...how these guys didn't get a visit from a few nice men in suits flashing Homeland Security badges and asking a lot of questions. I'm sure that they had to have been looked at...
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Amazon Goes Wiki
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I get very, very aggrivated at Amazon most of the time. I've found that unless you know EXACTLY what you are looking for when typing in your search text, the search is useless.
There used to be a day when you could literally just browse online on Amazon, and find things pretty easily. Now, with all the combined seaches and stuff, a simple search for a CD brings up 1000's of different matches, most of which have NOTHING to do with your CD or don't even contain the text of your search.
I usually Google for what I want, find the EXACT name of the item, then put it into Amazon's search.
First off, why isn't this modded down as "Off-Topic"? I don't see where this rant has anything to do with PayPal, which, from what I read last, this story was about.
Nevertheless, if a ranting, raving poster is going to be modded up, then the same should be applied to the the linked counter-rant.
...our Computer Science instructor used to grade us on the GRAMMAR of our comments in the code as well as the code. His theory was that to be a good CS Major in the 'real' world, you had to communicate effectively as well.
It might be a paranoid verison of backups, but I've found that the best backups are redundant backups. Tape fail, CD's fail, hard drives fail, but unless they're all in the same place when it catches on fire, they probably won't all fail at the same time. My backup strategy for the 80+gig of photos I have is:
1) Simply keep all of the online. I have one server dedicated to nothing but photos, and it's mounted as a share to all the other PC's. 2) Periodically copy over the entire directory structure of another server that has the space. 3) Regular tape backups of the main photo server. I bought a DLT tape drive for that. The tapes go off-site to my office. 4) Annually I take a CDR backup of the past year's photos, and put them in a safe-deposit box at the bank. I first go to the bank to get the old CD's, take them home, try them out to make sure they're still OK, and then take all the CD's back. If any CD's fail, re-burn them from the master server. Take everything back to the safe-deposit box and repeat next year.
This method, albeit tedious and time consuming assures me that I have a good copy of the photos in several places at all times.
Why the hell was parent moderated DOWN to "Overrated"? Jeebus Tapdancing Christ someone needs to read the "Moderator Guidelines" or get a frickin' life.
Way back in the olden days, we had a VAX/VMS mini that we did all our Computer Science projects on. Being bored one day, I wrote a "Fortune Cookie" program one day that others could include into their login profile to get a random fortune when they log in.
I decided to mess with a certain person's mind who was dialing in from home to the system (at a blazing 2400baud, mind you). I modified my Fortune code to detect that it was him logging, in, and when he did, it spawned off a new process that would inject random characters onto his screen at random intervals. I put the code in place, and watched the fun.
We saw him log in, and then log out after about a minute. Then log back in again. And then log out. And then back in again. And then out. After a while, he sent us an email complaining that he couldn't get a clean phone line into the system that evening for the life of him. Hee hee. I don't think we ever fussed up to it.
I've had many years of emails I've sent to users at AOL accounts simply vanish into the ether. No bounces, no receiving of the emails on the other side. Maybe this will wake them up to some type of responsibility of running a accurate and reliable mail service, and policing their own users to weed out the bad apples.
Huh. Look at that. It's definately not on Disney property. I'm sure it's some crazy Disney fan....not like I'd know about that or anything.../whistles while he works
Sheez? Three years? Try like 1950's for Granite Shoals, Texas lakeside on Lake LBJ. My parent's house isn't even there, and many other houses that I KNOW were built in the 50's or 60's aren't there either. It's almost like they took an old B&W and colorized it. Yet, right across the cove from where their house should be, the construction that took place over the past three years is there in plain sight. Weird. It's like they merged two datasets into one pic.
The fact of the matter is that this guy pulled off a seamless hoax. He even hoaxed the EXIF data in the image just in case some snooping hacker decided to do some checking up. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Kudos to you, Mr Alek!
