Slashdot Mirror
Full Frontal Quickies
Lady and Gentlemen, sit back and brace yourself for the assault of the quickies:
AlexPixel sent us
the curiously named Bilbo.com which actually sells feet keyboards for key modifiers and mouse clicks.
cadfael sent us a sordid tale of
a coder scorned.
Some billboards: first from Ant we have a
windows error and from
mazur we have a bit of unix (must be california ;) mmca noted that scientists have discovered why candy wrappers are loudest in movie theaters.
IcesTorm-I noted a supposed windows bug that will make ya wonder.
DuncMonk sent us a cool comic strip called Sinfest that you might wish to add to your morning coffee. How about the x86 Still for
those of you who believe that controlling your stereo, lights, garage door, and neighbors dog just isn't enough for your PC.
Not out there enough for ya? How about RSA implemented
entirely in javascript? (Doesn't work for me ... I leave
that crap turned off ;) And finally to leave everyone on the proper melodic note, gribbly
Symphony #2 for Dot Matrix Printers. Fortunately it's available in MP3 just in case you don't have a dot-matrix printer still handy...
Though I sympathize with Mr. Coder Scorned, I would say that, by setting up such a service on his own personal site without compensation, and by not setting such a service up as part of the company's own infrastructure (which it is his job to build), he failed in his duties, and didn't do his job right.
We can all look at it and say 'This guy was being nice, running it himselef!'.. but... your duty to the company is to design systems that protect the companies interests from everyone else, includeing YOURSELF.
Isn't that the same symphony for dot matrix printers that was posted to /. 2 other times before?
That shot of the crashed video board has inspired me. Those damn things are like animated GIF's on the highways, and I've been looking for some way to mess with them without being totally destructive and getting my ass thrown in jail.
It's all so simple...I just need to get a copy of BackOrifice installed on it, and put up my own subversive messages. Subtly, of course...I was thinking of something along the lines of:
"News Flash: Animated billboards reported as #3 cause of fatal car crashes, following drunk driving and cell phones!"
Okay, maybe not, but I still hate them.
It almost makes me want to host my company's web site from home, in case I decide one day that their health insurance policy just isn't comprehensive enough.
Seriously, though, if his company allowed their site to be hosted by/on his personal equipment, they've earned whatever happened.
Microsoft is getting free advertisements from electronic billboard operators!
No wonder there's so many Windows bugs! Bill Gates, in all of his genius and luminating brilliance, told his Windows devs to include a sneaky billboard function into the win32 api (WinCreateBillboardError()) that's called on all billboards to secretly promote Windows!
Or some pro-linux billboard operator has been playing tricks on poor Bill
Q: How many Bill Gates' does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Just one. He just holds the lightbulb still and lets the world revolve around him.
J
Yep, it's definatily dutch, I know couse I live in the netherlands and have seen this billboard IRL on train stations.
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It's amazing that this happened during an industry conference, when there was such a wonderful chance to embarass M$.
You can see it here on my web site: http://www.retina.net/~jna/g allery/16/r113-mssucks.jpgI must agree SinFest is an excellent independent web strip. The art is excellent and the writing is great - If it whets your appetite for more independent webcomics check out BigPanda or both excellent sources of online comic goodness that you wont find in your daily paper (and who wants to get ink all over their fingers anyhow).
air and light and time and space
From what I can tell, the translation of the Unix billboard (which isn't an error - it looks like Dutch unix) is something along the lines of:
For anyone who has listed in their CV (resume) that their work is their hobby and they are creative or innovative, send them an email with the subject set to "Your place is in Hilversum" (?), and tell 'em to go check out the URL: http://www.omroep.nl/gurus/
Not sure about the subject line, but that's a pretty darn nifty advertisement, for damned sure. I'd send 'em my resume...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
From the Microsoft support article listed above
During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed,-snip-
So is my computer oppening more and more windows when I try to leave pr0n sites a sign of a failing computer?
Being an ignorant american I'll try and translate:
jewerkisjehobby = your work is your hobby
creatief/innovatief = creative/innovative
je baan is in hilersum = your job is in hilversum
What I mean to say is BigPanda.Net and keenspot. Good online comic stuffs.
air and light and time and space
Cached: here. I could've sworn that story was from months ago, and it was (June 2).
