I honestly don't quite know what to say. Yeah, it is bad at Kent State for these guys, but this whole "Remember Columbine!" crap is spreading like wildfire.
Today during lunch the TV was on one of the local "news" stations, WDAF. I use that word "news" lightly - they spend most of the time doing stories about skiing squirrels.
Their lead story was this. And of course they (along with the KC Star article I linked to) mentioned how "Columbine like" this was. WDAF TV went a step further though by mentioning that "police found three black trench coats"!
We were doing everything mentioned in their abstract in 1995 here in Kansas City - minus one thing: handheld devices (okay, the radio was handheld, but the display device was not as there were no handheld devices like what is really needed to do it). We used web browsers, TCP/IP, JNOS or KA9Q NOS, etc. to access stuff off the net over 1200 baud packet. Heck, some of us were even playing with this type of stuff back in 1987/88 by sending vector type graphics around that you got to click on to change pages, etc.
A good way to think of what is going on here is to make your own comet! Get something, like sand, salt, etc. and pour a line of it out on the table in front of you. Some of the grains will spread out from that line. That is what is happening here.
As the Earth moves through this, you start out hitting a few particles, hit a max, then hit a few less again until it has passed through the trail. In the case of meteor showers, they are caused by comets leaving debris as they go by.
There are a ton of reasons, but the main one is education. First, anyone with a ham license can use these satellites. They are actually very easy to use and it does not require large antenna arrays consisting of 20 foot dishes or millions of dollars of equipment to use them. I have talked through the birds using only a small off the shelf handie talkie and a mobile antenna - total cost for all the equipment was about $500.
These are not just "things slopped together". A whole hell of a lot of engineering goes into them, and there really is not much of a difference between the hamsats and the ones put up by megacorp. They have Earth locators on them. Some sats, like WO-18 had video cameras. Other sats like DO-17 had voice encoders (which did not work for some reason) but would orbit and send down telemetry. Even though you could not use DO-17 for communcation, it was probably the most awesome of the hamsats at the time. I was able to listen to it go overhead without even having an antenna on the receiver, and was able to decode the telemetry packets when I put a rubber duckie antenna on the thing.
Check out the amsat.org web site some more. There are links to things like the University of Surrey satellites and the aformentioned WO-18 made by Weber University.
18 years ago tomorrow I got my first computer - A Timex/Sinclair 1000 (aka Sinclair ZX-81). I used it until March of '83 when I upgraded to an Atari 400, which I used until 17 years ago today when I upgraded to an Atari 800XL.
Recently I went to the local Goodwill store looking for old movie equipment and they had a TS1000 new in a box for $11. I did not find my movie stuff, but I did find my first computer!
Now, thanks to things like xmess I can still enjoy my old computers.
Also, for you Atari fans out there, you might want to check out Atari Magazines. They have the entire Antic magazine library online, including the source code, program disks, etc. It is a neat trip if you have a few hours to waste. Heck, even if you are not an Atari fan, it is still interesting.
I have been using it for a few years now and have never upgraded it (or even looked to see if it was upgraded!) The thing is running here.
It does catch the spammers! I have seen spam harvesters sit there for days just going through page after page after page. And of course I just let it.
However, make sure you have your robots.txt set up properly. I made a goof in the original one I had set up and ended up doing quite a number on Web Crawler. With some help from their tech support staff I got that fixed pretty fast.
When the front of the tube is smashed, the fragments go flying to the rear of the tube. They hit the back of it and then rebound and fly back out the front.
It is very very nasty if you happen to be near it.
They may not be selling it however. How tough was the address? If it was something like jimsmith01@hotmail.com, well, that is easy as hell to guess.
Spammers do wonderful things like sending to
jimsmith
jimsmith00
jimsmith01
jimsmith02
etc.
Chances are that is how you got hit. The spammer does not care, since hotmail is just going to say "uh, sorry, that account does not exist". Pick something like fjiogio83fj@hotmail.com. Chances are you won't get hit for a while. If you do get hit right off, then I would say hotmail is selling it. Vote Nader
I was discussing this with a friend a few weeks ago. Way back when I used to have fun with code by making a define, putting some text in it, then having printf's all over the place that were never called but were there just to stick phrases and stuff in the executeable. So why not do this? Make one big ass define, stuff the source in it, then do something so the value will show up when you compile and look at the compiled file, and bingo!
