For any black-mail (male?) scheme always be prepared to back it up with several remote sites with cron scripts to email the content to everyone (buy a spam CD) unless you take actions daily/weekly/etc. to prevent the mail from sending. This is so that if you get taken into custody, the whole thing is blown open, since you're fucked anyway!
No, I'm not talking about pastry design, I'm talking about real engineering.
I worked for a Danish company for 2 years in the R&D Dept. I learned that Danish engeineering is done differently than in America. They are very thourough, and documentation and research will be complete before they ever begin making the tangible object.
That is a sharp contrast from how things are done here. They call us 'cowboys' because we'll go off and come back with it either done, or a working (tho sometimes failed) proof of concept. Then we document what worked best. It is this cavalier attitude that I think always gets us winning Junk Yard Wars against the Europeans.
The results are this: This Danish company I worked for posted small but constant growth, making a profit ever year in the last 90 except the first year the company was founded. Here, in America, our growth is much more irratic. We (U.S.) will get the product to market, quicker, but we'll also replace it quicker.
We need to recognise why windows programmers write for end-users and unix programmers write for developers, and it is simple: Only developers are using unix.
Unix people, after 20 years, are still adding utility to their OS. Windows people get a complete system out of the box. Windows people never had to code up their own OS, it was provided by Microsoft. If it wasn't provided by microsoft though, it was provided as an end-product by someone else (Trumpet Winsock). Adding to non-existent OS self-improvement time was the fact that there were only ever 2 windows "systems" for Windows: Program manager and later, Explorer. No one had to reinvent the wheel for KDE, GNOME, and whatever DE the user might be running. Therefore, the windows coding efforts were more focused.
I've said it time and time again - we need to drop GNOME or KDE (preferably keeping KDE, IMHO) and just run with that. 2x the developers can do 4x as much work if they aren't duplicating each others work.
I remember TFC and how horrid it was. The physics between the two engines made Q:TF die hards complain constantly. Hardly anything worked the same, though it all worked. The matchups between classes turned out impossible to duplicate, and forced re-learning (for those that did) of how to play the game.
Lets not forget that Quake, driven by TF also started the Clan Wars. Now you can't go anywhere without having some kind of Clan for a multiplayer game.
TF a Halflife mod?
on
NYT on Game Mods
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I seem to remember playing TF on Quake 1's engine. As a matter of fact, me and my college buddies worked with the people making TF. We exerimented on our own selves (being in a college dorm, we had a perfect environment) trying out weapns like the gib gun, and *I* even prototypes the sniper dot. It was an 'x' originally.
So there might be a TF for HL, but TF is and always shall be a Quake mod. After all, Quake was the first engine that was open to modding by average Joe.
The free search engine that listed me for free is no longer paying off! Waaaaaa! Waaaaaa!
I for one welcome the change. Too many times have 20 of the top 30 links taken you two one site, but camafloged to google somehow as to look seperate. I experieced this painfully while looking for ringtones for my cellphone.
Google is first and foremost a search engine, not a marketing tool. Those who thought otherwise are finding out they are sorely mistaken.
The Definitive Guide to the.NET Compact Framework (Paperback)
by Roof, I.
18% off Amazon Amazon Price: $41.99 (as of 11/17/2003 01:13 Mountain Time, excludes shipping)
List Price: $59.99 Price: $34.49 You Save: $25.50 (42%) Edition: Paperback Catalog #: 339468
Quantity:
Availability In stock. Usually leaves our warehouse within 2-3 business days. Warehouse replenishment issues may stretch that period to 7 business days on some items. If you choose expedited shipping for your order, we will notify you if your order does not leave our warehouse within 3 business days.
Special Media Shipping We only charge $1.40 for shipping a single media item, $2.80 for two media items, $2.95 for three or more media items. Continental US only.
IT is not about tech for tech's sake!
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Technology is supposed to enable us to do more. As long as it does that, tech is a success. The hardware companies wil convince you that that means more Mhz and more disk.
In reality though, if you can put to use that PIII-700 to do something productive, then it is a success.
