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  1. The Best Store on What to Get My Geek for Valentine's Day? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's easy, almost anything from Think Geek

  2. Disadvantage of a dish on Cable TV Versus Satellite TV? · · Score: 1
    about two years ago my father was torn between cable and the dish, due to the steady pace of his monthly bills increasing.

    Finally he made the switch to the dish and loved it! All the channels, music, movies, porn and whatever else you could imagine.

    In the long run (twelve months later) he dropped the dish and went back to cable. If I remember correctly he did it prior to his contract being up.. I seem to remember a promotion that comcast was buying out (paying off the remaining contract for you) if you switched back... and he took it.

    Now don't get me wrong ... this wasn't a money issue. He didn't switch back since the cable compnay was offering this special... the switch simply made it easier.

    The two MAIN reasons for switching

    • No local channels - not sure if you could pay extra to have them, but I remember him needing to hookup rabbit ears in order to get the local channels.. wow.. 2003 and someone still using rabbit ears... I think he found them at the junk yard :)
    • Second and ever more of an issue - [picture this] sitting down at the tube, maybe even with a large group of people, watching intently of an important new bradcast from spirit - which has supposedly found life on Mars...the first braodcast coming live and >poof
    Now I have heard of other that have had the dish and microwave on opposite ends of the house and have had no problem, but damn! With current technology and the cost to have something that can be so easily interupted - that suck. In my fathers case he had no choice to have it counted outside the kitchen wall. But what happened if you live close enough to someone else.. what happens if they run a microwave?

    I hate comcast with a passion, but until I have a choice of cable providers I'll have stay with them (comcast).

  3. SCO DDOS on MyDoom Windows Worm DDoSing SCO · · Score: 1
    Quote:
    Obviously SCO has a lot of enemies out there right now, but it's always sad to watch someone stoop to this level.

    HUH? Stoop to this level? Hell - when I found out the virus was DDOSing SCO, I intentioanlly infected all of my machines with it! :)

    After all, it's the end goal that counts... not the means by which you get there.

  4. Recession Proofing on To Recertify, or Not Recertify? · · Score: 1
    I also have extensive background in various technical areas, and have the same issues. I have been able to apply these in some ways to my wife's business (Contracted Medical Transcriptionist). But I, as everyone else, want more.

    The more and more I think about it, and talk this issue over with my wife... we (yes, she also agrees and pushes my to do it)... we agree that pr0n may be the ticket. I good site takes someone with a wide variety of expertise, from routing, streaming, load balancing, securirty, SSL and much more. And best of all, all research that I've read (Consumer reports, profit margines, overhead, and non-bais articles from reports unrelated to the field) show that this business is recession proof. - No matter what the current standing of the economy, people pay for p0rn. They always squeeze it into their budget, regards of how broke or out-of-work they are.

    So if they are going to spend their money regardless... they might as well send it to us.

    Our biggest stumbling block with this is figuring out how to solicite folks, without spamming; which is soemthing that I absolutely refuse to do.

  5. Other companies do the same on Is Your Silver-based Thermal Paste Really Silver? · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I have always believed that many companies do these type of 'misleading' advertisements. Like BugerKing or McDonalds saying "100% pure ground beef"...[yeah right!] I have concluded that this means "Whatever amount of beef is in it, is 100% pure beef, the rest of the burger is something else." Therefore I think the reference of 100% beef is in regards to the beed content itself and not the burger as a whole.

    I see this as being the issue with the Silver as well. Though it seems in some cases theyy couldn't find any, though maybe the microgram of 99.99% pure silver that they added to it was to minut to detect?

  6. Worst Working Condition? on The Absolute Worst Working Environment? · · Score: 1

    I work with my mother-in-law.
    Try that for a single day, and then we'll take about work place hell.

  7. Re:Permanent base on moon on The Future of NASA · · Score: 1
    For a minute I thought I didn;'t read the article, therefore I went over it again... and it turns out I did read the article and correctly for that matter. Each of you are talking about heat and energy and possible needs to digging or nuclear reactors.. and being raped on energy bills. But a large portion of the original article stated that the moom is a floating Helium 3 (no pun intended)planet.. it has all the fuel for energy requirements that would ever be needed.It a 30 ton pay load brought back on the shuttle could provide the U.S. with electricity for a year, I think it could heat and energize a housing unit and some labatories.

