I'm hearing that python skit... where the *girl* keeps clearing her throat... "ahem, and my discovery is , ahem, [coughcough] that is to say, that I discoverd it and it is, ahem [cough] here it is, my work, ahem, aHEM, ahem, [coughcough]..."
Aparently there is no website anymore either. Looks like we slashdotted em.;)
Great... cause of one post, they have to buy more bandwidth and maybe a new server. Wonderful. There goes that month of food I was planning on getting out of my SSI when I retire.
I mean; its their screen. Its everyone's copier. I'd rather have their junk on their screen than the copier plate. Or the scanner... Have you ever seen what happens when someone tries to sit on a cheap scanner? hehe...
One of the most dollar-conscience people I know *doesn't* drive a high maintanence car cause they can't stand hidden costs.
Of course this is the same person that still uses mac os 8.6 on his g3 beige tower (main desktop), os 9.1 on their prismo (because I refuesd to reinstall 8.6) and os 9.3? on their new and nifty 4 year old emac. (which sits unused about 3/4 of the time cause it slows them down.)
Another drives an ageing audi for status. And its in the shop half the time.
I've had *one* auto issue with a toyota in my eleven years of driving that caused significant down time. And a shop never fixed it (because they couldn't, it was someone else's fault for hacking up the wiring.)
Sorry, I know for some people, its not an issue. But I can't stand gizmos that break and cost $1k + to repair. Why don't we just mandate better driver education. (Like weekend car control bootcamps or something!!! Like the motorcycle safety courses.)
I actually thought it was kind of cool... I mean, adding the light saber stuff kind of rocked. A well adjusted kid probably would have just laughed and grinned.
ATL airport, about 2 summers ago: Windows NT error messages were displayed on most of the terminal monitors. Main boards and systems were fine (running on a unix platform, IBM I think) but the NT box was serving up updates to remote terminals. Had one of those "dummy error ## blahlbah. Click "ok" to continue."..... No one did for the 3 or so hours were were waiting for a plane.
Oh, yeah... 4 hours. We had to "get a new plane" after they found out a screw was missing from the Delta DC-10's tail. (Not *that* screw... just one from the sheetmetal. )
I would have a picture of it, but it was on a fat32 partition that winXP decided needed to be hosed for some stupid reason. I never bothered to recover all of it.
Agreed.... I've had about a 50% failure rate within the first year with Dells. One in 5 toshiba's had a severe hard drive issue, which in the end turned out to be a winXP issue with the sata controller.
Dells: - one spent 7 months in and out of the shop for overheating issues. I finally threw it away. Dell never fixed it. - one spent about 2 months doing fine, then decided it didn't like wireless anymore. Enabling wireless is about the same as hitting it with a hammer. Click it on and: boom! Windows goes unstable, the machine becomes intermittently wacko (crashes all the time, doesn't turn on after sleep/shibernates/reboots.) Leaving wireless off has been enough to stableise the beast. - Another decided after 1 year of light use to stop holding the LCD up. It has to be propped up with a book. And the network card misteriously failed at about 1.5 years. - Another went through two mother boards in the first 3 months. - Another decided it would fry its LCD the first time it was plugged into a video switch for use in a presentation. Dell refuesd to fix it, even though it was less than 6 months old.
The HP's we've bought, or that I've reccomended have actually been fine for several years. (only about 3-4, all AMD.)
But the apples have shined. Of the 18 (one iBook and the rest G4 Powerbooks from 1.0 GHz to the latest), I've had: - one mobo issue for the aged 700 MHz g3 iBook, replaced out of warranty for free in 3 days after calling apple. Didn't even have to pay for shipping or even packing tape! - one mini-PCI wifi card "falling out slightly". Fixed by a little piece of rubber. - one dead hard drive after a toss down a flight of stairs: all data was recoverable, but the drive clicked and wasn't stable anymore. 2 years later with a new drive, the machine is still fine except for some scuffs. - a slight overheating issue that was solved when I got the user to admit that they were watching DVD's while trying to compile code, while downloading stuff, while having about 50 huge PDF's open... For days... I think that user is burning up a quad g5 now.:)
Try finding gobs of essoteric tuba/euphonium/trombone music and big brassy russian classical music, also ripped in at good bit rates.... It was a waste of time for me.