For an analogy consider a Cray vs a TRS-80. A Cray running a bubble sort will be beaten by a TRS-80 running QuickSort for just a few thousand elements. The same is true for tech in general. Work smart, not hard.
There are times where raw Mhz are needed, these are real-time requirements or due to lag creating some kind of penalty (if it takes 20 mins to get an answwr back, you'll be more selective in your questions, where as if it took milli-senconds, you'd take time to ask more creative questions - this was the prupoe behind Beowolf clusters)
And again, we see work smart not hard. Put those PIII-700 to work as a cluster, working smart, not hard.
Better processes are key. Brute force allows you to compensate for lack of a good process, but you pay a premium.
I see all too often PDAs being used instead of note pads. PDAs many be status simbles and nifty, but I can put notes in and read notes back off a pad of paper faster than the fastest PDA users.
If Apple's employees want to aviod usurping of personal projects, they can switch to KDE and give their time and contributions to that community. Then Apple's usurping won't happen, and if people actually do switch, it'll make apple thing twice before doing it again...
Apple Exec1: "Every time we usurp a project, we send more people to help out KDE" Apple Exec2: "Maybe usurping projects is not a good idea?"
There is a company called AEM That makes somethign called the EMS (Engine Management System) It's a $2000 drop-in ECU. With completel computer control and datalogging. A geeks dream!
The thing is, t doesn't take much to control a car. Some PWM inputs and outputs, some flash, some ROM. Add some DACs and you have all the hardware you need. The EMS uses a 16/32 hybrid microcontroller. Nothing much. You basically have to adjust the PWN for fuel on throttle position and intake air volume, and throw a spark when needed. The rest is just window/heater controls.
The EMS also has fly-by-wire throttle control, automated launch, and everything imaginable.
I'm surprised there's not an opensource project already.
It'd be great not having to double-cache everything.
While 2.6 does have a better queueing algorithm, that says nothing about cahche replacements policy. At some point the decisions of the policy will be causing blocks to be read or written. I'm not satisfied that optimim interaction has been acheived. I'm sure someone could devise a system that auto tunes the two, but for now an ioctl() will do just fine!
Incedentally, caching streaming media should be done in a MRU way, since the data will always change. Maybe we have some synergy with network level audio?
One of the big problems with databases on Linux is that the system only does LRU replacement. This is horrid for databases that do sequential scans, because you are contunualyl replaceing what you just loaded a few megs ago. It is actually better to replace waht you just read, since you're done with it, and keep the other prior stuff in memory and then come back to it.
Use private subnets, with IP Masq. Have them VPN in to your network, but go through a router and make sure that router only explicitly allows traffic from a selected set of MAC addresses to specific IP addresses (or MAC). Yeah, the maintaince will suckm but it'll only let people on through the boxes you know you have out there.
Then it's a matter of authentication security. Make sure the VPN passwords are unique and not the same as the application passowrds, so you can revoke a compromised (stolen) laptop without revoking the user's application privilages. True you'll have to add the new system where they originate from.
If you're using a database, don't have a generic web-account. Make the user app tie into the database's GRANT security.
Don't keep your database on the web host.
By then, you can reasonably assert that only a few authorised machines can get on the network; authorised users can run the app, and those users are contstrained to theit tables.
Back in college (in the 95/98 days) we had o ne homophobe in your suite. Imagine his disgust when he found the gay theme on his computer.... Imagine his gisdust after changing it back and rebooting to fond that it had -re-installed itself!
Another ding I did, since we were all procifient in dos, was to replace his command.com with my own that would show him an empty harddrive - no dirs, files, and all his drive space was free!
Get in with your neighbors and set up a WLAN. Load balance between your neighbors. I think a good many people under-use broadband, and the few who over-use it can, if averaged in with the rest, go unnoticed.
This ofcourse only works if you haven't already begun selling them broadband internet for $20/mo;-)
On top of that, it is important to note that Comcast has laucnhed a 3x service-- 3x the speed for 2x a month... No, it has NOTHING to do wit that, no sir!!!
