That pretty much encapsulates my theories. They'll be big for a brief time, while the 'toy fascination' slowly wears off. Then it'll crash and burn for the masses, leaving only the die-hard geeks and the people who can really use such items (disabled peoples, perhaps? I could see voice command of common appliances being very handy for helping the visually impaired around the house...)
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Silly rabbit! People will telecommute in the future, or just teleport around!;)
... and when you pull into your driveway your porch light turns on and the vcr (or digital HD thigy that replaced it a few months ago) gets ready to play back the news of the day that you told it to from the office when you saw something of interest on slashdot.
This is happening already with such things as TV/DVD/Computers all coming together as one "information appliance". This could be the only real use for net enabled applicances and really, when we've already got most of the above with a puter with video cap card and DVD, *IS* the only net enabled appliance we've got right now.
The above idea does intrigue me though. Maybe I'll try doing some scripted video capture onto a new 27GB HD via my BTTV. I smell open source VCR replacement for those peeps with big HDs.;)
As you get out of your car it begins to recharge itself form the docking station built into your garage and downlaods the audio notes you were dictating on the way home to your computer where they are converted to nice document form and ready on your desktop to do whatever you want with them.
Recharging: Not needed to be on the net.
Audio Notes: Another information appliance. Probably best handled by something like the upcoming cell phone/pager/palm pilot fusion dealies, or 'wearable computing' items which we've all been assured are coming Real Soon Now® from people like this collective of ubergeekiness.
I could see the transcription now:
... Persuant to our clients' interests, I recommend that we acquire JEEZEZ FUGGIN' CHRIST YOU MORON, STAY IN YOUR OWN GODDAMN LANE! Why am I always trapped on the road with DARWINIAN REJECTS!!!! God damn... now, where was I... oh, look, that figures. Some moron with an ancient cell-phone. TRY UPGRADING, IDIOT!...
Ahhhh... technology is a wonderful thing, n'est pas?;)
...then you go inside, watch the news while checking your e-mail with the remote. then you set up a client meeting and tell the oven to make your favorite dish all without getting up from the cozy couch.
You're going WAY beyond simple net connectivity with that sort of idea. You're looking at a large scale robotics issue, which would be far more expensive, and not much faster, and almost certainly less palatable than simply ordering out. You don't have to get out of your chair then either.
sound good? no? well to assloads of ppl out there it does and that means $$$ for all the companies that do it first. when it comes down to it, it's all about the benjamins.
Sure. It's just highly impractical, and terribly expensive in the case of automation, and unless you're an engineer or humanity suddenly is able to produce flawless technology, rife with annoying and potentially dangerous breakdowns and glitches. I also don't see a compelling reason to enable my lightbulbs to talk to me on the net, unless perhaps I want to do my own interpreting when the aliens from Close Encounters come buzzing by my home.
Don't get me wrong, I can understand and agree that for information appliances (phones, puters, entertainment devices etc) there's a definate upside to being net-enabled. I just don't believe that there's a compelling purpose to tracking your toilet usage via syslog, or any real need to ping your blender.
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
I never understood the desire to put your coffee pot/armchair/lufa sponge on the net. What purpose do they serve? You have to get up and get the coffee anyways, why bother with having it hooked to your computer?
The simple fact is this whole embedded appliance thing is a toy idea. Briefly interesting, of limited usefulness, and ultimately will be discarded as embedded devices start crashing left and right, or screwing up in a variety of entertaining and lethal ways.
The only people making money in net-enabled appliances will be, IMO, the early entries marketing to those rampaging toy-driven geeks who'll pay top buck... although IANAEAM (I Am Not An Embedded Appliance Marketer).
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Heh... I remember doing things like that back in the day during electronics class. Ahh, the fun we used to have sticking 16v capacitors into the lab-bench sockets. Had the whole room go off like a string of firecrackers one time (BTW - Tantalum caps, although more expensive, make a much more satisfying *snap* than little bitty barrel caps, but cause shrapnel.)
Here's a particularly nasty toy you can make with some commonly available goodies, for all you Dr. Evil-in-training types (I wonderink if Mikhail makink these device when leetle boy, da?)
What You'll Need
A brain. (You'd be amazed at how many people don't get past this point)
A capacitor. The best types are the big old barrel caps from circa 1960-1970 TV sets... you know, the ones that look and feel about the weight of a relay baton. Polarized or non doesn't matter. Axial (one lead on each side) or radial (both leads on one side) are both fine, but radials take just a bit more work.
