This is something I've always wanted to play with. It's a little expensive (for a home user) to get into, but it's extremely scalable. If I moved all my DVDs and such to on-line storage, I think this is what I would opt for. It can be run in all sorts of RAID configurations, doesn't require matched sized hard drives, and it can all be racked up very nicely.
'In a stark departure from the typical passenger instructions issued prior to touchdown, the same attendant added, "Your federally trained flight attendants have taken control of the situation!" according to Mr. Rosenblith'
That scares me more than someone holding a dead-man switch on a hydrogen bomb.
And I agree with a previous comment that he should have gotten an INCREASED sentence, since clearly we can't allow someone who has no control over themselves loose in public.
Back in '91, IBM won a contract from J.B. Hunt to develop a satellite based system for trucks. It used a Qualcomm satellite system, a 486SX based tablet computer (I designed the keyboard controller, power management processor and did a lot of the BIOS work on it), and a docking station.
The tablet ran a program designed by a sub-contractor that allowed the trucker to do things like checklists, fuel management, figure his trip earnings, report emergencies, etc.
One of J.B. Hunts driving (heh) reasons was that after a driver delivered his load, he might spend 30 minutes thumbing the same quarter into a payphone trying to call the dispatcher. With this system, he could send a communique that he was done, and the system would turn around with new orders in less than 2 minutes.
One of the other neat things was the Qualcomm dish could do triangulation that was accurate to a few hundred yards. At least twice I know of, rigs were stolen and recovered because of the satellite tracking.
Now the little antenna packages are ubiquitous on trucks. Look behind the air dam on the roof, or the back of the cab, and you'll see a white dome that's about 12" in diameter, and 10" tall. Odds are that's a Qualcomm satellite link.
The tablet system was pretty neat, too. It was an extremely dense PCB at the time, 16 layers. It supported the original Sundisk (before they became Sandisk) 2.5MB flash drives, touch screen, used Peltier devices to allow operation in extreme temperatures, had RS-232, RS-422, infrared, keyboard & mouse port, expansion connectors, LCD controller, all that stuff, in an aluminum frame with this heavy duty rubber covering over it.
The holster interfaced to the trucks wiring harness and could pick off speed (we were pre-GPS), RPM, voltage, stuff like that. Our group didn't handle the holster, so I only know vague details about it, but I do know that while they were considered some of the vehicle data busses for the future, they interfaced the old-fashioned way.
Most of the drivers were moderately receptive to the system, since it sped up their turn-around time, which meant more money. However, since it could tattle on exceeding maximum allowed drive time, over-revving, and of course speeding, there were some drivers that had real problems with it.
Incidentally, at that point in time, J.B. Hunt was a VERY large customer of IBM main frames. For the previous 7 years, they upgraded every year to IBMs newest mainframe offerings. Their big data center was somewhere in the Mid-west, I believe. With their route planning, logistics management, service records system, dispatch system and everything else, they burned a lot of CPU cycles.
Somewhere in my basement, I have one of the docking holsters and the tablet computer, and as of about a year ago, it powered up and booted into DOS.
J.B. Hunt and IBM learned an important lesson from this, too: Don't let the driver be able to see the tablet. Before they started positioning them where the driver couldn't read it while in motion, at least one accident occurred because of fixation.
While new technologies have brought more to the table, what the system offered 17 years ago isn't all that drastically different. Satellite is still the best choice, since cell phone coverage is not 100% pervasive.
The project name was Road Rider. Naturally, we called it Road Kill internally:)
Maybe because the titles are so esoteric that by defining what it's good for, people can relate to it.
Just based on the title of Mr. Hofmanns paper ('Kato problem for divergence form elliptic operators with Gaussian heat kernel bounds'), I have *no* idea why it might be useful (I'm also not a mathematician), but when someone says "It could be useful for understanding the effects of earthquakes as the shockwaves travel through rock.", at least I have *some* idea of where it's going.
I think this demonstrates just how ineffective and pointless these laws are. If the laws survived on their own, they would easily be renewed every time the sunset provision expired. The mere fact they chose to "extend" (make semi-permanent) these laws just says they have no merit.
With all the people, talent, and funding by people that care (for advertising), surely a week of boycotting DVD/video purchases and movie theaters could make a statement. I don't know what would be involved in setting it up, but if even 5% of the buyers pitched in, it would send a message.
