heh...now that I've got your attention...Besides the obligatory uses I would love to see this hit the CAD world. A tool like this would make construction documents (cd's)less error prone. In construction, quite often there are situations where symbols are located on cd's but the actual constructs don't become apparent until things are being built in field. Usually this is because of the scale of the drawings being too small (1/8 or 1/16) to illustrate say a series of conduits that would be miniscule at scale and in building cores things get pretty tight and at present the need for speed in document delivery negates the use of 3-D. I could see a 3-D symbol library heading off these problems rather quickly by giving architects and engineers a quick visual check on conduit/plumbing/hvac etc without the need for going all sorts of crazy to pop out a real 3d drawing which could take considerable(valuable) time and in the field would be pretty useless (read:most people on job sites have a hard enough time reading 2d plans correctly).
Before you flame me... I realize that 3D is not hard nor does it take long for a good/experienced CAD jock to crank out (usually I draw in 3d with no time hit) but my experience (16 years) has taught me that most of the folks who use products like AutoCAD don't really bother to learn how to use it at the level that would be required for extensive 3D work efficiently in a collaberative environment. They either don't have the time or see CAD as 'just a tool' to get thier job done. Though this can be painfully frustrating for a CAD manager or power user, it is the truth. Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +/. $authors)
October 2, 2000 - Network Copmuting Corporate Headquarters - Manhasset NY. - After reviewing numerous letters, Network Computing has reconsidered the companies Top Ten individuals in the technology sector and issues this revised list. We apologize to our shareholders (and to the FTC, SEC et al) for the erroneous posting of the previous list and its inclusion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, we had no idea that mentioning thier names here would lead to such a rapid plunge in the value of our stock. Additionally, in order to place a proper perspective on the technology sector, we will be forth coming with out new 'Meglamaniac Top Ten' as soon as the results are tabulated. The Meglamaniac Top Ten will be sure to include Mr. Gates, Mr. Jobs, Mr. Perot, Mr.Gerstner and Mr. Ellison. There's something about the computing industry that lends itself to achievements by the following individuals...
1. Tux
2. Dilbert
3. Ren & Stimpy (tie)
4. Tick
5. Kenny
6. Kyle
7. Cartman
8. Stan
9. Chef
10. Brian Boitano
Disclaimer: Network computing is in no way responsible for the results, outcome or bias displayed in the Top Ten list and assumes no liability for it. Please don't email us with your questions or comments as this is out final list. This list is in no way an attempt to placate the script kiddie who has sent us 3 million emails since 10:00 AM EST voting for Dogbert. Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +/. $authors)
You bring up some good points that got me thinking about the whole OneClick idea. Say we take a lool back and try to figure out the lowest common denominator... the venerable mouse. Now, I can't for the life of me remember at the moment who really invented 'the mouse'. I am sure someone will chime in with the dirty details as to who and when(Jobs stole it from someone) but what I don't understand is how come that particular patent owner and the idea of 'point and click' doesn't constitute prior art. The idea essentially boils down to this: 'With our newfangled and beautiful graphimacal (l)user interimface ya can gets jobs done by clickin here and theair. Uh click here and this here doodad runs a program and this here X closes it.' Now, I apologise for dumbing down the essentials to that level but this one click thing has got to be among the stupidest patents ever issued. Steve Jobs and his cronies at crApple villifying the patent by licensing it bothers me. They managed to steal this concept and now they seem to be backing up Amazon. If the concept of 'point and click' doesn't constitute prior art in this case (as you requested proof) then Amazon must have somehow comeup with the idea of clicking here to complete this particular task before the GUI and the utilization of the mouse as an input device. Jeff Bezos is a genius on many levels but this is a stretch. They would have a decent argument for copyright on the 'One Click' term as IP but essentially 'One Click' is... well... false advertising by virtue of it requiring (just slightly) more than the proverbial one click to accomplish the task. Maybe someone out there will get a patent on 'Almost One Click' or 'One Click after a little typing'... Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +/. $authors)
Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but I can't imagine this actually working. How many legislators read their own mail? Lick a stamp and mail an actual letter. It's harder to ignore. All this will do is knock down mail servers (you just know some jerk is gonna write a script and spam the hell out of them). I hate to break this to you but a few months back when we were all in an uproar about the Welfare Reform Act I did something I had never done before: I (and probably everyone I spammed with instructions on who and how) emailed my congresswoman. Do you know what happenned? A few days later I was pleasantly surprised to find a written response in my snailmail box. Later that day my phone rang and most of the people called and reported that they too had been recipients of a snailmail reply. Not very long after that/. runs an article to the effect of how certain rather objectionable portions of the Methamphetamine Control Act had been removed.I gotta say I felt proud when all that happenned. Don't dis the system like that because when voices speak and take action (like emailing your elected officials) things can get done. How about ecouraging the community to participate in this and discouraging the malicious ones from messing it up for all of us? Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +/. $authors)
On E-Bay:For sale ANY/. user account you want. Who needs to purchase a high karma account when you can just buy your enemies accounts and trash thier karma, reputation/image? That's right! Step right up boys and girls. 5r1p7 k1dd135 Inc. will for a limited time only give you access to any account you desire and you may trash away at will:) Call 1-800-urh4x0r3d in the next sixty seconds and we will even throw in a snippet of code that will gaurantee you the same access to any slash based site.
