Years ago I worked as part of the helpdesk service at my college. One of our public labs had a large line-impact printer.
[I'll include a side note for those who do not know what a line-impact printer is. Do you remember dot-matrix printers? No? Ok, no help for you. But for those of you who do remember them, you probably realized how having a single print-head that had to travel back and forth across the page contributed to their relatively slow printing speed. No doubt some of you came to the same conclusion the developer of the line-impact printer did: instead of having a tiny print head move back and forth across the page, simply create a huge print head (well, very wide but not very high) that could print an entire line at a time. That makes for a faster printer, and also a much more reliable printer (far fewer moving parts). Hence you can still find them in industrial applications where people need large volumes of low quality prints. This also happened to be ideal in an 1980's computer lab visited by uber geeks who needed to print out their code, and psychology students who needed to dump pounds and pounds of statistical data to a printer somehow. Anyway...]
The helpdesk office at this particular computer lab was attached to the lab with the line printer. So it was close enough you could hear it running. With normal, plain text like you'd see in a printout from a computer program, the printer (being an impact printer) made a recognizable sound. Mostly a wavering, roaring sound. However, when some idiot decided to dump a PostScript file to the printer - and with the printer just being designed for plain text (i.e. no freakin' PostScript like all the signs said) - the sound would change to a solid, angry roar as each entire page would be filled up by PostScript code. The difference in sound proved to be incredibly useful. Anyone sitting in the helpdesk office, even if they were concentrating on some other task and thus seemingly oblivious to the faint sound of the printer, would somehow hear the change in the sound. They'd know that someone had screwed up and that they needed to go and stop the job before the printer blew through an entire box of fan-fold paper.
As I say, we'd just tune into the change in the sound automatically. It wasn't even an especially conscious thing. You'd be working away on some task, completely engrossed in homework or something, and all of a sudden your brain would tune into the fact that the background sound had changed. With normal printing it was completely tuned out. You never noticed it until there was a problem. How fantastic is that? This is a great feature of the human brain - you can be giving your full attention to one task, but some other part of your brain is still somehow listening out for changes in your environment and will let you know if something's changed. I would find this so useful for a firewall. The sounds would have to be low volume and carefully chosen so as not to drive me insane in either instance (normal operation or "uh oh" mode), but I'd really love to give this a try.
It's such a coincidence... I was at work this morning and something just like my original printer story happened. We've got large format DesignJet printers from HP (basically giant InkJet printers that can handle 3 to 5 foot wide, 300 foot long rolls of paper). When they print, they run a vacuum fan to hold the paper down and steady while the print head zips back and forth across the sheet. The vacuum fans produce a dull sort of roar while printing. BUT, there's this second sound while they're printing... the sound of the print-head zipping back and forth, back and forth, across the sheet. Well, this morning, I was dealing with some stuff that really had me focusing on the task at hand. All of a sudden, some part of my brain alerted me to the fact that I'd been hearing the dull roar of the vacuum fan for a while, but not the sound of the print-head moving back and forth. This is really an am
Dude, this guy's happiness has been soooo alienated that something just burst out of his chest and it's now clattering around in the freakin' air ducts!
Should I be worried about the fact that the manufacturer apparently can't count? Maybe I'm posting too late, but does that connector look like it's a 15-pin to you?
I finally found some more information and pictures of the inscription. See the BBC Radio 4 program from May 12th. Includes an audio interview with the Bletchley Park director.
You're right - I posted that way too quickly. That said, we're talking about a 250 year old poem, not a 2 month old legal document. I think the original poster (and the earlier posters attributed this to much ado about nothing) is correct: the explanation provided by the family member is the most probable.
I'm not impressed by Plextor anymore. I've had two of their SCSI CD units die on me within the past couple of years. One was a plain Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drive, which experienced only light use, and died after about a year and a half after purchase. I was so annoyed I never bothered to send it back under warranty. The other, which finally died yesterday after months of intermittent hardware errors, was a SCSI CD-RW (Plexwriter 4/12/32) drive. Again, it had only experienced light use. Both were insanely expensive. I had hoped that, given the alleged quality of Plextor units, and given how little use they were going to get, that I'd have to replace them with different optical technology before I had to replace them due to failure. It didn't turn out that way.
Sorry, but based on my personal experience I think Plextor is relying more on its name these days, rather than maintaining its once high level of reliability. I really don't view them as anything special now. Except perhaps as overpriced - because people are still willing to pay for the name.
That being said, I prefer XPDF. On many occasions I've found it can open PDFs that Acrobat (even Professional) can't, due to file corruption or strange PDF generation techniques. Highly recommended.
