SCO: The new 'Military Intelligence'
on
Darl McBride Interview
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· Score: 5, Interesting
... that is to say, they're a living oxymoron.
If SCO isn't interested in being acquired, then why are they sure acting like they are? All this posturing is pointing to wanting to be bought out to make them shut up.
My dad's a nuclear physicist and built one of the experimental systems used with GAMMASPHERE -- I shall not say which, since his name is unusual and I don't want rabid Slashdotters chasing him down.
It's quite an amazing machine, and he gets ten to fifteen academic paper credits to his name per year because of his role in research using GAMMASPHERE.
Yes, the support stands really are painted those wacky colors. You can't see it in the trailer -- at least I couldn't -- but there's some magenta-purple components to the support stands that aren't readily visible, but the aqua and goldenrod portions are clearly visible in the trailer.
The radiation symbol caps on the detectors are fake, though, put in there so the ignorant public can see "Hey! It's nu-kew-lar!". I also couldn't definitively make out the EG&G Ortec logos on the detectors, probably because they didn't get the licensing rights or something.
And I'm sorry to say, but GAMMASPHERE isn't going to turn anyone into a Hulk anytime soon. It's not designed for that sort of work, even if anyone tried it deliberately.
I'm just glad Dad's system worked -- my fingers ached for awhile from wrapping photodiodes and the attached prisms with Teflon tape all day for weeks...
Note the phrase "The spacecraft itself appears to be in no danger..."
Landsat 7 itself is still functioning. The Thematic Mapper is the instrument with the problem. These satellites contain other instruments on board which can be used to continue the mission.
It's similar to how some of the instruments on board the Voyager spacecraft no longer function, but those that still work are returning useful data.
Oh indeed. I didn't intend to imply that dot-matrix printers are bad. I think it's cool that they can be made to work with OS X.
I personally have an HP Laserjet 4MP that I've had for years. I don't print much, so I've replaced the toner cartridge one time, and I've never had any problems with it. It prints B&W at 600dpi which is more than enough for my home use, and if I need a color print I can get one on the HP Color Laserjet 4500 we've got here at work.
But I like having the option of using an older printer should I need/want to.
My Volkswagen has a digital odometer. While it is possible to change the reading, the cluster will only accept a new reading (outside of the factory) until it reaches a certain number of miles/km, after which it will reject changes unless it's sent back to the factory.
It is possible to take the cluster out and replace it with a different one, and the instructions are fairly widely published among enthusiasts such as myself (see here for how) and doesn't require much in the way of special tools -- and the system depends on trust that the user will type in the correct mileage into the computer when the new cluster is programmed.
But it still requires more than changing the readout of a mechanical odometer. The change to digital is probably in part to prevent odometer fraud.
So I guess it's illegal to take photos of houses just in case evil Al Quaeda home-invaders might want to break in and rob me, or worse.
So I guess it's illegal for me to photograph my own house because my neighbors' houses might appear in the photos.
Right. Lady, if you're worried about that sort of thing, get an alarm. That's what they're for. Or if you're that scared, ask the cops to drive by every so often, or hire a private security company to do the same thing.
Origin and spelling of department name ...
on
Meteor Over Midwest
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· Score: 1
I'm feeling like nitpicking.;)
'fahrvergnuegen' should be 'fahrvergnugen'.
As for the origin of the word for anyone who is going "what the hell?" -- it's a 'made-up' word VW used in its ads for a time; it translates to 'driving pleasure'. A form of this campaign still exists, in the form of the "Drivers Wanted" slogan.
"On the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers."
I still remember the old ads for the Rabbit/Golf:
"Volkswagen does it again!" -- a reference to the original Beetle and the huge worldwide sales it generated. The Golf has now outsold the Beetle.
Hmm. True. Perhaps they should allude to the fact that there were lots of letters on the issue which could not be printed, to make it known that there was support, but this way they wouldn't reprint the 'bad' letters.
A good point. I wonder, what would the reaction be to sites that can generate letters based on answers to carefully chosen questions about an issue? That way, you do get your opinions reflected, if the system is prepared well, but there are still some advantages of making it easy to write in support of an issue.
Though yes, my comments work better with things like letters to congress than they do with letters to the editor. (I've written editors several times, but never with form letters.)
