The outlook, it was dismal for the Joyville nine that day
The year was 2502, one inning left to play.
The fan base had eroded so, this game would be the last.
The onetime national pastime's time, alas, had finally passed.
A somber group of gravediggers were warming up their arms.
They prepared to bury baseball, the big teams and the farms.
A-grieving in the bleachers the remaining faithful sat.
"If only we could liberate Ted Williams from his vat!"
For baseball's mighty slugger had been frozen when he died.
They froze his sacred arms and wrists, they froze his rugged hide.
They froze him in the hope that he might someday un-retire.
But no one thought the sport itself would sicken, then expire.
And then from many thousand throats there rose as one, a breath.
A gasp of shock, surprise and glee, of victory o'er death.
For in the batter's circle, for the multitudes to greet
In suspended animation, there hung Williams by his feet.
There was frost upon his biceps as they opened up his case.
Liquid nitrogen was dripping from the creases on his face.
How the faithful cheered their legend as the slugger was unpacked.
How he tipped his hat to greet them! How his knees and elbows cracked!
Now he stood there stiffly legged as the light began to die.
The pitcher hurled a bullet. Williams watched as it went by.
The catcher muttered softly, "You took that one like a chump."
"I'm adjusting to the temperature," he said. "Strike!" said the ump.
The tumult from the bleachers was amazing to behold.
Not a fan among them noticed that the bat was green with mold.
Now his eyes returned an icy glare, he curled his frozen lip.
Now his red socks were de-icing. Now his cap began to drip.
Then came another missive from that demon on the mound,
Showing every indication it would splutter to the ground.
But then it rose, Phoenix-like, 'til level with his belt.
"Strike two!" the umpire said, as Williams felt his shoulders melt.
In the catered suites around the park the corporate sponsors groaned.
In the press box doing play-by-play, the glib announcers moaned.
In the stands, prevailing wisdom was, the greatest one had choked.
At the plate, the catcher noticed that the batter's box was soaked.
For the frost upon the slugger's brow had turned into a slush.
His uniform was sodden and his mitt was leather mush.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now it's on its way.
And now the air's alive with a ferocious swing and spray.
Oh somewhere there's a field of dreams with bleachers by the surf.
And somewhere bands are playing on some soggy outfield turf.
Although mostly it is dusty by the plate where umpires shout,
There's a pool of mud in Joyville, for Ted Williams has thawed out.
Dale Connally (With apologies to Ernest L. Thayer.)
Ummm.... you all do realize that the entire cryonics industry is a plot conceived by time-travelling cannibals from the future to ensure an endless supply of TV-Dinners....
And don't forget that all of the guns will be replaced with walkie-talkies, and the entire cast will be replaced with digitally-created Ewoks!
FREE HAT!!!
Re:Hardware solution with caveats for you
on
Cheap KVM Over IP?
·
· Score: 2
I've got several of these installed with customers. My comments:
1) Despite any gripes below, it does what it says it will do flawlessly. 2) Virtual floppy can only be used for booting and operating systems that access the floppy via INT 13 (basically DOS unless somebody out there has a *nix INT 13 hack - don't even think about Win NT/2K/XP). 3) Requires one additional IP address, switch port per machine (and associated cabling, etc). 4) As far as I know it only works with Compaq Proliant servers (but I'd love to hear from somebody with other experience). 5) Graphical remote control sucks ass (sssslllooooowwww, even over a LAN), but it can get you to where you can use VNC / PCAnywhere / SSH / Windows Remote Console, etc.
You also left out that it has the ability to power-off / power-on / cold-boot the server.
Despite the above qualms, I spec them in all critical servers because they're the only way (short of true KVM over IP) to completely remotely troubleshoot a crashed server. By that I mean full access during the boot process, the ability to see a BSOD (or other OS equic) screen live, and the ability to control the OS boot through a text and / or graphical startup process. In fact, for a remote (colo, etc) Win2K server, I usually leave the Win2K CD in the drive, and a floppy disk with any special RAID / HDD drivers in the floppy drive. From there I can literally do a complete OS reinstall by remote control (of course, it would be nice if all of my server software ran on OSes that don't require occasional reinstalls, but that's another story).
