Four days ago I took LH444 from Frankfurt am Main to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and I was surprised to see this, uh- system in person.
The fingerprint scanners were pretty snazzy, but the cameras at each officer's desk looked like cheap spherical plastic webcams ziptied to even cheaper-looking lectern microphone holders.
As a US citizen and ostensible taxpayer;) I'm actually somewhat impressed they considered off-the-shelf consumer products. OTOH, I don't feel any safer, but a more-expensive camera would have no effect on that feeling.
Has anyone else seen these? I'm curious whether these cheap cams are strictly an ATL thing - which would be strange considering it's the biggest airport in the country - or if this is a standard observed at the other ports of entry.
(
Nicht vergessen: photography and use of cellphones by passengers is prohibited in these areas. I got excoriated for just looking at my handy in line.)
That sucks. Many of the unsolicited solicitations I get are from MBNA, my credit card company. I get calls every once in a while asking if I want to do a balance transfer, or sign up for their platinum card, etc.
So if this new law passes, MBNA and other companies I already do business with will be the only ones who can call me with their "special offers?"
Today I get my bill from them every month festooned with ads for mailing address return label stickers, wind-up flashlights, "world's smallest" FM radios, etc.
Tomorrow they'll be the only ones who can call me at home to solicit the things telemarketers always have.
Wouldn't it be more effective if those businesses you already do business with are limited in their solicitations to hawking a range of products related to their industry only?
jes5199 said:
> even the sounds effects are a kludge
> (it just watches the text output for
> "You hear a X")
Admittedly, yes. E.G., when the string
Your cat eats a giant rat corpse.
is printed, Falcon's Eye sees "cat" in the output and triggers the meow sound.
And perhaps to underscore how unpolished it is...
You trigger a fire trap. You're on fire! Your mithril cloak catches flame and burns.
also triggers the meow sound. Perhaps the developer could grep for "cat " (w/ tailing whitespace) to trigger the sound instead?;)
I've been hooked on roguelikes ever since playing Rogue on the Atari ST. Yeah, it's kludgey. Even still, Falcon's Eye is my favorite roguelike. The graphics aren't great, but anything would deliver better suspension of disbelief than...
...... ....@. .>....
Related aside: I heard a rogue-like came out for the Playstation a few years ago. Anyone seen it?
As an aside, the alcoholic 67-year old survivor of The Andromeda Strain had a penchant for strained Sterno - causing the acidosis that spared him from the (fictional) pestilence.
Crighton's character explained the process of deriving potable hooch from the magenta glob, and referred to the product as 'squeeze.'
Here's a recipe I found via a cursory googling:
Sterno [is] warmed over a fire of newspapers preparatory to squeezing it through a sock to make a drink called "Pink Lady."
EE majors: could the bar-monkeys control a sock with a solenoid, or something?
I couldn't believe what you said about SearchKing claiming to be a 501(c)(3), but a cursory mousing revealed this rider at the bottom of their donation form:
NOTICE.
THIS IS NOT A SALE. YOU ARE MAKING A $20 DONATION TO SEARCHKING, INC. WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE MONEY IS TO BE USED TO PAY LEGAL EXPENSES IN A LAWSUIT WITH GOOGLE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR $20 DONATION, WE WILL SEND YOU A PASSWORD THAT WILL ALLOW YOU ACCESS TO ALL AREAS OF THIS WEBSITE.
THIS IS NOT A SALE. THERE IS NO REFUND OR CHARGEBACKS. BY FILLING OUT THIS FORM AND TYPING IN YOUR NAME AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR CHECK OR CREDIT CARD, YOU ARE AGREEING THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS NOT A SALE BUT RATHER A DONATION THAT IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE.
Sorry to reply to my own comment on this, but I (now) see this has been covered a bit already...
Crack a "Numbers" Station
Posted by Hemos
on Sat 27 May 01:35PM
from the cool-insight dept. boss soul writes: "On Friday, NPR did an excellent story
on those infamous 'Numbers Stations' that broadcast on shortwave radio. Since the 1950s,
these stations have been broadcasting nothing but an unidentified human voice reading a string of
numbers. Though most people believe that these broadcasts are used by intelligence agencies to
communicate with their agents abroad, there has never been any way to confirm this... until now!
