Phight for your right to have Phun!
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Geocaching Crackdown?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have geocached for a while now. It seems like it has changed though, and is attracting a much wider following. When I moved to the Charleston area two years ago, there were about 20 caches nearby. Now we have 243. With some many more people involved, it can create a lot of traffic. The best places for caches are off the beaten path where they are unlikely to be disturbed by people who may have ill-intentions.
I live in the Santa Cruz, California area and there's quite a large number of caches around here. Some of the most popular are in the city, such as MicroCaches where tiny containers are slipped into niches. When you think about it, cache stashing in town is a very tricky business as you don't want it found by just anyone and you want seekers to find it, log entry and rehide without attracting too much attention. I'm considering placing a micro just because they get lots of visits, can be very challenging to place/find, and are just plain neat! Besides, even kids can get involved with this kind of activity, that just gives me a case of the warm fuzzies (which, curmudgeon that I am, doesn't happen often.)
This is precisely where the traffic hurts the most. I haven't read the article yet, still can't get it to load, but as someone who loves spending times outdoors, I'm not sure where I stand on this. It's a fun hobby, but with too many people not being cautious about thier impact on the surroundings, it could be not that great for the park or area the cache is in.
I haven't read it, yet, either, but I'll draw on this bit about unwanted traffic.
Most certainly a poorly planned cache, which encourages bushwhacking through sensitive environments or leaves a lot of beaten down undergrowth, should be terminated. But turning away traffic from parks?!?! What the fsck is that? Parks are for the public, and that includes responsible GeoCachers! I've had a belly-full of people stealing mountain bike trails ("Oh, it damages the environment, but the horses are OK") for similar reasons. I've been on trails which have existed for decades and are in good condition. OTOH horses really shread trails and create errosion problems. Occassionally there's a trail that biking has done damage to, but permanent closure isn't the answer, better trail maintenance is.
All that said, I've only been GeoCaching for a month, but I'm out int he parks (paying FEES!) and having a marvelous time (Check some photo collages at this site and I've recently stashed my first cache (look on Geocaching.com for "A Room With A View") and took pains to be certain it won't pollute the environment (It's a steel ammo box), no danger to critters (steel and no food inside) and seekers won't damage the area by seeking it. It's a bit of a tough cache so it probably won't see more than a few visits a year.
In these times, why not See America First, and let this great outdoor activity be a part of that. Fight these sit-on-their-arses members of the No Fun Club!
Re:SCO still packs a punch?
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SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It makes me take pause when I witness a company that appearently has no ammo keep entering into so many skirmishes against esteemed and battle proven foes. It almost makes me question the analysts that keep stating that SCO's claims lack bite.
Would the team at SCO really keep pushing a lie, even though they know that by doing so they will face unspeakable countersuits after the trial(s)? I think that SCO is cleverly hiding an ace-in-the-hole, and it's going to hurt Linux and IBM badly. This is unprecedented: no company would ever commit suicide so blatantly and openly. I fear the worst is yet to come.
Anyone remember a company called Ashton-Tate and a product called Dbase III? Dbase was a not-too-horribly-bad database design package for DOS PC's ages ago, sadly, rather than put decent effort into revamping their increasingly encumbering software they elected to sue the hell out of those who took the same ideas and gave them fresh blood. The rest, as they say, is history.
Yeah, with GPS coordinates, the task of being a mailman is reduced to the simple traveling salesman problem.
Ever been GeoCaching? Often the easiest route is not the shortest. Granted, I live and hunt around a mountainous area, but even in that flatlands property borders, rivers, etc. make that rule as valid.
1) The earth is not constant. Buildings move, earth settles, plates move, etc. It may not sound like much now, but there are places where a few decades can make a change in your address
A couple I know lived in Westminster, CO, where there's something about the land slowly drifting. Inches a year or so, which presents the needs for relative surveying. Still, it'd not be much of a problem, so long as the house number was still used.:-)
I saw that, too and thought, what the heck is that green gunk running down the cliff? Looks like her overrun of fertilizer is helping algae and bacteria grow. Small wonder she'd want that covered up!
One point in the lawsuit specifically states that the house is not listed in public records under her name. Like most of her property its registered under a corporate identity that can't be easily connected to her to protect her privacy. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if he hadn't disclosed the name of the owner, which is not required for the purposes of his site.
