I'm lagging this morning. There is, in fact, a price posted to the website. My brain is just too fried from early-morning law school reading in order to sort it all out.
Notice that if you try to sign up for the service it will ask for your credit card and personal information WITHOUT telling you how much you are going to be charged for this mystery service.
No clue anywhere on the company's page (that I could find - please prove me wrong) about just how much something like this costs.
Essentially it goes something like this:
VaporStream: We'll provide you with a totally recordless email solution.
Customer: Cool! I've been looking for a good way to whistleblow/rat to the feds/be paranoid! How much?
VaporStream: Umm... Just give us your credit card information and we'll take care of it. This way you'll have plausable deniability - you know, in the spirit of watching your back. Now make with the digits!
If you're really worried about durability, why not make a back up onto a CD-R/DVD-R in addition to your USB drive? They won't fry from static or water exposure, and they're arguably more compatible with PCs (despite the utter ubiquity of the USB drive, you'd be suprised at how many legacy PCs are still rattling around sans USB... especially in lower-level government offices - the sort of place where may someday need to prove your identity).
I can personally attest to having fried more than one USB flash drive from static buildup alone - enough miles in your pocket or bag with the protective cap off (which unfortunately happens rather frequently) will totally junk the drive. Nevermind the fact that the drives can be pretty fragile - doesn't take much to crush them or damage their USB interface.
Granted, the CD-R/DVD-R solution isn't perfect. They break, they scratch. But they're definately a worthwhile backup plan for your backup plan. I mean, if your whole aim is to build a universal contingency plan, then it doesn't make much sense to put all your eggs into one (semi-volatile and fragile) basket.
And what, ever since I posted to/. about finding the best way to *really* wipe a harddrive I've gotten about 45 emails telling me all kinds of ways to sort out this kind of problem (I still get emails about it, and the posting was more than three years ago). Everything from a quick thermite burn to breaking into a telco exchange for some ultra-high-current bit rearrangement.
those government types just beed to think outside the box a little more. hell, why settle for thermite - these boys have access to our nuclear arsenal!
Of course, it should be remembered that Sony sells far more than just computers. Digital audio players, stereo equipment, video recorders, digital cameras, televisions - more than just the obvious desktop, laptop and Aibo triumverate we're all familiar with.
In my own Sony Style Store experience (I live in Boston, home to a Sony Store), and I can say that their high-tech botique style is very appealing. The stores are great - I personally find them more appealing to the Apple Stores, which, although they offer a similar degree of tempting products, aren't as stimulating of a shopping/browsing experience.
Something that is ever-changing is "protean". It's a throwback to the parable of Proteus in Homer's Odyssey - one of the greek kings [the first one Odysseus' son visits - i've forgotten his name] had to wrestle the pseudo-god Proteus, who constantly changed form during the struggle.
the idea of the protean theme is widespread in literature - the best example being the so called 'protean chapters' from Joyce's "Ulysses".
so technically it's not spelled wrong. it's the wrong word.
it depends largely on where the aorta is cut. If you're talking about the major section of the aorta, near the aortic and mitric valves, then yes - the internal bleeding would be catastrophic, and the patient would die in a matter of minutes.
it sounds like this article is describing a cut in the aorta farther away from the heart than you're thinking. that would cause significantly less bleeding, and since imaging of such a location would be a secondary consideration, a complication in that area could go unnoticed for some time.
at any rate, a surgical system like the da Vinci could one day save many, many lives. I've got Marfan's Syndrome, and suffer from leaky aortic and mitric valves, as well as an aorta within 5mm of dissection. Closed-chest robotic surgery of this kind, which causes almost no damage to the heart and its effected connective tissues, would almost eliminate the need for me to undergo open-heart surgery one day.
Systems like this should be adopted cautiously, but i think that their introduction would lead to a dramatic drop in complications post-op, which is one of the the leading causes of death among open-heart surgery patients. Even those that survive the surgery are often left with drastically diminished cardiovascular capacity, due to the degree of trauma inflicted on the heart during the surgery. This was my father's case - he underwent open heart surgery twice to replace his aorta. The repeated surgery left his heart on a hair's trigger - the result of complications non-invasive surgery could have prevented.
pardon the soapbox, but this is a fairly close-hitting topic for me.
Umm... maybe somebody already posted this, but isn't that what/demos/ are for?
