It pisses me off when I have to enter a number, either a phone number or credit card number, in a specific format. Is it too hard to accept any of 8005551234, (800) 555-1234, (800)555 1234, or 800 555 1234? Or to simply remove spaces from my credit card number? Entering a nice, long string of digits with no spaces makes it a bitch when the website comes back with "Invalid credit card format", probably because my card has sequence "xxx xyyyy" and, not being able to use spaces, I entered xxxxxyyy by mistake.
I bought my wife one of the original Palm Pilot's for xmas several years ago. She used it a few months, then quit. So I snarfed it. I gave it 2 months, then gave up on it myself. IMHO, carrying a regular lab notebook around is a lot more convienent.
Around the same time, several people at work got the things. And like me, all but 2-3 dropped out of sight.
4-5 years ago I tried to give away about 5 years of Creative Computing and the first 15-20 years worth of Byte (starting at #1). Couldn't find any takers, anywhere. They are now somewhere in the Mirimar landfill, sigh.
That finger pointing rings a bell. I used to work on Globalstar, the Qualcomm/Loral attempt at satellite phones. We had a huge deadline and there was no fricken way it would be met. We also had a launch of our first 12 satellites coming up soon. They were on a Russian Bird with something like a 25% failure rate. We all watched the launch live. When it, ahh, forgot to deploy the satellites before hitting the ground we all looked at each other and had looks of relief. Sure enough, Russia took the hit for G* being 6 months late, when in fact nothing from software to the antennas to the phones were ready yet.
I still think they picked a known faulty booster to ensure the finger of doom pointed away from "the good guys".
the Seagate is fast as fuck It's guys like you that make women avoid us geeks. Slow down, enjoy the moment, take your time, and don't try to tell her your old 5.25" unit is better just because it's tried and true.
Take 1 or more baking potatos. Cut lengthwise into 6 pieces, they should look like steak fries (fancy french fries we get here). Put on a baking sheet and drizzle a bit of oil on them, maybe 1 tsp per potato. If you want dump salt on them as well. Now bake at 450 for an hour. They turn out like fat-free french fries, I love the things.
The other is a chicken dish. Chop up some spinach. Put it on top of a boned/skinned chicken breast. Put some Montery Jack cheese on top of it. Just fart with it to see how much spinach/cheese you like, I use a handful of spinach and a bit of cheese per chicken tit. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. If you want broil for an extra 5 to brown the cheese on top.
My parent's anniversary: Nov 11. My birthday: July 6. From the time I knew it took 9 months (9 mo, 5 minutes to be exact) to make a baby I've known when the swimmer who would be Jim found Nirvana.
OK, it's been a couple years now and I'm fuzzy on the details. But Crusade sucked because the TV executives wanted more action, less thinking. JMS was against this, he wanted to tell his typical stories. But the Powers That Be wanted gunfights. And it showed, big time. You could tell what was JMS, and what was some clueless executive, as you watched the show.
And FWIW, I'm one who wishes it were on a regular network also. I don't get Showtime, and won't be subscribing just for 1 show. So I guess I'm either stuck with the edited version on regular TV in a year (like Outer Limits), or I can rent the DVDs a year after the fact (Sopranos, Sex and the City).
I've been a Netflix customer since October, 1999 according to their web page. That would be the same month I got my DVD player. I love Netflix. Over the years I've seen the waiting lists for some movies get longer, and the turnaround grow a bit, but it still beats the local video store. They have 2 main advantages: You can hang on to 4 movies (with my plan) until you get around to watching them. I don't know about you, but my wife and I usually decide to watch a video about 7 PM on a friday night. Forget any decent selection at the video store. Second, their selection is awesome. Typically, if they don't carry something a bit of digging will show it's not on DVD yet.
Even if you live in Afganistan, you should be able to get a 2 week turnaround. That's 8 movies a month for $20. Still a good deal. If the turnaround is too long just supplement Netflix with the local Blockbuster.