Tin/Aluminum Foil. Not a whole bunch, just raid your mom's kitchen cabinents, or order some chinese food and use the tin from thier plates. As long as it's conductive, can be easily wrapped a cylindrical object, and cheap, it'll do.
Electrical Tape. You MIGHT be able to substitute duct tape, but apparently some substrates can become conductive under certain circumstances. Best to play safe and get the genuine article (the black rubbery stuff).
Some wire, soldering iron and solder. Not much solder is needed, nor wire. In fact, if you have an axial (one lead on each end) capacitor with long enough leads, you may not need these at all.
A continuity meter. The best in the world are made by Fluke Industries. No self-respecting electronic/electrical engineer would be caught dead without one. Of course, deletantes may use whatever cheesy little analogue meters they find in thier gran-pappy's toolkit.
A power source. The best are ones are bench supplies which can generate a specific voltage, but even a cheap-ass wall-plugged model will do in a pinch. Try to get it as close to the rating of the capacitor as possible. I've found that a couple car batteries in series makes a good 24v or +/-12v supply in a pinch, so long as they're kept charged and outdoors when not in use. Oh, and try not to spill their contents on your Nikes.
What You Do
Read the Fine Print.I absolve myself of all issues that may arise from you assembling and using this little beast. Don't blame me if you use this on the head jock of your school and end up getting a boot up your ass. You're a big boy and/or grrl and you know what you're getting yourself into. CAVEAT ENGINEO.
Discharge the Capacitor. Just bridge the leads of the capacitor with some wire, a screwdriver, or any other ol' peice of metal you got on hand. Better safe than sorry... at least for the time being. >B)
(optional) Extend your Leads. Depending on the size of your capacitor and the length of the leads, you may need to add a little more metal on to the end of 'em. If you have a radial style cap (two leads at the bottom), you'll probably need to extend one lead so that it'll reach up to the top of the cap.
Tape Up the Cap. Lay down a layer of tape across the length of the capacitor. Don't leave any metal exposed except for the leads themselves. If you have a radial cap, run the long lead along the length of your cap and tape down two-thirds of it overtop of the base layer to electrically isolate it until it gets past mid-way up your cap.
Make Your Contacts. Tinfoil time! Cut out 2 strips. Make them wide enough so that they're just a bit less wide than half the length of the capacitor, and long enough so you can wrap it around a few times.
Attach the Contacts to the Cap. Tape the short end of one of your strips to the barrel at one end. Wrap it around once, then put the lead for that end on the foil and continue wrapping (with that lead embedded in the foil) until you run out of strip. Tape down the short end and long ends of the exposed foil, then repeat for the other end. Make sure the foil contacts don't touch in the middle, and only make contact with one capacitor lead each. The intent here is to make two really big foil-based leads to the capacitor.
Test the Contacts. Pull out your continuity tester and put one probe on each of the two contacts. If you did it right, the resistance should start close to 0, then steadily increase to infinity. This is because testers use a little current to see if there's a connection, and you're slightly charging the cap when you test. If the resistance stays at or near zero, you either have a dead cap, or you have a short between the two contacts.
Charge 'er Up. Set your voltage to the rating on the cap (or as close as you can get) and let it sit for a minute. Right now you're sucking billions of fun-filled electrons from one plate and depositing them on another inside the cap. Can't you just feel the tension?
Choose Your Victim Carefully. Young, relatively healthy individuals of whom you know you can run faster are best. People you really dislike are also good. Try to avoid old people, people with pacemakers, epilepsy or similar physiological/neurological disorders, people holding hot drinks (cold drinks can add to the fun;), sharp or heavy objects. People who own lots of guns are probably not very good targets, but YYOJ. Remember the fine print.
Special Delivery! Hold your device with a glove, or carefully by only ONE contact. Approach your victim, and when about 10 feet away or so, shout "Hey , catch!" and gently toss the thing to 'em. Human nature is such that it makes us believe that small, slow moving objects should be caught in those situations, typically with both hands.
*POP!*
Laugh Your Ass Off and/or Run Like Hell. Self explanatory. Hope you had fun. Besides, you have to run home and build some more, unless your victim forgets about the thing and leaves it on the ground for some other Geek to take home and play with. Ah, the joys of simple electronics. The idea can be scaled down to smaller caps too (for little bitty jolts) if you want. Axials work MUCH better in those situations, as trying to line up the wires on one inch wide caps is a major PITA. For small caps, discard the tinfoil and just wrap the leads around the barrel as long as you can without them touching. Some hot-glue might be useful to hold things down. Make sure they're at least large enough to be easily visible to the naked eye while in the air, as they have to be seen to be caught. Have fun, and play safe!
