREXX
PASCAL
... insert 10 years of no programming ...
BASH (this installer)
C (current hobby)

I personally prefer FFDeploy (http://home.comcast.net/~ifrit/FFDeploy.html), even though it hasn't been updated in months, I believe it still works. It allows you to pick your own extensions and settings, and it's easy enough to burn them to a CD.

You mean to tell me that this has never been covered before on Slashdot? Are you kidding?

Or am I just being naive? I guess the slogan is true - Slashdot. The News 24 Hours After Everyone Else Or Your Money Back!

As an aside - why not mention Portable Firefox or FFDeploy? They fit the same category of spreading firefox.

Not quite 1 wire (2, power and CAT-5e) but here you go:

http://www.aviom.com/dspSolutionsDigitalSnakesOver view.cfm?cat=DigitalSnakes&sec=Solutions

http://audiorail.home.comcast.net/

And finally CobraNet:

http://www.peakaudio.com/CobraNet/FAQ.html

However, these are not really the same thing, since they don't run over TCP/IP. TCP/IP (more likely UDP) running to speakers and remote amps could be interesting due to the routing possibilities, but there doesn't seem to be much information (other than theres a patent pending), we'll never know if this is for real or not. A google search for streamnet seems to hit a bunch of press releases and not much else. the Netstreams site is a little light in details, which leads me to think there's not much it, other than it is yet another home automation system that's trying to become a univeral network. When the thing sends 96KHz/24bit AES audio over tcp/ip and requires GigEthernet, I'll get interested. MP3 audio? Nope. I'll wait.

I was meta-modding and this is what i saw.
Stairway to heaven

Here's a version of this type of program I made. It renders a 3D tree that represents your file structure. It's difficult to setup, and it's pretty buggy, but it's kind of a neat effect. I never found it very intuitive though to browse files this way, so I abandond the project. I haven't updated it in a long time.

The unfortunate downside to using elephants is that they still insist on using 5.25" floppies.

I now have a unignorable timer that keeps me from playing games too long:

My eighty pound Belgian Shepherd mix, who pummels me with her forepaws when she's decided I've been sitting around too long.

Stefan

I wonder if the nano has the same secret? It seems that the updated mini (6GB) does.

See? You're such a hopeless 'tard that you've gotten me agitated to the point where I make mistakes on the links.

Pictures available at:

Here

Here

Here

You fsckin' trolling twit.

See? You're such a hopeless 'tard that you've gotten me agitated to the point where I make mistakes on the links.

Pictures available at:

Here

Here

Here

You fsckin' trolling twit.

See? You're such a hopeless 'tard that you've gotten me agitated to the point where I make mistakes on the links.

Pictures available at:

Here

Here

Here

You fsckin' trolling twit.

Private funding for research on fetal stem cells is not restricted

You can stick your head like an ostrich in the sand.
Your loss

Private funding for research on fetal stem cells is not restricted

You can stick your head like an ostrich in the sand.
Your loss

Private funding for research on fetal stem cells is not restricted

You can stick your head like an ostrich in the sand.
Your loss

Here

• Occasionally dump a mixture of vinegar, oatmeal, and bean sprouts on carpet, to simulate puke. My dog would never consider peeing or pooping indoors, but she thinks nothing of heave-hoing when the need strikes.
• Whenever you head out the door, back a couple of small plastic bags. If you see a pile a dog crap, pick it up and dispose of it responsibly, all the while imagining that your Nintendog dropped the pile.
• Several times a year, pretend your Nintendog is stick. Take your game unit to a local vet. Take a seat in the lobby, wait a half hour while looking at bags of overpriced boutique-brand dog chow, then give the receptionist a $50 check with instructions it be given to the local shelter or rescue group.

The article incorrectly states that the sound quality is the same across the iPod line.

This test and actually, just comparing by the ear, shows interesting results from a number of players:

http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/playertest/playe rtest.htm

J

> especially when using the line-out from the docking port

This is placebo. The sound coming from the Line-Out jack is amplified to 100% by the iPod's internal amp. I have done some serious listening through the headphone jack (with and without external amps, and with rather good headphones - Bayer DT880s and Sennheiser HD650s). The best sounding iPod is actually the shuffle (unamplified)... it has really clean bass. The mini is sloppy generally, and the regular iPod is pretty solid. The Powerbook output isn't that great, the iPod is noticeably better. I have looked at waveforms with my oscilloscope that confirm these results -- the output stage caps on the mini and Powerbook discharge too quickly, making a 20Hz square wave look triangular. Not good. The shuffle does fine though! (I'm told it uses a 2-transistor push-pull output stage, but I'm no audio amplification expert.)