Like the reviewer I live in San Diego. Turnaround is usually 4-6 days with the occasional flyer of an extra day or two. If you watch your queue you'll notice a lot of your flyers are caused by them trying to get your number 1 movie. What they're doing I don't know, and I can't remember the status line they show (trying to fulfill your wishes, or something). I can live with that. I didn't notice any slowdown after 9/11, nor during the holidays.
I mainly use their queue as a "things I want to see" list. Every week I go to IMDB to learn this week's DVD releases. Those I want to see get popped into my rental queue. When I mail a movie in I hop over to Netflix, check what's available, and re-order my queue so I always know what's coming next. I've currently got 39 items, from Sex and the City at number 1 (long wait, sigh), Requiem for a Dream and Family Man at 2 and 3 respectively (they're next), all the way to Josie and the Pussycats down at number 39. I don't expect to ever see Josie, but it's a desparation movie.
Once in a while something happens (like sweeps week) that cause my wife and I to watch lots of movies. If we drain our Netflix movies we just run to Blockbuster, rent something, then I take it off my Netflix queue. No big deal. But between Tivo and Netflix we've usually got something to watch.
When you get a movie you get a plastic envelope with a barcode on it, I assume this identifies the movies. Like a blockhead, I've occasionally forgotten to put the disk in the plastic envelope before putting it into the mailer. No problem, I just send them email saying "um, I messed up, expect this movie to arrive naked Real Soon Now". Hasn't been a problem yet, I think I've done this twice in 3 years. When I've had a problem playing a movies it's always been something like Matrix, that my old DVD player just doesn't want to deal with.
What can they do to improve? Their new releases page sucks. It's got just about every movie that's come out in the last year, and the popular ones from years before. It's tough to find things that came out this month. Second, my wife and I will sometimes sit on a movie for weeks until we get around to watching it. If we knew someone else was waiting for it we'd be more motivated to watch and return it. As it is, oh well. Be nice if they could keep track of whether my wife or I ordered a movie. Solve a lot of "who ordered that turkey?" accusations. Also help a lot when looking for the next movie I want sent, I try to keep 1 for me, 1 for her, and 2 for both of us available. A 1 line comment in my queue would be great, something like "wife's friend recommended it" or "Angelina flashes her tits about 40 minutes in" would help a lot.
This sums it up for me. I installed/maintain machines for my sister, parents, and wife (not all the same person, smart-ass!). They all run Win98. As do I. I might upgrade my box to Win2k, but not if I don't have to. If my sister/parents/wife want to upgrade they're on their own. I'm not doing it for them. The only way they'll get an OS upgrade is if they buy new hardware. I imagine their Celeron 500's will be fine for the next decade, so that ain't gonna happen. And I won't have anything to do with XP, even if they install it on their own. But I don't think they've even heard of XP.
I don't think I'm unique here. I don't really enjoy installing MS OS's, it's very doubtful I'll ever upgrade their machines. There is no way any of them will upgrade on their own, they won't even learn cut and paste because it's too hard.
I guess the point is that in June 2003 there are going to be a lot of machines out there running Win98, that won't get upgraded no matter what Microsoft says. Any software/hardware company that decides not to support those Win98 boxen have just chopped their user base in half.
Either Microsoft will decide to keep supporting Win98, or hardware/software vendors will aim at Win98 users.
How do these hardware-DES codebreakers know when they've got the right key? I mean, it's not like a team of NSA folks are looking at all the output. So I'm assuming a lexigraphic analysis is done after trying each key. Now, IANAC (I am not a cryptogropher), but wouldn't it be effective to use hacker-speak in your plaintext? After all, if you can crypt then you can talk like a l33t d00d. Even better, sprinkle your plaintext with some binary codes like backspace, some 8 bit ascii, etc.
This is a pretty stupid list. Another electro-bike? A robot that will destroy all your plants whilst looking for slugs? A freekin skateboard with independent suspension, for christ sakes? And don't even get me started on the mashed potato maker.
