It really is just absolutely a terrible website. I hate flash becuase I feel like people think "I CAN make a confusing and terrible animated website now, so I obviously SHOULD."
Not to mention the text is hilarious. ..
"A built in microphone port means that with Nintendo DS, you only need to tell your games what to do.
Developers could create games which identify everything from voice commands to hand clapping."
OK. . . ALL Nintendo did was add a microphone port. Those have existed on PCs for oh, I don't know . ..15 years? Something tells me that the absence of microphone ports is not why we don't have a ton of voice commanded games.
My friend and I did a project setting up computers in schools in rural Tanzania. We were and are idiots.
We had never seen the computers we were setting up until we got to Tanzania. They were ancient macs. We had a couple SE30s, the first color mac, whatever that was called and so on. They were donated by some elementary school in Massachusetts.
I knew nothing about macs, particularly 15 year old macs, particularly ones that had been shipped FREIGHT in wardrobe boxes halfway around the world. I knew sad macs were bad. About half of the ones that started were sad. So, my friend and I spent a few weeks cannibalizing machines to build frankenmacs that actually booted up and appeared to do something. Any trick you've ever done to make a 15 year old piece of shit, dust filled apple work without the help of the internet, paved roads, running water or "facilities", we probably used it. but as I said, we were idiots, so we made a few mitakes.
We only had two printers that had any chance of working. We plugged the best one into 240V and blew it up. Why? Because it worked. Whcih was a contradiction. Nothing worked in Africa. So, we figured the other franken macs wouldn't accept it unless it too had undergone some severe trauma at some point
Anyway, we opened it to try and figure out what was wrong (in a less general sense than "it blew up and doesn't work.") We found a big fat capaciter that was leaking smelly yellow liquid. Using our impressive powers of deduction and lack of electrical engineering knowledge, we decided that was the problem. So, we went the 50 miles to town (walk over the mountain 3 miles to the dirt road. Follow the dirt road by foot 4 miles to the paved road. Ride in a VW bus with 20 other people 40 miles to the "city." Don't forget to clutch the broken printer to your chest like a sick baby this whole time. Take a broken-down second hand '86 Toyota Corolla cab scrapped in Dubai and shipped to Tanzania [trust me, I asked] 2 miles to the only "computer store/electronics repair shop/internet cafe" in town.)
Anyway, we showed the printer to the people in the repair shop. They were kind of not-surprised in a surprised sort of way. In that they had obviously never seen this particular type of 12 year old Apple printer before but they weren't used to understanding what the things they were fixing were or how they particularly worked when they fixed them.
We pointed at the yellow-leaky capaciter and said "We plugged it in and it blew up. In America, we would throw it out. In Africa, we will pay you whatever you want and kiss your feet if you can fix it. Please replace the leaky yellow thing. Do you think it will fix it?"
The nice Indian man said "Maybe. Maybe not. I don't have one of those but " . ..I swear to God he actually said this. Maybe he didn't speak English well enough to know how cliche it was . . . "I think I may know someone who does. I will get it. It will take three weeks. And it will cost you."
"OK!" we said. "How much?"
He said "30 dollars." We looked at each other and smiled. Then we thought about arguing but didn't when we realized that was called being an asshole for no reason just cause you can.
Anyway, the point IS . . . he fixed the damn thing without knowing what it was, how it worked or really what had happened AND without having access to parts or tools that he needed.
Then we plugged it into 240V again and blew it up again but bigger and with more smoke.
But that's basically oriented toward bills and congressional actions and is WAY too detailed for the layman.
What I'm suggesting is something which is focused on the legislator. So, I can click on my state and my senator and see that (for instance. I have no idea.) Chuck Schumer voted "Yes" on the Iraq War, "No" on the Patriot Act and spoke in opposition of INDUCE.
If I care about foreign policy, I could see a list of his votes on issues relating directly to American foreign policy.
I know this is probably a huge undertaking, but it would seem to me to be hugely useful in election times. Rather than relying on campaign speeches, we could look at our representative's voting record and choose to re-elect him or her based on his or her actions.