The makers of "The Conet Project" (a four-CD set of numbers-station recordings) have thrown down the proverbial gauntlet and announced a
series of "cryptographic
challenges" -- the object of which is to crack an actual numbers station
broadcast. Dust off your Crypto caps, everyone -- I want to see a slashdotter win this one! "
Atencion: Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero
on
PCI Shortwave Receiver
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This could be a great opportunity to further explore the fascinating world of so-called numbers stations; espionnage TX's from shadowy intelligence organizations (as if there were any other kind) all around the globe- encrypted with one-time pads and allowing agents to receive orders with nothing more than a modified walkman.
An excerpt from NPR's Lost & Found Sound: "Eventually, if listeners dig around [the shortwave spectrum] long enough, they'll tune across voices reciting endless strings of numbers. These broadcasts have been heard for at least 40 years. The signals are powerful, but they contain no information about location of the transmitter or the intended audience. Most listeners linger for a short time, then tune away, utterly baffled."
When I discovered these myself, I found them bizarre, chilling- and intriguing. In order to get some background, I ordered a 4-CD set from Irdial recordings in the UK called The Conet Project... highly reccomended.
What is perhaps the most surprising is that the number of numbers stations boradcasting on the shortwave band are only increasing- variously attributed to the increasing sophistication of organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist/separatist organizations and an increasingly fractious global intelligence community.
Do follow the links above if this intrigues you in the slightest- and just try going back to your insular world-view afterwards; "the enemy" is out there, and he's hiding right out in the open.
There's a lot of chocolate cities around;
We've got Newark, we've got Gary
Somebody told me we got L.A.
And we're working on Atlanta But you're the capital, CC
In a written statement, CAPS project lead Dr. Alan Davros staked his personal assurance that CAPS pods are capable "only of routine extermination," given their advanced Thal technology.
- Edward Johnson; Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862- 9200
| if you want to enter Manhattan, you'll | have to pay a toll of $5
No, only 37.5% of the bridges into Manhattan charge a toll. The rest are free. I used to drive to work in Manhattan from Brooklyn every day for no toll at all- and I had four local bridges to choose from.
I've used the rudimentary predecessor to tabbed browsing (Open Link in New Window...) for a while, and I loved that it helps me preserve my stream-of-consciousness while scanning the news.
I'd hoped tabbed browsing would spare me the memory overhead of having all those windows open, but it doesn't have a crucial feature; hotkey cycling through tabs.
After I open a bunch of interesting stories in new windows on Slashdot, for example, I can Ctrl-Tab between windows according to the whims of my rampant ADD.
Alt-Tab between programs, Ctrl-Tab between documents seems to be a pretty accepted convention in the Win32 environment.
Am I missing an undocumented keyboard shortcut here?
> Flash itself is not to blame for usability
> problems on websites - check out
> http://www.homestarrunner.com
> and tell me that site isn't easy to navigate.:)
Ok- That site isn't easy to navigate.
All I saw was
Black background
Big white box w/ puzzle icon, "Click here to get the plugin"
Window title: "Everybody! Everybody! - Mozilla {build id: 2002031104}"
Without any sort of a non-flash navigation (or even an intuitive page title), the user has...
...or how about Stereolab's highly-inappropriate song One Small Step playing in a Volvo ad?
As a silver car spins slowly the lyrics clearly heard:
From the sky would fall an incessant rain of bombs
We had nowhere to go but retreat underground
Our continent...waved a load of mines
Growing our food was a risk at any time
The sudden brutality we had to confront
Forced us many years to a life into the ground
When I came out after having hidden for so long under
At least when VW used Stereolab's Parsec in their New Beetle ad they had the presence of mind to select a song by the leftist group that didn't have any lyrics at all.
'Course, the ultimate folly in recent memory was GM buying the rights to a a Chumbawumba (née the ultra-Marxist Crass) song for their car ad... the proceeds of which were used to lobby against GM. Ha!
The Pink Lady is a harsh mistress
on
Self-Heating Can
·
· Score: 1
Sterno [is] warmed over a fire of newspapers preparatory to squeezing it through a sock to make a drink called "Pink Lady."
As an aside, the alcoholic 67-year old survivor of The Andromeda Strain had a penchant for strained Sterno - causing the acidosis that spared him from the (fictional) pestilence.
Crighton's character explained the process of deriving potable hooch from the magenta glob, and referred to the product as 'squeeze.'