Fortunatly, my collection is to the point where I'm happy with it. I *still* hear new things occasionally when I random play my iPod. I also have a lot of tracks on it that I've played in. 4 hour long concerts a year for seven years is a lot of music!
The PS2 backup thing sucks.:( There should be an exclusion clause or some thing that states that if you loose a piece of IP that you purchase, the company who made the IP is responsible to replace it or be sued for breach of contract. If there was any justice in the world that is...
Since they wont let you legeally make a copy for backup purposes, then they should be responsible for ensuring that you have perpetual and uninterupted access to the information. Arg....
(PS: I'm about to add a "pedantic pirate" clause to my sig...)
I'm not sure Verizon is makine the best move here. Either way we *need* something like this to happen, make its way to court, and set a precident.
Right now, its still a game. We can get away with a lot of stuff simply because there is a whole lot of "stuff" going on. Whats one more downloader? Its usually been like failing to buckle your seat belt. In some states, it wont get you fined unless you're pulled over for something else.
If we know we'll get stomped for DLing, and that our ISP's have to give all data to the feds, then we'll probably stop dling.
I personally stopped roving for MP3's a while ago. Can't stand most of the shared music, and the quality sucks. Mp3's ripped at 128 simply suck. (My cd collection is ripped for my iPod at 256.;) )
This was a good response, thought you shouldn't have posted as AC. And the mod shouldn't have modded ya down.
Why do/.'eans persist in attacking comments which aren't fully explained. I seem to be plauged with it.
There is a *lot* of information you can get from reading any single article, website, response, etc. But any engineer worth his/her degree would *never* rely on one source. Even stuff you see in peer reviewed articles can be wrong. (I've seen it!)
However, there is something to be learned even from the wrong article. Sure, I didn't go into this in my comment. I'm sorry I assumed that my point would come across without an explanation.
An example:
Looking up laser howtos the other day for revitalizing our laser lab. Was googleing for hints and docs about a few Spectra Physics argon ion lasers. (Series 2000 and a Stabilitte 2011). One of the first startup procedures I found for the 2000 was from a college graduate student physics lab.... I couldn't believe they had the students cutting the power on before they had the cooling water flowing. (Even though it states clearly in the manual that the water should be checked before the power is turned on.)
I had to ignore the startup (and shut down too, since that was even worse.) but the howto had one of the clearest tuning procedures I've seen for getting a dummy to safely align the laser.
Should I condem google for providing me with a howto that could result in an incident if there was a water leak? No. I could only blame myself for being stupid.
My main complaint is that my "good" eye is much more screwed up from the patch wearing days than the "bad": lazy eye. And to clarify: my vision never came back in my good eye after the patch was removed. Before I had the patch forced on me, I had good vision in both eyes, with just a wandering issue. In the days following the patch treatment, my good eye never bounced back. In weeks, I was still having color issues with it (compared to my lazy eye.) In months, I was needing glasses. In years, my perscription had gotten worse.
The RTCW playing had one noticable effect; I used to shoot rifles with my right eye in the past, but the stability of the eye has continued to decline (pulling all nighters in a chem-e degree probably didn't help.) But with a solid year of RTCW, I noticed I could occasionally use my right eye for viewfinder stuff again. Some days its quite stable. Some days it isn't. Its perferable to use it for sighting, since it has better color response and better long distance behavior.
I'd be very interested in this VR method of eye strengthening. Sounds like a good idea.
There's a balance between communication and proliferation. There really is.
If a person is being tested for a degree on material, they shouldn't have access to the answers. But if a person is working in the field, they *should*. And if a person is curious, they probably should too.
This is just taking it too far. There may be justifiable reasons why evil corperation X in country Z shouldn't have access to information Gamma, but what real difference will it make if they can google for it. There's a much greater chance of them screwing something up if they're evil than getting something right.
Weight that against the 1000's of corperations/individuals/research groups also looking at information Gamma and doing something promising, and google is, on average, doing a good service.