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Glocks (at least all that I've been exposed to) use 9mm. ie: 'Glock 9'... which, IIRC, is more-or-less equivalent to.357. Perhaps you're describing a Glock which busts caps my limited whitebread canadian ass ain't been exposed to yet.
West si-eeede. Gettin' jiggy with it. Yo yo yo etc.
(Why do I now have an image of Eric Cartman in my head complaining about not being able to play slip 'n slide in Zelma Hyack's underpants?)
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It's relevant 'cuz geeks seem to be the target for most of this bullshit. Look at all the geeks and/or protogeek Quake players that suffered in light of the knee-jerk reactionary thinking.
Maybe he was dumb, maybe he was a bully, maybe he was a total inbred-Jed with 47 teeth and an uncontrollable urge to rub his nose on fire hydrants. Who cares? The point is he was entrapped by a school system who clearly doesn't want anything to do with kids that deviate from the norm (as in Norman Rockwell) any tiny bit at all... just another step in the State's unwritten mandate of creating and celebrating a boring, mediocre populace which perform thier jobs without question and act like good little consumers around Christmas.
Try to remember that geeks often do (and indeed should) have more interests than the latest toy that's come down the pike. The Real World® affects you whether you like it or not, so it's best to be aware of it and prepare yourself accordingly.
As the french say: "Those who don't do politics will be done in by politics."
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
The city with the dubious distinction of being having the largest number of Junkies, and apparently the highest per-capita rate of HIV infection of all cities in developed nations.
When I went down Hastings street up towards Main the first day I came to Vancouver, there was a guy out on the sidewalk with his rig literally hanging out of his arm as he staggered about. The paramedics were waiting over by the ambulance for the guy to collapse... he was delusional and refusing medical attention (judging by the things he was trying to shout), so they just waited until he passed out before going to work. We periodically see news reports featuring kids shooting up in alleyways while the cops just look on, saying "Problem's too big, we have no power, no real support mechanism, Ottawa ignores us, what can we do?" Whereupon we all shake our heads and thank whatever Gods we hold dear that it isn't US.
When Neil Young came here on concert tour, he made a version of "The Needle and the Damage Done" specifically for Vancouverites. =/
We're not the only place with it, but we're definately among the worst. A shame really, as Vancouver is a beautiful city and a great place to live.
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If you're big on darwin's idea of how we came about (you people in certain states may not know about this, but there's this guy named Darwin, and he figured that we were evolved, not created;), the idea of natural selection should be plenty familiar to you.
Now, as then, nature favored the individuals that could survive best _in the environment they inhabited_. Natural selection works best when there's a competition for resources (food, shelter, breeding parters, etc)... when those elements are all in abundance, the selection process goes into low gear until a growing population forces limited resource competition again (selection may still be active... for example, in an environment when there are no physical limits to growth, the species that reproduces the fastest would have the best advantage when resources become limited, as they have superior numbers).
Basically, what we have today is a new variety of selection fostered by a far more forgiving environment. People who are poorly educated, stay at home, and breed like rabbits have certain advantages over the ones too busy fighting in the modern day economic survival wars to produce progeny in this environment... as you surmised.
Where it breaks down is when it comes to the time of limited resource again... when food, clothing, shelter are NOT secured (ie: political or economic upheaval). Then those who are more intelligent, or better prepared to be self sufficient in that newly changed environment will be victorious, and will pass on thier characteristics to thier 'species'.
We may indeed become totally reliant on medical technology if we haven't already. If/When the system collapses entirely, say due to a superbug, many will die. Those who don't will have either a physical attribute (resistances), or a more ephemeral attribute (just being damned lucky) that'll be tested in the new environment... at which point all our current criteria will be worth sweet dick all.
Weeding out people based on our _current_ criteria would probably end up hurting us in the long run. When the environment changes, we're going to need as many variants of human as can be mustered to ensure our succesful survival as a species.
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Lets say the virii attack a whole bunch of different types of cells. It injects the gene, kills the cell... the cell necrotizes, disperses its contents into the body. If the dose is large enough, or the virus manages to reproduce inside the affected cell, you're basically looking at liquifaction of your organs, connecting tissue, bones, skin... custom engineered Ebola, and then some.
This happens in small scale whenever you get a cold or flu, although most of the nasty fluids coming out of your body are more due to various excretions from living cells involved in the histamine reaction than rotting cell corpse juice.;)
(Well, maybe not rotting, as rot requires bacteria, but you know what I mean)
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
I think far more likely the cause is the incubation period of HIV, being anywhere from 6 months to years without any symptoms, the entire time being contagious... and the particularly FUN way that it gets transferred makes it a bitch to contain. If it was ONLY transferred by direct blood contact (IV users were the original suffers in substantial numbers) then it would have remained some obscure rare disease that people in 3rd world countries would just simply die of.