Not only that, but remember that reality doesn't resemble the bullshit Sci-Fi movie dogfights. While human flying skill will be extremely important for the forseeable future (whether or not the pilot is actually in the plane is another matter), computers are much better at hitting targets than people are. I would imagine that in 99.99% of the cases out there, the computer will handle the aiming and firing of the weapon and destroy the intended target with the first burst. In the other 0.01% of the cases the second burst should do the trick.
Surely the pun of using keystrokes to cure a terminal disease was 100% unintended (heh). And they're probably get more donations if the CIQ (Charity-In-Question) was helping the South Park character Timmy (TIMMAYYYY!!!!!).
BMW claims their 2001-02 M-Roadster does 0-60 in 5.0 seconds. Mine does 0-60 in well under that (I don't have a good way to measure it precicely, but I've driven enough sports cars to have a good idea). The various auto mags that have run their own test place it between 4.5 and 4.75 secs. Why would BMW understate the performance so significantly? So that it doesn't cut into sales of the higher-priced M3 Convertable and the much higher-priced (and actually slower) Z-8....
Homeland Security is frankly useless if your economy is cripped by rampant trivial patents being used as weapons of mass economic destruction.
While the patent system is in dire need of being addressed, I think that being blown up by a terrorist would suck a great deal more ass than being involved in patent litigation. At least in the long run.
It's interesting that most of the doctors responding are doing so much emothion and so little logic (and this one didn't even read the article carefully). Let's go through the rebuttal...
1) "Nothing Beats Pure Data" - Nobody that I'm aware of has posited this idea in the discussion, because it's absurd. Pure data on its own is fairly useless. It's the interpretation of the data that is important. What this tool seems to be designed to do is to make sure that the data is thoroughly collected and at least adequately corrolated against certain rules.
2) "I'd bet that a very small fraction of the people on the board would trust their mother's care to a database." Of course we wouldn't, but I would feel much better knowing that her condition was subjected to a thorough and complete analysis; this tool could probably assist in that. I'm sure my mom would agree - she's an experienced RN and regularly has to catch and help fix doctor's mistakes. This is not to say that doctors are incompetent (though some clearly are), but that they are human and fallible just like the rest of us.
3) "The great thing is that most people on this board are not representative of the world. The rest are not willing to forego a physician's care because of their superior intellect. Once the techie is in the emergency room with his twinkie-filled coronary arteries and a ten-ton elephant sitting on his chest - he'll be screaming for the best cardiologist money can buy." - This is an hysterical, stupid, cheap shot at eduacted technology professionals not even worthy of a response. But in the intrests of being thorough, I'm giving one anyway:). Despite the stereotype, many IT professionals (such as myself) are fit, healthy individuals who exercise regularly, drink plenty of water, and enjoy a proper diet. And those of us who stayed out of the dot-bomb industries (or got out early enough) can afford the best cardiologists money can buy, and don't have to whine and scream about it.
4) "Wait, wait you have to fill out the database.. the computer is better, your HMO says so..." - I don't think it was ever suggested that this tool be used in situations where seconds count.
5) "FIX HEALTHCARE by fixing the mundane problems: [blah blah blah]" - Yes, insurance and tort reform are well-known needs in many industries, including healthacre (at least until they allow us to start hunting lawyers to thin out the herd, prevent overgrazing and starvation, protect the species, etc.). Money? Yeah, let's just throw even more than the current 1/7th of our GNP (at least here in the US) down this rathole...
6) "stop belly-aching about egotistical doctors, for every high-profile bastard physician there are twenty doctors who work very hard, destroy their own families and life to care for your families." Dude, you're not exactly helping your cause here. And most well-adjusted people don't go around bragging about destroying their families and their lives in pursuit of their careers. I would think that something that could potentially reduce the amount of work that doctors do would improve their families and their lives (unless said doctors are egotistical assholes and their families are better off not having them around).
