that sounds like a very reasonably point. Do the rules and regulations of the courtroom explicitly state this? What reasoning is offered in the existing body or law or in defense of the practice as it stands. As legal contracts and rights-licensing issues become more invasive in today's society, should 'bad law' (or contract or any other legal document) be written so badly as to be indecipherable to a group of 12 mature adults? I'm not suggesting that we make every contract a dick-and-jane story for the lowest-common denominator, but can't we get contracts written in plain english. Is there a precident for this or somewhere in the juror's rules of conduct. Does someone explicitly say that the legal system can filter what amount of 'relevant' information gets passed through to the jury. Laws are the rules of our society. And they need to be understood. Not just by the people that write them, but by the people who are agree to be governed by them. I for one like to know what the government around me can do. I like to know how the leaders and programs I support are affecting my world. I don't fear bad cops, I fear bad law....just a thought
(no disrespect to the good folks of defendbrooklyn.com. I lived there for a while and still love that place, but yeah it's a tough town some blue nights. fulton sq.=missing ya. this is a real bad cop)
congratulations! now go off into the wild and fork lots of child_processes... or not if that's not your bag. Either way, we all wish you joy without end. And I'm sure your buds at blockstackers will forgive you for inviting so many guests to the reception-server and reducing it you a pile of smoking slashdot'ed slag. whoohoo!
I would have to venture that the idea here is to get new computer buyers (who we can therefore assume do not have an encompasing understanding of DRM, the legalities of file-sharing, etc...) latched into this turn-key system. I'm sure that whatever tool they're using to front-end this initiative has DRM dripping off the edges and will allow you to rip your own music to their proprietary (read:can't take it no-where else and don't even think about trying to share it P2P) format and get the user's locked in. Someone has taken a hint from M$ and is looking to get the 'Embrace and Extend' initiative rolling in the music world. Now you may call me cynical, but I highly doubt that this tool will play nicely with standard P2P tools. Would you put it past someone like PressPlay to have any mp3's touched by the system either re-encoded in a DRM-friendly format with minimal warning to the user (click here to import all you files into the PressPlay AudioVault of Doom...) or some obnoxious and legaly-questionable click-wrap aggreement that consists of 15 pages of legal bum-fodder that allows them to show up at your house in the middle of the night, rape your dog, kick your grandmother down the stairs and flag all the audio files on your machine with a unique fingerprint that gets matched with your machine ID and therefore your RW identity... hmm, Little Timmy has been uploading his Smurfs Christmas Album to Sweet Suzie. RIAA, sic'em!) {/sarcasm} Anyhow, I cannot fault Gateway for trying to provide their customers a value-added item like this (like smallpox to the Native-Americans...) I see this as becoming a troubling trend as more companies with DRM products start co-branding with big names in the PC field and set this plague loose on the face of the planet. In the meantime, I'll stick with my ogg-vorbis/mp3 server running linux.
and since the slashdot 'junk' filter is preventing me from posting the text of FatWallet's public announcement of their intent to challenge the Wal-Mart subpeona on the basis of the DMCA, I'll just have to provide you with the link and hope that FatWallet has FatServers...
I can only hope that this case gets enough media attention to make Wal-Mart lovin' Joe Sixpack stand up and take notice that this whole DMCA thing affects him as well. I would also like to think that this will be a good case to showcase how over-reaching and prone to abuse laws like this are. If anyone finds any more links about how FatWallet.com is persuing this case/counter-suit please post 'em here!. So far all I found was this http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/spew4th.pl?ascribei d=20021202.112004&time=11%2043%20PST&year=2002&pub lic=1 at ascribe.org.
Here's something to think about. In the event of an 'Information Warfare'-type attack generated by a hostile entity (Iraq, The Taliban, North Korea, Richard Simons... etc.), what do you do? In the case of a DDoS attack, would you try to isolate the thousands of zombie nodes spewing bad traffic or SYN packets or shut down the control-channel (often IRC or some other mechanism). If you thought thousands of badly admin'ed MTA's in china gave you headaches with spam, what happens when some hotshot cranks out a new DDoS package and melts your routers off their racks? I have horrible visions of something out of Brazil with FBI/NSA/HomelandSecurity/KeystoneKops kicking down the doors at NOC's around the country and shutting down IRC servers or pushing Tier-1 providers to shut down particular types of traffic. Call me cynical but I doubt that MaeEast-West would have the cohones to stand up to a squad of MP's led by Ashcroft brandishing the Homeland Security Act. Take this a step further, what happens when Dubya decides to throw weight with the countries in the middle-east that provide/sell terestrial bandwidth to said 'Axis of [Electronic] Evil'. I remember my mother being in Chinatown the day of the Tienamen Square massacre, people were running around with photocopies of faxes and e-mailed lists of the injured and on-the-spot reports. The deluge of information that managed to get out was because people were able to bypass the government's news-blackout. That was a country trying to hide it's internal operations from the global community, could our government justify such actions in the name of 'Stamping out Terrorism' or bringing a hostile government system down? I don't have a good feel for how completely we shut down the information/telcom infrastructre when we went into Iraq last time. News got out, cleaned up by press pools and government-directed self-censorship of the general media outlets, but did we really turn Iraq into an information dead-zone? (please, if anyone has any good links, post a reply and include 'em!) I can understand the military strategy behind denying your enemy any information except what you allow (Machivelli was writing about this half a millenia ago), but what happens when you are able to do this to an entire country. I can understand the need to put a lid on a farm of military backed 5cr1pt-K1ddes, but who prevents it from happening in our own backyard next time... hmmm
please tell me you're kidding... hairspray is an aerosol laquer and while I've used it for everything from dulling chrome on photo-shoots to protecting pastel and soft-chalk artwork, I doubt it works very well to protect the surface of CDs. If you have found some hairspray brand which dries with a hard enough surface to protect the clear plastic surface of the CD, is transparent enough not to cause read errors, and doesn't attract/stick dirt any worse than they already do, please let us know. Otherwise I'll keep the Aquanet in the medicine cabinet and stick to my GameDoctor and Novus thank-you-very-much....