I have to google for facts that make our research institute run literally daily. Usually its simple stuff like " what the hell is bentonite and how much can we put in this beaker without breaking something." or "what the heck is this photoflo stuff. It works great for this demonstration experiment, but we can't find the bottle..." a short google later, and we have a home brew wetting agent made, in the tank, and making the flow over a glass edge laminar just as we wanted.
Biopiracy? Please: Communication is a *vital* part of the scientific method. Shure, 1/1000 it might bite someone in the ass. But without modern communication pathways, we wouldn't have all these cool toys or long lives in which to buy more toys.
That eye-patch treatment started a downward spiral in both eyes which has me with: 1. a bad perscription in both eyes 2. loss of color definition in my left (good) eye 3. inability to wear contacts for extended periods 4. occasional eye twitches in lazy eye when overused 5. inability to use right eye in viewfinders, sights, etc. (have to shoot rifles left handed)
As soon as the treatment was over, I went from 20/20 to loosing my distance vision. I never got back the color response in my left (good) eye. now.
The only thing that helped a lot resently was RTCW.... hehe. I played quite seriously for about a year. Did wonders!
At least it didn't make the front page like the last 6 "ps3 delayed" announcements....
er... sorry, the "1" ps3 delayed admission, and the "5" announcments of rumors that it may be delayed.
I really do want to know what chip the rev has... I couldn't wait any longer though and finally bought a game cube. Actually my very first ever new game console. I had a aged fleamarket bought NES for a while (got it when the SNES was old and the dreamcast had just came out.)
" We have to resort to actually crippling the devices to keep people from being idiots."
and this is new how?
cell phones already come crippled in some cases (verizon, cingular, all at fault). windows definatly is crippled. cars have been known to be crippled by revlimiting and seed limiting.
i'd rather have crippling to prevent idiothood then crippling to get a better profit.
Han is my Hero (and did shoot the green smelly guy first. )
Agreed.... It was amazing how much of a difference of opinions I have compared to my news watching/broadcast TV enthralled cohorts.
The biggest thing I've noticed is that the media does a very good job of staying "memoryless". It is tough for someone watching the news day to day to keep in mind all the past bits. Its much eaisier to get a bunch of news all at once.
Take this example:
Man A is called a Gay. He is plastered on TV for it, and files a civil suit against the accuser. Its in the news for a month or so. Soon after that, Man A probably couldn't even go to Publix without being reccognized. And labeled. Regardless of whether or not it was true.
If a year later, Man A is videotaped saving a woman from a burning building and it makes the 11:00 news, then suddenly, Man A is known for months as "hey you're that All-American-Guy who rescued that woman!".
Now there's two interesting things here: 1. If no one from the news agencies looks up his history (on google, or AP search or whatever), then chances are it wont be brought back up. 2. We have to ask which "public" opinion is true? Is the man a Gay, a Hero, or both. (Nothing wrong with either I might add!!)
Can you see how media memory can effect reporting? I know that if a newsie anchor looked and saw the first appearence of Man A in archives, it owuld be brought up. But if they did't see it, it wouldn't be mentioned.
We're relying on Media Memory to make our opinions! We should be relying on our own!
Hehe... It would be a good span. At least easy to remember.
I can definatly agree at least in "feeling". Saw a cop shoot at a woman who was trying to run him down with her car the other day. I kept thinking through what I would have done if I'd had my 9mm ruger with me that afternoon. Although, I must say, that I think I wouldn't have missed as badly as he did.:(
Slashdot Mirror
I'm hearing that python skit... where the *girl* keeps clearing her throat... "ahem, and my discovery is , ahem, [coughcough] that is to say, that I discoverd it and it is, ahem [cough] here it is, my work, ahem, aHEM, ahem, [coughcough]..."
Aparently there is no website anymore either. Looks like we slashdotted em. ;)
Great... cause of one post, they have to buy more bandwidth and maybe a new server. Wonderful. There goes that month of food I was planning on getting out of my SSI when I retire.
Would you perfer the copier?
I mean; its their screen. Its everyone's copier. I'd rather have their junk on their screen than the copier plate. Or the scanner... Have you ever seen what happens when someone tries to sit on a cheap scanner? hehe...
wrong!