... if I write a letter to my congresscritter supporting an issue, I support that issue whether or not the original words are entirely mine. After all, presidents use speechwriters -- and this is entirely accepted as the norm (though Lincoln often wrote his own, but that's an abberation.) And yet we say that the president himself (or herself, someday in the future) supports the issue. Why should members of the public be ignored just because they have speechwriters, of a sort? It's the opinion that matters, not the form of the opinion, as long as it's not threatening or rude to another person.
VW also sells this same system in its Passat and Audi (many models) vehicles. It's supplied by Johnson Controls. They call it Homelink, and it's built into the driver's sun visor.
All that would have to be done would be to manage to block Homelink from supplying these and not only would it vanish from VW/Audi and Acura, but many other carmakers' cars as well.
I've put the illuminated keyboard on my wishlist on amazon.com. I'll probably buy one for my desktop as I'm revamping the video card and monitor already later this year, so why not get a new keyboard, too, while I'm at it?
But I have a Powerbook G4 already, and I've been waiting for backlighting for a LONG time. And when they finally come out with it, it won't fit my computer!
So where, I say, are the upgrade kits? I've been looking for a long time. Seems like something like this should be a shoo-in for an upgrade product...
... to get TiVo. I'd planned to this spring, but since it looks like I'll have to replace the entire recorder to get the combined HD/standard recording, I might as well wait.
Fortunately a friend of mine already has one that I've been leeching from and going over occasionally to watch the recordings I've piled up.;) I'm already converted.
Damn you, TiVo, for making me wait to get the one I really want!!
(Or am I wrong and misread the release, and it'll be a software upgrade for existing units, i.e. series2?)
I'd like to see 'em raid the trucks The Fast and the Furious-style. Imagine Hilary Rosen driving one of those Civics and cursing in Spanish at the truck driver. Imagine Jack Valenti hanging from the side of the truck getting his arm cut off while his lobbyist pals in some more black Civics try to save him.
Or...
"I'd like to live, just long enough, to see them put your head on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some boy band music comes at too high a price. I'd like to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave, like this..."
Back before election day, the phone would ring nonstop with political bullshit calls. Was I on the DNC list? Yes. Did it help? No. The following was printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; I'd link to it but the paper recently reorganized its site, and so links to the old stories are now dead.
NEXT weekend's going to be awfully dull. No chatty phone calls from Kit or Jack, Jean or Jim. No direct mail on guns and abortion. No more candidates scaring seniors and jeopardizing national security.
Campaign 2002 wound down to a surreal close this weekend. On Saturday, computerized telephone calls inundated homes, waking babies from naps, rousing people from their after-breakfast coffee and irritating the hell out of voters who thought the no-call list would guard their serenity. (No, you can't use the Missouri attorney general's no-call list to block political calls. But don't blame Jay Nixon, blame the First Amendment.)
No sooner had Jack hung up on his pitch for raising the tobacco tax, than Kit was on the line railing about how the Democrats stole the 2000 election. Kit mentioned his favorite dog, Ritzy, the voting spaniel. We wanted to remind him that Ritzy was registered in 1994 and did NOT vote in 2000, but we couldn't get a word in edgewise.
The line between reality and parody was especially murky Saturday evening when "Saturday Night Live" spoofs of campaign ads were mixed in with attack ads by Rep. David Phelps, D-Ill., against Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. The spoofs satirized one form of the attack ad that has been common in Missouri: "Call Jim Talent and tell him his vote shattered lives," or "Call Jean Carnahan. Tell her to put our security interest first."
The geniuses who parsed these "Call Joe Blow" ads are - surprise - lawyers. The wording, "Call Joe Blow," makes them "issue ads" that can be paid for with unlimited amounts of soft money. "Vote against Joe Blow," would make the ad into express advocacy of the defeat of a candidate, which must be funded by restricted hard money contributions.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was supposed to fix that by outlawing soft money and limiting "sham" issue ads. Ha ha. Even before the law takes effect today, pols of both parties have already figured out how to skirt it: funnel soft money to new party groups and state party committees.
Make your blood boil? Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and tell it to stop damaging democracy. And while you're at it, call Joe Blow and tell him to stop calling us.
