I had a 19" CRT that would only work on its' side
on
Computer Voodoo?
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· Score: 1
I had a 19" CRT (I can't remember the manufacturer) that started to go bad in a very peculiar fashion. It started by making a high-pitched whining noise regardless of the screen resolution. I was able to fix this problem by propping the screen up on the left (thereby tilting it to the right a couple degrees). This worked...for a time.
Eventually, I came home from work one day and the screen was blank. I tilted the screen even further, and it eventually came on. I couldn't work at a 45-degree angle, though, so I fully laid the screen down on its right side. My Geforce Ti4200 card's drivers did thankfully have a functionality for distorting the desktop screen (nvkeystone I think it was called), so I was able to continue using the monitor, laying on its side, for another four months. The thing did eventually die, and I replaced it with a a 17" NEC LCD which is still serving me (actually my parents) very well.
there aren't any cases of accounts being sold for thousands of dollars out there.
You're right that this isn't the case now, because the market is saturated with accounts for sale. 3-4 years ago, though, it was not unheard-of for an Everquest account with multiple well-equipped high-level characters to go for over $1000.
I don't know exactly how it works, but my youngest brother fucked up enough that he got put on a sort of system where, if he starts acting up, my parents just call the sheriff to come pick him up and take him to the juvenile detention center. Threatens to run away? Locked up. Runs away? Locked up. Threatens suicide? Locked up, solitary, on suicide watch, evaluated by psychiatrist. My brother, since being put into this system, has drastically altered his behavior for the better and the sheriff hasn't actually ever been called. If a kid threatens to kill anyone, that is waaaay illegal and grounds for a longer-term lockup.
If a kid is going to play with fire, (s)he should get burned.
Have you ever been addicted to something before? If you have, you'd know that eventually you reach a point where you want more.
Those who reach that point with MMORPGs might bitch about a lack of content, but I think that's very unlikely. It's more likely that they get another account. Maybe they'll play a different class or race, or maybe they'll play on the same side as their existing character so that they can group with themselves in order to more effectively conquor game content. I've known people that played 2 or even 3 accounts simultaneously just so they could experience a different aspect of the game.
So you're right that they'll be playing all the time, but they'll probably be playing multiple accounts all the time. That would be an interesting statistic; of the 40% who're addicted, how many of them have more than 1 account? more than 2? As far as bandwidth and server time are concerned, I think that those are pretty minimal issues. It isn't like the Blizzard servers are streaming MPEGs or anything, the bandwidth hit is probably less than 10k/sec per client except when changing zones.
A gift would tell the real story here. If tech has beaten out diamonds, then would the average woman prefer a new ipod over a pair of diamond earrings, as a gift? I don't care about how competent women are with technology, I care about whether or not they desire tech more than nicely crystallized carbon.
It wasn't an insult, it was a commentary on your mental agility; a mere observation.
And in The Siege (Part 3), they do say that the mostly-depleted ZPM which they received from earth would last for days, yes, but that was a depleted ZPM, not a fully charged one. Further, we don't know if ZPMs deplete linearly or not. A conventional chemical battery, for instance, will have a higher voltage when it is fresh than when it is at 10% capacity. It's possible that the first 20% of a ZPM's power would last for decades when powering the shields, and then it would deplete more rapidly over time. Sci-fi requires a little suspension of disbelief, that's what the "fi" part is all about.
Perhaps the city was abandoned was because they were cut off from their ZPM supply lines. Also, perhaps the ZPM factory was destroyed to prevent it from falling into wraith hands. Use your imagination.
Turbine-electric is an idea I've been considering for a while now, but as somebody else has pointed out, on a small scale they aren't fuel-efficient so much as weight-efficient. It's true that a lot of powerplants generate their power with gas turbines, but they're usually combined-cycle turbines that pair a gas turbine with a steam turbine which recycles the waste heat. I think that the best hybrid concept out there would actually be a Stirling-Turbine-Electric hybrid. If you aren't familiar with them, Howstuffworks has a great article on how Stirling Engines work. The short explanation is that the Stirling Engine is a sealed body which generates linear motion through the rapid expansion and compression of an internal working gas (like Hydrogen or Helium), due to a heat differential between two sides of the engine.
