Re:When users attack... Themselves
on
When Users Attack
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· Score: 2
Yeah, I used to have a nasty habit of stripping wires with my teeth. Doing that on a live telephone wire once cured me of that.
And then there was the time I was in the attic, connecting the test leads to try to find my new ISDN line... of course, I clipped on to the POTS line instead, just as my girlfriend called me. It was actually kind of interesting, feeling the 20 hz signal pulse in time with the ringing phone...
She didn't understand why I was pissed when I finally answered...
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the flag icon for this subject only has 12 stripes?
People seem to have an amazing amount of trouble with this... I've seen several flag stickers on cards that have 14 stripes, have the stripes in the wrong order, have a totally tweaked aspect ratio, and so on.
Really, something like SmartMedia would probably be even better. It's got no controller onboard so it's cheaper per unit, and the spec is open, unlike SD or memory stick.
It's still not as cheap as a floppy, though. And I never will get rid of my floppy drive until there's a widely accepted standard for some medium that'll let me give a few megs to a friend for 25 cents, and let me carry it in my pocket without risking destruction from scratches.
I'd say at least half. I saw a quote posted in someone's office around here attributed to Wernher von Braun, something to the effect of, "The object of the rocket business is to make the target area more hazardous than the launch site."
Think about it... better than 90% of the launch vehicle's mass is fuel and oxidizer. The whole thing has to accelerate to several times the speed of sound and maintain a very specific course. There's not a lot of room for things to go wrong, and when things go wrong with several million pounds of volatile chemicals, yeah, fire and explosion are pretty common.
And with Pricewatch, be aware that a lot of companies manipulate their listings to make sure they're at the top of the list. Check shipping and handling charges and other sale terms carefully.
I used to work for one, and they can probably get parts cheaper than you'll be able to through the web. There's always a markup to cover the not-inconsiderable expense of maintaining a storefront, but a competent, reputable local dealer is worth the cost especially if you're not comfortable troubleshooting and fixing problems yourself.
I've accepted counter-offers before, and it hasn't really been a problem. I don't discuss it with coworkers, though, and I've got an advantage in that the folks at the corporate office who decide such things are at a comfortable distance and I don't deal with them on a regular basis.
The fact is, in this industry sometimes that's the only way to establish your fair market value. I've got commitments where I'm at, and my current employer arguably needs me more than anyone else, but they'd better be prepared to pay me what I'm worth.
I can strip copper wire with my teeth, and terminate it with a Leatherman tool. Until I can do that with fiber, my network's sticking to good old-fashioned electrons.
The treaty specifically allows for those devices "necessary for peaceful exploration" when it mentions nuclear weapons in Article 4. NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications), KIWI, and other such programs have been killed by politics and environmental zealots, not by the treaty.
Not a bug... just the result of low-level fuzziness. Why store piddling details on subatomic particles when no one's looking (most of the time) and you can simulate their behavior at a higher level with much less effort?
I've thought about this before, and came to the conclusion that if I ever build my own universe I'm going to need to use data compression of some sort, and kind of fudge the details. I mean, who cares exactly where an electron is, as long as it statistically behaves like it should?
The scary thing is, the more I've learned about quantum mechanics, the more it looks like that's how the universe works.
I did something similar with an old fuse box once, but the panel slipped as I was taking it off and dropped right across a couple of hot fuse sockets. Made quite a 'pop' and vaporized a bit of the panel... could've been worse, I guess, but I felt pretty stupid at that point.
A good TV tuner is also critical if you spend much time in hotel rooms. Many common pay-per-view systems can be defeated with one of these, Spectravision and Lodgeview are both vulnerable to this. Just disconnect the cable input to the addressable decoder (you may need to use a car key to get the F-connector sleeve off), plug it in to your tuner/converter, and plug that into the TV. On the systems I've encountered, the channels ARE NOT SCRAMBLED. Pay channels 1-8 show up on something like 51-58... just tune around. Your off-the-shelf converter doesn't tattle on you, so the front desk doesn't know you're watching lesbian soft porn all night.
Some places you don't even need to bring the converter - just bypass the box and use the TV's tuning.
I think you're right - it's all about your local jurisdiction. I hope they don't count improvised tools, as I've got a rake and torsion wrench here on my desk that I use for the cabinets and breaker boxes. It's amazing how easy it is to pick cheap wafer locks - it rarely takes me more than 15 seconds to lock or unlock one.
Gives me tunnel vision for a second or two, during that fast spiral at the end. I can easily imagine someone with low blood pressure blacking out there.
Forget.coms... post 9-11,.mil is where the (steady but not outstanding) money is.
Of course, there's always contracting to worry about... ours is up in another year, but as the saying goes, I've got job security and the code to prove it. =]
Very true... I learned C originally in DOS and it worked fine there, but I haven't touched it much in recent years. I just recently started an embedded project, and decided I didn't have the patience to use assembly, so I jumped into the world of embedded C for the first time. It's a hell of a lot easier than assembly, stays quite tight with a bit of care (sprintf used up 80% of my available program space), and after dealing with a system having only 192 bytes of RAM and no OS I've got a much better appreciation of how the whole thing works. Stuff that seems like a major limitation after working in other high-level languages suddenly makes sense when you're coding on bare metal.
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Yeah, I used to have a nasty habit of stripping wires with my teeth. Doing that on a live telephone wire once cured me of that.
And then there was the time I was in the attic, connecting the test leads to try to find my new ISDN line... of course, I clipped on to the POTS line instead, just as my girlfriend called me. It was actually kind of interesting, feeling the 20 hz signal pulse in time with the ringing phone...