This is a fairly large part of why I have only a cell phone now. I don't appear in any directories, and telemarketers aren't allowed to call me (as far as I know).
One alternate history novel does ask what could have happened if the Victorian era had been more advanced than it really was in our timeline.
See the novel To Visit The Queen (sold as On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service in the UK. Stupid Harry Potter title police. I bought the UK edition in protest)...
England, under Queen Victoria, gets rocket (and nuke) technology wayyyy too early due to temporal meddling by dark forces. As a result, times were different and instead of being used for peace, Saturn 5-class rockets were used for war. Remember, this is closer to the age when England ruled the seas and wanted to keep it that way.
I can see it on fark.com now:
England blows up Moon to prove it's got two big ones. France surrenders.
It's done with a screen showing captions in the back of the theater, in reverse. You view 'em with a reflecting mirror. If you don't have a reflector, you don't see a thing.
Then complain to them.
I plan on it -- and included their addresses so others can write, too.
Ok, instead of complaining about the bad HTML in the story, try this:
In the response to the question of accessibility and the law governing it, the answer includes: "it is not reasonable to expect disabled people to go somewhere else to get the same information or enjoy the same experience."
If that is the case, then why is it apparently OK for a movie theater to fail to provide subtitled films? I have never once been able to walk into a theater on a given day and say "I'm deaf and I need subtitles on this film." Yet, adding subtitles is trivial especially with more films being produced digitally or even projected digitally. The technology is right there under their noses, and it's commonplace on TV now. It's been required in new TVs since 1990.
Yet the theaters seem to think it's reasonable to tell me to wait til a film hits DVD so I can turn on captions or subtitles. I'm sorry, but that doesn't cut it. Telling me I have to wait while telling the person with normal hearing next to me that they can see the film Right Now If You Buy A Ticket is inexcusable.
Oh, and those audio assist headphones you're probably about to tell me about in your reply? They don't work for the completely deaf or those who already wear hearing aids. Like me. Sorry, do not pass Go, try again.
Wehrenberg, one of the two chains in my area, offers a few open captioned films, but not on any date, not in any theater, and by far not the films I want to see. I want LOTR. I want Insurrection. I want Die Another Day. I want Harry Potter. I've never heard of Truth about Charlie or Red Dragon.
Please, write in and tell 'em it's inexcusable.
Wehrenberg Theatres 1215 Des Peres Road St. Louis, MO 63131 USA
American Multi Cinema 2049 Century Park East Suite 1020 Los Angeles, CA 90067 USA
The invasion part occurs when they scan your computer to see what other processes are running. It is fairly well known that EQ does this. They're looking to make sure You Aren't Running Anything The Big Megacorp Doesn't Want You To Be Running When You Use Their Stuff. For anti-cheating purposes, supposedly.
It's a slippery slope. If they start doing it with a game, which most people are going to write off as "it's just a game" -- how long before it starts happening with truly important software? Someone said that my mention of Microsoft was apples and oranges, but is it? As far as anyone knows, they don't do this sort of sniffing -- yet -- but I wouldn't be surprised if they start doing it to, say, find out if people are actually using OpenOffice as opposed to their own Office, and trying to disable OO if so with scary enigmatic "error" messages.
I can understand the position of wanting to lock out cheaters, and of course measures are going to be needed to prevent that from happening. However, there are, to me at least, ways to do it that I don't think are acceptable. Sniffing around on the user's system is an invasion of privacy. It may supposedly help accomplish that goal, but it, in my eyes, goes too far. What I run on my computer while using your application is none of your business, no matter why I'm running it. If you think I'm cheating, then find another way to figure that out. (Heck, applications that don't need the Internet at all that try to phone home anyway are going too far in my eyes.)
Slashdot Mirror
... that is to say, they're a living oxymoron.
If SCO isn't interested in being acquired, then why are they sure acting like they are? All this posturing is pointing to wanting to be bought out to make them shut up.
I guarantee they don't, seeing as my dad is one of the GAMMASPHERE researchers. They do however go out and drink beer and eat pizza. :)
My dad's a nuclear physicist and built one of the experimental systems used with GAMMASPHERE -- I shall not say which, since his name is unusual and I don't want rabid Slashdotters chasing him down.