I want to point out (as you probably already know, but for the benefit of others) that turbines can run on just about any liquid or gaseous fuel. Unleaded, Diesel, Jet Fuel, Ethanol, Propane, Methane, you name it and a turbine will burn it and harness the energy. In the same vein, a Stirling Engine works on a heat differential, so it doesn't matter what you're burning in order to get the hot side of the engine hot, it just matters that it gets hot.
I also want to describe the research and development performed by NASA back in the period from 1978 to 1988 on Stirling Engines for direct-drive automotive use. Under the name "Automotive Stirling Program" the research was initiated due to the 1978 passage of Public Law 95-238, the Automotive Propulsion Research & Development Act, which directed the DOE to develop more efficient automotive engines. The DOE delegated technical project management to NASA's Lewis Research Center. At the inception of the program in 1978, their baseline engine had net efficiency of 31 percent, whereas at the project's culmination, their prototype Mod II engine was at 40 percent efficiency and optimized for fuel economy. One of the major accomplishments of this program was the elimination of Cobalt (a "strategic" element for which the USA relies upon imports for the significant majority of its consumption) from the engine design and the formation of new high-temperature alloys (XF818 and CG27) for the engine components (another alloy, NASAUT-4GA1 has been developed but was not tested due to budget priorities). As of April 1987, over 25,000 test hours had been logged for the various prototype engines (P40, Mod I & Mod II) and over 2000 of those hours had been performed in actual vehicles. The Mod I engine was tested with a variety of different fuels: Diesel, Kerosene, JP4, various alcohols, broad-base petroleum distilled fuels, and simulated shale oil. The results of these fuel tests noted that engine power, efficiency and exhaust emissions were similar among all fuels. The Mod II installation in a Chevy Celebrity had nearly identical acceleration and power characteristics compared to the standard spark-ignition Celebrity, while achieving more than 30 percent greater fuel efficiency. For more information please head to the NASA Technical Reports Server and search for "Automotive Stirling Engine" in order to see some of the reports (Progress reports, materials analysis, alloy development, etc) produced during the course of this program. I highly recommend reading everything available, it is incredibly enlightening stuff.
With all of this said, I think that a turbine-stirling combination could be the most efficient and versatile powerplant available for a fuel-electric hybrid. Utilizing a multi-piston stirling engine equipped with a linear alternator (one per piston) and a turbine engine equipped with a rotary alternator and providing the ultimate in fuel-flexibility, such a hybrid seems to be the best idea in modern automotive engineering. Using back-of-the-envelope calculations, a possible 60% net fuel efficiency is possible, if not even more. A transmiss
The new Nissan Maxima (2007) features a CVT. There's a new commercial on television where a man and a woman are in a car, the man is driving and the woman is the passenger. The woman pulls out her lipstick to put it on as the man is accelerating, and she pauses a moment when she thinks the car is about to shift gears, but nothing happens. The man, noticing this, makes an engine-acceleration noise and then stops, lurches forward in a mocking gesture of "shift shock" and then goes back to making the noise. Then the narrator comes on and says something like "All power, no shift shock, the new Nissan Maxima with CVT."
There's a few different CVT technologies out there, but the major issue with them is efficiency. I don't know what kind of CVT is in the new Maxima, but it is hopefully not a belt system (they lack efficiency due to belt slippage) and is rather a sprocket and chain or even a geared system.
What I'm waiting for is a good IVT (Infinitely Variable Transmission) which allows for continuously variable gear ratios in both directions. I think that is some cool technology, right there.
I have a better solution, and I'm surprised that it's taken so long for nobody else to come up with it. If I weren't so poor and unemployed right now, I'd patent this idea because it's a real winner. Are you ready? Wireless in-ear cranial vibration sensing microphones. The only ambient noise that will be picked up is the sound of you chewing some gum, so don't chew when you're talking to HAL.
