I agree. There's a lot of high and mighty programmers here who are calling this guy "incompetent", but I'd be shocked if we haven't all accidentally sent debug code to production at some point or another.
It's either an honest mistake, or a REALLY poor hack attempt. Unless I've given further information, I'm inclined to think it was an honest mistake.
I, like I'm sure many other average-joe consumers, have been just WAITING for the decision to be made before going out and spending hard earned cash on a high-def player.
Warner Brothers moving to BluRay, along with rumors of Universal and Paramount possibly following suit, have really been a good sign.
I bought PS3 (and Rock Band!) pretty quickly after the news came out.
From the results of the independent study: "The positive work, or returned energy, from the prosthetic blade is close to three times higher than with the human ankle joint in maximum sprinting."
Sounds like "mechanical advantage" to me.
"The fact that he can compete with them is amazing."
This, I agree with. I think it's a testament to science and human ingenuity that people who are missing entire body parts can now compete with world class athletes.
I'll always remember the Christmas where our family got an Apple][+.
It came with two games. Castle Wolfenstein (the original), and RobotWars. Now that I think back, those were probably the best combination of games that could get me "into" computers.
Castle Wolfenstein was a great, visceral game that immediately grabbed my attention. Shooting Nazis, running from SS, and escaping the castle with The Plans! What fun.
RobotWars, however, was almost immediately shelved. However, after a while, I dusted it off and started playing around with it, and even though I was only 6 or 7 at the time, began actually programming my own robot. It was my first programming experience, and a great way to break into it, since it had very visual and rewarding feedback.
"From high-school on, I always found tall, slender, smart girls hot. I married a tall, slender, smart girl. My daughter is now a tall, slender smart girl."... and now you want to marry your daughter? I'm calling the police.
"Any contestants reading this? Maybe you could enlighten the rest of us on why you bothered competing?"
There are two immediate reasons I can think of why anyone would bother competing:
1) To win money. 2) Because they enjoy the challenge of trying to solve an interesting problem.
I'm just a simple coder, and knew that I didn't have any realistic chance of winning money. But I still found it very satisfying to try to come up with a solution and send it in and see how I did. I don't regret spending hours of my own leisure time on the project.
That said, eventually I gave it up. It was very clear that I'm not smart enough to meet the challenge. I had my fun, and it was time to move on to the next project. In summary, I don't think it's safe to assume that everyone is in it for the money.
"Pardon my cynicism, but seems like contests like this are a way to get a lot of ideas and work for very little money."
I call it "brilliant". Netflix probably put some pricetag on what it would pay to get >10% improvement on their system. That pricetag is probably more than $1 million. That means profit!
I pre-ordered the Orange Box just to get early access to Team Fortress 2, and so far I'm loving it.
It's very Counterstrike'ish, but with classes. What's cool, and surprisingly refreshing, is that the classes are actually VERY different, and lead to very different gameplay. The Spy is very sneaky, the Engineer is kind of a "pet" class where you spend most of your time fixing machines rather than in direct combat, the Healer is fun support, etc.
"Trial requires the entry of a registration key provided below. A major credit card is required to validate your account but will not be charged during the trial period. Please note the credit card will be automatically charged at the end of the trial unless cancelled."
I hate stuff like this. It preys on those of us who are too lazy to cancel our free subscriptions when the trial is up.
I'd love to give it a shot, but I just don't trust myself.
Here is the original message posted by Scott Fahlman on 19 September, 1982:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman:-)
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers::-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:-(
The entire thread is reproduced below. We didn't have formal newsgroup threads in those days, but these are all the messages that mention the need for a joke marker or that use the:-) symbol.
This was retrieved from the spice vax oct-82 backup tape by Jeff Baird on September 10, 2002. The period covered is 16 September 1982 through 21 October 1982.
Credits: Here is the account by Mike Jones describing how this ancient post was retrieved. It's an impressive piece of digital archeology, with many contributors. I am grateful to Mike, to Jeff Baird, and to all the others who played a role in this effort. It is great that we can view this bit of Internet history once again.
Many people were involved in this computing archaeology success story. I (Mike Jones) kicked off the effort in February 2002 by looking through some old bboard program (Bags) sources, figuring out the filename that the post would likely be found under (/usr/cmu/lib/bb/general.bb), and asking Howard Wactlar, the former CMU SCS facilities director, whether the file could still be restored. Scott Fahlman provided data narrowing the probable span of time during which the post was made. Howard and Bob Cosgrove, the current director, determined that backup tapes from that period (1981-1983) still existed and asked Jeff Baird of the facilities staff to try to find and restore the post. Dave Livingston of facilities located a working 9- track tape drive and a machine to use it on. Kirk Berthold and Michael Riley in CS operations managed retrieving tapes from off-site archival storage. Grad student Dan Pelleg's FreeBSD machine was used to read the 4.1BSD dump format tapes using a compatibility mode in the restore program. (Later in the effort a NetBSD machine was used to do the same thing.) Dale Moore looked for the post on Tops-20 backup tapes from CMU-20C. But by all accounts, Jeff Baird should get most of the credit for doing the hard work of locating and retrieving the data. He kept asking for more tapes, reading those that could still be read, narrowing the date range, and sticking with it until the post was found. Thanks all for your efforts to restore this part of computing history, and especially, thanks Jeff!
