www.worldtradeaftermath.com
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 2
I have set this up as a central information site. Please share the address with others. But, please do not browse it unless you need to. I don't want the server to get overloaded. Also, if anyone finds any emergency or volunteer contacts (or the like) online that aren't on the site, please let me know.
Central Information Site
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2
I've posted a centralized information site. PLEASE DO NOT SLASHDOT THIS SITE! Pass along the web address to people who need it. PLEASE don't just browse around the site. I'm not sure if the site could handle a slashdot-size load. Again... PLEASE visit the site sparingly. The site is www.worldtradeaftermath.com. Please pass the address on to those who need it. Thank you.
I have heard first and second-hand accounts that the whole World Trade Center complex began evacuating after the 1st plane hit. A friend was on th 61st floor of tower 1, was asked to evacuate, was in the stairwell when the 2nd plane hit. He made it out ok. I just heard secondhand reports of people as high up as th 88th floor of tower 1 getting out ok. My friend's father (staying here tonight) was across the street in front of Deutsche Bank when the 2nd plane hit. He hid behind the big pillars holding up the balcony to avoid the debris and then got as far away from the towers as possible.
Unfortunately, it looks like there were hundreds of people on the ground by the towers watching the fires burn, both when the 2nd plane hit... and when the 1st tower fell.
I've been listing my friends who make it out safe on my website, as well as adding an information I get from 1st and 2nd hand accounts of people who were there. All said it was gruesome, even after just the 1st plane hit. Pictures and a live webcam are on my site. SOMEONE PLEASE MIRROR the terrorism and webcam subsite so I don't get Slashdotted.
http://johnhaller.com/jh/terrorist/
I will also be creating a site tonight to try and help people get in touch and find people affected by this. I will post more when I have it up.
Best wishes for all everyone knows and loves to make it home safe.
I can see where the towers of the trade center used to be from my bedroom on 14th St. I saw just after the second plane hit and just after the 1st tower fell. I watched the 2nd tower fall. One of my friends is still missing. I'm trying to keep myself busy. You can see pictures on my site.
I'd estimate the death toll at betwen 20 and 50 thousand here. I believe approximately 40 thousand people work in the entire world trade complex and the attacks seem to be timed for just when everyone got work. I used to work in Tower 2, 15th Floor.
Actually, it is these anti-skip buffers that give the CP/MP3 player hybrids the battery life that they have. They spin up the disc, fill memory with data, then stop spinning the disc. So, at that point, it is operating more like a memory-only MP3 player. When the anti-skip memory gets down to below, say, a minute, the disc spins again, it reads more data, then stops it again.
Without doing this, the battery life would be much shorter. Heck, the RioVolt CD/MP3 player does 15 hours (2 AA batteries) while the Rio600 memory-based MP3 player does 10 (with 1 AA battery).
When I was in Junior High, I once set all the Apple IIes in the room to say "press any key" and then beep continuously if someone did. I knew the teacher (my friend's dad) would get a, um, kick out of it.
It may work with your PC. It seems some folks found that the BIOS could not detect it on bootup. At least, according to a discussion at usb.org and a few other places.
I did find a reference to an old key remapper. ZDNet actually made one a while ago called ZDKeyMap thet you can download at CNET. It says it only works with Windows 95 and on standard keys. You'd have to try it in Win98 and see if it still worked.
A better option may be JRkey. This project's goal is to create a generic, open-source, freeware multimedia keyboard driver for Windows 98. It looks promising, though it is still in Alpha.
Also, the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit has a utility called Reymapkey.exe which is supposed to let you remap scancodes.
If it is actually put in all these different devices... how long do you think it'll be before we automatically tune this one out, too? Living in New York City, we learn to tune out a lot of annoying noises... like the ubiquitous multi-tone car alarms.
Personally, I used every building toy I could get my hands on when I was growing up. They all required thinking about building in different ways and all were better suited to different projects. I used Capsela, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Robotix, Erector Set, Lego, plain wood blocks. I found a site that sells em all (and has pictures of them) called constructiontoys.com.
I also agree with others here who dislike the customization of pieces in sets like lego, etc. Building something interesting used to require more imagination, rather than getting the custom alien space ship kit. Plus, making boats that float out of the red roof lego pieces was fun in and of itself.
