Better yet, there used to be a kids' show called "The Great Space Coaster," and there was an 'evil' character on it who went by the name M.T. Promises-- that seems about right for Microsoft marketing.
Once I dropped a power pack while replacing it and nearly killed a gal working below.
That brings back memories. At my last job, we had doors with keypad-activated magnetic locks on them. One day I walked into one of our office suites to find a broken ceiling tile on the floor and one of my female coworkers looking like she just had the shit scared out of her.
Turns out, the door lock system had some sort of backup power, and the brainiacs who installed it pretty much just sat the large, heavy, sharp-edged backup battery up on the top of the wall up above the drop ceiling, without securing it up there in any way. Over time, the vibration from the door swinging shut moved the battery closer to the edge, and on that particular day when the door closed behind my coworker it nudged the battery past its center of gravity-- the battery went over, smashing right through the ceiling tile to the floor.
If she had walked slower or hesitated inside the door to speak to the receptionist, I probably would've walked in to find her dead on the floor in a large pool of her blood.
Holy shit!!! What moron thought an RJ45 jack would make a great power connector? Please tell me that this is a Photoshopped image and a cable such as this beast does not really exist.
On the other hand, if it *is* real, it's pretty much the only item needed in the "Li'l Bastard (TM) Disgruntled IT Employee Toolkit." Just plug 'er in in a concealed spot behind a desk, a few minutes before security escorts you out the day you get laid off.
Heh. I had something like this happen at my last job. One of the companies I supported got a brand new printer/copier that used one of those little Axis print servers that sticks on the parallel port. You had to print a config file to the thing within 5 minutes of it being powered on in order to set the print server's IP, etc.
The first week after they got it, every morning I'd get a call that the new printer wasn't visible on the network. I'd go and investigate, find nothing, cycle the power, and send the config file to fix it.
We had had encounters before with the cleaning crew, so just playing the odds we posted a sign over the outlet in English and Spanish that said, "Do not unplug!" Still, every morning the print server was found to have dutifully fallen off the network.
Finally, I went to Home Depot and got one of those wall outlet lock boxes and a padlock and installed it over the outlet so the plugs could not be removed by anyone except us. Problem solved.
In the past, I used my old Newton 2000 to store recipes. It sat on the counter nicely, and if you just enclosed it in a Ziploc bag, there were no worries about spills.
I don't know about putting a full-fledged computer in the kitchen. I've got two Audreys that will be integrated into my home automation rig when I finish creating the web interface. One is destined for my kitchen. I wanted the Audrey because I can take it out easily to keep it clean (i.e., avoid the greasy film that gets on everything from frying, and the flour film from using a mixer). I wouldn't permanently install anything that wasn't specifically ruggedized for a kitchen or damp/dirty environment.
If I *had* to put in a full-fledged PC, though, I'd get the smallest case I could find (like a Shuttle) and tuck it away in a cabinet with decent seals around the door, filtered ventilation holes and maybe its own fan. For the display, I'd suspend a fold-down LCD under a cabinet and fashion some sort of removable cover to completely enclose it when it was in the up position. Run the cables where necessary-- including a USB extender cable that is mounted under the cabinet with the LCD-- so your input device can be removed and stowed when not in use. If someone makes one of those waterproof keyboards with a built-in touchpad or other pointing device, that'd be just the ticket.
I seem to remember a photo like that in one of my old history textbooks in grade school or high school. IIRC, it was taken in the financial district in New York, sometime before the concept of using a single line to connect multiple places occurred to anyone. Think of all the people you call regularly-- now imagine needing a separate, dedicated phone line running from your house to each of theirs to make it possible. Total rats' nest.
I read this article over the weekend. The bottom line is, any ultra-rich idiot can have an automated house full of cool gadgets, if they throw enough money at someone else to set it up for them. There's nothing particularly impressive about being able to write a check.
I'd rather read about systems people put together themselves, consisting of parts attainable by someone who makes a modest salary.
And yeah, Catherine Bell is a hottie, but she loses points for being married and a Scientologist.
Macs have a much lower TCO in lost productivity time, frustration, etc.
Hear, hear. I'm a system integrator who specializes in Macs, and I've been happily (i.e., it feels fast enough to me) using the same Power Mac 7600 for the last 6 years. Three years ago I upgraded the CPU to a G3/400, and I've added RAM, and IDE and USB PCI cards over the years, but for such an old computer it still works fine and does everything I need it to do, which is quite a bit.