7) "I hate hearing anecdotal bullshit that this database helped solve my rare sleep disorder that only 1 person in 5 million has. GREAT!" - I bet that girl who almost died would have been thrilled. But that's just me. For all I know she's a masochist.
8) Does it make healthcare faster, more accurate and above all *CHEAPER*.... doubt it.. - And if your reaction of unwarranted hysteria, fear, suspicion, hatred, and loathing of any new tool that may challenge your fragile ego is representitive of your profession, then we'll probably never know. It's a tool to assist in diagnostics. It doesn't trivialize the doctor's contribution to medicine. It doesn't remove you from the process. It doesn't steal your lunch out of the refridgerator. It doesn't make your dick smaller. It's here to help you. Give it an honest before you dismiss it.
And finally, my $.02. I'm a very healthy person (no ongoing medical issues other than bad eyesight). My limited experience with doctors has been mixed. My impression is that there is a bit of a correlation between doctors and experienced IT professionals: they both have to perform complex analysis with limited and often incomplete and inaccurate data. Some approach problems in a thorough and disciplined manner, some are highly intuitive (gifted, or just plain lucky), some are sloppy, rushed, and prone to snap judgements (that no one dare question), and some simply don't give a shit. Unfortunately, most that I've seen seem to fall in the last two categories. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I seriously doubt it.
Personally, I think the problems are mainly systemic - doctors are spending far too much time performing tasks better suited to nurses and nurse practitioners; they get burned out because they can't do their jobs properly, and thus the downward spiral begins. Most HMOs would be better managed by any four monkeys from our local zoo (of course, the San Diego Zoo has some exceptional monkeys, but still). The number of improvements that could be applied to the health care industry (and schools and universities feeding it) can probably only be expressed using some highly esoteric mathematics. But if something reasonable shows up, you should probably give it a shot.
1) I've always found them to be extremely fragile. The number of people I know with Sony notebooks that haven't (badly) cracked or broken the cheap plastic case within one year is still zero.
2) As has been mentioned, their driver policy sucks ass.
3) No DVD-RW drive for it yet, but my 1-Year Old IBM Thinkpad T22 has a 15" screen (1400x1050x32), weighs less than 5 lbs, fits in any standard-size notebook carrying case, has the traditionally awesome IBM notebook keyboard (and personally I prefer the Trackpoint to the various touchpads), runs any version of Windows that I want, and is fully Linux compatible (Red Hat 7.3 installs perfectly). Oh, and since IBM's notebooks use the "UltraBay" spec, I know that when they do come out with a DVD-RW drive, it will work with my machine...
I actually did buy the new album, and it does suck compared to his previous offerings (esp. Play, which was a pretty good). The first track is decent, but the rest sound completely uninspired (IMHO). I've told all of my friends not to buy it.
True, but you should be able to negotiate some of these things with your new employer (the notable exception usually being vesting schedules, which they typically can't alter for legal / tax reasons). However most things can be boiled down into additional salary / signing bonus / vacation rule exceptions, etc.
One thing though - make sure that you are guaranteed these things up front and in writing. If the company promises to "take care of you down the road," you're at the mercy of your boss - and typically his/her boss and maybe even a few more steps up the ladder - to get this done. Keep in mind that the relative level of urgency on their part declines dramatically once you sign on the dotted line...
I was working with my formed employer trying to get the side panels for a Compaq rack cabinet delivered - in once piece. This turned out to be an extremely interesting challenge. Yes, the box is large, flat, and unwelidy, but it's clearly marked as fragile. So it's amazing how we had various sets delivered with bootprints, forklift wheel prints(!), etc. After rejecting about 5 shipments (some of which were so badly mangled we couldn't have possible attached them if we wanted to), we finally got a set that we deemed "serviceable"....
Slashdot Mirror
One in a million ... but which one?
Teddy in the Vat
July 2002
The outlook, it was dismal for the Joyville nine that day
The year was 2502, one inning left to play.
The fan base had eroded so, this game would be the last.
The onetime national pastime's time, alas, had finally passed.
A somber group of gravediggers were warming up their arms.
They prepared to bury baseball, the big teams and the farms.