Soooooo... it's not her estate, it's the corporation's. Still, I imagine it's listed on any number of "Maps of the Stars Homes" which can be acquired about town. They figured this out somehow, eh? So you suppose they snooped ("lookie the size of that nose, it's gotta be Streisand's!") or just common knowledge around the neighborhood? Maybe she'll get a restaining order against whatever blabbermouth told them it's hers.
What a poop-head. And as soon as the next storm comes along and carves away more of her sandstone she'll have her mouthpiece (or maybe even herself if she's not to shy about the size of the audience) beg for a pile of rocks to save her precious shack from tumbling into the Pacific as nature goes about it's inevitable business.
"Sorry, but we have no photographic record of how your coastline used to look, so we, and the good taxpayers, will just assume it's always had that room hanging over the ocean."
Phoo. Why not just use one of the GPS systems. The problem with oversimplifying like this
(as idealists tend to do) is they rarely reflect the reality of actual routing, like, "Gee, it's only
12 miles 'as the crow flies'", yet the route in question winds all over the place.
If they really wanted to simplify postal coding/addressing they'd do something first about these
damn addresses for people in South Korea, and a few other countries, which are like a whole paragraph long!
Ever have to fill out those little customs forms? Yeah, you know how fun that can be.
Idealists are more trouble to logistics than would be required to just take them out back and drown them it a bucket of water.
"Hey, isn't that a quarter in that bucket?"
Besides, strong initial resistance to this plan, there's probably some disingenuous patent and royalty speculation riding on this.
I don't think it's as simple as the amount of money on development costs. Microsoft is going through the transformation from a programming shop (with loose standards and shoot from the hip developers) to a true software engineering shop (many standards, well thought out ideas and calculated coding). It's a tough transformation, but the code will be better in the end.
Perhaps, but I have this nagging feeling that a company that does software should have been more focused on quality and security from the beginning. What they're doing now is expending the effort that should have been there all along. It's like all their code was written with some starry-eyed optimism that noone would ever think to misuse it or exploit lax security. Kinda like an automaker who builds a cars that can go 100 mph but has not seatbelts, no airbags and brakes that ask if you're sure you really want to hit them, under the knowledge that it runs and the assumptions that you'd never speed or drive recklessly.
It really is the R&D cost they're talking about putting in over the next 10-15 years before , by their own admission, the code should be totally secure and trustworthy. What other industry, besides perhaps tobacco, could get away with something as audacious as that? Last, the staggeringly amazing thing is, people seem fine with that. Cripes!
"Microsoft has decided to _beef_ up their security group by adding a code cleaning group "
As close to their admitting the code is full of bullshit!
Fool me once, shame one you
Fool me twice, shame on me
Fool me over and over and I must be the IT selection manager/commitee/group at a fortune 500 firm.
Anyone remember Douglas Adams' concept of the SEP field generator? It generates a sense that something is Someone Else's Problem and people's natural predisposition to overlook it makes the something invisible. Makes me wonder if that's not built into the code somewhere...
'Cause I figure as long as no one's getting hurt or put in real danger, it's all good.;-)
Yeah, but it's those little things like your foot catches on the wrong pedal, you miss braking by a fraction of a second and BOOM someone is rolling across your hood and that cold rush down your spine says, "This is very very extremely horribly ultra bad and I'm stuck right in the middle of it and my life will now commence to suck."
I try hard not to cut margins wafer thin. This morning was one fine example, as I was zipping along in the left lane, the car ahead was slowing down. Center lane was clear so I moved into it and accelerated. Within about 15 seconds someone in the Right lane drifts into my path leaving me no room so brake without hitting them (wtf? don't people check their mirrors anymore? BIG RED TRUCK BEARING DOWN ON YOUR POSITION should have registered.) Fortunately I had a split second to see the lane I had left was vacant, though the driver who had been behind me was moving to fill it up. I moved back left quick and nobody got hurt. Now imagine if I had actually been purposefully driving recklessly how slim magins wouldn't have been enough.
BTW, if a CHP or local police officer spotted you cutting it close you'd get a hefty ticket in my neck of the woods. They know how people drive, since they drive among them every day (some probably off duty are just as bad.)
I've been playing video games my entire life, and yet I've had 5 automobile accidents, countless number of knife mishaps and I am probably up for "most likely to be on 'America's Funniest Home Videos'".
I had lots of accidents when I was younger, but many of them because I was an aggressive driver. One potential problem (note: this is anecdotal) is games may have reinforced a very competitive personality. I.e. those things within my control I'll push to the limit to win, those outside my control I'll just swear at. Solution to the aggressive driving thing, get a vehicle with little pep and decent gas mileage. Patience is a virtue, especially as it keeps you out of many accidents and lowers the points on your record.
so we all know what this means, I need to play even MORE video games, or less Grand Theft Auto.