Granted, you would probably want to spread the source out over many files...
Oh - another good place to put the source would be in MP3s using the new ID tag. Can't remember which one it is right now, but it is the one that Music Match uses. It will let you put lyrics, notes, and artist bios in there. Start stuffing DeCSS in there, distribute the songs via Napster or something, and shortly there will be copies all over the world.
My only shirt problem is that I have to explain it to everyone. I went two places today - had to spend 5 minutes explaining it both times (I have the DVDCCA shirt today). The DeCSS shirt does not raise as many questions.
People do laugh though when I tell them what the shirt is about. Vote Nader
I bought the 7.0 Professional package yesterday and updated my laptop from 6.4. Seems to be working very well so far. USB support seems quite a bit better, but I can't say for sure yet until I get to play with the printer this weekend - but the mouse support seems decent.
There are some wacky things that SuSE does - so if you are a RH person, they may throw you. They sure did me. Config files are moved all over the place, for instance, and I still have not become 100% used to where they are now, but for the most part I like what SuSE did to them.
So, we are talking about something real - even though it is not. Much like the hologram of a magnifying glass in front of a bunch of medicine bottles - you move your phyiscal being around and the image that you see throught the magifying glass is what you would see if it was there.
Hmmm. That makes a lot more sense to me now!
Okay - I take back everything I said. I want one of these!
Okay - this sounds cool, and it is impressive. But I don't see how this can help make drugs. I understand being able to visualize what the compound you are trying to make will look like, but can't that be done with cheaper off the shelf equipment already? What benifit would this have?
As far as I can see this is going to be part of two possible markets - video games and science museums. The video game aspect is, well, pretty obvious - the science museum thing would be cool because you could use it to display exhibit A today and five minutes later you could be all ready to use it on exhibit B - Like maybe have a holographic model of a machine or something.
I dunno - it is cool, but awful silly at the same time.
A few weeks ago here on/., there was a story showing three of the clips from this presentation. I ended up seaching a while before I found the whole thing, but I tell ya what, it was worth it.
I am not sure how much of all of the stuff in the videos were actually in use in '68, such as the database and the way you could jump from level to level, but I have a feeling that everything presented was just wowing the folks who were in the auditorium that day.
Looking back at the presentation, everything done there is still done today, with the exception of that weird ass 5 key keyboard Doug was using. Ya got email with message threads, relational databases, the mouse, multi media video, networking to a far away computer... I find something new each time I watch it.
But, whoever it was that decided NOT to make the computer go "bbeep! buzz! honk!" every time it started computing something - that is the person who's hand I want to shake! That would drive me nuts after a while - come to think of it, I think I would rather listen to that all day than the Win9x startup music.
I have had DSL at home since February and have had a total of 1 hour downtime. My dad has not been so lucky - it took a while for SW Bell to get things right. Then there was the little matter of them putting my dad's DSL line on my bill - we live 10 miles apart. Then they screwed up my bill a few times and it took forever to get that straightened out.
At work I have DSL.NET as a provider with a 1.2 Mbit SDSL line. It works slick, though that too was a nightmare. Took over a week for them to finally get our IPs into their DNS servers.
My only real gripe with the actual DSL service is that SW Bell is using PPPoE in some cases, and DHCP in others. PPPoE seems to really suck big time, and it is the main cause of my dad not being online for hours at a time because the PPPoE stuff on SWB's end goes down or his PPPoE client (NT) blows up. It's kindof a nightmare at times. Vote Nader
I don't know if you heard about the Australian guy back in the 50's when the Olympics were in OZ: A 17 year old kid made a fake torch out of a stick and a tin can, put on his torch carrier outfit, and started running. The police saw him, and escorted him to city hall, where the Mayor was waiting. Mayor finishes up his speech, everyone starts to leave, then the real torch arrives.
It is stuff like this that can make the games in your town fun! Ya got two years to work on a prank - I sure would if they were here where I am.
Something the c|net article does not mention, and I wish more attention would be paid to it, is the use of the CC software to track user viewing habits in addition to barcodes.
The program sits there and listens to the audio feed of your TV. When it hears the CC sound, it takes you to the website, just like scanning a barcode does.