Hehe... You can always spot the stories by Brits and Canadians (and lotsa other folks). For the confused folks, flashlight = lantern. My friend also gave me this handy guide:
galloshes = rubbers
elevator = lift
french fries = chips
chips = crisps
crisps (those fat free things we have in the USA) = crap
Totally Offtopic: While looking for some creative ones on the web (and coming up emtpy-handed), I found this list of funny names two guys got the folks at the airport to page. Funny stuff.
We all remember using EDU the turtle on the old Apple computers. There are pay-versions of LOGO still out there. But, you can also get it for free. Some links for ya:
Turtle Tracks - A Java version released under the GPL. Requires a Java 1.1-compliant virtual machine. MSWLogo - A windows-only version. The source is available, but I'm not sure what license it is released under. Other logo software - This list, at the Logo Foundation's website lists commercial and free versions of logo. rLogo - An online in-the-browser logo interpreter.
This is a story that should probably be told on a wider scale. I've sumbitted it to NYTimes, ABCNews, CNN, MSNBC, CBSNews, Salt Lake City Tribune and some others. Anybody else wanna help?
Your little "summary" seems to imply that *all* of the above tests are somehow included in the overall system performance...
Actually, it wasn't meant to imply that at all. I merely took the content headings from the AnandTech Review as AnandTech had written them. If you recheck the review, that is what they are. The "Overall System Performance" numbers are actually a SYSMark 2001 result. It would perhaps have been better if AnandTech had titled that subsection of the review differently, but they did not. For all intents and purposes, Overall System Performance is correct, as that is what SYSMark 2001 measures. The fact that it doesn't actually measure it as accurately as it should is another story. Calling the summary a troll seems like quite an overreaction.
Although benchmarks are always open to interpretation, I think some of the numbers are quite interesting here. The Dual Athlon 1.2GHz outperforms the Dual Pentium Xeon 1.7 GHz by 6 to 18% on almost all the tests they ran. Here's a rundown:
* - The Xeons did outperform the Athlons on the Photoshop 4 portion of the workstation performace scores by 11.4%.
** - The Overall System Performance numbers ended up that way due to the Xeons' 20% advantage over the Athlons on the Internet Content Creation benchmarks and the basically even performance on the Office Productivity benchmarks.
What are the chances of you releasing a list of your customers so the rest of us will know who is worthy of our unending pointing and laughing... umm... I mean, respect?
(Perhaps we could also ask that you use your influence as an "internet icon" to get that Mind and Spirit moron to open her list up, too.)
Spam DOES Work - But Not Always That Well
on
RFC for Spammers
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· Score: 3
I just realized this recently. I've been fighting spam for quite a while now. I've gotten quite good at getting accounts cancelled, open relays closed and whatnot. I got a spam last week that seemed like just another typical spam message... one of those "make money" type deals. Well, in researching it, it seemed like the usual free website with a form submission to a cgi script at another. (Typical tactic, to try and get people to only cancel the free site) Well, while poking around, I discovered that the cgi-bin had directory browsing on and contained two files... the script and a text file containing the name, address, email and credit card information of everyone who responded.
I fired off complaints to geocities and earthlink as well as information on what happened to all the folks whose information was in the file. Most got back to me that they'd cancelled their credit cards, etc.
Is there a moral? I could come up with something witty if I weren't so tired. So, just use this example when telling people why you don't respond to spammers.
How It Works - Dual Monitor Video Cards
on
3D w/o Goggles
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· Score: 5
Actually, the unit is essentially two seperate LCD screens combined into one and (i believe) will work with an off-the-shelf dual-monitor video card. The connections are simply 2 x HD15 RGB Analogue (2 standard monitor connectors). So, you could actually use it on any OS without any drivers or anything. With drivers, the thing will really be able to shine... adding things like foreground and background buttons in OSes, popup windows in applications that actually popup, simulated 3d effects within games, medical apps, imaging stuff, geographical stuff, etc, etc. There are many possible applications. Actual Depth did have to do some work to get it to work nicely, since we need a truely clear LCD in the foreground (which is 6bit) so it doesn't disrupt the background (or main) LCD which is 24bit. Initially, the company plans on using it for marketting kiosks and the like (since it'll definitely catch people's eyes), but I anticipate a quick move into arcade game units, commercial applications and, eventually, home applications. My friend who has seen one says it is quite cool looking.