This is exactly right. Hayes was also notorious for putting "+++ATH0" in the top line of press releases. If the escape guard time wasn't implemented, you'd get dropped.
I use those 100 CDR stack spindles that media come in. People at the office never re-use them, so I just grab'em, take'em home, and stack my media on them. Makes in a little of a pain to find stuff, but I use little bits of sticky notes to index major sections (OSs, Windows drivers, games, etc).
It's not ideal, but it works better than anything else I've found to date.
...is to stop offering plea deals, and just torture them if they don't give the information. Then torture them anyway because they're fuckups.
Re:I'm looking for a new job because of this
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 1
The issue, I believe, is that it has become too easy to communicate. Push a button (Nextel is a good example), press return, push a speed dial key, you're talking to someone. It's not necessarily that people think they're immediate need is more important than what you're doing, but that "because I can instantly communicate, I should."
The need for Fedex didn't develop until Fedex invented a market for itself. The business world got along just fine without it, as far as I know. In fact, it provided a buffer that allowed people to think about decisions before they committed, which has become harder to do in this day of instant communication.
I have a Marantz RC2000 that I use with a Sony WEGA TV, Tivo, DirecTV receiver, Kenwood surround sound receiver, Sony 5 disc changer, Panasonic DVD player, and a Sony laser disc player.
At the time, it was one of the better remotes available, and more importantly, I could afford it without refinancing my house. It's usable, but it's not ideal. It's pretty easy to select the device to control, but each device can have 4 pages of 10 buttons. This can lead to confusion with the less technically inclined in the house.
Battery life is not too abhorrent, but it's very important to change the batteries with the warning indicator comes on, or you're doomed to an evening of reprogramming the thing.
I can't remember if the RC2000 has any internal remote profiles. As I recall, it does not, and you have to teach it every function by putting in learn mode, selecting the button, pressing the button on the other remote, etc. The obvious downside to this is that if you lose the original remote, you're SOL. I think the newer remotes with built in databases, or a learned database that can be backed would be far superior. I've just been very careful not to let the batteries die.
One of the most annoying "features" of the remote relates to the backlight. When the backlight button is pressed, the remote buttons don't work. The backlight only stays on a short time, so you end up oscillating between pressing the backlight button, then a function button, then the backlight button, etc.
I'm not ready to throw the RC2000 away yet, as it still works. But as much I'd like one of these fancy $1K LCD based remotes, I don't see that happening unless Bill Gates suddenly adopts me as his long lost child.
Overall impression: Better than a Radio Shack universal remote. Time consuming to program with a couple annoying UI features. Upside is that it's a learning remote, so it will work with just about anything, and it can handle a number of devices with a number of functions.
It can be found on laser disc. 3000 pressings exist/existed, of which I have one. There has been talk about moving it to DVD, and as prices to do so drop, either Mike will do it, or a fan will.
There's at least 2 VCR cuts (of which Avon, of all people, was selling 10 years ago or so), and the laser disc version.
I don't know if you ever followed any of the history of that movie, but Mike got screwed in real life much like the producer was trying to screw over the character in the movie. IIRC, Mike was basically left with a bunch of movie posters, and the original unedited film. The Avon release was not authorized by him, nor did he make any money from it. Fans have tried to send Mike money over the years, but he refused to accept it.
WOSAT is definitely an amazing movie, and one on my list I watch whenever I'm feeling a little bummed. Mike was working on Bjorn To Be Wild, but I haven't kept up with the progress in the last few years.
--jc
Feel free to correct any facts. Some of this may be misremembered, as it's been a while since I talked to Mike, and followed the web groups.
I imagine that if they're turning loose rats, they'll use some loudspeakers or something to attempt to warn people. And I'd put the rats in an orange vest or something, where it's obviously not a wild rat. Heck, maybe the rats will be equipped with 2 way radios, so the operator can talk to the victim.
But I'll take a little fear over being left to slowly die while trapped by a steel beam anyday.
BTW, the movie 'Willard' has probably done more to give rats a bad name image than anything other single modern thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a Mt. McKinley at the paper? Or a K2?
Spell checkers are not a replacement for actually reading what you've written.
An interesting comparison between the 1979 Ixtoc oil disaster and the BP disaster. Note that indeed Transocean and Sedco merged in 1999.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=127_1274931222
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_over_Ethernet
This is something I've always wanted to play with. It's a little expensive (for a home user) to get into, but it's extremely scalable. If I moved all my DVDs and such to on-line storage, I think this is what I would opt for. It can be run in all sorts of RAID configurations, doesn't require matched sized hard drives, and it can all be racked up very nicely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(volume)#Oil_barrel
There are 42 gallons, not 55, in a barrel of oil.