Now, take a look at the software - there thing uses user profiles (if you have them set up). Each person who uses the computer is encouraged to have thier own profile. So, when Mom sits down and scans stuff out of Family Circle, or watches LifetimeTV, or scans a bag of Gold Medal Flour - bingo! DC now knows this stuff. Dad watches ESPN, drinks Budweiser, and eats Guy's Potato Chips. Little Billy watches Nick Jr., drinks Hi-C, and enjoys Little Debbie sacky cakes. Now all those ads you see in print or on TV can be even MORE targeted. You simply change part of the CC-TV code to reflect the channel that is broadcasting it and you can watch the audience reaction to putting a commercial right at the highlight of the show - do they turn the channel? Do they just sit there and watch the commercials?
This is so orwellian in it's nature that I am happier now than ever that I don't run Windows and am not fooled into running CC's software.
Better yet, let's do this hypothetical situation: Pretend that I am a political candidate for the Silly Party. We put on our national convention. At the start of the broadcast, Joe Commentator comes on and says, "Turn on your Cue Cat software folks! The Silly Party will be sending you to various parts of the Silly Party platform during the presentation tonight."
Instantly, my minions at Silly Party HQ can start watching the audience reaction of the home viewers. Since I am using a teleprompter to give my lecture to the masses, it can be instantly changed and edited. The minions see me getting too many of the "angry white male" audience tuning away and returning to Monday Night Nitro? Simply insert political rhetoric aimed at them. Whoops! Now the latino population is tuning out! Better say something to keep them listening. And this can go on and on and on for the rest of the convention.
While I agree that NIMBY is a problem when it comes to placement of power plants, and I agree with you on most of your other points, I must strongly disagree with you about "In addition, whatever pollution is produced is less concentrated."
This is wrong. It is much easier, more effective, and requires less energy to control the pollution at one source than it is to control millions of sources. It does not matter one wit if the pollution is spread out over large areas - the total amount of pollution is still there. THAT is the problem.
For example, you take a can of motor oil and make a hole in it. You then hold the can over a stream and let the contents start leaking out. It is much easier for me to walk up to you and whap you upside the head and say "Stop that!" than it would be for you and 2000 of your friends to all get medicine droppers, each take a bit of oil, stand up and down the bank of the stream and all start putting drops of oil into it. I would have to go around to 2000 sources and whap all of you.
There is the same amount of pollution going into the stream and it is MUCH harder to control all these sources. GE is saying that they need to inspect all of the fuel cells every year. That is one hell of a lot of energy being spent to keep these things running.
Remember that just because one thing produces a lot of pollution does not mean that a million smaller things are going to produce less.
Also - you mention that NYC gets most of it's electricity from hydro. Hydro is a renewable resource. Natural Gas is not. Therefore it is costing nothing - other than plant and equipment - to make hydro power. There is no pollution that results from it. None. Zero. Nada. Natural gas on the other hand does cause pollution, though it is much less than nuclear or coal. But it is still there.
This man is truly a god and it just pisses me off thinking that some other clown gets all the attention because he can use his great marketing clout to rip off the public.
For years every console that comes out has been "a PC killer" and people have said "why do I want to buy a PC when my Nintendo/Sega/Super Nintendo/Playstation/N64/Dreamcast/PS2 works better at playing games?" It ain't gonna happen.
First, you have to have a TV set. How many of us have a TV set in our office? It is a hell of a lot easier to plunk in a game on our PC and then ALT-Tab out of it when the boss walks by, for one thing.
Consoles have their market and their purpose, just like a real computer does, but to say that either of them is going to smash the other's market share is idiotic at best. The PC world has nothing to fear from the X-Box - the only ones that do have something to worry about are Nintendo, Sega and Sony. Nobody else cares.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly don't quite know what to say. Yeah, it is bad at Kent State for these guys, but this whole "Remember Columbine!" crap is spreading like wildfire.
Today during lunch the TV was on one of the local "news" stations, WDAF. I use that word "news" lightly - they spend most of the time doing stories about skiing squirrels.
Their lead story was this. And of course they (along with the KC Star article I linked to) mentioned how "Columbine like" this was. WDAF TV went a step further though by mentioning that "police found three black trench coats"!
sigh.