Having just finished moving my parents out of the house they have lived in for 20+ years (how many people do that anymore, last I heard, the average american family relocates every 2-3 years...) I spent a fair amount of time documenting the house itself, it's contents and it's history. The homestead (as I like to refer to it...) was built in the early 1800's by the same person who built the structure which is now the town's Historical Society property. This allowed us to cross-reference the floor-plans and construction styles between our house which had undergone many renovations over the years, and a house that had been left more-or-less intact. I also went through the house and took pictures of each room including each of the walls, and any other unique structures (ie: the beehive oven in the basement, the hand-carved mouldings in the parlor, the original fan-light over the front door, etc...) or additions (the safe we hid in a wall durring reconstruction of two rooms). These pictures were all taken with a consumer-grade digital camera (Canon A20) so I do not have high hopes for them insofar as reconstructing QTVR or anything like that. However I think that combined with the detailed floor-plans, I have more than enough information to build a rough 3D model at some point in the future if I ever decide to embark on that little adventure. We have archived all this information with the local historical society for public use (minus any private details... such as the safe) and I guess our involvement in the house is at an end. But I like to think that if my children ever want to know what the house I grew up in looked like, I can give them a good idea of what it was, and what made it so unique. As far as the methodology for storing any information you collect in the process of documenting the household you are responsible for, please try and keep to open formats, and if possible, only touch the originals once. If you are willing to put the time and effort into archiving all the paperwork yourself, I would have to suggest investing in (or building yourself) a basic copy-stand. Such a rig will allow you to capture images (digital or film, tho' I would suggest digital, simply based on the per-image cost of handling film development) with a minimum of external variables, which may be increasingly important if you are working with color subjects. I would also suggest that you be prepared to spend a fair ammount of time creating a multi-layer catalog for all the information you produce. Once you have removed the subjects from the physical realm and transfered them to digital representations, you lose the physical orientation and placement that helps keep them referenced to each other. Each item should be given a unique ID and a full record made of where it was originally located, what it was bundled with, any clues or physical cues that lead you to assume it's age, origin, provenance, etc... If you wish to make this information 'useful' to the next person who wishes to search through it, you must provide as much information as possible. I would suggest getting in touch with your local historical society, or even looking farther afield to a profesional archivist for suggestions or assistance in planing the process before anything is disturbed. As always, keep multiple backups in separate locations and be prepared to learn more than you ever thought you could ever find out about the people who's lives passed through those doors. Best of luck to you, and don't forget to use acid-free paper (and CD's...)
so users who shirk defined job responsibilities can foist the blame onto their unknowing IT departments? I find that pill a little hard to swallow. I would however examine the chain of decisions that allowed the implementation of what would appear to be an 'unsupported' FS for what is valuable, if not critical data.
Note: Now I know that ReiserFS is an actual standard with a vocal and dedicated following, and it servers a useful purpose being a journaling alternative to ext3. But if it cannot be accomodated in your disaster recovery plan, it would have to be considered 'unsupported' against that measure.
All in all, I would have to agree that the critical misstep was in the bailwick of IT, but I would hesitate to call it a failure in execution, it was a failure in planning, which has deeper roots in project management and communication.
But hey, someone's gonna burn some oil trying to get back those numbers. good luck to the original poster.
I have to voice my personal preference for small rodents. My GF and I picked out a cute little russian hamster about two months ago and I'm quite smitten with the furry little creature. And I have to say that having a pet with the same schedule (nocturnal) is a boon. We've got him a hamster-ball and he takes great joy in doing laps around the living room and the rest of the house. Plan on a 2-year life span and expect to clean out the cage 1-2 times a week. He's a great little furry companion and he also enjoys chess. What more can you ask for in a geek-friendly pet.
No matter what you decide, make sure that you understand what you're getting into and are willing to make the commitment to a creature that for better or worse, will be dependant on you for the rest of it's life. Ask questions, choose wisely, and don't forget, there is a special hell for people who neglect their pets.
I would have to suggest that you prove yourself as a mature and rational member of your physical community and move/adjust the camera in a way to appease your neighboors. I would show them that you respect people's personal boundries, and perhaps gain a measure of dignity for the larger community of sky-watchers/geeks/whatevers in that person's eyes. Don't resort to hiding behind the word of law. Be proactive and keep the peace. you might get a little more respect from them in the future when something gets under your skin.
yeah, RTFM... or change your viewing threshold to something to keep out the trolls (1 is usually pretty safe), check of the "save" box and then click change. or you can get really creative in your user prefernces and edit your own weighting for different moderation selections....
I openly admit that I do not fully understand all the issues which Mr. Lawrie is trying to address in his push to ensure that there is a capable, competent, lawful management of the.za TLD going forward. However, I have to ask what kind of response we would see from ICANN... Are we looking at a complete backout of.za? Will this be an across-the-board version of the Usenet Death Penalty or just saber-rattling and name-calling among those involved. From what we have seen here, it does appear that the South-African Department of Communication has it's head in it's arse, but as an arm of the government, it may be impossible to prevent them from the heavy-handed actions they appear to have endorsed with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill. Does anyone have any information on what the ICANN (or anyone else for that matter...) is saying/thinking/doing about this? I for one would be very interested in this. how often do you get to watch a pissing match over a TLD... the mind recoils in horror.
as an avid paintball player and a paintball ref, I have two things to say to that...
1) your college will most likely treat it as a firearm (ie ban you from campus housing, if not kicked out or prosecuted...)