    And while there might not be a ready supply of readily available water, they most certainly IS water available. So check out this article.

    Now with the water frozen states of water, an abundant fuel supply which will allow electricity and heat to be produced - which the heat can be unuse to unfreeze the water (would only need to develope and outer space frozen particle vacuum to collect the frozen water, bring inside, apply heat.. and you have water -- water yfor you and the plants.

    As far as sun light, again, the adbundant supply of energy would provide the electricity for the artifical sun lamp to keep the plants thriving. I mean really! How many people do you know that grown, um, 'plants' in their closet using heat lamps. No light for plants make it harder... not impossible.

  8. Permanent base on moon on The Future of NASA · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A permanent base on the moon is the only thing I strongly side with him (Bush) about. Personally a permanent base on the moon would have been a much more viable solution than the current space station.

    The costs of both the space station and a moon base would not be that different from one another. Though the moon base would have allowed for much larger living quarter, plant life for primary oxygen supply. Further plant life could have been that of vegtables and other garden eatery. Exercise room, A real bedroom

    Plus this would have allowed for daily sampling, atmospheric tests, and a wide variety of other scientific tests that the previous short lived manned mission to the moon could not have provided due to time constraints.

    With the recent issue of the space station losing air pressure due to a leak (I beleive was in the living quarters), could have been potentially deadly. While a moon base could have a stock of oxygen and food that is never touch that would last as long as they needed until help could arrived. If the space station were to lose air at a high rate or have severe structural damage.. hwo long do you think it would take to get there? Answer... Too Long!

  9. Re:hmmmm.... on Tom's Reviews Expensive, Noiseless Case · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While avoiding the $1,400 fee by attempting to relocate the cases out of audible range may initially sound like a great idea, not to mention less expensive, you eliminate the access of the system being readily available.

    ie: MS Office component not installed, please insert ms office cd and click 'ok'. I'd hate to run back and forth for such a thing.

    People want their pleasures with their convenience. And while it seems (by the current posts/threads) that the pleasures for most are spending the $1,400 on a hooker, some of us have the fortunate position to have married our hookers. So while our payments are much higher for these pleasures and last the remaining part of your life.

    ok, off track a little. If relocating the case is the more cost effective, then you'll need to have a cd server or other means readily avaiable.

    I do agree that $1,400 is not worth the pleasure of a quite office - but then what other solutions are feasible?

  10. Repost? on Yahoo and Unilateral Anti-Spam Technology? · · Score: 5, Informative
    We talked about this, in a previous post on Dec 06, 2003 here at /. concerning this.

    There were alot of vital ascpects to this point made in the previous article some of which are quite thought provoking!

    If you missed the previous thread, I hgihly recommended reading or even reading it.

  11. I see this too on Filter-foiling Gibberish Becoming A Spam Staple · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've been using "SpamBayes Outlook Plugin" since a previous /. article talked about it.

    Agreeing with this article, over the past week or two I have seen excessive about of spam being missed by SpamBayes, even after marking them as spam for improved filter, they continue to hit the inbox whereas previous absolutely no spam made my outbox. Additionally, there may have only been 2 or 3 emails marked as possible spam when they were not. And zero items mark as definite spam that were not.

    SpamBayes has worked great previously, but now even it is falling short.

    I feel as the spammers manipulate the conents/context of the spam, it will eventually become impossible to determine the difference without physically looking at 500+ email daily.
    My primary use of email is business and not personal, therefore I cannot risk missing a client email, payment, question, etc... I've also see a progression of clients having MY emails deleted or caught in spam filters due to the business aspect and requests for payments. I feel this is primarily due to the comparison of too-often-common-phrases that a spam email and a business email contain. Such things as Click here to submit payment, or Buy these Products, Overdue etc... Even though all clients I email are only clients that contact me. I never cold-email anyone.

    More spammer are using this random text as the only text in the subject and body, and using an image as the content of their email, which makes scanning even more complicated, if not impossible.