Wait! Theres more! mention OpenSource and we will even throw in a free kernel upgrade and the link to the actual HOW-TO's will also be yours! Here's the best part!!! If you call and say CmdrTaco sent you we will even throw in his account and all the censoring powers that come with it. Imagine, you and your friends can kill off quickies and JonKatz with a single click(TM). Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +/. $authors)
Hey..I have the alcatel 1000 and am using hellsouth with thier pppoe crud. I used to have thier bridged service which was sweet but since they switched to pppoe life has been miserable. Anyways, look up the Roaring Penguin PPPoE client and use it instead of the one hellsouth provides. My nix box has one nic going to the alcatel1000 and one to a 8 port hub. Aside from hellsouths shitty/inconsistent connect (read:great for a few days at a time then things get ugly for a few days) the roaring penguin client does a great job. You don't need to sell the alcatel... it works great with pppoe and is not as problematic as the other 'options' i have seen them provide plus you can config it (via its own internal ip/web interface) really easy.
ahh... mentioning linux is a bad idea but so is mentioning NT. I was among the first people in Miami to have DSL. They charged me a lot (almost $500) which included them sending out an installer with 6 trainees and who had no clue how to even ipconfig/all from the command line in NT. After getting really nervous watching this supposed expert mess with my NT box I kicked him out of the drivers seat and moments later all was config'd. The pppoe client they provide but don't support for linux is borked. If you haven't already, install the roaring penguin pppoe client and you will be able to connect no prob with nix.
"I've had BellSouth DSL for a couple of months now, without a single problem...." All I can say is that you have been very, very, very lucky to this point. This will change soon enough. Thier incompetence will catch up with you. "...a customer service rep who actually knew what he was talking about..." Is that even possible? I mean I have logs of calls I have made to them that total over 60 hours of calls (not to mention unlogged hours of being on hold) just from the last 4 months. I find that when calling bellsouth most of the time you get level 1 and level 2 support that has no clue as to whats going on. They have a billing department that will shut you off (just the DSL) the day your bill is due even if your bill is paid before your actual phone lines get interrupted and they take 10 days on average to turn it back on. Billing it seems is in Jacksonville FL and the main switching offices for fastaccess is in Atlanta. They take 60 days to issue a credit to your account. They don't log your calls and you will never be able to talk to the same rep more than the one time you have them.
The most infuriating thing with them is this: it typically take 8 hops to get out of the bellsouth network. Do a trace route and you will not be happy. My miami packets go to jacksonville, then atlanta, then miami, then atlanta, then orlando, then jacksonville, back to orlando and then finally atlanta before I hit a server outside the bellsouth mess. This is real frustrating when you try to set up a quake server (which is a TOS violation btw) and have your friends who are all local try to connect.
If you can avoid it, then by all means get an ISP other than Bellsouth.net, the tales below should be enough to scare anyone off:First, some perspective, I have been a broadband customer for years having dealt with ISDN, cable and eventually DSL. I work out of my house doing presentation work for architectural firms and frequently find myself transferring huge amounts (animations, drawings, presentations, renders and large format finals from 50-400 megs in a shot) of data back and forth between myself and my clients. I had the 'fortunate' opportunity to participate in Bellsouth's preliminary install of DSL in my area. Bellsouth used to offer bridged service with DHCP assigned addresses and a fairly decent price for 256k/1.5m service. It was nice if you had a machine on 24/7 (which is usually the case here) because I would find that my ip address would be the same for several months at a time and I didn't have any connect problems at all until very recently (was 18 months of pristine service) when I moved to a new apartment and bellsouth switched to PPPoE. Moving, is where the real troubles began. They were unwilling to even discuss ADSL availability until I was physically at the new address. I had the prior phone number in advance, the tenant was willing to give it a shot as far as ordering and so was the landlord. I get to the new place, place my order and am informed that it will be in the neighborhood of 6-10 weeks for service to be installed. UnF*'n believeable. This mind you is for a self-install where I already had the telco add extra phone lines to my apt. and had wired up the splitter at the NID on the side of the building. Being mildly dependent on my connection for income I would contact Bellsouth almost everyday. Thier support staff wouldn't record information about the calls and hold times average 50 minutes. About 15 days into the fiasco I find out that the have not even cancelled the DSL service to my previous residence. Three hours of calls/holds later they finally cancell my service and I have to start totally over, which I did and was again informed 6-10 weeks from 3 days from today (afterall it would take 72 hours to cancell out the other account in the system). At this point my neighbor orders DSL from them (I tried to talk him out of it) A fairly knowledgable level 2 tech finally comprehends the idea that I am a self install and informs me that they will mail out additional 'filters' and as soon as I have them I will be able to connect. 10 days go by and nothing in my mailbox. I call and find out it is not thier policy to mail anything and I would have to schedule an appointment for a tech to comeout and deliver them, which I do. The appointment comes and goes on 3 different occaisions and now a whole month is lost. It has been 10 days since my neighbor called and a tech is outside his door who is nice enough to give me the 'filters' while installing the neigbors DSL. Great, I have the filters... I hook up, get sync but spend many hours trying to pull an IP address. No dice. I call and wait again for many hours with tech support to findout that I will not have a bridged connection and they will mail me the software... I go nuts. I call raise hell again and now finally have a tech drop off the cd with thier PPPoE client which comes in four flavors W98, NT4, W2K and Linux. The later two of the four not being supported but provided for advanced users. The tarball is corrupt and the W2K version blows up my W2K install several times. I finally get W2K and the client running and get a connect now 6 weeks later.
The saga ain't over yet... I have to fight with the billing dept: They had the audacity to charge me for service for the month and a half of no service, and bill me for the 3 different occaisions that thier installer came out (even though nobody ever did) for my self-install and it is a rather nasty two day period of long calls to get the $400 worth of bs off the bill but the actual credit to the account won't show up for 60 days so I have to pay it out to keep my phone service from being interrupted. I still have them for service (though orders are in for another company) but I am now in a position where I will have to keep the service till my credits with them are posted to the account.If they offer you service in your area...run like hell. Bellsouth is the phone company, they don't have to care.