Note: There apparently were a few posts prior to 16 September (not on the tape that was retrieved) that posed various physics questions about what would happen to various objects in an elevator if you cut the cable. Given the quality of the elevators in Wean Hall (then and now), this was more than idle speculation.
Apparently someone had posed the problem of what would happen to a helium balloon in free-fall, someone else had asked about pigeons flying around in the falling elevator, and someone had then asked what would happen if the birds were breathing the helium...
16-Sep-82 11:51 James Wright at CMU-780D Related question
Of equal interest is how the birds cheeping will
sound after they have inhaled the Helium.
=
16-Sep-82 12:09 Neil Swartz at CMU-750R Pigeon type question
This question does not involve pigeons, but is similar:
There is a lit candle in an elevator mounted on a bracket attached to
the middle of one wall (say, 2" from the wall). A drop of mercury
is on the floor. The cable snaps and the elevator falls.
At what point do JT's repeated and unsuccessful lawsuits become illegal themselves? Is it legal to sue over the same issue over and over and over and over and over again...?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. There's a lot of high and mighty programmers here who are calling this guy "incompetent", but I'd be shocked if we haven't all accidentally sent debug code to production at some point or another.
It's either an honest mistake, or a REALLY poor hack attempt. Unless I've given further information, I'm inclined to think it was an honest mistake.
Adamn
I love a good prank as much as the next guy, but sending the SWAT team to an innocent persons house? That's not that cool...
Ars Technica called the PS3 the "most future-proof player".
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html
I appreciate the link...
If I could get those 5 minutes of my life back, that would be awesome.
Those comics were awful.
Who buys movies? Netflix is your friend...
I, like I'm sure many other average-joe consumers, have been just WAITING for the decision to be made before going out and spending hard earned cash on a high-def player.
Warner Brothers moving to BluRay, along with rumors of Universal and Paramount possibly following suit, have really been a good sign.
I bought PS3 (and Rock Band!) pretty quickly after the news came out.
From the results of the independent study: "The positive work, or returned energy, from the prosthetic blade is close to three times higher than with the human ankle joint in maximum sprinting."
Sounds like "mechanical advantage" to me.
"The fact that he can compete with them is amazing."
This, I agree with. I think it's a testament to science and human ingenuity that people who are missing entire body parts can now compete with world class athletes.
I hope so... :(
--John Smith
I'll always remember the Christmas where our family got an Apple][+.
It came with two games. Castle Wolfenstein (the original), and RobotWars. Now that I think back, those were probably the best combination of games that could get me "into" computers.
Castle Wolfenstein was a great, visceral game that immediately grabbed my attention. Shooting Nazis, running from SS, and escaping the castle with The Plans! What fun.
RobotWars, however, was almost immediately shelved. However, after a while, I dusted it off and started playing around with it, and even though I was only 6 or 7 at the time, began actually programming my own robot. It was my first programming experience, and a great way to break into it, since it had very visual and rewarding feedback.
Good memories.
Warner joins Blu-Ray. People think the battle is over. In response, HDDVD prices are slashed. Consumer's flock to HDDVD. Battle continues.
I'm really tired of this.
"From high-school on, I always found tall, slender, smart girls hot. I married a tall, slender, smart girl. My daughter is now a tall, slender smart girl." ... and now you want to marry your daughter? I'm calling the police.
:)
(Kidding! Sorry, I couldn't resist
"Is it legitimate to use source code that's publicly available but doesn't fall under any particular license?"
Yes.
Simple? It actually, it took me quite a while to 5-star that song on Expert, and I consider myself an above-average GH player...
:)
Those three-finger chord changes were a bitch!
"Any contestants reading this? Maybe you could enlighten the rest of us on why you bothered competing?"
There are two immediate reasons I can think of why anyone would bother competing:
1) To win money.
2) Because they enjoy the challenge of trying to solve an interesting problem.
I'm just a simple coder, and knew that I didn't have any realistic chance of winning money. But I still found it very satisfying to try to come up with a solution and send it in and see how I did. I don't regret spending hours of my own leisure time on the project.
That said, eventually I gave it up. It was very clear that I'm not smart enough to meet the challenge. I had my fun, and it was time to move on to the next project. In summary, I don't think it's safe to assume that everyone is in it for the money.
