So lets see: If we combine a ton of read/write heads (the thing that makes flash memory so expensive) with vibration/movement (the thing that makes hard drives so crappy) we get an innovative product that is going to change the world and double the size of our desktop computers. Woohoo!
Pardon me for naysaying, but it seems like this is an academic experiment gone awry. The scientist apparently has a case of tunnel vision and is failing to place his/her work in a business context. (And nobody, but slashdot has the balls to break his/her heart...)
I learned to drive on a an early 80s Cutlas Sierra and it did almost the very same thing near the end of it's life. I would manually accelerate to near my previous speed and press the resume button. The car would sharply accelerate past my previous speed and would have probably gone forever had I not stopped it.
Luckily the few times this happened, lightly tapping the brake would disengage the cruise control computer and return control to me. I eventually learned to turn off the cruise control, turn it back on, and press the set button if I wanted to use the cruise. I didn't think it was dangerous because the cruise always shut off on command. Besides, shifting to neutral and pressing the e-brake sounded like a reasonable back-up should the gas ever stick.
There's a reason neutral is between reverse and drive.
A project a friend of mine was involved in a project that designed and built a hybrid pedal-electric bike with regenerative capabilities. Only down side is that it doesn't use a hub motor, so there's more to mount on the bike than just the batteries and control module.
http://www.iit.edu/~ipro315/Fall2003/Calendar.ht m
They got a sweet frame donated from Santa Cruz because they sponsor my friend in triathalons and bike races. I don't know if the project is currently operating, but if you'd like to know more, I can put you in touch with the people from the project. Just drop me an email.
Oh please. Unless you are Ivy League, nobody bumps your salary because you graduated from a certain college. IT Managers aren't THAT dumb anymore....quit fooling yourself.
This reminds me of several incidents with my university.
1.) One fraternity on campus decided to have a "fros and 40s party." The party-goers were encouraged to obtain 'fro wigs and drink malt liquor from 40oz bottles. Such parties have been banned because they have been labeled as racist.
2.) The school required that a student remove or cover a poltical cartoon posted on his door. The cartoon is a swastika whose arms are made from the words "political correctness." The idea behind the cartoon is that succumbing to political correctness breeds fascism. The school does not own the structure (a fraternity house) in which the cartoon was hung. They requested it be taken down before my fraternity provide accomodations for 5 or 6 high school seniors for a school-sponsored scholarship weekend. We respected their right to ask us to comply if we were going to participate in their preview weekend. Instead of compromising our values and allowing our liberty to be chipped away piece by piece by meeting their demands, we attempted to choose not to provide accomodations for the students. (knowing full well that the school had several other places to house the students.) The administration official started making threats of sanctions, contacting our national office, and informing our jewish university president of the racist activities happening inside our house.
At my first programming job, we shared an open office with the sales people. We started designing this large system with small group meetings in the common area of the office. We kept talking about "forking children" and "killing children" and our master process was called the "mother." Finally one of the more ditzy sale women came back and asked us to explain our disturbing terminology. She didn't think that "forking babies" was proper office talk. She was okay with it once we explained the terminology.
My idea has two parts. The first is awful and dirty, but the second is excellent.
First: Build a list of known ways to get an address into the spammer's hands. Build a tool that can fill out a web form and post it and another tool that can subscribe via an email. Subscribe thousands of fake hotmail, msn, yahoo, juno, excite, etc addresses to the spam lists. Spammers can only send so much spam. If they're sending half of it to addresses that don't work, they'll send you less. Second, these companies have real clout and could get something done about these spammers. Sure, it will cost them money, but they'll just lobby, get a government task force and some FBI help and all will be done.
Second: Most spam has an unsubscribe email. About half of those actually resolve to a real domain and sometimes a real account. Subscribe the unsubscribe emails to spam too! The spammers's return mail servers and connections will be clogged!
I wrote them a letter (in english) and actually got a timely response back. (in french) I asked them why they thought that this was a matter that could even be decided in a french court. I speak no french, but from what I was told by my many interpeters, the head of the cabinet (who wrote the letter) told me that while he disagrees with part of the situation, it's not his job to meddle in that part of the government.
Whoa, hold on! I think the problem is that a subscription service violates many things that the open source community stands for. This action by MS really turns software into a 'service' rather than a tangible product. If you 'buy' the software, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. (including using it for an indefinite period of time.) It doesn't really matter anyway because some talented MS programmer will create a crack and enable the software indefinitely. And when he/she does, I'll applaud him/her, maybe even write him/her a letter....using StarOffice.