I just bought a used G4/733, and I expect it to get several years out of it as well. My 7600 will eventually be listed on eBay, and will bring in significantly more money than a PC of the same vintage.
Macs cost more up front, but their longevity beats that of PCs (remember Gateway's 'trade this in after 2 years' program?), and Macs have a much higher resale value-- don't believe me? Check eBay for PCs with late-1996 specs, and then look at what Power Mac 8600 and 9600 machines go for.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the "swap out the guts of my whitebox every 2 years" crowd actually ended up spending more over the life of their machine than your average Mac "power user."
...someone has to track her down and discover that she is also a Mac user in real life-- she probably has a CRT iMac or an iBook or something, if she's like the models I know.
Pennsylvania recently passed an anti-telemarketing law that created a "Do Not Call" list. When they started accepting info (via phone and web) from people who wished to be added to that list, they got such a crushing, overwhelming response that their call center and their servers couldn't handle it, which made the local news and really drove the point home about exactly how many people HATE telemarketers.
I am one of those people. I signed up successfully, early on the first day, but I still continue to do what I've been doing for years-- applying technology myself to keep the bastards from bugging me:
For the last two years, I've had a Caller ID modem connected to the Mac that runs all my home automation stuff. I set it up with a whitelist of my friends and relatives. When someone on the whitelist calls, the computer verbally alerts me through wireless speakers placed thoughout the house, and I know to pick up the phone. The computer will also mute the sound on the entertainment center if I'm watching TV or have my stereo on, so I don't have to fumble for a remote. The end result is, the only people who can interrupt what I'm doing are people that I want to talk to. Everyone else gets the answering machine. This works for me because I am not so such a social butterfly that the whitelist needs constant updating. I suppose that if I were, though, I'd just create a web interface for it so I could edit it from anywhere.
The bottom line, though, is that Caller ID is your friend. Don't pick up if you don't know who's on the other end, just let your machine get it. If the call is important enough, the caller will leave a message.
I agree here. Who wants to browse the web on some dinky little screen? Not me, I've got a computer or laptop for that. And other people who may want to, shouldn't be able to. People can't drive well while punching a 7 or 10 digit number into a phone now, think the roads will be much safer when they're punching in URLs and looking at pr0n? There's a time and a place for web browsing and other such services, and those would be better served by the hot spot idea.
I have 2 *needs* w/r/t a cell phone: Make and receive voice calls, and send and receive (mostly receive) very short e-mail messages, like CNN Breaking News or a message from the Mac that runs my house, telling me a smoke detector has gone off or an intruder has been detected. A nicety would be built-in BlueTooth, so I can sync the contacts to my Mac's address book. To me, every single other feature on the newfangled phones is useless crap I don't want to pay for. I don't even need a color screen-- does anyone, really, just to read text and numbers? They're stuffing way too much shit into these new phones instead of focusing on making them do fewer things well.
I hope the Judge orders the guy to seek out the blow job he so obviously needs.
A court-ordered blowjob? Now THAT is a great idea!
Better yet, the hot models and actresses who get DUI's and drug convictions should be the ones who have to administer said court-ordered blowjobs. I suppose they could count towards the "community service" that always seems to be the sentence of the Famous Beautiful People who get caught breaking the law.
Microsoft learned this from the IBM PC. IBM didn't go after the clones and gained market share to knock out CP/M and Apple II.
Whaaaaa? Where the hell did you get this idea?
IBM did no such thing. IBM hated that PC clones were available-- it was an unintended side effect of their building the PC as an open system. That's why the PS/2 systems they came out with in the late 80's had the MicroChannel architecture... a closed, proprietary architecture that was protected by law. They tried to wrest control of the PC market back from the cloners with the MicroChannel, but their attempt failed because they were greedy and offered ridiculously draconian licensing terms (something like, to license the MicroChannel bus, a cloner had to pay a fee for all previous PC clones they had ever sold).
Needless to say, nobody with an ounce of sense went for this, and the industry moved on in a direction different from IBM.
My own list: 2600, 5200, ColecoVision, Vectrex, NES, Genesis, 3DO, Saturn, and PlayStation, and a HUGE collection of games for each. I guess I should also mention my mint, full-size arcade cabinet games as well, Zookeeper and Arkanoid II.