It's quite an amazing machine, and he gets ten to fifteen academic paper credits to his name per year because of his role in research using GAMMASPHERE.
Yes, the support stands really are painted those wacky colors. You can't see it in the trailer -- at least I couldn't -- but there's some magenta-purple components to the support stands that aren't readily visible, but the aqua and goldenrod portions are clearly visible in the trailer.
The radiation symbol caps on the detectors are fake, though, put in there so the ignorant public can see "Hey! It's nu-kew-lar!". I also couldn't definitively make out the EG&G Ortec logos on the detectors, probably because they didn't get the licensing rights or something.
And I'm sorry to say, but GAMMASPHERE isn't going to turn anyone into a Hulk anytime soon. It's not designed for that sort of work, even if anyone tried it deliberately.
I'm just glad Dad's system worked -- my fingers ached for awhile from wrapping photodiodes and the attached prisms with Teflon tape all day for weeks...
I guess I gotta go see it, just for GAMMASPHERE.
Note the phrase "The spacecraft itself appears to be in no danger..."
Landsat 7 itself is still functioning. The Thematic Mapper is the instrument with the problem. These satellites contain other instruments on board which can be used to continue the mission.
It's similar to how some of the instruments on board the Voyager spacecraft no longer function, but those that still work are returning useful data.
Oh indeed. I didn't intend to imply that dot-matrix printers are bad. I think it's cool that they can be made to work with OS X.
I personally have an HP Laserjet 4MP that I've had for years. I don't print much, so I've replaced the toner cartridge one time, and I've never had any problems with it. It prints B&W at 600dpi which is more than enough for my home use, and if I need a color print I can get one on the HP Color Laserjet 4500 we've got here at work.
But I like having the option of using an older printer should I need/want to.
My Volkswagen has a digital odometer. While it is possible to change the reading, the cluster will only accept a new reading (outside of the factory) until it reaches a certain number of miles/km, after which it will reject changes unless it's sent back to the factory.
It is possible to take the cluster out and replace it with a different one, and the instructions are fairly widely published among enthusiasts such as myself (see here for how) and doesn't require much in the way of special tools -- and the system depends on trust that the user will type in the correct mileage into the computer when the new cluster is programmed.
But it still requires more than changing the readout of a mechanical odometer. The change to digital is probably in part to prevent odometer fraud.
Yup, I heard of someone who got a dot-matrix printer (!) to work with OS X via CUPS.
So I guess it's illegal to take photos of houses just in case evil Al Quaeda home-invaders might want to break in and rob me, or worse.
So I guess it's illegal for me to photograph my own house because my neighbors' houses might appear in the photos.
Right. Lady, if you're worried about that sort of thing, get an alarm. That's what they're for. Or if you're that scared, ask the cops to drive by every so often, or hire a private security company to do the same thing.
I'm feeling like nitpicking. ;)
'fahrvergnuegen' should be 'fahrvergnugen'.
As for the origin of the word for anyone who is going "what the hell?" -- it's a 'made-up' word VW used in its ads for a time; it translates to 'driving pleasure'. A form of this campaign still exists, in the form of the "Drivers Wanted" slogan.
"On the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers."
I still remember the old ads for the Rabbit/Golf:
"Volkswagen does it again!" -- a reference to the original Beetle and the huge worldwide sales it generated. The Golf has now outsold the Beetle.
-- proud and very happy owner of a 2000 Golf GLS
*hugs her 2000 Golf*
:)
I like the fact that the car that's so well known is made by VW.
The People's Car, it was called. (volks wagen)
The Strength Through Joy Car, it was called. (KdF Wagen)
And it certainly was.
Hmm. True. Perhaps they should allude to the fact that there were lots of letters on the issue which could not be printed, to make it known that there was support, but this way they wouldn't reprint the 'bad' letters.
A good point. I wonder, what would the reaction be to sites that can generate letters based on answers to carefully chosen questions about an issue? That way, you do get your opinions reflected, if the system is prepared well, but there are still some advantages of making it easy to write in support of an issue.
Though yes, my comments work better with things like letters to congress than they do with letters to the editor. (I've written editors several times, but never with form letters.)