At some point long ago I saw a documentary about Chernobyl that included a segment on the slag that collected beneath the reactor. It included video taken of the "elephants foot". They also showed a police sharpshooter being called in to shoot/chip off a piece of the slag for analysis. I suspect that's how anyone has wound up with a piece of the slag for analysis. I doubt anyone would go near it.
If you look at the fairly solid wall of soil at the right you will see a slightly dark streak on it. That streak leads directly to a puddle on the floor. Given this visual evidence, and the structure of the soil, it is pretty obvious that this stuff is wet.
This is like saying you will see (god damn it, you will see it, because I say it's there) the face of Elvis on the mound to the left. It's not even clear what you mean by, "wall of soil at the right."
If I'm even looking at the same spot on that photo as you (and given your vague comment, it's impossible to know that I am), it looks to me like the dark, finely powdered soil from the surface layer has poured down the side of the trench wall, leaving a faint stripe down the wall, and forming a small pile at the base of the trench. There's the explanation for your "puddle". No water needed here. Try going outside sometime and examining some finely powdered, totally dry clay or silt. Clearly you're going to be surprised at how fluidly it can behave.
This story doesn't bother me, whether it's fair or not.
My current home computer environment consists primarily of a soft Linux and Windows "core" contained within a tough BSD shell.
The exterior shell currently consists of an OpenBSD firewall/NAT router/DHCP server, with the internal network containing a couple of Red Hat and Debian boxes, plus a Windows 98SE laptop. That means I have lots of flexibility and choice with user applications, along with some peace of mind when it comes to network security. I get the best of both worlds. I've been pairing BSD and Linux systems since day one. I think it's a fantastic combination. So much so that, in the interests of learning more about *NIX (just a casual hobby), I'm slowly switching to an even more diverse environment. I'm going to remove the simple OpenBSD firewall/router and replace it with an OpenBSD firewall/bridge, with a second BSD system acting as a dedicated NAT router/DHCP server. At some point in the future I'll add a Macintosh system, a Windows XP media-oriented system, and if I'm feeling extra keen to learn (and possibly paranoid), a honeypot. None of this is a big deal for me space-wise because I invested in a single, 4 post rack that keeps most of the computers out of the way, in one location. None of this is a big deal for me cash-wise because it'll all run on used or otherwise obsolete hardware (even the Mac will be a used one - no way I could afford one new). And none of this is a big deal for me time-wise because I just toy with this stuff slowly, usually taking months to complete a goal because I just string together the occasional couple of hours of free time.
Anyway, I'm really going off on a tangent. Here's my conclusion: BSD and Linux are both fantastic OSes, no matter what some cash-oriented research group says. But blended together with each fulfilling a role they happen to be good at, they are truly awesome. How many times has it been said here on Slashdot that homogeneity is not a good thing?
...and some nifty video switcher to take care of everything.
I don't have one of these yet, but I've wanted to get one for ages to try with some nifty projects. Their original ASEL model now has an optional rack-mountable case.
(You heard it here first... and yes, I do have too much free time. And no, I'm not making a statement pro or con about this area... this is just a little food for thought. Hah. I made a funny.:-) )
Officials at one of America's largest "all you can eat" restaurants announced today a new method of cost-cutting.
Tuesday, November 25th
For immediate release
Raleigh, NC:
Silver Bucket, a nation-wide franchise restaurant chain with over 200 all-you-can-eat restaurants, has just introduced a new technology called Digital Plate Management, or DPM for short. Company executives are said to be excited about this new technology as they expect it will end the ability for unscrupulous customers to share food with non-paying companions.
"We've always faced a certain 'undesirable' component to our clientele," says Bryan Dawkins, CEO of Silver Bucket. He adds, "You can tell who they are as soon as they arrive. They'll arrive in twos or threes... sometimes more. Only one or two will buy the buffet though. The others just matter-of-factly state they only want a soft drink."
Dawkins adds, "They're lying, of course. We seldom see it happen as they've become such experts at this kind of blatant theft, but come on... there's no way someone comes into our restaurant as part of group and only wants a soft drink. You immediately know they're up to no good."
The Digital Plate Management technology that is now being deployed at Silver Bucket restaurants will bring an end to all that. The system relies on a high-tech buffet plate that is designed to work only with the person who purchases the buffet menu option. "These plates are going to save our bacon," says Dawkins. "They are just the most fantastic devices we've ever seen." The plates, which cost the company a little over $1300 a piece, are encoded at the time the customer makes their purchase upon entry into the restaurant. From that point on, the plate is designed to maintain its rigidity only when held by the authorized patron. "If someone else picks them up, they go completely flaccid. The plates, that is," adds Dawkins. In other words, the plates will only be useful for the authorized customer.