And let's give props to the older computers, too... the C64 was an awesome game platform, and should almost count as a console system. I knew plenty of people who had them, and nobody ever did anything but play games on 'em (well, besides calling BBSes on their 300 baud modem to download cracked games).
I have no plans to buy any post-PlayStation consoles, because the games concentrate mostly on FMV glitz and not as much on gameplay. If any console game looks interesting to me (and those are few and far between), I'll pick it up when it comes out for the PC, and if it never does, oh well.
Oh, God, I loved all of Sierra's "* Quest" games. A great chunk of my youth passed by while working through many of them./me gets especially nostalgic for the Police Quest series (sniffle)
To make the Futurama game experience as much like the TV show as possible, the game checks the date and time when it is launched. If the game is launched on Sunday evenings between late September and January, it starts in the middle.
Yup. One of the first thoughts I had after the 2nd plane hit the WTC was, "Well, from this day on, any fool crazy enough to try to hijack a plane will be torn apart by the passengers."
I don't think there have been very many hijackings, if any, since that day. I'd be interested to see world hijacking statistics for the year preceeding 9/11/01, and the year since to see exactly how much of a decline there has been.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a link to pics of M.T. Promises that will hopefully continue to work (he's in the two pics on the left).
~Philly
First, they steal the Switch campaign.
Now, they bite off The Bugaloos to advertise MSN.
What next, "Sigmund the C# Monster"?
Better yet, there used to be a kids' show called "The Great Space Coaster," and there was an 'evil' character on it who went by the name M.T. Promises-- that seems about right for Microsoft marketing.
~Philly
Once I dropped a power pack while replacing it and nearly killed a gal working below.
That brings back memories. At my last job, we had doors with keypad-activated magnetic locks on them. One day I walked into one of our office suites to find a broken ceiling tile on the floor and one of my female coworkers looking like she just had the shit scared out of her.
Turns out, the door lock system had some sort of backup power, and the brainiacs who installed it pretty much just sat the large, heavy, sharp-edged backup battery up on the top of the wall up above the drop ceiling, without securing it up there in any way. Over time, the vibration from the door swinging shut moved the battery closer to the edge, and on that particular day when the door closed behind my coworker it nudged the battery past its center of gravity-- the battery went over, smashing right through the ceiling tile to the floor.
If she had walked slower or hesitated inside the door to speak to the receptionist, I probably would've walked in to find her dead on the floor in a large pool of her blood.
~Philly
Holy shit!!! What moron thought an RJ45 jack would make a great power connector? Please tell me that this is a Photoshopped image and a cable such as this beast does not really exist.
On the other hand, if it *is* real, it's pretty much the only item needed in the "Li'l Bastard (TM) Disgruntled IT Employee Toolkit." Just plug 'er in in a concealed spot behind a desk, a few minutes before security escorts you out the day you get laid off.
~Philly
Heh. I had something like this happen at my last job. One of the companies I supported got a brand new printer/copier that used one of those little Axis print servers that sticks on the parallel port. You had to print a config file to the thing within 5 minutes of it being powered on in order to set the print server's IP, etc.
The first week after they got it, every morning I'd get a call that the new printer wasn't visible on the network. I'd go and investigate, find nothing, cycle the power, and send the config file to fix it.
We had had encounters before with the cleaning crew, so just playing the odds we posted a sign over the outlet in English and Spanish that said, "Do not unplug!" Still, every morning the print server was found to have dutifully fallen off the network.
Finally, I went to Home Depot and got one of those wall outlet lock boxes and a padlock and installed it over the outlet so the plugs could not be removed by anyone except us. Problem solved.
~Philly
In the past, I used my old Newton 2000 to store recipes. It sat on the counter nicely, and if you just enclosed it in a Ziploc bag, there were no worries about spills.
I don't know about putting a full-fledged computer in the kitchen. I've got two Audreys that will be integrated into my home automation rig when I finish creating the web interface. One is destined for my kitchen. I wanted the Audrey because I can take it out easily to keep it clean (i.e., avoid the greasy film that gets on everything from frying, and the flour film from using a mixer). I wouldn't permanently install anything that wasn't specifically ruggedized for a kitchen or damp/dirty environment.