The coolest thing about this idea (I think) is that each mic could be coded to a specific user, and then fifty people could all be talking to the same supercomputer at the same time, and the computer could distinguish based on their user ID and not have to distinguish voices at the audio level at all. I've talked about this idea elsewhere in the past, and I'm still pretty surprised that nobody is doing it.
Speech recognition (speech-to-text) is pretty trivial without training as the newest release of Dragon Naturally Speaking, version 9, demonstrates. With training, it can become nearly flawless. Speech-to-text is another area where AT&T's research lab has made some pretty good progress. I'm looking forward to the future of voice-interaction with my computer with a certain optimism, especially if somebody will just (please) do the cranial-mic thing. (Contact me for licensing! My idea! heh.)
the history on the pegasus arc of the sg1 panoply indicates atlantis was both the first and last inabited city in that galaxy, but it has no zpm factory?
I don't call that a stupid tactical blunder, I call that a stupid viewer. I'm sorry, but a little bit needs to be left to the imagination so that you can "what if" the story a little bit, opening your mind to a new possibility. Asking for every single thing to be written out for you is the mark of complete mental laziness.
All of the cities similar to Atlantis are actually starships--they have hyperdrives and other systems for interstellar and intergalactic travel--so maybe the "ZPM factory" left Pegasus to some other galaxy which will be brought in on another plot arc? Maybe communications were cut off between Atlantis and the factory and its departure was not recorded in the ancient database? Maybe the factory was obliterated during the many centuries of war with the Wraith, but that section of the ancient database hasn't yet been decoded? Or, maybe you'll just have to keep watching to find out, lazy viewer!
The democrats are the ones that are ushering in the nanny state, while the republicans are the ones ushering in the police state. What's the difference, you ask? One of them says "none for you!" and the other says "if you even think about it, I'll shoot you!"
The democrats have all their "for the children!" legislation, but the republicans have all their "omgz terrorists!" legislation. We need a party that doesn't have either type of legislation, and I still don't know which party that is.
I was in Montana when I was 17 (7 years ago), and I wanted to buy a lighter from the 7-11. No dice. They wouldn't let me buy a lighter at 17. I had to have my buddy who was with me (and was 18) go in and buy it for me. 100% no joke.
The 40 images-of-paedophilia thing has me a little curious.
If I used javascript to preload an image without displaying it, or if I hid a 640x480 image as a 1x1 pixel on a webpage, wouldn't that image end up in the browser cache? Is it really even technically accurate to believe that anything that is in the browser cache has indeed been intentionally viewed by the user doing the browsing?
Say you run a website and you want people to stop linking to your images from offsite, so you have any off-site requests for an image responded to with kiddy porn. You don't even need to host the porn, just redirect to an image stored on some server in Amsterdam or whatever. Then you can get kiddy porn onto everyone's computer, and I think they'll all be as guilty as this Romm fellow was.
Where I work, we've got a 60 or 90 day period (I forget how long it is, really) between mandatory password changes, and my "base" password is 12 characters long to begin with, upper and lower case letters and numbers and symbols mixed.
When the time comes to change my password, you know what I do? I add an exclamation point. I'm up to four now.
People just need to devise their own system that they can use to make their password more secure, but memorable. Here's a fairly easy to remember, secure password: 1234qwer!@#$ -- numbers, letters, symbols, 12 characters, not going to be thwarted by a dictionary attack any time soon. When the time comes to change the password, just add a period, or a semicolon, or a backslash, or a pair of brackets around the whole thing, or whatever. Unless you're prohibited from using part of your old password in your new password, it's relatively easy to keep a secure password that changes on a regular basis. If you always need to change your password so it doesn't contain the previous password, consider reversing the password: $#@!rewq4321 or consider putting something between each character: 1.2.3.4.q.w.e.r.!.@.#.$ or whatever... You'd have to be pretty dim-witted to not realize how easy this is...