Digital Plate Management is the results of years of research, combining stunning effort in both materials engineering and biometrics. The plates include integrated sensors that allow them to be encoded with biometric data when the customer is first handed the plate. The plate stores information about the registered user such as fingerprints, skin elasticity, and body temperature. If these values change beyond a certain range of acceptable values, the plate goes limp. That might seem like a problem for restaurant staff, but the plates have been designed to handle encoding for more than one person. "One of the incredible features of these plates is that they can be encoded to allow any of our restaurant employees to handle the plate without having the plate become flaccid," adds Dawkins. This means that, while customers cannot share their plates amongst themselves, restaurant staff will be free to handle the plates when clearing tables and during dish washing. "Oh certainly, in the restaurant business, you never want to annoy your staff with potential hurdles like that," states Dawkins. He continues, "Multiple user encoding was one of the first things they had to solve in the design of these plates."
"Silver Bucket is committed to providing a first class customer experience," explains Dawkins. "Digital Plate Management is an absolutely revolutionary method for maintaining the level of quality our customers expect. These plates will allow us to make sure that only those honest, paying customer will have access to our all-you-can-eat buffet. We will thus be able to ensure a high-quality menu for our guests, and improve the bottom line for our shareholders."
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks!
it's so easy to write C extensions for a Ruby program.
This is an honest question: how? Do you know of any good online examples or documentation of how to do this?
Please. That's kids stuff!
:-)
What you really need for an effective deterrent is a 110,000 volt, 30 barrel taser gattling gun. More details here. Choice quote:
"Most spectators experience some degree of sinus discomfort after several firings, due to the high brissance of the plasma explosion."
Hah. I'll bet they do.
Q. How do you disarm an intruder?
A. With a bandsaw.
Speculation isn't worth much. If it was a nuclear blast someone will find out eventually.
I was just relieved that it didn't turn out to mean "F-ing Twisted Transfer Protocol".
...he was ejected.
Years ago I worked as part of the helpdesk service at my college. One of our public labs had a large line-impact printer.
... I was at work this morning and something just like my original printer story happened. We've got large format DesignJet printers from HP (basically giant InkJet printers that can handle 3 to 5 foot wide, 300 foot long rolls of paper). When they print, they run a vacuum fan to hold the paper down and steady while the print head zips back and forth across the sheet. The vacuum fans produce a dull sort of roar while printing. BUT, there's this second sound while they're printing ... the sound of the print-head zipping back and forth, back and forth, across the sheet. Well, this morning, I was dealing with some stuff that really had me focusing on the task at hand. All of a sudden, some part of my brain alerted me to the fact that I'd been hearing the dull roar of the vacuum fan for a while, but not the sound of the print-head moving back and forth. This is really an am
[I'll include a side note for those who do not know what a line-impact printer is. Do you remember dot-matrix printers? No? Ok, no help for you. But for those of you who do remember them, you probably realized how having a single print-head that had to travel back and forth across the page contributed to their relatively slow printing speed. No doubt some of you came to the same conclusion the developer of the line-impact printer did: instead of having a tiny print head move back and forth across the page, simply create a huge print head (well, very wide but not very high) that could print an entire line at a time. That makes for a faster printer, and also a much more reliable printer (far fewer moving parts). Hence you can still find them in industrial applications where people need large volumes of low quality prints. This also happened to be ideal in an 1980's computer lab visited by uber geeks who needed to print out their code, and psychology students who needed to dump pounds and pounds of statistical data to a printer somehow. Anyway...]
The helpdesk office at this particular computer lab was attached to the lab with the line printer. So it was close enough you could hear it running. With normal, plain text like you'd see in a printout from a computer program, the printer (being an impact printer) made a recognizable sound. Mostly a wavering, roaring sound. However, when some idiot decided to dump a PostScript file to the printer - and with the printer just being designed for plain text (i.e. no freakin' PostScript like all the signs said) - the sound would change to a solid, angry roar as each entire page would be filled up by PostScript code. The difference in sound proved to be incredibly useful. Anyone sitting in the helpdesk office, even if they were concentrating on some other task and thus seemingly oblivious to the faint sound of the printer, would somehow hear the change in the sound. They'd know that someone had screwed up and that they needed to go and stop the job before the printer blew through an entire box of fan-fold paper.