Sure, mutations contribute by reason of making it more difficult to generate useful therapies (to cure or vaccinate against it), but the primary means of infection remain the dominant reason for its continued existance. Kids (and some foolish adults) still figure they can fuck and forget... all too often that's proven tragically wrong. Not to mention the heroin addicts and part-time hookers who turn the odd trick to subsidize thier affliction. Living in Vancouver gives you a whole new perspective on that sort of thing. =(
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Someone (I forget who) made a pithy quote on the topic, along the lines of:
"Why is it that the people who most desire immortality are the people who can't find something to do on a rainy tuesday afternoon?"
Or, if you want an even pithier quote:
"Who wants to live forever?" - Queen
Well, I, for one... I'd love to know that barring getting whacked by a bus or getting a cap in the ass, that I could continue on indefinately. Problem is, the world has only so much capacity for life, and if we had no natural limits we'd rapidly all starve, or freeze, or have a superbug wipe us out in some malthusian nightmare.
I've got no doubt that such toys will become available for the uber-reche (think BillG will fear death if these come to pass? doubtful...) but if/when they're created, the general populace WILL NOT KNOW ABOUT IT... cuz if we did, it'd cause an upheaval on our world's society that'd rival that of an asteroid collision.
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
VPR doesn't detect cells, it just kills em once it gets inside 'em (as you pointed out).
Then gene therapy techniques come into play. Retrovirii are cool little gene delivery devices (check out genetic geektalk here at the NCI Gene Therapy FAQ). Basically, choose a virii strain that normally attacks the cell of choice, insert your custom gene, and stuff it into your patient. Of course, there's potential problems with the idea (if the gene is malengineered, it could lead to a different cancer for example, or attack the wrong cells)... hence the reason why it's still in the experimental stages in a lot of cases.
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Think of it... this little stunt is proving that videogames can exist anywhere. Not being content with existing in computers, consoles or hand-held game units, the MAME infection will spread everywhere! Cameras are just the beginning!
This is the beginning of the end! Rage against the game juggernaut my friends, and try to think of the sour smell of Pac Man wafting out of that half-day-old-out-of-the-fridge MAME carton!
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
In this case (like many others) it comes down to how much gilding it takes before you no longer notice the cage. All of these methods are designed to make things better for us as consumers/users (warranty cards help us get things fixed or replaced if they break, directed advertising is designed to help companies get more pertinent information to us, the potential buyers... etc).
The truly paranoid can indeed adopt a underground lifestyle to obscure his/her existance in order to avoid detection or the perceived negative aspects of whatever is being hidden from. The downside of course is that living an underground lifestyle is extremely restrictive and generally a lot less fun and carefree than the lifestyle being lived by the oblivious (or willfully ignorant) corporate tools.
Considering that I've designed stuff that uses IMG SRC cookies, and make use of other stuff that does, I think I'll let myself be a corporate tool for a little while longer.;)
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
I'm not suggesting that because you can't be completely secure that there's no point in trying to be as secure as possible. Certainly it's in everyone's best interest to try to make it as expensive (in money, effort or other resource) as possible for the Bad Guys® to get what they want. What I am objecting to is the idea of disabling a very handy tool and break a bunch of sites in order to improve your overall security profile some questionable amount. IMO, the upside (removing only an avenue for banner ad sites to accumulate information, while still leaving open HTML-based cookie insertions) doesn't justify the downside (sites depending on IMG SRC cookies breaking hard).
What never ceases to amaze me is the plethora of comparitively minor things (like cookies helping companies know if you like pr0n) that'll get people's panties in a bunch, compared to some of the Really Big Issues... Echelon, for example. Yes, you might point to slashdot and similar hackerish resources as people being aware and trying to take action... but ask Mr. Puter Everyman what Echelon is and you'll get a blank stare, ask him about cookies and privacy and you'll hear a stream of media induced rhetoric about how it'll bring a rain of firey destruction down on our heads. There are, of course, even greater threats to our personal privacy and security than Echelon or Cookies, but I can't think of any this early in the A.M.;)
Coincidentally, there are a great many people out there who think they can be 100% secure, 100% anonymous. Some hold that concept as a basic life foundation stone right up to the point where that illusion is irrevocably shattered (having been BnEd, Hacked, mugged, defrauded, stalked, surveiled et al). Security professionals of all stripes make big bucks off those shattered illusions.