Uh oh, Terminator andriods will rule the earth!
on
Grid Processing
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Anyone remember from T2 what the CPU looked like? It was a 3 dimentional grid of CPUs...
If they go hard enough, they tear through tissue, and keep much of their energy. Also to consider is deformation of the pellets. All this is tied together. Then there is exiting to consider. If it leaves the body, not all enery was imparted to the body.
I can come close to punching someone 5 feet through the air. I'm sure martial arts experts can come alot closer to 5 meters (3-4 maybe?)
Still I think the best explanation they the person shooting the gun is fine is that they are using blanks, wich just move air and go boom. (I guess that's redundant...) So without actual kick, the actor stands there casually.
You are parially right and wrong. When shooting a gun, you must have proper positioning (bone aligment) that will transmit the force into the ground. This is also very key in martial arts. Being able to transfer engery to and from the ground is the notion a good stance. 90% of marial arts is alignment, the other 10% is motion. Without stance work, you are weak.
The argument I am making here is that the victim is not in proper stance to absorb the blast, and is knocked back. I'll admit flying back through the air is ludicrios, but submling back 5 feet is plausible. Then from that plauability, it is only small atistic license to make the guy leave his feet for the duration of the stumble.
If you don't believe me, hold a shotgun to the center of your chest and shoot, you will be knocked back.
Other things to consider: the kick from the gun is short and over in fractions of a second. The absorbtion of energy by the targe takes longer, because the "shot" (pellets) have to decelerate into tissue, so you wind up with a mroe steady force.
Law of conservation of mass and energy. Apearently, they can conjure up matter from no where. If they repected that law, then 99% of movies are out the window.
Slashdot Mirror
For any black-mail (male?) scheme always be prepared to back it up with several remote sites with cron scripts to email the content to everyone (buy a spam CD) unless you take actions daily/weekly/etc. to prevent the mail from sending. This is so that if you get taken into custody, the whole thing is blown open, since you're fucked anyway!
Um, maybe they air different outcomes for each country, but USA usually trounces everyone, at least in the episodes I see.
Anyone care to back me up?
No, I'm not talking about pastry design, I'm talking about real engineering.
I worked for a Danish company for 2 years in the R&D Dept. I learned that Danish engeineering is done differently than in America. They are very thourough, and documentation and research will be complete before they ever begin making the tangible object.
That is a sharp contrast from how things are done here. They call us 'cowboys' because we'll go off and come back with it either done, or a working (tho sometimes failed) proof of concept. Then we document what worked best. It is this cavalier attitude that I think always gets us winning Junk Yard Wars against the Europeans.
The results are this: This Danish company I worked for posted small but constant growth, making a profit ever year in the last 90 except the first year the company was founded. Here, in America, our growth is much more irratic. We (U.S.) will get the product to market, quicker, but we'll also replace it quicker.
That bouncing a spacecraft is just a bad idea? We're waht - one for 3? The old viking probes had a much better track record!
But you missed my main point - I was talking historically. In the past 2 years, yes, Linux distros have pulled ahead in terms of pre-packaged goodies.
We need to recognise why windows programmers write for end-users and unix programmers write for developers, and it is simple: Only developers are using unix.
Unix people, after 20 years, are still adding utility to their OS. Windows people get a complete system out of the box. Windows people never had to code up their own OS, it was provided by Microsoft. If it wasn't provided by microsoft though, it was provided as an end-product by someone else (Trumpet Winsock). Adding to non-existent OS self-improvement time was the fact that there were only ever 2 windows "systems" for Windows: Program manager and later, Explorer. No one had to reinvent the wheel for KDE, GNOME, and whatever DE the user might be running. Therefore, the windows coding efforts were more focused.
I've said it time and time again - we need to drop GNOME or KDE (preferably keeping KDE, IMHO) and just run with that. 2x the developers can do 4x as much work if they aren't duplicating each others work.
I remember TFC and how horrid it was. The physics between the two engines made Q:TF die hards complain constantly. Hardly anything worked the same, though it all worked. The matchups between classes turned out impossible to duplicate, and forced re-learning (for those that did) of how to play the game.
