This is a really cool hack, it's nice that it doesn't require me to get telnet or anything running on my tivo. However, it's not very accurate. For instance, I have 121 episodes of Good Eat's Tivo'd, but it's only reporting 13.
Just curious, since assholes aren't allowed to be shown on network tv, when they air the press conference will he be pixelated or completely covered with a black dot?
I'm a beta tester for this product and have gotten some scary results. For instance, I was on vacation in Yellowstone and took a photo of Old Faithful with my camera phone. I submitted it and it gave me back search results for tubgirl!
Justin and co. always writes great utilities, but it's really hard to suggest to your boss that the company should be using a tool called "asssniffer" or "ASS I/O".
Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less
on
100 Years of Einstein
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity
In Words of Four Letters or Less
[ 0 ]
So, have a seat. Put your feet up. This may take some time. Can I get you some tea? Earl Grey? You got it.
Okay. How do I want to do this? He did so much. It's hard to just dive in. You know? You pick a spot to go from, but soon you have to back up and and go over this or that item, and you get done with that only to see that you have to back up some more. So if you feel like I'm off to the side of the tale half the time, well, this is why. Just bear with me, and we'll get to the end in good time. Okay?
Okay. Let's see....
[ I ]
Say you woke up one day and your bed was gone. Your room, too. Gone. It's all gone. You wake up in an inky void. Not even a star. Okay, yes, it's a dumb idea, but just go with it. Now say you want to know if you move or not. Are you held fast in one spot? Or do you, say, list off to the left some? What I want to ask you is: Can you find out? Hell no. You can see that, sure. You don't need me to tell you. To move, you have to move to or away from... well, from what? You'd have to say that you don't even get to use a word like "move" when you are the only body in that void. Sure. Okay.
Now, let's add the bed back. Your bed is with you in the void. But not for long -- it goes away from you. You don't have any way to get it back, so you just let it go. But so now we have a body in the void with you. So does the bed move, or do you move? Or both? Well, you can see as well as I that it can go any way you like. Flip a coin. Who's to say? It's best to just say that you move away from the bed, and that the bed goes away from you. No one can say who's held fast and who isn't.
Now, if I took the bed back but gave you the sun -- just you and the sun in the void, now -- I'll bet you'd say that the sun is so big, next to you, that odds are you move and not the sun. It's easy to move a body like ours, and not so easy to kick a sun to and fro. But that isn't the way to see it. Just like with the bed, no one can say who's held fast.
In a word, you can't find any one true "at rest". Izzy was the one who told us that. Izzy said that you can't tell if you move or are at rest at any time. You can say that you go and all else is at rest, or you can say that you are at rest and all else goes. It all adds up the same both ways. So we all knew that much from way back when.
Aha, but now wait! The sun puts off rays! So: why not look at how fast the rays go past you? From that you'd see how fast you move, yes? For you see, rays move just the same if what puts them off is held fast or not. (Make a note of that, now.) Izzy had no way to know that, back then, but it's true. Rays all move the same. We call how fast that is: c. So, you can see how fast the rays go by you, and how far off that is from c will tell you how fast you move! Hell, you don't even need the sun for that. You can just have a lamp with you -- the one by your bed that you use to read by. You can have that lamp in your hand, and see how fast the rays go by you when you turn it on. The lamp will move with you, but the rays will move at c. You will see the rays move a bit more or less than c, and that will be how fast you move. An open-and-shut case, yes?
Well, and so we went to test this idea out. Hey, you don't need to be in a void to do this test. We move all the time, even as we sit here. We spin, in fact. So they shot some rays off and took note of how fast they went east, and how fast they went west, and so on. Well, what do you know? The rays went just as fast both ways. All ways, in fact. They all went at c, just the same. Not an iota more or less.
To say that we were less than glad to find that out is to be kind. It blew the mind, is more like it. "What is up with that?" we said. And here is when old Al came in.