... if I write a letter to my congresscritter supporting an issue, I support that issue whether or not the original words are entirely mine. After all, presidents use speechwriters -- and this is entirely accepted as the norm (though Lincoln often wrote his own, but that's an abberation.) And yet we say that the president himself (or herself, someday in the future) supports the issue. Why should members of the public be ignored just because they have speechwriters, of a sort? It's the opinion that matters, not the form of the opinion, as long as it's not threatening or rude to another person.
VW also sells this same system in its Passat and Audi (many models) vehicles. It's supplied by Johnson Controls. They call it Homelink, and it's built into the driver's sun visor.
http://www.homelink.com/home/home.tml is the site.
All that would have to be done would be to manage to block Homelink from supplying these and not only would it vanish from VW/Audi and Acura, but many other carmakers' cars as well.
I've put the illuminated keyboard on my wishlist on amazon.com. I'll probably buy one for my desktop as I'm revamping the video card and monitor already later this year, so why not get a new keyboard, too, while I'm at it?
But I have a Powerbook G4 already, and I've been waiting for backlighting for a LONG time. And when they finally come out with it, it won't fit my computer!
So where, I say, are the upgrade kits? I've been looking for a long time. Seems like something like this should be a shoo-in for an upgrade product...
... to get TiVo. I'd planned to this spring, but since it looks like I'll have to replace the entire recorder to get the combined HD/standard recording, I might as well wait.
;) I'm already converted.
Fortunately a friend of mine already has one that I've been leeching from and going over occasionally to watch the recordings I've piled up.
Damn you, TiVo, for making me wait to get the one I really want!!
(Or am I wrong and misread the release, and it'll be a software upgrade for existing units, i.e. series2?)
I'd like to see 'em raid the trucks The Fast and the Furious-style. Imagine Hilary Rosen driving one of those Civics and cursing in Spanish at the truck driver. Imagine Jack Valenti hanging from the side of the truck getting his arm cut off while his lobbyist pals in some more black Civics try to save him.
Or...
"I'd like to live, just long enough, to see them put your head on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some boy band music comes at too high a price. I'd like to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave, like this..."
I get around those by just bookmarking the URL I get dropped on when I click the "just go away already" link. It's worked fine so far.
Back before election day, the phone would ring nonstop with political bullshit calls. Was I on the DNC list? Yes. Did it help? No. The following was printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; I'd link to it but the paper recently reorganized its site, and so links to the old stories are now dead.
NEXT weekend's going to be awfully dull. No chatty phone calls from Kit or Jack, Jean or Jim. No direct mail on guns and abortion. No more candidates scaring seniors and jeopardizing national security.
Campaign 2002 wound down to a surreal close this weekend. On Saturday, computerized telephone calls inundated homes, waking babies from naps, rousing people from their after-breakfast coffee and irritating the hell out of voters who thought the no-call list would guard their serenity. (No, you can't use the Missouri attorney general's no-call list to block political calls. But don't blame Jay Nixon, blame the First Amendment.)
No sooner had Jack hung up on his pitch for raising the tobacco tax, than Kit was on the line railing about how the Democrats stole the 2000 election. Kit mentioned his favorite dog, Ritzy, the voting spaniel. We wanted to remind him that Ritzy was registered in 1994 and did NOT vote in 2000, but we couldn't get a word in edgewise.
The line between reality and parody was especially murky Saturday evening when "Saturday Night Live" spoofs of campaign ads were mixed in with attack ads by Rep. David Phelps, D-Ill., against Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. The spoofs satirized one form of the attack ad that has been common in Missouri: "Call Jim Talent and tell him his vote shattered lives," or "Call Jean Carnahan. Tell her to put our security interest first."
The geniuses who parsed these "Call Joe Blow" ads are - surprise - lawyers. The wording, "Call Joe Blow," makes them "issue ads" that can be paid for with unlimited amounts of soft money. "Vote against Joe Blow," would make the ad into express advocacy of the defeat of a candidate, which must be funded by restricted hard money contributions.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was supposed to fix that by outlawing soft money and limiting "sham" issue ads. Ha ha. Even before the law takes effect today, pols of both parties have already figured out how to skirt it: funnel soft money to new party groups and state party committees.