When I woked for a certain hardware manufacturer a few years back, we sort of ad-hoc'd new box names- of course the inevitable growing pains and conflicts arose so we came up with the following conventions for different business units:
Rodents:
NUTRIA.DOMAIN.COM
JERBOA.DOMAIN.COM
VOLE.DOMAIN.COM
Lamentably, we ran out of rodents; using so many we almost broke the convention by moving to marsupials. Also, certain uptight folks we worked with also took umbrage to their machine being the RAT, BEAVER or (heaven forbid) GERBIL. Which gave rise to...
Invertebrate Meiofauna:
OLIGOCHAETA.DOMAIN.COM
NEMATODA.DOMAIN.COM
KINORHYNCHA.DOMAIN.COM
We could have grown forever with this convention, it's just that only one guy could come up with new ones. So we settled on...
Cheese:
PECORINO.DOMAIN.COM
GORGONZOLA.DOMAIN.COM
CASUMARZU.DOMAIN.COM
But the best convention came from a crappy.com I worked for a few years ago:
Remote Lounge on Bowery in Manhattan is webcammed to the hilt. Went there the day after it opened with some work friends and had a blast.
There are easily 200 or more cameras in here, most are controllable by patrons from their tabletop consoles. You can even save as many as you like for later consideration on their website.
Ever since I heard about the firewire-equipped Shuttle FV24 motherboard I've been fiending to make a DIY pseudo-laptop to fit inside a rugged, waterproof, 10 5/8" L x 9 11/16" W x 6 7/8" D Pelican #1300 case (pic).
We're talking lunchbox form factor!
I say 'pseudo' laptop because I don't want to mess with batteries when pretty much all the places I'd care to use a laptop there are already electrical outlets nearby. Plus how cool would it be with an old vacuum cleaner's retractable powercord?
There are plenty of little optical mice and the Happy Hacker would certainly be adequate... but I kept getting hung up on what I have heard is the most expensive part of a laptop- the display.
Most of the 4"-8" discrete LCD modules I can find (such as these) only have standard "Yellow RCA" composite video-in.
Anyone know where small LCD modules with VGA connectors can be found?
I remember being boggled as a kid seeing commercials for another weird MTV crossover product: The MTV LeRun Sit-Down Skate Bike
Does anyone else remember this POS from the mid-80's? It was a super-deformed hybrid unicycle/skateboard. You heard me. Slather it with 'radical' pastel colors and copious Mtv branding and you've got yourself an MTV LeRun.
I tried googling/ebaying the names and the best I could find was the original Malaysian manufacturer (who has since moved on to different products) and this wistful page by some kid who won one back in '89.
And for the record, I lost touch with MTV right around the time they stopped syndicating Monty Python reruns and started developing their own abhorrent programming to replace their purported raison dêtre of music videos.
Slashdot Mirror
Four days ago I took LH444 from Frankfurt am Main to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and I was surprised to see this, uh- system in person.
The fingerprint scanners were pretty snazzy, but the cameras at each officer's desk looked like cheap spherical plastic webcams ziptied to even cheaper-looking lectern microphone holders.
As a US citizen and ostensible taxpayer ;) I'm actually somewhat impressed they considered off-the-shelf consumer products. OTOH, I don't feel any safer, but a more-expensive camera would have no effect on that feeling.
Has anyone else seen these? I'm curious whether these cheap cams are strictly an ATL thing - which would be strange considering it's the biggest airport in the country - or if this is a standard observed at the other ports of entry.
/F356 /B83 /A972 /F83 /H25 /N729 /F387 /G298 /O37 /X235 /Q734 /K822 /L262 /B23 /B383 /L947 /M84 /M867 /B86 /K89 /O958 /B88 /L67 /P213 /N297 /B957 /W482 /I55 /K387 /P987 /R480 /Y98 /O092 /C381 /F36 /B83 /A972 /F863 /H235 /N729 /F387 /THE /OWLS /ARE /NOT /WHAT /THEY /SEEM /O03 /X235 /Q734 /K822 /L22 /B23 /B383 /L947 /M84 /M867 /B586 /K389 /O98 /B808 /L867 /P13 /N297 /B957 /W482 /I55 /K387 /P987 /R80 /Y98 /O02 /C381 /F356 /COOPER /COOPER /COOPER /B83 /A972 /H25 /N729 /F387 /G298 /O37 /X235 /Q734 /X24 /K822 /L262 /B33 /L947 /M284 /M867 /B586 /K389 /O198 /N37 /B88 /L867
/X243
/N37
/Z03
/G298
/X243
/N37
/Z03
/F83
/B23
Roger & Me's Law:
You get way more chicks being Roger Moore as opposed to Michael Moore.
