I had this problem a while ago. The goons at wzr.net own org.com.kg (stupid, I know) and allow registration of *.org.com.kg. My default DNS server was in a.com.kg domain, causing.org domains to occasionally map to.com.kg. One day Slashdot.org even pointed to wzr.net, saying "Slashdot.org is available! Register today!" I e-mailed a quite harsh message to keith, the owner, and received back only oh boohoo..dumbass. Some people just don't belong on the Internet...
Anyways, if you ever are redirected to "WebZone Resources v3.0 - asdf.org is still available!" contact webmaster@wzr.net and give him a piece of your mind. Obviously, I tried speaking to him about this issue but to no avail. Remember that's webmaster@wzr.net.
BeyondLogic has information on programming USB. It's more difficult than serial, but if you really want to program serial/parallel it's a good idea to get a hold of a port replicator. I had one from PortSmith that turned a USB port into serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports. Worked great, I would have used it if I didn't have all this legacy junk on my system.
What a waste of a perfectly good CD! I would prefer to precisely scratch the reflective media off using a microscope and write a script to read the bad sectors. Then you could store DeCSS or even the Linux kernel superimposed on an XP CD. Who says trash CDs are useless?
Re:Counterpoints to all of Jeremy Nixon's main poi
on
Usenet Encoding: yEnc
·
· Score: 2
=yend is again similar to UUencode (end). The combination =y at the line start cannot occur elsewhere - because '=' is the escape char and 'Ctrl+Y' is not an escaped character.
Counterpoints to all of Jeremy Nixon's main points
on
Usenet Encoding: yEnc
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
Uuencoding relies on searching for "magic strings" in the message body of a Usenet post. This is unreliable, error-prone, and has already led to problems with certain client software. It is absolutely the wrong way to go about tagging message content, because what you really want is something reliably machine-readable and precisely specified. However, yEnc also relies upon magic strings in the body.
There is no reason to despise magic strings. They work, and cannot ever occur in the user data. All yEnc magic strings start with =y, = being the escape character. Ctrl-Y does not need to be encoded, so yEnc is free to use =y for it's own purposes (e.g. =ybegin, =yend). Jeremy Nixon continues his misled rant...
With a uuencoded multi-part post, client software typically uses the Subject line of the post to attempt to determine the filename, and to tell where the segment falls in the sequence. This is obviously a terrible way to do it.
No, using the subject line is not obviously a terrible way to determine filenames, segments, and anything else. I find it very convienent to know exactly what my yEnc files will be saved as, how big they are, and how many parts they are in inside the subject line. Nixon says "Sure, it works out most of the time, but it is imprecise and error prone (especially when spaces are used in filenames)" This is blatently false nonsense. Quotes reliabily allow clients to discern the filename. It's not "imprecise and error prone" by any stretch of imagination.
When non-ascii characters are used in message headers, software currently just has to guess what they mean. Jürgen's filename specification cannot even be used to reliably reproduce his own name.
I give them that. Non-USASCII data in headers is a pain, and a large powerful organizational bodies needs to agree on a character encoding standard. Oh wait, they already did - Unicode!
but gives no method to specify a filename which happens to contain quotes, which is not uncommon
False again. I've never had a filename containing quotes on my Windows box. If we expect newsgroups standards to reach everyone, we must use the lowest common denominator. Similar to how ISO9660 used 8.3 filenames, but on a higher level.
And the bandwidth savings? That's an illusion. A smaller encoding scheme gives us exactly one benefit: faster downloads and uploads for the users
Which is exactly what the creators of yEnc intended.
Meanwhile, the transition creates confusion for the users
They mean "AOL users" of course. Usenet hasn't had a new encoding format in 6 years, it's about time. Adopting this format should be as easy as switching from Napster to OpenNap to Morpheus to Grokster to Blubster and so on.
When Jürgen found that going through an actual standardization process within MIME would take time, he chose to ignore MIME in favor of getting something out there right away.
I don't blame him. Jurgen is a coder, not a politician. I would have done the same thing.