"Of course crime pays. If it didn't, there wouldn't be any criminals." - G.Gordon Liddy
Sadly, the persistence of the term 'caveat emptor' points out that bad business and bad business ethics have been around as long as... well... prostitution. The real problem here is not that you need third party auditing to present the data but the fact that you can't (blindly) trust the third parties either. A few months back we discussed the fiasco of a third party service that signed your apps blindly just because you had paid for the certificate without verifiying the code wasn't malicious etc. So, I guess what all of this boils down to is this: as long as there is money involved there will be the incentive to fudge the data.This trend in practices that not only pervades the fledgling computing industry but many fields where the data dictates how money will be spent. We all suffer for this in unforseen ways like higher retail prices (afterall much marketing capitol gets wasted), bad science/academia (publish or perish fields being corrupted) and bad products (tires anyone?).
You gotta stop... You should be happy there is a Linux port or a Mac port, period. From what I have heard the Linux port did not even break even. JC and crew should be commended for taking the chance and putting out a product for various platforms. They didn't have to do that. The fact they did means Linux is no longer second class (if we were someone else would have to port it). Personally, I think that Id shipping a commercial Linux port of the game (within a reasonable window) elevates Linux as a viable market and will put pressure on the rest of the gaming industry to do the same. Until Linux is a more profitable endeavour to publish for, than say some other OS, getting mad about the lag in releases of different versions of a game will only hurt all of us. Complaining makes the alternate OS community look like a cranky eliteist bunch, an image we need to improve rather than perpetuate.
ah, Jr High school relived... just for a moment
on
A Letter from 2020
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· Score: 3
Back in 7th grade I had an English teacher (Robert Smiley) who gave us a creative writing project where we were to write ourselves a letter that was to be opened 10 years down the road. The subject matter was to be what we envisioned our lives being like at that time frame in our future. Well, about 17 years later my mother ran across this small envelope addressed to me stating 'if the fates allow open me now' and a wax seal of a penny and the year 1992 impressed into the wax where the date on the penny was. I opened it, completely having forgotten what I wrote and was really surprised. You see, the 'predictions' were all wrong but the mindset wasn't. No, I didn't go to college like I had foreseen, but I made references to free speech (was really into Jefferson at the time and writing a report for another class) and online communications (at 11 I was addicted to Compuserve and my new 300 baud screemer..I digress) being the 'in thing' for people to speak freely where the couldn't in the real world. Opening the letter to myself had a profound impact on me and I spent many months contemplating my thoughts as an 11 year old and rejuvinating ideas/goals that had become dormant. So far, the end result being my return to college and certain passions rekindled. I recently wrote myself a new letter and placed it in my mothers safe deposit box for some date in the future.
This article is great in the sense that it has the right feel and vision. It is probably not far off (eerie) from where things are headed. It would be interesting to see this letter in 2020 and see how close to a bullseye it is.I wonder if any of Mr. Smiley's students are out there who found thier letters. If you had a similar project please reply as it would be great to hear the results/thoughts/outcome.
In this article (annoying free registration required) at TechRepublic there is good information on Microsoft's plans to start renting thier applications to companies. The idea being that M$ now beleives that ASP's are for real and will be a better way to manage thier revenue stream. The model being a per user charge for the OS and for thier products like Back Office and the Office suite. An interesting comment in the article:
... If Sun, IBM, Oracle, and AOL all decided to band together and focus on providing the Sun StarOffice Suite on a standard Linux/Gnome platform using a rich, hosted Lotus Notes back end for a set fee per month, ($5 or less), then Microsoft would have to dramatically alter their plans to continue desktop operating system and productivity suite domination.
I realize this post is slightly off topic but its worth a look and discussion here too. Paying twice for windows is kind of like being taxed by M$ for thier crappy os. I know they are big, but, they certainly arent the government and taxation without representation is (last i checked) still illegal. My point here is that both the topic and this article detail a good portion of M$'s revenue schemes for the future. If they go for the leasing concept there will be many smaller firms looking into switching to other platforms which is good news for all of us.
warmcat, 'stupendously cooler magic' is a real good point but what I harp on the SETI types (I am guilty of being one, however futile) for is a bit different. The thing that SETI misses the point of is Timeline Coincidence. If we were to all agree about the age of the universe in the 'universe in a day model' where man has shown himself in just the last few hundred thousands of the last second we can really begin to put the SETI task into a more appropriate perspective. Man with his feeble magic of the last hundred or so years by some miracle has managed not to bring extinction upon himself in the roughly 5,000 years of time we can account for (never mind the 65,000 or so years that span the few hundred thousandths of the second). If we gave an arbitrary span of time lets say a full half second (very generous) on the clock for a sentient race to evolve, develop cosmic cool tech and then disappear to extinction what makes us think that the half second would even come close to an overlap with our hundred thousandths of a second/feeble magic? SETI scans the sky looking into the past as it flies by us in our present. The problem inherently is the stuff SETI is looking for may have traveled for a few years or a few billion but in order to gleen fleetingly past us. Whatever signals a sentient race may have generated even in a near system (eg. alpha cent.) may have been wonderfully strong and pointed at us far back on the clock like 10 PM and back then no one was here to listen to it.
That said, just in case that overlap occurs during my nanoseconds of existence I shall crunch a few more blocks with my pc, stylus and chisel:)
the correct link to the report is http://www.ccic.gov/ac/pitac_ltr_sep11. html.
Not to bash tony for getting his article up infront of everybody but the link in the article on/. doesn't goe where it implies it will go.
free to charge you whatever they want.
Free to charge whatever you want is acceptable in a situation where the price can be haggled. In my book this is ok, as transactions/sales are the core of business. Why Amazon is wrong to do be doing this? Because if the price can be negotiable (obviously on thier end it is) it should be negotioable from both side and it clearly is not for at least 4.5million items...