As I say, we'd just tune into the change in the sound automatically. It wasn't even an especially conscious thing. You'd be working away on some task, completely engrossed in homework or something, and all of a sudden your brain would tune into the fact that the background sound had changed. With normal printing it was completely tuned out. You never noticed it until there was a problem. How fantastic is that? This is a great feature of the human brain - you can be giving your full attention to one task, but some other part of your brain is still somehow listening out for changes in your environment and will let you know if something's changed. I would find this so useful for a firewall. The sounds would have to be low volume and carefully chosen so as not to drive me insane in either instance (normal operation or "uh oh" mode), but I'd really love to give this a try.
It's such a coincidence
Dude, this guy's happiness has been soooo alienated that something just burst out of his chest and it's now clattering around in the freakin' air ducts!
Looks like a nice card.
Should I be worried about the fact that the manufacturer apparently can't count? Maybe I'm posting too late, but does that connector look like it's a 15-pin to you?
*Please* tell me you have some pictures of this.
Then, drawing upon some of what one person has posted to that BBC Radio article too, you'd have:
;-)
"Out 'ure own sweet vale Alicia vanisheth vanity 'twixt deity and man."
Sounds good to me.
Mystery solved.
Posting to my own response, but oh well...
I finally found some more information and pictures of the inscription. See the BBC Radio 4 program from May 12th. Includes an audio interview with the Bletchley Park director.
You're right - I posted that way too quickly. That said, we're talking about a 250 year old poem, not a 2 month old legal document. I think the original poster (and the earlier posters attributed this to much ado about nothing) is correct: the explanation provided by the family member is the most probable.
*sigh*
It does match the letters. The word "betwixt" means "between". In this poetic case, betwixt has been shortened to 'twixt. So, that translates to:
"Out of your own sweet vale Alicia vanish vanity between deity and man."
And if you read the article, you'd know that the inscription actually reads:
O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.
With the D and M lower than the rest of the inscription.
Clear now?
Ok, I'll add my 2 cents.
I'm not impressed by Plextor anymore. I've had two of their SCSI CD units die on me within the past couple of years. One was a plain Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drive, which experienced only light use, and died after about a year and a half after purchase. I was so annoyed I never bothered to send it back under warranty. The other, which finally died yesterday after months of intermittent hardware errors, was a SCSI CD-RW (Plexwriter 4/12/32) drive. Again, it had only experienced light use. Both were insanely expensive. I had hoped that, given the alleged quality of Plextor units, and given how little use they were going to get, that I'd have to replace them with different optical technology before I had to replace them due to failure. It didn't turn out that way.
Sorry, but based on my personal experience I think Plextor is relying more on its name these days, rather than maintaining its once high level of reliability. I really don't view them as anything special now. Except perhaps as overpriced - because people are still willing to pay for the name.
Try the alternate Adobe Reader Download Page
All of the software, less of the HTML insanity.
That being said, I prefer XPDF. On many occasions I've found it can open PDFs that Acrobat (even Professional) can't, due to file corruption or strange PDF generation techniques. Highly recommended.
At some point long ago I saw a documentary about Chernobyl that included a segment on the slag that collected beneath the reactor. It included video taken of the "elephants foot". They also showed a police sharpshooter being called in to shoot/chip off a piece of the slag for analysis. I suspect that's how anyone has wound up with a piece of the slag for analysis. I doubt anyone would go near it.
If you look at the fairly solid wall of soil at the right you will see a slightly dark streak on it. That streak leads directly to a puddle on the floor. Given this visual evidence, and the structure of the soil, it is pretty obvious that this stuff is wet.
This is like saying you will see (god damn it, you will see it, because I say it's there) the face of Elvis on the mound to the left. It's not even clear what you mean by, "wall of soil at the right."
If I'm even looking at the same spot on that photo as you (and given your vague comment, it's impossible to know that I am), it looks to me like the dark, finely powdered soil from the surface layer has poured down the side of the trench wall, leaving a faint stripe down the wall, and forming a small pile at the base of the trench. There's the explanation for your "puddle". No water needed here. Try going outside sometime and examining some finely powdered, totally dry clay or silt. Clearly you're going to be surprised at how fluidly it can behave.
...and thus forcing the New York Times to implement a "pay per view" system for each article.
Thank you! That's some great thinking on your part!
This story doesn't bother me, whether it's fair or not.
My current home computer environment consists primarily of a soft Linux and Windows "core" contained within a tough BSD shell.
