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Slashback: Antennae, Play, Book Larnin'
Out of warranty since day two -- More-than-ordinary Airport investigator Constantin von Wentzel, fearing that "readers will learn about the vagaries of Apple RAM instead of how to fix base stations," writes: "Cliff posted a article by Peter Deweese detailing how his Apple Airport failed. Unfortunately, these failures are next to certain since the power supply inside the Base Station will fry two components by two different means. One is heat, the other the switching power supply. Apple Base Station owners are well aware of the heat issue (the underside can get hot enough to bubble off the sticker)and the two capacitors inside the base station are rated for 1,000 hours @ 105 deg C - about 50 days. The other mode of failure is the power supply itself which switches at a high frequency and subjects the capacitors to high current loads. I investigated my ABS when it failed, and discovered two fried capacitors. It is true that the ABS will run as a DHCP router, etc. when the power supply has failed as long as the WaveLAN card has been removed. The question is how long. I put together a online guide to repair Apple Base Stations as well as how to retrofit external antennas. Both can be found at [this URL]."
Of course, I still like playing Earthball. In reference to the recent quest for non-zero sum games, stuq writes: " 35-40 years ago Buckminster Fuller created the 'World Game' -- the mother of all non-zero sum games. World Game is now under the excellent stewardship of Medard Gable and his World Game Institute.
The original game was played on a version of Fuller's Dymaxion map of the earth that covered an entire gym floor. They now have a satellite imagery version of the map!
There are 100 players, each representing 1% of humanity. Players are assigned
positions on the map in proportion to actual population density (which is
an eye opener -- half of India had to stand in the ocean). Everyone is apportioned:
energy, food, tech credits, etc. in a way that represents the actual distribution
of those rescoures. Additional players around the edge of the map represent
NGO's, Mother Nature, the world press, etc.
The goal is to make the world work for everyone. Utter chaos ensues
and the game play is totally exhilarating. The World Game Institute has taken
the large version of the game to players around the world including many
world leaders.
There is a
net version of the game. Looks like these people haven't been clued in to open source, but I'd bet
they would be interested."
Letters -- they're made out of letters! billn writes: "Long and short, member of a StarCraft clan was dealt a search warrant and is under investigation for 'tampering.' This is not a free speech suppression case. It's not a hate case. The followup is posted here. I did a lot of the research work myself, including a couple phone interviews. I'd just like to say, to all the people who flew off the handle without checking the facts first (including those of you who called Kent State to rant), LEARN TO READ.
For those who care, we'll be following the story to closure."
This after the recent story Cops Bust Starcraft Clan.
Have you got a license for this thing, sir? Olivier Lejade, CEO and co-founder of Nevrax wrote to say that he's posted a response to the recent mention of Nevrax's GPL-client/GPL-server game platform. More information is always good to have, thanks Olivier.
Yea, I know that whole 1970s thing was the National Guard getting just a tisch trigger happy. But the Kent State UPD just bought freaking M16s
Supposedly, they're being modified to semi-automatic. Still, what the hell does a UPD need M16s for? If it's that bad, call in the city police or sherrifs for help. Or even the National Guard if you have a riot on your hands.... oh wait... that happened already. My bad.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
People often mistakenly assume that someone's gain is necessarily someone else's loss.
That's not "left-wing theory". It's called the laws of thermodynamics.
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Is there something wrong with the idea of competition and having someone win and others lose? After all many of the challenges people face in their lives will be zero-sum ones - either you win or you lose, and not everyone can come out ahead. Finding a partner is not a positive-sum game for instance, and that's about the most important thing there is.
There does seem to be certain people that seem to think that competition is bad, and that it is somehow "unfair" to those that aren't as good. Peronally, I think it's unfair to cosset these people and make them believe that things are going to be easy when they hit the outside world.
At least losing in school will prepare them for losing outside of it. Harsh, yes, but better sooner rather than later.
Still, the game sounds interesting and I may have to have a go. Hopefully managing the world's resources won't turn out to be a zero sum game, even though America seems to think it is, and if they don't actively try and scupper all attempts to curb our excesses we will somehow "lose".
Oohkay. So, there's no real evidence that a crime has been committed (maybe someone logged onto the server, fired up IE, and the pages ended up in the cache), but the judge is quick to hand out a search warrant and the police have the right to hold the kid's computer for up to a year.
So, if I were to find a beer can in a dorm trash can, would the judge grant a search warrant to confiscate the dorm fridge of every resident (despite the fact that some residents might be overage, or that a visitor might have desposited it, or whatever)? After all, a crime might have been committed.
In my opinion, this case was never important for any free speech implications: It's the unreasonable search and seizure you should be concerned with. Even in a case where it the police don't know a crime has even been committed, they can easily obtain a warrant to suspect a suspect's civil liberties.
If the government tries to regulate guns, special interests swing into action. If the government tries to stop someone from saying anything, Slashdot goes nuts. Why isn't this just as bad, if not worse?
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Had the airport been intact Apple would have presumably replaced it (it's not cost-effective to repair them) free of charge under the one year warranty.
Unfortunately due to (reportedly) poor electrical design the device's lifetime appears to be only slightly greater then one year. How convenient for Apple. I'd always suspected this of my kitchen appliances but generally Apple's equipment (except for their old 9" monitors & Mac SE power supplies) has been notably high quality.
Electrical/design defects aside the Apple Airports really are a fabulous bit of engineering. For a few hundred bucks they act as a really nifty DHCP/NAT server. One doesn't even need a Mac to configure these suckers as their OS manufacturer has a Java one out. Surreally enough the AirPorts are x86-based, which is strange considering the strength of PPC in embedded devices.
In somewhat related new the Orinoco/WaveLAN 802.11 cards have now dropped in price to ~US$150 for Silver, ~US$170 for Gold (128 bit encryption.) Furthermore reports are out that the next generation of these devices will shrink down to two or so discrete chips meaning even smaller/more efficient devices.
Now if only more manufacturers would start embedding antennas in their devices.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Well, I'm glad to see that the police did at least go in for some reason that wasn't just 'we don't like the page'. It's really sad though, that it's gotten to the point that many of us feel that we have to be that paranoid with regard to laws and law enforcement, and that it seems that much of law enforcement is very behind as far as technical knowledge goes. I'm still wondering why it wasn't handled internally though. At my university, if a student is suspected of breaking the rules of the school with regard to the network, his physical feed is unplugged from the other end. (Ironically, they aren't usually smart enough to cut access by IP, so the student simply has to find another outlet, but oh bloody well.) The thing is that they don't usually need to call the police in, and I'm not aware of any instances where that was necessary.
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...