A-grieving in the bleachers the remaining faithful sat.
"If only we could liberate Ted Williams from his vat!"
For baseball's mighty slugger had been frozen when he died.
They froze his sacred arms and wrists, they froze his rugged hide.
They froze him in the hope that he might someday un-retire.
But no one thought the sport itself would sicken, then expire.
And then from many thousand throats there rose as one, a breath.
A gasp of shock, surprise and glee, of victory o'er death.
For in the batter's circle, for the multitudes to greet
In suspended animation, there hung Williams by his feet.
There was frost upon his biceps as they opened up his case.
Liquid nitrogen was dripping from the creases on his face.
How the faithful cheered their legend as the slugger was unpacked.
How he tipped his hat to greet them! How his knees and elbows cracked!
Now he stood there stiffly legged as the light began to die.
The pitcher hurled a bullet. Williams watched as it went by.
The catcher muttered softly, "You took that one like a chump."
"I'm adjusting to the temperature," he said. "Strike!" said the ump.
The tumult from the bleachers was amazing to behold.
Not a fan among them noticed that the bat was green with mold.
Now his eyes returned an icy glare, he curled his frozen lip.
Now his red socks were de-icing. Now his cap began to drip.
Then came another missive from that demon on the mound,
Showing every indication it would splutter to the ground.
But then it rose, Phoenix-like, 'til level with his belt.
"Strike two!" the umpire said, as Williams felt his shoulders melt.
In the catered suites around the park the corporate sponsors groaned.
In the press box doing play-by-play, the glib announcers moaned.
In the stands, prevailing wisdom was, the greatest one had choked.
At the plate, the catcher noticed that the batter's box was soaked.
For the frost upon the slugger's brow had turned into a slush.
His uniform was sodden and his mitt was leather mush.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now it's on its way.
And now the air's alive with a ferocious swing and spray.
Oh somewhere there's a field of dreams with bleachers by the surf.
And somewhere bands are playing on some soggy outfield turf.
Although mostly it is dusty by the plate where umpires shout,
There's a pool of mud in Joyville, for Ted Williams has thawed out.
Dale Connally (With apologies to Ernest L. Thayer.)
Ummm.... you all do realize that the entire cryonics industry is a plot conceived by time-travelling cannibals from the future to ensure an endless supply of TV-Dinners....
For people with no idea what we're talking about: South Park Episode 609 (RealPlayer format).
And don't forget that all of the guns will be replaced with walkie-talkies, and the entire cast will be replaced with digitally-created Ewoks!
FREE HAT!!!
I've got several of these installed with customers. My comments:
1) Despite any gripes below, it does what it says it will do flawlessly.
2) Virtual floppy can only be used for booting and operating systems that access the floppy via INT 13 (basically DOS unless somebody out there has a *nix INT 13 hack - don't even think about Win NT/2K/XP).
3) Requires one additional IP address, switch port per machine (and associated cabling, etc).
4) As far as I know it only works with Compaq Proliant servers (but I'd love to hear from somebody with other experience).
5) Graphical remote control sucks ass (sssslllooooowwww, even over a LAN), but it can get you to where you can use VNC / PCAnywhere / SSH / Windows Remote Console, etc.
You also left out that it has the ability to power-off / power-on / cold-boot the server.
Despite the above qualms, I spec them in all critical servers because they're the only way (short of true KVM over IP) to completely remotely troubleshoot a crashed server. By that I mean full access during the boot process, the ability to see a BSOD (or other OS equic) screen live, and the ability to control the OS boot through a text and / or graphical startup process. In fact, for a remote (colo, etc) Win2K server, I usually leave the Win2K CD in the drive, and a floppy disk with any special RAID / HDD drivers in the floppy drive. From there I can literally do a complete OS reinstall by remote control (of course, it would be nice if all of my server software ran on OSes that don't require occasional reinstalls, but that's another story).
Or calling Eric Cartman "fat-ass" rather than "big-boned" or "festively plump."