2) you deserve whatever you get for it.
paintball gets enough of a bad rap as-is without someone else doing something stupid and putting other people at risk. check your local laws and get in touch with the fact that in most places, while a paintball gun does not qualify as a 'firearm' in the letter of the law (no propelant is ignited), you can be charged with possesion / assault with a 'deadly weapon'. I can only hope that the only people injured in the event of a discharge would be the pud-lick who used it outside of a properly protected and managed paintball game.
here's something to swing by your boss, see if he has got someone else in management who's willing to hold onto a copy of your analysis in a CYA capacity for archival purposes. Explain that it was brought up before and was not seen as 'vital', but you would like to provide some basic CYA for your group. Handle it as a purely CYA exercise, and downplay the doom & gloom angle. Have your boss E-mail your politely worded analysis to the MCSiE goober, Goober's boss, and your boss's buddy. Make sure you thank him afterwords. Goober knows that you've put your analysis into the corporate meme-sphere, and Corner Office dude is likely to be impressed by your forward thinking and tact. In the best case, Goober gets the hint and lashes together at least a basic firewall. (and if it gets 0wn3d later, he's still going to have some serious shoveling to do if it doesn't address the bullet-points in your CYA of Networking Doom) Worst Case, the general network becomes kiddie-pr0n central, everyone who owns stock gets heated, and you have a documented paper-trail that keeps you out of harms way. Since you've already brought up the subject with the Goober's Boss and gotten a less than stellar reaction, further pursuit along that avenue may be interpreted as a petchulant code-geek on a witch-hunt. But maybe showing people that it worries you enough to handle it in a CYA manner will engender a self-preservation interest in folks. However, if your boss doesn't want to push this one, DO NOT pursue it on your own. That kind of thing is often construed as the work of someone who doesn't know when to hear the word 'NO' and is liable to get you branded as a troublemaker. Good luck.
I have to agree with you Track, I myself don't play MMORPG's, I don't care for the PK/Level_whoring that many MMORPGs 'devolve' into, I guess my interests fall into 3 categories; a) 'flat' multiplayer experiences like CS or Quake3:TA. (well defined game structures that are based primarily on skill, not on out-spending an opponent based on in-game development) b) old-school paper-RPGs (gameplay shared with a bunch of people/friends in a co-operative environment that rewards thought and cognitive skill... and a little hack'n'slash for fun!) c) single player RPGs (which invariably seem to be console/PC based (ie: final fantasy, Marathon, Deus Ex, etc... , are their any good self-run paper RPGs?)
I found The Sims to be interesting, and I will gladly admit that I redecorated my house a few times, learning about space management and the immportance of a good book-case to prevent kitchen-fires, however I didn't care for it as much as I did for any of the original Marathon trilogy. That was a game with intrigue, character development (not the player's character so much as the AI's that drove the story) and plot. We all look for different 'experiences' in our leisure time. I have friends who enjoy recreational drugs, making their own music, martial arts, art, cooking, porn, competitive sports, programming, MMORPGs, ADD (et al) and countless other pursuits. Everyone finds something that satisfies them as an individual. Companies cater to these needs (face it, you do not need 95%+ of what you see in your local 'big box' retailer) and aim their products at things they think we like spending our time doing. My belief, as stated in my first post, is that attempting to develop a syncronicity between 'The Sims' and the 'MMORPG market' will be difficult. And without altering a large portion of what makes 'The Sims' such a popular 'simulation tool' (as Maxis likes to label their products) I think that they are not going to appeal to the target market of power-gamers who make 'EverQuest' and 'UltimaOnline' such financial successes. I also recall that 'The Sims' had a fairly robust system that automatically generated an exportable HTML scrapbook/photo-album/family-journal of the major events in the lives of your Sims. People created houses that told stories, dark tales of death and drownings (and the funeral urns over the mantle...) and swingin' batcholer pads that had hanging gardens and would host pool parties for the whole neighborhood. Perhaps they are looking to make that aspect the selling point. Who knows, but having played most of the Maxis titles at one point or another, I wish them the best of luck. And don't forget to clean up after the hamster...;)
I think inkfox is in the dark about how Diablo has already been ported for the original playstation. And apparently it got fairly good reviews, so you could argue that it's a good landmark for how a PC-based RPG made a graceful transition to a console title. However many of the people I know got addicted to playing Diablo as a (m)morpg, and the console version supports only a basic two-player version. I personally can't see myself playing a(m)morpg sim game like 'The Sims'. Everquest and it's ilk seem to be the 'killer-app' for mmorpg's and they do it very well, because they reward players for working together for short-term rewards and long-term gain. The system also has an inherent, "my Palidian is bigger than yours!" ego-stroke factor with the upgradable array of quasi-unique items and the structured leveling system. You play to improve your character (both XP and GP) and then take on new, more challenging enemies. On the other hand, games like The Sims reward intellectual gameplay based on long-term development and more qualitative goals; build a pretty house (what do you consider 'pretty'?), develop lots of positive relationships with NPCs, build some skills, budget time for work/play, etc. I always found that I could pop open the sims for 'just 10 minutes' (which invariably becomes 30...) but I will sit down for a good chunk with an RPG (to date I think most of my playstation RPG sessions were at least 30 minutes, if not more like 1hr +...) Without adding a new 'competitive' aspect to The Sims, or building a structured points/leveling/neighboorhood/my_sims_need_therapy system, I find it difficult to imagine that they will find the online version will get the same rabid response from the gaming community that drove the original single-player 'The Sims' to blockbuster status on the PC. This isn't to say that I don't love The Sims, but I think that it is going to take some serious re-tooling of the game's underlying goals and concepts to produce a (m)morpg that will sell to the online-console-gamer market.
As pgrote has said, certifications tend to be a cyclical thing and typically promote bandwagon mentality. (And to the 'truly technical', certs are often viewed as 'redundant'). However as someone who has fought for employment solely on the vagaries of my 'experience', it can be hard to get in the door and prove your skills to those 'truely technical' folks without the certs that HR and head-hunters like to flog. With two years of co-op and a BS CS under your belt, I have to believe that you would not find it a difficult exercise to study up on your own and (as much as I hate to say it...) take a MSCE test or two. a) you get a plaque(yes, it's analgous to tooth decay) from MS saying that you've got some basic quantitative skills. HR and PHB weenies get off things like this. b) and if you pick up a certification in something that complements your existing skills you've made yourself even more valuable to a prospective employer.
This is just my take on how things operate in the market I've been working in, but I'd imagine that it's fairly universal in it's mechanics. If you still find yourself stimied in your job hunt, you might want to seriously examine the posibility of relocating. From your description, I would hazard that coming out of a BS-degree program, you do not have any massive financial responsiblities (ie: mortgage, lease, 2-kids&dog) so this period may afford you flexability to relocate to a market where your skills are in higher demand and the lack of certs will be less likely hamper your job search. Good luck in this, and keep us posted.
well, if you're really going for a simple/lo-tek/ghetto solution, check out sculpey polymer modeling compound. It's easy to find, simple to work with, non-toxic, and once you bake it, you're all set. The only immediate draw-backs are the fact that you're going to have to pre-form at least a starting hole for any screw-mounts (unless you want to get fancy and use pre-tapped cores...) and your project may end up looking like a bad craft project. Then again, I have to suggest it for simple DIY factor and simplicity. Shape, trim, bake @ 250, done!. But then again that's just my 2 cents and I already use it for some craft projects, so YMMV. I do have to agree that there are some nice 'professional' resources that are now available to hobbyists with the expansion of 3-D printing and virtualization for one-offs and short-run, but for ~$2 an ounce, you can't beat sculpey for a fast and dirty way to mock a case. A friend of mine did a replacement faceplate for his old Nokia and was offered $60 for it. go figure...