[ II ]
Old Al, he came out the blue and said, "Not only do rays move at c if what puts them out is held fast or not: they move at
I know this isn't a book review, but...
on
100 Years of Einstein
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If you really want to get a handle on what Einstein did and what his work has influenced, I would recommend buying The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. Somehow it found it's way onto my Amazon wishlist a few years ago (I don't remember putting it there), and my mom bought it for me for xmas. I've read about half of it so far and it's amazing stuff. It's about the (super)string theory, which essentially ties together Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics. I can feel my brain get bigger as I read it.
Well, here's yet another reason not to use iTunes.
There, I said it.
I think iTunes sucks. I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but when I see iTunes get lauded on this site as a playlist godsend, I shudder. Apple is a trendy company that makes trendy products. Unfortunately all of them don't work as well as the iPod, but the fanboys will use whatever is fed to them.
Winamp works for me, and has worked since I dumped Frauhnhoeffer mplayer for it. It doesn't take up a lot of real estate on the screen, can play just about anything, and can work with the iPod (although I haven't tried that)
I got a iPod (free by the way, the pyramid scheme works). I first tried using iTunes to load music onto it, but the way it handled the tags of mp3s was pathetic in my opinion. I use J. River Media Center for my Tivo, and that supports iPod, so I used that for a while. What I settled on was Anapod Explorer. I did have to pay a little for it, but it's smart (sql interface anyone?), the interface is simple and what I'm used to (unlike iTunes), and it supports features iTunes doesn't.
It took me a while to set it up so iTunes didn't try to rape and pillage my playlist whenever I plugged it in.
Oh, and I can't forget Ephpod, it's free but the interface is slightly lacking. I use that for taking music of other people's iPods.
I still use iTunes to buy music when I'm too lazy to go to the store, and I use hymn to convert them so I can enjoy them drm-free on my iPod.
Asking a questions like this on slashdot is pointless.
People who have a CS degree from a well known school will say "most definitely!" so they can justify their own.
People who have a CS degree from Arkansas Community College will say "not really" because they got a job just fine with theirs.
People who have a computer-related degree from DeVry will say "nope" because they have a bottom-rung tech job.
People without a degree will say "most definitely not" because they have a job based on experience.
I'm trying to hire three developers, a project manager, and a business analyst where I work. We ignore the degrees they put down, unless it's for the pm spot where a MBA from anywhere will work. Some of the applicants have a BS in CS from places like Berkeley, but it doesn't really matter because they got it ten years ago...with an emphasis in cobol.
Having a degree on your resume will just help it get through the automated resume grabbing filters big companies use when fielding hundreds of applicants.
And as we all know very well, CSI has a machine that will read the code and bring up a 3d map with your current location, a recent photo of you, and a list of every cash purchase you've made in the last six months.
Article Text (Slashdotted already)
on
The Music Man
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
The Music Man - King Of The Pirates Has A Goal - Own It All!
"I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple's iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it's the journey not the destination."
What do you say to someone who has a digital music collection that exceeds 900,000 songs? This was the question I was pondering during my long drive to interview the man who claims he is on a quest to own a copy of every song ever recorded. What do you say? I think the only way to begin such an interview would be to ask "why?"...
When I pulled into the driveway of the King of the Pirates, an upper middle class neighborhood of stylish homes and SUV's, Infiniti's, and more Mini-Coopers than necessary, I was surprised by the normalcy of it all. His home was nothing short of spectacular, his wife a mid-30's ex-underwear model (honest!), and his two kids well groomed, apparently intelligent, and very wired. (As in technology, not ADD) This is not the home I would have thought would be the enclave of someone out to pirate the hell out of the music industry. This was going to be very interesting...
