First I read "Faculty and students at Cornell University have built an unmanned airplane with its own on-board, embedded control system. The large-scale model plane flies by accessing coordinates from an off-the-shelf GPS unit...the plane run[s] XP embedded"
And then I read "Symantec and The Register are reporting that the first Windows CE trojan horse, known as Brador...this will most likely be used to make new botnets, and it leads me to wonder: will we soon need firewalls for Windows Embedded?"
And I'm like.. First UAV running Windows Embedded.. first trojan for Windows Embedded... woah shi, SKYNET!?!?!
Yes yes, I know its a CE trojan but still, a man can joke can't he?
Its easy-- they first break it down between 1-10 and then say they think its a 9, then they compare alll the other 9s they've ever given and rank it AMONGST THOSE 9s. Thats where you get a 92% or 95% or whatever.
I bet they have an automated system where they just punch in a number and it automatically returns all the other games that match that number, then they can think on a game by game basis, is DOOM3 Graphically better then X? Yes, then move it up a point. But is it graphically better then Y? Then.. etc.
If aided by screenshots or video, then the review numbers mean even more.
I prefer the two digit (either percentage or x.x) reviews for these reasons, I think if you considered it, you would too.
"Demo: our priority was finishing the game first and now we are turning our attention to the demo. I don't have any information to share regarding any specific content, but I don't believe that we have ever disappointed in that regard in the past. We will release the demo as soon as it's done, but this probably won't happen until after the game has arrived on U.S. store shelves."
So yes there will be a demo, but unfortunately not until after the games been out for a while.
Circa 1998- A now ex-girlfriend of mine living in her Smith college dorm room (they called them "houses" actually) had a fancy new Compaq laptop du jour and also happened to own some pretty sweet looking two-layered glasses with some floating glittery substance inside a liquid filled space created by the two layers. It's decorative but unfortunately doesn't indicate too well as to whether the glass is full or empty.
One day she was drinking some water out of this cup while using her laptop. At some point, a housemate popped in for a visit, saw the cup, and not able to tell it was full of water, proceeded to turn it upside down like a snowglobe to watch the floating glittery substance move around the cup. Over her laptop's keyboard. DOH!
She calls me in a fit of panic and I call my ultra-savy with electronics Dad. Instructions are turn laptop off, turn upside down over paper towels and let it dry for a day or so.
Afterwards she turned it on and it still worked! But here's the funny part-- it started acting up months later. To us it seemed like it wasn't related to the original water incident. Basically it would randomly lock up. Reinstalling windows didn't seem to help. Compaq had us send in the laptop.
Days go by and we get a call from Compaq. "Uhm, we're very sorry to have to tell you this, but your laptop burst into flames while operating on our test bench!" Wow that could have been bad! Subsequently they sent us a new one under warranty and she's kept her friend away from her fancy glittery glasses:)
If you don't care about offsite storage then tape backup isn't neccesarily for you, but I can assure you, as a server admin, that there is nothing quite like the feeling of taking your backup tapes home with you every night, knowing that they are safe under your pillow in case of emergency. It gives you a great sense of security and calm.
The 40GB Travans I barely noticed, but we've moved up to 400GB Ultriums, and they are making my pillow quite uncomfortable these days!
I can't say that these warranties make sense every time, but for Car Stereo equipment they DEFINETLY make sense. Atleast, they did for me. Here's my story:
1997, bought Blapunkt CD player, Cerwin Vega front and rear speakers, generic 10" subs+box combo, Pioneer floor model AMP, and warranties for all.