Mine is much simpler and less geeky, but I just bought a few of the grounded X10 applicance controllers, hooked them up to the extension cords for all the lights outside. I have a Firecracker X10 dongle on my RedHat box, and the lights are controlled via a self-modifying cron that determines sunrise and sunset. I have my regular outside lights also controlled by in in-wall X10 controller that way. The Xmas lights turn on at sunset, and go off at midnight. The outside lights then come on until sunrise, then they turn off.
A few years ago I bought up some of those Virgin WebPlayers and I-Openers from eBay and other places, and proceeded to hack into them with the instructions provided.
The WebPlayer I'm using in the living room has Windows 95 on it reduced down using LitePC, and has Opera running as a web client. Also installed is Identafone, a piece of software that will display caller-id information on the screen. Add a cheap USB network adapter, plug in the phone line to the modem, and fire up the web browser to bring up a variant of the Block-random script provided by the Gallery distro, and you have a Photo Frame/Caller-ID box that has a small footprint and has no moving parts (no fan or hard drive).
I've also done the same thing with the I-Openers, installing a small 10-Gig laptop drive or so using a custom IMOD2 Kit. They both run very well and you end up with a much more configurable picture frame than a store-bought one for around a third of the cost.
Now, I wish I could do something with some type of Linux distro on these guys, and I'm sure that it's possible, but I just haven't had the time after doing these. Ideas anyone? Would a Linux distro run on these boxes and still have enough memory to run a GUI to display photos?
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Well, they *had* an interactive application that did this. Now it's a smouldering hunk.
...how these guys didn't get a visit from a few nice men in suits flashing Homeland Security badges and asking a lot of questions. I'm sure that they had to have been looked at...
I get very, very aggrivated at Amazon most of the time. I've found that unless you know EXACTLY what you are looking for when typing in your search text, the search is useless.
There used to be a day when you could literally just browse online on Amazon, and find things pretty easily. Now, with all the combined seaches and stuff, a simple search for a CD brings up 1000's of different matches, most of which have NOTHING to do with your CD or don't even contain the text of your search.
I usually Google for what I want, find the EXACT name of the item, then put it into Amazon's search.
I, for one, welcome our new Oracle overlords.
All Hail Larry! All Hail Larry!
First off, why isn't this modded down as "Off-Topic"? I don't see where this rant has anything to do with PayPal, which, from what I read last, this story was about.
Nevertheless, if a ranting, raving poster is going to be modded up, then the same should be applied to the the linked counter-rant.
...our Computer Science instructor used to grade us on the GRAMMAR of our comments in the code as well as the code. His theory was that to be a good CS Major in the 'real' world, you had to communicate effectively as well.
It might be a paranoid verison of backups, but I've found that the best backups are redundant backups. Tape fail, CD's fail, hard drives fail, but unless they're all in the same place when it catches on fire, they probably won't all fail at the same time. My backup strategy for the 80+gig of photos I have is:
1) Simply keep all of the online. I have one server dedicated to nothing but photos, and it's mounted as a share to all the other PC's.
2) Periodically copy over the entire directory structure of another server that has the space.
3) Regular tape backups of the main photo server. I bought a DLT tape drive for that. The tapes go off-site to my office.
4) Annually I take a CDR backup of the past year's photos, and put them in a safe-deposit box at the bank. I first go to the bank to get the old CD's, take them home, try them out to make sure they're still OK, and then take all the CD's back. If any CD's fail, re-burn them from the master server. Take everything back to the safe-deposit box and repeat next year.
This method, albeit tedious and time consuming assures me that I have a good copy of the photos in several places at all times.
Would using Windows to connect to my at-home RedHat boxes via PuTTY be considered a hobby?
That's what I saw too, leading me to believe there's some type of moisture in the soil? Dunno.
Maybe they can wait until nighttime and hopefully whatever is permeated into that soil will freeze, giving the rover a little more traction...
Why the hell was parent moderated DOWN to "Overrated"? Jeebus Tapdancing Christ someone needs to read the "Moderator Guidelines" or get a frickin' life.
...something I pulled on a classmate in college.