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Perhaps I should have defined the term Perfectly Acceptable in more detail.
When I think of cookies in images, I think of such tools as WebSideStory, a handy little service useful for learning all manner of interesting information about traffic coming to your website. Cookies are used in a variety of ways, such as measuring return visitors, keeping track of other pages visited on that site, and so on. It may be possible to perform analyses like that with IMG SRCing, given direct access to the logs, but the IMG SRC cookie behaviour makes it very simple and elegant to produce these sorts of services as third-party tools that you simply add in to your site.
Of course, things have changed since WSS started up, and now they provide this enormous, poorly formatted wad of javascript to produce the same result as that original image once did. The offshoot of that is a good demonstration that even if IMG SRC cookies were disabled, banner ad'rs would still have avenues to accumulate the same information... so killing IMG SRC cookies to kill banner ads (or thier data gathering) would be moot, aside from pissing off a bunch of people who depend on that behaviour.
I agree to the idea that collecting excessive information on personal habits is disconcerting and regulation would be nice. Unfortunately, enforcing such a law would be nigh impossible. As some famous type person once said: "You can't legislate morality."
Of course, just because it's impossible to ensure complete privacy doesn't mean you shouldn't make it as hard as possible for the Bad Guys® to scoop up as much information about you as possible. I suppose I've just become jaded from my past experiences, and perhaps a bit lazy because there's very little I do in my life that I couldn't comfortably discuss among friends.
-- rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
I've written a review about a JavaScript book which, IMO, was substantially less than stellar. Wait'll you see the review I'm doing of this fictional book by Daniel Oran (here's a hint... if you're thinking of buying his book: DON'T!)
I think the main thing is that there's so many good books out there that people want to highlight the ones worthy of acquisition, rather than waste thier time slogging through (and afterwards painstakingly deconstructing) a steaming pile of dead tree barely fit for the recycling bin.
Anyways, bad reviews are on the way, rest assured. And at the end of each one I write, I'm going to append: "I blame Hemos for this book. If he didn't send it to me, I wouldn't have felt obligated to wallow in it's suckitude just to write a reasonable review.". >B)
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Slashdot Mirror
That pretty much encapsulates my theories. They'll be big for a brief time, while the 'toy fascination' slowly wears off. Then it'll crash and burn for the masses, leaving only the die-hard geeks and the people who can really use such items (disabled peoples, perhaps? I could see voice command of common appliances being very handy for helping the visually impaired around the house...)
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
That collective of ubergeekiness is actually here, not at the link above. Sorry about that.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Silly rabbit! People will telecommute in the future, or just teleport around! ;)
This is happening already with such things as TV/DVD/Computers all coming together as one "information appliance". This could be the only real use for net enabled applicances and really, when we've already got most of the above with a puter with video cap card and DVD, *IS* the only net enabled appliance we've got right now.
The above idea does intrigue me though. Maybe I'll try doing some scripted video capture onto a new 27GB HD via my BTTV. I smell open source VCR replacement for those peeps with big HDs. ;)
As you get out of your car it begins to recharge itself form the docking station built into your garage and downlaods the audio notes you were dictating on the way home to your computer where they are converted to nice document form and ready on your desktop to do whatever you want with them.
Recharging: Not needed to be on the net.
Audio Notes: Another information appliance. Probably best handled by something like the upcoming cell phone/pager/palm pilot fusion dealies, or 'wearable computing' items which we've all been assured are coming Real Soon Now® from people like this collective of ubergeekiness.
I could see the transcription now:
Ahhhh... technology is a wonderful thing, n'est pas?You're going WAY beyond simple net connectivity with that sort of idea. You're looking at a large scale robotics issue, which would be far more expensive, and not much faster, and almost certainly less palatable than simply ordering out. You don't have to get out of your chair then either.
sound good? no? well to assloads of ppl out there it does and that means $$$ for all the companies that do it first. when it comes down to it, it's all about the benjamins.
Sure. It's just highly impractical, and terribly expensive in the case of automation, and unless you're an engineer or humanity suddenly is able to produce flawless technology, rife with annoying and potentially dangerous breakdowns and glitches. I also don't see a compelling reason to enable my lightbulbs to talk to me on the net, unless perhaps I want to do my own interpreting when the aliens from Close Encounters come buzzing by my home.
Don't get me wrong, I can understand and agree that for information appliances (phones, puters, entertainment devices etc) there's a definate upside to being net-enabled. I just don't believe that there's a compelling purpose to tracking your toilet usage via syslog, or any real need to ping your blender.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
The simple fact is this whole embedded appliance thing is a toy idea. Briefly interesting, of limited usefulness, and ultimately will be discarded as embedded devices start crashing left and right, or screwing up in a variety of entertaining and lethal ways.