Haven't seen one for windows, but there is a hack available for PalmOS that moves the scrollbar to the left-hand side. It's called Left Hack and I've heard decent stuff about it. Of course, it makes more sense to move the scrollbars on PalmOS, since to scroll (normally) with your left hand, your hand covers the screen as you scroll.
Personally, I'd recommend *against* Verizon. They don't have a friggin clue when it comes to most internet stuff. I spose they may be able to handle dialup pretty well, but just ask some of the poor folks in the World Trade Center who are stuck in the middle of Bell Atl... uh, I mean Verizon's monopoly and they'll tell a different story. Verizon blames so and so (eg, UUNet, if you have an ISDN line)... so and so blames Verizon. In the end, you're just stuck. When I worked there, the company next door to me had no net access for weeks on end cuz Verizon didn't know their ass from their elbow.
That said, I'd suggest you consider splitting up net access and web/email hosting. For hosting, go with a company recommened by other folks. Pop online and check them out a bit. Watch out, though... some of the biggest companies have the worst support and technical expertise (example: Interland). For dialup, go with a regular ISP... like Earthlink or something along those lines. Or, even better, a local one. You don't have to worry as much about switching ISPs... since your email is hosted with your website by someone else.
Best advise I can add to that is... consider using someone entirely different for your DNS services (perhaps Zone Edit). That way, if you do switch web hosts, you control when the switch is made. It makes switching hosts almost painless.
Yeah... my post was supposed to be a reply to the 1st person's comment. How it ended up as a reply to the story? Chalk it up to one of those days. I'm sure someone will mod it down.
Ok, replying to my own post... lame, I know. This was supposed to be a reply to the comment "Why the link?" 2 comments up... hit the wrong button. One of those days... etc, etc.
I have set this up as a central information site. Please share the address with others. But, please do not browse it unless you need to. I don't want the server to get overloaded. Also, if anyone finds any emergency or volunteer contacts (or the like) online that aren't on the site, please let me know.
worldtradeaftermath.com
I've posted a centralized information site. PLEASE DO NOT SLASHDOT THIS SITE! Pass along the web address to people who need it. PLEASE don't just browse around the site. I'm not sure if the site could handle a slashdot-size load. Again... PLEASE visit the site sparingly. The site is www.worldtradeaftermath.com. Please pass the address on to those who need it. Thank you.
I have heard first and second-hand accounts that the whole World Trade Center complex began evacuating after the 1st plane hit. A friend was on th 61st floor of tower 1, was asked to evacuate, was in the stairwell when the 2nd plane hit. He made it out ok. I just heard secondhand reports of people as high up as th 88th floor of tower 1 getting out ok. My friend's father (staying here tonight) was across the street in front of Deutsche Bank when the 2nd plane hit. He hid behind the big pillars holding up the balcony to avoid the debris and then got as far away from the towers as possible.
Unfortunately, it looks like there were hundreds of people on the ground by the towers watching the fires burn, both when the 2nd plane hit... and when the 1st tower fell.
I've been listing my friends who make it out safe on my website, as well as adding an information I get from 1st and 2nd hand accounts of people who were there. All said it was gruesome, even after just the 1st plane hit. Pictures and a live webcam are on my site. SOMEONE PLEASE MIRROR the terrorism and webcam subsite so I don't get Slashdotted.
http://johnhaller.com/jh/terrorist/
I will also be creating a site tonight to try and help people get in touch and find people affected by this. I will post more when I have it up.
Best wishes for all everyone knows and loves to make it home safe.
I can see where the towers of the trade center used to be from my bedroom on 14th St. I saw just after the second plane hit and just after the 1st tower fell. I watched the 2nd tower fall. One of my friends is still missing. I'm trying to keep myself busy. You can see pictures on my site.
I'd estimate the death toll at betwen 20 and 50 thousand here. I believe approximately 40 thousand people work in the entire world trade complex and the attacks seem to be timed for just when everyone got work. I used to work in Tower 2, 15th Floor.
I'll try and get a webcam up, too.
