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Interesting Uses For a USB LED Screen?
Hogwash McFly writes "My boss gave me one of those USB-powered red LED scrolling displays as a Christmas gift, and while cycling the usual 'I read your emails' and 'ID10T Error' messages will be entertaining for a day or two, I was wondering if it could be put to more constructive uses. The configuration file is plaintext and supports different scroll speeds, flashing, bitmaps, and WAV sounds. The font is defined as 5x5 pixels per character, also stored in plaintext as 5 hex values, one for each vertical line of pixels. A dynamically generated message could prove useful in my day-to-day work on the helpdesk, but are there any interesting uses beyond network notifications and news feeds?"
I hope our far-left overlords are more benevolent than the far-right ones were.
If you think that the incoming President is far-left and the old President was far-right, then you need a refresher course in both politics and civics.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Why don't you just TELL them?
I dread to think what you got them for Christmahannukwanzaa this year.
of course, if he doesn't work in a call center, but is instead one of a few IT people, putting that outisde of his office with a message saying something along the lines of "SQL Server down for update, will be up at 4pm" will stop perhaps one or two people from knocking on his door to ask why the server is down and when it will be back up.
Xaotik Designs
What planet have you been on for the last 8 years?
I know it is sometimes an easy mistake to make, but far-stupid != far-right.
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Please stop talking about things you obviously haven't thought through and don't understand.
If I pass then move over after just two car lengths, I've pretty much demonstrated the classic definition of cutting someone off. The only result is that they are then caused to either tailgate me or unexpectedly slow down, potentially causing a problem for the person behind them. Just because the guy flying up my butt is anxious is no reason for me to be a dick. His tailgating means we have two cars in an unsafe relationship and if we have a wreck we can at least have a hope of confining it to one lane. But if I try to get out of Mr. Speedracer's way by cutting off the guy in the lane next to me, we now have two unsafe maneuvers happening at the same time instead of one and I've involved another car and another lane in our potential accident. Bad news. Just because the guy behind me is stupid doesn't mean I want to join him in endangering my fellow motorists.
When I pass, I wait until I can see both headlights of the car I passed in my rearview mirror. Then I signal and move over. Anyone who thinks I wait too long to move over or who, worse, tries to shoot through the gap between us is an incompetent menace.
This rule will not allow sufficient traffic to move at posted speeds with the number of lanes available in most US highway configurations. So while the rule is a great guide for safety purposes, it is effectively useless in or near a city, because no one wants to spend extra hours on the road on the one hand, and the government won't allow high enough speeds to make those spacings practical for the vehicle density that is a modern fact of life.
And this, by the way, is one of the reasons I live and work in rural Montana.
Most US highway designs are so bad - insufficient to the task of safe and timely travel - that the only hope we really have is over-the-horizon technological. Car to car radar and status; automated response to same; deep infrared (heat) sensors; vastly improved light rail; isolation of travel corridors from debris, wildlife and pedestrians; the vague and unlikely hope that inexpensive flying capability will decongest the ground paths (and recover immense amounts of real estate.)
I've always thought that a truly advanced society would at least master how to contain and conserve light gases and go for personal airship transport, with elevated setups such as monorails for mass and heavy transit. Roads are such a waste of land, such a risk to wildlife, such resource- and maintainance-hogs...
But then again, we're still using and wasting power with streetlights long after they became obsolete. That whole advanced society thing... not us.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Have you watched fox news lately?, I think they are more closely related then they apear