In short, yes I agree yEnc needs to be more polished. But the point is it works right now, and it's working great. It filled a gap in Usenet, itched a stratch to borrow an ESRism. Once yEnc is standardized as Y.32049 Annex D or whatever those standard organizations call it, we will use it. Until then, yEnc forever!
They called it Parkview Middle School. Upon visiting the school I remember a student asking his mom if that's what she had. Of course, the (female) principal demanded splitting the first word, so now it's Park View Middle School.
I second that. Here in Kiev, illict discs overshadow legal copies. Most consumers, including myself, find it cheaper and easier to buy a pirated CD. HP's move is only good new for the pirates here.
(Of course it's not like we ever needed any help. The only competition ever was when Universal released the "Women" cassette and reasonably priced it at $2.)
Think about it for a minute - Kiev has five CD factories. We produce polycarbonates (CD-Rs are nowhere to be found - this is the real thing) 24/7. The process is highly streamlined. We sell XP for $2.50 and make an immense profit. If Microsoft did this, they would too, and they would be competeting directly against US.
MS ain't waiters, we don't tip 'em
Treat XPs like Windows take 'em hope and rip 'em
Scan the back cover, do the quality inspection
Put an ad in the paper in the classified section
Beware of following the instructions on this page
on
Build A Nixie Tube Clock
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I, too, was tempted to buy a few Nixies to revive my cold and dank cellar, but stopped dead in my tracks soon as I saw a notice at the respectable RepairFAQ:
This circuit was not isolated from the power line and has been removed due to the danger involved in such a setup.
Although web archive's archives of the Repair FAQ only go back to 15 Feb 2K1, if I remember correctly the removed link went to the page Slashdot is linking too. Word from the wise: I'm not saying Nixies are inheirently dangerous, but many schmatics involving Nixie tubes do not isolate from the power line. And don't forget the big red warning on the page:
Warning! As this design uses a transformerless power supply, the whole circuit is at mains potential. Disconnect before making any adjustments etc. If you need to use an oscilloscope for debugging, the circuit MUST be operated through an isolating transformer.
I wholehardely agree. Undoubtedly, AG's selection stems from the fact that users can run clients on Unix boxen. Unix boxen tend to have a longer uptime than Microsoft operating systems, especially when used as a server. I, for one, share my 11GB MP3 collection with the world through Audiogalaxy 24/7.
On the topic of bitrates, I rip all my CDs at 320kbps. Now that's quality:)
Yet not all audio is out there. Ever tried searching for Bass 6's "I Am Bass" or DJ Billy-E's "Generator"? Heck, try finding any of Bass 6's or DJ Billy-E's songs on Morpheus or Audiogalaxy. The simple fact is, no one has them. This is where P2P fails.
By avoiding free-beer software, you are not immune to spyware. Case in point: NewsUpd.exe, spyware installed when installing Creative Labs hardware, such as SB 16. It is not disclosed in the license agreement nor mentioned in the documentation. Cexx said it best:
This really burns me up. This isn't some sleazy shareware application downloaded from God-knows-where, but legitimately purchased hardware from a legitimate-looking company, that is installing advertising spyware along with its hardware drivers!! This is a clear betrayal of user trust. (Ed. note: I discovered this particular piece of spyware when installing a Creative Labs SB16 on my OWN system, so I am quite obviously angered. The heads-up came when Zone Alarm alerted me that an unknown application newsupd.exe was trying to access the Internet. Creative has yet to make good on my request for a refund on my advertising-subsidized hardware purchase.)
The article implies that they are squeezing the downloads into "latent" portions of the DTV signal.
Well, what I want to know is why can't they do this with existing analog signals instead of forcing users to upgrade their television sets? So says hut.fi:
While the 525 lines in a complete NTSC television picture may seem impressive (after all VGA has only 480) there's a catch. Approximately 100 lines are lost to timing information and retracing. Only about 425 lines make it to the screen.
Available on every analog TV channel is 100 lines, which could theoretically be digitized and used for downloads. If I did my math correctly, that's (60MHz (refresh rate) / 525) * 100 = 11MHz of spare data. Assuming an average of 50 usable channels, 571MHz unused TV spectrum is wasted. I hope they put it to use before trying to develop incompatible standards to do the same thing.