The only people making money in net-enabled appliances will be, IMO, the early entries marketing to those rampaging toy-driven geeks who'll pay top buck... although IANAEAM (I Am Not An Embedded Appliance Marketer).
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Here's a particularly nasty toy you can make with some commonly available goodies, for all you Dr. Evil-in-training types (I wonderink if Mikhail makink these device when leetle boy, da?)
What You'll Need
What You DoDischarge the Capacitor. Just bridge the leads of the capacitor with some wire, a screwdriver, or any other ol' peice of metal you got on hand. Better safe than sorry... at least for the time being. >B)
(optional) Extend your Leads. Depending on the size of your capacitor and the length of the leads, you may need to add a little more metal on to the end of 'em. If you have a radial style cap (two leads at the bottom), you'll probably need to extend one lead so that it'll reach up to the top of the cap.
Tape Up the Cap. Lay down a layer of tape across the length of the capacitor. Don't leave any metal exposed except for the leads themselves. If you have a radial cap, run the long lead along the length of your cap and tape down two-thirds of it overtop of the base layer to electrically isolate it until it gets past mid-way up your cap.
Make Your Contacts. Tinfoil time! Cut out 2 strips. Make them wide enough so that they're just a bit less wide than half the length of the capacitor, and long enough so you can wrap it around a few times.
Attach the Contacts to the Cap. Tape the short end of one of your strips to the barrel at one end. Wrap it around once, then put the lead for that end on the foil and continue wrapping (with that lead embedded in the foil) until you run out of strip. Tape down the short end and long ends of the exposed foil, then repeat for the other end. Make sure the foil contacts don't touch in the middle, and only make contact with one capacitor lead each. The intent here is to make two really big foil-based leads to the capacitor.
Test the Contacts. Pull out your continuity tester and put one probe on each of the two contacts. If you did it right, the resistance should start close to 0, then steadily increase to infinity. This is because testers use a little current to see if there's a connection, and you're slightly charging the cap when you test. If the resistance stays at or near zero, you either have a dead cap, or you have a short between the two contacts.
Charge 'er Up. Set your voltage to the rating on the cap (or as close as you can get) and let it sit for a minute. Right now you're sucking billions of fun-filled electrons from one plate and depositing them on another inside the cap. Can't you just feel the tension?
Choose Your Victim Carefully. Young, relatively healthy individuals of whom you know you can run faster are best. People you really dislike are also good. Try to avoid old people, people with pacemakers, epilepsy or similar physiological/neurological disorders, people holding hot drinks (cold drinks can add to the fun ;), sharp or heavy objects. People who own lots of guns are probably not very good targets, but YYOJ. Remember the fine print.
Special Delivery! Hold your device with a glove, or carefully by only ONE contact. Approach your victim, and when about 10 feet away or so, shout "Hey , catch!" and gently toss the thing to 'em. Human nature is such that it makes us believe that small, slow moving objects should be caught in those situations, typically with both hands.
*POP!*
Laugh Your Ass Off and/or Run Like Hell. Self explanatory. Hope you had fun. Besides, you have to run home and build some more, unless your victim forgets about the thing and leaves it on the ground for some other Geek to take home and play with. Ah, the joys of simple electronics. The idea can be scaled down to smaller caps too (for little bitty jolts) if you want. Axials work MUCH better in those situations, as trying to line up the wires on one inch wide caps is a major PITA. For small caps, discard the tinfoil and just wrap the leads around the barrel as long as you can without them touching. Some hot-glue might be useful to hold things down. Make sure they're at least large enough to be easily visible to the naked eye while in the air, as they have to be seen to be caught. Have fun, and play safe!
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G17 9MM 4.5" BARREL 17 ROUND MAG .40 CAL 4.5" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG .40 CAL 4" BARREL 13 ROUND MAG .40 CAL 6" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG .380 ACP 4" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG .357 SIG 4.5" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG .357 SIG 4" BARREL 23 ROUND MAG .40 CAL 5.32" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG
G17L 9MM 6" BARREL 17 ROUND MAG
G19 9MM 4" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG
G20 10MM 4.6" BARREL 15 ROUND MAG
G21 45ACP 4.6" BARREL 13 ROUND MAG
G22
G23
G24
G25
M31
M32
M34 9MM 5.32" BARREL 17 ROUND MAG
M35
You're right. I've only been exposed to the G17 and G19... but you can bust a .40. I must now hang my head in maple-syrup shame.
