I attended a little conference at a local community college on hacking, at the time I was working for a major police department in IT. The agent made a comment about the magazine 2600 and the frequency of the Captain Crunch whistle, then said he didn't know if it was 2600 Hertz or 2600 MHz. I commented that it was Hertz as 2600 MHz would up in the microwave band. He made the laughing comment that I must be a hacker. As it happens, I am an amateur radio operator and have a bit of a background in RF.
If the dude doesn't know the diff on a factor of 10^6, and he's an 'expert' on computers and hacking, I think it's a lost cause.
One problem with the push towards the PS/2-type game platform: I cannot play console games. I had five operations on my right hand, and though I can type and mouse just fine (55 WPM), my thumb doesn't work for console controllers.
I will probably never own a console game box, unless I get one for my possible future children.
I buy a cell phone in Europe. I come to the US and buy the appropriate subscriber module. And the phone self-destructs because I'm no longer in Europe.
I can't say how much this disgusts me. It definitely falls into the category of "just because they can, doesn't mean they should."
I don't think I own anything that is grey market, but I would love to see one of these Motorola execs who can travel around the world buy a laptop in HK and have it not work here. This is an absolutely disgusting concept.
Their web site lists country of origin, or at least it did a year or so ago. I was able to buy American-made tennis shoes. I thought that was pretty cool (and rare).
And while we're at it, how about German, Spanish, any of the Roman(ish) alphabets so we can pretty much avoid them weird accented characters?
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A good source for discontinued card games
on
FASA Dies
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· Score: 1
is the dealer room at major conventions. There are three conventions in LA held over President's Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day. I picked up a box of boosters for Shadowfist for $5.00. I've seen NetRunner there.
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Don't talk to me about slow pay!
on
FASA Dies
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· Score: 1
Myself and a group of friends did a huge amount of work for Flying Buffalo on a Blade supplement (I think it was the last City Map book) and most of us haven't seen a dime and that was probably over three years ago. The editor paid out of her pocket for the color seperations and I don't think she was ever repaid for that.
The only ones who have been paid, AFAIK, are the ones who worked at Buffalo and thus were in a position to bitch repeatedly until paid, or those whom the owner thought he might be able to get more product out of (fat chance!).
Their full tower case is a joy to work in and they use standard components so it will be a breeze when upgrade time comes a couple years down the road.
You ought to go into their Country Stores and check them out. The cabinet was pretty much my #1 priority when I bought my new system last year because I really really hate sucky cases. Theirs is the best commercial case that I've found. Cases in Fry's sucked. Cases in the local builder's sucked. My Gateway case is a joy.
Unfortunately sex offenders have the highest rate of recidivism of felony offenders.
I agree that people should not be punished for life, but I think the recidivism rate merits a reevaluation of this concept.
IANAL, but I do work for law enforcement, and let me tell ya: I've seen the sorts of images that these sickies trade in when my detective friends are doing forensic examinations. I have little problem with the keys being thrown away on this type of criminal.
Some Issues (far from all!):
1. Blanks. No demonstration of multi-ethnicity. What about short people? Do they shrink?
2. Arnie swimming through that glop. I don't think so. They use pretty nasty stuff as preservatives. No way I'd dive into that shit.
3. Major plot inconsistency: bad guy tells Arnie that he knows exactly how he is going to die and offers to tell him just before Arnie shoots up the data bank. End of movie: he's genetically clean.
4. Action. Sub-par for an Arnie flic. For me, Total Recall (and maybe Commando) is still his best action flic.
Very mediocre movie.
The thing that I find amusing is that he's come out against sequalitis, yet he's making T3, Total Recall 2 and True Lies 2. I'm just waiting for Running Man 2 and The Seventh Day.
At least we're unlikely to see followups to End of Days or Jingle All The Way
Use a laptop. How are you going to fit a sugar cube into a laptop case? The space just isn't there. Not to mention the difficulty in quickly disassembling/reassembling a laptop.
VBT has the dubious distinction of being the only film that I have walked out on. Started as a potentially delicious black comedy with the death of the hooker and the frantic insanity of what to do with the body, but the cold-blooded murder of the security officer just made the film plain sick and evil.
There was one other film whose title I (thankfully) refuse to remember, but it was so bad and left such a horrid taste in my mouth and brain that I taped over the tape in 2, then 4, then 6 hour mode before throwing it away. I felt its evil was counter-balanced by the taping: I only used programs like Oprah and Jerry Springer.