I can see this turning into a larger trend. Remember 'Bang the Machine' a film that some people put together to cover the 'deep' end of StreetFighter tournaments? I believe it got shown on SXSW... Believe it or not these guys play deep strategy, out-psych their opponents, and generally play at the edge of the game's envelope. It was supposed to be a surprising good look into the guys who play the game at the grand-master level and the 'culture' that has formed around them.
now...
try that with pong . .. .. . didn't think so... but in the meantime, check out slime volleyball!
Belkin OmniView SOHO KVM-(google is your friend)
on
Mutant USB K(V)M Switches?
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· Score: 4, Informative
If you don't already have at least a basic video switchbox or basic HDI-15 & dual ps2 KVM, you might as well throw the money and do it right. We're doing this at the office for some secretarial luser who needs both a W2K and Mac box. We picked up one of the Belkin Omniview SOHO 4's and had no problem hooking it up to both platforms. I've also heard that it works with linux (at least on a RH7.0 install someone had...YMMV)
Well, mach-5, I hate to add another negative voice to the chorus, but yeah, the disk is fsck'ed. If you can't fsck it with the standard commercial recovery packages, you are also fsck'ed. But the first thing you hear when you get a warm body on the other end of the Iomega Hotline will be, "we'll replace the media, but we can't be responsible for the data." And as unkind as it may sound, they're right. Check your documentation, it says it right there. the drive can grind it's happy little heads through your magnum opus, negating all those thousands of hours of grad-school, and all you're going to get out of Iomega is a new disk. That's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be. Every piece of mass-storage equipment in my house and office has a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) which is a fanciful metric that tells you how often you can expect said piece of HW to go tits-up and die. Iomega knows that their storage solutions have these limitations, and they inform you of this up front, with that MTBF rating. Jaz drives are great for backups, but you can't expect them to last forever, and you're a fool if you think that Murphy's law isn't hiding around the corner looking to fubar your day. You cannot expect Iomega to take responsibility for every cartridge they produce, no matter what conditions it is exposed to. It is not Iomega's job to ensure that they can recovery everything that is every put onto those spinning platters. I do not know of any company that has that kind of a guarantee, and I'd be very wary of a company that promised it could. Entropy will always increase, and 3am hardware failure can deliver more entropy than you can shake a stick at. None of this does you any good in your present position, but just like any other emotional tradgedy, there are steps and goals to help you with coping. Don't hate Iomega, how old was that disk, how much use had it gotten? Was it something you re-wrote over every evening to transfer stuff from work to home? Unless it died right out of the box (right on the leading edge of the bathtub-curve) you got at least some measure of use out of it, and Iomega succeded in delivering a product that worked. I know people who have used the same Jaz cartridge for 5+ years, millions of cycles, without incident. Others have had bad media that went south in a week. Iomega is not to blame for the statistical blip that you were on the receiving end of, and there is almost nothing they can do for you at this point. I'm not trying to push responsibility onto you for the failure, but you can't really blame Iomega, and they are not going to eat the recovery cost for the data. And that brings us to the next step, recovering your data. This is something you're going to have to pay for out of your own pocket, and you probably want to analyize your options before you start writing checks. There are several companies that do drive recovery and have a 'free-evaluation' process. You ship them the drive, they tell you how much cash to cough up to recovery it. This gives you an option to decided if all that pr0n is really worth $4000 of your student loan money. I would suggest talking to someplace like Accurate Data Recovery, Flat Rate Data Recovery or some other place that isn't liable to hand you a $3000+ bill for pulling the data. note: I have no experience or interest in these companys. YMMV, do your homework, google.com is your friend. All else fails, rip off the housing, drill a hole in the platter and nail it to the wall in your data center. This may act as a gruesome deterent to the other equipment in the room and keep them in line. Good luck.
if you're looking for tips and tricks for handling the infamous clear stuff, check out the people who do custom aquariums. I found in my few forays into the field (thank god for a schitzophrenic art education...) that to make really nice seamless structures you're going to want heat, and plenty of it. it's fast and dirty to throw some aquarium epoxy on mating edges and call it a day, but a single seamless piece will really stand out in a sea of imitations. Buy yourself up a good heat gun (sometimes refered to as a paint-stripping gun), a blowtorch with a removeable fishtail spreader, and some good sturdy sheet steel to use as a working surface when playing with fire. note: a medium-level blowtorch flame will alow you to 'flame-polish' the edges of your plexi creation. once you get good at this and can do it with one even pass you'll love the results. it's the same concept as you use when flame-polishing glass. The fishtail spreader is good for applying heat to a larger area if you don't have a proper electric heat gun. Expect to make some pretty gruesome mistakes the first few tries. Start making some basic shapes, 90 degree bends and such, with small chunks of plexi. Once you get decent with that, work up to longer bends (not large radius bends, but wider pieces). A friend of mine swears by making jigs out of lengths of thin steel rod (1/8 - 1/4 dia.) and shaping the plexi over it. Always work in well ventilated areas and don't rush the process. it's not as difficult as glass-blowing, but it still requires a lot of patience to get even surface temperatures on large expanses of the stuff. As a 1st real project, I would suggest taking a PC chassis with removeable side and front panels, and create a single piece of plexi that 'wraps' from one side, across the front (use drill bits and a dremel to cut your drive openings) and around the other side. trim off any excess sheet metal from the chassis, and you're all set. Good luck and keep us posted as far as your results.