Had I only known, I'd have nominated the pull-my-finger-freddy I bought last year. Bald guy sitting in an armchair, pull his finger and he farts and makes a comment. About as deserving of an award as the crap on that list.
outsourcing is done so that you can be EXPENDIBLE and FIRED at their whim). I've got news for you. You're EXPENDIBLE and can be FIRED at their whim anyway. Contractors just know this and aren't surprised to find out friday is their last day. Employees are expecting a gold watch in 40 years and are shocked to find out friday is their last day.
Can we really point at companies that failed and say "they were stupid"?
Selling dog food over the net was stupid. Selling luxury items, where tactile sensations are important, over the net was stupid. Asking for money while vaguely promising to pass it along is stupid. Oh wait, paypal is still in business.
We all knew at the time a lot of these web sites sucked, and business models sucked. Just because something is new doesn't mean common sense doesn't apply.
"Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines,"
What he's saying is that because the PC is open, cutthroat competition drove hardware prices down while pushing performance up. Contrast with the Mac, where prices stay high and opening the case voids the warranty. Apple wants to be a hardware company, Microsoft stayed a software company. Had Microsoft decided Windows would run only on a Microsoft platform, hermetically sealed for your protection, we wouldn't have the plethora of cheap hardware we have now. Without the cheap hardware Finnish hackers wouldn't have computers they could write OS's on.
What we have is a software trinity: Gates, Stallman, and Torvalds. Take away any one of these 3 and we wouldn't have Linux.
snotnose
Re:A plea to the hard core LOTR fans
on
Behind the Scenes
·
· Score: 1
Anybody know why they're not doing the Hobbit now as well? Sounds like the LOTR is actually going to be done right this time. And The Hobbit is the Story That Started It All (tm).
I imagine now in addition to the living room cam, bedroom cam, and bathroom cam, they'll have to have a colon cam.
Or, as my wife called it recently when she needed a colonoscopy, a cornholio-cam.
For the rest of you old farts, kinda puts a new perspective on the old Reader's Digest "I am Joe's frobozz" series in new light. Especially when you recall the picture of the eyeball staring out of somebody's chocolate starfish.
Wait till the porn industry gets one. They can use a rubber to hold it on, cut a small hole in the tip so the cam can see out. Guess then it would be a c***-cam.
Hmmm, speaking of farting, just think of, ahhh, never mind.
Years ago we had a cranky copy machine and an expensive service contract. So a service guy came out, pretty much tore the machine down to the frame, then rebuilt it. Took 2 days. For testing he ran an entire ream of paper through it copying a test pattern. It worked, he went off to finish his paperwork. I found all that paper in the trash, put it back in the feed tray, and made a couple copies. Then tracked down the repair guy and said "Hey, all my copies have this test pattern on them!". I was nice enough to start laughing before he started tearing the machine down again.
In the mid-80's we were building standalone boxes with detachable keyboards. Damn things randomly locked up 3-4 times a day, we didn't know why. The VP of engineering was giving a demo at a trade show and the unit locked up. The mark hadn't yet noticed, so Mike casually leaned over and while saying "and if you look on the back panel here" pressed the power button with his stomach. It was all the other engineer and I could do to not bust out laughing as Mike did the "damn, hang on while I turn it on again" schpiel.
The problem was eventually solved by running a ground wire from the keyboard to the unit chassis.
but I would not be surprised that PSI reputation as a spam-friendly ISP is one of the reasons they are having the financial problems they have now.
Nope, just your basic piss poor business model. Forbes had a fairly long article (free registration required) on the company about 2 issues (1 month) ago, they didn't seem to think Psinet would be around for long. They used debt for aquisitions, not stock swaps. When the dotcom bust happened last year the debt equity markets slammed shut on them. When ya gotta borrow money to make your interest payments it's a good bet you're on the downward spiral.
There is a very good article on patents in the current issue of Fortune Magazine
A sample quote:
"if one had invented the stool, it wouldn't be good patent strategy to submit an application that defines the stool as "a wooden base with three legs appended." It would be much smarter to say "a base with at least three legs appended." The latter would allow the patent to cover a stool constructed out of wood, metal, or plastic--or, conceivably, a four-legged chair."
