NASA's Messenger space probe has lifted off on its second try on a Delta 2-Heavy rocket
Which ties "lift off" and "try" dangerously close to each other.
And notice how you use the word "attempt" instead of "try". "Try" is simply the wrong word to use when talking about launching rockets. There's a big difference between "trying to launch" and "making a launch attempt".
When I started to switch to digital photagraphy (still), I started by buying a fairly cheap 2040 olympus. When I had had it about a year, I knew what I really wanted in a digital camera and eps. what I didn't want.
Anyway, it's like sex in a relationship. If is works it's only 10% of the relationship, but if it doesn't work it suddenly become really important.
Buy any old camera the works and is easy to operate. If you spend 300$ now and make a short film and get a hell of a lot of experience, you can easily save a ton of money later.
Okay, the 300$ camera will not look as impressive as a 10.000$ camera, but if that's what you are going for maybe you could try case modding it;-).
Not sure what the robot identifies it self as (take a look at your log, I don't care enough to do it), but I've been visisted by msnbot64042.search.msn.com and msnbot64043.search.msn.com for a total of 12500 page hits in june (drawing 230MB of bandwidth). Googlebot did just over 10000 page hits and 233MB, in the same period... (number 3 is Inktomi Slurp with 2000 hits and 9MB...)
It's the price you pay for visitors. Google is, with a wide margin, the bigget referer to my site and if MSN/newSearch can deliver as many visitors as google for the bandwidth they "take" when they spider me, I sure as hell aren't going shut them off...
The bedrock of a successful democracy is people who has had a decent meal recently. When they have had it, they may start to wonder about making a better and maybe more democratic future for themselves...
Linking up africa will not solve their problems...
I once had a math book written by Asimov, sadly I can't remember the title...
Anyway, it explained math topics so well, that I often gave up explaining stuff to the x (current/wife, doesn't care about math), and just found the relevant explanation in the Asimov book and let her read that.
She would usually go "Ah, why didn't you say that from the beginning".
(In hinsight I would probably say that I could have done as well as Asimov if I had had a whiteboard...)
I was at a business lunch, we where four people in all (all old friends) and the mattes had gone from business to just talk. We where having fun..
One of the guys mobils rings. He looks at it and says "Sorry, I have to take this...".
He answers the phone and the conversations goes like this: X:"Hi, this is X". [The other part identifies it self, and obviously askes if it's interrupting anything important] X: "No, no problem - I was bored anyway".
Cracked me up!
But there's a good bit of truths in it. When you answer your mobile phone while in company with other people, that's basicly what you are saying.
"I'm answering this call, because I care more about having a conversation with a random stanger, than this conversation I'm having with you. For not other reason that the fact that it's convinient for the stranger to talk to me now. The fact that you are wasting your time while I'm having the conversation will not mean anything to me, and I'll keep on talking as long as it take and beyond..."
[Googling..]...A quick search tells me that kazaa was sold til Sharman Networks in january 2002 and if I search google groups for the words "kazaa spyware" and limit the search for january 2002, I find lots of posts saying that Kazaa contains spyware... so I guess you are right and that they are Scum(tm).
(it's been a long time since I installede Kazaa, but as I remember it, it actually contained options in the install program to not install all the extra crap)
I think that there may be a problem here. I can't see how a VoIP system can get the market penetration for it to work, without huge money behind it (esp if it has to have POTS gateways) and I can't see how that can be done with Free/OSS. There may be a business model behind doing a POTS/VoIP gateway, but that's investing in the past and not something you'll find investors interested in.
If Skype would open their source code and protocol [*] we could have a winner on our hands - if we could find some way to make it as profitable business to make gateways. But the thing is, it need a fairly big investment that will be less and less the more successful your system is, but is never the less needed to start the ball rolling.
[*] Never going to happen - they got somebody to invest millions in them on the business model described on their homepage. They can't go back on that and that means no OSS or protocol.
Skype make quite a deal of the fact that it's doesn't contain spy or ad ware.
I've used it quite a bit to communicate from Denmark to Greenland and I'm very impressed by the quality. I get a 4-500ms ping to my brother who's only on a dial-up, yet the quality is flawless and the lag isn't to bad.