Actually, it is these anti-skip buffers that give the CP/MP3 player hybrids the battery life that they have. They spin up the disc, fill memory with data, then stop spinning the disc. So, at that point, it is operating more like a memory-only MP3 player. When the anti-skip memory gets down to below, say, a minute, the disc spins again, it reads more data, then stops it again. Without doing this, the battery life would be much shorter. Heck, the RioVolt CD/MP3 player does 15 hours (2 AA batteries) while the Rio600 memory-based MP3 player does 10 (with 1 AA battery).
When I was in Junior High, I once set all the Apple IIes in the room to say "press any key" and then beep continuously if someone did. I knew the teacher (my friend's dad) would get a, um, kick out of it.
It may work with your PC. It seems some folks found that the BIOS could not detect it on bootup. At least, according to a discussion at usb.org and a few other places.
I did find a reference to an old key remapper. ZDNet actually made one a while ago called ZDKeyMap thet you can download at CNET. It says it only works with Windows 95 and on standard keys. You'd have to try it in Win98 and see if it still worked.
A better option may be JRkey. This project's goal is to create a generic, open-source, freeware multimedia keyboard driver for Windows 98. It looks promising, though it is still in Alpha.
Also, the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit has a utility called Reymapkey.exe which is supposed to let you remap scancodes.
If it is actually put in all these different devices... how long do you think it'll be before we automatically tune this one out, too? Living in New York City, we learn to tune out a lot of annoying noises... like the ubiquitous multi-tone car alarms.
tr.v. encrypted, encrypting, encrypts
- To put into code or cipher.
- Computer Science. To alter (a file, for example) using a secret code so as to be unintelligible to unauthorized parties.*
The 2nd definition (the one we're concerned with) states that it means altering a file using a secret code. ROT-13 is anything *BUT* secret.Besides, he could always claim that he was attempting to use ROT-13 to *encrypt* the text.
* Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Personally, I used every building toy I could get my hands on when I was growing up. They all required thinking about building in different ways and all were better suited to different projects. I used Capsela, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Robotix, Erector Set, Lego, plain wood blocks. I found a site that sells em all (and has pictures of them) called constructiontoys.com.
I also agree with others here who dislike the customization of pieces in sets like lego, etc. Building something interesting used to require more imagination, rather than getting the custom alien space ship kit. Plus, making boats that float out of the red roof lego pieces was fun in and of itself.
I used to do this to unsuspecting DOS/Windows users:
prompt $p$gformat c:
This yields a prompt of:
c:>format c:
It scares the hell out of newbies.
Actually, I think most databases perform ok while their admins are on acid.
Hehe... You can always spot the stories by Brits and Canadians (and lotsa other folks). For the confused folks, flashlight = lantern. My friend also gave me this handy guide:
galloshes = rubbers
elevator = lift
french fries = chips
chips = crisps
crisps (those fat free things we have in the USA) = crap
Cheers!
Code Crafter
Code Poet
Electron Magician
Comput-o-Rooter
Computer Psychiatrist (or Psychologist, Dr, etc)
Bug Tamer
Totally Offtopic: While looking for some creative ones on the web (and coming up emtpy-handed), I found this list of funny names two guys got the folks at the airport to page. Funny stuff.
We all remember using EDU the turtle on the old Apple computers. There are pay-versions of LOGO still out there. But, you can also get it for free. Some links for ya:
Turtle Tracks - A Java version released under the GPL. Requires a Java 1.1-compliant virtual machine.
MSWLogo - A windows-only version. The source is available, but I'm not sure what license it is released under.
Other logo software - This list, at the Logo Foundation's website lists commercial and free versions of logo.
rLogo - An online in-the-browser logo interpreter.
This is a story that should probably be told on a wider scale. I've sumbitted it to NYTimes, ABCNews, CNN, MSNBC, CBSNews, Salt Lake City Tribune and some others. Anybody else wanna help?
Your little "summary" seems to imply that *all* of the above tests are somehow included in the overall system performance...
Actually, it wasn't meant to imply that at all. I merely took the content headings from the AnandTech Review as AnandTech had written them. If you recheck the review, that is what they are. The "Overall System Performance" numbers are actually a SYSMark 2001 result. It would perhaps have been better if AnandTech had titled that subsection of the review differently, but they did not. For all intents and purposes, Overall System Performance is correct, as that is what SYSMark 2001 measures. The fact that it doesn't actually measure it as accurately as it should is another story. Calling the summary a troll seems like quite an overreaction.
