Please, Please, Please -- there has got to be some way to determine if the person calling
you is not your avreage 'where is the "any" key' idiot and quickly get them talk to
somebody who understands them..
Hack your phone company's records so your Caller-ID returns your geek code...:)
So, in theory, once this is implemented, I could sneak into the factory where they make hair-regrowing cells, and add some fluorescent protein to their big tanks of protozoa. Glow-in-the-dark hair! Yowzat!
Look, LAYER was evil incarnate. I'm very glad it was dropped. Now you actually have a browser from Netscape that follows the standards and a uniform DOM layout.
When was the last time you visited w3.org? I suggest you do that to see just why Mozilla doesn't do layers any more and why all of a sudden you have to <gasp> learn DOM.
Now they need to hack "Barney the singing Dinosaur" from Microsoft and make it sing "time for kink and sodomy", at the end of which he would mutilate itself.
I don't think calling someone a "Cutie" qualifies as a Public Display of Affection. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of all those sexual harrassment laws...
What's particularly interesting is that Congress has now stated (in the "it is the sense of Congress that" sense of the word, not with actual dollars) that no transaction with INS ought to take more than six months.
You might think it's funny, but it's not! I'm an H1-B worker and I went home in August to visit my family (I'm Russian). Before I left, I called the INS and asked them which papers I needed to get a visa and re-enter the country. Well, he said that all I needed were just two pieces of paper which I already had. So, I left.
Unfortunately, I was misinformed by the INS -- I needed a whole bunch of other papers to get a visa to re-enter the country. (Just to clarify -- I was a student first and my H1-B status came through when I was in US on a student status, so I never had to get an H1-B visa per se prior to my August leave). One of the papers, a form I-129, which is original "Foreign worker" petition, was not on file with my employer, so they had to file a form with the INS to send them a copy of it. It's now November and we're still waiting for INS to send just a simple copy of a paper. No effort -- just find my file, and fax the document. We did get their receipt late in August, stating that we should be waiting for a reply within 80-120 days. 3 to 4 months to get a copy of a document! Absurd!
So, I'm stuck. Thankfully, my employer didn't terminate my job (which they could!) and I can still admin my servers via the Interet (which costs per minute here).
This ain't funny. I understand the waits when some decision-making is required, but heck -- just fax the friggin' paper!
I concur. I was once banned from go.com chats for doing exactly that.
First of all, I wanted to find out how hard would it be to actually trace where in the world some person in a public chat is located. I fired off my sniffit and was pleasantly suprized to know, that the go.com/Chat applet is really an IRC front-end and every person's IP address is directly revealed to me.
So, all I had to do was to look up a person's IP address and tracert it to tell him/her almost exactly where he/she is from. What's even worse, though, is that by using nbtscan I was many times able to tell them their names, since many sipletons just put their full name when they log into their windows box, making this information their network identifier.
When I shared all that in a "parenting chat-room" out of concern -- letting people know that they have no privacy whatsoever using go.com's Chatrooms, I was eventually banned for being a "bad-bad hacker" and tracing people's locations.
How is that hacking? I haven't cracked a simple computer -- all I did was look up the information that their computer makes directly accessible via the net. I tried protesting, but go.com is such a big thing that I just got me another handle.
Remember, in the beginning -- a huge flaming thing hurls towards the ship and then a skull appears in the middle of it... And right after that Bruce Willis wakes up.
Oh, jiit. What if 5-El was a prophecy?.. "But I don't want to go to Egypt!"
Pilot: This is flight CN-123 flying Beijing-New York. Do you copy? Control: Uhm... Yeah... Hang on... To himself. Why aren't you on my screen?.. Wait just a sec... (typing in "deja.com" in his browser and searching for "China airplane linux"). Oh, I see... Multibyte support is lacking in the version we're using. To the pilot: OK, can you do some boxes while I download the latest CVS?