Our man, let's call him Doug, greeted me with a huge hug, a broad smile on his face, drink in hand (Grand Mariner of all things), and invited me in to his den. He was absolutely thrilled to finally be able to talk to someone who was actually interested in what he was doing. Seems that 'the wife' as he calls her, was bored to tears hearing about his latest collections, or the latest Bit Torrent site he found; a treasure trove of hard to find music all ripped at 256-bits. The wife wants to know why he doesn't play more golf, like his friends. "Golf is the most boring game in the world, what I am doing is much more fun."
The Pirate Room - A MacGeek's Heaven on Earth
Doug has devoted one of his extra bedrooms ( 7 in all) into what can only be described as The War Room. He owns three Power Mac G5's, and just added two iMac G5's. Several external 250GB firewire drives are attached to the iMacs, and sitting in the corner are a stack of at least 6 other external drives, all 300GB, brand new, boxed, and just waiting to go online.
He has two cable modems and one DSL line. One cable modem is "for the family", the other dedicated to his quest. His DSL line is a backup and is sometimes used when he has discovered a new site that offers a slew of new torrents he wants to mine. The wife, and the kids, are all connected to the Internet through an Airport network, with four Airport Express base stations scattered about the house. Music is constantly heard throughout the house, all different genres playing at the same time. Doug tells me that what I am hearing is unusual, most of the time the house is relatively quiet.
All the Macs in his 'command and control' room have JBL Creature speaker systems; some white, some blue, and a burgundy one that I have never seen before. The entire room is lit with indirect 'rope' lights, giving the room a feel of living in the Star Trek Universe. There are a couple of rich soft brown leather chairs and one long, very plush, baby-butt soft leather sofa that just screams comfort. I took a seat on the sofa and never felt more pampered or more comfortable. I made a mental note that once our pets' pass on to wherever pets go this sofa was going to be the sofa in MY house. For all I cared this interview could last for days, once ensconced in this incredible piece of furniture I didn't want to leave...ever.
The Wife bought us a pot of coffee (Jamaican Blue Mountain), two cups, cream, and a small bowl of 'Equal'. Along the coffee was a plate of fresh (fresh!) Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon Sticks. The interaction between The Wife and Doug showed that these two seemed to be one happy couple. The seemed to really like each other; and that my friends, is more rare than you might think.
If Lotus Notes was a character on Kill Bill, it would go something like this...
Lotus Notes: Larry, there ain't no mail out there! Larry Gomez : There ain't no mail out there... Larry... What's your point? That you're not needed here? Lotus Notes: My point is, I'm the groupware... and there ain't no mail out there to deliver! Larry Gomez : You're saying that the reason... that you're not doing the job... that I'm... paying you to do... is, that you don't have a job to do? Is that what you're saying? What are you trying to convince me of, exactly? That you're as useless as an asshole right here? Well guess what, Lotus Notes. I think, you just fucking convinced me!
Really, I have to use Lotus at my current job and have had to use it at previous ones too. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss MS Exchange Server. Who needs Lotus when you have pop3 and a text file every can edit...at least it would work most of the time. Never before have I used such a frustrating, stupid, ugly, ineffective product. Give me a ham sandwich over Lotus Notes.
Also of interest, an in-depth analysis of Lotus Notes on the User Interface Hall of Shame.
Slashdot Mirror
ahh, it has a limit of returning 128 shows.
h tml
Here's a version of the script someone fixed: http://anonymous123.home.comcast.net/nowPlaying.x
This is a really cool hack, it's nice that it doesn't require me to get telnet or anything running on my tivo. However, it's not very accurate. For instance, I have 121 episodes of Good Eat's Tivo'd, but it's only reporting 13.
Where is the hack that lets you view the pdf examples of the other hacks in firefox without it locking up?
I was murdering prostitutes WAY before GTA came out.
Enjoy an article about designing those full color icons we so cherish today...
r l= /library/en-us/dnwxp/html/winxpicons.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
Informative page, who says microsoft is 100% evil?!
I really hope it's because of a Natalie Portman nipple slip.