Not that it makes it any less of a disaster, but it is the correct number.
I've always preferred to call it the "Zero Intelligence" policy. As all too often demonstrated by school administrators.
'In a stark departure from the typical passenger instructions issued prior to touchdown, the same attendant added, "Your federally trained flight attendants have taken control of the situation!" according to Mr. Rosenblith'
That scares me more than someone holding a dead-man switch on a hydrogen bomb.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is.html
And I agree with a previous comment that he should have gotten an INCREASED sentence, since clearly we can't allow someone who has no control over themselves loose in public.
...is the public housing project of the internet.
99-bottles-of-beer.net
*turkeys*
We could all wear Richard Nixon masks...
Back in '91, IBM won a contract from J.B. Hunt to develop a satellite based system for trucks. It used a Qualcomm satellite system, a 486SX based tablet computer (I designed the keyboard controller, power management processor and did a lot of the BIOS work on it), and a docking station.
:)
The tablet ran a program designed by a sub-contractor that allowed the trucker to do things like checklists, fuel management, figure his trip earnings, report emergencies, etc.
One of J.B. Hunts driving (heh) reasons was that after a driver delivered his load, he might spend 30 minutes thumbing the same quarter into a payphone trying to call the dispatcher. With this system, he could send a communique that he was done, and the system would turn around with new orders in less than 2 minutes.
One of the other neat things was the Qualcomm dish could do triangulation that was accurate to a few hundred yards. At least twice I know of, rigs were stolen and recovered because of the satellite tracking.
Now the little antenna packages are ubiquitous on trucks. Look behind the air dam on the roof, or the back of the cab, and you'll see a white dome that's about 12" in diameter, and 10" tall. Odds are that's a Qualcomm satellite link.
The tablet system was pretty neat, too. It was an extremely dense PCB at the time, 16 layers. It supported the original Sundisk (before they became Sandisk) 2.5MB flash drives, touch screen, used Peltier devices to allow operation in extreme temperatures, had RS-232, RS-422, infrared, keyboard & mouse port, expansion connectors, LCD controller, all that stuff, in an aluminum frame with this heavy duty rubber covering over it.
The holster interfaced to the trucks wiring harness and could pick off speed (we were pre-GPS), RPM, voltage, stuff like that. Our group didn't handle the holster, so I only know vague details about it, but I do know that while they were considered some of the vehicle data busses for the future, they interfaced the old-fashioned way.
Most of the drivers were moderately receptive to the system, since it sped up their turn-around time, which meant more money. However, since it could tattle on exceeding maximum allowed drive time, over-revving, and of course speeding, there were some drivers that had real problems with it.
Incidentally, at that point in time, J.B. Hunt was a VERY large customer of IBM main frames. For the previous 7 years, they upgraded every year to IBMs newest mainframe offerings. Their big data center was somewhere in the Mid-west, I believe. With their route planning, logistics management, service records system, dispatch system and everything else, they burned a lot of CPU cycles.
Somewhere in my basement, I have one of the docking holsters and the tablet computer, and as of about a year ago, it powered up and booted into DOS.
J.B. Hunt and IBM learned an important lesson from this, too: Don't let the driver be able to see the tablet. Before they started positioning them where the driver couldn't read it while in motion, at least one accident occurred because of fixation.
While new technologies have brought more to the table, what the system offered 17 years ago isn't all that drastically different. Satellite is still the best choice, since cell phone coverage is not 100% pervasive.
The project name was Road Rider. Naturally, we called it Road Kill internally
Maybe because the titles are so esoteric that by defining what it's good for, people can relate to it.
Just based on the title of Mr. Hofmanns paper ('Kato problem for divergence form elliptic operators with Gaussian heat kernel bounds'), I have *no* idea why it might be useful (I'm also not a mathematician), but when someone says "It could be useful for understanding the effects of earthquakes as the shockwaves travel through rock.", at least I have *some* idea of where it's going.
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye.
I think this demonstrates just how ineffective and pointless these laws are. If the laws survived on their own, they would easily be renewed every time the sunset provision expired. The mere fact they chose to "extend" (make semi-permanent) these laws just says they have no merit.
http://www.hemcon.com/list_Price.html says they're $113/ea, and a box of 100 is $11,300. Nice discount. And after 2+ years, no less.