There should be a web page where for any legislator you could find out:
Which bills they proposed
Which bills they voted for and against
Which committees they are on
Other information like that which I can't think of right now
It could be cross-referenced by bill too. So, you could see who voted for and against which bills. You could see things like partisanship, who was most likely to vote against his party, etc., etc. Maybe it could be linked to campaign finance records too so we could see whose pocket everyone is in. I know the information is all public domain, but I don't know of any simple way to access it.
Does anyone know of a site that does anything like this? I think it would go a long way towards making actions of congress more transparent and maybe forcing a little more accountability on legislators (by having their voting records very easily accessible and understandable for the public.)
If the citizens of Utah were kept up to date about the legislation he proposes and what his votes are there would be a huge outcry for him to be tossed out on his ass
Is there a website with this information? There should be a place you could go to see what your state senators and local representatives proposed, what committees they are on and what came out of those committees, and how they voted on various bills and issues.
I know this information is public, but I'm not sure there is a good way for the public to access it and there definitely should be. If anyone knows of a website, please fill me in.
I worked at a finance company (about 100 people) that dealt with some secure information. They used to make us change the login passwords for our workstations once every two weeks. It's a good idea for security. But it became very annoying.
Eventually, one guy realized that if you put in the name of our company beginning with a capital letter and followed it with a number (1), then you met the (somewhat bizarre) password requirements. Two weeks later, you rolled that number to 2, etc. Everyone being sick of the stupid rule (and having little respect for the particular security guy who started it anyway), we all thought that was a great idea.
End result: Everyone in the office had the same password AND the password was the name of the company we worked for followed by a digit. And most people wrote it down anyway because they had trouble remembering what number they were on. Trust me, my password was a LOT more secure before the rules went into place.
We were all programmers/administrators/DBAs who knew something about security. I think it shows that overly strict security rules can often be as bad as lax ones because they piss off the users and make them want to "get back" at the security person who made them jump through all the hoops in the first place. Almost as if people were thinking "If I get hacked, it's his problem. . . I might as well share the pain."
How much is our time worth? How much would you pay to have one of us (a skilled developer with proven teamwork/colloboration and software engineering) on YOUR company's team?
Your worth has increased but the worth of the ?? thousand people working on the databases at oracle has decreased. THAT's the point. IT doesn't devalue you as an INDIVIDUAL. It devalues the software industry as a WHOLE.
You can also purchase unlocked GSM phones independent of a provider, but then you don't get the discount on the phone for signing a service agreement. Which means an unlocked phone is often twice the cost of a locked in one.
I am very surprised to hear that Cingular and T-Mobile will allow someone to nlock the phones. From everything I have read it is considered illegal to unlock a phone like that. I think that is pretty BS, but . . . so it goes.
One thing to pay VERY CLOSE attention to is the exact specs given on the phone you purchase from the particular provider. I bought the Motorola v70 (advertised as a tri-band phone on the motorola website and across the web.) However, the version sold by Cingular was an "American" version, which, for some reason, had its ability to use the 900 and 1800 Mhz bands removed (I think it was those bands. Might be wrong.) So the phone will NOT work in Europe, even though it is sold in Europe as a tri-band phone that WILL work in the US.
So, the same phone is not always the same when it is sold by different providers.
Secondly, if the MPAA & RIAA are both doing so badly, where are all the broke movie and music superstars?
Broke. Poor = Not interesting when it comes to American pop culture.
Unless we're talking about VH1 behind the music.
"Former pop star has no money, gets job as web designer" doesn't exactly make for an eye-catching headline.
But it isn't the superstars who lose money here. It is the people who should be superstars and never will be. The RIAA makes our stars. They choose who to publicize, who to push on the public. Flagging record sales just mean less people get these opportunities or get them at a lower profit margin.
The paradox of file sharing is that it has the potential to give these new artists great exposure, yet in its current instantiation it just limits their opportunities and cuts into their bottom line. Until file sharing lives up to its promise and changes the way albums are marketed, it is these small artists who lose. (I think we established iTunes is just the RIAA in disguise. The artists make a pittance off those sales. Maybe in a few years that will change.)
The major record labels/distribution companies will make their buck. Losses will always be translated to the artists because there will always be someone to step into their place. Talent is important, but I would bet that any record exec would tell you that marketing is more important.
I think this ranking tells you almost nothing about the school. It tells you some numbers that you can use to say "hey, we're the best", but that is about it.