And which Travolta movie are you talking about, Battlefield Earth?
I have a story for you about that movie. This year I was fortunate to attend DragonCon in Atlanta (very major SF con). There was a table for BFE, in fact, it was 2 or 3 booths wide. It was avoided like the plague. You could actually watch people moving to the other side of the aisle to avoid contamination from it.
Same thing happened at San Diego ComicCon: smaller booth, no one going near it.
Myself, I loved it. Like many of its supporters, I thought this was the best actual superhero movie in a long time. Yes, it was slow. Yes, Bruce Willis was flat (performance-wise), but as Katz pointed out it was appropriate to the role.
I'm on a private message board with some friends across the country, and the love/hate split has also been there.
Myself, I can't wait for the followup films and eagerly wait for the DVD release. And I fully expect most of my friends to hate it, but I'm proud of my eclectic taste in films.
And his son actually shooting him would have ruined the film: it would have confirmed everything that was being hinted at. Far too obvious. It also would have ruined the wonderful build-up of emotional tension and release in that scene.
I'm also glad that he didn't take the gun with him when he went on his first "patrol." He's trying to be a "thinking" hero and there ain't enough of them.
I wrote a program for authenticating supposed palindromes to test one for a guy who thought he had the longest palindrome that wasn't nonsense syllables. I'll have to see if I can dig it out.
I don't remember who, but some prankster outfit bought a bunch of talking Barbies and talking GI Joes and performed bit of creative surgery: swapped the phrase disks then returned them to the store.
So suddenly GI Joe says "I think math is hard!" and "Let's go shopping!" while Barbie talks about killing people.
Another slipped by before I was on Slashdot: Seymour Cray was killed in a traffic accident, I believe in Colorado. I wrote to Byte and Infoworld asking them to do a tribute: nothing happened. Sigh.
Actually, from what I read, the Polish cryptographers gave the Bombes to the British when they decrypted messages showing they were about to be invaded: they didn't want Germany knowing that their message traffic was being read.
Alas, I don't have the book in front of me as I'm at work. I believe it was Seizing the Enigma.
Here's one for you. My girlfriend is kind of tight financially right now, so she drops her ISP and goes to Barnes & Noble for their free ISP setup. She has endless problems trying to register because it doesn't seem to be remembering that she's registered. Finally, I don't know how she found it, she had to install IE 5.0~ and register through THAT browser! Once she was registered, she uninstalled it and went back to Netscrape!
I will personally never subscribe to MS Office. Office 97 is more than good enough for me, and really the only thing it has that I can't get in some Linux offering is Access.
Meeting scheduling doesn't have to be difficult depending on your groupware system. If everyone maintains their personal meeting schedule, or knows that their group meets every other Tuesday from 2-4, there's no prob. If your groupware can read other people's schedules to check availability, then you're good.
But if you're relying on emails and voice mails to schedule a meeting, you're in trouble. Too much info can get forgotten: use email and a good group scheduler.
I'm a civilian at a law enforcement agency. The officers generally work fixed shifts of 4x10's. Hourly civilian employees work 5x8's. Most groups within the department let salaried civilians (i.e. me) work 9/80's: eight 9-hour days (72 hrs) + one 8-hr day for 80 hours in 9 days: I get every other Monday off.
It is flexing because it's not 4x10 or 8x5 and I have some flexibility in my sched: I officially work 7-5, but my real hours are more like 7:15-5:30. My boss is cool with this and she's very flexible in letting my move my off-day up or back a week or several days to accomodate trips or whatever.
My preference would be working 4x10 and having every Monday off, but the Big Boss thinks that 4x10 leads to programmer burn-out. I guess he doesn't realize that there is little difference between being here 9 hours and 10 hours and that we're already all burned-out.
So, a hearty YES! to flex-time. The best hours I ever worked as a programmer was 10-7pm. No rush-hour traffic, sleep in late, and I was guaranteed 2 hours a day of no interruptions.
(alas, we cannot telecommute due to security regs, but telecommuting is a big factor in flex time)
Slashdot Mirror
I attended a little conference at a local community college on hacking, at the time I was working for a major police department in IT. The agent made a comment about the magazine 2600 and the frequency of the Captain Crunch whistle, then said he didn't know if it was 2600 Hertz or 2600 MHz. I commented that it was Hertz as 2600 MHz would up in the microwave band. He made the laughing comment that I must be a hacker. As it happens, I am an amateur radio operator and have a bit of a background in RF.