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West si-eeede. Gettin' jiggy with it. Yo yo yo etc.
(Why do I now have an image of Eric Cartman in my head complaining about not being able to play slip 'n slide in Zelma Hyack's underpants?)
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Maybe he was dumb, maybe he was a bully, maybe he was a total inbred-Jed with 47 teeth and an uncontrollable urge to rub his nose on fire hydrants. Who cares? The point is he was entrapped by a school system who clearly doesn't want anything to do with kids that deviate from the norm (as in Norman Rockwell) any tiny bit at all... just another step in the State's unwritten mandate of creating and celebrating a boring, mediocre populace which perform thier jobs without question and act like good little consumers around Christmas.
Try to remember that geeks often do (and indeed should) have more interests than the latest toy that's come down the pike. The Real World® affects you whether you like it or not, so it's best to be aware of it and prepare yourself accordingly.
As the french say: "Those who don't do politics will be done in by politics."
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Maybe I should change my tagline to "If I quote someone, it's usually paraphrased, and BADLY. Let the reader beware." ;)
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The city with the dubious distinction of being having the largest number of Junkies, and apparently the highest per-capita rate of HIV infection of all cities in developed nations.
When I went down Hastings street up towards Main the first day I came to Vancouver, there was a guy out on the sidewalk with his rig literally hanging out of his arm as he staggered about. The paramedics were waiting over by the ambulance for the guy to collapse... he was delusional and refusing medical attention (judging by the things he was trying to shout), so they just waited until he passed out before going to work. We periodically see news reports featuring kids shooting up in alleyways while the cops just look on, saying "Problem's too big, we have no power, no real support mechanism, Ottawa ignores us, what can we do?" Whereupon we all shake our heads and thank whatever Gods we hold dear that it isn't US.
When Neil Young came here on concert tour, he made a version of "The Needle and the Damage Done" specifically for Vancouverites. =/
We're not the only place with it, but we're definately among the worst. A shame really, as Vancouver is a beautiful city and a great place to live.
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Now, as then, nature favored the individuals that could survive best _in the environment they inhabited_. Natural selection works best when there's a competition for resources (food, shelter, breeding parters, etc)... when those elements are all in abundance, the selection process goes into low gear until a growing population forces limited resource competition again (selection may still be active... for example, in an environment when there are no physical limits to growth, the species that reproduces the fastest would have the best advantage when resources become limited, as they have superior numbers).
Basically, what we have today is a new variety of selection fostered by a far more forgiving environment. People who are poorly educated, stay at home, and breed like rabbits have certain advantages over the ones too busy fighting in the modern day economic survival wars to produce progeny in this environment... as you surmised.
Where it breaks down is when it comes to the time of limited resource again... when food, clothing, shelter are NOT secured (ie: political or economic upheaval). Then those who are more intelligent, or better prepared to be self sufficient in that newly changed environment will be victorious, and will pass on thier characteristics to thier 'species'.
We may indeed become totally reliant on medical technology if we haven't already. If/When the system collapses entirely, say due to a superbug, many will die. Those who don't will have either a physical attribute (resistances), or a more ephemeral attribute (just being damned lucky) that'll be tested in the new environment... at which point all our current criteria will be worth sweet dick all.
Weeding out people based on our _current_ criteria would probably end up hurting us in the long run. When the environment changes, we're going to need as many variants of human as can be mustered to ensure our succesful survival as a species.
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"Oops. It's late. Kindly disregard." ;)
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Lets say the virii attack a whole bunch of different types of cells. It injects the gene, kills the cell... the cell necrotizes, disperses its contents into the body. If the dose is large enough, or the virus manages to reproduce inside the affected cell, you're basically looking at liquifaction of your organs, connecting tissue, bones, skin... custom engineered Ebola, and then some.
This happens in small scale whenever you get a cold or flu, although most of the nasty fluids coming out of your body are more due to various excretions from living cells involved in the histamine reaction than rotting cell corpse juice. ;)
(Well, maybe not rotting, as rot requires bacteria, but you know what I mean)
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Sure, mutations contribute by reason of making it more difficult to generate useful therapies (to cure or vaccinate against it), but the primary means of infection remain the dominant reason for its continued existance. Kids (and some foolish adults) still figure they can fuck and forget... all too often that's proven tragically wrong. Not to mention the heroin addicts and part-time hookers who turn the odd trick to subsidize thier affliction. Living in Vancouver gives you a whole new perspective on that sort of thing. =(
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I've got no doubt that such toys will become available for the uber-reche (think BillG will fear death if these come to pass? doubtful...) but if/when they're created, the general populace WILL NOT KNOW ABOUT IT... cuz if we did, it'd cause an upheaval on our world's society that'd rival that of an asteroid collision.