    Being on the net prior to what is is today (going on 20 years), I often wonder how much control the spam actually has over the net in several aspects

    • If spam were to disappear, will overhead costs decrease that greatly in order for ISP's to pass along higher saving to the consumer?
    • If Spam were to disappear completely, how much faster would the Internet be?
    Has anyone ever done a study to determine how much effect spam has on degrading the net, and what would it be like if all spam was gone tomorrow?
  12. What about professionals on Kodak To Stop Selling Film Cameras In U.S. · · Score: 1
    I also have never owned a film based camera (other than a disposable), but I have close friends that are professional photographers, and have ironically have won National Kodak Awards for their photography. Photographs produced by film based cameras.

    These same photographers have had several discussions concerning film vs digital, and it always ends in film still being far superior.

    I personally an not photographic expert, but isn't this comparable to shooting your own foot off?

    I could understand eliminating low-end typical consumer type camera, but why eliminate the film based line completely? Continue producing the high-end cameras for the serious photographer - the same photographers that help Kodak become the Kodak they are today!

  13. Previous /. discussion on Apartment Lit Solely by LEDs · · Score: 2, Informative
    We touch on this previously in this article Though previously concerning three other companies

    Kopin Corp
    Color Kinetics
    Luminus Devices

    The biggest issue was the overhead of the LED for the residential aspects, whereas larger corporations may be better equipped financially to handle the current cost.

    To quote this article directly

    "The problem is cost. Like early computer chips, today's LEDs are still too expensive to spark mass adoption. "You could replace a 100-watt light bulb with a 60-watt LED, and get the same brightness," says John Fan, chairman and founder of Kopin Corp., a Taunton company that makes LEDs. "You'd save 40 percent on power, but it would cost about $100. We need to bring that price down.""

    Personally that is far outside of my price range. At that rate I'd be replacing one household bulb each year... hmmm.. I should have my entire house finsihed when I'm about 87 years old. And by that time I'll be blind and won't need lights anyway.

  14. Epoch, Tick, Wall Time & Wrap Around on 100 Years of Macintosh · · Score: 3, Informative

    The time and
    date corresponding to 0 in an operating system's clock and
    timestamp values. Under most Unix versions the epoch is
    00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970; under VMS, it's 00:00:00 of
    November 17, 1858 (base date of the US Naval Observatory's
    ephemerides); on a Macintosh, it's the midnight beginning
    January 1 1904. System time is measured in seconds or ticks
    past the epoch. Weird problems may ensue when the clock wraps
    around which is not necessarily a rare
    event; on systems counting 10 ticks per second, a signed
    32-bit count of ticks is good only for 6.8 years. The
    1-tick-per-second clock of Unix is good only until January 18,
    2038, assuming at least some software continues to consider it
    signed and that word lengths don't increase by then.

    Wall Time is the `Real world' time
    (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed to the system clock's
    idea of time. The real running time of a program, as opposed to
    the number of ticks required to execute it (on a timesharing
    system these always differ, as no one program gets all the ticks,
    and on multiprocessor systems with good thread support one may get
    more processor time than real time).

    Wrap Around of a counter that starts over at zero or
    at `minus infinity' (see infinity) after its maximum value has
    been reached, and continues incrementing, either because it is
    programmed to do so or because of an overflow (as when a car's
    odometer starts over at 0).

  15. Sister inlaw on Weird Presents Anyone? · · Score: 1

    What a weird coincidence to read this... especially since I just got off the phone with my wife's sister and her common-law husband bought her a kitchen trash can for Christmas.

    I would've shove it up his chimney!

  16. Re:Save your money. Give a 486 a job... on Build a Multi-Output MP3 Server? · · Score: 1

    I second the DIBS on those ummm 'junk' systems

    And I'll see your shipping cost and raise you another shipping cost.

    With six kids, I'm always looking for more PC's so that I to finally have enough to go around...

  17. Re:Why is cable unique? on Cable TV A La Carte Part 2 · · Score: 1

    If my cable COMPLETE 'digital' cable service and broadband only cost me $15.00 I won't care. Actually my newpaper is $13.00/mo - my cable on the other hand runs me $99 for digital plus and broadband. NO premium channels (HBO, Starz, Max, etc...). Therefore when the local newpaper increases their fee to $99 /mo.. then YES. I will request and expect to get only the sections that I desire in order to lower my cost.