Now if only they would make a PalmOne version. I'm going buy a new PDA real-soon-now, but it's not going to be a MS based one. No way.
That's not what the patent claims. The patent is for a handheld emulator that can dynamically chose which platform to emulate based on the input file it was asked to load.
The workaround is to forget about coding that part and just have the user select which platform needs to be emulated.
I can see it now:
LOADING MY_SNES_GAME.ROM.... LOADED...
Please select which emulator to run this ROM on:
1. PS1 (not!) 2. GameBoy (I don't think so) [H1][BLINK]3. SNES[/BLINK][/H1] 4. Amiga (No way)
Please press a number between 1-4 (which isn't 1, 2 or 4): _
One of the things that annoy me the most about pop-up ads, is that they have destroyed an otherwise fine tool. I'll a couple of home-pages and sometimes it would be really nice to be able to do a pop-up. Like for telling people that, if they have to keep on getting the news letter they will have to blah blah, blah... or warning them that there's only two days left if they want to join the competition.
But people are so negative about pop-ups that if they aren't using a blocker (I'm using Firebird), they certainly aren't reading what's in the pop-up before they close it.
Yes, most pop-op blockers have a white-list function, but most users are totally clueless on how to use it and will not white list anything. Even if you give them a clue, they will revert to cluelessness in a few minutes. I'm not just guessing here. I installed Mozilla on every workstation here (15 WS's), changed the default browser to mozilla and demoed it, include the white-list function (our intranet uses pop-ups). So they all had the intranet white-listed "out of the box" and they all know that if there's a small blue question mark is means that there's a pop-up that they might be missing. How often do you think that they come to the me, complaining about home pages that doesn't work "in that stupid mozilla browser..." ?
The only solution that I can see is a global/central white list function. If it was possible to register my site as a "good practice pop-up site" at the various pop-up blocker suppliers, that would could us the pop-up back as a useful tool.
I imagine the rules for getting on the white list should be something like this:
1. Only display a pop-up once to each visitor. Use a cookie or something to make sure that you don't do it again. 2. No ads in the pop-up. The pop-up must be related to the site visited. 3. Make it clear if clicking a link will result in a pop-up (we need a common icon/symbol for this). 4. For the extra strict: Only pop-up to registered users who have signed up for the pop-ups. Like phpBB2's "news personal mail" pop-up box.
I'm unsure if it could be automated, either by analyzing the site with a robot, or through analyzing the manual white-listing done by the users of your blocker software. Otherwise it would have to be a manual process... (which means that it probably would become a paid for extra service).
The first line about venture capital and customer-support was ment as a joke....
Anyway, I've been thinking about it for a bit, and I got one idea: Besides volumn (e.i. compete on price), you need to have a hook.
I would go for the people who are going for their computer number two. Either because the old one is crap or because the wife/kid needs one. This marked must be fairly big and it can only get larger.
Do not make the mistake of thinking these customers are tech-savy and lighter on support. Just because they've had computers for years, does not mean that they have a clue as to what they are doing.
But they do know that they hate about their old computer. They probably hate that they cant put more ram it it (filling out all the sockets with small sticks is often cheaper then buying one big or even worse - they got RAMBUS), that they can't put a new and faster cpu in it (because the bios can't be accessed), that they got the 20$ graphics card instead of the 30$ one and now they can't play games. That the PSU isn't standard, so they can't even add a new harddrive.
The big ones are pulling stunts like that all the time and have no idea until the day arrive where they want to upgrade and their tech-savy friends, just goes "sorry, compaqs aren't build to be upgraded - you paid more for less".
Make sure to get enough venture capital, when you start you new hardware store, that you can hire somebody else to take care of customer-support.
But seriously, it's all about volumn. You have to buy a lot of parts to be able to compete - the margin on hardware is small. Your fortune isn't made just because you can sell a thousand boxes and make 10 or 20 bucks each. Now you have to be read, when half of them calls you and tell you that they can't figure how to connect that 56k modem to their adsl line or that the cup holder is broken.
Now where are those mod points, when you need them?