You make a great point. I long for this voyertainment trend to end up as something like the gladiator games. Feed 14ppl to some hungry lions and *poof* whoever is alive is deemed the survivor.This type of 'entertainment' sucks. Though its interesting for a moment next year prime time tv will be filled with it just like we now have to endure a dozen different shows based horribly on the judicial system. (the only 'benefit' to society being that now even more people want to sue your ass because they think they know how...). I guess that what this all boils down to is the accident phenomina: Two cars collide (could be just one changing a tire mind you) on your local rush hour parking lot(ironically read:freeway) and get pulled off to the side or end up there somehow. No lanes obstructed yet traffic comes to a complete crawl. Why? Because the amount of stupid people on the road gawking at the minor distraction is in direct (albeit exponential) proportion to the amount of people who actual care about getting somewhere on time and could care less (add factor for frustration with small minded people) about seeing if (a)someones guts are spilled, (b) the quantity of tires needing to be changed, (c) number of idiots sufferg from tonic hypnosis of police lights and (d) the number of yellow tarps covering bodies multplied by how many minutes you are running late.Hrm.. come to think of there's a show in that too: Survivors of (insert city of choice) Rush Hour or just call it Road Rage. You wouldn't have to hire a cast just park on the side of the road point a cam at the traffic and see what happens...
OK, If I remember correctly there will be a lot of energy in the form of electricity being generated by the friction of the cables through the atmosphere. I am assuming that the main cable materials would be non-conductive but wouldn't it be beneficial to add some cables for power generation? The shuttle experiment generated 2700 watts (going by memory so correct me if wrong) for the few seconds that it was functioning on an ultra thin coppper wire. Does anyone know what kind of numbers this thing could possibly generate?
I have seen the mission schemes regarding the method you mentioned but i was talking about a slightly different approach: a simultaneous launch of 2 manned vehicles which i have not seen proposed anywhere yet.
I think with the recent improvements in propulsion technologies like ion plasma they are discussing the capability to make the trip in around 90 days (each way)at speeds sufficiently greater than anything we have put out to date. Maybe if they combined this with a dual launch like NASA used to do in the 70's with the viking and voyager craft they could sufficiently decrease the tragedy dilema that so many people are concerned with. This would increse costs (about 1.5x the cost of a single habitat...just a guess) but also provide an extra benefit, if two habitats go there only one needs to comeback and thus our first permanent building on another planet.Also, remember astrounauts are a different breed: they would gladly take the chance at the opportunity to do this. I know I would, probably for selfish reasons mind you but the 'good of all man kind' would make an excellent cover.
hey just needed to interject here: I emailed my rep and had a lot of people i know (including a judge and a few lawyers) and we all got letters back in the last week or so from our rep. I gotta say it really feels good to see that when enough people write, fax and email we can make a difference.
There can be no true peace as long as there are apocalyptic weapons such as nuclear tipped ICBMs. You can't hug your children with nuclear arms. You are right but if we just laydown the nukes and mothball our military we wont have peace either. A few dozen ICBM's pointed in the right direction are major deterrents to rogue nations and world powers who are bent on conquerring etc. True world peace is an admirable goal. Just not a realistic one seeing that we (read:human beings) are so hell bent on destroying each other.
Actually, you are right. The military budget is crucial to maintaining a world order. With rougue nations obtaining nuclear capabilities we still need to be able to keep the technical superiority edge as a wild card up our sleeves. Without a serious consistent investment here all could be lost.
Ok. now that we cleared up the bleeding heart issue;) I agree NASA's programs may seem 'extravagently expensive' but the sad fact of the matter is that NASA's budget is a small portion of our huge national spending. A better funded NASA would have been able to spend more resources testing equipment and implemeting redundant systems to avoid dome of the miserable failures as of late. The dollar cost for the innovations and discoveries has been high but the initial investment here is paying off. Just look at the advances we have made recently in plasma propulsion which once implemented can indeed be very cheap. National literacy rates and educational levels imho weren't any better back when we were all 'reading books by the fire' and they deserve much more money than our countries feeble attempts at socialistic endeavours. We can get money to improve the education system from budgets other than NASA's. I would say kill welfare and make it workfare so we can use the money for education. This would benefit us twofold: instill the desire to elevate ones education so a workfare job is not waiting for you and provide a labor force to build and maintain a better school system. Other avenues of pursuit to consider: stop the drug war, stop putting people in jail for health problems, stop the criminal profiling that causes blacks unheeded harassment/persecution/incarceration. The money saved here could be vested into the educational system, maybe even to the point where better education about drugs and a decriminalized environment brings about thier ultimate erradication. Americans are funny about educating thier children these days. On the surface its priority one but just underneath the surface we discover our unwillingness to pay out more money to throw at the problem. Childcare systems need more attention too. Teachers are seriously underpaid and for the most part underappreciated. This has got to change but how can you effect change when people are basically unwilling to really take action to make changes happen?Humanity and culture are important but in the new paradigm of the information age I am not sure about how relevant they will be. We are notorious for our ignorance of other cultures but this maybe an issue of isolationism and the fact that at just over 220 years we haven't really developed our own. I spent 6 summers of my childhood in eastern europe and central europe(Hungary mostly, but also Austria, Poland, West Germany and Switzerland) and know that european culture is extremely diverse. This has been changing rapidly in the last two decades(at least perceptually). Are we leaders in this? I don't know(read:hope not). The EC may ultimately end up just like us. I do know that where society has evolved for several hundreds of years there are definetly more relaxed perspectives on what to do today with extra time which in turn propogates the arts, cultural/ancestoral contact and the like. In the US we lack some of the nuclear familial values that reinforce this. A democratic system like ours is a very grand experiment and at the pace we are going it may take 200 more years for any real 'American' culture to evolve.I still have to disagree with you that time spent focusing on scientific minutiae doesn't really benefit us. You are entitled to your opinion and so am I. If I have learned anything from science its this: in the big picture the devil is in the details.