"fuck you" has a colloquial meaning which is widely known and understood. "Kill Soandso" does not have a colloquial meaning, it only has one possible very literal interpretation.
If the teacher believes 99% that it's a joke, then the kid is still making the teacher feel threatened (even if only by 1%) and there's still cause to remove him for the safety of the teacher. That teacher needs to properly educate 20-30 other students, to ensure that they grow mentally and psychologically in healthy ways. If having the threat of death is even mildly suspected, it can infringe upon the ability of that teacher to undertake this aforementioned responsibility.
If you think that "Kill [Person's Name]" can be readily interpreted as a joke 100% of the time, then please make a T-shirt that says "Kill President Bush" and wear it down to a comedy club, and let us known if the Secret Service come by to pay you a visit. I'm 99% sure you'll be fine, do you want to take a 1% chance?
This isn't about the mechanics of the system, it's about the mechanics of the human mind.
The point that keeps getting made is that people don't always enter their "maximum" bid. Not everyone has their budget planned down to the last dollar, most are just flying by the seat of their pants. When the auction is about to end, the bid rate on a hot item will generally increase, especially if the current top bid is low. It increases because people will bid what they want or would prefer to pay as a minimum, but in reality they'll go a few bucks more. They'll justify itself to themselves somehow: skip a pack of smokes, a rented movie, dinner with the girlfriend... They'll find a reason to pull out that extra $5, $10, $20 or more so they can bid just a little higher.
And the email alerts, with their excited exclamation points and bold text and the obvious-to-some-of-us encouraging phrase, "You have been outbid. Bid again now!" are just about all it takes to get average Joe to start looking for ways he can save a few bucks so he can have his new thingamagadget.
Let's say this hypothetical item starts at $1. So the item starts at $1, you watch it. Somebody comes along and bids $5, the current bid is increased to $2. Somebody else comes along and bids $4, the current bid is increased to $5. The same bidder turns it over in his mind and decides that given the number of search results for this item, he can go to $7. He bids, and the current bid is $7. Another bidder comes along, she's willing to pay $10 because it retails for $18. She bids $10, the current bid is set to $10. She rethinks this though, goes back, and alters her bid to be $11, after calculating shipping charges and realising it's still a good deal. High bid is stil $10. You come along and snipe in the end, and win at $11.
Let's look at it again, but with your initial $100 maximum bid. Item starts at $1, you bid $100. Somebody comes along and bids $5, the current bid is increased to $6. Somebody else comes along and does his mental gymnastics and determines that he'll go for $8, just a couple bucks more than the current bid. ("just a couple bucks more" is such a loaded phrase) So somebody else comes along and she bids $10, current bid is set to $11. She thinks about it for a bit, and it's just a couple bucks more, so she bids $12. The bid is incremented to $13, and you win.
I'm not saying that it would go either way necessarily. What I am saying is that there are variables involved which may not make sense to you, but they make sense to the average Mary, Dick, Jane and Bob that come along and empty their wallets for a thingamawhatchamacallit.
Just remember this: "it's just a couple bucks more..." and "You have been outbid. Bid again now!" and then mentally picture the "average" person buying stuff on eBay.
Slashdot Mirror
And with great risks come great rewards.
I had a 19" CRT (I can't remember the manufacturer) that started to go bad in a very peculiar fashion. It started by making a high-pitched whining noise regardless of the screen resolution. I was able to fix this problem by propping the screen up on the left (thereby tilting it to the right a couple degrees). This worked...for a time.
Eventually, I came home from work one day and the screen was blank. I tilted the screen even further, and it eventually came on. I couldn't work at a 45-degree angle, though, so I fully laid the screen down on its right side. My Geforce Ti4200 card's drivers did thankfully have a functionality for distorting the desktop screen (nvkeystone I think it was called), so I was able to continue using the monitor, laying on its side, for another four months. The thing did eventually die, and I replaced it with a a 17" NEC LCD which is still serving me (actually my parents) very well.
there aren't any cases of accounts being sold for thousands of dollars out there.
