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I find chandler to meet my calendering needs. Sure, it's 1000x slower than the DOS program it is supposed replace (agenda) when running on a modern computer, but that python interface is sure sweet!

"When Intelligence Fails, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition"
- Curious George

Myth #9. SURGE PROTECTORS ARE PERMANENT DEVICES. Most point-of-use surge protectors use metal oxide varistors as their primary protection component. Despite all its strengths, this inexp- ensive (15 cent) component wears out a little with each surge above a very modest threshold... a threshold that is exceeded mant times a day in most environments. Unfortunately, the race among surge protector manufacturers to provide the "best" protection (i.e., the lowest let- through voltage) has led them to use lower voltage MOVs which age faster and fail sooner. The normal failure mode for an MOV is overheating, and they have been known to cause fires. Thus MOVs wear out and should be replaced periodically. Unfortunately, equipment to test MOVs is very expensive (on the order of $20,000). Indicator lights purporting to show that protection is operational ,are not always reliable; in fact, those are sometimes wired across the power line and thus only indicates that the power line is live.

and surge protectors work the same way:

Surge suppressors eventually wear out, but the better quality ones have an indicator light that flashes when they have been damaged. If you are subject to frequent storms or brownouts, it's best to replace them every three or four years.

A Pictorial History of the Apple Desktop Interface 1979 - 2000

That's pretty much the easiest solution. I have everything sorted into 5 basic genre umbrellas:

Rock-Pop-Alt-Country\
Rap-HipHop-RnB-Reggae\
D ance-Techno-Electronic\
Jazz-Classical-Internatio nal-Vintage\
Scores-Soundtracks-Words\

Then after that into albums.

Artists-Album-Year\Track-Artist-Song.mp3

If an artist has more than one album, they get their own folder. I generally group related artists together (Dave Matthews Band, Dave Matthews, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds). There are a few artists that could be under either umbrella but for the most part you will know where everyone goes. For any live performances I like to append the date. So on Prince's concert on 21 March 1981, the filename for his performance of "Head" is 10-Prince-Head_032181.mp3

What's the catch? You use a utility like Nipkick's nmp3 that catalogs the name and location of all your mp3 files (or write your own). Anytime you are at a command line interface (or in nmp3's case, IRC), you type /mp3 followed by a search string. For example, /mp3 eric will bring up anything from Eric B. & Rakim to Eric Clapton to any song with the word "America" in it. At that point you type /mp3 06 and it plays song #6 on the list (06-Stevie_Wonder-Jesus_ Children_of_America). Not everyone has mIRC, but I am sure a lot of people on /. can script something very similar and do it very quickly, and I'm sure other clients have similar scripts.

I find typing something is always quicker than scrolling through anything. But that's just me.

http://home.hvc.rr.com/vcasr/cf.html

Don't monkeys already rule the earth?

--LWM

C'mon guys. Spam is not a problem if you don't give your email addresses to spammers - and better, have a few email addresses to use when you don't trust someone.
Hi hi: this one statement is so gently naive. Smile...

We are hit every day with a minimum of 900,000 distributed dictionary attacks,
Hum.. the harsh reality. Made me think of the following:

Was posted a while ago... but IMO worth new mention.

No one is claiming this would be the definitive-all-purpose-magic-solution to spam but the scenario described at ISACS looked very interesting to me.

Basically it's an application of CAPTCHA to spam filtering. Any "unknown" sender is sent back with a randomly generated picture. This pics is never the same, is not based on text only. Once the test is passed, it is not submitted any more. Nothing too new here. The originality of the solution lies in the picture generation. In short, ask a computer to recognise a letter: easy. Ask a computer to recognise a banana: harder. Ask a computer to recognise several non letter symboles: hard enough to be not feasible by standard CPU power.

There are drawbacks with the described scenario: many email addresses, how about lists etc. But seams worth consideration.

Hope to see it deployed here and there for observing real usage.

Z.

Mirror: http://home.nycap.rr.com/snozberry/case01.html Google cache of some pages: http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:iGzZEFTuVvEJ: www.beefstew.net/snozberry/case01.html+&hl=en&star t=1 http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:gk1K4aQmKdMJ: www.beefstew.net/snozberry/case03.html+&hl=en&star t=1 URL:http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:OyUMTXJeN 5YJ:www.beefstew.net/snozberry/case05.html+&hl=en& start=1>

I live downtown in a *small* rural community. I can take my 900Mhz cordless to the corner store, the parks, and a couple of restaurants without it dropping calls. Plus, I have bonus of looking like Zack Morris as I stroll around with my big-ass phone.

Why not? They tried an inflatable airplane

Dino's page has links to most of the remakes out there. The ones marked "completed" are the ones I was speaking of.