We were doing everything mentioned in their abstract in 1995 here in Kansas City - minus one thing: handheld devices (okay, the radio was handheld, but the display device was not as there were no handheld devices like what is really needed to do it). We used web browsers, TCP/IP, JNOS or KA9Q NOS, etc. to access stuff off the net over 1200 baud packet. Heck, some of us were even playing with this type of stuff back in 1987/88 by sending vector type graphics around that you got to click on to change pages, etc.
And it managed to get them on the RBL. Looks like ebay may find themselves there too if they are not careful.
Yep. Keep your eyes open.
A good way to think of what is going on here is to make your own comet! Get something, like sand, salt, etc. and pour a line of it out on the table in front of you. Some of the grains will spread out from that line. That is what is happening here.
As the Earth moves through this, you start out hitting a few particles, hit a max, then hit a few less again until it has passed through the trail. In the case of meteor showers, they are caused by comets leaving debris as they go by.
There are a ton of reasons, but the main one is education. First, anyone with a ham license can use these satellites. They are actually very easy to use and it does not require large antenna arrays consisting of 20 foot dishes or millions of dollars of equipment to use them. I have talked through the birds using only a small off the shelf handie talkie and a mobile antenna - total cost for all the equipment was about $500.
These are not just "things slopped together". A whole hell of a lot of engineering goes into them, and there really is not much of a difference between the hamsats and the ones put up by megacorp. They have Earth locators on them. Some sats, like WO-18 had video cameras. Other sats like DO-17 had voice encoders (which did not work for some reason) but would orbit and send down telemetry. Even though you could not use DO-17 for communcation, it was probably the most awesome of the hamsats at the time. I was able to listen to it go overhead without even having an antenna on the receiver, and was able to decode the telemetry packets when I put a rubber duckie antenna on the thing.
Check out the amsat.org web site some more. There are links to things like the University of Surrey satellites and the aformentioned WO-18 made by Weber University.
73 DE NV0U
18 years ago tomorrow I got my first computer - A Timex/Sinclair 1000 (aka Sinclair ZX-81). I used it until March of '83 when I upgraded to an Atari 400, which I used until 17 years ago today when I upgraded to an Atari 800XL.
Recently I went to the local Goodwill store looking for old movie equipment and they had a TS1000 new in a box for $11. I did not find my movie stuff, but I did find my first computer!
Now, thanks to things like xmess I can still enjoy my old computers.
Also, for you Atari fans out there, you might want to check out Atari Magazines. They have the entire Antic magazine library online, including the source code, program disks, etc. It is a neat trip if you have a few hours to waste. Heck, even if you are not an Atari fan, it is still interesting.
If English was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for everyone!
(I think it was some governor from about 30 years ago... can't remember his name - at any rate, it is funny.)
I have been using it for a few years now and have never upgraded it (or even looked to see if it was upgraded!) The thing is running here.
It does catch the spammers! I have seen spam harvesters sit there for days just going through page after page after page. And of course I just let it.
However, make sure you have your robots.txt set up properly. I made a goof in the original one I had set up and ended up doing quite a number on Web Crawler. With some help from their tech support staff I got that fixed pretty fast.
but they also explode.
When the front of the tube is smashed, the fragments go flying to the rear of the tube. They hit the back of it and then rebound and fly back out the front.
It is very very nasty if you happen to be near it.
They are on Rush Limbaugh's site, because that is the only link I have handy (a republican friend of mine sent it to me). Here it is
And I agree. What? You can't follow an arrow?
I voted Nader. Nader did not win, nor does it look like he got 5%. But ya know what? I have never been more proud of myself.
For the first time in my life I voted for what I believe in and not "the lesser of two evils" or "party lines". I voted exactly what I think.
They may not be selling it however. How tough was the address? If it was something like jimsmith01@hotmail.com, well, that is easy as hell to guess.
Spammers do wonderful things like sending to
jimsmith
jimsmith00
jimsmith01
jimsmith02
etc.
Chances are that is how you got hit. The spammer does not care, since hotmail is just going to say "uh, sorry, that account does not exist". Pick something like fjiogio83fj@hotmail.com. Chances are you won't get hit for a while. If you do get hit right off, then I would say hotmail is selling it.
