I used to work at a smallish ISP and I always wondered why people would pay $50/yr for a crappy POP mailbox when they could get Yahoo or Gmail or free email from any other of hundreds of providers.
For a small ISP, email is a support black hole. You are going to get 1 or 2 calls every day per 100 accounts, people complaining about too much spam, not enough spam, accidentally deleted their trash, why a message (that they have no idea where is was sent from or when) took 2 minutes extra to get through, etc, etc, etc. People are going to have 10GB mailboxes and you will have to figure out a way to keep up with the storage and provide backup and disaster recovery.
Of course Gmail addresses this issue by answering all support questions with "Who, me?"
The LA to LV corridor has always been a main rail corridor, it was LV's reason for existence in the first place, and rail lines are where the fiber goes. And except for the 100 miles or so between Barstow and the state line, it's solid suburbia all the way from the coast to LV. LA and LV are twin cities!
California is basically out of electricity capacity, has earthquakes, and land and taxes are expensive, so Nevada is not only an economy unto itself, but a nearby tax haven. No coincidence that Las Vegas and Reno, the only two cities of any size in NV, are right across the border.
Except the lifelock guarantee says nothing of the sort. Just like the auto companies advertise only that their cars have safety features, not that they will protect me under all circumstances. Their guarantee even foresees that customer's identities will be stolen.
"Our Total Service Guarantee is simple. In the unfortunate event your identity is misused while you are a LifeLock member, we will reimburse direct expenses you incur and pay professionals to resolve the problem for you - up to $1 million"
So, unless they are refusing service to paid up customers who actually had their identity stolen, I still call "ambulance chasing".
.. I drove my car into a tree at 70 MPH and I got hurt. Fuckers!
Although you do have to be a bit of chump to pay $10 per month to lock your credit, the value is that the company will do all the work if your identity does get stolen. So unless the company is incompetent at that, I declare these people to be a bunch of whiners, with some ambulance chasing douchebag lawyer probably promising them great riches if they win.
Well, then the danger is the mechanic in a hurry or under pressure is going to see the spar covered with filled in cracks, and say "it must be working OK!"
Still, probably better than the explosive decompressions one gets with aluminum.
Back in the old days, a good agent for finding these problems was the tar from cigarette smoke. If a small hole or crack occurred, the sludge from accumulated smoke would seep out of the crack under pressure and produce a visible stain. The crack would often self seal, although obviously would not prevent the crack from propagating, and this only worked on the elements comprising the pressure vessel.
Well, this looks like it takes a fair amount of skill, as opposed to just signing up at a flight school and asking how to fly a jetliner straight ahead, oh yes, no need to take off or land, just straight ahead, yes, thank you.
I'm curious where he gets his tiny jet engines. I want one:-)
To give some real word stats, several co-workers of mine have traveled to India and Dubai and back to the US recently, and none have had their laptops searched. One traveled via Syria on the way back, and he was questioned vigorously, but he was not asked to turn his laptop on.
Basically, customs has the right to make your entry a hassle if you are determined to make it so. But it's in their their interest to be as expeditious as possible, and the people in line behind you will appreciate you not being an asshole about opening your computer.
There used to be a technology that used a staining solution of some kind and could view the data on 1/2 tapes as differently shaded bands. I recall hearing stories about this, and at 800 or even 1600 bpi I am sure it was feasible to recover data that way if the motivation arose.
Not sure why you would want to, if the tape drive actually existed, perhaps in the case of a tape that was burned or crumpled.
Steve Roberts. Eventually the bike became too heavy to pedal (more or less), and he switched to a small boat. Eventually his small boat became to heavy to get around (more or less) so Steve got a big 44 foot sailboat. Sellout:-) But I think it beats sleeping in a wet sleeping bag every night.
In addition to the usual hapless corporate customers needing to restore 10 year old backup tapes at the request of lawyers, forensic data recoverers can now market to nostalgic boomers looking to relive their C64 and Sinclair ZX-80 experiences.
There is big money here - look at the motorcycle industry, which used to be pitched to outlaws, kids, and the outdoorsy, and is now aiming for the Viagra and $100-bottle-of-wine crowd.
I still have a huge library of Fortran code on 1/2" tape. If I ever want to see that code again will somebody please kill me.
The rights of the people to play a pirated copy of GTA while carrying a full auto AK-47 and then be tried by a jury of undersocialized teenage hackers while shouting "Fuck the RIAA!" at the judge shall not be infringed.