  18. To what extent does this go? on Cable TV A La Carte Part 2 · · Score: 1
    After all the reading, both current and previous articles... to what extent does this A LA Carte go? Is it possible to order just four channels from them? Or must I get the minimum package and then A LA Carte only the premium channels?

    After everything I read I haven't really found a concrete answer, and I know the Cable company sure in hell won't enlighten me :)

  19. CUPS on CUPS Security Vulnerabilities · · Score: 3, Funny
    An exploitation recently discovered in CUPS has globally rocked and baffled the scientific industry.

    It appears that a vulnerability has been found whereby a malicious user can covertly attach a second string to the midsection of the two originating CUPS and 'tap' into the communication between CUP "A" and CUP "B".

    Furthermore, said user can attach a third CUP to the end of his/her string and receive a secondary branch off of all data vibrating bwteen the two original CUPS.

    Saavy users can then vocally mimic the voice data being picked up and assume the identity of either CUP "A" or CUP "B".

    Agency around the world have been placed on full alert as they scramble for a patch to this unforseen security hole!

  20. Re:facial recognition on New Software Secures Data when Owners Walk Away · · Score: 1

    This may also be out of the question within the near future. I base this on the November 28th Story posted here on /. which states "Face Transplants on the way..."

  21. Re:New cubicle on New Software Secures Data when Owners Walk Away · · Score: 1

    Yes I did read the article!

    It says you can set the password, but nothign of the capabilities to change/modify it at a later date.

    Additionally, even though the token contains the 'Master' key, the answer to the request is still being trasmitted. Therefore it would essentially be possible to copy the transmission and 'play it back' to the systems requests that are announced at one second intervals.

    As long as you can capture the transmission, transmitting the play-back wouldn't be an issue.

  22. New cubicle on New Software Secures Data when Owners Walk Away · · Score: 1

    So all the guy/gal in the next cubicle has to do is monitor the IR transmission/receiver and copy your key... or am I missing something?

    Can you occassionally change your key?

    I don't like this idea, being that these 'products' give your employer a more solid ground to say "It must have been you that deleted the files and crashed the server with the worm you released after we gave you a bad QA assesment." Afterall, it had to be you... your the only one with "The Crypto Key".

    How would you prove it otherwise that it wasn't you?

    I like my passwords, the ease of changing them increases my frequency of doing so. And for those that change their pwd's to easily remembered terms due to your lack of brain power - Well then you deserve what you get. If you can't remember a password, and have the ability to remember that password as it changes every few days or weeks - then you shouldn't be sitting at a computer to begin with. I constantly change my passwords and use a different password for nearly 30+ things... all password are no less then 11 or 12 highly mixed random characters. And while I am no idiot, I am far from having a photographic memory. So as the old dieters solgan goes... "If I can do it, so can you"

  23. Are the really making money... on Old Age Simulator · · Score: 1

    Are they really making money on this 'suit'?
    Why would you want to "feel" what arthitis is like? Hell, I have a 20 lb sledgehammer that will let you feel what a broke leg feels like :) Maybe I should remarket the sledge hammer (slightly modified) and patent it and get these people to sell it with their suits.

  24. This happened in the past on Scientists Don't Read the Papers They Cite · · Score: 1

    One of the most famous cases of this, IMHO, that is STILL widely mistaken in the public eye is the case of the almightly muscle building Spinach. When the case study was completed on spinach the decimal point was misplaced, making spinach appear to have a super potentcy.

    This became even more wide spread with the use of spinach by Popeye (which got it's original use of spinach from this report). The two coupled in together became a 'norm' of knowledge in the public. Even though science has since correct this misplaced decimal, all most everyone that'd you still ask today would not know the correction and still beleive spinach is the 'power fuel/food' of muscle building, prtien and iron. And while it DOES contain more then average levels, it is no where near what it was once thought to contain.

  25. Re:When Slashdot attacks on When Users Attack · · Score: 3, Funny
    We should visit the other 229 users websites as well. Eventually they'll need to either cancel ALL of them too, or simply deal with it until the /.'ing has slowed.

    Possibly 100,000 + email would give them a hint. and 100,000 more hits to 229 unique domain... let's see how their systems handle 22,900,000 hits. :)