Since then, with no money changing hands (except as noted), the warranty did this for me:
* First blapunkt CD player died, received replacement
* Cerwin Vega rear speakers got blown, received replacement
* Cerwin vega front speakers got blown, received replacement
* Subs got blown, received replacement
* Second blapunkt CD player died, paid $20 and upgraded to SONY since that model wasn't carried anymore
* Sony CD Player starts skipping, they ship it out for repair (much to my suprise, since Blapunkt was a replacement.. apparently sony doesn't like to replace). The repair doesn't fix it, 3 more times later I get a new cd player under lemon policy (that part sucked, but hey I got a replacement eventually)
* Amp finally dies (it was a floor model) receive replacement Rockford Fosgate (since they no longer had pioneer) at no cost to me
* Subs die along with amp, pay $50 to upgrade subs to pioneers and better bandpass box (they didn't have the old sub box any longer)
Now all of that happened during my 4 years of owning all of that equipment. If I had no warranties I would have been really screwed:(. Since then the car that all of that equipment in has died, so I salvaged the subs, the amp (which died finally out of warranty) and the cd player. I gave the cd player for my brother, bought a new amp and a fancy sony cd-mp3 player and used the old subs and speakers that came with the car to build my new system. And you better BELIEVE that I bought the warranty for the new amp and cd player.
It may come in handy some day.
I have all the receipts to prove this for any nonbelievers out there, and no I don't work for best buy (I'm not advocating THEM in particular here), I'm just a "demon customer" I guess;)
Visited the Tampa Amateur Radio club's field day operation but didn't participate this year, some photos up here - http://www.hamclub.org/. (Warning: server is already running slowly and I haven't even posted it to/. yet!)
The story I have to share is this-- it was very cool, they had the use of both the City of Tampa's police department's mobile command post as well as the Hillsborough Country Fire Rescue's mobile command post going with stations in each (all running on emergency power of course), plus a handful of RVs running on generators as well. Of course they also had traditional stations as well as slow scan tv, satellite communications and digital mode communications going as WELL as a "get on the air" station for any NON hams who want to, well, get on the air! Another interesting sight was the use of one of the fire department's chevy suburban trucks to anchor down the third guy wire on a 100 foot collapsable tower. (You can see that particular truck on the bottom of the club homepage, unfortunately NOT hooked up to the tower).
The City of Tampa and Hillsborough County and the Tampa Amateur Radio Club have a very close relationship and constantly drill and practice for emergency communications. And since Field Day is really just a big emergency communications drill (although every type of ham communications is represented) its no suprise the city and county let TARC use their equipment for this.
Unfortunately they had a lightning strike on the 100 foot tower in the middle of operations that took out a beautiful Icom 756pro-ii (http://www.icomamerica.com/amateur/hf/ic756proiim ain.asp. But that was the only loss (and they had a backup one ready to go). All in all it was awesome to check it out, maybe I'll participate next year!
And believe it or not I wish I knew a more pithy way of saying that. Shi, is that even grammatically correct? Anyways-
This entire thing is really an exercise in besting the competition. In this case, ATI and in this case, they are badly in need of being able to say that they are #1, because ATI stole the crown and hasn't really given it back just yet. This whole mess is really just an exercise in brand building/marketing. Just trying to get people to think of nVidia as the best/etc-- its aimed at those who can only afford one card, trying to influence their overall feeling for nVidia.
nVidia's 3DFX property didn't have much competition back when it first introduced the voodoo sli.. ahh how times have changed.
Basically, our hero is on the street and sees someone he recognizes driving around. He says whatsup can I get a ride somewhere and gets in his car. Woops seems like the ignition has been popped. He asks if the car is stolen and his friend says no, but the ignition is broken. Our hero says that in the back of his mind he knew it must be stolen, but he needed a ride so he just takes the ride and says seeya to his buddy.
I signed up for their "singlerate east" plan with 250 anytime minutes. For $10 more per month I could get "2000 night and weekend minutes" or something like that.
Years go by. Suddenly I start going over my minutes. Whats that you say? I request a detailed minute usage report and after careful examination it shows that, for some reason, I'm getting charged anytime minutes during the nights and weekends when I should be burning "night/weekend minutes".
I call them. They are flabbergasted. How can I possibly have 2000 night and weekend minutes with the singlerate east plan? Yes it does SHOW that I'm PAYING for it, but there is no possible way that I COULD have it. How is it even on there? Who authorized this!?
Incredibly they had turned off those minutes months ago, BUT KEPT CHARGING ME FOR IT. Basically it was such an old promotion that noone who was working there had heard of it! There must have been some glitch in the system when they discontinued it, such that they never notified me (in violation of the contract), and they still kept charging me (in violation of THE LAW).