More people have been killed in the presence of a Kennedy than in a US nuclear incident.
Has everyone forgotten one of the neatest hacks of the trash-80? Someone (Christenson I believe) figured out how to write timing loops that used RFI to play tunes on a nearby AM radio. I bought the game just to see this puppy in action, towards the end of the TRS-80's life this was the main method of generating sound.
Slashdot Mirror
It pisses me off when I have to enter a number, either a phone number or credit card number, in a specific format. Is it too hard to accept any of 8005551234, (800) 555-1234, (800)555 1234, or 800 555 1234? Or to simply remove spaces from my credit card number? Entering a nice, long string of digits with no spaces makes it a bitch when the website comes back with "Invalid credit card format", probably because my card has sequence "xxx xyyyy" and, not being able to use spaces, I entered xxxxxyyy by mistake.
Around the same time, several people at work got the things. And like me, all but 2-3 dropped out of sight.
Sad, so sad.
snot
4-5 years ago I tried to give away about 5 years of Creative Computing and the first 15-20 years worth of Byte (starting at #1). Couldn't find any takers, anywhere. They are now somewhere in the Mirimar landfill, sigh.
That finger pointing rings a bell. I used to work on Globalstar, the Qualcomm/Loral attempt at satellite phones. We had a huge deadline and there was no fricken way it would be met. We also had a launch of our first 12 satellites coming up soon. They were on a Russian Bird with something like a 25% failure rate. We all watched the launch live. When it, ahh, forgot to deploy the satellites before hitting the ground we all looked at each other and had looks of relief. Sure enough, Russia took the hit for G* being 6 months late, when in fact nothing from software to the antennas to the phones were ready yet.
I still think they picked a known faulty booster to ensure the finger of doom pointed away from "the good guys".
the Seagate is fast as fuck
It's guys like you that make women avoid us geeks. Slow down, enjoy the moment, take your time, and don't try to tell her your old 5.25" unit is better just because it's tried and true.
2 very easy to cook things:
Take 1 or more baking potatos. Cut lengthwise into 6 pieces, they should look like steak fries (fancy french fries we get here). Put on a baking sheet and drizzle a bit of oil on them, maybe 1 tsp per potato. If you want dump salt on them as well. Now bake at 450 for an hour. They turn out like fat-free french fries, I love the things.
The other is a chicken dish. Chop up some spinach. Put it on top of a boned/skinned chicken breast. Put some Montery Jack cheese on top of it. Just fart with it to see how much spinach/cheese you like, I use a handful of spinach and a bit of cheese per chicken tit. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. If you want broil for an extra 5 to brown the cheese on top.
snot.
My parent's anniversary: Nov 11. My birthday: July 6. From the time I knew it took 9 months (9 mo, 5 minutes to be exact) to make a baby I've known when the swimmer who would be Jim found Nirvana.
OK, it's been a couple years now and I'm fuzzy on the details. But Crusade sucked because the TV executives wanted more action, less thinking. JMS was against this, he wanted to tell his typical stories. But the Powers That Be wanted gunfights. And it showed, big time. You could tell what was JMS, and what was some clueless executive, as you watched the show.
I suspect details are at The Lurkers Guide
And FWIW, I'm one who wishes it were on a regular network also. I don't get Showtime, and won't be subscribing just for 1 show. So I guess I'm either stuck with the edited version on regular TV in a year (like Outer Limits), or I can rent the DVDs a year after the fact (Sopranos, Sex and the City).
snotnose
So is it KathleenTaco now?
Nope, Mistress Taco.
I've been a Netflix customer since October, 1999 according to their web page. That would be the same month I got my DVD player. I love Netflix. Over the years I've seen the waiting lists for some movies get longer, and the turnaround grow a bit, but it still beats the local video store. They have 2 main advantages: You can hang on to 4 movies (with my plan) until you get around to watching them. I don't know about you, but my wife and I usually decide to watch a video about 7 PM on a friday night. Forget any decent selection at the video store. Second, their selection is awesome. Typically, if they don't carry something a bit of digging will show it's not on DVD yet.