- Database Server Performance: 17.6% Faster
- 3D Rendering Performance: 14% Faster
- Image Editting Performance: 6.1% Faster
- Workstation Performance (Overall): 22.1% Faster*
- Linux Performance (Total): 12% Faster
- IT/Constant Computing Performance (Average): 17% Faster
- Overall System Performance: 8.6% Slower**
* - The Xeons did outperform the Athlons on the Photoshop 4 portion of the workstation performace scores by 11.4%.** - The Overall System Performance numbers ended up that way due to the Xeons' 20% advantage over the Athlons on the Internet Content Creation benchmarks and the basically even performance on the Office Productivity benchmarks.
Ok, so I only have one real question...
What are the chances of you releasing a list of your customers so the rest of us will know who is worthy of our unending pointing and laughing... umm... I mean, respect?
(Perhaps we could also ask that you use your influence as an "internet icon" to get that Mind and Spirit moron to open her list up, too.)
I just realized this recently. I've been fighting spam for quite a while now. I've gotten quite good at getting accounts cancelled, open relays closed and whatnot. I got a spam last week that seemed like just another typical spam message... one of those "make money" type deals. Well, in researching it, it seemed like the usual free website with a form submission to a cgi script at another. (Typical tactic, to try and get people to only cancel the free site) Well, while poking around, I discovered that the cgi-bin had directory browsing on and contained two files... the script and a text file containing the name, address, email and credit card information of everyone who responded.
I fired off complaints to geocities and earthlink as well as information on what happened to all the folks whose information was in the file. Most got back to me that they'd cancelled their credit cards, etc.
Is there a moral? I could come up with something witty if I weren't so tired. So, just use this example when telling people why you don't respond to spammers.
Actually, the unit is essentially two seperate LCD screens combined into one and (i believe) will work with an off-the-shelf dual-monitor video card. The connections are simply 2 x HD15 RGB Analogue (2 standard monitor connectors). So, you could actually use it on any OS without any drivers or anything. With drivers, the thing will really be able to shine... adding things like foreground and background buttons in OSes, popup windows in applications that actually popup, simulated 3d effects within games, medical apps, imaging stuff, geographical stuff, etc, etc. There are many possible applications. Actual Depth did have to do some work to get it to work nicely, since we need a truely clear LCD in the foreground (which is 6bit) so it doesn't disrupt the background (or main) LCD which is 24bit. Initially, the company plans on using it for marketting kiosks and the like (since it'll definitely catch people's eyes), but I anticipate a quick move into arcade game units, commercial applications and, eventually, home applications. My friend who has seen one says it is quite cool looking.
Haven't seen one for windows, but there is a hack available for PalmOS that moves the scrollbar to the left-hand side. It's called Left Hack and I've heard decent stuff about it. Of course, it makes more sense to move the scrollbars on PalmOS, since to scroll (normally) with your left hand, your hand covers the screen as you scroll.
Personally, I'd recommend *against* Verizon. They don't have a friggin clue when it comes to most internet stuff. I spose they may be able to handle dialup pretty well, but just ask some of the poor folks in the World Trade Center who are stuck in the middle of Bell Atl... uh, I mean Verizon's monopoly and they'll tell a different story. Verizon blames so and so (eg, UUNet, if you have an ISDN line)... so and so blames Verizon. In the end, you're just stuck. When I worked there, the company next door to me had no net access for weeks on end cuz Verizon didn't know their ass from their elbow.
That said, I'd suggest you consider splitting up net access and web/email hosting. For hosting, go with a company recommened by other folks. Pop online and check them out a bit. Watch out, though... some of the biggest companies have the worst support and technical expertise (example: Interland). For dialup, go with a regular ISP... like Earthlink or something along those lines. Or, even better, a local one. You don't have to worry as much about switching ISPs... since your email is hosted with your website by someone else.
Best advise I can add to that is... consider using someone entirely different for your DNS services (perhaps Zone Edit). That way, if you do switch web hosts, you control when the switch is made. It makes switching hosts almost painless.
Yeah... my post was supposed to be a reply to the 1st person's comment. How it ended up as a reply to the story? Chalk it up to one of those days. I'm sure someone will mod it down.
Ok, replying to my own post... lame, I know. This was supposed to be a reply to the comment "Why the link?" 2 comments up... hit the wrong button. One of those days... etc, etc.