And the Ultima III GBC port - not in Dino's list due to the fact that it's being rebuilt and all - wasn't in any way commissioned by Origin/EA, and is in no way related to FCI, PonyCanyon, or any of those companies who were responsible for Ultima console ports. It's a non-commercial, freely downloadable fan remake. You can find the source code there too.

Hey buddy, I already have a copyright on an invisible galaxy, or an invisible _anything_. This "work of art" is copyrighted by ME and anyone that tries to duplicate it will be in copyright violation. If you would like to reproduce an "invisible" "work of art" please contact my lawyers at:

The Law Office
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Flash is NOT evil.

When it's used properly there are things that flash can accomplish that HTML and Java simply can't.

Saying Flash is evil is like saying guns are evil. Flash does not ruin user experiences, designers that use it to make eye candy ruin user experiences. It is totally possible to use Flash is a beneficial and useful way. It's just not used for that most of the time,

Again, from the RoadRunner Subscription Agreement:
2. General.
(g) Subscriber is responsible in all respects for all use of Subscriber's account, including under any screen name, user name or password by any person, and all use by others of Subscriber's account is subject to the terms hereof and the Terms of Use. For the purposes of this Agreement, all use of Subscriber's account, whether or not authorized by Subscriber, shall be deemed Subscriber's use.

Your connection, your responsibility.

In the US, residential service is supposed to be for one residence. A lot of people do it (I did the same 25 years ago with cable TV, and am about to do it with my current connection), but that doesn't mean the provider has to like it or authorize it. Who does the neighbor call for a service issue? You, or the cable company?

From the TimeWarner RoadRunner service Acceptable Use Policy:
"...the RoadRunner service is provided to you for personal, non-commercial use only."

From the TimeWarner RoadRunner Cable Modem Service Subscription Agreement
"5. Subscriber Conduct.(d)
Subscriber will not resell the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof, or otherwise charge others to use the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof. Further, Subscriber will not redistribute the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof, whether or not Subscriber receives compensation for such redistribution. The Road Runner Service as offered under this Agreement is a residential service offered for personal, non-commercial use only."

Each house/apt/condo is supposed to pay for their own connection.

In the US, residential service is supposed to be for one residence. A lot of people do it (I did the same 25 years ago with cable TV, and am about to do it with my current connection), but that doesn't mean the provider has to like it or authorize it. Who does the neighbor call for a service issue? You, or the cable company?

From the TimeWarner RoadRunner service Acceptable Use Policy:
"...the RoadRunner service is provided to you for personal, non-commercial use only."

From the TimeWarner RoadRunner Cable Modem Service Subscription Agreement
"5. Subscriber Conduct.(d)
Subscriber will not resell the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof, or otherwise charge others to use the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof. Further, Subscriber will not redistribute the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof, whether or not Subscriber receives compensation for such redistribution. The Road Runner Service as offered under this Agreement is a residential service offered for personal, non-commercial use only."

Each house/apt/condo is supposed to pay for their own connection.

I like Howard's non-fiction as well as his fiction, which is one of the reasons I wrote some movie reviews with him:

• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• The Fabulous World of Jules Verne.
• The Incredibles

"Yet another project abandoned because of WWII."

Well, here's a similar project that was started because of WWII. It would have been as scary as hell if the Germans were able to mass-produce these babies.

I've got a friend over at NASA who gave me a preview of some of the pictures.

Pretty fascinating if you ask me.

I second that... doesn't involve a lot of math or derivations

I tend to use LaTeX for documents so even that works out fine. Once you've go the hang of how to write equations etc (a few hours) it's dead easy. I've really come full circle regarding word processing, if you don't have this-or-that feature you don't play with it and inevitably end up doing more work!

As an aside, for those using PalmOS type devices I can recommend peditPro http://home.columbus.rr.com/nevai/palm/. In the end most people don't really need that colour screen and multimedia capability my trusty second hand Handspring does everything I need.

Force users to install one of these insane Captcha thingies as plugin to their Outlook Express client. That would work for sure. By the way it would prevent your 6 year old son from sending stupid emails to your coworkers. Or maybe not. Yeah, they should force you to physically come to the ISP headquarters with your .eml on a floppy disk.

http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/duncable.htm

You'll find that some cheaper cables are actually better designed than the expensive ones.

It would seem that he has. (scroll down towads the bottom or search for the words "Audio CAPTCHA" in the document)

Of course the system is not as good for the visually impaired as it is for those who aren't. But this seems to me to be a pretty good SPAM solution compared to any that are out there .. including those that cater for the blind.
Also, how many systems in the computing world are designed to work well (or at least as well) for the blind? Think about it .. Browsers? Mail clients? The (majority of) www?
I'm not saying this is right .. but its just the way it is. Systems are, unfortunately easier to design for, and so, are designed for people without disabilities. At least this thing does have the audio alternative.