They ended up paying for my last few cellphone bills and then some. But I still dropped them. I can't trust them anymore. I shudder to think about how many other customers they've ripped off who didn't notice!!
I'm with AT&T now and believe it or not I've had a good experience. I guess it just goes to show that it varies for everyone.
That is not to say that I will not fullfill my oath to follow the instructions given by the judge/etc. I am not entirely for or against jury nullification, but it is nice to know that if I have a major problem with the law in question that I have some legal legs to stand on when I go to the jury room.
I served as a foreperson on a jury and wasn't aware of the right to jury nullification. The judge instructed us just as they described it in the article ("you may consider "only the facts" and that you are not to let your conscience, opinion of the law, or the motives of the defendant affect your decision").
One person on our jury didn't agree with the law and held out for not guilty. We of course couldn't find for guilty because of this one person. Now I'm glad that he did, because I didn't agree with the law but knew that the person did indeed break it! (Person rode in the passenger seat of a stolen car, knew it was stolen. Woops, did you know that riding in a stolen car, while knowing it was stolen, is grand theft auto? Even if YOU did not steal it!?).
He also ran from the police when they asked him what he was doing in the car and admitted to doing so as well so we found guilty for that. But man I felt like what was going on in the jury room was a miscarriage of justice, now I realize that the Judge lied to us and we almost screwed up! Believe me, that man wasn't the only one who felt the way he did.
Incredibly I just recently got another Jury Duty summons. I look forward to exercising my new found rights if I am selected (and I imagine I will be, given my past experience).
I'm sorry to say it, but Yahoo castrated Alltheweb.com's search results and replaced them with the same Overture/Inktomi results that you get from MSN and Yahoo searches. By the way they also did the same thing to Altavista:(.
I'm still hoping that some of the technology from Alltheweb will get integrated with Inktomi but for the most part I haven't read anything about major changes to the Inktomi algorithm yet so I'm assuming that they let Alltheweb die a quiet death. Maybe someday we'll alltheweb style improvements to the yahoo/inktomi engine, but until then:
From reading the article you get the feeling that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing over at Yahoo-- while they are offering antiadware/spyware programs, they simultaneously support Claria/Gator through their Overture pay per click advertisment subsidiary.
But this isn't the only issue that Yahoo is two faced about-- They are also very conflicted over pay for inclusion in their search engine:
"The difficulty with [pay for inclusion] hasn't changed, as you can see using current material from Yahoo:
'Yahoo...today announced that it has created a more comprehensive and relevant search experience for users through the deployment of its own algorithmic search technology' --Yahoo Press Release, Feb. 18, 2004
Sounds like good news for searchers. But wait! What are advertisers being told about Yahoo-owned Overture Site Match, which feeds paid inclusion content into Yahoo's search results?
'Eliminate guesswork: Ensure that your pages are reviewed and included in the search index quickly and refreshed frequently. No waiting for search engines to find your site or guessing which content will be included.' --Overture Site Match product page, May 18, 2004
On the one hand, searchers are told that Yahoo has a comprehensive and relevant search engine, which you'd also assume means it's fresh. On the other hand, site owners are told that Yahoo's search engine apparently just guesses about what to include and may not refresh that content frequently.
Is it any wonder that Yahoo's gained bad press after unveiling its new programs? Either you have a great search engine or you don't. Trying to play it both ways simply doesn't fly."
Personally I think they've kept the pay for inclusion because they've got thousands and thousands of people paying for it and they don't want to kill that revenue stream-- even though they are perfectly capable of functioning without it like Google.
This feeling also applies to their continued partnership with Gator/Claria-- it makes them too much money to dump them.
Finally-- Does Gator's name change to Claria remind anyone else of Phillip Morris' failed name change to Altria? Name change or no, they'll never live down their sleezy reputation that they EARNED themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Gives a whole new meaning to the term bluebox now doesn't it?