Like numbers carry any meaning in Linux distros...:) Slackware jumped from what -- 4 to 7? When you buy/get a distribution you don't look at numbers, but at what's in it, don't you? RedHat could've put "RedHat 33.3" as their release number, and that would've meant squat -- if you use Linux in serious environments, you don't look at distro numbers.
I got RH7 for it's GNOME 1.2 and XFree 4.0.1 and I'm pleased with it so far. Of course, some stuff doesn't compile, but that's not such a big deal on a workstation -- most stuff has RPMs that work.
You can tell that they have been down for a year -- they still have a "Channel it to MS Explorer" button on their front page.
Reminds me of that "man frozen for three years" episode of South Park.
From my voice recognition experience.
on
Speak To Your Palm
·
· Score: 3
Palm: You are currently in your appointments menu. You: Create new apppointment. Palm: There are no appointments on the eight's. You: No, CREATE! CREATE new appointment. Palm: Please enter a date for new appointment. You: October Seventh, two thousand. Palm: October Seventy-Two is not a valid date. You: Argh! October... Seventh... Two thousand. Palm: Enter a title for your appointment. You: Meet with Peg for lunch. Palm: The title for the new appointment is: "Meatloaf begs for life". Is that correct? You: #$#@! Erase. "Meet... with.. Peg... for.. lunch". Palm: The title for the new appointment is: "Nitwit... fag.. buttmunch..." Is that correct? You: @#!@!!! Yes!! Palm: Please enter your notes. You: Bring her NSync CD. Palm: Syncing now, stand by... You: **Smashing the phone in despair**
I already get various "check out this kewl movie clip" e-mails from my ADSL and Cable-modem friends, who don't seem to grasp the idea that the top I get over my phone line is 33kbps on a happy day. What's going to happen when they get 100Mbps? Oh, the humanity!
You're all thinking of computers as desktop PC's. That's not the point. A desktop PC is a swiss-army knife -- such knives can do many things, but are very clumsy to carry around. A swiss army knife has its limitations -- it's good to have on a hike, but at home I'd rather use separate tools because they are much easier to use than such a bulky and heavy tool.
The point of a tool is to make something done easier. A light-switch is a tool which helps us avoid having to put rubber gloves on and connect bare wires to have a light come on. Desktop PC's are quickly desintegrating into smaller tools which are designed for a certain purpose. A game console is designed to play games. An MP3 player is designed to play MP3's. You can do both on a desktop, but it's same as a swiss-army knife -- I want to be able to take my music to the porch with me, or to the party.
I am all for computers-tools. It's much more convenient for me to simply tap a button on my MP3 player, than do:
Both get the work done, but by golly, doing the latter is like live-wiring the electricity to have the lights go on.
I'd say -- let computers become tools that are easy to use, have low learning curve, and perform a specific task. I don't want to learn NTSC specs to watch a TV, why should a computer user have to learn how to mount a drive to listen to MP3's.
I thought it was fishy when they said that its NATO designation was "SAMOWAR", which is a woodburn-heated teapot in Russian... Last time I checked SAMOVARS didn't include hi-tech guidance chips, unless they were made on one of those converted ex-military factories...;)
What a way to hate your parents... ;)
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
C'mon -- with fashion changing so fast, can you really create "designer babies"? Imagine your parents in the 70's genetically engineering you into having afros and sideburns. You'd strangle yourself today if you had that. OK, so it was an over-exaggeration, but you catch the drift -- if today the high demand in US is athletes, it is not unlikely that after a while this set of characteristics will be outdated and no longer the "hip". One can buy a new wardrobe, but once you are born with a certain set of characteristics, you can't easily change them. Also, one of the fallacies of parenting is that parents are always trying to raise a perfect child, while really they should be trying to raise a good adult. Take my mother -- she thought that lisp is really cute, so she never bothered to correct me when I was growing up. Then I moved to US where came to a sad realization that lisp in this country is stereotyped with a certain sexual minority.;) I'd be very distraught if one day I come to pick up my kid from a daycare and become surrounded with Shirley Temple look-alikes...