Slashdot Mirror
that sounds like a very reasonably point. Do the rules and regulations of the courtroom explicitly state this? What reasoning is offered in the existing body or law or in defense of the practice as it stands. As legal contracts and rights-licensing issues become more invasive in today's society, should 'bad law' (or contract or any other legal document) be written so badly as to be indecipherable to a group of 12 mature adults? I'm not suggesting that we make every contract a dick-and-jane story for the lowest-common denominator, but can't we get contracts written in plain english. Is there a precident for this or somewhere in the juror's rules of conduct. Does someone explicitly say that the legal system can filter what amount of 'relevant' information gets passed through to the jury. ...just a thought
Laws are the rules of our society. And they need to be understood. Not just by the people that write them, but by the people who are agree to be governed by them.
I for one like to know what the government around me can do. I like to know how the leaders and programs I support are affecting my world.
I don't fear bad cops, I fear bad law.
(no disrespect to the good folks of defendbrooklyn.com. I lived there for a while and still love that place, but yeah it's a tough town some blue nights. fulton sq.=missing ya. this is a real bad cop )
congratulations! now go off into the wild and fork lots of child_processes... or not if that's not your bag.
Either way, we all wish you joy without end. And I'm sure your buds at blockstackers will forgive you for inviting so many guests to the reception-server and reducing it you a pile of smoking slashdot'ed slag. whoohoo!
I would have to venture that the idea here is to get new computer buyers (who we can therefore assume do not have an encompasing understanding of DRM, the legalities of file-sharing, etc...) latched into this turn-key system. I'm sure that whatever tool they're using to front-end this initiative has DRM dripping off the edges and will allow you to rip your own music to their proprietary (read:can't take it no-where else and don't even think about trying to share it P2P) format and get the user's locked in. Someone has taken a hint from M$ and is looking to get the 'Embrace and Extend' initiative rolling in the music world.
Now you may call me cynical, but I highly doubt that this tool will play nicely with standard P2P tools. Would you put it past someone like PressPlay to have any mp3's touched by the system either re-encoded in a DRM-friendly format with minimal warning to the user (click here to import all you files into the PressPlay AudioVault of Doom...)
or some obnoxious and legaly-questionable click-wrap aggreement that consists of 15 pages of legal bum-fodder that allows them to show up at your house in the middle of the night, rape your dog, kick your grandmother down the stairs and flag all the audio files on your machine with a unique fingerprint that gets matched with your machine ID and therefore your RW identity... hmm, Little Timmy has been uploading his Smurfs Christmas Album to Sweet Suzie. RIAA, sic'em!)
{/sarcasm}
Anyhow, I cannot fault Gateway for trying to provide their customers a value-added item like this (like smallpox to the Native-Americans...) I see this as becoming a troubling trend as more companies with DRM products start co-branding with big names in the PC field and set this plague loose on the face of the planet.
In the meantime, I'll stick with my ogg-vorbis/mp3 server running linux.
and since the slashdot 'junk' filter is preventing me from posting the text of FatWallet's public announcement of their intent to challenge the Wal-Mart subpeona on the basis of the DMCA, I'll just have to provide you with the link and hope that FatWallet has FatServers...
FatWallet Challenges Abusive DMCA Claims and Protects Users' Privacy Rights
I can only hope that this case gets enough media attention to make Wal-Mart lovin' Joe Sixpack stand up and take notice that this whole DMCA thing affects him as well. I would also like to think that this will be a good case to showcase how over-reaching and prone to abuse laws like this are.i d=20021202.112004&time=11%2043%20PST&year=2002&pub lic=1 at ascribe.org.
If anyone finds any more links about how FatWallet.com is persuing this case/counter-suit please post 'em here!.
So far all I found was this http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/spew4th.pl?ascribe
Here's something to think about. In the event of an 'Information Warfare'-type attack generated by a hostile entity (Iraq, The Taliban, North Korea, Richard Simons... etc.), what do you do?
In the case of a DDoS attack, would you try to isolate the thousands of zombie nodes spewing bad traffic or SYN packets or shut down the control-channel (often IRC or some other mechanism). If you thought thousands of badly admin'ed MTA's in china gave you headaches with spam, what happens when some hotshot cranks out a new DDoS package and melts your routers off their racks? I have horrible visions of something out of Brazil with FBI/NSA/HomelandSecurity/KeystoneKops kicking down the doors at NOC's around the country and shutting down IRC servers or pushing Tier-1 providers to shut down particular types of traffic.
Call me cynical but I doubt that MaeEast-West would have the cohones to stand up to a squad of MP's led by Ashcroft brandishing the Homeland Security Act.
Take this a step further, what happens when Dubya decides to throw weight with the countries in the middle-east that provide/sell terestrial bandwidth to said 'Axis of [Electronic] Evil'. I remember my mother being in Chinatown the day of the Tienamen Square massacre, people were running around with photocopies of faxes and e-mailed lists of the injured and on-the-spot reports. The deluge of information that managed to get out was because people were able to bypass the government's news-blackout. That was a country trying to hide it's internal operations from the global community, could our government justify such actions in the name of 'Stamping out Terrorism' or bringing a hostile government system down? I don't have a good feel for how completely we shut down the information/telcom infrastructre when we went into Iraq last time. News got out, cleaned up by press pools and government-directed self-censorship of the general media outlets, but did we really turn Iraq into an information dead-zone? (please, if anyone has any good links, post a reply and include 'em!)
I can understand the military strategy behind denying your enemy any information except what you allow (Machivelli was writing about this half a millenia ago), but what happens when you are able to do this to an entire country.
I can understand the need to put a lid on a farm of military backed 5cr1pt-K1ddes, but who prevents it from happening in our own backyard next time... hmmm
please tell me you're kidding... hairspray is an aerosol laquer and while I've used it for everything from dulling chrome on photo-shoots to protecting pastel and soft-chalk artwork, I doubt it works very well to protect the surface of CDs.
If you have found some hairspray brand which dries with a hard enough surface to protect the clear plastic surface of the CD, is transparent enough not to cause read errors, and doesn't attract/stick dirt any worse than they already do, please let us know. Otherwise I'll keep the Aquanet in the medicine cabinet and stick to my GameDoctor and Novus thank-you-very-much....