The exterior shell currently consists of an OpenBSD firewall/NAT router/DHCP server, with the internal network containing a couple of Red Hat and Debian boxes, plus a Windows 98SE laptop. That means I have lots of flexibility and choice with user applications, along with some peace of mind when it comes to network security. I get the best of both worlds. I've been pairing BSD and Linux systems since day one. I think it's a fantastic combination. So much so that, in the interests of learning more about *NIX (just a casual hobby), I'm slowly switching to an even more diverse environment. I'm going to remove the simple OpenBSD firewall/router and replace it with an OpenBSD firewall/bridge, with a second BSD system acting as a dedicated NAT router/DHCP server. At some point in the future I'll add a Macintosh system, a Windows XP media-oriented system, and if I'm feeling extra keen to learn (and possibly paranoid), a honeypot. None of this is a big deal for me space-wise because I invested in a single, 4 post rack that keeps most of the computers out of the way, in one location. None of this is a big deal for me cash-wise because it'll all run on used or otherwise obsolete hardware (even the Mac will be a used one - no way I could afford one new). And none of this is a big deal for me time-wise because I just toy with this stuff slowly, usually taking months to complete a goal because I just string together the occasional couple of hours of free time.
Anyway, I'm really going off on a tangent. Here's my conclusion: BSD and Linux are both fantastic OSes, no matter what some cash-oriented research group says. But blended together with each fulfilling a role they happen to be good at, they are truly awesome. How many times has it been said here on Slashdot that homogeneity is not a good thing?
...and some nifty video switcher to take care of everything.
I don't have one of these yet, but I've wanted to get one for ages to try with some nifty projects. Their original ASEL model now has an optional rack-mountable case.
...I WILL KICK YOUR BASS!
(You heard it here first ... and yes, I do have too much free time. And no, I'm not making a statement pro or con about this area ... this is just a little food for thought. Hah. I made a funny. :-) )
... sometimes more. Only one or two will buy the buffet though. The others just matter-of-factly state they only want a soft drink."
... there's no way someone comes into our restaurant as part of group and only wants a soft drink. You immediately know they're up to no good."
Officials at one of America's largest "all you can eat" restaurants announced today a new method of cost-cutting.
Tuesday, November 25th
For immediate release
Raleigh, NC: Silver Bucket, a nation-wide franchise restaurant chain with over 200 all-you-can-eat restaurants, has just introduced a new technology called Digital Plate Management, or DPM for short. Company executives are said to be excited about this new technology as they expect it will end the ability for unscrupulous customers to share food with non-paying companions.
"We've always faced a certain 'undesirable' component to our clientele," says Bryan Dawkins, CEO of Silver Bucket. He adds, "You can tell who they are as soon as they arrive. They'll arrive in twos or threes
Dawkins adds, "They're lying, of course. We seldom see it happen as they've become such experts at this kind of blatant theft, but come on
The Digital Plate Management technology that is now being deployed at Silver Bucket restaurants will bring an end to all that. The system relies on a high-tech buffet plate that is designed to work only with the person who purchases the buffet menu option. "These plates are going to save our bacon," says Dawkins. "They are just the most fantastic devices we've ever seen." The plates, which cost the company a little over $1300 a piece, are encoded at the time the customer makes their purchase upon entry into the restaurant. From that point on, the plate is designed to maintain its rigidity only when held by the authorized patron. "If someone else picks them up, they go completely flaccid. The plates, that is," adds Dawkins. In other words, the plates will only be useful for the authorized customer.
Digital Plate Management is the results of years of research, combining stunning effort in both materials engineering and biometrics. The plates include integrated sensors that allow them to be encoded with biometric data when the customer is first handed the plate. The plate stores information about the registered user such as fingerprints, skin elasticity, and body temperature. If these values change beyond a certain range of acceptable values, the plate goes limp. That might seem like a problem for restaurant staff, but the plates have been designed to handle encoding for more than one person. "One of the incredible features of these plates is that they can be encoded to allow any of our restaurant employees to handle the plate without having the plate become flaccid," adds Dawkins. This means that, while customers cannot share their plates amongst themselves, restaurant staff will be free to handle the plates when clearing tables and during dish washing. "Oh certainly, in the restaurant business, you never want to annoy your staff with potential hurdles like that," states Dawkins. He continues, "Multiple user encoding was one of the first things they had to solve in the design of these plates."
"Silver Bucket is committed to providing a first class customer experience," explains Dawkins. "Digital Plate Management is an absolutely revolutionary method for maintaining the level of quality our customers expect. These plates will allow us to make sure that only those honest, paying customer will have access to our all-you-can-eat buffet. We will thus be able to ensure a high-quality menu for our guests, and improve the bottom line for our shareholders."
Customer reaction has been mixed. David
Anyone else find it amusing that the BBC labelled them "snippers" as opposed to "snipers"?
;-)
I guess the difference is how low they aim?