PDA's in education are still a few years away
on
Laptops In Education
·
· Score: 1
Let's face it -- if you've ever had kids and had to buy stuff for them, you know that in just a few days it will be either a) broken b) lost c) stolen d) dropped on concrete floor and walked upon. Therefore, if we're ever to introduce _successful_ PDA's to kids age 5 and up, it will have to be completely and entirely shatter-proof, coolaid-resistent, theft-protected, very hard to hack into, able to sustain melted cheese poored all over, and capable of withstanding up to an hour in a hot-tub bath.
Children also are NOT consenting adults, so this device and service will have to have tight security, filtering, and monitoring software (I'm as opposed to filtering and control as the next guy, but the next guy is hopefully able to discern right from wrong and real from fake). The system itself will have to have a very tight security so that every 11-y.o. Kewl HaCkEr won't change his grades to a Harvard level.
Needless to say, this device will have to be dirt-cheap, otherwise it will never take off in regions where funding is scarce. It should also be extremely easy to use: if teachers and parents can't learn how to use it, they won't adopt it. 95% of elementary school teachers I know aren't capable of anything more than Word and Solitaire (and I am soooo tired of being asked whether I'm a Pittsburgh Penguins fan).
LCD screens? Ha! Keyboards? Right. No, this device will have to have something that is DURABLE, and I mean NASA tech durable (apart from recent Mars bloopers, that is). Surely, one can create a device that will be suitable for usage in school, but at this point in our technology development, that device will hardly survive the real world conditions.
I am looking anxiously at E-ink and similar technologies progress, but true flexible screens capable of high refresh rates aren't here yet. We now finally have a Crusoe, which should be a smashing platform for such a device, but it's still not here. I'm fascinated with Jini, but I am yet to see a widely-spread device that supports it.;)
The technology is coming, but in my estimation it will be up to 10-15 years until we see a successful system (as in the set of protocols) and a successful device introduced into a classroom to be used on a more than a "well-ain't-that-cool" basis.
I'll sign under that. I started with RedHat 5.1 and was very happy with my choice until I hit the 6.1. By golly, it was THE worst RedHat distribution ever. Lots of things were broken (like kppp not running when non-root), many more got screwed after upgrade. And please tell me WHY does redhat insist on upgrading the Sendmail even if this package was uninstalled and was specifically unchecked during the "select packages to upgrade" stage. I'm happily running qmail and my/usr/lib/sendmail is actually a symbolic link to a qmail wrapper...
Well, anyway. I got me a Slackware-7 distro after a month of having a RH6.1 and I am very happy with my choice.
After you do a preview, you want to change all ampersands in escaped sequences (&) to & before you place them in <textarea></textarea>. Otherwise all escaped tags (like <) get unescaped within the textarea and second time get submitted plaintext (which isn't what the user wanted!).
Write me if you don't know what I'm talking about.
OK, I admit that. However, a "javascript:" link could easily be evaded by running an extra regexp that would make sure that only http: or ftp: links are permitted (easy as pie with PHP). With extra paranoia added, you can strip anything that is after an ampersand in the link, but that will break almost anything linking to a dynamic site (e.g. weather.com). Also, you can attach a big pop-up warning window to each link which will scream "THIS CAN BE A MALICIOUS LINK!!!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!" (although I would never return to such a forum if I find one like it).
I don't have this problem because of 5 forums that I am running, 4 strip all HTML-tags by changing to < and > ("htmlentities" function in PHP3), and the fifth one allows users simple XML formatting which is later parsed into HTML. The parser drops any tags it doesn't recognize.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, Please, Please -- there has got to be some way to determine if the person calling you is not your avreage 'where is the "any" key' idiot and quickly get them talk to somebody who understands them..
Hack your phone company's records so your Caller-ID returns your geek code... :)
So, in theory, once this is implemented, I could sneak into the factory where they make hair-regrowing cells, and add some fluorescent protein to their big tanks of protozoa. Glow-in-the-dark hair! Yowzat!