Vote Nader
I was discussing this with a friend a few weeks ago. Way back when I used to have fun with code by making a define, putting some text in it, then having printf's all over the place that were never called but were there just to stick phrases and stuff in the executeable. So why not do this? Make one big ass define, stuff the source in it, then do something so the value will show up when you compile and look at the compiled file, and bingo!
Granted, you would probably want to spread the source out over many files...
Oh - another good place to put the source would be in MP3s using the new ID tag. Can't remember which one it is right now, but it is the one that Music Match uses. It will let you put lyrics, notes, and artist bios in there. Start stuffing DeCSS in there, distribute the songs via Napster or something, and shortly there will be copies all over the world.
Vote Nader
My only shirt problem is that I have to explain it to everyone. I went two places today - had to spend 5 minutes explaining it both times (I have the DVDCCA shirt today). The DeCSS shirt does not raise as many questions.
People do laugh though when I tell them what the shirt is about.
Vote Nader
I bought the 7.0 Professional package yesterday and updated my laptop from 6.4. Seems to be working very well so far. USB support seems quite a bit better, but I can't say for sure yet until I get to play with the printer this weekend - but the mouse support seems decent.
There are some wacky things that SuSE does - so if you are a RH person, they may throw you. They sure did me. Config files are moved all over the place, for instance, and I still have not become 100% used to where they are now, but for the most part I like what SuSE did to them.
Vote Nader
How stupid of me!
So, we are talking about something real - even though it is not. Much like the hologram of a magnifying glass in front of a bunch of medicine bottles - you move your phyiscal being around and the image that you see throught the magifying glass is what you would see if it was there.
Hmmm. That makes a lot more sense to me now!
Okay - I take back everything I said. I want one of these!
Vote Nader
Okay - this sounds cool, and it is impressive. But I don't see how this can help make drugs. I understand being able to visualize what the compound you are trying to make will look like, but can't that be done with cheaper off the shelf equipment already? What benifit would this have?
As far as I can see this is going to be part of two possible markets - video games and science museums. The video game aspect is, well, pretty obvious - the science museum thing would be cool because you could use it to display exhibit A today and five minutes later you could be all ready to use it on exhibit B - Like maybe have a holographic model of a machine or something.
I dunno - it is cool, but awful silly at the same time.
Vote Nader
A few weeks ago here on /., there was a story showing three of the clips from this presentation. I ended up seaching a while before I found the whole thing, but I tell ya what, it was worth it.
I am not sure how much of all of the stuff in the videos were actually in use in '68, such as the database and the way you could jump from level to level, but I have a feeling that everything presented was just wowing the folks who were in the auditorium that day.
Looking back at the presentation, everything done there is still done today, with the exception of that weird ass 5 key keyboard Doug was using. Ya got email with message threads, relational databases, the mouse, multi media video, networking to a far away computer... I find something new each time I watch it.
But, whoever it was that decided NOT to make the computer go "bbeep! buzz! honk!" every time it started computing something - that is the person who's hand I want to shake! That would drive me nuts after a while - come to think of it, I think I would rather listen to that all day than the Win9x startup music.
Vote Nader
I have had DSL at home since February and have had a total of 1 hour downtime. My dad has not been so lucky - it took a while for SW Bell to get things right. Then there was the little matter of them putting my dad's DSL line on my bill - we live 10 miles apart. Then they screwed up my bill a few times and it took forever to get that straightened out.
At work I have DSL.NET as a provider with a 1.2 Mbit SDSL line. It works slick, though that too was a nightmare. Took over a week for them to finally get our IPs into their DNS servers.
My only real gripe with the actual DSL service is that SW Bell is using PPPoE in some cases, and DHCP in others. PPPoE seems to really suck big time, and it is the main cause of my dad not being online for hours at a time because the PPPoE stuff on SWB's end goes down or his PPPoE client (NT) blows up. It's kindof a nightmare at times.
Vote Nader
I don't know if you heard about the Australian guy back in the 50's when the Olympics were in OZ: A 17 year old kid made a fake torch out of a stick and a tin can, put on his torch carrier outfit, and started running. The police saw him, and escorted him to city hall, where the Mayor was waiting. Mayor finishes up his speech, everyone starts to leave, then the real torch arrives.
It is stuff like this that can make the games in your town fun! Ya got two years to work on a prank - I sure would if they were here where I am.