Here are some results similar to mine (I haven't written mine up due to lack of interest and time :)

http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/playertest/playe rtest.htm

According to these articles, the shuffle's sound quality is due to superior amp circuitry (push-pull vs capacitor-coupled). That's not to discount the possibility that the HDD in other models contributes noise, but I haven't seen or observed any proof of the HDD noise.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1778968,00.as p
http://home.comcast.net./~machrone/playertest/play ertest.htm

I give the Nano double thumbs-up. Very slick design. And the fact that we're up into multiple gigabytes in a completely solid state device is pretty exciting. I have a 1GB Shuffle, which I'm really happy with, mainly because of its size and weight (or lack thereof), excellent audio quality and solid-state-ness. I'd probably consider getting a Nano if I had the money.

The thing I'm most interested to learn, though, is how its bass response compares to other models. As is detailed here, the Shuffle has a far superior amplifier (based on a push-pull design, I believe) and as a result performs way above the competition in the lower end of the spectrum. The old Mini, however, was the worst of the lot. It just couldn't flesh out those wide low-frequency waves.

So, which amp did the Nano get? The gutsy push-pull setup from the Shuffle, or the ... improvable amp from the Mini?

As of right now, the interface is kind of limited and the graphics are not wonderful. Thomas Foote wrote the game as a remake of the original, so the graphics and interface are almost entirely drawn from the original game, which came out in the 80's. However, he also has the complete source code of the game available for those who want to tinker with it. ^_^ It's a retro game that requires you to think and has open source. What's not to like?

For minesweeper on the PSP, Mac, or anything non-MS that supports javascript, use the version at http://home.comcast.net/~sheppoor/minesweeper/mine sweeper.html. It is being inclueded in a few off-line PSP packages. Too bad the PSP browser doesn't have a right click :(

True enough.

But, once upon a time, flying itself was "hard".

TU-144

XB-70

Not to mention the concorde...

We have had large planes flying fast for a long time.

...in Olinto de Pretto's handwriting. Or maybe David Hilbert's. Either way, the "original" probably is second-generation from something else.

Pics here, since the other stuff doesn't seem to be loading. Taken at LW SF on Wednesday.

(If it isn't all there yet, give it a few minutes to upload.)

no, you can't have a pony.

Skencil (was called Sketch) is a good basic editor that has been stable for a long time. It's particularly interesting to people making diagrams for LaTeX, because of the SketchLatex and skLatex plugins to handle latex math formatting visually within the editor.

Also, there is IPE and XFig should at least rate a mention.

Better late than never.. From the discussion thread, he just re-posted his pictures and the build log in PDF format. - Joel

You might take a look at some of the criticisms of that article, for example: David Ness comments on "Beating the Averages".

Myself I would say that technical issues like choice of language do matter, but no where near as much as techies like to believe.

When it works...

No, you can't have a pony.

Sorry, dude. You ARE a game designer. Live with it. You may not be a paid professional, but you are still a designer and the fact that people write and thank you for your work is a really good sign.

I don't play Neverwinter Nights, but:

One of my college professors had a cartoon taped to her file cabinet. It showed a badly drawn Charlie Brown sitting on a curb, chin resting on crossed arms, with a sour expression on his face.

In a thought balloon above Charlie's head:

"Getting a paper published is like pissing yourself when you are wearing a dark suit. You get a nice warm feeling but no one else notices."

I'm engaged in the game design version of this. I am writing INFORM text adventures.

I have one practice adventure finished; a haunted house adventure:

"Compiled" file for playing with Frotz or other Infocommish play engines:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.z5

Source:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.inf

I'm working on a much larger summer camp adventure. Actally had most of the text written, but put the files in a folder I didn't back up prior to getting this laptop serviced. Duh.

Stefan

Sorry, dude. You ARE a game designer. Live with it. You may not be a paid professional, but you are still a designer and the fact that people write and thank you for your work is a really good sign.