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
> the curiously named Bilbo.com which actually sells feet keyboards
The name makes sense if you've read Tolkien. However, Bilbo would insist that it's "foots" rather than "feet".
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't think this can be called a "windows bug" since it sounds like the BIOS does this. Doesn't matter if you are running M$, Linux, or *BSD, it would happen anyways.
The musical error was linked to in a comment attached to a set of quickies maybe a month ago (I posted it to my journal, so I can get an exact date)
Quickies? More like Oldies. The very best /. from 6 months, 12 months and 2 years ago...
What a great story! Four paragraphs to explain that, no matter how quickly or slowly you open a candy bar, the same amount of sound comes from it. Like I didn't know it! Their advice: Just open it quickly and get it over with. Wow, these guys are GOOD!!!
Great! A tune to accompany the famous BSOD! Maybe the billboards could have great, big speakers attached to them.... I would've prefered "Daisy daisy..." anyway...
I just had another thought: instead of emailing an an ascii resume as an attachment to a potential new employer, why not slurp in your resume, encode it somehow, and then send them the script/source/whatever as an attachment? As hard as it is to hire good people, I don't think that it would be a turn-off or keep you from being considered. It might piss off HR, but that's never a bad thing. If someone sent me their resume that way, I recommend they be hired on the spot. At any rate, you could use it as a filter: anyone that either didn't get it, didn't run it or didn't appreciate it wouldn't likely be a place you'd want to work anyway.
Of course, my .sig might make me out to be a little biased... :-)
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
You might ask an organist, they play with pedals also. You could also check if there tended to be injuries caused by foot-pumped portable organs or foot-pumped sewing machines; although this is an easier motion than erratic selection, a pattern of injuries would be an indicator of problems.
How difficult is it to bring up a window that says, "Excel crashed, your work is gone, loser."
Instead I get a midi of 'Start Me Up' and some memory addresses. Killer!
For your pleasure and off-topic fun, a handy lexicon of Microsoft PR translations:
- Loads applications 50% faster! -- experience crashes 50% faster
- Multitasking! -- crashes multiple programs at once
- Backwardly compatible! -- will also crash your existing software
- Network ready! -- crashes multiple systems at once
- Multimedia ready! -- experience the astonishing sights and sounds of crashing in vivid VGA color
- Free MSN subscription! -- go online and talk to other Windows users about their crashing experiences
- Mac-like interface! -- 11 years of development and it's not even original
- User friendly! -- pictures of clouds
JIt's not California at all, mister! It is Holland. Some folks at our national television try to attract some IT'ers.
:-) Besides, it's TV, not film)
The bills were all around the place some time ago. I liked them.
www.omroep.nl is the united website of national broadcasters. And Hilversum is the place where they make TV in holland (like Hollywood, only VERY different
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
The sound is caused by the pops and clicks as creases in the packaging material are pulled apart, and there is very little a theatergoer can do to decrease the loudness of those sounds, according to Eric Kramer, a physicist from Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Waiiit...so you're saying that the noise of opening candy is a product of the packaging? Well, hot damn! I figured it was just something in the air.
CNN calls this news? Must be by Jeannie Frickin Moos.
-Waldo
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It seems that my friend often deals with clients who are not too savvy - so he often keeps the registration for the clients domain names under his own control.
He just directed his client's DNS (which was some major company) to a porn site.
It backfired on him though. A sheriff's deputy showed up at my friend's parent's house to serve a lawsuit process over this and I guess the parents (who are very elderly, conservative, and not hip to the ways of the web) were pretty astounded at the name of the porn site that was listed on the process.
This same fellow makes it a practice to always register domain names under his own name and never give them up until the money is settled. I know of a number of companies that are probably unaware that they don't have control over their own DNS and that he's keeping this card up his sleeve in case negotiations turn bad.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
It is not the typical employee's responsibility to look out for the company's best interests, it is the managers'. That the managers did not forsee problems with this employee hosting the web site on his own personal account is not the employee's fault. It wasn't a technical issue, it was a business and legal issue.