Having just finished moving my parents out of the house they have lived in for 20+ years (how many people do that anymore, last I heard, the average american family relocates every 2-3 years...) I spent a fair amount of time documenting the house itself, it's contents and it's history. The homestead (as I like to refer to it...) was built in the early 1800's by the same person who built the structure which is now the town's Historical Society property. This allowed us to cross-reference the floor-plans and construction styles between our house which had undergone many renovations over the years, and a house that had been left more-or-less intact.
I also went through the house and took pictures of each room including each of the walls, and any other unique structures (ie: the beehive oven in the basement, the hand-carved mouldings in the parlor, the original fan-light over the front door, etc...) or additions (the safe we hid in a wall durring reconstruction of two rooms). These pictures were all taken with a consumer-grade digital camera (Canon A20) so I do not have high hopes for them insofar as reconstructing QTVR or anything like that. However I think that combined with the detailed floor-plans, I have more than enough information to build a rough 3D model at some point in the future if I ever decide to embark on that little adventure.
We have archived all this information with the local historical society for public use (minus any private details... such as the safe) and I guess our involvement in the house is at an end. But I like to think that if my children ever want to know what the house I grew up in looked like, I can give them a good idea of what it was, and what made it so unique.
As far as the methodology for storing any information you collect in the process of documenting the household you are responsible for, please try and keep to open formats, and if possible, only touch the originals once. If you are willing to put the time and effort into archiving all the paperwork yourself, I would have to suggest investing in (or building yourself) a basic copy-stand. Such a rig will allow you to capture images (digital or film, tho' I would suggest digital, simply based on the per-image cost of handling film development) with a minimum of external variables, which may be increasingly important if you are working with color subjects.
I would also suggest that you be prepared to spend a fair ammount of time creating a multi-layer catalog for all the information you produce. Once you have removed the subjects from the physical realm and transfered them to digital representations, you lose the physical orientation and placement that helps keep them referenced to each other. Each item should be given a unique ID and a full record made of where it was originally located, what it was bundled with, any clues or physical cues that lead you to assume it's age, origin, provenance, etc... If you wish to make this information 'useful' to the next person who wishes to search through it, you must provide as much information as possible.
I would suggest getting in touch with your local historical society, or even looking farther afield to a profesional archivist for suggestions or assistance in planing the process before anything is disturbed.
As always, keep multiple backups in separate locations and be prepared to learn more than you ever thought you could ever find out about the people who's lives passed through those doors.
Best of luck to you, and don't forget to use acid-free paper (and CD's...)
so users who shirk defined job responsibilities can foist the blame onto their unknowing IT departments?
I find that pill a little hard to swallow. I would however examine the chain of decisions that allowed the implementation of what would appear to be an 'unsupported' FS for what is valuable, if not critical data.
Note: Now I know that ReiserFS is an actual standard with a vocal and dedicated following, and it servers a useful purpose being a journaling alternative to ext3. But if it cannot be accomodated in your disaster recovery plan, it would have to be considered 'unsupported' against that measure.
All in all, I would have to agree that the critical misstep was in the bailwick of IT, but I would hesitate to call it a failure in execution, it was a failure in planning, which has deeper roots in project management and communication.
But hey, someone's gonna burn some oil trying to get back those numbers. good luck to the original poster.
I have to voice my personal preference for small rodents. My GF and I picked out a cute little russian hamster about two months ago and I'm quite smitten with the furry little creature. And I have to say that having a pet with the same schedule (nocturnal) is a boon. We've got him a hamster-ball and he takes great joy in doing laps around the living room and the rest of the house.
Plan on a 2-year life span and expect to clean out the cage 1-2 times a week. He's a great little furry companion and he also enjoys chess. What more can you ask for in a geek-friendly pet.
No matter what you decide, make sure that you understand what you're getting into and are willing to make the commitment to a creature that for better or worse, will be dependant on you for the rest of it's life. Ask questions, choose wisely, and don't forget, there is a special hell for people who neglect their pets.
bwahaa! mod[funny+1]!
I would have to suggest that you prove yourself as a mature and rational member of your physical community and move/adjust the camera in a way to appease your neighboors. I would show them that you respect people's personal boundries, and perhaps gain a measure of dignity for the larger community of sky-watchers/geeks/whatevers in that person's eyes.
Don't resort to hiding behind the word of law. Be proactive and keep the peace. you might get a little more respect from them in the future when something gets under your skin.
yeah, RTFM... or change your viewing threshold to something to keep out the trolls (1 is usually pretty safe), check of the "save" box and then click change. or you can get really creative in your user prefernces and edit your own weighting for different moderation selections....
I openly admit that I do not fully understand all the issues which Mr. Lawrie is trying to address in his push to ensure that there is a capable, competent, lawful management of the .za TLD going forward. However, I have to ask what kind of response we would see from ICANN... Are we looking at a complete backout of .za? Will this be an across-the-board version of the Usenet Death Penalty or just saber-rattling and name-calling among those involved.
From what we have seen here, it does appear that the South-African Department of Communication has it's head in it's arse, but as an arm of the government, it may be impossible to prevent them from the heavy-handed actions they appear to have endorsed with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill.
Does anyone have any information on what the ICANN (or anyone else for that matter...) is saying/thinking/doing about this? I for one would be very interested in this. how often do you get to watch a pissing match over a TLD... the mind recoils in horror.
as an avid paintball player and a paintball ref, I have two things to say to that...
1) your college will most likely treat it as a firearm (ie ban you from campus housing, if not kicked out or prosecuted...)
2) you deserve whatever you get for it.
paintball gets enough of a bad rap as-is without someone else doing something stupid and putting other people at risk. check your local laws and get in touch with the fact that in most places, while a paintball gun does not qualify as a 'firearm' in the letter of the law (no propelant is ignited), you can be charged with possesion / assault with a 'deadly weapon'.
I can only hope that the only people injured in the event of a discharge would be the pud-lick who used it outside of a properly protected and managed paintball game.
sidecutters are another name for what most people refer to as diagonal shears or dykes .
which may or may not prove useful in removing the leather pants if no one sent her a set of lockpicks...
here's something to swing by your boss, see if he has got someone else in management who's willing to hold onto a copy of your analysis in a CYA capacity for archival purposes. Explain that it was brought up before and was not seen as 'vital', but you would like to provide some basic CYA for your group.