First I read "Faculty and students at Cornell University have built an unmanned airplane with its own on-board, embedded control system. The large-scale model plane flies by accessing coordinates from an off-the-shelf GPS unit...the plane run[s] XP embedded"
And then I read "Symantec and The Register are reporting that the first Windows CE trojan horse, known as Brador...this will most likely be used to make new botnets, and it leads me to wonder: will we soon need firewalls for Windows Embedded?"
And I'm like.. First UAV running Windows Embedded.. first trojan for Windows Embedded... woah shi, SKYNET!?!?!
Yes yes, I know its a CE trojan but still, a man can joke can't he?
Its easy-- they first break it down between 1-10 and then say they think its a 9, then they compare alll the other 9s they've ever given and rank it AMONGST THOSE 9s. Thats where you get a 92% or 95% or whatever.
I bet they have an automated system where they just punch in a number and it automatically returns all the other games that match that number, then they can think on a game by game basis, is DOOM3 Graphically better then X? Yes, then move it up a point. But is it graphically better then Y? Then.. etc.
If aided by screenshots or video, then the review numbers mean even more.
I prefer the two digit (either percentage or x.x) reviews for these reasons, I think if you considered it, you would too.
He's probably referring to the leaked Doom E3 demo.
:)
Remember?
From Todd Hollenshed of id's plan file:
"Demo: our priority was finishing the game first and now we are turning our attention to the demo. I don't have any information to share regarding any specific content, but I don't believe that we have ever disappointed in that regard in the past. We will release the demo as soon as it's done, but this probably won't happen until after the game has arrived on U.S. store shelves."
So yes there will be a demo, but unfortunately not until after the games been out for a while.
Circa 1998- A now ex-girlfriend of mine living in her Smith college dorm room (they called them "houses" actually) had a fancy new Compaq laptop du jour and also happened to own some pretty sweet looking two-layered glasses with some floating glittery substance inside a liquid filled space created by the two layers. It's decorative but unfortunately doesn't indicate too well as to whether the glass is full or empty.
:)
One day she was drinking some water out of this cup while using her laptop. At some point, a housemate popped in for a visit, saw the cup, and not able to tell it was full of water, proceeded to turn it upside down like a snowglobe to watch the floating glittery substance move around the cup. Over her laptop's keyboard. DOH!
She calls me in a fit of panic and I call my ultra-savy with electronics Dad. Instructions are turn laptop off, turn upside down over paper towels and let it dry for a day or so.
Afterwards she turned it on and it still worked! But here's the funny part-- it started acting up months later. To us it seemed like it wasn't related to the original water incident. Basically it would randomly lock up. Reinstalling windows didn't seem to help. Compaq had us send in the laptop.
Days go by and we get a call from Compaq. "Uhm, we're very sorry to have to tell you this, but your laptop burst into flames while operating on our test bench!" Wow that could have been bad! Subsequently they sent us a new one under warranty and she's kept her friend away from her fancy glittery glasses
Hey, has anyone who can't get to www.google.com or re having problems with search tried any of Google's other data centers?
http://www2.google.com
http://www3.google.com
Or select from an even bigger list of "Google mirrors".
Hope this helps!
Nono, that's Konfabulator's line...
http://www.konfabulator.com/
sortof.
Damn preview window showing me one thing then final post showing another :(
Its simple really:
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/Tobril/xbox.jpg
versus
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/Tobril/pc.jpg
am i rite?
If you don't care about offsite storage then tape backup isn't neccesarily for you, but I can assure you, as a server admin, that there is nothing quite like the feeling of taking your backup tapes home with you every night, knowing that they are safe under your pillow in case of emergency. It gives you a great sense of security and calm.
The 40GB Travans I barely noticed, but we've moved up to 400GB Ultriums, and they are making my pillow quite uncomfortable these days!
Mmmm, Overland Storage Powerloader
I can't say that these warranties make sense every time, but for Car Stereo equipment they DEFINETLY make sense. Atleast, they did for me. Here's my story:
:(. Since then the car that all of that equipment in has died, so I salvaged the subs, the amp (which died finally out of warranty) and the cd player. I gave the cd player for my brother, bought a new amp and a fancy sony cd-mp3 player and used the old subs and speakers that came with the car to build my new system. And you better BELIEVE that I bought the warranty for the new amp and cd player.