As for the javascript thing, you don't have to allow javascript at all. (again .. please read). Its just an image .. .. like the current CAPTCHA systems. Maybe the word "click" diverted your attention .. but thats just a suggested implementation. The caption to the image reads "Please click on or enter each letter ..."

It would seem that he has. (scroll down towads the bottom or search for the words "Audio CAPTCHA" in the document)

Of course the system is not as good for the visually impaired as it is for those who aren't. But this seems to me to be a pretty good SPAM solution compared to any that are out there .. including those that cater for the blind.
Also, how many systems in the computing world are designed to work well (or at least as well) for the blind? Think about it .. Browsers? Mail clients? The (majority of) www?
I'm not saying this is right .. but its just the way it is. Systems are, unfortunately easier to design for, and so, are designed for people without disabilities. At least this thing does have the audio alternative.

As for the javascript thing, you don't have to allow javascript at all. (again .. please read). Its just an image .. .. like the current CAPTCHA systems. Maybe the word "click" diverted your attention .. but thats just a suggested implementation. The caption to the image reads "Please click on or enter each letter ..."

Is there any circumvention of the CAPTCHA?

Spammers have used social engineering to fool people into solving CAPTCHA for them via websites that promise free pornography. The handful of valid email addresses that spammers would generate with such a technique would be beyond trivial relative to the multiple of billions of spam that are currently sent every day.

Here is a description of the actual"Virtual Photographic CPATCHA" system, with pictures. Why this wasn't included in the original post, we'll never know. (Oh wait - maybe it was to prevent a slashdotting. Oh well.)

People might listen to what you say if you lose the "freemacmini" sig. As long as it is there many people will consider you to be a loser. In this case, it would appear that they are correct. This is a Ponzi scheme, as has been proven before. http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/ponzi/ It has been proven that only a complete moron would buy into things like this. Congratulations, you are among the select few who have an IQ lower than the current temperature in Anchorage, Alaska.

Sorry, but if you divide a power by the square of a length, then you don't get a power, but power per area (also known as energy flux).

Your calculation would be right if
a) the laser had an opening angle of 45 degrees (so radius of covered area equals distance of light),
b) the satellite had a cross section of exactly 1 square meter and
c) there would be vacuum between you and the satellite.

Now b is not impossible, but a would imply a rather badly focused beam. OTOH c would imply reduced power.

According to this article, a laser gives a spot with a diameter of 7km on the moon (distance 3.6*10^8 m), so at the point of the satellite it would be 7000/3.6e8 * 3.5e7 m = ca. 680 m, which assuming a circular spot gives an area of 3.6e5 m^2.

If there were no atmosphere, for your 250 kW laser pulse, this would amount to an energy flux of about 0.69 W/m^2. Orders of magnitude above your value, but still too low to do any harm (for comparison, the total energy flux of an 80W light bulb [light and heat together, i.e. taking the complete 80W into account] is about 6.4 W/m^2. That is, a 2.5 megawatt laser would generate the same energy flux at the satellite as a 80W lightbulb would.

Now, what will the satellite have to cope with anyway? Well, obviously the sun. Now, the energy flux of the sun above atmosphere is 1370W/m^2. That is, even the 2.5 megawatt laser would just add 0.5% to the energy flux the sun throws at the satellite anyway.

That's of course without taking into account the atmosphere.

Instead, just build this Son of Fermentation Chiller. Probably a bit less effort.

And I know, because I sell science fiction first editions in my spare time.

Different portions of the package are intended for use in different ways. It doesn't make much sense to license a work based on content, rather than on functionality, under the (L)GPL; this is the point of the GFDL. The software freedoms don't really make sense for the documentation.

I mirrored it.

Another Lego Computer!

A much better (IMHO) legoputer as its not just using bricks, but has windows and doors to control cooling!

"ACME! The only Bat-Man outfit worn by bats!"

I would really suggest some sort of media reader... I have a Lexar Mult-Card reader (the 7-in-1 I believe, a bit older than the current 12-in-1) and I insert my SD card whenever I need to transfer files around. It's not a huge expense, and doesn't take up a lot of time. A mountable Palm device would be nice, but I wouldn't expect to see one soon. (The Palm cradle is too conducive to removing the hardware, you would have to "eject" your PDA every time you picked it up.)

Have you considered pedit for text file editing?

I agree with you. Though GPL can be used for any kind of work, it is best suited for works where is possible to identify a "source" and a "binary" (speaking in terms of software).

A good choice would be the GNU Free Documentation License if you ask me.

With an e-mail address of dragon76@cinci.rr.com I do not think you are one to talk... much of the world rightly calls Cincinnati 'western'.

I also think your post contains too much technical handwaving. Integrating their respective architectures and OSes would require an enormous amount of work, if it could even be done within time/money limits (say, three years and $5B).