Delving into the actual study may reveal it's games which encourage good on-the-fly plan developing and limited time spent on it and a good diet (the study center only fed the subjects healthy food.) I know when I was seriously hooked on games I'd skip food until my bloodsugar made me twitchy.
I played video games for years. I gladly suffered Repetitive Stress Injuries, lost sleep, became stressed out and think staring so close to a screen for long times without blinking affected my eyes. Not that I didn't enjoy playing games, but In moderation I suppose it helps, but only early on, as motor skill development curbs rapidly after the early teens, i.e. it's harder to learn to ski as an adult than as a child.
What next, a diet of Doritos and Mt. Dew make you a stud?
"How to make some room on your hard drive"? Is that what Slashdot writes about nowadays? - The editors must be on crack!
I see comments like these and wonder, generally, what is supposedly definitively Slashdot-worthy news. I mean, there's been about 25 Matrix articles in the last month, but not one article about Alan Ralsky being strung up by his testicles (all five of them to go along with his mutant penis after taking too many blue peckerpills, the fool.) Seriously, if it wasn't Slashdot worthy, it wouldn't get any replies, except those worded, "oops, wrong topic, i'm looking for matrix sequels threads."
As for spring cleaning of the hard drive, I'll probably plunk a few quid for a DVD burner and shuffle archival stuff (two copies of everything, y'know) off the drive. Nothing encourages cleaning more than upgrading your computer. Nothing makes it harder to clean than the stupid way Microsoft organizes your disk for you (i.e. why the fsck is my programming code default filing under My Documents?) I generally create directories at the root level and divided things accordingly. So much simpler, but a pain everytime some stupid app askes me which name I'd like to save something as under My Documents.
EVERY great story, from Shakesphere to Comic Books, is great because it says something.
There's an unqualified statement and an opening for a larger discussion, repleat with flamewars and trolls, if ever there was one.
Perhaps define 'Great' first.
Many a popular movie has only said to me, 'People are cattle.'
Having said that, I did watch it Friday, along with about 25 other people. I wonder what the numbers people will have to say, but it looks like the initial novelty is wearing off pretty quick. Those who had to see it, did so.
The really successful ones do it in a way that their people believe there is still a free press, the books are burned quietly in a hidden place
On the contrary, Hitler made these a public spectacle. People believed it was patriotic to burn the works of Hitler's enemies. Has anyone in the US ever suggested burning books? Yep. Pay attention to these people, they seek power.
Plenty of geek gadgetry to appeal to the PDA and MP3-player buyers mixed with black leather and latex fashion and a pop rock soundtrack to appeal to teenagers and an annoyingly shallow philosophical statement. These were the kind of deep thoughts I had the first few times I smoked grass.
Probably as good a reason as any to stop smoking grass. I generally find people who believe they experienced deep and philosophically meaningful, while under the influence of some kind of drug, can't really connect the dots when sober again. While it's effective for breaking out of a cycle of thought, it generally reveals no truths of it's own, but tell that to people who want to buy into a drug's mysticism.
some people take movies too seriously... they are for enjoyment!! Books are for thinking...
Really. Thus totalitarian regimes clamp down on press, burn books, imprison writers and so on.
Though there are certain films, which did not spring from books, but ideas no less dangerous to states or people. You will rarely find such at the same cinema which carries the like of The Matrix, though. Most likely the local art theater which runs films made by people who actually do it for the love of the thing rather than scads of money.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in the Santa Cruz, California area and there's quite a large number of caches around here. Some of the most popular are in the city, such as MicroCaches where tiny containers are slipped into niches. When you think about it, cache stashing in town is a very tricky business as you don't want it found by just anyone and you want seekers to find it, log entry and rehide without attracting too much attention. I'm considering placing a micro just because they get lots of visits, can be very challenging to place/find, and are just plain neat! Besides, even kids can get involved with this kind of activity, that just gives me a case of the warm fuzzies (which, curmudgeon that I am, doesn't happen often.)
This is precisely where the traffic hurts the most. I haven't read the article yet, still can't get it to load, but as someone who loves spending times outdoors, I'm not sure where I stand on this. It's a fun hobby, but with too many people not being cautious about thier impact on the surroundings, it could be not that great for the park or area the cache is in.
I haven't read it, yet, either, but I'll draw on this bit about unwanted traffic.
