SSTO (or Single Stage to Orbit) vehicles still use chemical fuels - they just use them more efficiently.
I think we're going to see some progress in this field over the next few years, assuming that the American Taxpayers don't start squawking that the money for the space program would be better used to feed people who're too lazy to work.
The "smart crowbars" were discussed in depth as a possibility for the SDI projects - see references for "brilliant pebbles" as opposed to "smart rocks."
Why AC to DC? The power supplied by photovoltaics is already DC. You just need a switching power supply to make sure you're getting the voltage you need (not all of my DC equipment/wall warts supply the same voltage!)
I'd need (just looking at the power strip, here) a 3v, 7v, 9v, 12v, and 15v DC outlet just to take care of the USB hub, the network hub, the DSL "modem," the regular modem (for failover), and the DLT.
AC is great for transmitting power over long distances, but any time power is used within a short distance of the generator, DC is more efficient in most cases (as there's no need to convert voltage *again*.)
And in some cases like transmitting power under/through bodies of water, high voltage DC is used to get around certain electrolytic effects.
I'm already using white LEDs in certain applications for lighting, and plan to expand that. I've already cut the computers' electrical usage as low as I can without sacrificing performance. I don't use a CRT any more - LCD is less than 5% the power that the CRT used to draw.
I wonder what the real numbers are on efficiency in the wall wart equation. I know that some data centers use distributed DC power instead of a separate AC-to-DC converter inside each server (Sun's Netra boxes spring to mind.)
"Recent complaints about blocklists have come from companies and organizations, including British Telecom, the Libertarian Party and News.com publisher CNET Networks, among others."
btinternet is complaining about getting blocked because they don't bother to nuke their spammers. CNET doesn't verify e-mailed subscriptions, so just about anyone can sign someone else up.
Is it any wonder that they're complaining about being blocked?
I'll second the request for pictures/description of the finished product.
I built a very small gauss gun in high school, played with capacitors (and other high voltage devices, like the infrared viewer I built), and generally had all kinds of fun.
Try http://www.popsoda.com - their storefront is around the corner from my house.
If it's bottled and non-alcoholic, they probably have it.
I used to stock the fridge in my old office with Black Lemonade - only one person ever stole one, and he turned out to be slightly allergic to the capsicum in the soda. It tastes like a liquid Sour Lemon Warhead, but it's black.
Unfortunately, the dye that makes it black is non-digestible, and makes things *green*.
Their soda prices aren't *bad*, but they're not great, either. Their selection is just flat amazing, though.
I think it'll probably cost you more to ship a single bottle to Israel than the bottle costs.
I don't think any new laws are going to fix any of the problems. Look at what's going on with Microsoft lately... Slashdot published a story about the meeting scheduled between the Phoenix Linux Users Group and the Maricopa County CIO to talk about the purchasing guidelines and potential for Open Source, but it looks like Maricopa County won't be "disbarring" Microsoft as a supplier, despite the clear legality of doing so after Microsoft's lost legal battles on the "monopoly" front.
After about two hours (8:30AM to 10:30AM) I left the meeting with a much better feeling about my local County government - at least in the IT/IS groups.
Linden Thatcher, the CIO for Maricopa County, struck me as quite literate in the issues that were raised.
About 5% of the County IT/IS budget goes to Microsoft products, a vast majority of those being the 12,000 desktops they support. According to the statements Mr. Thatcher made, most of their "server-side" applications run on a mix of HP-UX and System V, with some apps running on Websphere.
There are currently a couple of internal projects running Linux/Apache to provide document publishing.
Mr. Thatcher has read "Ender's Game," and met Orson Scott Card (thank goodness we've got SOMEONE in the hierarchy who is not only literate, but READS!)
The Phoenix Linux Users Group people who showed up were very polite, and there was only one person in the crowd who seemed to be almost violently "anti-Microsoft."
Good meeting. But I still don't have any hopes that new laws are going to fix any of these problems.
Hehe. The funniest thing about people sending me "Delete JDBGMGR.EXE now!" messages is that it doesn't exist on any of my personal machines. Not the AlphaStation, not the SPARCStation, not the Pentium 133, nor the Dual 1GHz Power Mac G4...
A friend of mine who's into conspiracy theories thinks that the anti-virus companies like McAfee also have people writing the viruses - so they can sell "subscriptions" to keep the definitions updated.
I'm reserving judgement on that one until a virus is actually tracked back to an author who's affiliated with an anti-virus company.
But I *do* wish they cut out the FUD. It's bad enough getting my weekly dose of "Delete jdbgmgr.exe from your system! It's a virus!" from my friends and relatives, who then get dutifully pointed to www.snopes.com to read "Inboxer Rebellion," without having people who supposedly know better promoting the same kind of crap.