One of the most dollar-conscience people I know *doesn't* drive a high maintanence car cause they can't stand hidden costs.
Of course this is the same person that still uses mac os 8.6 on his g3 beige tower (main desktop), os 9.1 on their prismo (because I refuesd to reinstall 8.6) and os 9.3? on their new and nifty 4 year old emac. (which sits unused about 3/4 of the time cause it slows them down.)
Another drives an ageing audi for status. And its in the shop half the time.
I've had *one* auto issue with a toyota in my eleven years of driving that caused significant down time. And a shop never fixed it (because they couldn't, it was someone else's fault for hacking up the wiring.)
How much does it cost to fix when it breaks!
Sorry, I know for some people, its not an issue. But I can't stand gizmos that break and cost $1k + to repair. Why don't we just mandate better driver education. (Like weekend car control bootcamps or something!!! Like the motorcycle safety courses.)
I'm thinking this would be like "google caches" of the top ten-25 fisrt hit pages or something.
I actually thought it was kind of cool... I mean, adding the light saber stuff kind of rocked. A well adjusted kid probably would have just laughed and grinned.
ATL airport, about 2 summers ago: Windows NT error messages were displayed on most of the terminal monitors. Main boards and systems were fine (running on a unix platform, IBM I think) but the NT box was serving up updates to remote terminals. Had one of those "dummy error ## blahlbah. Click "ok" to continue." ..... No one did for the 3 or so hours were were waiting for a plane.
Oh, yeah... 4 hours. We had to "get a new plane" after they found out a screw was missing from the Delta DC-10's tail. (Not *that* screw... just one from the sheetmetal. )
I would have a picture of it, but it was on a fat32 partition that winXP decided needed to be hosed for some stupid reason. I never bothered to recover all of it.
The image from a few years ago of a human-esk ear growing on the back of a rat comes to mind....
We've come a *long* way.
This bladder trans seems to be one of the best projects I've seen. Next, I guess we'll be on to the kidneys!?!~`1
Should read::
"Windows (TM) PC's can no longer recover from Malware of the worst sort..."
Agreed.... I've had about a 50% failure rate within the first year with Dells. One in 5 toshiba's had a severe hard drive issue, which in the end turned out to be a winXP issue with the sata controller.
:)
Dells:
- one spent 7 months in and out of the shop for overheating issues. I finally threw it away. Dell never fixed it.
- one spent about 2 months doing fine, then decided it didn't like wireless anymore. Enabling wireless is about the same as hitting it with a hammer. Click it on and: boom! Windows goes unstable, the machine becomes intermittently wacko (crashes all the time, doesn't turn on after sleep/shibernates/reboots.) Leaving wireless off has been enough to stableise the beast.
- Another decided after 1 year of light use to stop holding the LCD up. It has to be propped up with a book. And the network card misteriously failed at about 1.5 years.
- Another went through two mother boards in the first 3 months.
- Another decided it would fry its LCD the first time it was plugged into a video switch for use in a presentation. Dell refuesd to fix it, even though it was less than 6 months old.
The HP's we've bought, or that I've reccomended have actually been fine for several years. (only about 3-4, all AMD.)
But the apples have shined. Of the 18 (one iBook and the rest G4 Powerbooks from 1.0 GHz to the latest), I've had:
- one mobo issue for the aged 700 MHz g3 iBook, replaced out of warranty for free in 3 days after calling apple. Didn't even have to pay for shipping or even packing tape!
- one mini-PCI wifi card "falling out slightly". Fixed by a little piece of rubber.
- one dead hard drive after a toss down a flight of stairs: all data was recoverable, but the drive clicked and wasn't stable anymore. 2 years later with a new drive, the machine is still fine except for some scuffs.
- a slight overheating issue that was solved when I got the user to admit that they were watching DVD's while trying to compile code, while downloading stuff, while having about 50 huge PDF's open... For days... I think that user is burning up a quad g5 now.
I'm still more than a little disturbed by the ch@1r pr0n :: ahref=http://www.furnitureporn.com/rel=url2html-22 377http://www.furnitureporn.com/> .