If the dude doesn't know the diff on a factor of 10^6, and he's an 'expert' on computers and hacking, I think it's a lost cause.
One problem with the push towards the PS/2-type game platform: I cannot play console games. I had five operations on my right hand, and though I can type and mouse just fine (55 WPM), my thumb doesn't work for console controllers.
I will probably never own a console game box, unless I get one for my possible future children.
is twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty.
--
Just don't forget, the never-to-be-forgotten Mel Blanc did the voice!
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I buy a cell phone in Europe. I come to the US and buy the appropriate subscriber module. And the phone self-destructs because I'm no longer in Europe.
I can't say how much this disgusts me. It definitely falls into the category of "just because they can, doesn't mean they should."
I don't think I own anything that is grey market, but I would love to see one of these Motorola execs who can travel around the world buy a laptop in HK and have it not work here. This is an absolutely disgusting concept.
--
Their web site lists country of origin, or at least it did a year or so ago. I was able to buy American-made tennis shoes. I thought that was pretty cool (and rare).
--
I need to get some new shoes. :-)
And while we're at it, how about German, Spanish, any of the Roman(ish) alphabets so we can pretty much avoid them weird accented characters?
--
is the dealer room at major conventions. There are three conventions in LA held over President's Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day. I picked up a box of boosters for Shadowfist for $5.00. I've seen NetRunner there.
--
Myself and a group of friends did a huge amount of work for Flying Buffalo on a Blade supplement (I think it was the last City Map book) and most of us haven't seen a dime and that was probably over three years ago. The editor paid out of her pocket for the color seperations and I don't think she was ever repaid for that.
The only ones who have been paid, AFAIK, are the ones who worked at Buffalo and thus were in a position to bitch repeatedly until paid, or those whom the owner thought he might be able to get more product out of (fat chance!).
--
If the alleged artist formerly known as Prince can do it, why can't he?
--
Their full tower case is a joy to work in and they use standard components so it will be a breeze when upgrade time comes a couple years down the road.
You ought to go into their Country Stores and check them out. The cabinet was pretty much my #1 priority when I bought my new system last year because I really really hate sucky cases. Theirs is the best commercial case that I've found. Cases in Fry's sucked. Cases in the local builder's sucked. My Gateway case is a joy.
--
Unfortunately sex offenders have the highest rate of recidivism of felony offenders.
I agree that people should not be punished for life, but I think the recidivism rate merits a reevaluation of this concept.
IANAL, but I do work for law enforcement, and let me tell ya: I've seen the sorts of images that these sickies trade in when my detective friends are doing forensic examinations. I have little problem with the keys being thrown away on this type of criminal.
--
Hmmm.... isn't Mir coming down in February?
--
Major disappointment.
Some Issues (far from all!):
1. Blanks. No demonstration of multi-ethnicity. What about short people? Do they shrink?
2. Arnie swimming through that glop. I don't think so. They use pretty nasty stuff as preservatives. No way I'd dive into that shit.
3. Major plot inconsistency: bad guy tells Arnie that he knows exactly how he is going to die and offers to tell him just before Arnie shoots up the data bank. End of movie: he's genetically clean.
4. Action. Sub-par for an Arnie flic. For me, Total Recall (and maybe Commando) is still his best action flic.
Very mediocre movie.
The thing that I find amusing is that he's come out against sequalitis, yet he's making T3, Total Recall 2 and True Lies 2. I'm just waiting for Running Man 2 and The Seventh Day.
At least we're unlikely to see followups to End of Days or Jingle All The Way
--
Use a laptop. How are you going to fit a sugar cube into a laptop case? The space just isn't there. Not to mention the difficulty in quickly disassembling/reassembling a laptop.
--
VBT has the dubious distinction of being the only film that I have walked out on. Started as a potentially delicious black comedy with the death of the hooker and the frantic insanity of what to do with the body, but the cold-blooded murder of the security officer just made the film plain sick and evil.
There was one other film whose title I (thankfully) refuse to remember, but it was so bad and left such a horrid taste in my mouth and brain that I taped over the tape in 2, then 4, then 6 hour mode before throwing it away. I felt its evil was counter-balanced by the taping: I only used programs like Oprah and Jerry Springer.