For anyone seriously interested in the technical and official aspects of DTV, either for Internet or video, be sure to check out the FCC's Digital Television: MM Docket No. 87-268 page. The FCC is reallocating TV channels 52-59 (687-746MHz) for digital broadcasting, perhaps even Clear Channel's Internet will be used on that part of the spectrum. Evidently, Clear Channel wants to convert all analog broadcasts to digital, but 687-746MHz will act as a sort of test bed.
SkyStream already provides "Internet delivery over DTV", in their own words. DTV Internet is spreading slowly but surely, VisionConsult is looking into Internet@Digital.TV. In Europe, Internet over digital TV set-top boxes where available as early as 1990 according to Re:Think (see the section entitled "Case Study: Digital TV Set-Top Boxes).
Monsanto also dumped 40-50 tons of mercury
on
Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 2, Informative
TalkInternational has a short but well worth reading blurb on a similar incident where the Monsanto plant dumped 40-50 tons of liquid mercury into a storm drain during the 1950's. The article goes on to say how the dumped mercury, caustic soda, and chlorine reacted to form PCBs.
Not only does Monsanto have no respect for the environment, they are also dishonest:
"In 1999,
Monsanto's spin-off Anniston company, Solutia, gave state regulators a brief description of the site's use of mercury," wrote reporter Elizabeth Bluemink. "But, company records show that the information Solutia supplied about the potential for mercury discharges was incomplete and inaccurate." Officials at Solutia told the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) that Monsanto had "likely" not released any mercury to the environment.
And it's not like activists haven't been fighting Monsanto. Early as 1967, Dr. Denzel Fergusen reported Monsanto's mercury discharges where killing nearby fish. The same article links to a 404 at Annistonstar (a newspaper for one of the highly affected areas), but a quick search reveals several relevent articles:
Governor names 2 to ADEM commission - Environmental lobbyist Joe Turnham said he would challenge the new appointees to push for an internal investigation
At least Monsanto is doing something about their situation. Paul and Joyce Guldin, residents whose backyard includes Choccolocco Creek, received a $999.33 settlement check from Monsanto. Hopefully, many more checks are to come.
It's possible to make your own CPU-meter with a few simple electronic components available at your favorite electronics retailer. I wouldn't be suprised of a custom LED CPU meter is at least half the price of prebuilt ones.
SC Test aims to produce regression testing software. This basically means that when software has new features added, regression testing tests to make sure it hasn't taken a step backwards (regressed). In plain english, regression testing tries to prevent new features from introducing bugs. A good introduction to regression testing is at AutomatedQA, although the software there is commerical their few words on regression testing are well worth reading.
The selective retesting of a software system that has been modified to ensure that any bugs have been fixed and that no other previously-working functions have failed as a result of the reparations and that newly added features have not created problems with previous versions of the software. Also referred to as verification testing, regression testing is initiated after a programmer has attempted to fix a recognized problem or has added source code to a program that may have inadvertently introduced errors. It is a quality control measure to ensure that the newly-modified code still complies with its specified requirements and that unmodified code has not been affected by the maintenance activity.
Glad to see SC is making progress. Another one of my favorite SC spin offs is Quilt, a replacement for the dated make. Additionally, SCons is a similar program which won the SC build competition in August 2000. Although I personally haven't used Quilt nor SCons, they appear to be well-designed pieces of software. Hopefully Software Carpentry will act as a catalyst allowing the creative juices of progammers around the world to create the most well-designed software possible. So far, I'd say it succeeded.
With the 3rd human genome chromosome completely mapped out, it's time to move on to other chromosomes such as the 17th. According to A Brief History of The Human Genome Project,
For example the 17th chromosome in mice is homologous in large part to the 11th in human beings and of the 35 mapped loci in both organisms on these chromosomes, all but two are ordered into the same sequence.
I wonder how similar 3rd chromosome of mice is to the 3rd chromosome of the human genome. Any research being done in this field?