Hell, if it weren't for my need to eat, I might put in some free time in a NOC like that one, if for no other reason than to have access to the hardware.
Call it the ultimate training lab. Make any change you want - nobody can really bitch much about it, since they're not paying for it anyway. The only motives to keep things running are to, well, keep things running...
I wasn't really trying to deconstruct your method.
The problem, to me, is that any doofus on the street can walk into Best Buy and walk out with a DDOS zombie waiting to happen.
As far as "...such a newbie that they do not know how to use a mouse, but is somehow given administrator access to a Windows PC..." - this happens thousands of times per day in CompUSAs, Best Buys, and Circuit City locations across the nation.
Compounding the problem are "salespeople" who have not the slightest idea what they are selling.
I used to be constantly amazed at what people could manage to do to a computer without the foggiest notion of what they're trying to do, or what they're doing.
Of course, half the time this kind of thing happens, it's their friend telling them, "OK - take the mouse and move the pointer over there and click, NO! Over THERE! OK. Now, go over there and click. OK. Now, do you see (this?) No? OK. Click here..." and so on, never realizing that the "NO!" was something that is not only wrong, but needs to be backed out.
Heinlein once said, "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
This goes doubly for people who bought computers just so they could trade music with their friends (don't laugh - I know one person who spent about $800 or so to do exactly this, only to find that that cheap-ass audio board didn't quite work the way he wanted it to...)
Re:Good point, but in most cases...
on
Kazaa Usability Study
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Novice users" doesn't mean a whole lot to me. What is your group of "novice users" representative of? College students? Joe Average blue-collar workers? High school graduates? Retirement community inhabitants?
And what's a "small group?"
Given that your "novice users" already had music stored in a particular directory, I somehow doubt that they were entirely computer newbies.
Find a group of people who don't know what a mouse is for, and see if they can share files without putting their entire drive at risk...
This looks an awful lot like the plot from "Weapons of Mass Distraction," with Ben Kingsley and Gabriel Byrne.
Great movie, albeit completely depressing, as the two media moguls don't back down from their feud until they've utterly destroyed the lives of their own families.
Bingo. Your "right" to send e-mail ends at my MX. I'm under no obligation to accept incoming e-mail at all.
Spam isn't a "free speech" issue. It's a "theft of resources" issue according to CompuServe vs. Cyber Promotions, wherein the judge decided that spamming was indeed "actionable trespass of chattel."
The RBL, to the best of my knowledge, is not now a "volunteer" organization since they went to a subscription model in order to use their lists.
SPEWS, on the other hand, seems to be a volunteer organization. If anyone knew who operated it, I'd go ask them about it. But they don't ask for money, and they've been incredibly successful in getting spammers to whine a lot about their e-mail getting rejected.
A Gerber Multi-Lock, Leatherman, or any of the standard "multitool" devices can suffice for most of what you'll need in a dorm room. I had a couple of smaller individual screwdrivers that "walked off," but I still have my multitool.
Add a small hammer, and possibly a small "keyhole" saw - it'll come in handy when you need to cut a piece of wood down to fit into the loft your roommate wants to build, and can also be used to cut a chunk of drywall to patch that hole that your drunk friend left with his forehead...
Cheesy SF novel by Leo Frankowski about genetically-engineered treehouses, food trees, Labor and Defense Units (gengineered "police," as it were.) He also has mosquitoes that eat steel and aluminum, thus making most weapons and vehicles cease functioning.
Read it quite some time ago, after I'd finished "Conrad's Quest for Rubber," the last of the "Cross-Time Engineer" series, also by Frankowski.
I like his writing and humor, but he got a lot of things *wrong*, like distilling in brass. Bad idea.
Re:Just send a ton of Spam mails.... maybe not.
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This might work for ELNK and AOL, but a rising number of ISPs are inserting "clean-up fees" for customers who violate their Acceptable Use Policies.
They *might* turn around and bill you a few bucks per spam (which could add up rather quickly) and STILL not "cancel" your account, but simply suspend your ability to log in during their "investigation."
For even more fun, try calling Earthlink support with other questions.
By leading them around a bit, you can get them to admit that your account password is stored in plaintext in their trouble-ticketing system.
I've never used any online system that stored passwords in plaintext - as a Solaris admin, we usually just reset the password, tell the user what the new one is, and tell them it must be changed when they next log in.
I don't *WANT* to know the user's password - I have no need for it, since I'm root anyway. Why do Earthlink tech support drones need to know the user's password? They've already got a stack of other information that can be used to verify the user's identity.
Slashdot Mirror
SSTO (or Single Stage to Orbit) vehicles still use chemical fuels - they just use them more efficiently.
I think we're going to see some progress in this field over the next few years, assuming that the American Taxpayers don't start squawking that the money for the space program would be better used to feed people who're too lazy to work.