;)
1997, bought Blapunkt CD player, Cerwin Vega front and rear speakers, generic 10" subs+box combo, Pioneer floor model AMP, and warranties for all.
Since then, with no money changing hands (except as noted), the warranty did this for me:
* First blapunkt CD player died, received replacement
* Cerwin Vega rear speakers got blown, received replacement
* Cerwin vega front speakers got blown, received replacement
* Subs got blown, received replacement
* Second blapunkt CD player died, paid $20 and upgraded to SONY since that model wasn't carried anymore
* Sony CD Player starts skipping, they ship it out for repair (much to my suprise, since Blapunkt was a replacement.. apparently sony doesn't like to replace). The repair doesn't fix it, 3 more times later I get a new cd player under lemon policy (that part sucked, but hey I got a replacement eventually)
* Amp finally dies (it was a floor model) receive replacement Rockford Fosgate (since they no longer had pioneer) at no cost to me
* Subs die along with amp, pay $50 to upgrade subs to pioneers and better bandpass box (they didn't have the old sub box any longer)
Now all of that happened during my 4 years of owning all of that equipment. If I had no warranties I would have been really screwed
It may come in handy some day.
I have all the receipts to prove this for any nonbelievers out there, and no I don't work for best buy (I'm not advocating THEM in particular here), I'm just a "demon customer" I guess
Visited the Tampa Amateur Radio club's field day operation but didn't participate this year, some photos up here - http://www.hamclub.org/. (Warning: server is already running slowly and I haven't even posted it to /. yet!)
m ain.asp. But that was the only loss (and they had a backup one ready to go). All in all it was awesome to check it out, maybe I'll participate next year!
The story I have to share is this-- it was very cool, they had the use of both the City of Tampa's police department's mobile command post as well as the Hillsborough Country Fire Rescue's mobile command post going with stations in each (all running on emergency power of course), plus a handful of RVs running on generators as well. Of course they also had traditional stations as well as slow scan tv, satellite communications and digital mode communications going as WELL as a "get on the air" station for any NON hams who want to, well, get on the air! Another interesting sight was the use of one of the fire department's chevy suburban trucks to anchor down the third guy wire on a 100 foot collapsable tower. (You can see that particular truck on the bottom of the club homepage, unfortunately NOT hooked up to the tower).
The City of Tampa and Hillsborough County and the Tampa Amateur Radio Club have a very close relationship and constantly drill and practice for emergency communications. And since Field Day is really just a big emergency communications drill (although every type of ham communications is represented) its no suprise the city and county let TARC use their equipment for this.
Unfortunately they had a lightning strike on the 100 foot tower in the middle of operations that took out a beautiful Icom 756pro-ii (http://www.icomamerica.com/amateur/hf/ic756proii
For more on field day, check out the rules and also here's a nice little blurb about it
Cheers
And believe it or not I wish I knew a more pithy way of saying that. Shi, is that even grammatically correct? Anyways-
This entire thing is really an exercise in besting the competition. In this case, ATI and in this case, they are badly in need of being able to say that they are #1, because ATI stole the crown and hasn't really given it back just yet. This whole mess is really just an exercise in brand building/marketing. Just trying to get people to think of nVidia as the best/etc-- its aimed at those who can only afford one card, trying to influence their overall feeling for nVidia.
nVidia's 3DFX property didn't have much competition back when it first introduced the voodoo sli.. ahh how times have changed.
Clearly it blows that midlet away :).... I recently got to witness this on a Nokia 7650 and I'm still in shock, amazing!
AdventureMail
Although they are kindof evil...
Jump To Conclusions Mat
True. But let me explain the circumstances--
:(.
Basically, our hero is on the street and sees someone he recognizes driving around. He says whatsup can I get a ride somewhere and gets in his car. Woops seems like the ignition has been popped. He asks if the car is stolen and his friend says no, but the ignition is broken. Our hero says that in the back of his mind he knew it must be stolen, but he needed a ride so he just takes the ride and says seeya to his buddy.