Forbes has an article on Fixed Wireless Internet Access services. Fixed wireless ISPs utilize Multipoint Multichannel Distribution Services (MMDS). Interesting read, although the article only covers Sprint's service.
Re:Piezoelectric fans are already available
on
Wriggling Heat Sinks
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ouch. But, considering that you'd need 20 or so of those to replace a single conventional fan in flow rate, you'd be able to get their bulk prices.
Not a bad estimate. Considering computer fans typically move 20-30 CFM, although high-end fans which blow more than 50 CFM), you would need 10 to 15 piezoelectric fans to achieve equivalent volume air flow. In 5-24 quantites they cost $79, so that translates to $790 to $1185.
Of course, laptop manufacturers could buy in bulk (100+) easily at $39. $390 to $585 per fan, significantly less.
Yet, according to the article these are novelty fans. If it costs manufacturers $149 per novelty fan, I wonder what the "real" thing costs...
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a mirror of the article in question.
I wish I could buy http://chat.musiccity.com/dl/GirlsGoneWild.mpeg for $1 a day.
Anyways, if you ever are redirected to "WebZone Resources v3.0 - asdf.org is still available!" contact webmaster@wzr.net and give him a piece of your mind. Obviously, I tried speaking to him about this issue but to no avail. Remember that's webmaster@wzr.net.
BeyondLogic has information on programming USB. It's more difficult than serial, but if you really want to program serial/parallel it's a good idea to get a hold of a port replicator. I had one from PortSmith that turned a USB port into serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports. Worked great, I would have used it if I didn't have all this legacy junk on my system.
What a waste of a perfectly good CD! I would prefer to precisely scratch the reflective media off using a microscope and write a script to read the bad sectors. Then you could store DeCSS or even the Linux kernel superimposed on an XP CD. Who says trash CDs are useless?
There is no reason to despise magic strings. They work, and cannot ever occur in the user data. All yEnc magic strings start with =y, = being the escape character. Ctrl-Y does not need to be encoded, so yEnc is free to use =y for it's own purposes (e.g. =ybegin, =yend). Jeremy Nixon continues his misled rant...
No, using the subject line is not obviously a terrible way to determine filenames, segments, and anything else. I find it very convienent to know exactly what my yEnc files will be saved as, how big they are, and how many parts they are in inside the subject line. Nixon says "Sure, it works out most of the time, but it is imprecise and error prone (especially when spaces are used in filenames)" This is blatently false nonsense. Quotes reliabily allow clients to discern the filename. It's not "imprecise and error prone" by any stretch of imagination.
I give them that. Non-USASCII data in headers is a pain, and a large powerful organizational bodies needs to agree on a character encoding standard. Oh wait, they already did - Unicode!
False again. I've never had a filename containing quotes on my Windows box. If we expect newsgroups standards to reach everyone, we must use the lowest common denominator. Similar to how ISO9660 used 8.3 filenames, but on a higher level.
Which is exactly what the creators of yEnc intended.
They mean "AOL users" of course. Usenet hasn't had a new encoding format in 6 years, it's about time. Adopting this format should be as easy as switching from Napster to OpenNap to Morpheus to Grokster to Blubster and so on.
I don't blame him. Jurgen is a coder, not a politician. I would have done the same thing.
In short, yes I agree yEnc needs to be more polished. But the point is it works right now, and it's working great. It filled a gap in Usenet, itched a stratch to borrow an ESRism. Once yEnc is standardized as Y.32049 Annex D or whatever those standard organizations call it, we will use it. Until then, yEnc forever!
I suppose you mean the RGB hex color #424242.
They called it Parkview Middle School. Upon visiting the school I remember a student asking his mom if that's what she had. Of course, the (female) principal demanded splitting the first word, so now it's Park View Middle School.
(Of course it's not like we ever needed any help. The only competition ever was when Universal released the "Women" cassette and reasonably priced it at $2.)
Think about it for a minute - Kiev has five CD factories. We produce polycarbonates (CD-Rs are nowhere to be found - this is the real thing) 24/7. The process is highly streamlined. We sell XP for $2.50 and make an immense profit. If Microsoft did this, they would too, and they would be competeting directly against US.