Assuming you are not a troll and respecting your right to speak...You see this money as being burned up? OK. do the world a favor and throw away your cellphone, vcr, remote controls, and be sure to return that personal computer you posted the message with. These are technological advances that you can't live without today and they all have thier origins in the space program. Read this,this, and all of this and then reflect upon your money burning up. Its great to feel a compassion for your fellow man but don't confuse the issue. If you want socialism and the like then advocate it as you see fit this is a free speaking democracy afterall. You wouldn't get my support and I am sure there are millions of ignorant people with bleeding hearts that seem to 'think' the way you do.In a democracy its not everyones obligation or responsibility to pay the bill for feeding the lazy, the overbreeders or the willfully undereducated of our society. Yet that is were I see my tax dollars burning. I would rather see my tax dollars get spent on the space program than our great war on drugs, welfare, socialized medicine, etc. which ultimately will not reflect our advances but our lack thereof. What you should be getting mad about is the fact that the prison system is the 6th largest growth industry in the US. We spend billions of dollars waging a ludicrous 'war' on drugs (which is largely a health issue not a criminal one) that is incarcerating people at an unprecedented rate and forcing the system to release violent offenders to squeeze in another 'drug' criminal with a mandatory sentence. We encourage overpopulation by increasing welfare benefits for mothers who have more and more children and never give them any incentive to change (read:why would you work if you got free money and free food?). Our country has great potential, for example, I see people wash ashore here in S.Florida all the time, not a penny to thier name and yet they start businesses and forge themselves a niche to survive in. Yet all the time I hear people like you bitch about how we have to feed the hungry, house the homeless etc. and I see people who have spent thier entire lives here saying there is no opportunity here. Don't you think that the folks out there who don't make that niche for thier existence will become part of the natural selection process that governs the nature of all things?Be sure to work extra hard today there are millions out there who are dependant on your tax dollars as thier source of income. A few % of your pennies will go to advancing the science of mankind and the rest of the dollars will feed people who didnot contribute to advancing anything other than thier laziness.
Slashdot Mirror
heh...now that I've got your attention...Besides the obligatory uses I would love to see this hit the CAD world. A tool like this would make construction documents (cd's)less error prone. In construction, quite often there are situations where symbols are located on cd's but the actual constructs don't become apparent until things are being built in field. Usually this is because of the scale of the drawings being too small (1/8 or 1/16) to illustrate say a series of conduits that would be miniscule at scale and in building cores things get pretty tight and at present the need for speed in document delivery negates the use of 3-D. I could see a 3-D symbol library heading off these problems rather quickly by giving architects and engineers a quick visual check on conduit/plumbing/hvac etc without the need for going all sorts of crazy to pop out a real 3d drawing which could take considerable(valuable) time and in the field would be pretty useless (read:most people on job sites have a hard enough time reading 2d plans correctly). Before you flame me... I realize that 3D is not hard nor does it take long for a good/experienced CAD jock to crank out (usually I draw in 3d with no time hit) but my experience (16 years) has taught me that most of the folks who use products like AutoCAD don't really bother to learn how to use it at the level that would be required for extensive 3D work efficiently in a collaberative environment. They either don't have the time or see CAD as 'just a tool' to get thier job done. Though this can be painfully frustrating for a CAD manager or power user, it is the truth. /. $authors)
Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +
October 2, 2000 - Network Copmuting Corporate Headquarters - Manhasset NY. - After reviewing numerous letters, Network Computing has reconsidered the companies Top Ten individuals in the technology sector and issues this revised list. We apologize to our shareholders (and to the FTC, SEC et al) for the erroneous posting of the previous list and its inclusion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, we had no idea that mentioning thier names here would lead to such a rapid plunge in the value of our stock. Additionally, in order to place a proper perspective on the technology sector, we will be forth coming with out new 'Meglamaniac Top Ten' as soon as the results are tabulated. The Meglamaniac Top Ten will be sure to include Mr. Gates, Mr. Jobs, Mr. Perot, Mr.Gerstner and Mr. Ellison. There's something about the computing industry that lends itself to achievements by the following individuals... 1. Tux
/. $authors)
2. Dilbert
3. Ren & Stimpy (tie)
4. Tick
5. Kenny
6. Kyle
7. Cartman
8. Stan
9. Chef
10. Brian Boitano
Disclaimer: Network computing is in no way responsible for the results, outcome or bias displayed in the Top Ten list and assumes no liability for it. Please don't email us with your questions or comments as this is out final list. This list is in no way an attempt to placate the script kiddie who has sent us 3 million emails since 10:00 AM EST voting for Dogbert.
Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +
You bring up some good points that got me thinking about the whole OneClick idea. Say we take a lool back and try to figure out the lowest common denominator... the venerable mouse. Now, I can't for the life of me remember at the moment who really invented 'the mouse'. I am sure someone will chime in with the dirty details as to who and when(Jobs stole it from someone) but what I don't understand is how come that particular patent owner and the idea of 'point and click' doesn't constitute prior art. The idea essentially boils down to this: 'With our newfangled and beautiful graphimacal (l)user interimface ya can gets jobs done by clickin here and theair. Uh click here and this here doodad runs a program and this here X closes it.' Now, I apologise for dumbing down the essentials to that level but this one click thing has got to be among the stupidest patents ever issued. Steve Jobs and his cronies at crApple villifying the patent by licensing it bothers me. They managed to steal this concept and now they seem to be backing up Amazon. If the concept of 'point and click' doesn't constitute prior art in this case (as you requested proof) then Amazon must have somehow comeup with the idea of clicking here to complete this particular task before the GUI and the utilization of the mouse as an input device. Jeff Bezos is a genius on many levels but this is a stretch. They would have a decent argument for copyright on the 'One Click' term as IP but essentially 'One Click' is... well... false advertising by virtue of it requiring (just slightly) more than the proverbial one click to accomplish the task. Maybe someone out there will get a patent on 'Almost One Click' or 'One Click after a little typing'... /. $authors)
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Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but I can't imagine this actually working. How many legislators read their own mail? Lick a stamp and mail an actual letter. It's harder to ignore. All this will do is knock down mail servers (you just know some jerk is gonna write a script and spam the hell out of them). I hate to break this to you but a few months back when we were all in an uproar about the Welfare Reform Act I did something I had never done before: I (and probably everyone I spammed with instructions on who and how) emailed my congresswoman. Do you know what happenned? A few days later I was pleasantly surprised to find a written response in my snailmail box. Later that day my phone rang and most of the people called and reported that they too had been recipients of a snailmail reply. Not very long after that /. runs an article to the effect of how certain rather objectionable portions of the Methamphetamine Control Act had been removed.I gotta say I felt proud when all that happenned. Don't dis the system like that because when voices speak and take action (like emailing your elected officials) things can get done. How about ecouraging the community to participate in this and discouraging the malicious ones from messing it up for all of us? /. $authors)
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On E-Bay:For sale ANY /. user account you want. Who needs to purchase a high karma account when you can just buy your enemies accounts and trash thier karma, reputation/image? That's right! Step right up boys and girls. 5r1p7 k1dd135 Inc. will for a limited time only give you access to any account you desire and you may trash away at will:) Call 1-800-urh4x0r3d in the next sixty seconds and we will even throw in a snippet of code that will gaurantee you the same access to any slash based site.