There are a lot of other things to take into account when choosing a university, such as:
Athletics Campus Location Administration (particularly their attitude towards undergraduate affairs and their political leanings) Particular professors and departments Student attitude/philosophy Breadth of academic coverage Social Life Housing and about a bazillion more.
I think most of the schools at the top of the list lose a lot of points on a lot of these items. The exception being Stanford, which is the best school ever. No question.
Oops. I think I may have given away the true purpose of my post a little too soon.
But seriously, I applied to Stanford early because it does well on a lot of these things while I think some of the other top schools don't. In the last few years I think that has been changing a little (I would have given it a lot of points for administration when I was a freshman. By the time I graduated, I would say that the administration was making some of the worst decisions I have ever seen. GW style decisions. Microsoft Decisions. We are talking big time bad here).
Anyway, I turned down a scholarship to USC because I wanted to go to the best school in the country (in my mind). By the time I graduated, I realized that I would probably have been just as happy, if not more so, at USC. When I chose my school, I was completely focused on what that school would do for me after I graduated. I completely ignored the fact that college would be four major years of my life that would most likely completely change my opinion on what I thought I wanted to do with myself.
I got lucky because my school decision turned out to be a good one for reasons I didn't really consider. But were I to make it again, I would focus a lot more on making sure I enjoyed the hell out of my four years of school and got the full range of experiences necessary to choose my path in life, instead of trying to find the best possible academics I could.
The only reason I don't install the updates on time is because I usually have 10 or 15 applications open at work and don't want to spend the time to close them all, install, reboot and reopen them (My computer dies when the hard drive is being used and takes > 5 minutes to reboot because of all the fun conflicts).
Anyway, I want to know if windows will auto-reboot during these installations. Last time I did windows update I had to reboot three times.
I'm hoping that it will just magically restart your computer while you are working. Then everyone can say "OMG my computer just restarted and I didn't do anything! I must have a virus."
And we can all say "Oh no, that's a Microsoft feature. It randomly reboots your computer at inopportune times so you don't get that virus that randomly reboots your computer at inopportune times."
Aha. So, Time Warner has finally done it. They shut down microsoft, at least as far as New York City is concerned. I think that's Steve Case taking matters into his own hands. =)
But yeah, Roadrunner from NYC. I love Slashdot for its prompt service response.
Is it just me or is anyone else having trouble accessing all of the Microsoft sites? I know this is off topic, but I mean,.Net, Microsoft, Online services, all their sites down, I dunno. Maybe a router between me and them is dead. But I can get just about everything else.
Re:Idea after being mugged last year...
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 1
exactly. And then after you were done being mugged, you would call in with a real 911 call, and the operator could grab the info from the server and use it to track down the criminal. Otherwise the info is just thrown out
Re:Idea after being mugged last year...
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 1
All right, this is totally warped, but . . .
What if the panic button didn't call 911? What if it recorded your exact location, and the cell phone numbers of all the people within a 100 yard radius of you. Most criminals are stupid, and probably carry their cell phones with them when they go on a job. Of course criminals would stop carrying phones after this caught a few people, but it would be a pretty badass way to snag a mugger, don't you think?
Let me see if I understand this though. The article mentions 10^-17 cm as the magic distance these scientists think they need to push two particles together to create a black hole. Now it makes sense to me that there can be no interaction among dimensions outside of their "size". Basically, until the extra dimensions of the two particles overlap, we shouldn't see this jump in gravitational power. But once they overlap, the effect is huge, cause we go from a power of two to a power of n, where n is the number of dimensions. So the size of the dimensions is the important variable here because until you get within that size, the effect is not seen? Which means they must think that the dimensions are at least 10^-17 cm in size. Is that number special in any way? Because it seems like if its wrong, then the whole idea goes out the window. Does my logic make sense? I may be completely off base here.
Slashdot Mirror
It really is just absolutely a terrible website. I hate flash becuase I feel like people think "I CAN make a confusing and terrible animated website now, so I obviously SHOULD."
.
.15 years? Something tells me that the absence of microphone ports is not why we don't have a ton of voice commanded games.
Not to mention the text is hilarious. .
"A built in microphone port means that with Nintendo DS, you only need to tell your games what to do.
Developers could create games which identify everything from voice commands to hand clapping."
OK. . . ALL Nintendo did was add a microphone port. Those have existed on PCs for oh, I don't know . .