She didn't understand why I was pissed when I finally answered...
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the flag icon for this subject only has 12 stripes?
People seem to have an amazing amount of trouble with this... I've seen several flag stickers on cards that have 14 stripes, have the stripes in the wrong order, have a totally tweaked aspect ratio, and so on.
12 million sheep in a country of 3 million people and they still need to cut grass mechanically?
Really, something like SmartMedia would probably be even better. It's got no controller onboard so it's cheaper per unit, and the spec is open, unlike SD or memory stick.
It's still not as cheap as a floppy, though. And I never will get rid of my floppy drive until there's a widely accepted standard for some medium that'll let me give a few megs to a friend for 25 cents, and let me carry it in my pocket without risking destruction from scratches.
Salamanders are cool... I think newts are really second-class amphibians and not nearly so worthy of admiration.
I think I'm melting into my chair.
Ahh... slashdot and dental procedures...
Is it time for another Vicodin yet?
Personally, I don't believe in Tungsten. And I'm not entirely sure I can trust Boron.
It's a Markov Chain. Look at the poster's name. Read http://mozai.com/babble/markov.html for some info.
I'd say at least half. I saw a quote posted in someone's office around here attributed to Wernher von Braun, something to the effect of, "The object of the rocket business is to make the target area more hazardous than the launch site."
Think about it... better than 90% of the launch vehicle's mass is fuel and oxidizer. The whole thing has to accelerate to several times the speed of sound and maintain a very specific course. There's not a lot of room for things to go wrong, and when things go wrong with several million pounds of volatile chemicals, yeah, fire and explosion are pretty common.
And with Pricewatch, be aware that a lot of companies manipulate their listings to make sure they're at the top of the list. Check shipping and handling charges and other sale terms carefully.
I used to work for one, and they can probably get parts cheaper than you'll be able to through the web. There's always a markup to cover the not-inconsiderable expense of maintaining a storefront, but a competent, reputable local dealer is worth the cost especially if you're not comfortable troubleshooting and fixing problems yourself.
But I'd probably buy one anyway, just for das blinkenlights. =]
I've accepted counter-offers before, and it hasn't really been a problem. I don't discuss it with coworkers, though, and I've got an advantage in that the folks at the corporate office who decide such things are at a comfortable distance and I don't deal with them on a regular basis.
The fact is, in this industry sometimes that's the only way to establish your fair market value. I've got commitments where I'm at, and my current employer arguably needs me more than anyone else, but they'd better be prepared to pay me what I'm worth.
I can strip copper wire with my teeth, and terminate it with a Leatherman tool. Until I can do that with fiber, my network's sticking to good old-fashioned electrons.
In one of the few decisions of the Bush administration that I agree with, they're finally starting to look at nuclear propulsion again.
Heck, all you have to do is say that it'll help fight terrorism... people will buy anything that claims that, these days.
Not a bug... just the result of low-level fuzziness. Why store piddling details on subatomic particles when no one's looking (most of the time) and you can simulate their behavior at a higher level with much less effort?
I've thought about this before, and came to the conclusion that if I ever build my own universe I'm going to need to use data compression of some sort, and kind of fudge the details. I mean, who cares exactly where an electron is, as long as it statistically behaves like it should?
The scary thing is, the more I've learned about quantum mechanics, the more it looks like that's how the universe works.
I did something similar with an old fuse box once, but the panel slipped as I was taking it off and dropped right across a couple of hot fuse sockets. Made quite a 'pop' and vaporized a bit of the panel... could've been worse, I guess, but I felt pretty stupid at that point.
A good TV tuner is also critical if you spend much time in hotel rooms. Many common pay-per-view systems can be defeated with one of these, Spectravision and Lodgeview are both vulnerable to this. Just disconnect the cable input to the addressable decoder (you may need to use a car key to get the F-connector sleeve off), plug it in to your tuner/converter, and plug that into the TV. On the systems I've encountered, the channels ARE NOT SCRAMBLED. Pay channels 1-8 show up on something like 51-58... just tune around. Your off-the-shelf converter doesn't tattle on you, so the front desk doesn't know you're watching lesbian soft porn all night.
Some places you don't even need to bring the converter - just bypass the box and use the TV's tuning.
I think you're right - it's all about your local jurisdiction. I hope they don't count improvised tools, as I've got a rake and torsion wrench here on my desk that I use for the cabinets and breaker boxes. It's amazing how easy it is to pick cheap wafer locks - it rarely takes me more than 15 seconds to lock or unlock one.
Gives me tunnel vision for a second or two, during that fast spiral at the end. I can easily imagine someone with low blood pressure blacking out there.
I write all of my comments in haiku.
comments in haiku
not for any good reason
i was really bored
Ok, not a really good example, but you know what? No one's ever said anything about it.
Don't forget, you've got to buy the factory that makes the Energia boosters...
They're not using MS Money for that?
Forget .coms... post 9-11, .mil is where the (steady but not outstanding) money is.
Of course, there's always contracting to worry about... ours is up in another year, but as the saying goes, I've got job security and the code to prove it. =]
Very true... I learned C originally in DOS and it worked fine there, but I haven't touched it much in recent years. I just recently started an embedded project, and decided I didn't have the patience to use assembly, so I jumped into the world of embedded C for the first time. It's a hell of a lot easier than assembly, stays quite tight with a bit of care (sprintf used up 80% of my available program space), and after dealing with a system having only 192 bytes of RAM and no OS I've got a much better appreciation of how the whole thing works. Stuff that seems like a major limitation after working in other high-level languages suddenly makes sense when you're coding on bare metal.