Just curious, since assholes aren't allowed to be shown on network tv, when they air the press conference will he be pixelated or completely covered with a black dot?
Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers will produce for Warner Brothers
Don't you mean the Wachowski Siblings?
I'm a beta tester for this product and have gotten some scary results. For instance, I was on vacation in Yellowstone and took a photo of Old Faithful with my camera phone. I submitted it and it gave me back search results for tubgirl!
Justin and co. always writes great utilities, but it's really hard to suggest to your boss that the company should be using a tool called "asssniffer" or "ASS I/O".
Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity
... well, from what? You'd have to say that you don't even get to use a word like "move" when you are the only body in that void. Sure. Okay.
In Words of Four Letters or Less
[ 0 ]
So, have a seat. Put your feet up. This may take some time. Can I get you some tea? Earl Grey? You got it.
Okay. How do I want to do this? He did so much. It's hard to just dive in. You know? You pick a spot to go from, but soon you have to back up and and go over this or that item, and you get done with that only to see that you have to back up some more. So if you feel like I'm off to the side of the tale half the time, well, this is why. Just bear with me, and we'll get to the end in good time. Okay?
Okay. Let's see....
[ I ]
Say you woke up one day and your bed was gone. Your room, too. Gone. It's all gone. You wake up in an inky void. Not even a star. Okay, yes, it's a dumb idea, but just go with it. Now say you want to know if you move or not. Are you held fast in one spot? Or do you, say, list off to the left some? What I want to ask you is: Can you find out? Hell no. You can see that, sure. You don't need me to tell you. To move, you have to move to or away from
Now, let's add the bed back. Your bed is with you in the void. But not for long -- it goes away from you. You don't have any way to get it back, so you just let it go. But so now we have a body in the void with you. So does the bed move, or do you move? Or both? Well, you can see as well as I that it can go any way you like. Flip a coin. Who's to say? It's best to just say that you move away from the bed, and that the bed goes away from you. No one can say who's held fast and who isn't.
Now, if I took the bed back but gave you the sun -- just you and the sun in the void, now -- I'll bet you'd say that the sun is so big, next to you, that odds are you move and not the sun. It's easy to move a body like ours, and not so easy to kick a sun to and fro. But that isn't the way to see it. Just like with the bed, no one can say who's held fast.
In a word, you can't find any one true "at rest". Izzy was the one who told us that. Izzy said that you can't tell if you move or are at rest at any time. You can say that you go and all else is at rest, or you can say that you are at rest and all else goes. It all adds up the same both ways. So we all knew that much from way back when.
Aha, but now wait! The sun puts off rays! So: why not look at how fast the rays go past you? From that you'd see how fast you move, yes? For you see, rays move just the same if what puts them off is held fast or not. (Make a note of that, now.) Izzy had no way to know that, back then, but it's true. Rays all move the same. We call how fast that is: c. So, you can see how fast the rays go by you, and how far off that is from c will tell you how fast you move! Hell, you don't even need the sun for that. You can just have a lamp with you -- the one by your bed that you use to read by. You can have that lamp in your hand, and see how fast the rays go by you when you turn it on. The lamp will move with you, but the rays will move at c. You will see the rays move a bit more or less than c, and that will be how fast you move. An open-and-shut case, yes?
Well, and so we went to test this idea out. Hey, you don't need to be in a void to do this test. We move all the time, even as we sit here. We spin, in fact. So they shot some rays off and took note of how fast they went east, and how fast they went west, and so on. Well, what do you know? The rays went just as fast both ways. All ways, in fact. They all went at c, just the same. Not an iota more or less.
To say that we were less than glad to find that out is to be kind. It blew the mind, is more like it. "What is up with that?" we said. And here is when old Al came in.