For the millionth time, it's NOT IIT doing the review. IIT is a tech school that is stuck in the awkward situation of being wedged between a huge government research project (IITRI) and one of the world's largest companies. (Motorola). Lets all be correct and talk about IITRI's review of Carnivore. Moderate me to hell...karma is like an ex-girlfriend,: it was good while it was here, but you don't give a damn when it's gone...
Sega dropped their pinball division sometime in 1999. I have a cousin who is head of one of the development departments there. I'm studying computer engineering an so I thought it might be interesting to take a tour since I'm only a couple miles away during the school year. (now 365...) I called to make an appointment with him and he we talked for a while. During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that they were now "Stern Pinball Inc." I guess the head of the pinball division bought the division from Sega. The website isn't much at all, but here it is. You'll notice that they actually make many of the popular games seen in arcades if you browse through the firmware library.
It's obvious what will happen. Nothing. If you do not have the 'intent' to harm, they can't do anything because it was out of your control. If you brakes on your new car totally fail and you mow down a little old lady, who gets sued? Ford. Same situation.
You name a large number of defendants. Fair use dictates that if these users own the CD, they may download the music contained on that CD. What will you say to those that you have inconvenienced by naming them a defendant in a lawsuit that does not have anything to do with them? Do you expect to see retaliation from them? (Or their lawyers?)
Do computers really PLAY chess? They make decisions based on the probability for best outcome due to future possibilities of moves and future opponent moves. While PLAYING chess involves such decisions on a human's part, it also involves feeling and a bit of trickery/deception. I couldn't see a computer making a bad move to "suck a player in" or bait a player into making a move. I don't think that they've been given the power to "manipulate" a player yet. These computers can do infinitely more permutations of a game than a human can do, but a human can predict strategy based on a player's habits and faults. I contest that the computers are able to win because they have this ability to play out a game based on odds and probability many times before even making a move.
.18u my rosy red arse! For those of you not in the know, the.18u measure is the smallest feature measure, or the Lambda of the chip. Every other dimension on the chip is a multiple of that number. It is the distance across the gate of a transistor from source to drain. Now, when they bake the chips, that distance shortens by a few mirons. Unfortunately, the marketing dept. got wind of this and took off with it. Now, they measure the shortest distance from source to drain right near the gate, because the further from the gate the measurement is taken, the wider the gap is. (Sort of a curve...) So in reality, those.18u chips are actually.20u or.21u. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're talking about millions and millions of transistors, that's a lot of space. (But probably still no more than the head of a pin.)
Come on, everybody is complaining about the hard drive driving up the cost and not being practical. I would think that slashdotters would embrace the hard drive. It allows one to save virtually infinite games with an incredible amount of detail. How much do those VMUs and memory cards cost? $25 and you can save little more than one game of NFL2k on them. The hard drive will allow developers to release demos over the internet. Imagine being able to hack PSX2 games just like we used to do with NES ROMs. Changes in gameplay, add certain features...Enhance a game for online play. (Ahem, Counterstrike.) Stop complaining and start thinking about all of the cool things you could do with this!
I know of a US firm that is planning on making a cheap (sub $50) adapter to connect a game platform with a modem (or any device with a modem) to a LAN. No offical project release yet, but I got the tip from an old high school friend that works in the Valley. Supposedly, this thing simulates a phone circuit, (dis)assembles packets for differences in MTU, and looks totally like a NIC from the network. I thought something like this existed before and tried to tell her that, but she insisted that their RnD department said there was no such animal. I've never had such a use for a device so I've never cared. Has anybody ever heard of this?
It's the fact that if you ask an American geek what the first real computer is, he'll say the ENIAC. If you ask a British geek, he'll say the Babbage Diff Eng. Wait, a computer made of gears and cams? That's like saying that the first automobile was the horse drawn buggy!
The posting of the askjesus.org filter was no accident! It is the key to the massive, totally undocumented (not to mention pretty impossible) encryption algorithm that the RIAA and the MPAA use to create the text on their web pages. Just read the RIAA mission statement: "Our sinners art the befoulers that comprise the most vibrant tribal music industry in the world. Our mission is to foster a slave-trade and scriptural climate that supports and promotes our sinners' creative and gentile vitality around the world." Wow, now if THAT isn't the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it April already?
So lets see: If we combine a ton of read/write heads (the thing that makes flash memory so expensive) with vibration/movement (the thing that makes hard drives so crappy) we get an innovative product that is going to change the world and double the size of our desktop computers. Woohoo!
Pardon me for naysaying, but it seems like this is an academic experiment gone awry. The scientist apparently has a case of tunnel vision and is failing to place his/her work in a business context. (And nobody, but slashdot has the balls to break his/her heart...)