I quite agree. Actually if you read the first XP book, one of the main point are that if you follow all the ideas, they merge together and support each other.
There's a nice diagram in the book somewhere that show how the different methods support each other.
But then again, you don't have to do all of them "extremely". Just doing all of them just a little, bit will be a lot better than big-ball-of-mudd or the usual chaos development method used.
In most cases added as much as possible of the xp methods to your standard waterfall, spiral or iterative development process will give you a lot.
I've developed software professionally for 15 years and I've used XP for the last 2-3 years. It that doesn't mean that I think XP is the end all of how to develop software. It's right for the things that I do, when used in moderat amounts combined with whatever it gets to get management to accept it.
(try to tell a govermant org that they don't have to write a big contract and that they just have to pay us by the hour and every time we give them something of value. They will nod and go "that sounds nice, but can we get back to the big contract that will cover my ass 100%, even if the project fails badly, now? I know that it raised the chances of the projekt failing, but it will cover my ass, so I don't care.").
I have to agree on this and and follow up with my own, go read the book.
Infact go read everything by Vinge. He has written, so few books, but all of them are great. He show knowledge and interest in topic of IT and he seems to know what he's talking about (unlike, say Gibson).
I've reviewed most his books on my site (without spoilers).
My first thought was to try it in googles calculator:
1 cubic Philadelphia in cubic meters
Didn't work though...
I love these invented-for-the-moment units.
The next time I need to order something I'll try make up my own and wait with excitement for what I'll get. Use an area unit for a room mesurement must give bonus points (and vise-versa).
"Hello, I would like 10 keyboard units of sand, please".
Slashdot Mirror
That's never, ever happened to me before... ... well, there was that one time, but that was a summer/normal time related accident and doesn't count.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
That's just rude...
Just want to recommend Ken MacLeods Newton's wake as post-singularity SF book.
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross should also be good, but I haven't read that one yet.
You are correct, except the write up says:
NASA's Messenger space probe has lifted off on its second try on a Delta 2-Heavy rocket
Which ties "lift off" and "try" dangerously close to each other.
And notice how you use the word "attempt" instead of "try". "Try" is simply the wrong word to use when talking about launching rockets. There's a big difference between "trying to launch" and "making a launch attempt".
So the rocket didn't try hard enough the first time or what? Stupid write up.
Do or do not... [come now, all together]... there is no try!
(With rockets, if you try and don't succed there definitly isn't a second try).
Good advice.
;-).
When I started to switch to digital photagraphy (still), I started by buying a fairly cheap 2040 olympus. When I had had it about a year, I knew what I really wanted in a digital camera and eps. what I didn't want.
Anyway, it's like sex in a relationship. If is works it's only 10% of the relationship, but if it doesn't work it suddenly become really important.
Buy any old camera the works and is easy to operate. If you spend 300$ now and make a short film and get a hell of a lot of experience, you can easily save a ton of money later.
Okay, the 300$ camera will not look as impressive as a 10.000$ camera, but if that's what you are going for maybe you could try case modding it
Not sure what the robot identifies it self as (take a look at your log, I don't care enough to do it), but I've been visisted by msnbot64042.search.msn.com and msnbot64043.search.msn.com for a total of 12500 page hits in june (drawing 230MB of bandwidth). Googlebot did just over 10000 page hits and 233MB, in the same period... (number 3 is Inktomi Slurp with 2000 hits and 9MB...)
It's the price you pay for visitors. Google is, with a wide margin, the bigget referer to my site and if MSN/newSearch can deliver as many visitors as google for the bandwidth they "take" when they spider me, I sure as hell aren't going shut them off...
The bedrock of a successful democracy is people who has had a decent meal recently. When they have had it, they may start to wonder about making a better and maybe more democratic future for themselves...
Linking up africa will not solve their problems...
1. Global vars: BAD.
2. Borland Delphi has had some of this for while with the assert function.
It's basicly a way of making sure that all the things that can't go wrong, actually doesn't.
I considered submitting this story yesterday but thought that someone else already did.
I submitted it 36 hours ago and had it rejected 24 hours ago. Nice slashdot editors....