Am thinkink that Russian is definitely pollutink English, da? It must beink some ingenious plan by some evil genius...
How did they fit 22 people in a Saturn? I don't recall a mini-van model or anything. I would think that a school-bus with 22 moons is more like it.
However, I surely agree -- if you see 22 moons looking at you from Saturn, there's nothing to do but show them Uranus.
This is marked informative?
Look, LAYER was evil incarnate. I'm very glad it was dropped. Now you actually have a browser from Netscape that follows the standards and a uniform DOM layout.
When was the last time you visited w3.org? I suggest you do that to see just why Mozilla doesn't do layers any more and why all of a sudden you have to <gasp> learn DOM.
Now they need to hack "Barney the singing Dinosaur" from Microsoft and make it sing "time for kink and sodomy", at the end of which he would mutilate itself.
Sell your Viagra stocks now.
I wonder how much time will pass before someone somewhere starts using kids to grow them into crafty robocop-ish mechwarriors.
Think about it... If you can make a steel arm, how far behind is an ultimate soldier?
I don't think calling someone a "Cutie" qualifies as a Public Display of Affection. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of all those sexual harrassment laws...
What's particularly interesting is that Congress has now stated (in the "it is the sense of Congress that" sense of the word, not with actual dollars) that no transaction with INS ought to take more than six months.
You might think it's funny, but it's not! I'm an H1-B worker and I went home in August to visit my family (I'm Russian). Before I left, I called the INS and asked them which papers I needed to get a visa and re-enter the country. Well, he said that all I needed were just two pieces of paper which I already had. So, I left.
Unfortunately, I was misinformed by the INS -- I needed a whole bunch of other papers to get a visa to re-enter the country. (Just to clarify -- I was a student first and my H1-B status came through when I was in US on a student status, so I never had to get an H1-B visa per se prior to my August leave). One of the papers, a form I-129, which is original "Foreign worker" petition, was not on file with my employer, so they had to file a form with the INS to send them a copy of it. It's now November and we're still waiting for INS to send just a simple copy of a paper. No effort -- just find my file, and fax the document. We did get their receipt late in August, stating that we should be waiting for a reply within 80-120 days. 3 to 4 months to get a copy of a document! Absurd!
So, I'm stuck. Thankfully, my employer didn't terminate my job (which they could!) and I can still admin my servers via the Interet (which costs per minute here).
This ain't funny. I understand the waits when some decision-making is required, but heck -- just fax the friggin' paper!
I concur. I was once banned from go.com chats for doing exactly that.
First of all, I wanted to find out how hard would it be to actually trace where in the world some person in a public chat is located. I fired off my sniffit and was pleasantly suprized to know, that the go.com/Chat applet is really an IRC front-end and every person's IP address is directly revealed to me.
So, all I had to do was to look up a person's IP address and tracert it to tell him/her almost exactly where he/she is from. What's even worse, though, is that by using nbtscan I was many times able to tell them their names, since many sipletons just put their full name when they log into their windows box, making this information their network identifier.
When I shared all that in a "parenting chat-room" out of concern -- letting people know that they have no privacy whatsoever using go.com's Chatrooms, I was eventually banned for being a "bad-bad hacker" and tracing people's locations.
How is that hacking? I haven't cracked a simple computer -- all I did was look up the information that their computer makes directly accessible via the net. I tried protesting, but go.com is such a big thing that I just got me another handle.
Silly people!
Remember, in the beginning -- a huge flaming thing hurls towards the ship and then a skull appears in the middle of it... And right after that Bruce Willis wakes up.
Oh, jiit. What if 5-El was a prophecy?.. "But I don't want to go to Egypt!"
That's what Grandpa-dinosaurs told their grandkid-dinosaurs millions of years ago about mammals.
"Just yer look at 'em darn mammals. Nothin' but darned mutated bests, if yer ask me."
Sorry, MS, I believe that's called evolution.
Pilot: This is flight CN-123 flying Beijing-New York. Do you copy?