My friend and I did a project setting up computers in schools in rural Tanzania. We were and are idiots.
.I swear to God he actually said this. Maybe he didn't speak English well enough to know how cliche it was . . . "I think I may know someone who does. I will get it. It will take three weeks. And it will cost you."
We had never seen the computers we were setting up until we got to Tanzania. They were ancient macs. We had a couple SE30s, the first color mac, whatever that was called and so on. They were donated by some elementary school in Massachusetts.
I knew nothing about macs, particularly 15 year old macs, particularly ones that had been shipped FREIGHT in wardrobe boxes halfway around the world. I knew sad macs were bad. About half of the ones that started were sad. So, my friend and I spent a few weeks cannibalizing machines to build frankenmacs that actually booted up and appeared to do something. Any trick you've ever done to make a 15 year old piece of shit, dust filled apple work without the help of the internet, paved roads, running water or "facilities", we probably used it. but as I said, we were idiots, so we made a few mitakes.
We only had two printers that had any chance of working. We plugged the best one into 240V and blew it up. Why? Because it worked. Whcih was a contradiction. Nothing worked in Africa. So, we figured the other franken macs wouldn't accept it unless it too had undergone some severe trauma at some point
Anyway, we opened it to try and figure out what was wrong (in a less general sense than "it blew up and doesn't work.") We found a big fat capaciter that was leaking smelly yellow liquid. Using our impressive powers of deduction and lack of electrical engineering knowledge, we decided that was the problem. So, we went the 50 miles to town (walk over the mountain 3 miles to the dirt road. Follow the dirt road by foot 4 miles to the paved road. Ride in a VW bus with 20 other people 40 miles to the "city." Don't forget to clutch the broken printer to your chest like a sick baby this whole time. Take a broken-down second hand '86 Toyota Corolla cab scrapped in Dubai and shipped to Tanzania [trust me, I asked] 2 miles to the only "computer store/electronics repair shop/internet cafe" in town.)
Anyway, we showed the printer to the people in the repair shop. They were kind of not-surprised in a surprised sort of way. In that they had obviously never seen this particular type of 12 year old Apple printer before but they weren't used to understanding what the things they were fixing were or how they particularly worked when they fixed them.
We pointed at the yellow-leaky capaciter and said "We plugged it in and it blew up. In America, we would throw it out. In Africa, we will pay you whatever you want and kiss your feet if you can fix it. Please replace the leaky yellow thing. Do you think it will fix it?"
The nice Indian man said "Maybe. Maybe not. I don't have one of those but " . .
"OK!" we said. "How much?"
He said "30 dollars." We looked at each other and smiled. Then we thought about arguing but didn't when we realized that was called being an asshole for no reason just cause you can.
Anyway, the point IS . . . he fixed the damn thing without knowing what it was, how it worked or really what had happened AND without having access to parts or tools that he needed.
Then we plugged it into 240V again and blew it up again but bigger and with more smoke.
Stewart Home
I like to read Slashdot in the midst of depression while riding a wave of self-loathing and drifting further and further from reality.
Right.
But that's basically oriented toward bills and congressional actions and is WAY too detailed for the layman.
What I'm suggesting is something which is focused on the legislator. So, I can click on my state and my senator and see that (for instance. I have no idea.) Chuck Schumer voted "Yes" on the Iraq War, "No" on the Patriot Act and spoke in opposition of INDUCE.
If I care about foreign policy, I could see a list of his votes on issues relating directly to American foreign policy.
I know this is probably a huge undertaking, but it would seem to me to be hugely useful in election times. Rather than relying on campaign speeches, we could look at our representative's voting record and choose to re-elect him or her based on his or her actions.
It could be cross-referenced by bill too. So, you could see who voted for and against which bills. You could see things like partisanship, who was most likely to vote against his party, etc., etc. Maybe it could be linked to campaign finance records too so we could see whose pocket everyone is in. I know the information is all public domain, but I don't know of any simple way to access it.
Does anyone know of a site that does anything like this? I think it would go a long way towards making actions of congress more transparent and maybe forcing a little more accountability on legislators (by having their voting records very easily accessible and understandable for the public.)