OK, sure - you might not get the full game experience that you would from fooling around with the full version, so you won't get to see if the gaming quality drops off a couple levels in or something, but that's what sites like Sharky Extreme and FiringSquad are for. Isn't this just a/little/ redundant?
Then again, publishers are prob'ly in love with this idea. Not just because it's moronic, but cause it helps 'em rake in some more cash charging to rent;p.
-Warble://VX
Re:Men are the targets of these witchhunts.
on
Roasting Sacred Cows
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Oh poor you! You get paid more than the women at your job, are less likely to be ticketed by a police officer, and never once have to be afraid that the shadowy fellow beside you might rape you (unless you're in prison, in which case your cornhole gets what it deserves IMO) - but ye gods! British Airways won't seat you beside a child traveling alone!?! You poor, downtrodden man!
Get off your soapbox so someone who needs it can use it.
yeah, but you're not renting the security cards, so they would have _no_ reason to get your address....the only reason for them to ask for ID would be if you paid with a check. haha - and i'm sure that they'd be more than willing to take a check from a guy stealing direcTV;p
it's more likely that they get the adds. from those "entertainment supply companies" - the type that also sells plans to cable tv descramblers and such. i'm sure they'd cave in and fork over a list of adds. they shipped cards to if uncle sam stood over them long enough.
4. Once you put a man on Mars, you're golden, untouchable.
Don't you think that's a slight exaggeration? I mean, these were the same folk who put a man on the moon; and if you take it into perspective (avaliable technology vs. distance), it was a hell of a bigger feat to land on the Moon than a landing on Mars would be. And even with that accomplishment, here we are 25 odd years later questioning the existance of the program.
Will it make NASA golden? Not a chance - we only went to the moon for two reasons: our hate and fear of the former USSR, and our love for JFK - So what reason does the country have to unite behind a Mars mission?
"We are shooting for the stars, but sometimes we hit london"
I dunno if anyone has every seriously considered this or not, but what about a boycott of the music industry?
Think about it - if everyone on Napster just stopped buying CD's it would send one hell of a message. Even better - if you could organize a large-scale boycott (say, everyone on the internet;p) then the message would be even more clear. Even if it only lasted a month it would punch a mighty big hole in profits (plus it might be enough to starve away uber-pop groups), which seems to be about the only way to get their attention anyhow (after all, RIAA and others didn't start to notice Napster until profits began to "slip").
actually, no - i didn't graduate. I asked to leave at the beginning of this year, due to what they referred to as poor decisions. You're all smart folk, i'm sure you don't need me to tell you what that meant;p.
as for this comment: It's a good thing you went to that smug elitist school, I wonder if the project lost interest because the student body was more interested in getting drunk and laid (as any high school student should god damn it).
All I can say is, I give my eternal praise to Slashdot - there's more wisdom here in a day than most places see in a year;).
Interesting mention of a highschool student being able to create a beowulf cluster...
Suffield Academy students, myself included (once upon a time, that is), attempted this about two years ago with PROJECT:EFFECT (sadly, the website is now-defunct). The goal of the project was to demonstrate that clustered supercomputing was an extremely viable, which we tried to prove by assembling a cluster of our own - from donated parts!
...sadly, there just wasn't any real interest in the project, and it has since been abandoned....of course, i'd be more than willing to help another generation of SA students with this - provided, of course, that we were able to generate enough support (**cough, cough**).
Anyhow, enough of me rolling in the past; just wanted to be an old man for a sec and yell "It's been done before, ya punks!!".
root_dev_X
::it's too bad that old people don't like me, cause they're so tasty::
OK, i'll admit it - i'm a geek. I'm a hardware weenie, there's very little i like more than to be knee deep in mainboards and cabling. However, i find this article disgusting. Call it flamebait if you want, but this needs to be said.
Whatever happened to letting kids be kids? If a child has an aptitude toward programming or other geek 'arts', then it will become apparent and the child learn what they crave to know. But i find the idea repulsive that some of us want to take it upon ourselves to teach programming along with the alphabet.
I think that we would be doing a great disservice to children if we taught them to program. For one reason, i think that programming as it exists today is a fad. That's right, a fad. I believe that the groundswell of popularity of programming will end in mass unemployment for skilled programmers (it's already starting to happen in the Silicon Valley and eslewhere). But aside from that opinion, I think that we should allow gifted children (programmers and otherwise) to find their talents on their own.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm lagging this morning. There is, in fact, a price posted to the website. My brain is just too fried from early-morning law school reading in order to sort it all out.