With all the people, talent, and funding by people that care (for advertising), surely a week of boycotting DVD/video purchases and movie theaters could make a statement. I don't know what would be involved in setting it up, but if even 5% of the buyers pitched in, it would send a message.
I'm looking for honest opinions: Would it work?
This is exactly right. Hayes was also notorious for putting "+++ATH0" in the top line of press releases. If the escape guard time wasn't implemented, you'd get dropped.
I use those 100 CDR stack spindles that media come in. People at the office never re-use them, so I just grab'em, take'em home, and stack my media on them. Makes in a little of a pain to find stuff, but I use little bits of sticky notes to index major sections (OSs, Windows drivers, games, etc).
It's not ideal, but it works better than anything else I've found to date.
...is to stop offering plea deals, and just torture them if they don't give the information. Then torture them anyway because they're fuckups.
The issue, I believe, is that it has become too easy to communicate. Push a button (Nextel is a good example), press return, push a speed dial key, you're talking to someone. It's not necessarily that people think they're immediate need is more important than what you're doing, but that "because I can instantly communicate, I should."
The need for Fedex didn't develop until Fedex invented a market for itself. The business world got along just fine without it, as far as I know. In fact, it provided a buffer that allowed people to think about decisions before they committed, which has become harder to do in this day of instant communication.
I have a Marantz RC2000 that I use with a Sony WEGA TV, Tivo, DirecTV receiver, Kenwood surround sound receiver, Sony 5 disc changer, Panasonic DVD player, and a Sony laser disc player.
At the time, it was one of the better remotes available, and more importantly, I could afford it without refinancing my house. It's usable, but it's not ideal. It's pretty easy to select the device to control, but each device can have 4 pages of 10 buttons. This can lead to confusion with the less technically inclined in the house.
Battery life is not too abhorrent, but it's very important to change the batteries with the warning indicator comes on, or you're doomed to an evening of reprogramming the thing.
I can't remember if the RC2000 has any internal remote profiles. As I recall, it does not, and you have to teach it every function by putting in learn mode, selecting the button, pressing the button on the other remote, etc. The obvious downside to this is that if you lose the original remote, you're SOL. I think the newer remotes with built in databases, or a learned database that can be backed would be far superior. I've just been very careful not to let the batteries die.
One of the most annoying "features" of the remote relates to the backlight. When the backlight button is pressed, the remote buttons don't work. The backlight only stays on a short time, so you end up oscillating between pressing the backlight button, then a function button, then the backlight button, etc.
I'm not ready to throw the RC2000 away yet, as it still works. But as much I'd like one of these fancy $1K LCD based remotes, I don't see that happening unless Bill Gates suddenly adopts me as his long lost child.
Overall impression: Better than a Radio Shack universal remote. Time consuming to program with a couple annoying UI features. Upside is that it's a learning remote, so it will work with just about anything, and it can handle a number of devices with a number of functions.
It can be found on laser disc. 3000 pressings exist/existed, of which I have one. There has been talk about moving it to DVD, and as prices to do so drop, either Mike will do it, or a fan will.
There's at least 2 VCR cuts (of which Avon, of all people, was selling 10 years ago or so), and the laser disc version.
I don't know if you ever followed any of the history of that movie, but Mike got screwed in real life much like the producer was trying to screw over the character in the movie. IIRC, Mike was basically left with a bunch of movie posters, and the original unedited film. The Avon release was not authorized by him, nor did he make any money from it. Fans have tried to send Mike money over the years, but he refused to accept it.
WOSAT is definitely an amazing movie, and one on my list I watch whenever I'm feeling a little bummed. Mike was working on Bjorn To Be Wild, but I haven't kept up with the progress in the last few years.
--jc
Feel free to correct any facts. Some of this may be misremembered, as it's been a while since I talked to Mike, and followed the web groups.
I imagine that if they're turning loose rats, they'll use some loudspeakers or something to attempt to warn people. And I'd put the rats in an orange vest or something, where it's obviously not a wild rat. Heck, maybe the rats will be equipped with 2 way radios, so the operator can talk to the victim.
But I'll take a little fear over being left to slowly die while trapped by a steel beam anyday.
BTW, the movie 'Willard' has probably done more to give rats a bad name image than anything other single modern thing.
The unplanned irony in the photo is hysterical.
Nuclear weapon. Fire extinguisher.