MS ain't waiters, we don't tip 'em
Treat XPs like Windows take 'em hope and rip 'em
Scan the back cover, do the quality inspection
Put an ad in the paper in the classified section
Although web archive's archives of the Repair FAQ only go back to 15 Feb 2K1, if I remember correctly the removed link went to the page Slashdot is linking too. Word from the wise: I'm not saying Nixies are inheirently dangerous, but many schmatics involving Nixie tubes do not isolate from the power line. And don't forget the big red warning on the page:
On the topic of bitrates, I rip all my CDs at 320kbps. Now that's quality :)
Yet not all audio is out there. Ever tried searching for Bass 6's "I Am Bass" or DJ Billy-E's "Generator"? Heck, try finding any of Bass 6's or DJ Billy-E's songs on Morpheus or Audiogalaxy. The simple fact is, no one has them. This is where P2P fails.
Well, what I want to know is why can't they do this with existing analog signals instead of forcing users to upgrade their television sets? So says hut.fi:
Available on every analog TV channel is 100 lines, which could theoretically be digitized and used for downloads. If I did my math correctly, that's (60MHz (refresh rate) / 525) * 100 = 11MHz of spare data. Assuming an average of 50 usable channels, 571MHz unused TV spectrum is wasted. I hope they put it to use before trying to develop incompatible standards to do the same thing.
For anyone seriously interested in the technical and official aspects of DTV, either for Internet or video, be sure to check out the FCC's Digital Television: MM Docket No. 87-268 page. The FCC is reallocating TV channels 52-59 (687-746MHz) for digital broadcasting, perhaps even Clear Channel's Internet will be used on that part of the spectrum. Evidently, Clear Channel wants to convert all analog broadcasts to digital, but 687-746MHz will act as a sort of test bed.
SkyStream already provides "Internet delivery over DTV", in their own words. DTV Internet is spreading slowly but surely, VisionConsult is looking into Internet@Digital.TV. In Europe, Internet over digital TV set-top boxes where available as early as 1990 according to Re:Think (see the section entitled "Case Study: Digital TV Set-Top Boxes).
Not only does Monsanto have no respect for the environment, they are also dishonest:
And it's not like activists haven't been fighting Monsanto. Early as 1967, Dr. Denzel Fergusen reported Monsanto's mercury discharges where killing nearby fish. The same article links to a 404 at Annistonstar (a newspaper for one of the highly affected areas), but a quick search reveals several relevent articles:
At least Monsanto is doing something about their situation. Paul and Joyce Guldin, residents whose backyard includes Choccolocco Creek, received a $999.33 settlement check from Monsanto. Hopefully, many more checks are to come.
Through Google I found the UWBWG, and there's lots of detailed papers at Aetherwire. Interesting reading.
It's possible to make your own CPU-meter with a few simple electronic components available at your favorite electronics retailer. I wouldn't be suprised of a custom LED CPU meter is at least half the price of prebuilt ones.
This is what Webopedia has to say on the subject:
Glad to see SC is making progress. Another one of my favorite SC spin offs is Quilt, a replacement for the dated make. Additionally, SCons is a similar program which won the SC build competition in August 2000. Although I personally haven't used Quilt nor SCons, they appear to be well-designed pieces of software. Hopefully Software Carpentry will act as a catalyst allowing the creative juices of progammers around the world to create the most well-designed software possible. So far, I'd say it succeeded.
I wonder how similar 3rd chromosome of mice is to the 3rd chromosome of the human genome. Any research being done in this field?
Forbes has an article on Fixed Wireless Internet Access services. Fixed wireless ISPs utilize Multipoint Multichannel Distribution Services (MMDS). Interesting read, although the article only covers Sprint's service.
Of course, laptop manufacturers could buy in bulk (100+) easily at $39. $390 to $585 per fan, significantly less.
Yet, according to the article these are novelty fans. If it costs manufacturers $149 per novelty fan, I wonder what the "real" thing costs...