Notice that if you try to sign up for the service it will ask for your credit card and personal information WITHOUT telling you how much you are going to be charged for this mystery service.
No clue anywhere on the company's page (that I could find - please prove me wrong) about just how much something like this costs.
Essentially it goes something like this:
VaporStream:
We'll provide you with a totally recordless email solution.
Customer:
Cool! I've been looking for a good way to whistleblow/rat to the feds/be paranoid! How much?
VaporStream:
Umm... Just give us your credit card information and we'll take care of it. This way you'll have plausable deniability - you know, in the spirit of watching your back. Now make with the digits!
Sounds fishy to me. (Har).
If you're really worried about durability, why not make a back up onto a CD-R/DVD-R in addition to your USB drive? They won't fry from static or water exposure, and they're arguably more compatible with PCs (despite the utter ubiquity of the USB drive, you'd be suprised at how many legacy PCs are still rattling around sans USB... especially in lower-level government offices - the sort of place where may someday need to prove your identity).
I can personally attest to having fried more than one USB flash drive from static buildup alone - enough miles in your pocket or bag with the protective cap off (which unfortunately happens rather frequently) will totally junk the drive. Nevermind the fact that the drives can be pretty fragile - doesn't take much to crush them or damage their USB interface.
Granted, the CD-R/DVD-R solution isn't perfect. They break, they scratch. But they're definately a worthwhile backup plan for your backup plan. I mean, if your whole aim is to build a universal contingency plan, then it doesn't make much sense to put all your eggs into one (semi-volatile and fragile) basket.
And what, ever since I posted to /. about finding the best way to *really* wipe a harddrive I've gotten about 45 emails telling me all kinds of ways to sort out this kind of problem (I still get emails about it, and the posting was more than three years ago). Everything from a quick thermite burn to breaking into a telco exchange for some ultra-high-current bit rearrangement.
those government types just beed to think outside the box a little more. hell, why settle for thermite - these boys have access to our nuclear arsenal!
or better still, guerilla marketing?
Anyone else remember the movie Captain Ron? "You asshole, there's aren't any gorillas in the caribbean!"
Of course, it should be remembered that Sony sells far more than just computers. Digital audio players, stereo equipment, video recorders, digital cameras, televisions - more than just the obvious desktop, laptop and Aibo triumverate we're all familiar with.
In my own Sony Style Store experience (I live in Boston, home to a Sony Store), and I can say that their high-tech botique style is very appealing. The stores are great - I personally find them more appealing to the Apple Stores, which, although they offer a similar degree of tempting products, aren't as stimulating of a shopping/browsing experience.
you seem to be saying this as though it's not a good reason...
don't make us revise the axis of evil!
that's because "protean" is actually a word.
Something that is ever-changing is "protean". It's a throwback to the parable of Proteus in Homer's Odyssey - one of the greek kings [the first one Odysseus' son visits - i've forgotten his name] had to wrestle the pseudo-god Proteus, who constantly changed form during the struggle.
the idea of the protean theme is widespread in literature - the best example being the so called 'protean chapters' from Joyce's "Ulysses".
so technically it's not spelled wrong. it's the wrong word.
knowlege is a burden
it depends largely on where the aorta is cut. If you're talking about the major section of the aorta, near the aortic and mitric valves, then yes - the internal bleeding would be catastrophic, and the patient would die in a matter of minutes.
it sounds like this article is describing a cut in the aorta farther away from the heart than you're thinking. that would cause significantly less bleeding, and since imaging of such a location would be a secondary consideration, a complication in that area could go unnoticed for some time.
at any rate, a surgical system like the da Vinci could one day save many, many lives. I've got Marfan's Syndrome, and suffer from leaky aortic and mitric valves, as well as an aorta within 5mm of dissection. Closed-chest robotic surgery of this kind, which causes almost no damage to the heart and its effected connective tissues, would almost eliminate the need for me to undergo open-heart surgery one day.
Systems like this should be adopted cautiously, but i think that their introduction would lead to a dramatic drop in complications post-op, which is one of the the leading causes of death among open-heart surgery patients. Even those that survive the surgery are often left with drastically diminished cardiovascular capacity, due to the degree of trauma inflicted on the heart during the surgery. This was my father's case - he underwent open heart surgery twice to replace his aorta. The repeated surgery left his heart on a hair's trigger - the result of complications non-invasive surgery could have prevented.
pardon the soapbox, but this is a fairly close-hitting topic for me.