If I *had* to put in a full-fledged PC, though, I'd get the smallest case I could find (like a Shuttle) and tuck it away in a cabinet with decent seals around the door, filtered ventilation holes and maybe its own fan. For the display, I'd suspend a fold-down LCD under a cabinet and fashion some sort of removable cover to completely enclose it when it was in the up position. Run the cables where necessary-- including a USB extender cable that is mounted under the cabinet with the LCD-- so your input device can be removed and stowed when not in use. If someone makes one of those waterproof keyboards with a built-in touchpad or other pointing device, that'd be just the ticket.
~Philly
I seem to remember a photo like that in one of my old history textbooks in grade school or high school. IIRC, it was taken in the financial district in New York, sometime before the concept of using a single line to connect multiple places occurred to anyone. Think of all the people you call regularly-- now imagine needing a separate, dedicated phone line running from your house to each of theirs to make it possible. Total rats' nest.
~Philly
I realize that potential use by terrorists is the worst way to justify blocking a technology...
No, that's #2 on the list. The WORST way to justify blocking a technology is so an antiquated business model doesn't have to be changed.
~Philly
I read this article over the weekend. The bottom line is, any ultra-rich idiot can have an automated house full of cool gadgets, if they throw enough money at someone else to set it up for them. There's nothing particularly impressive about being able to write a check.
I'd rather read about systems people put together themselves, consisting of parts attainable by someone who makes a modest salary.
And yeah, Catherine Bell is a hottie, but she loses points for being married and a Scientologist.
~Philly
OS 8.5 is the biggest POS on the planet. If you are going to lose weeks of work, this is the OS that it'll happen on.
Right. Which is why everyone should upgrade to 8.5.1 or 8.6, the free bugfix releases.
~Philly
Macs have a much lower TCO in lost productivity time, frustration, etc.
Hear, hear. I'm a system integrator who specializes in Macs, and I've been happily (i.e., it feels fast enough to me) using the same Power Mac 7600 for the last 6 years. Three years ago I upgraded the CPU to a G3/400, and I've added RAM, and IDE and USB PCI cards over the years, but for such an old computer it still works fine and does everything I need it to do, which is quite a bit.
I just bought a used G4/733, and I expect it to get several years out of it as well. My 7600 will eventually be listed on eBay, and will bring in significantly more money than a PC of the same vintage.
Macs cost more up front, but their longevity beats that of PCs (remember Gateway's 'trade this in after 2 years' program?), and Macs have a much higher resale value-- don't believe me? Check eBay for PCs with late-1996 specs, and then look at what Power Mac 8600 and 9600 machines go for.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the "swap out the guts of my whitebox every 2 years" crowd actually ended up spending more over the life of their machine than your average Mac "power user."
~Philly
...someone has to track her down and discover that she is also a Mac user in real life-- she probably has a CRT iMac or an iBook or something, if she's like the models I know.
It always cracked me up that the Blue Man Group shill for Intel but run their shows with Macs.
~Philly
Pennsylvania recently passed an anti-telemarketing law that created a "Do Not Call" list. When they started accepting info (via phone and web) from people who wished to be added to that list, they got such a crushing, overwhelming response that their call center and their servers couldn't handle it, which made the local news and really drove the point home about exactly how many people HATE telemarketers.
I am one of those people. I signed up successfully, early on the first day, but I still continue to do what I've been doing for years-- applying technology myself to keep the bastards from bugging me:
For the last two years, I've had a Caller ID modem connected to the Mac that runs all my home automation stuff. I set it up with a whitelist of my friends and relatives. When someone on the whitelist calls, the computer verbally alerts me through wireless speakers placed thoughout the house, and I know to pick up the phone. The computer will also mute the sound on the entertainment center if I'm watching TV or have my stereo on, so I don't have to fumble for a remote. The end result is, the only people who can interrupt what I'm doing are people that I want to talk to. Everyone else gets the answering machine. This works for me because I am not so such a social butterfly that the whitelist needs constant updating. I suppose that if I were, though, I'd just create a web interface for it so I could edit it from anywhere.
The bottom line, though, is that Caller ID is your friend. Don't pick up if you don't know who's on the other end, just let your machine get it. If the call is important enough, the caller will leave a message.
~Philly
Yeah, that's an easy one... all you need is a suit and a pair of handcuffs.