Not only that, but remember that reality doesn't resemble the bullshit Sci-Fi movie dogfights. While human flying skill will be extremely important for the forseeable future (whether or not the pilot is actually in the plane is another matter), computers are much better at hitting targets than people are. I would imagine that in 99.99% of the cases out there, the computer will handle the aiming and firing of the weapon and destroy the intended target with the first burst. In the other 0.01% of the cases the second burst should do the trick.
Shit, I'm just happy I no longer have to fear my girlfriend accidentally vaporizing the city when she takes a bubble bath.
Surely the pun of using keystrokes to cure a terminal disease was 100% unintended (heh). And they're probably get more donations if the CIQ (Charity-In-Question) was helping the South Park character Timmy (TIMMAYYYY!!!!!).
How is this off-topic? Road Runner is a registered trademark of AOL-Time-Warner.
Because they know that AOHell-Time-Warner is going to sue the living shit out of them any minute now...
BMW claims their 2001-02 M-Roadster does 0-60 in 5.0 seconds. Mine does 0-60 in well under that (I don't have a good way to measure it precicely, but I've driven enough sports cars to have a good idea). The various auto mags that have run their own test place it between 4.5 and 4.75 secs. Why would BMW understate the performance so significantly? So that it doesn't cut into sales of the higher-priced M3 Convertable and the much higher-priced (and actually slower) Z-8....
While the patent system is in dire need of being addressed, I think that being blown up by a terrorist would suck a great deal more ass than being involved in patent litigation. At least in the long run.
It's interesting that most of the doctors responding are doing so much emothion and so little logic (and this one didn't even read the article carefully). Let's go through the rebuttal...
:). Despite the stereotype, many IT professionals (such as myself) are fit, healthy individuals who exercise regularly, drink plenty of water, and enjoy a proper diet. And those of us who stayed out of the dot-bomb industries (or got out early enough) can afford the best cardiologists money can buy, and don't have to whine and scream about it.
1) "Nothing Beats Pure Data" - Nobody that I'm aware of has posited this idea in the discussion, because it's absurd. Pure data on its own is fairly useless. It's the interpretation of the data that is important. What this tool seems to be designed to do is to make sure that the data is thoroughly collected and at least adequately corrolated against certain rules.
2) "I'd bet that a very small fraction of the people on the board would trust their mother's care to a database." Of course we wouldn't, but I would feel much better knowing that her condition was subjected to a thorough and complete analysis; this tool could probably assist in that. I'm sure my mom would agree - she's an experienced RN and regularly has to catch and help fix doctor's mistakes. This is not to say that doctors are incompetent (though some clearly are), but that they are human and fallible just like the rest of us.
3) "The great thing is that most people on this board are not representative of the world. The rest are not willing to forego a physician's care because of their superior intellect. Once the techie is in the emergency room with his twinkie-filled coronary arteries and a ten-ton elephant sitting on his chest - he'll be screaming for the best cardiologist money can buy." - This is an hysterical, stupid, cheap shot at eduacted technology professionals not even worthy of a response. But in the intrests of being thorough, I'm giving one anyway
4) "Wait, wait you have to fill out the database.. the computer is better, your HMO says so..." - I don't think it was ever suggested that this tool be used in situations where seconds count.
5) "FIX HEALTHCARE by fixing the mundane problems: [blah blah blah]" - Yes, insurance and tort reform are well-known needs in many industries, including healthacre (at least until they allow us to start hunting lawyers to thin out the herd, prevent overgrazing and starvation, protect the species, etc.). Money? Yeah, let's just throw even more than the current 1/7th of our GNP (at least here in the US) down this rathole...
6) "stop belly-aching about egotistical doctors, for every high-profile bastard physician there are twenty doctors who work very hard, destroy their own families and life to care for your families." Dude, you're not exactly helping your cause here. And most well-adjusted people don't go around bragging about destroying their families and their lives in pursuit of their careers. I would think that something that could potentially reduce the amount of work that doctors do would improve their families and their lives (unless said doctors are egotistical assholes and their families are better off not having them around).
7) "I hate hearing anecdotal bullshit that this database helped solve my rare sleep disorder that only 1 person in 5 million has. GREAT!" - I bet that girl who almost died would have been thrilled. But that's just me. For all I know she's a masochist.