[ II ]
Old Al, he came out the blue and said, "Not only do rays move at c if what puts them out is held fast or not: they move at
If you really want to get a handle on what Einstein did and what his work has influenced, I would recommend buying The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. Somehow it found it's way onto my Amazon wishlist a few years ago (I don't remember putting it there), and my mom bought it for me for xmas. I've read about half of it so far and it's amazing stuff. It's about the (super)string theory, which essentially ties together Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics. I can feel my brain get bigger as I read it.
I'm not trying to troll.
iTunes will try to update the firmware on your iPod.
Well, here's yet another reason not to use iTunes.
There, I said it.
I think iTunes sucks. I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but when I see iTunes get lauded on this site as a playlist godsend, I shudder. Apple is a trendy company that makes trendy products. Unfortunately all of them don't work as well as the iPod, but the fanboys will use whatever is fed to them.
Winamp works for me, and has worked since I dumped Frauhnhoeffer mplayer for it. It doesn't take up a lot of real estate on the screen, can play just about anything, and can work with the iPod (although I haven't tried that)
I got a iPod (free by the way, the pyramid scheme works). I first tried using iTunes to load music onto it, but the way it handled the tags of mp3s was pathetic in my opinion. I use J. River Media Center for my Tivo, and that supports iPod, so I used that for a while. What I settled on was Anapod Explorer. I did have to pay a little for it, but it's smart (sql interface anyone?), the interface is simple and what I'm used to (unlike iTunes), and it supports features iTunes doesn't.
It took me a while to set it up so iTunes didn't try to rape and pillage my playlist whenever I plugged it in.
Oh, and I can't forget Ephpod, it's free but the interface is slightly lacking. I use that for taking music of other people's iPods.
I still use iTunes to buy music when I'm too lazy to go to the store, and I use hymn to convert them so I can enjoy them drm-free on my iPod.
Problem solved.
Asking a questions like this on slashdot is pointless.
People who have a CS degree from a well known school will say "most definitely!" so they can justify their own.
People who have a CS degree from Arkansas Community College will say "not really" because they got a job just fine with theirs.
People who have a computer-related degree from DeVry will say "nope" because they have a bottom-rung tech job.
People without a degree will say "most definitely not" because they have a job based on experience.
I'm trying to hire three developers, a project manager, and a business analyst where I work. We ignore the degrees they put down, unless it's for the pm spot where a MBA from anywhere will work. Some of the applicants have a BS in CS from places like Berkeley, but it doesn't really matter because they got it ten years ago...with an emphasis in cobol.
Having a degree on your resume will just help it get through the automated resume grabbing filters big companies use when fielding hundreds of applicants.
Oh, and I don't have a degree.
jebus christ, leave it up to netscape to ruin the concept of firefox.
http://gemal.dk/misc/nsb05.png
And as we all know very well, CSI has a machine that will read the code and bring up a 3d map with your current location, a recent photo of you, and a list of every cash purchase you've made in the last six months.
Well, ever since hotmail upped it's space to 250mb I've been getting the same amount too.
I heard the real purpose of the test was to place a police car on the roof.
The Music Man - King Of The Pirates Has A Goal - Own It All!
"I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple's iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it's the journey not the destination."
What do you say to someone who has a digital music collection that exceeds 900,000 songs? This was the question I was pondering during my long drive to interview the man who claims he is on a quest to own a copy of every song ever recorded. What do you say? I think the only way to begin such an interview would be to ask "why?"...
When I pulled into the driveway of the King of the Pirates, an upper middle class neighborhood of stylish homes and SUV's, Infiniti's, and more Mini-Coopers than necessary, I was surprised by the normalcy of it all. His home was nothing short of spectacular, his wife a mid-30's ex-underwear model (honest!), and his two kids well groomed, apparently intelligent, and very wired. (As in technology, not ADD) This is not the home I would have thought would be the enclave of someone out to pirate the hell out of the music industry. This was going to be very interesting...