Wait! Theres more! mention OpenSource and we will even throw in a free kernel upgrade and the link to the actual HOW-TO's will also be yours! Here's the best part!!! If you call and say CmdrTaco sent you we will even throw in his account and all the censoring powers that come with it. Imagine, you and your friends can kill off quickies and JonKatz with a single click(TM). /. $authors)
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Hey..I have the alcatel 1000 and am using hellsouth with thier pppoe crud. I used to have thier bridged service which was sweet but since they switched to pppoe life has been miserable. Anyways, look up the Roaring Penguin PPPoE client and use it instead of the one hellsouth provides. My nix box has one nic going to the alcatel1000 and one to a 8 port hub. Aside from hellsouths shitty/inconsistent connect (read:great for a few days at a time then things get ugly for a few days) the roaring penguin client does a great job. You don't need to sell the alcatel... it works great with pppoe and is not as problematic as the other 'options' i have seen them provide plus you can config it (via its own internal ip/web interface) really easy.
ahh... mentioning linux is a bad idea but so is mentioning NT. I was among the first people in Miami to have DSL. They charged me a lot (almost $500) which included them sending out an installer with 6 trainees and who had no clue how to even ipconfig/all from the command line in NT. After getting really nervous watching this supposed expert mess with my NT box I kicked him out of the drivers seat and moments later all was config'd. The pppoe client they provide but don't support for linux is borked. If you haven't already, install the roaring penguin pppoe client and you will be able to connect no prob with nix.
"I've had BellSouth DSL for a couple of months now, without a single problem...." All I can say is that you have been very, very, very lucky to this point. This will change soon enough. Thier incompetence will catch up with you. "...a customer service rep who actually knew what he was talking about..." Is that even possible? I mean I have logs of calls I have made to them that total over 60 hours of calls (not to mention unlogged hours of being on hold) just from the last 4 months. I find that when calling bellsouth most of the time you get level 1 and level 2 support that has no clue as to whats going on. They have a billing department that will shut you off (just the DSL) the day your bill is due even if your bill is paid before your actual phone lines get interrupted and they take 10 days on average to turn it back on. Billing it seems is in Jacksonville FL and the main switching offices for fastaccess is in Atlanta. They take 60 days to issue a credit to your account. They don't log your calls and you will never be able to talk to the same rep more than the one time you have them. The most infuriating thing with them is this: it typically take 8 hops to get out of the bellsouth network. Do a trace route and you will not be happy. My miami packets go to jacksonville, then atlanta, then miami, then atlanta, then orlando, then jacksonville, back to orlando and then finally atlanta before I hit a server outside the bellsouth mess. This is real frustrating when you try to set up a quake server (which is a TOS violation btw) and have your friends who are all local try to connect.
If you can avoid it, then by all means get an ISP other than Bellsouth.net, the tales below should be enough to scare anyone off:First, some perspective, I have been a broadband customer for years having dealt with ISDN, cable and eventually DSL. I work out of my house doing presentation work for architectural firms and frequently find myself transferring huge amounts (animations, drawings, presentations, renders and large format finals from 50-400 megs in a shot) of data back and forth between myself and my clients. I had the 'fortunate' opportunity to participate in Bellsouth's preliminary install of DSL in my area. Bellsouth used to offer bridged service with DHCP assigned addresses and a fairly decent price for 256k/1.5m service. It was nice if you had a machine on 24/7 (which is usually the case here) because I would find that my ip address would be the same for several months at a time and I didn't have any connect problems at all until very recently (was 18 months of pristine service) when I moved to a new apartment and bellsouth switched to PPPoE. Moving, is where the real troubles began. They were unwilling to even discuss ADSL availability until I was physically at the new address. I had the prior phone number in advance, the tenant was willing to give it a shot as far as ordering and so was the landlord. I get to the new place, place my order and am informed that it will be in the neighborhood of 6-10 weeks for service to be installed. UnF*'n believeable. This mind you is for a self-install where I already had the telco add extra phone lines to my apt. and had wired up the splitter at the NID on the side of the building. Being mildly dependent on my connection for income I would contact Bellsouth almost everyday. Thier support staff wouldn't record information about the calls and hold times average 50 minutes. About 15 days into the fiasco I find out that the have not even cancelled the DSL service to my previous residence. Three hours of calls/holds later they finally cancell my service and I have to start totally over, which I did and was again informed 6-10 weeks from 3 days from today (afterall it would take 72 hours to cancell out the other account in the system). At this point my neighbor orders DSL from them (I tried to talk him out of it) A fairly knowledgable level 2 tech finally comprehends the idea that I am a self install and informs me that they will mail out additional 'filters' and as soon as I have them I will be able to connect. 10 days go by and nothing in my mailbox. I call and find out it is not thier policy to mail anything and I would have to schedule an appointment for a tech to comeout and deliver them, which I do. The appointment comes and goes on 3 different occaisions and now a whole month is lost. It has been 10 days since my neighbor called and a tech is outside his door who is nice enough to give me the 'filters' while installing the neigbors DSL. Great, I have the filters... I hook up, get sync but spend many hours trying to pull an IP address. No dice. I call and wait again for many hours with tech support to findout that I will not have a bridged connection and they will mail me the software... I go nuts. I call raise hell again and now finally have a tech drop off the cd with thier PPPoE client which comes in four flavors W98, NT4, W2K and Linux. The later two of the four not being supported but provided for advanced users. The tarball is corrupt and the W2K version blows up my W2K install several times. I finally get W2K and the client running and get a connect now 6 weeks later. The saga ain't over yet... I have to fight with the billing dept: They had the audacity to charge me for service for the month and a half of no service, and bill me for the 3 different occaisions that thier installer came out (even though nobody ever did) for my self-install and it is a rather nasty two day period of long calls to get the $400 worth of bs off the bill but the actual credit to the account won't show up for 60 days so I have to pay it out to keep my phone service from being interrupted. I still have them for service (though orders are in for another company) but I am now in a position where I will have to keep the service till my credits with them are posted to the account.If they offer you service in your area...run like hell. Bellsouth is the phone company, they don't have to care.