I once had a math book written by Asimov, sadly I can't remember the title...
Anyway, it explained math topics so well, that I often gave up explaining stuff to the x (current/wife, doesn't care about math), and just found the relevant explanation in the Asimov book and let her read that.
She would usually go "Ah, why didn't you say that from the beginning".
(In hinsight I would probably say that I could have done as well as Asimov if I had had a whiteboard...)
Totally unrelated (I promise!), but I actually quit my job two weeks ago. And I am at home.
The first thing I did was to get the sysAdm to change all root passwords and remove my admin rights.
1. Install on all computers at work.
2. Quit.
3. Profit.
(not that it should take a new sysadm long to notice...)
I was at a business lunch, we where four people in all (all old friends) and the mattes had gone from business to just talk. We where having fun..
One of the guys mobils rings. He looks at it and says "Sorry, I have to take this...".
He answers the phone and the conversations goes like this:
X:"Hi, this is X".
[The other part identifies it self, and obviously askes if it's interrupting anything important]
X: "No, no problem - I was bored anyway".
Cracked me up!
But there's a good bit of truths in it. When you answer your mobile phone while in company with other people, that's basicly what you are saying.
"I'm answering this call, because I care more about having a conversation with a random stanger, than this conversation I'm having with you. For not other reason that the fact that it's convinient for the stranger to talk to me now. The fact that you are wasting your time while I'm having the conversation will not mean anything to me, and I'll keep on talking as long as it take and beyond..."
[Googling..]...A quick search tells me that kazaa was sold til Sharman Networks in january 2002 and if I search google groups for the words "kazaa spyware" and limit the search for january 2002, I find lots of posts saying that Kazaa contains spyware... so I guess you are right and that they are Scum(tm).
(it's been a long time since I installede Kazaa, but as I remember it, it actually contained options in the install program to not install all the extra crap)
I think that there may be a problem here. I can't see how a VoIP system can get the market penetration for it to work, without huge money behind it (esp if it has to have POTS gateways) and I can't see how that can be done with Free/OSS. There may be a business model behind doing a POTS/VoIP gateway, but that's investing in the past and not something you'll find investors interested in.
If Skype would open their source code and protocol [*] we could have a winner on our hands - if we could find some way to make it as profitable business to make gateways. But the thing is, it need a fairly big investment that will be less and less the more successful your system is, but is never the less needed to start the ball rolling.
[*] Never going to happen - they got somebody to invest millions in them on the business model described on their homepage. They can't go back on that and that means no OSS or protocol.
Skype make quite a deal of the fact that it's doesn't contain spy or ad ware.
I've used it quite a bit to communicate from Denmark to Greenland and I'm very impressed by the quality. I get a 4-500ms ping to my brother who's only on a dial-up, yet the quality is flawless and the lag isn't to bad.
Now if only they would make a PalmOne version. I'm going buy a new PDA real-soon-now, but it's not going to be a MS based one. No way.
I'm guess my needs are different/simpler than yours. Sorry, if I got your hopes up...
And I was looking around for a new sound edit program. I've been using CoolEdit for a long time but Audacity seems to do everything I need.
Just took it for a spin and it looks good. It even have a noise reduction function...
Hey, just checked the undo feature and you can even undo the mp3 import.
The mp3 export function seems a bit lacking, but thats what programs like CDex is for (on windows).
One of the things that annoy me the most about pop-up ads, is that they have destroyed an otherwise fine tool. I'll a couple of home-pages and sometimes it would be really nice to be able to do a pop-up. Like for telling people that, if they have to keep on getting the news letter they will have to blah blah, blah... or warning them that there's only two days left if they want to join the competition.
But people are so negative about pop-ups that if they aren't using a blocker (I'm using Firebird), they certainly aren't reading what's in the pop-up before they close it.
Yes, most pop-op blockers have a white-list function, but most users are totally clueless on how to use it and will not white list anything. Even if you give them a clue, they will revert to cluelessness in a few minutes. I'm not just guessing here. I installed Mozilla on every workstation here (15 WS's), changed the default browser to mozilla and demoed it, include the white-list function (our intranet uses pop-ups). So they all had the intranet white-listed "out of the box" and they all know that if there's a small blue question mark is means that there's a pop-up that they might be missing. How often do you think that they come to the me, complaining about home pages that doesn't work "in that stupid mozilla browser..." ?