You are not obligated to protect the company from bad management decisions.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Did you see the date on that story?
Tuesday, May 9, 2000, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
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Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Think that's bad, try reading the comments with a threshhold of -1
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I am the dot in slashdot.org
Trust me, it's real. I was in Vegas last week and saw one do something like that. The screen was gibberish with the exception of the word "Microsoft" printed at the bottom. Then, of course, someone had to ctrl-alt-del it and go searching for the file to start it up again. Quite humorous indeed. My two cents...
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Our airport (Austin) is new, and they have a bunch of multi-headed boxes showing departures and arrivals. I've seen 'em with windows error messages several times... wasn't there a web site of "sightings" like this somewhere?
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Maybe I'm crazy, but wouldn't it make more sense for it to actually tell you about the problem?
I'd be inclined to think so. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't put this particular Easter egg into the code; it's a feature of the BIOS itself.
from the SELECT-*-FROM-quickies-WHERE-humor-<-0; dept.
Well heck, if you're selecting the quickies with humor less than zero, they're bound to suck. I'd check the SQL server though, some of those were mildy funny.
I was responding to the "coder scorned" post and meant it to be a warning to everyone reading it to keep control of your internet assets.
You may regard my friend as an asshole - but he regards it as his business strategy, much to the dismay of his clients who do not make the effort to get informed about important things like who owns the domain name registration.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Now I've never worked with these billboard systems before so I have to ask: Exactly how does a live billboard encounter a situation where the add hardware wizard pops up?
I can see it now. Two geeks are assigned to replace the video card for this system.
Geek #1: OK, #2, this is your first time on this job so you might be surprised. That billboard takes a video signal just like any other monitor. Its just an average PC system so this job will be cake.
Geek #2: Cool! So all we have to do is take a spare monitor and a video card up there.
Geek #1: Well yeah, but we don't need the monitor. We'll just watch the progress from the billboard.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
The most recent quickies contain a lot of repeats.
Search for the others yourself. I don't expect the posters to remember every /. story, but you think that they could run a search for at least the most recent stories for the topic they're posting?
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Never trust anyone over 90000.
Scientist sometimes do get bored and amuse themselves by producing "funny" research. The Journal of Irreproducible Results is one example of this. At times, this "research" are presented in a more formal environment. IIRC, there was a paper published in a highly reputable journal that tried to determine what type of cheese the moon was composed of. They took actual lunar seismic velocity measurements and compared them to laboratory velocity measurements of different types of cheese.
Another time, a talk at a meeting was to be on a newly discovered orientation of the mid-ocean ridges where seafloor spreading occurs. These ridges are normally linear. But in this case, two approaching linear ridges diverged and then overlapped at a particular point. The title of their talk was something like, "69ing Mid-Ocean Ridges." Needless to say, a lot of ppl showed up for this talk.
Ralph Alpher and Hans Bethe wrote a paper. They then added George Gamow to produce an authorship of Alpher, Bethe, Gamow (alpha, beta, gamma).
I once tried to published a paper where the key variables were p and q, and said that one must mind your... I had to make editorial changes.
Perhaps I assumed that, because he was a former program manager at Microsoft, that he had a somewhat managerial position at this company. I figured perhaps he was a piece of that.
And if they weren't paying him, that's HIS fault for running it, or his fault for not asking.
I'm not saying that the company screwed up or he screwed up, or that one is guilty and one is not, merely that the situation should not have arisen, and both parties should realize that.
Without the full story, who can say?
That Windows problem is interesting and all, but it pales in comparison to this gem. I almost feel sorry for the person who had to write that.
> Finally, somebody else who comprehends the sublime suckiness of JavaScript. At long last, I have been agreed with.
Twice in one day: I also <CmdrTaco>leave that crap turned off</CmdrTaco>.
It's funny/annoying how endemic the assumption is that everyone does use it. I often visit sites, get bizarre error messages, report them, and find out that the bizarre message should have actually said "You need to run that crap^w^w JavaScript to do that."
ps - Turning that crap^w^w JavaScript off works wonders for the stability of Netscape under Linux, and also disables the ever popular pop-up ads.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sure, occasionally stuff gets re-posted, but this is absurd. You missed a few.