If the citizens of Utah were kept up to date about the legislation he proposes and what his votes are there would be a huge outcry for him to be tossed out on his ass
Is there a website with this information? There should be a place you could go to see what your state senators and local representatives proposed, what committees they are on and what came out of those committees, and how they voted on various bills and issues.
I know this information is public, but I'm not sure there is a good way for the public to access it and there definitely should be. If anyone knows of a website, please fill me in.
He'd apparently made the calls, unnoticed, from class.
From the article. . . You have to think he wasn't even trying not to get caught.
Trillian, Winrar, Firefox, Winamp, SmartFTP, Azureus, NMap, GKrellM, PowerDVD
Pirate much? Those look like the perfect apps for making a HUGE pr0n collection. No wonder he reinstalls so much.
"Hey, Johnny, I need to use your computer tonight."
"Yeah, no problem, Mom. Let me just format and reinstall really quick."
I worked at a finance company (about 100 people) that dealt with some secure information. They used to make us change the login passwords for our workstations once every two weeks. It's a good idea for security. But it became very annoying.
Eventually, one guy realized that if you put in the name of our company beginning with a capital letter and followed it with a number (1), then you met the (somewhat bizarre) password requirements. Two weeks later, you rolled that number to 2, etc. Everyone being sick of the stupid rule (and having little respect for the particular security guy who started it anyway), we all thought that was a great idea.
End result: Everyone in the office had the same password AND the password was the name of the company we worked for followed by a digit. And most people wrote it down anyway because they had trouble remembering what number they were on. Trust me, my password was a LOT more secure before the rules went into place.
We were all programmers/administrators/DBAs who knew something about security. I think it shows that overly strict security rules can often be as bad as lax ones because they piss off the users and make them want to "get back" at the security person who made them jump through all the hoops in the first place. Almost as if people were thinking "If I get hacked, it's his problem. . . I might as well share the pain."
How much is our time worth? How much would you pay to have one of us (a skilled developer with proven teamwork/colloboration and software engineering) on YOUR company's team?
Your worth has increased but the worth of the ?? thousand people working on the databases at oracle has decreased. THAT's the point. IT doesn't devalue you as an INDIVIDUAL. It devalues the software industry as a WHOLE.
Billy Bob Thornton has my academy award vote for Bad Santa.
You can also purchase unlocked GSM phones independent of a provider, but then you don't get the discount on the phone for signing a service agreement. Which means an unlocked phone is often twice the cost of a locked in one.
I am very surprised to hear that Cingular and T-Mobile will allow someone to nlock the phones. From everything I have read it is considered illegal to unlock a phone like that. I think that is pretty BS, but . . . so it goes.
One thing to pay VERY CLOSE attention to is the exact specs given on the phone you purchase from the particular provider. I bought the Motorola v70 (advertised as a tri-band phone on the motorola website and across the web.) However, the version sold by Cingular was an "American" version, which, for some reason, had its ability to use the 900 and 1800 Mhz bands removed (I think it was those bands. Might be wrong.) So the phone will NOT work in Europe, even though it is sold in Europe as a tri-band phone that WILL work in the US.
So, the same phone is not always the same when it is sold by different providers.
Secondly, if the MPAA & RIAA are both doing so badly, where are all the broke movie and music superstars?
Broke. Poor = Not interesting when it comes to American pop culture.
Unless we're talking about VH1 behind the music.
"Former pop star has no money, gets job as web designer" doesn't exactly make for an eye-catching headline.
But it isn't the superstars who lose money here. It is the people who should be superstars and never will be. The RIAA makes our stars. They choose who to publicize, who to push on the public. Flagging record sales just mean less people get these opportunities or get them at a lower profit margin.
The paradox of file sharing is that it has the potential to give these new artists great exposure, yet in its current instantiation it just limits their opportunities and cuts into their bottom line. Until file sharing lives up to its promise and changes the way albums are marketed, it is these small artists who lose. (I think we established iTunes is just the RIAA in disguise. The artists make a pittance off those sales. Maybe in a few years that will change.)
The major record labels/distribution companies will make their buck. Losses will always be translated to the artists because there will always be someone to step into their place. Talent is important, but I would bet that any record exec would tell you that marketing is more important.
>You can buy Athlon and P4 based computers that'll stomp on the G5 for certain tasks (Such as playing some games).