Try finding gobs of essoteric tuba/euphonium/trombone music and big brassy russian classical music, also ripped in at good bit rates.... It was a waste of time for me.
:( There should be an exclusion clause or some thing that states that if you loose a piece of IP that you purchase, the company who made the IP is responsible to replace it or be sued for breach of contract. If there was any justice in the world that is...
Fortunatly, my collection is to the point where I'm happy with it. I *still* hear new things occasionally when I random play my iPod. I also have a lot of tracks on it that I've played in. 4 hour long concerts a year for seven years is a lot of music!
The PS2 backup thing sucks.
Since they wont let you legeally make a copy for backup purposes, then they should be responsible for ensuring that you have perpetual and uninterupted access to the information. Arg....
(PS: I'm about to add a "pedantic pirate" clause to my sig...)
um.... 34 ISP's... Big brother time.
;) )
I'm not sure Verizon is makine the best move here. Either way we *need* something like this to happen, make its way to court, and set a precident.
Right now, its still a game. We can get away with a lot of stuff simply because there is a whole lot of "stuff" going on. Whats one more downloader? Its usually been like failing to buckle your seat belt. In some states, it wont get you fined unless you're pulled over for something else.
If we know we'll get stomped for DLing, and that our ISP's have to give all data to the feds, then we'll probably stop dling.
I personally stopped roving for MP3's a while ago. Can't stand most of the shared music, and the quality sucks. Mp3's ripped at 128 simply suck. (My cd collection is ripped for my iPod at 256.
This was a good response, thought you shouldn't have posted as AC. And the mod shouldn't have modded ya down.
/.'eans persist in attacking comments which aren't fully explained. I seem to be plauged with it.
... I couldn't believe they had the students cutting the power on before they had the cooling water flowing. (Even though it states clearly in the manual that the water should be checked before the power is turned on.)
Why do
There is a *lot* of information you can get from reading any single article, website, response, etc. But any engineer worth his/her degree would *never* rely on one source. Even stuff you see in peer reviewed articles can be wrong. (I've seen it!)
However, there is something to be learned even from the wrong article. Sure, I didn't go into this in my comment. I'm sorry I assumed that my point would come across without an explanation.
An example:
Looking up laser howtos the other day for revitalizing our laser lab. Was googleing for hints and docs about a few Spectra Physics argon ion lasers. (Series 2000 and a Stabilitte 2011). One of the first startup procedures I found for the 2000 was from a college graduate student physics lab.
I had to ignore the startup (and shut down too, since that was even worse.) but the howto had one of the clearest tuning procedures I've seen for getting a dummy to safely align the laser.
Should I condem google for providing me with a howto that could result in an incident if there was a water leak? No. I could only blame myself for being stupid.
My main complaint is that my "good" eye is much more screwed up from the patch wearing days than the "bad": lazy eye. And to clarify: my vision never came back in my good eye after the patch was removed. Before I had the patch forced on me, I had good vision in both eyes, with just a wandering issue. In the days following the patch treatment, my good eye never bounced back. In weeks, I was still having color issues with it (compared to my lazy eye.) In months, I was needing glasses. In years, my perscription had gotten worse.
The RTCW playing had one noticable effect; I used to shoot rifles with my right eye in the past, but the stability of the eye has continued to decline (pulling all nighters in a chem-e degree probably didn't help.) But with a solid year of RTCW, I noticed I could occasionally use my right eye for viewfinder stuff again. Some days its quite stable. Some days it isn't. Its perferable to use it for sighting, since it has better color response and better long distance behavior.
I'd be very interested in this VR method of eye strengthening. Sounds like a good idea.
This made me spit out my coffee... Arrrrg!
There's a balance between communication and proliferation. There really is.
If a person is being tested for a degree on material, they shouldn't have access to the answers. But if a person is working in the field, they *should*. And if a person is curious, they probably should too.
This is just taking it too far. There may be justifiable reasons why evil corperation X in country Z shouldn't have access to information Gamma, but what real difference will it make if they can google for it. There's a much greater chance of them screwing something up if they're evil than getting something right.
Weight that against the 1000's of corperations/individuals/research groups also looking at information Gamma and doing something promising, and google is, on average, doing a good service.