"Pardon my cynicism, but seems like contests like this are a way to get a lot of ideas and work for very little money."
I call it "brilliant". Netflix probably put some pricetag on what it would pay to get >10% improvement on their system. That pricetag is probably more than $1 million. That means profit!
I pre-ordered the Orange Box just to get early access to Team Fortress 2, and so far I'm loving it.
It's very Counterstrike'ish, but with classes. What's cool, and surprisingly refreshing, is that the classes are actually VERY different, and lead to very different gameplay. The Spy is very sneaky, the Engineer is kind of a "pet" class where you spend most of your time fixing machines rather than in direct combat, the Healer is fun support, etc.
Good times.
"Trial requires the entry of a registration key provided below. A major credit card is required to validate your account but will not be charged during the trial period. Please note the credit card will be automatically charged at the end of the trial unless cancelled."
I hate stuff like this. It preys on those of us who are too lazy to cancel our free subscriptions when the trial is up.
I'd love to give it a shot, but I just don't trust myself.
Adman
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm
:-) was proposed
:-)
:-)
:-(
:-) symbol.
---------------
Original Bboard Thread in which
Here is the original message posted by Scott Fahlman on 19 September, 1982:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use
The entire thread is reproduced below. We didn't have formal newsgroup threads in those days, but these are all the messages that mention the need for a joke marker or that use the
This was retrieved from the spice vax oct-82 backup tape by Jeff Baird on September 10, 2002. The period covered is 16 September 1982 through 21 October 1982.
Credits: Here is the account by Mike Jones describing how this ancient post was retrieved. It's an impressive piece of digital archeology, with many contributors. I am grateful to Mike, to Jeff Baird, and to all the others who played a role in this effort. It is great that we can view this bit of Internet history once again.
Many people were involved in this computing archaeology success story. I (Mike Jones) kicked off the effort in February 2002 by looking through some old bboard program (Bags) sources, figuring out the filename that the post would likely be found under (/usr/cmu/lib/bb/general.bb), and asking Howard Wactlar, the former CMU SCS facilities director, whether the file could still be restored. Scott Fahlman provided data narrowing the probable span of time during which the post was made. Howard and Bob Cosgrove, the current director, determined that backup tapes from that period (1981-1983) still existed and asked Jeff Baird of the facilities staff to try to find and restore the post. Dave Livingston of facilities located a working 9- track tape drive and a machine to use it on. Kirk Berthold and Michael Riley in CS operations managed retrieving tapes from off-site archival storage. Grad student Dan Pelleg's FreeBSD machine was used to read the 4.1BSD dump format tapes using a compatibility mode in the restore program. (Later in the effort a NetBSD machine was used to do the same thing.) Dale Moore looked for the post on Tops-20 backup tapes from CMU-20C. But by all accounts, Jeff Baird should get most of the credit for doing the hard work of locating and retrieving the data. He kept asking for more tapes, reading those that could still be read, narrowing the date range, and sticking with it until the post was found. Thanks all for your efforts to restore this part of computing history, and especially, thanks Jeff!
Note: There apparently were a few posts prior to 16 September (not on the tape that was retrieved) that posed various physics questions about what would happen to various objects in an elevator if you cut the cable. Given the quality of the elevators in Wean Hall (then and now), this was more than idle speculation.
Apparently someone had posed the problem of what would happen to a helium balloon in free-fall, someone else had asked about pigeons flying around in the falling elevator, and someone had then asked what would happen if the birds were breathing the helium...
16-Sep-82 11:51 James Wright at CMU-780D Related question
Of equal interest is how the birds cheeping will
sound after they have inhaled the Helium.
=
16-Sep-82 12:09 Neil Swartz at CMU-750R Pigeon type question
This question does not involve pigeons, but is similar:
There is a lit candle in an elevator mounted on a bracket attached to
the middle of one wall (say, 2" from the wall). A drop of mercury
is on the floor. The cable snaps and the elevator falls.
What happens to the candle and the mercury?
That's a good account, and tells a lot more of the story than the YouTube videos do.... Thanks.
Adman
I just wanted say say that this is one of the most well-written, insightful pieces of commentary I've read in a long time.
Thank you.
Adman
"Strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.
How about a nice game of chess?"
Strategically placed cameras is probably a better idea.
But why use a simple solution when there's a perfectly good complicated solution to try?
Didn't they have a couple wacky songs out, like, 20 years ago?
For what it's worth, the SecondLife webpage says it has over 5 million subscribers, with 1.6 million logging in in the last 60 days.
I don't know if that's an excuse for so many news stories, but your estimation of 20k subscribers was grossly inaccurate.
I'd like to see everyones /played values.
Nevermind... that would be too scary....!
At what point do JT's repeated and unsuccessful lawsuits become illegal themselves? Is it legal to sue over the same issue over and over and over and over and over again...?