Lets not forget that Quake, driven by TF also started the Clan Wars. Now you can't go anywhere without having some kind of Clan for a multiplayer game.
I seem to remember playing TF on Quake 1's engine. As a matter of fact, me and my college buddies worked with the people making TF. We exerimented on our own selves (being in a college dorm, we had a perfect environment) trying out weapns like the gib gun, and *I* even prototypes the sniper dot. It was an 'x' originally.
So there might be a TF for HL, but TF is and always shall be a Quake mod. After all, Quake was the first engine that was open to modding by average Joe.
The free search engine that listed me for free is no longer paying off! Waaaaaa! Waaaaaa!
I for one welcome the change. Too many times have 20 of the top 30 links taken you two one site, but camafloged to google somehow as to look seperate. I experieced this painfully while looking for ringtones for my cellphone.
Google is first and foremost a search engine, not a marketing tool. Those who thought otherwise are finding out they are sorely mistaken.
The Definitive Guide to the .NET Compact Framework (Paperback)
by Roof, I.
18% off Amazon
Amazon Price: $41.99
(as of 11/17/2003 01:13 Mountain Time, excludes shipping)
List Price: $59.99
Price: $34.49
You Save: $25.50 (42%)
Edition: Paperback
Catalog #: 339468
Quantity:
Availability
In stock. Usually leaves our warehouse within 2-3 business days. Warehouse replenishment issues may stretch that period to 7 business days on some items. If you choose expedited shipping for your order, we will notify you if your order does not leave our warehouse within 3 business days.
Special Media Shipping
We only charge $1.40 for shipping a single media item, $2.80 for two media items, $2.95 for three or more media items. Continental US only.
Technology is supposed to enable us to do more. As long as it does that, tech is a success. The hardware companies wil convince you that that means more Mhz and more disk.
In reality though, if you can put to use that PIII-700 to do something productive, then it is a success.
For an analogy consider a Cray vs a TRS-80. A Cray running a bubble sort will be beaten by a TRS-80 running QuickSort for just a few thousand elements. The same is true for tech in general. Work smart, not hard.
There are times where raw Mhz are needed, these are real-time requirements or due to lag creating some kind of penalty (if it takes 20 mins to get an answwr back, you'll be more selective in your questions, where as if it took milli-senconds, you'd take time to ask more creative questions - this was the prupoe behind Beowolf clusters)
And again, we see work smart not hard. Put those PIII-700 to work as a cluster, working smart, not hard.
Better processes are key. Brute force allows you to compensate for lack of a good process, but you pay a premium.
I see all too often PDAs being used instead of note pads. PDAs many be status simbles and nifty, but I can put notes in and read notes back off a pad of paper faster than the fastest PDA users.
If Apple's employees want to aviod usurping of personal projects, they can switch to KDE and give their time and contributions to that community. Then Apple's usurping won't happen, and if people actually do switch, it'll make apple thing twice before doing it again...
Apple Exec1: "Every time we usurp a project, we send more people to help out KDE"
Apple Exec2: "Maybe usurping projects is not a good idea?"
Or maybe the employee was 'fairly' compensated?
Linux-BAsed Automotive CPU
There is a company called AEM That makes somethign called the EMS (Engine Management System)
It's a $2000 drop-in ECU. With completel computer control and datalogging. A geeks dream!
The thing is, t doesn't take much to control a car. Some PWM inputs and outputs, some flash, some ROM. Add some DACs and you have all the hardware you need. The EMS uses a 16/32 hybrid microcontroller. Nothing much. You basically have to adjust the PWN for fuel on throttle position and intake air volume, and throw a spark when needed. The rest is just window/heater controls.
The EMS also has fly-by-wire throttle control, automated launch, and everything imaginable.
I'm surprised there's not an opensource project already.
It'd be great not having to double-cache everything.