I learned to drive on a an early 80s Cutlas Sierra and it did almost the very same thing near the end of it's life. I would manually accelerate to near my previous speed and press the resume button. The car would sharply accelerate past my previous speed and would have probably gone forever had I not stopped it.
Luckily the few times this happened, lightly tapping the brake would disengage the cruise control computer and return control to me. I eventually learned to turn off the cruise control, turn it back on, and press the set button if I wanted to use the cruise. I didn't think it was dangerous because the cruise always shut off on command. Besides, shifting to neutral and pressing the e-brake sounded like a reasonable back-up should the gas ever stick.
There's a reason neutral is between reverse and drive.
A project a friend of mine was involved in a project that designed and built a hybrid pedal-electric bike with regenerative capabilities. Only down side is that it doesn't use a hub motor, so there's more to mount on the bike than just the batteries and control module.
t m
http://www.iit.edu/~ipro315/Fall2003/Calendar.h
They got a sweet frame donated from Santa Cruz because they sponsor my friend in triathalons and bike races. I don't know if the project is currently operating, but if you'd like to know more, I can put you in touch with the people from the project. Just drop me an email.
If they can't sell books, they can't pay lawyers. Lets let them know how we feel, Dave Barry Style!
b out/contact.htm
Direct mail and orders to:
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
405 Murray Hill Parkway
East Rutherford, NJ 07073
(800) 788-6262 (Individual Consumer Sales)
(800) 526-0275 (Reseller Sales)
(800) 631-8571 (Reseller Customer Service)
International numbers here: http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/a
Oh please. Unless you are Ivy League, nobody bumps your salary because you graduated from a certain college. IT Managers aren't THAT dumb anymore....quit fooling yourself.
This post is a lie. The good samaritan laws protect those that act in good faith. If you're not lying, your doctor friend was completely misinformed.
If you leave a laptop HDD powered and writing more than 20% duty cycle (like a server...) the MTBF decreases significantly. I won't be buying one.
This reminds me of several incidents with my university.
1.) One fraternity on campus decided to have a "fros and 40s party." The party-goers were encouraged to obtain 'fro wigs and drink malt liquor from 40oz bottles. Such parties have been banned because they have been labeled as racist.
2.) The school required that a student remove or cover a poltical cartoon posted on his door. The cartoon is a swastika whose arms are made from the words "political correctness." The idea behind the cartoon is that succumbing to political correctness breeds fascism. The school does not own the structure (a fraternity house) in which the cartoon was hung. They requested it be taken down before my fraternity provide accomodations for 5 or 6 high school seniors for a school-sponsored scholarship weekend. We respected their right to ask us to comply if we were going to participate in their preview weekend. Instead of compromising our values and allowing our liberty to be chipped away piece by piece by meeting their demands, we attempted to choose not to provide accomodations for the students. (knowing full well that the school had several other places to house the students.) The administration official started making threats of sanctions, contacting our national office, and informing our jewish university president of the racist activities happening inside our house.
They never called our national.
But we called the ACLU.
At my first programming job, we shared an open office with the sales people. We started designing this large system with small group meetings in the common area of the office. We kept talking about "forking children" and "killing children" and our master process was called the "mother." Finally one of the more ditzy sale women came back and asked us to explain our disturbing terminology. She didn't think that "forking babies" was proper office talk. She was okay with it once we explained the terminology.
Why not make the spammers combat the spammers?
My idea has two parts. The first is awful and dirty, but the second is excellent.
First: Build a list of known ways to get an address into the spammer's hands. Build a tool that can fill out a web form and post it and another tool that can subscribe via an email. Subscribe thousands of fake hotmail, msn, yahoo, juno, excite, etc addresses to the spam lists. Spammers can only send so much spam. If they're sending half of it to addresses that don't work, they'll send you less. Second, these companies have real clout and could get something done about these spammers. Sure, it will cost them money, but they'll just lobby, get a government task force and some FBI help and all will be done.
Second: Most spam has an unsubscribe email. About half of those actually resolve to a real domain and sometimes a real account. Subscribe the unsubscribe emails to spam too! The spammers's return mail servers and connections will be clogged!
Just a thought.
I wrote them a letter (in english) and actually got a timely response back. (in french) I asked them why they thought that this was a matter that could even be decided in a french court. I speak no french, but from what I was told by my many interpeters, the head of the cabinet (who wrote the letter) told me that while he disagrees with part of the situation, it's not his job to meddle in that part of the government.