You gotta stop... You should be happy there is a Linux port or a Mac port, period. From what I have heard the Linux port did not even break even. JC and crew should be commended for taking the chance and putting out a product for various platforms. They didn't have to do that. The fact they did means Linux is no longer second class (if we were someone else would have to port it). Personally, I think that Id shipping a commercial Linux port of the game (within a reasonable window) elevates Linux as a viable market and will put pressure on the rest of the gaming industry to do the same. Until Linux is a more profitable endeavour to publish for, than say some other OS, getting mad about the lag in releases of different versions of a game will only hurt all of us. Complaining makes the alternate OS community look like a cranky eliteist bunch, an image we need to improve rather than perpetuate.
Back in 7th grade I had an English teacher (Robert Smiley) who gave us a creative writing project where we were to write ourselves a letter that was to be opened 10 years down the road. The subject matter was to be what we envisioned our lives being like at that time frame in our future. Well, about 17 years later my mother ran across this small envelope addressed to me stating 'if the fates allow open me now' and a wax seal of a penny and the year 1992 impressed into the wax where the date on the penny was. I opened it, completely having forgotten what I wrote and was really surprised. You see, the 'predictions' were all wrong but the mindset wasn't. No, I didn't go to college like I had foreseen, but I made references to free speech (was really into Jefferson at the time and writing a report for another class) and online communications (at 11 I was addicted to Compuserve and my new 300 baud screemer..I digress) being the 'in thing' for people to speak freely where the couldn't in the real world. Opening the letter to myself had a profound impact on me and I spent many months contemplating my thoughts as an 11 year old and rejuvinating ideas/goals that had become dormant. So far, the end result being my return to college and certain passions rekindled. I recently wrote myself a new letter and placed it in my mothers safe deposit box for some date in the future. This article is great in the sense that it has the right feel and vision. It is probably not far off (eerie) from where things are headed. It would be interesting to see this letter in 2020 and see how close to a bullseye it is.I wonder if any of Mr. Smiley's students are out there who found thier letters. If you had a similar project please reply as it would be great to hear the results/thoughts/outcome.
the correct link to the report is http://www.ccic.gov/ac/pitac_ltr_sep11. html. Not to bash tony for getting his article up infront of everybody but the link in the article on /. doesn't goe where it implies it will go.
free to charge you whatever they want. Free to charge whatever you want is acceptable in a situation where the price can be haggled. In my book this is ok, as transactions/sales are the core of business. Why Amazon is wrong to do be doing this? Because if the price can be negotiable (obviously on thier end it is) it should be negotioable from both side and it clearly is not for at least 4.5million items...
You make a great point. I long for this voyertainment trend to end up as something like the gladiator games. Feed 14ppl to some hungry lions and *poof* whoever is alive is deemed the survivor.This type of 'entertainment' sucks. Though its interesting for a moment next year prime time tv will be filled with it just like we now have to endure a dozen different shows based horribly on the judicial system. (the only 'benefit' to society being that now even more people want to sue your ass because they think they know how...). I guess that what this all boils down to is the accident phenomina: Two cars collide (could be just one changing a tire mind you) on your local rush hour parking lot(ironically read:freeway) and get pulled off to the side or end up there somehow. No lanes obstructed yet traffic comes to a complete crawl. Why? Because the amount of stupid people on the road gawking at the minor distraction is in direct (albeit exponential) proportion to the amount of people who actual care about getting somewhere on time and could care less (add factor for frustration with small minded people) about seeing if (a)someones guts are spilled, (b) the quantity of tires needing to be changed, (c) number of idiots sufferg from tonic hypnosis of police lights and (d) the number of yellow tarps covering bodies multplied by how many minutes you are running late.Hrm.. come to think of there's a show in that too: Survivors of (insert city of choice) Rush Hour or just call it Road Rage. You wouldn't have to hire a cast just park on the side of the road point a cam at the traffic and see what happens...
OK, If I remember correctly there will be a lot of energy in the form of electricity being generated by the friction of the cables through the atmosphere. I am assuming that the main cable materials would be non-conductive but wouldn't it be beneficial to add some cables for power generation? The shuttle experiment generated 2700 watts (going by memory so correct me if wrong) for the few seconds that it was functioning on an ultra thin coppper wire. Does anyone know what kind of numbers this thing could possibly generate?
hey when you get a chance check these links out about plasma and the travel times: ASPL
NASA press release
design refrence mission
a page full of links for more info
I have seen the mission schemes regarding the method you mentioned but i was talking about a slightly different approach: a simultaneous launch of 2 manned vehicles which i have not seen proposed anywhere yet.