You're right that this isn't the case now, because the market is saturated with accounts for sale. 3-4 years ago, though, it was not unheard-of for an Everquest account with multiple well-equipped high-level characters to go for over $1000.
in whatever continent Hungaria is in.
Do you mean: whatever continent Hungary is in?
(It's Europe, by the way)
I don't know exactly how it works, but my youngest brother fucked up enough that he got put on a sort of system where, if he starts acting up, my parents just call the sheriff to come pick him up and take him to the juvenile detention center. Threatens to run away? Locked up. Runs away? Locked up. Threatens suicide? Locked up, solitary, on suicide watch, evaluated by psychiatrist. My brother, since being put into this system, has drastically altered his behavior for the better and the sheriff hasn't actually ever been called. If a kid threatens to kill anyone, that is waaaay illegal and grounds for a longer-term lockup.
If a kid is going to play with fire, (s)he should get burned.
You're looking at this pretty one-dimensionally.
Have you ever been addicted to something before? If you have, you'd know that eventually you reach a point where you want more.
Those who reach that point with MMORPGs might bitch about a lack of content, but I think that's very unlikely. It's more likely that they get another account. Maybe they'll play a different class or race, or maybe they'll play on the same side as their existing character so that they can group with themselves in order to more effectively conquor game content. I've known people that played 2 or even 3 accounts simultaneously just so they could experience a different aspect of the game.
So you're right that they'll be playing all the time, but they'll probably be playing multiple accounts all the time. That would be an interesting statistic; of the 40% who're addicted, how many of them have more than 1 account? more than 2? As far as bandwidth and server time are concerned, I think that those are pretty minimal issues. It isn't like the Blizzard servers are streaming MPEGs or anything, the bandwidth hit is probably less than 10k/sec per client except when changing zones.
It's Blaster Master.
Well, those people might be right. I mean, you're on slashdot...
A gift would tell the real story here. If tech has beaten out diamonds, then would the average woman prefer a new ipod over a pair of diamond earrings, as a gift? I don't care about how competent women are with technology, I care about whether or not they desire tech more than nicely crystallized carbon.
It wasn't an insult, it was a commentary on your mental agility; a mere observation.
And in The Siege (Part 3), they do say that the mostly-depleted ZPM which they received from earth would last for days, yes, but that was a depleted ZPM, not a fully charged one. Further, we don't know if ZPMs deplete linearly or not. A conventional chemical battery, for instance, will have a higher voltage when it is fresh than when it is at 10% capacity. It's possible that the first 20% of a ZPM's power would last for decades when powering the shields, and then it would deplete more rapidly over time. Sci-fi requires a little suspension of disbelief, that's what the "fi" part is all about.
Perhaps the city was abandoned was because they were cut off from their ZPM supply lines. Also, perhaps the ZPM factory was destroyed to prevent it from falling into wraith hands. Use your imagination.
Turbine-electric is an idea I've been considering for a while now, but as somebody else has pointed out, on a small scale they aren't fuel-efficient so much as weight-efficient. It's true that a lot of powerplants generate their power with gas turbines, but they're usually combined-cycle turbines that pair a gas turbine with a steam turbine which recycles the waste heat. I think that the best hybrid concept out there would actually be a Stirling-Turbine-Electric hybrid. If you aren't familiar with them, Howstuffworks has a great article on how Stirling Engines work. The short explanation is that the Stirling Engine is a sealed body which generates linear motion through the rapid expansion and compression of an internal working gas (like Hydrogen or Helium), due to a heat differential between two sides of the engine.
I want to point out (as you probably already know, but for the benefit of others) that turbines can run on just about any liquid or gaseous fuel. Unleaded, Diesel, Jet Fuel, Ethanol, Propane, Methane, you name it and a turbine will burn it and harness the energy. In the same vein, a Stirling Engine works on a heat differential, so it doesn't matter what you're burning in order to get the hot side of the engine hot, it just matters that it gets hot.