That's totally true. My friend's G5 gets a framerate of 0 on 90% of the games on the market.
I think this ranking tells you almost nothing about the school. It tells you some numbers that you can use to say "hey, we're the best", but that is about it.
There are a lot of other things to take into account when choosing a university, such as:
Athletics
Campus
Location
Administration (particularly their attitude towards undergraduate affairs and their political leanings)
Particular professors and departments
Student attitude/philosophy
Breadth of academic coverage
Social Life
Housing
and about a bazillion more.
I think most of the schools at the top of the list lose a lot of points on a lot of these items. The exception being Stanford, which is the best school ever. No question.
Oops. I think I may have given away the true purpose of my post a little too soon.
But seriously, I applied to Stanford early because it does well on a lot of these things while I think some of the other top schools don't. In the last few years I think that has been changing a little (I would have given it a lot of points for administration when I was a freshman. By the time I graduated, I would say that the administration was making some of the worst decisions I have ever seen. GW style decisions. Microsoft Decisions. We are talking big time bad here).
Anyway, I turned down a scholarship to USC because I wanted to go to the best school in the country (in my mind). By the time I graduated, I realized that I would probably have been just as happy, if not more so, at USC. When I chose my school, I was completely focused on what that school would do for me after I graduated. I completely ignored the fact that college would be four major years of my life that would most likely completely change my opinion on what I thought I wanted to do with myself.
I got lucky because my school decision turned out to be a good one for reasons I didn't really consider. But were I to make it again, I would focus a lot more on making sure I enjoyed the hell out of my four years of school and got the full range of experiences necessary to choose my path in life, instead of trying to find the best possible academics I could.
The only reason I don't install the updates on time is because I usually have 10 or 15 applications open at work and don't want to spend the time to close them all, install, reboot and reopen them (My computer dies when the hard drive is being used and takes > 5 minutes to reboot because of all the fun conflicts).
Anyway, I want to know if windows will auto-reboot during these installations. Last time I did windows update I had to reboot three times.
I'm hoping that it will just magically restart your computer while you are working. Then everyone can say "OMG my computer just restarted and I didn't do anything! I must have a virus."
And we can all say "Oh no, that's a Microsoft feature. It randomly reboots your computer at inopportune times so you don't get that virus that randomly reboots your computer at inopportune times."
I have to say, this was MUCH funnier when it was in response to the innocent question "Well, who expects a slashdotting?" Then it was brilliant.
Scratch that. Microsoft's back up. Asheron's Call 2 it is.
Well crap. Now I can't go to work and I can't stay home and play Asheron's Call 2. WTF am I going to do with myself?
Aha. So, Time Warner has finally done it. They shut down microsoft, at least as far as New York City is concerned. I think that's Steve Case taking matters into his own hands. =)
But yeah, Roadrunner from NYC. I love Slashdot for its prompt service response.
Is it just me or is anyone else having trouble accessing all of the Microsoft sites? I know this is off topic, but I mean, .Net, Microsoft, Online services, all their sites down, I dunno. Maybe a router between me and them is dead. But I can get just about everything else.
exactly. And then after you were done being mugged, you would call in with a real 911 call, and the operator could grab the info from the server and use it to track down the criminal. Otherwise the info is just thrown out
All right, this is totally warped, but . . .
What if the panic button didn't call 911? What if it recorded your exact location, and the cell phone numbers of all the people within a 100 yard radius of you. Most criminals are stupid, and probably carry their cell phones with them when they go on a job. Of course criminals would stop carrying phones after this caught a few people, but it would be a pretty badass way to snag a mugger, don't you think?
Thanks for the response. Very informative.
Let me see if I understand this though. The article mentions 10^-17 cm as the magic distance these scientists think they need to push two particles together to create a black hole. Now it makes sense to me that there can be no interaction among dimensions outside of their "size". Basically, until the extra dimensions of the two particles overlap, we shouldn't see this jump in gravitational power. But once they overlap, the effect is huge, cause we go from a power of two to a power of n, where n is the number of dimensions. So the size of the dimensions is the important variable here because until you get within that size, the effect is not seen? Which means they must think that the dimensions are at least 10^-17 cm in size. Is that number special in any way? Because it seems like if its wrong, then the whole idea goes out the window. Does my logic make sense? I may be completely off base here.