The "smart crowbars" were discussed in depth as a possibility for the SDI projects - see references for "brilliant pebbles" as opposed to "smart rocks."
Why AC to DC? The power supplied by photovoltaics is already DC. You just need a switching power supply to make sure you're getting the voltage you need (not all of my DC equipment/wall warts supply the same voltage!)
I'd need (just looking at the power strip, here) a 3v, 7v, 9v, 12v, and 15v DC outlet just to take care of the USB hub, the network hub, the DSL "modem," the regular modem (for failover), and the DLT.
AC is great for transmitting power over long distances, but any time power is used within a short distance of the generator, DC is more efficient in most cases (as there's no need to convert voltage *again*.)
And in some cases like transmitting power under/through bodies of water, high voltage DC is used to get around certain electrolytic effects.
I'm already using white LEDs in certain applications for lighting, and plan to expand that. I've already cut the computers' electrical usage as low as I can without sacrificing performance. I don't use a CRT any more - LCD is less than 5% the power that the CRT used to draw.
I wonder what the real numbers are on efficiency in the wall wart equation. I know that some data centers use distributed DC power instead of a separate AC-to-DC converter inside each server (Sun's Netra boxes spring to mind.)
"Recent complaints about blocklists have come from companies and organizations, including British Telecom, the Libertarian Party and News.com publisher CNET Networks, among others."
btinternet is complaining about getting blocked because they don't bother to nuke their spammers. CNET doesn't verify e-mailed subscriptions, so just about anyone can sign someone else up.
Is it any wonder that they're complaining about being blocked?
"Well-researched" my ass.
I'll second the request for pictures/description of the finished product.
I built a very small gauss gun in high school, played with capacitors (and other high voltage devices, like the infrared viewer I built), and generally had all kinds of fun.
But I wanna see this thing fire...
Try http://www.popsoda.com - their storefront is around the corner from my house.
If it's bottled and non-alcoholic, they probably have it.
I used to stock the fridge in my old office with Black Lemonade - only one person ever stole one, and he turned out to be slightly allergic to the capsicum in the soda. It tastes like a liquid Sour Lemon Warhead, but it's black.
Unfortunately, the dye that makes it black is non-digestible, and makes things *green*.
Their soda prices aren't *bad*, but they're not great, either. Their selection is just flat amazing, though.
I think it'll probably cost you more to ship a single bottle to Israel than the bottle costs.
Already did. Submitted and rejected twice.
I guess I'm just not enough of a karma whore to actually get a submission posted.
I don't think any new laws are going to fix any of the problems. Look at what's going on with Microsoft lately... Slashdot published a story about the meeting scheduled between the Phoenix Linux Users Group and the Maricopa County CIO to talk about the purchasing guidelines and potential for Open Source, but it looks like Maricopa County won't be "disbarring" Microsoft as a supplier, despite the clear legality of doing so after Microsoft's lost legal battles on the "monopoly" front.
After about two hours (8:30AM to 10:30AM) I left the meeting with a much better feeling about my local County government - at least in the IT/IS groups.
Linden Thatcher, the CIO for Maricopa County, struck me as quite literate in the issues that were raised.
About 5% of the County IT/IS budget goes to Microsoft products, a vast majority of those being the 12,000 desktops they support. According to the statements Mr. Thatcher made, most of their "server-side" applications run on a mix of HP-UX and System V, with some apps running on Websphere.
There are currently a couple of internal projects running Linux/Apache to provide document publishing.
Mr. Thatcher has read "Ender's Game," and met Orson Scott Card (thank goodness we've got SOMEONE in the hierarchy who is not only literate, but READS!)
The Phoenix Linux Users Group people who showed up were very polite, and there was only one person in the crowd who seemed to be almost violently "anti-Microsoft."
Good meeting. But I still don't have any hopes that new laws are going to fix any of these problems.
They could always run it again next season, retitling it as "Once More (AGAIN!) With Feeling, Take Two."
I never could understand the attraction some people hold for the whole Buffy continuum...
Hehe. The funniest thing about people sending me "Delete JDBGMGR.EXE now!" messages is that it doesn't exist on any of my personal machines. Not the AlphaStation, not the SPARCStation, not the Pentium 133, nor the Dual 1GHz Power Mac G4...
A friend of mine who's into conspiracy theories thinks that the anti-virus companies like McAfee also have people writing the viruses - so they can sell "subscriptions" to keep the definitions updated.
I'm reserving judgement on that one until a virus is actually tracked back to an author who's affiliated with an anti-virus company.
But I *do* wish they cut out the FUD. It's bad enough getting my weekly dose of "Delete jdbgmgr.exe from your system! It's a virus!" from my friends and relatives, who then get dutifully pointed to www.snopes.com to read "Inboxer Rebellion," without having people who supposedly know better promoting the same kind of crap.