Handle it as a purely CYA exercise, and downplay the doom & gloom angle.
Have your boss E-mail your politely worded analysis to the MCSiE goober, Goober's boss, and your boss's buddy. Make sure you thank him afterwords. Goober knows that you've put your analysis into the corporate meme-sphere, and Corner Office dude is likely to be impressed by your forward thinking and tact.
In the best case, Goober gets the hint and lashes together at least a basic firewall. (and if it gets 0wn3d later, he's still going to have some serious shoveling to do if it doesn't address the bullet-points in your CYA of Networking Doom)
Worst Case, the general network becomes kiddie-pr0n central, everyone who owns stock gets heated, and you have a documented paper-trail that keeps you out of harms way.
Since you've already brought up the subject with the Goober's Boss and gotten a less than stellar reaction, further pursuit along that avenue may be interpreted as a petchulant code-geek on a witch-hunt. But maybe showing people that it worries you enough to handle it in a CYA manner will engender a self-preservation interest in folks.
However, if your boss doesn't want to push this one, DO NOT pursue it on your own. That kind of thing is often construed as the work of someone who doesn't know when to hear the word 'NO' and is liable to get you branded as a troublemaker.
Good luck.
I have to agree with you Track, I myself don't play MMORPG's, I don't care for the PK/Level_whoring that many MMORPGs 'devolve' into, I guess my interests fall into 3 categories;
;)
a) 'flat' multiplayer experiences like CS or Quake3:TA. (well defined game structures that are based primarily on skill, not on out-spending an opponent based on in-game development)
b) old-school paper-RPGs (gameplay shared with a bunch of people/friends in a co-operative environment that rewards thought and cognitive skill... and a little hack'n'slash for fun!)
c) single player RPGs (which invariably seem to be console/PC based (ie: final fantasy, Marathon, Deus Ex, etc... , are their any good self-run paper RPGs?)
I found The Sims to be interesting, and I will gladly admit that I redecorated my house a few times, learning about space management and the immportance of a good book-case to prevent kitchen-fires, however I didn't care for it as much as I did for any of the original Marathon trilogy. That was a game with intrigue, character development (not the player's character so much as the AI's that drove the story) and plot. We all look for different 'experiences' in our leisure time. I have friends who enjoy recreational drugs, making their own music, martial arts, art, cooking, porn, competitive sports, programming, MMORPGs, ADD (et al) and countless other pursuits.
Everyone finds something that satisfies them as an individual. Companies cater to these needs (face it, you do not need 95%+ of what you see in your local 'big box' retailer) and aim their products at things they think we like spending our time doing. My belief, as stated in my first post, is that attempting to develop a syncronicity between 'The Sims' and the 'MMORPG market' will be difficult. And without altering a large portion of what makes 'The Sims' such a popular 'simulation tool' (as Maxis likes to label their products) I think that they are not going to appeal to the target market of power-gamers who make 'EverQuest' and 'UltimaOnline' such financial successes.
I also recall that 'The Sims' had a fairly robust system that automatically generated an exportable HTML scrapbook/photo-album/family-journal of the major events in the lives of your Sims. People created houses that told stories, dark tales of death and drownings (and the funeral urns over the mantle...) and swingin' batcholer pads that had hanging gardens and would host pool parties for the whole neighborhood. Perhaps they are looking to make that aspect the selling point. Who knows, but having played most of the Maxis titles at one point or another, I wish them the best of luck.
And don't forget to clean up after the hamster...
I think inkfox is in the dark about how Diablo has already been ported for the original playstation. And apparently it got fairly good reviews, so you could argue that it's a good landmark for how a PC-based RPG made a graceful transition to a console title. However many of the people I know got addicted to playing Diablo as a (m)morpg, and the console version supports only a basic two-player version.y system, I find it difficult to imagine that they will find the online version will get the same rabid response from the gaming community that drove the original single-player 'The Sims' to blockbuster status on the PC.
I personally can't see myself playing a(m)morpg sim game like 'The Sims'. Everquest and it's ilk seem to be the 'killer-app' for mmorpg's and they do it very well, because they reward players for working together for short-term rewards and long-term gain. The system also has an inherent, "my Palidian is bigger than yours!" ego-stroke factor with the upgradable array of quasi-unique items and the structured leveling system. You play to improve your character (both XP and GP) and then take on new, more challenging enemies.
On the other hand, games like The Sims reward intellectual gameplay based on long-term development and more qualitative goals; build a pretty house (what do you consider 'pretty'?), develop lots of positive relationships with NPCs, build some skills, budget time for work/play, etc.
I always found that I could pop open the sims for 'just 10 minutes' (which invariably becomes 30...) but I will sit down for a good chunk with an RPG (to date I think most of my playstation RPG sessions were at least 30 minutes, if not more like 1hr +...) Without adding a new 'competitive' aspect to The Sims, or building a structured points/leveling/neighboorhood/my_sims_need_therap
This isn't to say that I don't love The Sims, but I think that it is going to take some serious re-tooling of the game's underlying goals and concepts to produce a (m)morpg that will sell to the online-console-gamer market.
As pgrote has said, certifications tend to be a cyclical thing and typically promote bandwagon mentality. (And to the 'truly technical', certs are often viewed as 'redundant'). However as someone who has fought for employment solely on the vagaries of my 'experience', it can be hard to get in the door and prove your skills to those 'truely technical' folks without the certs that HR and head-hunters like to flog.
With two years of co-op and a BS CS under your belt, I have to believe that you would not find it a difficult exercise to study up on your own and (as much as I hate to say it...) take a MSCE test or two.
a) you get a plaque(yes, it's analgous to tooth decay) from MS saying that you've got some basic quantitative skills. HR and PHB weenies get off things like this.
b) and if you pick up a certification in something that complements your existing skills you've made yourself even more valuable to a prospective employer.
This is just my take on how things operate in the market I've been working in, but I'd imagine that it's fairly universal in it's mechanics.
If you still find yourself stimied in your job hunt, you might want to seriously examine the posibility of relocating. From your description, I would hazard that coming out of a BS-degree program, you do not have any massive financial responsiblities (ie: mortgage, lease, 2-kids&dog) so this period may afford you flexability to relocate to a market where your skills are in higher demand and the lack of certs will be less likely hamper your job search.