Make your blood boil? Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and tell it to stop damaging democracy. And while you're at it, call Joe Blow and tell him to stop calling us.
This is a fairly large part of why I have only a cell phone now. I don't appear in any directories, and telemarketers aren't allowed to call me (as far as I know).
One alternate history novel does ask what could have happened if the Victorian era had been more advanced than it really was in our timeline.
...
See the novel To Visit The Queen (sold as On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service in the UK. Stupid Harry Potter title police. I bought the UK edition in protest)
England, under Queen Victoria, gets rocket (and nuke) technology wayyyy too early due to temporal meddling by dark forces. As a result, times were different and instead of being used for peace, Saturn 5-class rockets were used for war. Remember, this is closer to the age when England ruled the seas and wanted to keep it that way.
I can see it on fark.com now:
England blows up Moon to prove it's got two big ones. France surrenders.
... but to add subtitles calls for either negatively influencing everyone else's view of the movie ...
Not the way the most common system works -- Mr. Clark kindly sent me an email with a few links in it. (Thanks again!)
Here's the company that does a lot of this:
http://www.mopix.org
It's done with a screen showing captions in the back of the theater, in reverse. You view 'em with a reflecting mirror. If you don't have a reflector, you don't see a thing.
Then complain to them.
I plan on it -- and included their addresses so others can write, too.
Ok, instead of complaining about the bad HTML in the story, try this:
In the response to the question of accessibility and the law governing it, the answer includes: "it is not reasonable to expect disabled people to go somewhere else to get the same information or enjoy the same experience."
If that is the case, then why is it apparently OK for a movie theater to fail to provide subtitled films? I have never once been able to walk into a theater on a given day and say "I'm deaf and I need subtitles on this film." Yet, adding subtitles is trivial especially with more films being produced digitally or even projected digitally. The technology is right there under their noses, and it's commonplace on TV now. It's been required in new TVs since 1990.
Yet the theaters seem to think it's reasonable to tell me to wait til a film hits DVD so I can turn on captions or subtitles. I'm sorry, but that doesn't cut it. Telling me I have to wait while telling the person with normal hearing next to me that they can see the film Right Now If You Buy A Ticket is inexcusable.
Oh, and those audio assist headphones you're probably about to tell me about in your reply? They don't work for the completely deaf or those who already wear hearing aids. Like me. Sorry, do not pass Go, try again.
Wehrenberg, one of the two chains in my area, offers a few open captioned films, but not on any date, not in any theater, and by far not the films I want to see. I want LOTR. I want Insurrection. I want Die Another Day. I want Harry Potter. I've never heard of Truth about Charlie or Red Dragon.
Please, write in and tell 'em it's inexcusable.
Wehrenberg Theatres
1215 Des Peres Road
St. Louis, MO 63131
USA
American Multi Cinema
2049 Century Park East Suite 1020
Los Angeles, CA 90067
USA
That's been fixed in the latest version of the Preview application (which was the cause of this problem.) Nothing to sue them over.
The invasion part occurs when they scan your computer to see what other processes are running. It is fairly well known that EQ does this. They're looking to make sure You Aren't Running Anything The Big Megacorp Doesn't Want You To Be Running When You Use Their Stuff. For anti-cheating purposes, supposedly.
It's a slippery slope. If they start doing it with a game, which most people are going to write off as "it's just a game" -- how long before it starts happening with truly important software? Someone said that my mention of Microsoft was apples and oranges, but is it? As far as anyone knows, they don't do this sort of sniffing -- yet -- but I wouldn't be surprised if they start doing it to, say, find out if people are actually using OpenOffice as opposed to their own Office, and trying to disable OO if so with scary enigmatic "error" messages.
THAT is what I'm talking about...
I can understand the position of wanting to lock out cheaters, and of course measures are going to be needed to prevent that from happening. However, there are, to me at least, ways to do it that I don't think are acceptable. Sniffing around on the user's system is an invasion of privacy. It may supposedly help accomplish that goal, but it, in my eyes, goes too far. What I run on my computer while using your application is none of your business, no matter why I'm running it. If you think I'm cheating, then find another way to figure that out. (Heck, applications that don't need the Internet at all that try to phone home anyway are going too far in my eyes.)