Control: Uhm... Yeah... Hang on... To himself. Why aren't you on my screen?.. Wait just a sec... (typing in "deja.com" in his browser and searching for "China airplane linux"). Oh, I see... Multibyte support is lacking in the version we're using. To the pilot: OK, can you do some boxes while I download the latest CVS?
Like numbers carry any meaning in Linux distros... :) Slackware jumped from what -- 4 to 7? When you buy/get a distribution you don't look at numbers, but at what's in it, don't you? RedHat could've put "RedHat 33.3" as their release number, and that would've meant squat -- if you use Linux in serious environments, you don't look at distro numbers.
I got RH7 for it's GNOME 1.2 and XFree 4.0.1 and I'm pleased with it so far. Of course, some stuff doesn't compile, but that's not such a big deal on a workstation -- most stuff has RPMs that work.
You can tell that they have been down for a year -- they still have a "Channel it to MS Explorer" button on their front page.
Reminds me of that "man frozen for three years" episode of South Park.
Palm: You are currently in your appointments menu.
You: Create new apppointment.
Palm: There are no appointments on the eight's.
You: No, CREATE! CREATE new appointment.
Palm: Please enter a date for new appointment.
You: October Seventh, two thousand.
Palm: October Seventy-Two is not a valid date.
You: Argh! October... Seventh... Two thousand.
Palm: Enter a title for your appointment.
You: Meet with Peg for lunch.
Palm: The title for the new appointment is: "Meatloaf begs for life". Is that correct?
You: #$#@! Erase. "Meet... with.. Peg... for.. lunch".
Palm: The title for the new appointment is: "Nitwit... fag.. buttmunch..." Is that correct?
You: @#!@!!! Yes!!
Palm: Please enter your notes.
You: Bring her NSync CD.
Palm: Syncing now, stand by...
You: **Smashing the phone in despair**
I already get various "check out this kewl movie clip" e-mails from my ADSL and Cable-modem friends, who don't seem to grasp the idea that the top I get over my phone line is 33kbps on a happy day. What's going to happen when they get 100Mbps? Oh, the humanity!
You're all thinking of computers as desktop PC's. That's not the point. A desktop PC is a swiss-army knife -- such knives can do many things, but are very clumsy to carry around. A swiss army knife has its limitations -- it's good to have on a hike, but at home I'd rather use separate tools because they are much easier to use than such a bulky and heavy tool.
The point of a tool is to make something done easier. A light-switch is a tool which helps us avoid having to put rubber gloves on and connect bare wires to have a light come on. Desktop PC's are quickly desintegrating into smaller tools which are designed for a certain purpose. A game console is designed to play games. An MP3 player is designed to play MP3's. You can do both on a desktop, but it's same as a swiss-army knife -- I want to be able to take my music to the porch with me, or to the party.
I am all for computers-tools. It's much more convenient for me to simply tap a button on my MP3 player, than do:
mount /mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom/mycollection.m3u -Z
mpg123 --list
Both get the work done, but by golly, doing the latter is like live-wiring the electricity to have the lights go on.
I'd say -- let computers become tools that are easy to use, have low learning curve, and perform a specific task. I don't want to learn NTSC specs to watch a TV, why should a computer user have to learn how to mount a drive to listen to MP3's.
I thought it was fishy when they said that its NATO designation was "SAMOWAR", which is a woodburn-heated teapot in Russian... Last time I checked SAMOVARS didn't include hi-tech guidance chips, unless they were made on one of those converted ex-military factories... ;)
C'mon -- with fashion changing so fast, can you really create "designer babies"? Imagine your parents in the 70's genetically engineering you into having afros and sideburns. You'd strangle yourself today if you had that. OK, so it was an over-exaggeration, but you catch the drift -- if today the high demand in US is athletes, it is not unlikely that after a while this set of characteristics will be outdated and no longer the "hip". One can buy a new wardrobe, but once you are born with a certain set of characteristics, you can't easily change them. Also, one of the fallacies of parenting is that parents are always trying to raise a perfect child, while really they should be trying to raise a good adult. Take my mother -- she thought that lisp is really cute, so she never bothered to correct me when I was growing up. Then I moved to US where came to a sad realization that lisp in this country is stereotyped with a certain sexual minority. ;) I'd be very distraught if one day I come to pick up my kid from a daycare and become surrounded with Shirley Temple look-alikes...