Good luck in this, and keep us posted.
well, if you're really going for a simple/lo-tek/ghetto solution, check out sculpey polymer modeling compound. It's easy to find, simple to work with, non-toxic, and once you bake it, you're all set. The only immediate draw-backs are the fact that you're going to have to pre-form at least a starting hole for any screw-mounts (unless you want to get fancy and use pre-tapped cores...) and your project may end up looking like a bad craft project. Then again, I have to suggest it for simple DIY factor and simplicity. Shape, trim, bake @ 250, done!.
But then again that's just my 2 cents and I already use it for some craft projects, so YMMV. I do have to agree that there are some nice 'professional' resources that are now available to hobbyists with the expansion of 3-D printing and virtualization for one-offs and short-run, but for ~$2 an ounce, you can't beat sculpey for a fast and dirty way to mock a case. A friend of mine did a replacement faceplate for his old Nokia and was offered $60 for it. go figure...
I can see this turning into a larger trend. Remember 'Bang the Machine' a film that some people put together to cover the 'deep' end of StreetFighter tournaments? I believe it got shown on SXSW... Believe it or not these guys play deep strategy, out-psych their opponents, and generally play at the edge of the game's envelope. It was supposed to be a surprising good look into the guys who play the game at the grand-master level and the 'culture' that has formed around them.
. .
now...
try that with pong
. .
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didn't think so...
but in the meantime, check out slime volleyball!
If you don't already have at least a basic video switchbox or basic HDI-15 & dual ps2 KVM, you might as well throw the money and do it right.
We're doing this at the office for some secretarial luser who needs both a W2K and Mac box. We picked up one of the Belkin Omniview SOHO 4's and had no problem hooking it up to both platforms. I've also heard that it works with linux (at least on a RH7.0 install someone had...YMMV)
Well, mach-5, I hate to add another negative voice to the chorus, but yeah, the disk is fsck'ed. If you can't fsck it with the standard commercial recovery packages, you are also fsck'ed. But the first thing you hear when you get a warm body on the other end of the Iomega Hotline will be, "we'll replace the media, but we can't be responsible for the data."
And as unkind as it may sound, they're right. Check your documentation, it says it right there. the drive can grind it's happy little heads through your magnum opus, negating all those thousands of hours of grad-school, and all you're going to get out of Iomega is a new disk. That's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be. Every piece of mass-storage equipment in my house and office has a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) which is a fanciful metric that tells you how often you can expect said piece of HW to go tits-up and die. Iomega knows that their storage solutions have these limitations, and they inform you of this up front, with that MTBF rating.
Jaz drives are great for backups, but you can't expect them to last forever, and you're a fool if you think that Murphy's law isn't hiding around the corner looking to fubar your day.
You cannot expect Iomega to take responsibility for every cartridge they produce, no matter what conditions it is exposed to. It is not Iomega's job to ensure that they can recovery everything that is every put onto those spinning platters. I do not know of any company that has that kind of a guarantee, and I'd be very wary of a company that promised it could. Entropy will always increase, and 3am hardware failure can deliver more entropy than you can shake a stick at.
None of this does you any good in your present position, but just like any other emotional tradgedy, there are steps and goals to help you with coping. Don't hate Iomega, how old was that disk, how much use had it gotten? Was it something you re-wrote over every evening to transfer stuff from work to home? Unless it died right out of the box (right on the leading edge of the bathtub-curve) you got at least some measure of use out of it, and Iomega succeded in delivering a product that worked. I know people who have used the same Jaz cartridge for 5+ years, millions of cycles, without incident. Others have had bad media that went south in a week.
Iomega is not to blame for the statistical blip that you were on the receiving end of, and there is almost nothing they can do for you at this point. I'm not trying to push responsibility onto you for the failure, but you can't really blame Iomega, and they are not going to eat the recovery cost for the data.
And that brings us to the next step, recovering your data. This is something you're going to have to pay for out of your own pocket, and you probably want to analyize your options before you start writing checks. There are several companies that do drive recovery and have a 'free-evaluation' process. You ship them the drive, they tell you how much cash to cough up to recovery it. This gives you an option to decided if all that pr0n is really worth $4000 of your student loan money. I would suggest talking to someplace like Accurate Data Recovery, Flat Rate Data Recovery or some other place that isn't liable to hand you a $3000+ bill for pulling the data. note: I have no experience or interest in these companys. YMMV, do your homework, google.com is your friend.
All else fails, rip off the housing, drill a hole in the platter and nail it to the wall in your data center. This may act as a gruesome deterent to the other equipment in the room and keep them in line. Good luck.
if you're looking for tips and tricks for handling the infamous clear stuff, check out the people who do custom aquariums. I found in my few forays into the field (thank god for a schitzophrenic art education...) that to make really nice seamless structures you're going to want heat, and plenty of it.
it's fast and dirty to throw some aquarium epoxy on mating edges and call it a day, but a single seamless piece will really stand out in a sea of imitations.
Buy yourself up a good heat gun (sometimes refered to as a paint-stripping gun), a blowtorch with a removeable fishtail spreader, and some good sturdy sheet steel to use as a working surface when playing with fire.
note: a medium-level blowtorch flame will alow you to 'flame-polish' the edges of your plexi creation. once you get good at this and can do it with one even pass you'll love the results. it's the same concept as you use when flame-polishing glass. The fishtail spreader is good for applying heat to a larger area if you don't have a proper electric heat gun.
Expect to make some pretty gruesome mistakes the first few tries. Start making some basic shapes, 90 degree bends and such, with small chunks of plexi. Once you get decent with that, work up to longer bends (not large radius bends, but wider pieces). A friend of mine swears by making jigs out of lengths of thin steel rod (1/8 - 1/4 dia.) and shaping the plexi over it.
Always work in well ventilated areas and don't rush the process. it's not as difficult as glass-blowing, but it still requires a lot of patience to get even surface temperatures on large expanses of the stuff.
As a 1st real project, I would suggest taking a PC chassis with removeable side and front panels, and create a single piece of plexi that 'wraps' from one side, across the front (use drill bits and a dremel to cut your drive openings) and around the other side. trim off any excess sheet metal from the chassis, and you're all set.
Good luck and keep us posted as far as your results.