The only solution that I can see is a global/central white list function. If it was possible to register my site as a "good practice pop-up site" at the various pop-up blocker suppliers, that would could us the pop-up back as a useful tool.
I imagine the rules for getting on the white list should be something like this:
1. Only display a pop-up once to each visitor. Use a cookie or something to make sure that you don't do it again.
2. No ads in the pop-up. The pop-up must be related to the site visited.
3. Make it clear if clicking a link will result in a pop-up (we need a common icon/symbol for this).
4. For the extra strict: Only pop-up to registered users who have signed up for the pop-ups. Like phpBB2's "news personal mail" pop-up box.
I'm unsure if it could be automated, either by analyzing the site with a robot, or through analyzing the manual white-listing done by the users of your blocker software. Otherwise it would have to be a manual process... (which means that it probably would become a paid for extra service).
The first line about venture capital and customer-support was ment as a joke....
Anyway, I've been thinking about it for a bit, and I got one idea: Besides volumn (e.i. compete on price), you need to have a hook.
I would go for the people who are going for their computer number two. Either because the old one is crap or because the wife/kid needs one. This marked must be fairly big and it can only get larger.
Do not make the mistake of thinking these customers are tech-savy and lighter on support. Just because they've had computers for years, does not mean that they have a clue as to what they are doing.
But they do know that they hate about their old computer. They probably hate that they cant put more ram it it (filling out all the sockets with small sticks is often cheaper then buying one big or even worse - they got RAMBUS), that they can't put a new and faster cpu in it (because the bios can't be accessed), that they got the 20$ graphics card instead of the 30$ one and now they can't play games. That the PSU isn't standard, so they can't even add a new harddrive.
The big ones are pulling stunts like that all the time and have no idea until the day arrive where they want to upgrade and their tech-savy friends, just goes "sorry, compaqs aren't build to be upgraded - you paid more for less".
Go for those people and it just may happen.
Make sure to get enough venture capital, when you start you new hardware store, that you can hire somebody else to take care of customer-support.
But seriously, it's all about volumn. You have to buy a lot of parts to be able to compete - the margin on hardware is small. Your fortune isn't made just because you can sell a thousand boxes and make 10 or 20 bucks each. Now you have to be read, when half of them calls you and tell you that they can't figure how to connect that 56k modem to their adsl line or that the cup holder is broken.
Good luck...
Now where are those mod points, when you need them?
I quite agree. Actually if you read the first XP book, one of the main point are that if you follow all the ideas, they merge together and support each other.
There's a nice diagram in the book somewhere that show how the different methods support each other.
But then again, you don't have to do all of them "extremely". Just doing all of them just a little, bit will be a lot better than big-ball-of-mudd or the usual chaos development method used.
In most cases added as much as possible of the xp methods to your standard waterfall, spiral or iterative development process will give you a lot.
I've developed software professionally for 15 years and I've used XP for the last 2-3 years. It that doesn't mean that I think XP is the end all of how to develop software. It's right for the things that I do, when used in moderat amounts combined with whatever it gets to get management to accept it.
(try to tell a govermant org that they don't have to write a big contract and that they just have to pay us by the hour and every time we give them something of value. They will nod and go "that sounds nice, but can we get back to the big contract that will cover my ass 100%, even if the project fails badly, now? I know that it raised the chances of the projekt failing, but it will cover my ass, so I don't care.").
I have to agree on this and and follow up with my own, go read the book.
Infact go read everything by Vinge. He has written, so few books, but all of them are great. He show knowledge and interest in topic of IT and he seems to know what he's talking about (unlike, say Gibson).
I've reviewed most his books on my site (without spoilers).
Didn't work though...
I love these invented-for-the-moment units.
The next time I need to order something I'll try make up my own and wait with excitement for what I'll get. Use an area unit for a room mesurement must give bonus points (and vise-versa).
"Hello, I would like 10 keyboard units of sand, please".