Way back in the olden days, we had a VAX/VMS mini that we did all our Computer Science projects on. Being bored one day, I wrote a "Fortune Cookie" program one day that others could include into their login profile to get a random fortune when they log in.
I decided to mess with a certain person's mind who was dialing in from home to the system (at a blazing 2400baud, mind you). I modified my Fortune code to detect that it was him logging, in, and when he did, it spawned off a new process that would inject random characters onto his screen at random intervals. I put the code in place, and watched the fun.
We saw him log in, and then log out after about a minute. Then log back in again. And then log out. And then back in again. And then out. After a while, he sent us an email complaining that he couldn't get a clean phone line into the system that evening for the life of him. Hee hee. I don't think we ever fussed up to it.
I've had many years of emails I've sent to users at AOL accounts simply vanish into the ether. No bounces, no receiving of the emails on the other side. Maybe this will wake them up to some type of responsibility of running a accurate and reliable mail service, and policing their own users to weed out the bad apples.
Now, with our awesome Slashdot power, we have now set fire to the servers on the ship, and it is in the process of sinking.
Good job, everyone! Now, World Domnination is within our grasp!
...can it fold up into a briefcase after you land at work??
....can it fold up into a briefcase after you land at work?
Huh. Look at that. It's definately not on Disney property. I'm sure it's some crazy Disney fan....not like I'd know about that or anything... /whistles while he works
The SBC Logo on top of the SBC Center (where the Spurs Play)
Airplane on landing path to SAT
Northside Stadium
Sheez? Three years? Try like 1950's for Granite Shoals, Texas lakeside on Lake LBJ. My parent's house isn't even there, and many other houses that I KNOW were built in the 50's or 60's aren't there either. It's almost like they took an old B&W and colorized it. Yet, right across the cove from where their house should be, the construction that took place over the past three years is there in plain sight. Weird. It's like they merged two datasets into one pic.
....they don't violate The IPIX Patent
I start my new job on the 24th! And my wife's birthday is that day too!
Curse you braniac-part-time-tutors-from-Cardiff!
Seriously, this whole project could be replaced by one simple device that's been in use for years by homebrewers. (search down the page).
/homebrewer for 12 years
To see a truly automated brewing system, you need a RIMS system, which are pretty cool.
The fact of the matter is that this guy pulled off a seamless hoax. He even hoaxed the EXIF data in the image just in case some snooping hacker decided to do some checking up. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Kudos to you, Mr Alek!
Mine is much simpler and less geeky, but I just bought a few of the grounded X10 applicance controllers, hooked them up to the extension cords for all the lights outside. I have a Firecracker X10 dongle on my RedHat box, and the lights are controlled via a self-modifying cron that determines sunrise and sunset. I have my regular outside lights also controlled by in in-wall X10 controller that way. The Xmas lights turn on at sunset, and go off at midnight. The outside lights then come on until sunrise, then they turn off.
A few years ago I bought up some of those Virgin WebPlayers and I-Openers from eBay and other places, and proceeded to hack into them with the instructions provided.
The WebPlayer I'm using in the living room has Windows 95 on it reduced down using LitePC, and has Opera running as a web client. Also installed is Identafone, a piece of software that will display caller-id information on the screen. Add a cheap USB network adapter, plug in the phone line to the modem, and fire up the web browser to bring up a variant of the Block-random script provided by the Gallery distro, and you have a Photo Frame/Caller-ID box that has a small footprint and has no moving parts (no fan or hard drive).
I've also done the same thing with the I-Openers, installing a small 10-Gig laptop drive or so using a custom IMOD2 Kit. They both run very well and you end up with a much more configurable picture frame than a store-bought one for around a third of the cost. Now, I wish I could do something with some type of Linux distro on these guys, and I'm sure that it's possible, but I just haven't had the time after doing these. Ideas anyone? Would a Linux distro run on these boxes and still have enough memory to run a GUI to display photos?
And the "exit" popup page when you leave his Wikipediasucks.org page advertises Princess Diana car crash pictures, beheading pictures, and Pr0n. Hmmm.