Even if you live in Afganistan, you should be able to get a 2 week turnaround. That's 8 movies a month for $20. Still a good deal. If the turnaround is too long just supplement Netflix with the local Blockbuster.
Like the reviewer I live in San Diego. Turnaround is usually 4-6 days with the occasional flyer of an extra day or two. If you watch your queue you'll notice a lot of your flyers are caused by them trying to get your number 1 movie. What they're doing I don't know, and I can't remember the status line they show (trying to fulfill your wishes, or something). I can live with that. I didn't notice any slowdown after 9/11, nor during the holidays.
I mainly use their queue as a "things I want to see" list. Every week I go to IMDB to learn this week's DVD releases. Those I want to see get popped into my rental queue. When I mail a movie in I hop over to Netflix, check what's available, and re-order my queue so I always know what's coming next. I've currently got 39 items, from Sex and the City at number 1 (long wait, sigh), Requiem for a Dream and Family Man at 2 and 3 respectively (they're next), all the way to Josie and the Pussycats down at number 39. I don't expect to ever see Josie, but it's a desparation movie.
Once in a while something happens (like sweeps week) that cause my wife and I to watch lots of movies. If we drain our Netflix movies we just run to Blockbuster, rent something, then I take it off my Netflix queue. No big deal. But between Tivo and Netflix we've usually got something to watch.
When you get a movie you get a plastic envelope with a barcode on it, I assume this identifies the movies. Like a blockhead, I've occasionally forgotten to put the disk in the plastic envelope before putting it into the mailer. No problem, I just send them email saying "um, I messed up, expect this movie to arrive naked Real Soon Now". Hasn't been a problem yet, I think I've done this twice in 3 years. When I've had a problem playing a movies it's always been something like Matrix, that my old DVD player just doesn't want to deal with.
What can they do to improve? Their new releases page sucks. It's got just about every movie that's come out in the last year, and the popular ones from years before. It's tough to find things that came out this month. Second, my wife and I will sometimes sit on a movie for weeks until we get around to watching it. If we knew someone else was waiting for it we'd be more motivated to watch and return it. As it is, oh well. Be nice if they could keep track of whether my wife or I ordered a movie. Solve a lot of "who ordered that turkey?" accusations. Also help a lot when looking for the next movie I want sent, I try to keep 1 for me, 1 for her, and 2 for both of us available. A 1 line comment in my queue would be great, something like "wife's friend recommended it" or "Angelina flashes her tits about 40 minutes in" would help a lot.
Highly recommended.
This sums it up for me. I installed/maintain machines for my sister, parents, and wife (not all the same person, smart-ass!). They all run Win98. As do I. I might upgrade my box to Win2k, but not if I don't have to. If my sister/parents/wife want to upgrade they're on their own. I'm not doing it for them. The only way they'll get an OS upgrade is if they buy new hardware. I imagine their Celeron 500's will be fine for the next decade, so that ain't gonna happen. And I won't have anything to do with XP, even if they install it on their own. But I don't think they've even heard of XP.
I don't think I'm unique here. I don't really enjoy installing MS OS's, it's very doubtful I'll ever upgrade their machines. There is no way any of them will upgrade on their own, they won't even learn cut and paste because it's too hard.
I guess the point is that in June 2003 there are going to be a lot of machines out there running Win98, that won't get upgraded no matter what Microsoft says. Any software/hardware company that decides not to support those Win98 boxen have just chopped their user base in half.