Most certainly a poorly planned cache, which encourages bushwhacking through sensitive environments or leaves a lot of beaten down undergrowth, should be terminated. But turning away traffic from parks?!?! What the fsck is that? Parks are for the public, and that includes responsible GeoCachers! I've had a belly-full of people stealing mountain bike trails ("Oh, it damages the environment, but the horses are OK") for similar reasons. I've been on trails which have existed for decades and are in good condition. OTOH horses really shread trails and create errosion problems. Occassionally there's a trail that biking has done damage to, but permanent closure isn't the answer, better trail maintenance is.
All that said, I've only been GeoCaching for a month, but I'm out int he parks (paying FEES!) and having a marvelous time (Check some photo collages at this site and I've recently stashed my first cache (look on Geocaching.com for "A Room With A View") and took pains to be certain it won't pollute the environment (It's a steel ammo box), no danger to critters (steel and no food inside) and seekers won't damage the area by seeking it. It's a bit of a tough cache so it probably won't see more than a few visits a year.
In these times, why not See America First, and let this great outdoor activity be a part of that. Fight these sit-on-their-arses members of the No Fun Club!
Anyone remember a company called Ashton-Tate and a product called Dbase III? Dbase was a not-too-horribly-bad database design package for DOS PC's ages ago, sadly, rather than put decent effort into revamping their increasingly encumbering software they elected to sue the hell out of those who took the same ideas and gave them fresh blood. The rest, as they say, is history.
Oh, John Ashcroft will have no problem keeping track of where you live, rest assured.
"He knows when you are sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good...
Ever been GeoCaching? Often the easiest route is not the shortest. Granted, I live and hunt around a mountainous area, but even in that flatlands property borders, rivers, etc. make that rule as valid.
A couple I know lived in Westminster, CO, where there's something about the land slowly drifting. Inches a year or so, which presents the needs for relative surveying. Still, it'd not be much of a problem, so long as the house number was still used. :-)
I saw that, too and thought, what the heck is that green gunk running down the cliff? Looks like her overrun of fertilizer is helping algae and bacteria grow. Small wonder she'd want that covered up!
Soooooo... it's not her estate, it's the corporation's. Still, I imagine it's listed on any number of "Maps of the Stars Homes" which can be acquired about town. They figured this out somehow, eh? So you suppose they snooped ("lookie the size of that nose, it's gotta be Streisand's!") or just common knowledge around the neighborhood? Maybe she'll get a restaining order against whatever blabbermouth told them it's hers.
"Sorry, but we have no photographic record of how your coastline used to look, so we, and the good taxpayers, will just assume it's always had that room hanging over the ocean."
Just imagine what that would do for the economy! =-)
IIRC, I once looked up Zip Codes for Manhattan. The top and bottom halves of each of the two towers of the WTC were seperate Zip Codes.
If they really wanted to simplify postal coding/addressing they'd do something first about these damn addresses for people in South Korea, and a few other countries, which are like a whole paragraph long! Ever have to fill out those little customs forms? Yeah, you know how fun that can be.
Idealists are more trouble to logistics than would be required to just take them out back and drown them it a bucket of water.
"Hey, isn't that a quarter in that bucket?"
Besides, strong initial resistance to this plan, there's probably some disingenuous patent and royalty speculation riding on this.
Perhaps, but I have this nagging feeling that a company that does software should have been more focused on quality and security from the beginning. What they're doing now is expending the effort that should have been there all along. It's like all their code was written with some starry-eyed optimism that noone would ever think to misuse it or exploit lax security. Kinda like an automaker who builds a cars that can go 100 mph but has not seatbelts, no airbags and brakes that ask if you're sure you really want to hit them, under the knowledge that it runs and the assumptions that you'd never speed or drive recklessly.
It really is the R&D cost they're talking about putting in over the next 10-15 years before , by their own admission, the code should be totally secure and trustworthy. What other industry, besides perhaps tobacco, could get away with something as audacious as that? Last, the staggeringly amazing thing is, people seem fine with that. Cripes!
Fool me once, shame one you
Fool me twice, shame on me
Fool me over and over and I must be the IT selection manager/commitee/group at a fortune 500 firm.
Anyone remember Douglas Adams' concept of the SEP field generator? It generates a sense that something is Someone Else's Problem and people's natural predisposition to overlook it makes the something invisible. Makes me wonder if that's not built into the code somewhere...
NEWSFLASH!: Microsoft invents quality control! source code reveiw measures, internal cooperation among units, standardized enterprise wide security measures! Patents soon to follow!