Think "Sony Laptop Fire", except with 1000 times as much energy. It isn't the shock hazard, it's the risk of a very large energy release (polite term for "explosion and fire") when the battery suddenly is asked to provides several hundred volts at several hundred amps when the jaws of life cut into it..
There are enough hybrids on the road now that firefighters are aware of these hazards, and Ford, Toyota, et al, provide free training for emergency responders, and send out handbooks on how to make battery disconnections, etc.
Considering the technologies that the namesake Tesla was into, one small mistake and you get fied.
Once these LiIon powered cars are widely available, firefighters and other emergency responders are a little concerned about digging in to extract crash victims from twisted smoking piles of LiIon battery wreckage so maybe your name is an apt one.
I mean, "apple" and "America" are pretty generic terms, but I suspect if I started a company called "Apple Microcomputers" and "Mortgage Bank of America" I'd get some phone calls real soon, and they wouldn't be from customers.
Ah well, they should just change their name to "YA Bankrupt Fly-By-Night Mortgage Broker" and be done with it.
The expensive peak load plants in the the US power air conditioning. So we get offers in our electric bill for some sort of automated gizmo that will let Big Brother control our *thermostat* from headquarters. When it gets hot and blackouts are imminent, Big Brother wants to be able to turn our thermostats up 3 degrees.
Coming soon, a fair number of people will have plug in hybrid cars, and that will give the electric utilities incentive to install smart meters that can charge the cars at offpeak rates instead of expensive peak rates, and even out the load, so even more power plants don't have to be built to power cars.
That's not true in my County, I have friends in the County SAR service, and I'm a ham radio volunteer who supports them from time to time. They will bust their ass to find you. And so will every police officer and firefighter everywhere. Even if there aren't any donuts.
The donuts are appreciated, however. Although I wish there wasn't quite so much junk food at the command posts. But I digress.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work at a smallish ISP and I always wondered why people would pay $50/yr for a crappy POP mailbox when they could get Yahoo or Gmail or free email from any other of hundreds of providers.
For a small ISP, email is a support black hole. You are going to get 1 or 2 calls every day per 100 accounts, people complaining about too much spam, not enough spam, accidentally deleted their trash, why a message (that they have no idea where is was sent from or when) took 2 minutes extra to get through, etc, etc, etc. People are going to have 10GB mailboxes and you will have to figure out a way to keep up with the storage and provide backup and disaster recovery.
Of course Gmail addresses this issue by answering all support questions with "Who, me?"
The LA to LV corridor has always been a main rail corridor, it was LV's reason for existence in the first place, and rail lines are where the fiber goes. And except for the 100 miles or so between Barstow and the state line, it's solid suburbia all the way from the coast to LV. LA and LV are twin cities!
California is basically out of electricity capacity, has earthquakes, and land and taxes are expensive, so Nevada is not only an economy unto itself, but a nearby tax haven. No coincidence that Las Vegas and Reno, the only two cities of any size in NV, are right across the border.
Except the lifelock guarantee says nothing of the sort. Just like the auto companies advertise only that their cars have safety features, not that they will protect me under all circumstances. Their guarantee even foresees that customer's identities will be stolen.
http://lifelock.com/lifelock-for-people/how-we-do-it/how-does-the-guarantee-work:
"Our Total Service Guarantee is simple. In the unfortunate event your identity is misused while you are a LifeLock member, we will reimburse direct expenses you incur and pay professionals to resolve the problem for you - up to $1 million"
So, unless they are refusing service to paid up customers who actually had their identity stolen, I still call "ambulance chasing".
Ho: "For $20 I'll do anything you want."
Dad: "Here's twenty bucks, lay 500 meters of conduit to my house, b****!"
.. I drove my car into a tree at 70 MPH and I got hurt. Fuckers!
Although you do have to be a bit of chump to pay $10 per month to lock your credit, the value is that the company will do all the work if your identity does get stolen. So unless the company is incompetent at that, I declare these people to be a bunch of whiners, with some ambulance chasing douchebag lawyer probably promising them great riches if they win.
.. for a new Linux packaging format?
Well?
[....]
Well, then the danger is the mechanic in a hurry or under pressure is going to see the spar covered with filled in cracks, and say "it must be working OK!"
Still, probably better than the explosive decompressions one gets with aluminum.
Back in the old days, a good agent for finding these problems was the tar from cigarette smoke. If a small hole or crack occurred, the sludge from accumulated smoke would seep out of the crack under pressure and produce a visible stain. The crack would often self seal, although obviously would not prevent the crack from propagating, and this only worked on the elements comprising the pressure vessel.