-WarbleVX
Do you know what this means? The Italian Lira has become virtually worthless!!!
a very slick idea indeed - i can imagine an etch-a-sketch T Shirt would kick a considerable amount of ass.
BUT - i can also remember seeing all those "visions of the future" film reels, promising everyhing from flying cars to auto-polarizing window glass.
Sure, it's cool - cool as hell in fact, but i'm not about to start holding my breath.
Warble://VX
Umm... maybe somebody already posted this, but isn't that what /demos/ are for?
/little/ redundant?
;p.
OK, sure - you might not get the full game experience that you would from fooling around with the full version, so you won't get to see if the gaming quality drops off a couple levels in or something, but that's what sites like Sharky Extreme and FiringSquad are for. Isn't this just a
Then again, publishers are prob'ly in love with this idea. Not just because it's moronic, but cause it helps 'em rake in some more cash charging to rent
-Warble://VX
Get off your soapbox so someone who needs it can use it.
~Warble
it's more likely that they get the adds. from those "entertainment supply companies" - the type that also sells plans to cable tv descramblers and such. i'm sure they'd cave in and fork over a list of adds. they shipped cards to if uncle sam stood over them long enough.
err, what were we talking about again?
~Warble
ask and ye shall receive
Don't you think that's a slight exaggeration? I mean, these were the same folk who put a man on the moon; and if you take it into perspective (avaliable technology vs. distance), it was a hell of a bigger feat to land on the Moon than a landing on Mars would be. And even with that accomplishment, here we are 25 odd years later questioning the existance of the program.
Will it make NASA golden? Not a chance - we only went to the moon for two reasons: our hate and fear of the former USSR, and our love for JFK - So what reason does the country have to unite behind a Mars mission?
"We are shooting for the stars, but sometimes we hit london"
~Warble
lol - a "Handfull of transistors" 20nm in size? Shouldn't they be putting those into chips? ;)
Think about it - if everyone on Napster just stopped buying CD's it would send one hell of a message. Even better - if you could organize a large-scale boycott (say, everyone on the internet ;p) then the message would be even more clear. Even if it only lasted a month it would punch a mighty big hole in profits (plus it might be enough to starve away uber-pop groups), which seems to be about the only way to get their attention anyhow (after all, RIAA and others didn't start to notice Napster until profits began to "slip").
Any ideas? You can count me in :).
warble
as for this comment:
It's a good thing you went to that smug elitist school, I wonder if the project lost interest because the student body was more interested in getting drunk and laid (as any high school student should god damn it).
All I can say is, I give my eternal praise to Slashdot - there's more wisdom here in a day than most places see in a year ;).
Suffield Academy students, myself included (once upon a time, that is), attempted this about two years ago with PROJECT:EFFECT (sadly, the website is now-defunct). The goal of the project was to demonstrate that clustered supercomputing was an extremely viable, which we tried to prove by assembling a cluster of our own - from donated parts!
Anyhow, enough of me rolling in the past; just wanted to be an old man for a sec and yell "It's been done before, ya punks!!".
root_dev_X
bear with me, the sig is old....
That would be a mallard. Daffy Duck is a mallard, 1000 x 10*3 is a millard... ;p
So how about a millard mallards?
DJ Warble
OK, i'll admit it - i'm a geek. I'm a hardware weenie, there's very little i like more than to be knee deep in mainboards and cabling. However, i find this article disgusting. Call it flamebait if you want, but this needs to be said.
Whatever happened to letting kids be kids? If a child has an aptitude toward programming or other geek 'arts', then it will become apparent and the child learn what they crave to know. But i find the idea repulsive that some of us want to take it upon ourselves to teach programming along with the alphabet.
I think that we would be doing a great disservice to children if we taught them to program. For one reason, i think that programming as it exists today is a fad. That's right, a fad. I believe that the groundswell of popularity of programming will end in mass unemployment for skilled programmers (it's already starting to happen in the Silicon Valley and eslewhere). But aside from that opinion, I think that we should allow gifted children (programmers and otherwise) to find their talents on their own.
Flame Away.
Alex
hehe i just got evilteenagekiller@waveamerica.com... maybe that'll make people think twice before spamming my email address :)