Either Microsoft will decide to keep supporting Win98, or hardware/software vendors will aim at Win98 users.
snotnose
How do these hardware-DES codebreakers know when they've got the right key? I mean, it's not like a team of NSA folks are looking at all the output. So I'm assuming a lexigraphic analysis is done after trying each key. Now, IANAC (I am not a cryptogropher), but wouldn't it be effective to use hacker-speak in your plaintext? After all, if you can crypt then you can talk like a l33t d00d. Even better, sprinkle your plaintext with some binary codes like backspace, some 8 bit ascii, etc.
snotnose
This is a pretty stupid list. Another electro-bike? A robot that will destroy all your plants whilst looking for slugs? A freekin skateboard with independent suspension, for christ sakes? And don't even get me started on the mashed potato maker.
Had I only known, I'd have nominated the pull-my-finger-freddy I bought last year. Bald guy sitting in an armchair, pull his finger and he farts and makes a comment. About as deserving of an award as the crap on that list.
outsourcing is done so that you can be EXPENDIBLE and FIRED at their whim).
I've got news for you. You're EXPENDIBLE and can be FIRED at their whim anyway. Contractors just know this and aren't surprised to find out friday is their last day. Employees are expecting a gold watch in 40 years and are shocked to find out friday is their last day.
Can we really point at companies that failed and say "they were stupid"?
Selling dog food over the net was stupid. Selling luxury items, where tactile sensations are important, over the net was stupid. Asking for money while vaguely promising to pass it along is stupid. Oh wait, paypal is still in business.
We all knew at the time a lot of these web sites sucked, and business models sucked. Just because something is new doesn't mean common sense doesn't apply.
"Really, the reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines,"
What he's saying is that because the PC is open, cutthroat competition drove hardware prices down while pushing performance up. Contrast with the Mac, where prices stay high and opening the case voids the warranty. Apple wants to be a hardware company, Microsoft stayed a software company. Had Microsoft decided Windows would run only on a Microsoft platform, hermetically sealed for your protection, we wouldn't have the plethora of cheap hardware we have now. Without the cheap hardware Finnish hackers wouldn't have computers they could write OS's on.
What we have is a software trinity: Gates, Stallman, and Torvalds. Take away any one of these 3 and we wouldn't have Linux.
snotnose
Anybody know why they're not doing the Hobbit now as well? Sounds like the LOTR is actually going to be done right this time. And The Hobbit is the Story That Started It All (tm).
Pop over the firewire page at sourceforge to learn all you need to know about Firewire on Linux. I've got both a camera and IP over 1394 working.
Or, as my wife called it recently when she needed a colonoscopy, a cornholio-cam.
For the rest of you old farts, kinda puts a new perspective on the old Reader's Digest "I am Joe's frobozz" series in new light. Especially when you recall the picture of the eyeball staring out of somebody's chocolate starfish.
Wait till the porn industry gets one. They can use a rubber to hold it on, cut a small hole in the tip so the cam can see out. Guess then it would be a c***-cam.
Hmmm, speaking of farting, just think of, ahhh, never mind.
Years ago we had a cranky copy machine and an expensive service contract. So a service guy came out, pretty much tore the machine down to the frame, then rebuilt it. Took 2 days. For testing he ran an entire ream of paper through it copying a test pattern. It worked, he went off to finish his paperwork. I found all that paper in the trash, put it back in the feed tray, and made a couple copies. Then tracked down the repair guy and said "Hey, all my copies have this test pattern on them!". I was nice enough to start laughing before he started tearing the machine down again.
The problem was eventually solved by running a ground wire from the keyboard to the unit chassis.
snotnose
Nope, just your basic piss poor business model. Forbes had a fairly long article (free registration required) on the company about 2 issues (1 month) ago, they didn't seem to think Psinet would be around for long. They used debt for aquisitions, not stock swaps. When the dotcom bust happened last year the debt equity markets slammed shut on them. When ya gotta borrow money to make your interest payments it's a good bet you're on the downward spiral.
All your snot are belong to, uhh, nevermind.
A sample quote:
Has everyone forgotten one of the neatest hacks of the trash-80? Someone (Christenson I believe) figured out how to write timing loops that used RFI to play tunes on a nearby AM radio. I bought the game just to see this puppy in action, towards the end of the TRS-80's life this was the main method of generating sound.