You're not the first guy to propose such a merger. This guy at O'Reilley suggested it, and the responses to his article about why Apple-Sun would be stupid apply here. A quick Google search turns up other arguments that may also be valid, like this one.

Finally, the IBM non-sequitor at the end of your post doesn't even remotely apply to the Apple-Sun situation.

The default Gimp layout is actaully the same as the default Photoshop layout under Mac. I personally do not like the Photoshop layout under MS Windows. If I maximize the image I am working on, all the other docked tool windows are always topmost and cover parts of the image. With Gimp, I have every tool window docked into one nice main tool panel. If I need to change a tool, I just alt+tab, select the tool and then alt+tab back to the maximized image with nothing covering the image.

pbembb.com

Largely superceded by the Java client (home.austin.rr.com/javabbowl/), but still a good user community.

I manage a lot of servers remotely. I started out using the hardware RAID support on my server's mobos. But there were issues with that.

First, it was hard getting Linux driver support (I think drivers were available, but it was a matter of downloading them. And I don't beleive they worked on the 2.6 kernel's I used).

Then the RAID setup required BIOS settings. When you only have remote access to a server (and no KVM-o-IP) that means you need to work through a tech at the DC. Not, umm, ideal.

And finally, there was the issue of 'what if I need to move these disks to a different server'. One that doesn't have the same raid controller. Well, it wouldn't work.

Anyway, I ended up using software raid. I've used it now on a few dozen servers. And I'm really happy with it. Performance seems fine, albeit I'm not using it in really IO critical environments like a dedicated database server. In in 99% of cases I'd now use software raid in preference to hardware raid.

What follows are a few tips I'd like to pass along that may be a help with getting a software raid setup...

If you get the chance setup RAID on / and /boot via your OS installer (on a new system). Doing it afterwards is a real pain.

Build RAID support and RAID1,and RAID5 into the kernel (not as modules). You'll need that if you boot from a raid1 boot partition. Note: if you are using RAID5 you'll need RAID1 built in (since I beleive in the event of a failed disk the raid personaility swaps from RAID5 to RAID1).

With a 2.6 kernel build I've been getting "no raid1 module" errors at the make install phase when building with a RAID-ed / or /boot. The 'fix' is to compile the RAID support you need into the kernel (not as modules) then run: /sbin/mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-2.6.8.1.img 2.6.8.1 --omit-raid-modules (substituting your kernel image name/version).

Every now and then I've had the kernel spit a drive out a raid array. I've found that sometimes the kernel may be being overly cautious. You can often raidhotremove then raidhotadd it back again. And you may never see a problem again. If you do, it probably really is time to replace the disk.

Rebuilding a RAID array goes smoothly. It happens in the background when the Linux machine is in multi user mode. The md code rebuild guarantees a minimum rebuild rate. From memory it takes about an hour or two to do a 200GB RAID1 array.

You can see the RAID rebuild status in /proc/mdstat. I run a very simple script to check the RAID status each day and send out an email if it is broken.

If you are using a RAID-ed /boot, grab the latest lilo since IIRC it has better RAID support than what is in the distros I use.

Hard drive-wise I've been happy with Seagate Barracudas. I've had to replace a few failed Western Digital drives. (Just my recommendation from experience, it could just have been good/bad luck on my part).

One neat trick with Software raid is that your drives don't have to be the same size. You do RAID on partitions. And your raid array sizes itself according to the smallest common denominator in the array.

Tip: always create a bit of spare space on any device you are RAID-ing. e.g. a 4GB swap partition. Then if you have a drive fail and it needs to be replaced, and your replacement varies in size slightly you'll still be able to use it. Not all 40/120/200GB drives are created with equal sizes :).

In summary: Software RAID=good. Decent performance. I've had no real kernel bugs with it. No need for BIOS access. Easy to move drives between servers. Easy to monitor failures. Non-intrusive/minimal downtime when recovering a failed devi

I put a test page up. There are two spoof tests on the page. The latest version of Firefox is not affected by either of them if you left click the link. However, if you middle click the first spoof test, Firefox takes you to the wrong site.

Does anyone know why the Creative Commons license was used instead if the GNU Free Documentation License?

The PC speaker is like the CGA of music.

You mispelled MCGA.

For those that don't remember MCGA.

you meant bkittridge@cfl.rr.com, right?

It's about time books went digital, and google is in a great position to do it. But there is fear on behalf on content owners. For google to proceed forward (legally) they HAD to address that fear. Yes, yes, we will implement DRM and all of your content will be safe. The whole while, they knew it would be cracked. I don't think Google deceived themselves, they just placated content owners. Exactly like mac did with iTunes. As an aside, what do people think of taking images and fracturing them into single pixel lines for DRM purposes? The browser can nicely reconstruct the image, but you can't save it without doing a printscreen.


Google me!