Our man, let's call him Doug, greeted me with a huge hug, a broad smile on his face, drink in hand (Grand Mariner of all things), and invited me in to his den. He was absolutely thrilled to finally be able to talk to someone who was actually interested in what he was doing. Seems that 'the wife' as he calls her, was bored to tears hearing about his latest collections, or the latest Bit Torrent site he found; a treasure trove of hard to find music all ripped at 256-bits. The wife wants to know why he doesn't play more golf, like his friends. "Golf is the most boring game in the world, what I am doing is much more fun."
The Pirate Room - A MacGeek's Heaven on Earth
Doug has devoted one of his extra bedrooms ( 7 in all) into what can only be described as The War Room. He owns three Power Mac G5's, and just added two iMac G5's. Several external 250GB firewire drives are attached to the iMacs, and sitting in the corner are a stack of at least 6 other external drives, all 300GB, brand new, boxed, and just waiting to go online.
He has two cable modems and one DSL line. One cable modem is "for the family", the other dedicated to his quest. His DSL line is a backup and is sometimes used when he has discovered a new site that offers a slew of new torrents he wants to mine. The wife, and the kids, are all connected to the Internet through an Airport network, with four Airport Express base stations scattered about the house. Music is constantly heard throughout the house, all different genres playing at the same time. Doug tells me that what I am hearing is unusual, most of the time the house is relatively quiet.
All the Macs in his 'command and control' room have JBL Creature speaker systems; some white, some blue, and a burgundy one that I have never seen before. The entire room is lit with indirect 'rope' lights, giving the room a feel of living in the Star Trek Universe. There are a couple of rich soft brown leather chairs and one long, very plush, baby-butt soft leather sofa that just screams comfort. I took a seat on the sofa and never felt more pampered or more comfortable. I made a mental note that once our pets' pass on to wherever pets go this sofa was going to be the sofa in MY house. For all I cared this interview could last for days, once ensconced in this incredible piece of furniture I didn't want to leave...ever.
The Wife bought us a pot of coffee (Jamaican Blue Mountain), two cups, cream, and a small bowl of 'Equal'. Along the coffee was a plate of fresh (fresh!) Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon Sticks. The interaction between The Wife and Doug showed that these two seemed to be one happy couple. The seemed to really like each other; and that my friends, is more rare than you might think.
Once I got through ogling the va
Let me know when they make a 64-bit processor out of polenta.
If Lotus Notes was a character on Kill Bill, it would go something like this...
e ring/iarchitect/lotus.htm
Lotus Notes: Larry, there ain't no mail out there!
Larry Gomez : There ain't no mail out there... Larry... What's your point? That you're not needed here?
Lotus Notes: My point is, I'm the groupware... and there ain't no mail out there to deliver!
Larry Gomez : You're saying that the reason... that you're not doing the job... that I'm... paying you to do... is, that you don't have a job to do? Is that what you're saying? What are you trying to convince me of, exactly? That you're as useless as an asshole right here? Well guess what, Lotus Notes. I think, you just fucking convinced me!
Really, I have to use Lotus at my current job and have had to use it at previous ones too. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss MS Exchange Server. Who needs Lotus when you have pop3 and a text file every can edit...at least it would work most of the time. Never before have I used such a frustrating, stupid, ugly, ineffective product. Give me a ham sandwich over Lotus Notes.
Also of interest, an in-depth analysis of Lotus Notes on the User Interface Hall of Shame.
http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engine
It cost five bucks, so I figured I'd give it a spin. It'd be good to use to play pranks on friends and family.
I'm not concerned about the five bucks, but if Paypal can get it back then more power to them.
Take off the tinfoil cover off your checkbook.
I signed up for the service while this article was still in the mysterious future. Tried it out, didn't work.
I got to file my first Paypal dispute claim!
Seriously though, the website is just text and there's no contact info for anything.
Scam.
Here's something amazing my car doesn't do...it doesn't wrap itself around a tree while I try to check my email and read a fax at the same time.