I agree here. Who wants to browse the web on some dinky little screen? Not me, I've got a computer or laptop for that. And other people who may want to, shouldn't be able to. People can't drive well while punching a 7 or 10 digit number into a phone now, think the roads will be much safer when they're punching in URLs and looking at pr0n? There's a time and a place for web browsing and other such services, and those would be better served by the hot spot idea.
I have 2 *needs* w/r/t a cell phone:
Make and receive voice calls, and send and receive (mostly receive) very short e-mail messages, like CNN Breaking News or a message from the Mac that runs my house, telling me a smoke detector has gone off or an intruder has been detected. A nicety would be built-in BlueTooth, so I can sync the contacts to my Mac's address book. To me, every single other feature on the newfangled phones is useless crap I don't want to pay for. I don't even need a color screen-- does anyone, really, just to read text and numbers? They're stuffing way too much shit into these new phones instead of focusing on making them do fewer things well.
~Philly
In one fell swoop, every citizen in the entire country of Elbonia would suddenly have broadband access... if only they had computers.
~Philly
This guy gets the Too Much Time On His Hands Award of the Week. What's his encore gonna be, a racing stripe on all the Cat-5 cable in the place?
~Philly
I hope the Judge orders the guy to seek out the blow job he so obviously needs.
A court-ordered blowjob? Now THAT is a great idea!
Better yet, the hot models and actresses who get DUI's and drug convictions should be the ones who have to administer said court-ordered blowjobs. I suppose they could count towards the "community service" that always seems to be the sentence of the Famous Beautiful People who get caught breaking the law.
~Philly
...surely will go down in history as the day Ed Begley, Jr. finally got e-mail.
ObSimpsonsParaphrase: "This PC is fully biodegradable, dissolves instantly in water, and is powered completely by my sense of self-satisfaction."
~Philly
Brake, Brake, Brake, Gas, Brake, Gas - Nitro boost
Has anyone ever tried this one in Simpsons Road Rage?:
Gas, brake, honk. Gas, brake, honk. Honk, honk, punch. Gas, gas gas! (From "King Size Homer")
~Philly
Microsoft learned this from the IBM PC. IBM didn't go after the clones and gained market share to knock out CP/M and Apple II.
Whaaaaa? Where the hell did you get this idea?
IBM did no such thing. IBM hated that PC clones were available-- it was an unintended side effect of their building the PC as an open system. That's why the PS/2 systems they came out with in the late 80's had the MicroChannel architecture... a closed, proprietary architecture that was protected by law. They tried to wrest control of the PC market back from the cloners with the MicroChannel, but their attempt failed because they were greedy and offered ridiculously draconian licensing terms (something like, to license the MicroChannel bus, a cloner had to pay a fee for all previous PC clones they had ever sold).
Needless to say, nobody with an ounce of sense went for this, and the industry moved on in a direction different from IBM.
~Philly
Long live the 80's and early-90's consoles!
My own list: 2600, 5200, ColecoVision, Vectrex, NES, Genesis, 3DO, Saturn, and PlayStation, and a HUGE collection of games for each. I guess I should also mention my mint, full-size arcade cabinet games as well, Zookeeper and Arkanoid II.
And let's give props to the older computers, too... the C64 was an awesome game platform, and should almost count as a console system. I knew plenty of people who had them, and nobody ever did anything but play games on 'em (well, besides calling BBSes on their 300 baud modem to download cracked games).
I have no plans to buy any post-PlayStation consoles, because the games concentrate mostly on FMV glitz and not as much on gameplay. If any console game looks interesting to me (and those are few and far between), I'll pick it up when it comes out for the PC, and if it never does, oh well.
~Philly
Oh, God, I loved all of Sierra's "* Quest" games. A great chunk of my youth passed by while working through many of them. /me gets especially nostalgic for the Police Quest series (sniffle)
~Philly
To make the Futurama game experience as much like the TV show as possible, the game checks the date and time when it is launched. If the game is launched on Sunday evenings between late September and January, it starts in the middle.
~Philly
Yup. One of the first thoughts I had after the 2nd plane hit the WTC was, "Well, from this day on, any fool crazy enough to try to hijack a plane will be torn apart by the passengers."
I don't think there have been very many hijackings, if any, since that day. I'd be interested to see world hijacking statistics for the year preceeding 9/11/01, and the year since to see exactly how much of a decline there has been.
~Philly