Here's just the link to the .mov file:1 a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c02 589f25382f668c9329e0375e8177dec6493ff77de/lxg_480. mov
http://a772.g.akamai.net/5/772/51/f31fd0bc5c0b1d/
So if this new law passes, MBNA and other companies I already do business with will be the only ones who can call me with their "special offers?"
Today I get my bill from them every month festooned with ads for mailing address return label stickers, wind-up flashlights, "world's smallest" FM radios, etc.
Tomorrow they'll be the only ones who can call me at home to solicit the things telemarketers always have.
Wouldn't it be more effective if those businesses you already do business with are limited in their solicitations to hawking a range of products related to their industry only?
Even the most callypygic individuals will succumb to steatopygia in time.
> even the sounds effects are a kludge
> (it just watches the text output for
> "You hear a X")
Admittedly, yes. E.G., when the string
is printed, Falcon's Eye sees "cat" in the output and triggers the meow sound.And perhaps to underscore how unpolished it is...
also triggers the meow sound. Perhaps the developer could grep for "cat " (w/ tailing whitespace) to trigger the sound instead?I've been hooked on roguelikes ever since playing Rogue on the Atari ST. Yeah, it's kludgey. Even still, Falcon's Eye is my favorite roguelike. The graphics aren't great, but anything would deliver better suspension of disbelief than...
Related aside: I heard a rogue-like came out for the Playstation a few years ago. Anyone seen it?
Crighton's character explained the process of deriving potable hooch from the magenta glob, and referred to the product as 'squeeze.'
Here's a recipe I found via a cursory googling:
EE majors: could the bar-monkeys control a sock with a solenoid, or something?
NOTICE.
THIS IS NOT A SALE. YOU ARE MAKING A $20 DONATION TO SEARCHKING, INC. WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE MONEY IS TO BE USED TO PAY LEGAL EXPENSES IN A LAWSUIT WITH GOOGLE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR $20 DONATION, WE WILL SEND YOU A PASSWORD THAT WILL ALLOW YOU ACCESS TO ALL AREAS OF THIS WEBSITE.
THIS IS NOT A SALE. THERE IS NO REFUND OR CHARGEBACKS. BY FILLING OUT THIS FORM AND TYPING IN YOUR NAME AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR CHECK OR CREDIT CARD, YOU ARE AGREEING THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS NOT A SALE BUT RATHER A DONATION THAT IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE.
(emphasis mine)
Crack a "Numbers" Station ... until now!
The makers of "The Conet Project" (a four-CD set of numbers-station recordings) have thrown down the proverbial gauntlet and announced a
series of "cryptographic
challenges" -- the object of which is to crack an actual numbers station
broadcast. Dust off your Crypto caps, everyone -- I want to see a slashdotter win this one! "
Posted by Hemos on Sat 27 May 01:35PM
from the cool-insight dept.
boss soul writes: "On Friday, NPR did an excellent story on those infamous 'Numbers Stations' that broadcast on shortwave radio. Since the 1950s, these stations have been broadcasting nothing but an unidentified human voice reading a string of numbers. Though most people believe that these broadcasts are used by intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents abroad, there has never been any way to confirm this
An excerpt from NPR's Lost & Found Sound:
"Eventually, if listeners dig around [the shortwave spectrum] long enough, they'll tune across voices reciting endless strings of numbers. These broadcasts have been heard for at least 40 years. The signals are powerful, but they contain no information about location of the transmitter or the intended audience. Most listeners linger for a short time, then tune away, utterly baffled."
When I discovered these myself, I found them bizarre, chilling- and intriguing. In order to get some background, I ordered a 4-CD set from Irdial recordings in the UK called The Conet Project... highly reccomended.
What is perhaps the most surprising is that the number of numbers stations boradcasting on the shortwave band are only increasing- variously attributed to the increasing sophistication of organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist/separatist organizations and an increasingly fractious global intelligence community.
Do follow the links above if this intrigues you in the slightest- and just try going back to your insular world-view afterwards; "the enemy" is out there, and he's hiding right out in the open.
There's a lot of chocolate cities around;
We've got Newark, we've got Gary
Somebody told me we got L.A.
And we're working on Atlanta
But you're the capital, CC
Gainin' on ya!
SKARO - The familiarity of the moon laser pods seen in recent coverage of the proposed NASA Comet/Asteroid Protection System is "merely a coincidence," say Langley Research Center officials.