8) Does it make healthcare faster, more accurate and above all *CHEAPER*.... doubt it.. - And if your reaction of unwarranted hysteria, fear, suspicion, hatred, and loathing of any new tool that may challenge your fragile ego is representitive of your profession, then we'll probably never know. It's a tool to assist in diagnostics. It doesn't trivialize the doctor's contribution to medicine. It doesn't remove you from the process. It doesn't steal your lunch out of the refridgerator. It doesn't make your dick smaller. It's here to help you. Give it an honest before you dismiss it.
And finally, my $.02. I'm a very healthy person (no ongoing medical issues other than bad eyesight). My limited experience with doctors has been mixed. My impression is that there is a bit of a correlation between doctors and experienced IT professionals: they both have to perform complex analysis with limited and often incomplete and inaccurate data. Some approach problems in a thorough and disciplined manner, some are highly intuitive (gifted, or just plain lucky), some are sloppy, rushed, and prone to snap judgements (that no one dare question), and some simply don't give a shit. Unfortunately, most that I've seen seem to fall in the last two categories. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I seriously doubt it.
Personally, I think the problems are mainly systemic - doctors are spending far too much time performing tasks better suited to nurses and nurse practitioners; they get burned out because they can't do their jobs properly, and thus the downward spiral begins. Most HMOs would be better managed by any four monkeys from our local zoo (of course, the San Diego Zoo has some exceptional monkeys, but still). The number of improvements that could be applied to the health care industry (and schools and universities feeding it) can probably only be expressed using some highly esoteric mathematics. But if something reasonable shows up, you should probably give it a shot.
1) I've always found them to be extremely fragile. The number of people I know with Sony notebooks that haven't (badly) cracked or broken the cheap plastic case within one year is still zero.
2) As has been mentioned, their driver policy sucks ass.
3) No DVD-RW drive for it yet, but my 1-Year Old IBM Thinkpad T22 has a 15" screen (1400x1050x32), weighs less than 5 lbs, fits in any standard-size notebook carrying case, has the traditionally awesome IBM notebook keyboard (and personally I prefer the Trackpoint to the various touchpads), runs any version of Windows that I want, and is fully Linux compatible (Red Hat 7.3 installs perfectly). Oh, and since IBM's notebooks use the "UltraBay" spec, I know that when they do come out with a DVD-RW drive, it will work with my machine...
'nough said.
Actually, the case is usually that they legislate the crap into everything, but your point it taken.
As in, if you use them or more than eight hours a day, do they die within three months like a half-dozen of my "deathstar" drives have done?
I actually did buy the new album, and it does suck compared to his previous offerings (esp. Play, which was a pretty good). The first track is decent, but the rest sound completely uninspired (IMHO). I've told all of my friends not to buy it.
They don't want to admit it, but the real reason for building this thing is so that they can predict appearances of Godzilla....
True, but you should be able to negotiate some of these things with your new employer (the notable exception usually being vesting schedules, which they typically can't alter for legal / tax reasons). However most things can be boiled down into additional salary / signing bonus / vacation rule exceptions, etc.
One thing though - make sure that you are guaranteed these things up front and in writing. If the company promises to "take care of you down the road," you're at the mercy of your boss - and typically his/her boss and maybe even a few more steps up the ladder - to get this done. Keep in mind that the relative level of urgency on their part declines dramatically once you sign on the dotted line...
$0.37 after this month. The bastards.
After all, AT&T's logo does strongly resemble the Death Star...
The more AT&T tightens its grip, the more cable modems will slip through its fingers...
I was working with my formed employer trying to get the side panels for a Compaq rack cabinet delivered - in once piece. This turned out to be an extremely interesting challenge. Yes, the box is large, flat, and unwelidy, but it's clearly marked as fragile. So it's amazing how we had various sets delivered with bootprints, forklift wheel prints(!), etc. After rejecting about 5 shipments (some of which were so badly mangled we couldn't have possible attached them if we wanted to), we finally got a set that we deemed "serviceable"....