Let's face it -- if you've ever had kids and had to buy stuff for them, you know that in just a few days it will be either a) broken b) lost c) stolen d) dropped on concrete floor and walked upon. Therefore, if we're ever to introduce _successful_ PDA's to kids age 5 and up, it will have to be completely and entirely shatter-proof, coolaid-resistent, theft-protected, very hard to hack into, able to sustain melted cheese poored all over, and capable of withstanding up to an hour in a hot-tub bath.
;)
Children also are NOT consenting adults, so this device and service will have to have tight security, filtering, and monitoring software (I'm as opposed to filtering and control as the next guy, but the next guy is hopefully able to discern right from wrong and real from fake). The system itself will have to have a very tight security so that every 11-y.o. Kewl HaCkEr won't change his grades to a Harvard level.
Needless to say, this device will have to be dirt-cheap, otherwise it will never take off in regions where funding is scarce. It should also be extremely easy to use: if teachers and parents can't learn how to use it, they won't adopt it. 95% of elementary school teachers I know aren't capable of anything more than Word and Solitaire (and I am soooo tired of being asked whether I'm a Pittsburgh Penguins fan).
LCD screens? Ha! Keyboards? Right. No, this device will have to have something that is DURABLE, and I mean NASA tech durable (apart from recent Mars bloopers, that is). Surely, one can create a device that will be suitable for usage in school, but at this point in our technology development, that device will hardly survive the real world conditions.
I am looking anxiously at E-ink and similar technologies progress, but true flexible screens capable of high refresh rates aren't here yet. We now finally have a Crusoe, which should be a smashing platform for such a device, but it's still not here. I'm fascinated with Jini, but I am yet to see a widely-spread device that supports it.
The technology is coming, but in my estimation it will be up to 10-15 years until we see a successful system (as in the set of protocols) and a successful device introduced into a classroom to be used on a more than a "well-ain't-that-cool" basis.
I'll sign under that. I started with RedHat 5.1 and was very happy with my choice until I hit the 6.1. By golly, it was THE worst RedHat distribution ever. Lots of things were broken (like kppp not running when non-root), many more got screwed after upgrade. And please tell me WHY does redhat insist on upgrading the Sendmail even if this package was uninstalled and was specifically unchecked during the "select packages to upgrade" stage. I'm happily running qmail and my /usr/lib/sendmail is actually a symbolic link to a qmail wrapper...
Well, anyway. I got me a Slackware-7 distro after a month of having a RH6.1 and I am very happy with my choice.
Arggg!!! Ridiculous bug in slashdot!
To slashdot coders:
After you do a preview, you want to change all ampersands in escaped sequences (&) to & before you place them in <textarea></textarea>. Otherwise all escaped tags (like <) get unescaped within the textarea and second time get submitted plaintext (which isn't what the user wanted!).
Write me if you don't know what I'm talking about.
OK, I admit that. However, a "javascript:" link could easily be evaded by running an extra regexp that would make sure that only http: or ftp: links are permitted (easy as pie with PHP). With extra paranoia added, you can strip anything that is after an ampersand in the link, but that will break almost anything linking to a dynamic site (e.g. weather.com). Also, you can attach a big pop-up warning window to each link which will scream "THIS CAN BE A MALICIOUS LINK!!!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!" (although I would never return to such a forum if I find one like it).
I don't have this problem because of 5 forums that I am running, 4 strip all HTML-tags by changing to < and > ("htmlentities" function in PHP3), and the fifth one allows users simple XML formatting which is later parsed into HTML. The parser drops any tags it doesn't recognize.