And which Travolta movie are you talking about, Battlefield Earth?
I have a story for you about that movie. This year I was fortunate to attend DragonCon in Atlanta (very major SF con). There was a table for BFE, in fact, it was 2 or 3 booths wide. It was avoided like the plague. You could actually watch people moving to the other side of the aisle to avoid contamination from it.
Same thing happened at San Diego ComicCon: smaller booth, no one going near it.
--
Myself, I loved it. Like many of its supporters, I thought this was the best actual superhero movie in a long time. Yes, it was slow. Yes, Bruce Willis was flat (performance-wise), but as Katz pointed out it was appropriate to the role.
I'm on a private message board with some friends across the country, and the love/hate split has also been there.
Myself, I can't wait for the followup films and eagerly wait for the DVD release. And I fully expect most of my friends to hate it, but I'm proud of my eclectic taste in films.
And his son actually shooting him would have ruined the film: it would have confirmed everything that was being hinted at. Far too obvious. It also would have ruined the wonderful build-up of emotional tension and release in that scene.
I'm also glad that he didn't take the gun with him when he went on his first "patrol." He's trying to be a "thinking" hero and there ain't enough of them.
--
I was massivly thankful that it wasn't Sixth Sense. I really disliked that movie.
--
One of my favs: Live sex in a Toyota nixes evil.
I wrote a program for authenticating supposed palindromes to test one for a guy who thought he had the longest palindrome that wasn't nonsense syllables. I'll have to see if I can dig it out.
--
I don't remember who, but some prankster outfit bought a bunch of talking Barbies and talking GI Joes and performed bit of creative surgery: swapped the phrase disks then returned them to the store.
So suddenly GI Joe says "I think math is hard!" and "Let's go shopping!" while Barbie talks about killing people.
Now wouldn't that be a cool one to have!
--
Another slipped by before I was on Slashdot: Seymour Cray was killed in a traffic accident, I believe in Colorado. I wrote to Byte and Infoworld asking them to do a tribute: nothing happened. Sigh.
--
Actually, from what I read, the Polish cryptographers gave the Bombes to the British when they decrypted messages showing they were about to be invaded: they didn't want Germany knowing that their message traffic was being read.
Alas, I don't have the book in front of me as I'm at work. I believe it was Seizing the Enigma.
--
Here's one for you. My girlfriend is kind of tight financially right now, so she drops her ISP and goes to Barnes & Noble for their free ISP setup. She has endless problems trying to register because it doesn't seem to be remembering that she's registered. Finally, I don't know how she found it, she had to install IE 5.0~ and register through THAT browser! Once she was registered, she uninstalled it and went back to Netscrape!
I will personally never subscribe to MS Office. Office 97 is more than good enough for me, and really the only thing it has that I can't get in some Linux offering is Access.
--
Meeting scheduling doesn't have to be difficult depending on your groupware system. If everyone maintains their personal meeting schedule, or knows that their group meets every other Tuesday from 2-4, there's no prob. If your groupware can read other people's schedules to check availability, then you're good.
But if you're relying on emails and voice mails to schedule a meeting, you're in trouble. Too much info can get forgotten: use email and a good group scheduler.
--
I'm a civilian at a law enforcement agency. The officers generally work fixed shifts of 4x10's. Hourly civilian employees work 5x8's. Most groups within the department let salaried civilians (i.e. me) work 9/80's: eight 9-hour days (72 hrs) + one 8-hr day for 80 hours in 9 days: I get every other Monday off.
It is flexing because it's not 4x10 or 8x5 and I have some flexibility in my sched: I officially work 7-5, but my real hours are more like 7:15-5:30. My boss is cool with this and she's very flexible in letting my move my off-day up or back a week or several days to accomodate trips or whatever.
My preference would be working 4x10 and having every Monday off, but the Big Boss thinks that 4x10 leads to programmer burn-out. I guess he doesn't realize that there is little difference between being here 9 hours and 10 hours and that we're already all burned-out.
So, a hearty YES! to flex-time. The best hours I ever worked as a programmer was 10-7pm. No rush-hour traffic, sleep in late, and I was guaranteed 2 hours a day of no interruptions.
(alas, we cannot telecommute due to security regs, but telecommuting is a big factor in flex time)
--