I don't play Neverwinter Nights, but:

One of my college professors had a cartoon taped to her file cabinet. It showed a badly drawn Charlie Brown sitting on a curb, chin resting on crossed arms, with a sour expression on his face.

In a thought balloon above Charlie's head:

"Getting a paper published is like pissing yourself when you are wearing a dark suit. You get a nice warm feeling but no one else notices."

I'm engaged in the game design version of this. I am writing INFORM text adventures.

I have one practice adventure finished; a haunted house adventure:

"Compiled" file for playing with Frotz or other Infocommish play engines:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.z5

Source:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.inf

I'm working on a much larger summer camp adventure. Actally had most of the text written, but put the files in a folder I didn't back up prior to getting this laptop serviced. Duh.

Stefan

AirSnare is a useful tool for detecting "unfriendly" MAC addresses (any MAC addresses that you have not specified as "friendly").

It can be set to email the admin in cases of unauthorized access, and it works in conjunction with Ethereal and AirHorn as well.

Oh, and it's free (as in beer).

After years of thinking I knew rocket propulsion -- via SF novels and popular works and, well, building small ones -- I took a policy course on space travel at CMU. Professor Morel (sp?) insisted that we learn the science first. I got all sorts of good stuff, and started poking around the engineering library for more.

I found, while researching my term project, a great book on advanced propulsion topics. This wasn't some popular work, but a collection of hard-core equation-filled research papers. There was stuff on what could be the next generation of fission drives, various fusion drive concepts, and antimatter propulsion.

Beyond the obvious containment issues, there is a BIG problem with antimatter propulsion:

The problem of opacity.

Antimatter / matter reactions produce gamma rays. These are extremely energetic and readily penetrate many materials.

This means that they are very inefficient when it comes to heating up a working fluid. The detail -short linked-to article glibly talks about shooting gamma rays into propellant. They will heat up the hydrogen or water or whatever you are using for a working fluid, but a lot of the energy will simply keep on going, and whiz right through the outside wall of the "combustion" chamber.

The one research paper which described a "pure" antimatter rocket heated the propellant indirectly. The positrons would be shot into a block of tungsten alloy dense enough to intercept an appreciable amount of the energy produced by the matter / antimatter reaction. Working fluid passed through channels in the block would heat up, turn to gas, and produce thrust.

The rated Isp was, as I recall, about 5,000 seconds. This is way more than conventional fluid / chemical rockets (500 seconds) and fission rockets (1,000 seconds) but only a little higher than existing ion thrusters (3,100 seconds for that solar-powered testbed that ran a few years back).

The one advantage this rocket would have over ion thrusters would be the amount of thrust. Ion rockets produce just a trickle of thrust. The antimatter thermal rocket would probably produce a fair amount of thrust, although probably not enough for a ground-to-orbit booster.

Stefan

I don't think comcast had WAP's in mind when they wrote this part of thier policy, but it's directly applicable...

You are responsible for any misuse of the Service, even if the misuse was committed by a friend, family member, or guest with access to your Service account. Therefore, you must take steps to ensure that others do not use your account to gain unauthorized access to the Service by, for example, strictly maintaining the confidentiality of your Service login and password. In all cases, you are solely responsible for the security of any device you choose to connect to the Service, including any data stored or shared on that device. http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp

Here is a test image that I believe was designed for printer/monitor color calibration (I dredged it up from the data recovered from a hard drive failure a while back). It is 2297x3600x24 at a resolution of 360 pixels per inch for a final image size of 6.381x10 inches. Included on the image are several Kodak color charts, along with a variety of household objects and several faces of varying skin colors.

Here is another test photo of the same style as the first one. According to the CNET Labs printer page, this is "the industry-accepted PhotoDisc Target document." Not sure about that (especially with the website logo in the corner of the image), but whatever. It works nonetheless.

Following with the previous recommendation of finding a vibrant nature photo, I located a rather beautiful photograph (free registration required for download) of the Grand Canyon with a large variety of colors at 1200x1600x24.

I have been thinking about this on and off for a while now (still stuck in lowly inkjet-land). Thanks for finally motivating me to do some research. Hope this aids you in your obsessive-compulsive quest to achieve satisfaction from knowing every little defect in your printer.