In a written statement, CAPS project lead Dr. Alan Davros staked his personal assurance that CAPS pods are capable "only of routine extermination," given their advanced Thal technology.
- Edward Johnson; Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862- 9200
| have to pay a toll of $5
No, only 37.5% of the bridges into Manhattan charge a toll. The rest are free. I used to drive to work in Manhattan from Brooklyn every day for no toll at all- and I had four local bridges to choose from.
Exhibit one:
New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (toll) Bridges & Tunnels map
Exhibit two:
Transportation Alternatives' 5-borough bridge map
There are lots of ways into Manhattan without paying - you just have to navigate a little.
| my family and kids come before
| anybody else.
Yes; in accordance with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
| The other thing that's irritating it that they
| rate these things in "VA" (watts?), when watt-
| hours would be a more useful to know.
APC has published a white paper that explains the differences between Watts and Volt-Amps.
Further, it explains why VA are really more relevant when figuring out which UPS would look good on you.
Hey, it's-a me! Marshall Applewhite! Castrate-a yourself for a spot on-a Hale-Bopp.
I've used the rudimentary predecessor to tabbed browsing (Open Link in New Window...) for a while, and I loved that it helps me preserve my stream-of-consciousness while scanning the news.
I'd hoped tabbed browsing would spare me the memory overhead of having all those windows open, but it doesn't have a crucial feature; hotkey cycling through tabs.
After I open a bunch of interesting stories in new windows on Slashdot, for example, I can Ctrl-Tab between windows according to the whims of my rampant ADD.
Alt-Tab between programs, Ctrl-Tab between documents seems to be a pretty accepted convention in the Win32 environment.
Am I missing an undocumented keyboard shortcut here?
> problems on websites - check out
> http://www.homestarrunner.com
> and tell me that site isn't easy to navigate.
Ok- That site isn't easy to navigate.
All I saw was
Without any sort of a non-flash navigation (or even an intuitive page title), the user has...
As a silver car spins slowly the lyrics clearly heard:
At least when VW used Stereolab's Parsec in their New Beetle ad they had the presence of mind to select a song by the leftist group that didn't have any lyrics at all.
'Course, the ultimate folly in recent memory was GM buying the rights to a a Chumbawumba (née the ultra-Marxist Crass) song for their car ad... the proceeds of which were used to lobby against GM. Ha!
As an aside, the alcoholic 67-year old survivor of The Andromeda Strain had a penchant for strained Sterno - causing the acidosis that spared him from the (fictional) pestilence.
Crighton's character explained the process of deriving potable hooch from the magenta glob, and referred to the product as 'squeeze.'
Aww!
Rodents:
Lamentably, we ran out of rodents; using so many we almost broke the convention by moving to marsupials. Also, certain uptight folks we worked with also took umbrage to their machine being the RAT, BEAVER or (heaven forbid) GERBIL. Which gave rise to...
Invertebrate Meiofauna:
We could have grown forever with this convention, it's just that only one guy could come up with new ones. So we settled on...
Cheese:
But the best convention came from a crappy .com I worked for a few years ago:
Storied scientists:
There are easily 200 or more cameras in here, most are controllable by patrons from their tabletop consoles. You can even save as many as you like for later consideration on their website.
But yeah, not the best place to commit adultery.
We're talking lunchbox form factor!
I say 'pseudo' laptop because I don't want to mess with batteries when pretty much all the places I'd care to use a laptop there are already electrical outlets nearby. Plus how cool would it be with an old vacuum cleaner's retractable powercord?
There are plenty of little optical mice and the Happy Hacker would certainly be adequate... but I kept getting hung up on what I have heard is the most expensive part of a laptop- the display.
Most of the 4"-8" discrete LCD modules I can find (such as these) only have standard "Yellow RCA" composite video-in.
Anyone know where small LCD modules with VGA connectors can be found?
Does anyone else remember this POS from the mid-80's? It was a super-deformed hybrid unicycle/skateboard. You heard me. Slather it with 'radical' pastel colors and copious Mtv branding and you've got yourself an MTV LeRun.
I tried googling/ebaying the names and the best I could find was the original Malaysian manufacturer (who has since moved on to different products) and this wistful page by some kid who won one back in '89.
And for the record, I lost touch with MTV right around the time they stopped syndicating Monty Python reruns and started developing their own abhorrent programming to replace their purported raison dêtre of music videos.