Whoa, hold on! I think the problem is that a subscription service violates many things that the open source community stands for. This action by MS really turns software into a 'service' rather than a tangible product. If you 'buy' the software, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. (including using it for an indefinite period of time.) It doesn't really matter anyway because some talented MS programmer will create a crack and enable the software indefinitely. And when he/she does, I'll applaud him/her, maybe even write him/her a letter....using StarOffice.
For the millionth time, it's NOT IIT doing the review. IIT is a tech school that is stuck in the awkward situation of being wedged between a huge government research project (IITRI) and one of the world's largest companies. (Motorola). Lets all be correct and talk about IITRI's review of Carnivore. Moderate me to hell...karma is like an ex-girlfriend,: it was good while it was here, but you don't give a damn when it's gone...
Check it out...just found it today....
okay, i feel dumb...I should have read the article first...they actually mention the company my cousin works for...heh.
Sega dropped their pinball division sometime in 1999. I have a cousin who is head of one of the development departments there. I'm studying computer engineering an so I thought it might be interesting to take a tour since I'm only a couple miles away during the school year. (now 365...) I called to make an appointment with him and he we talked for a while. During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that they were now "Stern Pinball Inc." I guess the head of the pinball division bought the division from Sega. The website isn't much at all, but here it is. You'll notice that they actually make many of the popular games seen in arcades if you browse through the firmware library.
It's obvious what will happen. Nothing. If you do not have the 'intent' to harm, they can't do anything because it was out of your control. If you brakes on your new car totally fail and you mow down a little old lady, who gets sued? Ford. Same situation.
would have been betterif it were called House Bill 1337!
You name a large number of defendants. Fair use dictates that if these users own the CD, they may download the music contained on that CD. What will you say to those that you have inconvenienced by naming them a defendant in a lawsuit that does not have anything to do with them? Do you expect to see retaliation from them? (Or their lawyers?)
Do computers really PLAY chess? They make decisions based on the probability for best outcome due to future possibilities of moves and future opponent moves. While PLAYING chess involves such decisions on a human's part, it also involves feeling and a bit of trickery/deception. I couldn't see a computer making a bad move to "suck a player in" or bait a player into making a move. I don't think that they've been given the power to "manipulate" a player yet. These computers can do infinitely more permutations of a game than a human can do, but a human can predict strategy based on a player's habits and faults. I contest that the computers are able to win because they have this ability to play out a game based on odds and probability many times before even making a move.
.18u my rosy red arse! For those of you not in the know, the .18u measure is the smallest feature measure, or the Lambda of the chip. Every other dimension on the chip is a multiple of that number. It is the distance across the gate of a transistor from source to drain. Now, when they bake the chips, that distance shortens by a few mirons. Unfortunately, the marketing dept. got wind of this and took off with it. Now, they measure the shortest distance from source to drain right near the gate, because the further from the gate the measurement is taken, the wider the gap is. (Sort of a curve...) So in reality, those .18u chips are actually .20u or .21u. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're talking about millions and millions of transistors, that's a lot of space. (But probably still no more than the head of a pin.)
Come on, everybody is complaining about the hard drive driving up the cost and not being practical. I would think that slashdotters would embrace the hard drive. It allows one to save virtually infinite games with an incredible amount of detail. How much do those VMUs and memory cards cost? $25 and you can save little more than one game of NFL2k on them. The hard drive will allow developers to release demos over the internet. Imagine being able to hack PSX2 games just like we used to do with NES ROMs. Changes in gameplay, add certain features...Enhance a game for online play. (Ahem, Counterstrike.) Stop complaining and start thinking about all of the cool things you could do with this!
I know of a US firm that is planning on making a cheap (sub $50) adapter to connect a game platform with a modem (or any device with a modem) to a LAN. No offical project release yet, but I got the tip from an old high school friend that works in the Valley. Supposedly, this thing simulates a phone circuit, (dis)assembles packets for differences in MTU, and looks totally like a NIC from the network. I thought something like this existed before and tried to tell her that, but she insisted that their RnD department said there was no such animal. I've never had such a use for a device so I've never cared. Has anybody ever heard of this?
It's the fact that if you ask an American geek what the first real computer is, he'll say the ENIAC. If you ask a British geek, he'll say the Babbage Diff Eng. Wait, a computer made of gears and cams? That's like saying that the first automobile was the horse drawn buggy!
The posting of the askjesus.org filter was no accident! It is the key to the massive, totally undocumented (not to mention pretty impossible) encryption algorithm that the RIAA and the MPAA use to create the text on their web pages. Just read the RIAA mission statement: "Our sinners art the befoulers that comprise the most vibrant tribal music industry in the world. Our mission is to foster a slave-trade and scriptural climate that supports and promotes our sinners' creative and gentile vitality around the world."
Wow, now if THAT isn't the truth.