While 2.6 does have a better queueing algorithm, that says nothing about cahche replacements policy. At some point the decisions of the policy will be causing blocks to be read or written. I'm not satisfied that optimim interaction has been acheived. I'm sure someone could devise a system that auto tunes the two, but for now an ioctl() will do just fine!
Incedentally, caching streaming media should be done in a MRU way, since the data will always change. Maybe we have some synergy with network level audio?
One of the big problems with databases on Linux is that the system only does LRU replacement. This is horrid for databases that do sequential scans, because you are contunualyl replaceing what you just loaded a few megs ago. It is actually better to replace waht you just read, since you're done with it, and keep the other prior stuff in memory and then come back to it.
Use private subnets, with IP Masq. Have them VPN in to your network, but go through a router and make sure that router only explicitly allows traffic from a selected set of MAC addresses to specific IP addresses (or MAC). Yeah, the maintaince will suckm but it'll only let people on through the boxes you know you have out there.
Then it's a matter of authentication security. Make sure the VPN passwords are unique and not the same as the application passowrds, so you can revoke a compromised (stolen) laptop without revoking the user's application privilages. True you'll have to add the new system where they originate from.
If you're using a database, don't have a generic web-account. Make the user app tie into the database's GRANT security.
Don't keep your database on the web host.
By then, you can reasonably assert that only a few authorised machines can get on the network; authorised users can run the app, and those users are contstrained to theit tables.
Back in college (in the 95/98 days) we had o ne homophobe in your suite. Imagine his disgust when he found the gay theme on his computer.... Imagine his gisdust after changing it back and rebooting to fond that it had -re-installed itself!
Another ding I did, since we were all procifient in dos, was to replace his command.com with my own that would show him an empty harddrive - no dirs, files, and all his drive space was free!
Get in with your neighbors and set up a WLAN. Load balance between your neighbors. I think a good many people under-use broadband, and the few who over-use it can, if averaged in with the rest, go unnoticed.
;-)
This ofcourse only works if you haven't already begun selling them broadband internet for $20/mo
On top of that, it is important to note that Comcast has laucnhed a 3x service-- 3x the speed for 2x a month... No, it has NOTHING to do wit that, no sir!!!
Anyone remember from T2 what the CPU looked like? It was a 3 dimentional grid of CPUs...
Don't say I didn't warn you!
Older versions can do the same with Visual Assist by Whole Tomato Software
Discalimer: I am only a satisfie user, and to now work for them or sell it in any way.
The momentum thing is not wrong, but not right.
If they go hard enough, they tear through tissue, and keep much of their energy. Also to consider is deformation of the pellets. All this is tied together. Then there is exiting to consider. If it leaves the body, not all enery was imparted to the body.
I can come close to punching someone 5 feet through the air. I'm sure martial arts experts can come alot closer to 5 meters (3-4 maybe?)
Still I think the best explanation they the person shooting the gun is fine is that they are using blanks, wich just move air and go boom. (I guess that's redundant...) So without actual kick, the actor stands there casually.
You are parially right and wrong.
When shooting a gun, you must have proper positioning (bone aligment) that will transmit the force into the ground. This is also very key in martial arts. Being able to transfer engery to and from the ground is the notion a good stance. 90% of marial arts is alignment, the other 10% is motion. Without stance work, you are weak.
The argument I am making here is that the victim is not in proper stance to absorb the blast, and is knocked back. I'll admit flying back through the air is ludicrios, but submling back 5 feet is plausible. Then from that plauability, it is only small atistic license to make the guy leave his feet for the duration of the stumble.
If you don't believe me, hold a shotgun to the center of your chest and shoot, you will be knocked back.
Other things to consider: the kick from the gun is short and over in fractions of a second. The absorbtion of energy by the targe takes longer, because the "shot" (pellets) have to decelerate into tissue, so you wind up with a mroe steady force.
(and that is not to mention the pain!)
What about the out-sise the deathstar shots on the attack run witht h X wing engine whining and the tie-fighters whailing?
Law of conservation of mass and energy. Apearently, they can conjure up matter from no where. If they repected that law, then 99% of movies are out the window.