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Take a look a little Electron Microscopy of the never-isolated virus magically captured.
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Then gene therapy techniques come into play. Retrovirii are cool little gene delivery devices (check out genetic geektalk here at the NCI Gene Therapy FAQ). Basically, choose a virii strain that normally attacks the cell of choice, insert your custom gene, and stuff it into your patient. Of course, there's potential problems with the idea (if the gene is malengineered, it could lead to a different cancer for example, or attack the wrong cells)... hence the reason why it's still in the experimental stages in a lot of cases.
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Some damn cool things coming down the medical pike. Best time in history to be sick, I guess. ;)
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Now, what if those Disposable Milk-Carton Computers were able to play MAME games? I can tell you right now... no kids would go to school! They'd stay at the breakfast table playing Donkey Kong on thier milk jug! No school, no education! No education, well, Bad Things Would Happen©.
This is the beginning of the end! Rage against the game juggernaut my friends, and try to think of the sour smell of Pac Man wafting out of that half-day-old-out-of-the-fridge MAME carton!
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The truly paranoid can indeed adopt a underground lifestyle to obscure his/her existance in order to avoid detection or the perceived negative aspects of whatever is being hidden from. The downside of course is that living an underground lifestyle is extremely restrictive and generally a lot less fun and carefree than the lifestyle being lived by the oblivious (or willfully ignorant) corporate tools.
Considering that I've designed stuff that uses IMG SRC cookies, and make use of other stuff that does, I think I'll let myself be a corporate tool for a little while longer. ;)
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What never ceases to amaze me is the plethora of comparitively minor things (like cookies helping companies know if you like pr0n) that'll get people's panties in a bunch, compared to some of the Really Big Issues... Echelon, for example. Yes, you might point to slashdot and similar hackerish resources as people being aware and trying to take action... but ask Mr. Puter Everyman what Echelon is and you'll get a blank stare, ask him about cookies and privacy and you'll hear a stream of media induced rhetoric about how it'll bring a rain of firey destruction down on our heads. There are, of course, even greater threats to our personal privacy and security than Echelon or Cookies, but I can't think of any this early in the A.M. ;)
Coincidentally, there are a great many people out there who think they can be 100% secure, 100% anonymous. Some hold that concept as a basic life foundation stone right up to the point where that illusion is irrevocably shattered (having been BnEd, Hacked, mugged, defrauded, stalked, surveiled et al). Security professionals of all stripes make big bucks off those shattered illusions.
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Yeah, but 'apropos' is a *nix command, 'approprie' will just elict a confused shell error. ;)
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When I think of cookies in images, I think of such tools as WebSideStory, a handy little service useful for learning all manner of interesting information about traffic coming to your website. Cookies are used in a variety of ways, such as measuring return visitors, keeping track of other pages visited on that site, and so on. It may be possible to perform analyses like that with IMG SRCing, given direct access to the logs, but the IMG SRC cookie behaviour makes it very simple and elegant to produce these sorts of services as third-party tools that you simply add in to your site.
Of course, things have changed since WSS started up, and now they provide this enormous, poorly formatted wad of javascript to produce the same result as that original image once did. The offshoot of that is a good demonstration that even if IMG SRC cookies were disabled, banner ad'rs would still have avenues to accumulate the same information... so killing IMG SRC cookies to kill banner ads (or thier data gathering) would be moot, aside from pissing off a bunch of people who depend on that behaviour.
I agree to the idea that collecting excessive information on personal habits is disconcerting and regulation would be nice. Unfortunately, enforcing such a law would be nigh impossible. As some famous type person once said: "You can't legislate morality."
Of course, just because it's impossible to ensure complete privacy doesn't mean you shouldn't make it as hard as possible for the Bad Guys® to scoop up as much information about you as possible. I suppose I've just become jaded from my past experiences, and perhaps a bit lazy because there's very little I do in my life that I couldn't comfortably discuss among friends.
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I think the main thing is that there's so many good books out there that people want to highlight the ones worthy of acquisition, rather than waste thier time slogging through (and afterwards painstakingly deconstructing) a steaming pile of dead tree barely fit for the recycling bin.
Anyways, bad reviews are on the way, rest assured. And at the end of each one I write, I'm going to append: "I blame Hemos for this book. If he didn't send it to me, I wouldn't have felt obligated to wallow in it's suckitude just to write a reasonable review.". >B)
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it is simply abandoned."
- I forget. Someone famous in code circles.
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