Now. Thats grand theft auto. Suprise
I signed up for their "singlerate east" plan with 250 anytime minutes. For $10 more per month I could get "2000 night and weekend minutes" or something like that.
Years go by. Suddenly I start going over my minutes. Whats that you say? I request a detailed minute usage report and after careful examination it shows that, for some reason, I'm getting charged anytime minutes during the nights and weekends when I should be burning "night/weekend minutes".
I call them. They are flabbergasted. How can I possibly have 2000 night and weekend minutes with the singlerate east plan? Yes it does SHOW that I'm PAYING for it, but there is no possible way that I COULD have it. How is it even on there? Who authorized this!?
Incredibly they had turned off those minutes months ago, BUT KEPT CHARGING ME FOR IT. Basically it was such an old promotion that noone who was working there had heard of it! There must have been some glitch in the system when they discontinued it, such that they never notified me (in violation of the contract), and they still kept charging me (in violation of THE LAW).
They ended up paying for my last few cellphone bills and then some. But I still dropped them. I can't trust them anymore. I shudder to think about how many other customers they've ripped off who didn't notice!!
I'm with AT&T now and believe it or not I've had a good experience. I guess it just goes to show that it varies for everyone.
That is not to say that I will not fullfill my oath to follow the instructions given by the judge/etc. I am not entirely for or against jury nullification, but it is nice to know that if I have a major problem with the law in question that I have some legal legs to stand on when I go to the jury room.
DMCA case anyone!?
I served as a foreperson on a jury and wasn't aware of the right to jury nullification. The judge instructed us just as they described it in the article ("you may consider "only the facts" and that you are not to let your conscience, opinion of the law, or the motives of the defendant affect your decision").
One person on our jury didn't agree with the law and held out for not guilty. We of course couldn't find for guilty because of this one person. Now I'm glad that he did, because I didn't agree with the law but knew that the person did indeed break it! (Person rode in the passenger seat of a stolen car, knew it was stolen. Woops, did you know that riding in a stolen car, while knowing it was stolen, is grand theft auto? Even if YOU did not steal it!?).
He also ran from the police when they asked him what he was doing in the car and admitted to doing so as well so we found guilty for that. But man I felt like what was going on in the jury room was a miscarriage of justice, now I realize that the Judge lied to us and we almost screwed up! Believe me, that man wasn't the only one who felt the way he did.
Incredibly I just recently got another Jury Duty summons. I look forward to exercising my new found rights if I am selected (and I imagine I will be, given my past experience).
They've already got pads with built in usb powered cooling fans of varying designs and number of fans.
What about a full on LAPDESK for your laptop?
Or, as another poster pointed out, they have cooling pads that can rotate and elevate your laptop that also come in varying designs.
And don't forget about cooling yourself off!
Why am I not suprised?.
HMM!
I'm sorry to say it, but Yahoo castrated Alltheweb.com's search results and replaced them with the same Overture/Inktomi results that you get from MSN and Yahoo searches. By the way they also did the same thing to Altavista :(.
I'm still hoping that some of the technology from Alltheweb will get integrated with Inktomi but for the most part I haven't read anything about major changes to the Inktomi algorithm yet so I'm assuming that they let Alltheweb die a quiet death. Maybe someday we'll alltheweb style improvements to the yahoo/inktomi engine, but until then:
RIP ALLTHEWEB.
But this isn't the only issue that Yahoo is two faced about-- They are also very conflicted over pay for inclusion in their search engine:
Personally I think they've kept the pay for inclusion because they've got thousands and thousands of people paying for it and they don't want to kill that revenue stream-- even though they are perfectly capable of functioning without it like Google.
This feeling also applies to their continued partnership with Gator/Claria-- it makes them too much money to dump them.
Finally-- Does Gator's name change to Claria remind anyone else of Phillip Morris' failed name change to Altria? Name change or no, they'll never live down their sleezy reputation that they EARNED themselves.
Keep fighting the good fight!