Here is a test image that I believe was designed for printer/monitor color calibration (I dredged it up from the data recovered from a hard drive failure a while back). It is 2297x3600x24 at a resolution of 360 pixels per inch for a final image size of 6.381x10 inches. Included on the image are several Kodak color charts, along with a variety of household objects and several faces of varying skin colors.

Here is another test photo of the same style as the first one. According to the CNET Labs printer page, this is "the industry-accepted PhotoDisc Target document." Not sure about that (especially with the website logo in the corner of the image), but whatever. It works nonetheless.

Following with the previous recommendation of finding a vibrant nature photo, I located a rather beautiful photograph (free registration required for download) of the Grand Canyon with a large variety of colors at 1200x1600x24.

I have been thinking about this on and off for a while now (still stuck in lowly inkjet-land). Thanks for finally motivating me to do some research. Hope this aids you in your obsessive-compulsive quest to achieve satisfaction from knowing every little defect in your printer.

"Claymation®" is a registered trademark of Will Vinton Productions, Inc.

You may be thinking of Aardman Animations, the British creators of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run

You can read commentary by the author of the Utah porn bill here: http://jdougall.typepad.com/dynamic_range/

He feels that the bill is no different than requiring that adult subject books/magazines/video be in special sections (age restricted) in physical stores.

I have spoken with John about his bill. His goal is to create a law that brings consistency to online and physical rules for restricted speech and passes "constitutional muster." It remains to be seen whether he met these goals.

As far a filtering goes Comcast already provides this service http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=Serv icesSecurity_Manager17985. In Utah, many ISPs advertise specifically this type of service.

I personally think the cubequarium is a much better use of the little box...

http://home.comcast.net/~jleblanc77/cube/

No worries, most people have never heard of it. But it's a damned cool application. Adobe should have bought it when they had the chance, just as they should have bought Painter.

About 6 months ago a few people on the Adobe Forums were wondering about Expression, and I did a quick image to show them.

For the benefit of you folks here I gathered together a couple precursor images, plus 2 screenshots of the image I did and slammed a quick page up on my server. Don't hate me because I suck at building web pages!

THIS PAGE might give you a bit of an idea what's going on with Expression.

The article is light on technical details, but it does sound like the Enhanced Security mode of WS2003. Running IE as a seperate user with less privileges is better, but that wouldn't work in a multi-user environment. Every user would have the same access to a shared profile for storing bookmarks, saved forms and the like. There is a more elegant solution: restricted tokens.

Restricted tokens are a feature available in Windows 2000 and later that allows any user to create a new process with less privileges than they have normally. You can delete SIDs, so that they can't be used to grant access, delete privileges, and create a list of restricting SIDs. "When a restricted process or thread tries to access a securable object, the system performs two access checks: one using the token's enabled SIDs, and another using the list of restricting SIDs. Access is granted only if both access checks allow the requested access rights." (from the above link)

I've been running Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Winamp and a few other things with restricted SIDs for quite a while now. I delete the Administrators group, all privileges and restrict them to a narrow set of SIDs. I give them access to my profile, but are explicitly denied access to all the Run keys in the registry, and My Documents. The program jobprc can be used to create restricted tokens and job objects.
You can also create a process with a restricted token with the Protect My Computer option of RunAs, albeit with less control.

I created a VM and TRIED to get infected while logged on as an admin using a restricted token. Nothing got through.

It would be great if Microsoft took better advantage of restricted tokens by running certain things (like IE) with them by default.

(Note: I have no financial or emotional connection with the company that makes the products mentioned below. I just want to point out that for a little more you can have to keep a far more flexible product.)

This week, Target is selling for $97 the non-disposable equivalent of this gimmick, the Aiptek "IS-DV."

The IS stands for "Image Stabilization."

It records to internal memory or a SD stick. A 256 mb stick holds about 60 minutes of MPEG4 video.

It is also a still camera (5 mp, but with a non-adjustable lens), voice recorder, and MP3 player. It comes with a tripod, A/V cable, headphones, and USB cable.

I've had an earlier version, the DV4500, for about six months. It's a great little toy. I bought it so I'd have a cheap camera I wouldn't be afraid to carry around everywhere. The image quality is pretty good:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/valley_view_ wide.JPG

The video quality is "OK." Note that this film was done under less than optimal lighting conditions:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/kira_jumps_h oop.asf (3.3 mb ASF video)

I bought a IS-DV so I can give the DV4500 to a relative.

Stefan