The x86 Still was a quickie not quite a month back
RSA implemented in javascript was a quickie just a few weeks before the still
I understand that sometimes stuff is gonna show up twice, but this is silly.
for the record, the foot pedals were their own article HERE so we're what, four out of 10 confirmed already posted, and a fifth that may have been?
You may call a technicality on the symphony. Personally, I think it's stupid to link to the knowledge base article. It's not a windows bug. It's not a bug. The hardware does it, it'd do the same thing if it overheated under Linux or BSD. I used to work for a shop years ago that had a Netware box that would play Fur Elise when it got too hot. It's a function of the hardware monitor on some motherboards.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
The Windows "bug" doesn't have a thing to do with Window. It's been around for years and resurfaces every now and then when somebody "discovers" the web page. It's a hardware alarm generated by the BIOS when voltages go awry in the computer.
I'll stay away from the usual rant about spewing out "news" on /.
=h=
Dot matrixes aren't the only printers that are musical, some have it built into them.
http://www.eeggs.com/items/529.html
Slashdot doesn't allow the SCRIPT tag but some sites do (perhaps unknowingly) and so someone can write an apparently innocent comment in a chat and include a script that eats your hard disk.
A close friend of mine told me that she's been writing largely in Javascript for a long time now and her company is in fact basing their entire online strategy on Javascript. They're making a huge investment in it and will be selling a product that will be very expensive that will require very highly paid people to leave Javascript on all day long just to do their work.
I was astonished at that idea and said they were doing a disservice to their customers by encouraging them to enable Javascript, let alone requiring it for the basic functions of their product.
She was pretty incredulous about this, even after I recounted the above CERT advisory. She told me Javascript was sandboxed and could not do anything destructive. I told her it was full of holes and highly nonstandardized and bugs were being found in it all the time.
I also advisted her to read the Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems (also available as comp.risks on the Usenet News).
I told her I felt that reading Risks was a very basic requirement for anyone who wrote software for a living, and was doubly important for someone like her who wrote software that would effect people's lives in a substantial way (I can't be too specific - but she's not writing entertainment software). She thought this was all very silly.
Now, slashdotters, what can I say to my friend - what can I say that is of real substance not just flaming? Can you give me literature references or URL's? Pertinent CERT advisories would be good.
BTW - here's a suggestion - while I leave Javascript turned off most of the time, I often find I have to turn it on to use some sites. It really gets me down that some sites don't even function if Javascript is not enabled.
But Junkbuster is a simple proxy that will filter out ads and stop cookies, but allow them in controlled ways. For example, I only allow cookies from Slashdot and my bank, so I don't have to have cookies from any other site and I don't have to keep turning cookies back on to read slashdot.
I think it would be a fairly simple matter to modify the Junkbuster source code to filter out SCRIPT tags for most sites except those that are on an approved list. The source code is GPL'ed so someone with the inclination could just get the source and do it. I'd do it myself but I'm real busy for the next little while.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
California may be morally simular to the Netherlands, but, believe me, they're worlds apart.
Yikes!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I tried to convince Gav (supreme leader of Keenspot and artist of Nukees) to make a Keenspot slashbox, but he wasn't interested.
In other news, it seems when this article first got posted, Keenspot (and quite a few of its member sites, like College Roomies from Hell, got Slashdotted.
And check out Help Desk. It's awesome (done entirely on OS/2 too).
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
One day i went to a cash machine (ATM) at the Natwest bank, and all there was on the screen was an NT4 "Press CTRL ALT DELETE to log on" message box. I dunno, maybe the power had gone down or something and it came back looking like that.
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They run Windows too.
Every time I go in, there's a little grey error box on the screen but NO keyboard or mouse to click OK. Needless to say the thing doesn't work.
What idiot designs an embedded system and uses an OS which required a keyboard and mouse? What kind of thought processes does this require? The next question is what kind of moron buys a product like that?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Now I have just placed an order for a twiddler -- found from a link off tiqit, separate note in slashdot today -- which I hope to receive in about two weeks. I'll let you know how it fares.