Vote Nader
Something the c|net article does not mention, and I wish more attention would be paid to it, is the use of the CC software to track user viewing habits in addition to barcodes.
The program sits there and listens to the audio feed of your TV. When it hears the CC sound, it takes you to the website, just like scanning a barcode does.
Now, take a look at the software - there thing uses user profiles (if you have them set up). Each person who uses the computer is encouraged to have thier own profile. So, when Mom sits down and scans stuff out of Family Circle, or watches LifetimeTV, or scans a bag of Gold Medal Flour - bingo! DC now knows this stuff. Dad watches ESPN, drinks Budweiser, and eats Guy's Potato Chips. Little Billy watches Nick Jr., drinks Hi-C, and enjoys Little Debbie sacky cakes. Now all those ads you see in print or on TV can be even MORE targeted. You simply change part of the CC-TV code to reflect the channel that is broadcasting it and you can watch the audience reaction to putting a commercial right at the highlight of the show - do they turn the channel? Do they just sit there and watch the commercials?
This is so orwellian in it's nature that I am happier now than ever that I don't run Windows and am not fooled into running CC's software.
Better yet, let's do this hypothetical situation: Pretend that I am a political candidate for the Silly Party. We put on our national convention. At the start of the broadcast, Joe Commentator comes on and says, "Turn on your Cue Cat software folks! The Silly Party will be sending you to various parts of the Silly Party platform during the presentation tonight."
Instantly, my minions at Silly Party HQ can start watching the audience reaction of the home viewers. Since I am using a teleprompter to give my lecture to the masses, it can be instantly changed and edited. The minions see me getting too many of the "angry white male" audience tuning away and returning to Monday Night Nitro? Simply insert political rhetoric aimed at them. Whoops! Now the latino population is tuning out! Better say something to keep them listening. And this can go on and on and on for the rest of the convention.
This just scares the crap out of me.
Vote Nader
While I agree that NIMBY is a problem when it comes to placement of power plants, and I agree with you on most of your other points, I must strongly disagree with you about "In addition, whatever pollution is produced is less concentrated."
This is wrong. It is much easier, more effective, and requires less energy to control the pollution at one source than it is to control millions of sources. It does not matter one wit if the pollution is spread out over large areas - the total amount of pollution is still there. THAT is the problem.
For example, you take a can of motor oil and make a hole in it. You then hold the can over a stream and let the contents start leaking out. It is much easier for me to walk up to you and whap you upside the head and say "Stop that!" than it would be for you and 2000 of your friends to all get medicine droppers, each take a bit of oil, stand up and down the bank of the stream and all start putting drops of oil into it. I would have to go around to 2000 sources and whap all of you.
There is the same amount of pollution going into the stream and it is MUCH harder to control all these sources. GE is saying that they need to inspect all of the fuel cells every year. That is one hell of a lot of energy being spent to keep these things running.
Remember that just because one thing produces a lot of pollution does not mean that a million smaller things are going to produce less.
Also - you mention that NYC gets most of it's electricity from hydro. Hydro is a renewable resource. Natural Gas is not. Therefore it is costing nothing - other than plant and equipment - to make hydro power. There is no pollution that results from it. None. Zero. Nada. Natural gas on the other hand does cause pollution, though it is much less than nuclear or coal. But it is still there.
Vote Nader
Speaking of MP3s, The Offspring just royally pissed off Sony today. Here is the story about them putting their next album on the web.
Gotta love anarchy!
Vote Nader
Englebart's Unfinished Vision.
This man is truly a god and it just pisses me off thinking that some other clown gets all the attention because he can use his great marketing clout to rip off the public.
What sad times are these.
Vote Nader
For years every console that comes out has been "a PC killer" and people have said "why do I want to buy a PC when my Nintendo/Sega/Super Nintendo/Playstation/N64/Dreamcast/PS2 works better at playing games?" It ain't gonna happen.
First, you have to have a TV set. How many of us have a TV set in our office? It is a hell of a lot easier to plunk in a game on our PC and then ALT-Tab out of it when the boss walks by, for one thing.
Consoles have their market and their purpose, just like a real computer does, but to say that either of them is going to smash the other's market share is idiotic at best. The PC world has nothing to fear from the X-Box - the only ones that do have something to worry about are Nintendo, Sega and Sony. Nobody else cares.