I have to google for facts that make our research institute run literally daily. Usually its simple stuff like " what the hell is bentonite and how much can we put in this beaker without breaking something." or "what the heck is this photoflo stuff. It works great for this demonstration experiment, but we can't find the bottle..." a short google later, and we have a home brew wetting agent made, in the tank, and making the flow over a glass edge laminar just as we wanted.
Biopiracy? Please: Communication is a *vital* part of the scientific method. Shure, 1/1000 it might bite someone in the ass. But without modern communication pathways, we wouldn't have all these cool toys or long lives in which to buy more toys.
That eye-patch treatment started a downward spiral in both eyes which has me with:
... hehe. I played quite seriously for about a year. Did wonders!
1. a bad perscription in both eyes
2. loss of color definition in my left (good) eye
3. inability to wear contacts for extended periods
4. occasional eye twitches in lazy eye when overused
5. inability to use right eye in viewfinders, sights, etc. (have to shoot rifles left handed)
As soon as the treatment was over, I went from 20/20 to loosing my distance vision. I never got back the color response in my left (good) eye. now.
The only thing that helped a lot resently was RTCW.
At least it wasn't "Buttle". ;)
At least it didn't make the front page like the last 6 "ps3 delayed" announcements....
er... sorry, the "1" ps3 delayed admission, and the "5" announcments of rumors that it may be delayed.
I really do want to know what chip the rev has... I couldn't wait any longer though and finally bought a game cube. Actually my very first ever new game console. I had a aged fleamarket bought NES for a while (got it when the SNES was old and the dreamcast had just came out.)
"Let the flood of *I challenge you to hack me* ip posts begin...
:( )
You can start with this one: XX.XX.XXX.XXX.
(Man... I just didn't have the heart to post it.
" We have to resort to actually crippling the devices to keep people from being idiots."
and this is new how?
cell phones already come crippled in some cases (verizon, cingular, all at fault). windows definatly is crippled. cars have been known to be crippled by revlimiting and seed limiting.
i'd rather have crippling to prevent idiothood then crippling to get a better profit.
Han is my Hero (and did shoot the green smelly guy first. )
Agreed.... It was amazing how much of a difference of opinions I have compared to my news watching/broadcast TV enthralled cohorts.
The biggest thing I've noticed is that the media does a very good job of staying "memoryless". It is tough for someone watching the news day to day to keep in mind all the past bits. Its much eaisier to get a bunch of news all at once.
Take this example:
Man A is called a Gay. He is plastered on TV for it, and files a civil suit against the accuser. Its in the news for a month or so. Soon after that, Man A probably couldn't even go to Publix without being reccognized. And labeled. Regardless of whether or not it was true.
If a year later, Man A is videotaped saving a woman from a burning building and it makes the 11:00 news, then suddenly, Man A is known for months as "hey you're that All-American-Guy who rescued that woman!".
Now there's two interesting things here:
1. If no one from the news agencies looks up his history (on google, or AP search or whatever), then chances are it wont be brought back up.
2. We have to ask which "public" opinion is true? Is the man a Gay, a Hero, or both. (Nothing wrong with either I might add!!)
Can you see how media memory can effect reporting? I know that if a newsie anchor looked and saw the first appearence of Man A in archives, it owuld be brought up. But if they did't see it, it wouldn't be mentioned.
We're relying on Media Memory to make our opinions! We should be relying on our own!
Bush Clinton Clinton Bush Bush Clinton Clinton...
:(
Hehe... It would be a good span. At least easy to remember.
I can definatly agree at least in "feeling". Saw a cop shoot at a woman who was trying to run him down with her car the other day. I kept thinking through what I would have done if I'd had my 9mm ruger with me that afternoon. Although, I must say, that I think I wouldn't have missed as badly as he did.
New Dell Precision xDuo's have to be sent back for repairs twice as fast!
(We've had to stop buying dells, since Dell has their laptops about 2 weeks out of every months... jees!)
The HP duo Core's pretty nice. I'm leaning toward a new macbook (not pro, when they come out.) But have a sweet spot for the g4's.