I'm not impressed.
Not cheap
http://www.sitewavesstores.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=JetCat&Category_Code=TURB
But the fun to cost ratio probably makes them a great buy of you have the cash.
Well, this looks like it takes a fair amount of skill, as opposed to just signing up at a flight school and asking how to fly a jetliner straight ahead, oh yes, no need to take off or land, just straight ahead, yes, thank you.
:-)
I'm curious where he gets his tiny jet engines. I want one
To give some real word stats, several co-workers of mine have traveled to India and Dubai and back to the US recently, and none have had their laptops searched. One traveled via Syria on the way back, and he was questioned vigorously, but he was not asked to turn his laptop on.
Basically, customs has the right to make your entry a hassle if you are determined to make it so. But it's in their their interest to be as expeditious as possible, and the people in line behind you will appreciate you not being an asshole about opening your computer.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=smiley+face&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=116.007505,75.410156&ie=UTF8&ll=33.808729,-118.22742&spn=0.002102,0.001151&t=h&z=19
There used to be a technology that used a staining solution of some kind and could view the data on 1/2 tapes as differently shaded bands. I recall hearing stories about this, and at 800 or even 1600 bpi I am sure it was feasible to recover data that way if the motivation arose.
Not sure why you would want to, if the tape drive actually existed, perhaps in the case of a tape that was burned or crumpled.
By "huge" I meant it took up TWO boxes of punched cards.
Steve Roberts. Eventually the bike became too heavy to pedal (more or less), and he switched to a small boat. Eventually his small boat became to heavy to get around (more or less) so Steve got a big 44 foot sailboat. Sellout :-) But I think it beats sleeping in a wet sleeping bag every night.
http://microship.com/
In addition to the usual hapless corporate customers needing to restore 10 year old backup tapes at the request of lawyers, forensic data recoverers can now market to nostalgic boomers looking to relive their C64 and Sinclair ZX-80 experiences.
There is big money here - look at the motorcycle industry, which used to be pitched to outlaws, kids, and the outdoorsy, and is now aiming for the Viagra and $100-bottle-of-wine crowd.
I still have a huge library of Fortran code on 1/2" tape. If I ever want to see that code again will somebody please kill me.
You heard it here first, unfortunately.
The rights of the people to play a pirated copy of GTA while carrying a full auto AK-47 and then be tried by a jury of undersocialized teenage hackers while shouting "Fuck the RIAA!" at the judge shall not be infringed.
Think "Sony Laptop Fire", except with 1000 times as much energy. It isn't the shock hazard, it's the risk of a very large energy release (polite term for "explosion and fire") when the battery suddenly is asked to provides several hundred volts at several hundred amps when the jaws of life cut into it..
There are enough hybrids on the road now that firefighters are aware of these hazards, and Ford, Toyota, et al, provide free training for emergency responders, and send out handbooks on how to make battery disconnections, etc.
Considering the technologies that the namesake Tesla was into, one small mistake and you get fied.
Once these LiIon powered cars are widely available, firefighters and other emergency responders are a little concerned about digging in to extract crash victims from twisted smoking piles of LiIon battery wreckage so maybe your name is an apt one.
I mean, "apple" and "America" are pretty generic terms, but I suspect if I started a company called "Apple Microcomputers" and "Mortgage Bank of America" I'd get some phone calls real soon, and they wouldn't be from customers.
Ah well, they should just change their name to "YA Bankrupt Fly-By-Night Mortgage Broker" and be done with it.
When you get to Web 3.141, you come full circle, and it's web 1.0 again.
My water heater is gas, you insensitive clods!
The expensive peak load plants in the the US power air conditioning. So we get offers in our electric bill for some sort of automated gizmo that will let Big Brother control our *thermostat* from headquarters. When it gets hot and blackouts are imminent, Big Brother wants to be able to turn our thermostats up 3 degrees.
Coming soon, a fair number of people will have plug in hybrid cars, and that will give the electric utilities incentive to install smart meters that can charge the cars at offpeak rates instead of expensive peak rates, and even out the load, so even more power plants don't have to be built to power cars.
That's not true in my County, I have friends in the County SAR service, and I'm a ham radio volunteer who supports them from time to time. They will bust their ass to find you. And so will every police officer and firefighter everywhere. Even if there aren't any donuts.
The donuts are appreciated, however. Although I wish there wasn't quite so much junk food at the command posts. But I digress.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9105166
Firefighters are just glad your're OK, even if you are a gorked out dumbass.