I think with the recent improvements in propulsion technologies like ion plasma they are discussing the capability to make the trip in around 90 days (each way)at speeds sufficiently greater than anything we have put out to date. Maybe if they combined this with a dual launch like NASA used to do in the 70's with the viking and voyager craft they could sufficiently decrease the tragedy dilema that so many people are concerned with. This would increse costs (about 1.5x the cost of a single habitat...just a guess) but also provide an extra benefit, if two habitats go there only one needs to comeback and thus our first permanent building on another planet.Also, remember astrounauts are a different breed: they would gladly take the chance at the opportunity to do this. I know I would, probably for selfish reasons mind you but the 'good of all man kind' would make an excellent cover.
hey just needed to interject here: I emailed my rep and had a lot of people i know (including a judge and a few lawyers) and we all got letters back in the last week or so from our rep. I gotta say it really feels good to see that when enough people write, fax and email we can make a difference.
There can be no true peace as long as there are apocalyptic weapons such as nuclear tipped ICBMs. You can't hug your children with nuclear arms. You are right but if we just laydown the nukes and mothball our military we wont have peace either. A few dozen ICBM's pointed in the right direction are major deterrents to rogue nations and world powers who are bent on conquerring etc. True world peace is an admirable goal. Just not a realistic one seeing that we (read:human beings) are so hell bent on destroying each other.
Actually, you are right. The military budget is crucial to maintaining a world order. With rougue nations obtaining nuclear capabilities we still need to be able to keep the technical superiority edge as a wild card up our sleeves. Without a serious consistent investment here all could be lost.
Ok. now that we cleared up the bleeding heart issue ;) I agree NASA's programs may seem 'extravagently expensive' but the sad fact of the matter is that NASA's budget is a small portion of our huge national spending. A better funded NASA would have been able to spend more resources testing equipment and implemeting redundant systems to avoid dome of the miserable failures as of late. The dollar cost for the innovations and discoveries has been high but the initial investment here is paying off. Just look at the advances we have made recently in plasma propulsion which once implemented can indeed be very cheap. National literacy rates and educational levels imho weren't any better back when we were all 'reading books by the fire' and they deserve much more money than our countries feeble attempts at socialistic endeavours. We can get money to improve the education system from budgets other than NASA's. I would say kill welfare and make it workfare so we can use the money for education. This would benefit us twofold: instill the desire to elevate ones education so a workfare job is not waiting for you and provide a labor force to build and maintain a better school system. Other avenues of pursuit to consider: stop the drug war, stop putting people in jail for health problems, stop the criminal profiling that causes blacks unheeded harassment/persecution/incarceration. The money saved here could be vested into the educational system, maybe even to the point where better education about drugs and a decriminalized environment brings about thier ultimate erradication. Americans are funny about educating thier children these days. On the surface its priority one but just underneath the surface we discover our unwillingness to pay out more money to throw at the problem. Childcare systems need more attention too. Teachers are seriously underpaid and for the most part underappreciated. This has got to change but how can you effect change when people are basically unwilling to really take action to make changes happen?Humanity and culture are important but in the new paradigm of the information age I am not sure about how relevant they will be. We are notorious for our ignorance of other cultures but this maybe an issue of isolationism and the fact that at just over 220 years we haven't really developed our own. I spent 6 summers of my childhood in eastern europe and central europe(Hungary mostly, but also Austria, Poland, West Germany and Switzerland) and know that european culture is extremely diverse. This has been changing rapidly in the last two decades(at least perceptually). Are we leaders in this? I don't know(read:hope not). The EC may ultimately end up just like us. I do know that where society has evolved for several hundreds of years there are definetly more relaxed perspectives on what to do today with extra time which in turn propogates the arts, cultural/ancestoral contact and the like. In the US we lack some of the nuclear familial values that reinforce this. A democratic system like ours is a very grand experiment and at the pace we are going it may take 200 more years for any real 'American' culture to evolve.I still have to disagree with you that time spent focusing on scientific minutiae doesn't really benefit us. You are entitled to your opinion and so am I. If I have learned anything from science its this: in the big picture the devil is in the details.
Assuming you are not a troll and respecting your right to speak...You see this money as being burned up? OK. do the world a favor and throw away your cellphone, vcr, remote controls, and be sure to return that personal computer you posted the message with. These are technological advances that you can't live without today and they all have thier origins in the space program. Read this, this, and all of this and then reflect upon your money burning up. Its great to feel a compassion for your fellow man but don't confuse the issue. If you want socialism and the like then advocate it as you see fit this is a free speaking democracy afterall. You wouldn't get my support and I am sure there are millions of ignorant people with bleeding hearts that seem to 'think' the way you do.In a democracy its not everyones obligation or responsibility to pay the bill for feeding the lazy, the overbreeders or the willfully undereducated of our society. Yet that is were I see my tax dollars burning. I would rather see my tax dollars get spent on the space program than our great war on drugs, welfare, socialized medicine, etc. which ultimately will not reflect our advances but our lack thereof. What you should be getting mad about is the fact that the prison system is the 6th largest growth industry in the US. We spend billions of dollars waging a ludicrous 'war' on drugs (which is largely a health issue not a criminal one) that is incarcerating people at an unprecedented rate and forcing the system to release violent offenders to squeeze in another 'drug' criminal with a mandatory sentence. We encourage overpopulation by increasing welfare benefits for mothers who have more and more children and never give them any incentive to change (read:why would you work if you got free money and free food?). Our country has great potential, for example, I see people wash ashore here in S.Florida all the time, not a penny to thier name and yet they start businesses and forge themselves a niche to survive in. Yet all the time I hear people like you bitch about how we have to feed the hungry, house the homeless etc. and I see people who have spent thier entire lives here saying there is no opportunity here. Don't you think that the folks out there who don't make that niche for thier existence will become part of the natural selection process that governs the nature of all things?Be sure to work extra hard today there are millions out there who are dependant on your tax dollars as thier source of income. A few % of your pennies will go to advancing the science of mankind and the rest of the dollars will feed people who didnot contribute to advancing anything other than thier laziness.