It certainly makes me wonder what the hell they've been doing all these years, besides making gigantic amounts of profit...
Oh... right, less money on development costs == more profits. Now I see why Steve Ballmer and Bill have been selling off so much stock.
Yeah, but it's those little things like your foot catches on the wrong pedal, you miss braking by a fraction of a second and BOOM someone is rolling across your hood and that cold rush down your spine says, "This is very very extremely horribly ultra bad and I'm stuck right in the middle of it and my life will now commence to suck."
I try hard not to cut margins wafer thin. This morning was one fine example, as I was zipping along in the left lane, the car ahead was slowing down. Center lane was clear so I moved into it and accelerated. Within about 15 seconds someone in the Right lane drifts into my path leaving me no room so brake without hitting them (wtf? don't people check their mirrors anymore? BIG RED TRUCK BEARING DOWN ON YOUR POSITION should have registered.) Fortunately I had a split second to see the lane I had left was vacant, though the driver who had been behind me was moving to fill it up. I moved back left quick and nobody got hurt. Now imagine if I had actually been purposefully driving recklessly how slim magins wouldn't have been enough.
BTW, if a CHP or local police officer spotted you cutting it close you'd get a hefty ticket in my neck of the woods. They know how people drive, since they drive among them every day (some probably off duty are just as bad.)
I had lots of accidents when I was younger, but many of them because I was an aggressive driver. One potential problem (note: this is anecdotal) is games may have reinforced a very competitive personality. I.e. those things within my control I'll push to the limit to win, those outside my control I'll just swear at. Solution to the aggressive driving thing, get a vehicle with little pep and decent gas mileage. Patience is a virtue, especially as it keeps you out of many accidents and lowers the points on your record.
so we all know what this means, I need to play even MORE video games, or less Grand Theft Auto.
Delving into the actual study may reveal it's games which encourage good on-the-fly plan developing and limited time spent on it and a good diet (the study center only fed the subjects healthy food.) I know when I was seriously hooked on games I'd skip food until my bloodsugar made me twitchy.
What next, a diet of Doritos and Mt. Dew make you a stud?
We used to use weather balloons for field day. It's ok, until a good wind kicks up.
I mean, supposing Neo is on there somewhere!
I'll have you know all dishes are made from the only the finest silicon compounds.
I see comments like these and wonder, generally, what is supposedly definitively Slashdot-worthy news. I mean, there's been about 25 Matrix articles in the last month, but not one article about Alan Ralsky being strung up by his testicles (all five of them to go along with his mutant penis after taking too many blue peckerpills, the fool.) Seriously, if it wasn't Slashdot worthy, it wouldn't get any replies, except those worded, "oops, wrong topic, i'm looking for matrix sequels threads."
As for spring cleaning of the hard drive, I'll probably plunk a few quid for a DVD burner and shuffle archival stuff (two copies of everything, y'know) off the drive. Nothing encourages cleaning more than upgrading your computer. Nothing makes it harder to clean than the stupid way Microsoft organizes your disk for you (i.e. why the fsck is my programming code default filing under My Documents?) I generally create directories at the root level and divided things accordingly. So much simpler, but a pain everytime some stupid app askes me which name I'd like to save something as under My Documents.
There's an unqualified statement and an opening for a larger discussion, repleat with flamewars and trolls, if ever there was one.
Perhaps define 'Great' first.
Many a popular movie has only said to me, 'People are cattle.'
Having said that, I did watch it Friday, along with about 25 other people. I wonder what the numbers people will have to say, but it looks like the initial novelty is wearing off pretty quick. Those who had to see it, did so.
On the contrary, Hitler made these a public spectacle. People believed it was patriotic to burn the works of Hitler's enemies. Has anyone in the US ever suggested burning books? Yep. Pay attention to these people, they seek power.
Probably as good a reason as any to stop smoking grass. I generally find people who believe they experienced deep and philosophically meaningful, while under the influence of some kind of drug, can't really connect the dots when sober again. While it's effective for breaking out of a cycle of thought, it generally reveals no truths of it's own, but tell that to people who want to buy into a drug's mysticism.
Really. Thus totalitarian regimes clamp down on press, burn books, imprison writers and so on.
Though there are certain films, which did not spring from books, but ideas no less dangerous to states or people. You will rarely find such at the same cinema which carries the like of The Matrix, though. Most likely the local art theater which runs films made by people who actually do it for the love of the thing rather than scads of money.