Hell, if it weren't for my need to eat, I might put in some free time in a NOC like that one, if for no other reason than to have access to the hardware.
Call it the ultimate training lab. Make any change you want - nobody can really bitch much about it, since they're not paying for it anyway. The only motives to keep things running are to, well, keep things running...
I wasn't really trying to deconstruct your method.
The problem, to me, is that any doofus on the street can walk into Best Buy and walk out with a DDOS zombie waiting to happen.
As far as "...such a newbie that they do not know how to use a mouse, but is somehow given administrator access to a Windows PC..." - this happens thousands of times per day in CompUSAs, Best Buys, and Circuit City locations across the nation.
Compounding the problem are "salespeople" who have not the slightest idea what they are selling.
I used to be constantly amazed at what people could manage to do to a computer without the foggiest notion of what they're trying to do, or what they're doing.
Of course, half the time this kind of thing happens, it's their friend telling them, "OK - take the mouse and move the pointer over there and click, NO! Over THERE! OK. Now, go over there and click. OK. Now, do you see (this?) No? OK. Click here..." and so on, never realizing that the "NO!" was something that is not only wrong, but needs to be backed out.
Heinlein once said, "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
This goes doubly for people who bought computers just so they could trade music with their friends (don't laugh - I know one person who spent about $800 or so to do exactly this, only to find that that cheap-ass audio board didn't quite work the way he wanted it to...)
"Novice users" doesn't mean a whole lot to me. What is your group of "novice users" representative of? College students? Joe Average blue-collar workers? High school graduates? Retirement community inhabitants?
And what's a "small group?"
Given that your "novice users" already had music stored in a particular directory, I somehow doubt that they were entirely computer newbies.
Find a group of people who don't know what a mouse is for, and see if they can share files without putting their entire drive at risk...
This looks an awful lot like the plot from "Weapons of Mass Distraction," with Ben Kingsley and Gabriel Byrne.
Great movie, albeit completely depressing, as the two media moguls don't back down from their feud until they've utterly destroyed the lives of their own families.
Because you're not paying to receive the junk mail. When someone sends a spam, it arrives on my mail server through my pipe, and costs me bandwidth.
Junk faxes are illegal for this very reason.
That's why his e-mail address isn't included in the article - the e-mail address in the header is for the "letters to the editor" address.
Bingo. Your "right" to send e-mail ends at my MX. I'm under no obligation to accept incoming e-mail at all.
Spam isn't a "free speech" issue. It's a "theft of resources" issue according to CompuServe vs. Cyber Promotions, wherein the judge decided that spamming was indeed "actionable trespass of chattel."
The RBL, to the best of my knowledge, is not now a "volunteer" organization since they went to a subscription model in order to use their lists.
SPEWS, on the other hand, seems to be a volunteer organization. If anyone knew who operated it, I'd go ask them about it. But they don't ask for money, and they've been incredibly successful in getting spammers to whine a lot about their e-mail getting rejected.
An IT professional whose lifeblood depends on amassing lists of valid e-mail addresses?
That makes you, what? A spammer? Or a marketer?
It doesn't make you a "professional," in my book.
A Gerber Multi-Lock, Leatherman, or any of the standard "multitool" devices can suffice for most of what you'll need in a dorm room. I had a couple of smaller individual screwdrivers that "walked off," but I still have my multitool.
Add a small hammer, and possibly a small "keyhole" saw - it'll come in handy when you need to cut a piece of wood down to fit into the loft your roommate wants to build, and can also be used to cut a chunk of drywall to patch that hole that your drunk friend left with his forehead...
Cheesy SF novel by Leo Frankowski about genetically-engineered treehouses, food trees, Labor and Defense Units (gengineered "police," as it were.) He also has mosquitoes that eat steel and aluminum, thus making most weapons and vehicles cease functioning.
Read it quite some time ago, after I'd finished "Conrad's Quest for Rubber," the last of the "Cross-Time Engineer" series, also by Frankowski.
I like his writing and humor, but he got a lot of things *wrong*, like distilling in brass. Bad idea.
This might work for ELNK and AOL, but a rising number of ISPs are inserting "clean-up fees" for customers who violate their Acceptable Use Policies.
They *might* turn around and bill you a few bucks per spam (which could add up rather quickly) and STILL not "cancel" your account, but simply suspend your ability to log in during their "investigation."
For even more fun, try calling Earthlink support with other questions.
By leading them around a bit, you can get them to admit that your account password is stored in plaintext in their trouble-ticketing system.
I've never used any online system that stored passwords in plaintext - as a Solaris admin, we usually just reset the password, tell the user what the new one is, and tell them it must be changed when they next log in.
I don't *WANT* to know the user's password - I have no need for it, since I'm root anyway. Why do Earthlink tech support drones need to know the user's password? They've already got a stack of other information that can be used to verify the user's identity.