I also want to describe the research and development performed by NASA back in the period from 1978 to 1988 on Stirling Engines for direct-drive automotive use. Under the name "Automotive Stirling Program" the research was initiated due to the 1978 passage of Public Law 95-238, the Automotive Propulsion Research & Development Act, which directed the DOE to develop more efficient automotive engines. The DOE delegated technical project management to NASA's Lewis Research Center. At the inception of the program in 1978, their baseline engine had net efficiency of 31 percent, whereas at the project's culmination, their prototype Mod II engine was at 40 percent efficiency and optimized for fuel economy. One of the major accomplishments of this program was the elimination of Cobalt (a "strategic" element for which the USA relies upon imports for the significant majority of its consumption) from the engine design and the formation of new high-temperature alloys (XF818 and CG27) for the engine components (another alloy, NASAUT-4GA1 has been developed but was not tested due to budget priorities). As of April 1987, over 25,000 test hours had been logged for the various prototype engines (P40, Mod I & Mod II) and over 2000 of those hours had been performed in actual vehicles. The Mod I engine was tested with a variety of different fuels: Diesel, Kerosene, JP4, various alcohols, broad-base petroleum distilled fuels, and simulated shale oil. The results of these fuel tests noted that engine power, efficiency and exhaust emissions were similar among all fuels. The Mod II installation in a Chevy Celebrity had nearly identical acceleration and power characteristics compared to the standard spark-ignition Celebrity, while achieving more than 30 percent greater fuel efficiency. For more information please head to the NASA Technical Reports Server and search for "Automotive Stirling Engine" in order to see some of the reports (Progress reports, materials analysis, alloy development, etc) produced during the course of this program. I highly recommend reading everything available, it is incredibly enlightening stuff.
With all of this said, I think that a turbine-stirling combination could be the most efficient and versatile powerplant available for a fuel-electric hybrid. Utilizing a multi-piston stirling engine equipped with a linear alternator (one per piston) and a turbine engine equipped with a rotary alternator and providing the ultimate in fuel-flexibility, such a hybrid seems to be the best idea in modern automotive engineering. Using back-of-the-envelope calculations, a possible 60% net fuel efficiency is possible, if not even more. A transmiss
The new Nissan Maxima (2007) features a CVT. There's a new commercial on television where a man and a woman are in a car, the man is driving and the woman is the passenger. The woman pulls out her lipstick to put it on as the man is accelerating, and she pauses a moment when she thinks the car is about to shift gears, but nothing happens. The man, noticing this, makes an engine-acceleration noise and then stops, lurches forward in a mocking gesture of "shift shock" and then goes back to making the noise. Then the narrator comes on and says something like "All power, no shift shock, the new Nissan Maxima with CVT."
There's a few different CVT technologies out there, but the major issue with them is efficiency. I don't know what kind of CVT is in the new Maxima, but it is hopefully not a belt system (they lack efficiency due to belt slippage) and is rather a sprocket and chain or even a geared system.
What I'm waiting for is a good IVT (Infinitely Variable Transmission) which allows for continuously variable gear ratios in both directions. I think that is some cool technology, right there.
I have a better solution, and I'm surprised that it's taken so long for nobody else to come up with it. If I weren't so poor and unemployed right now, I'd patent this idea because it's a real winner. Are you ready? Wireless in-ear cranial vibration sensing microphones. The only ambient noise that will be picked up is the sound of you chewing some gum, so don't chew when you're talking to HAL.
The coolest thing about this idea (I think) is that each mic could be coded to a specific user, and then fifty people could all be talking to the same supercomputer at the same time, and the computer could distinguish based on their user ID and not have to distinguish voices at the audio level at all. I've talked about this idea elsewhere in the past, and I'm still pretty surprised that nobody is doing it.
Speech recognition (speech-to-text) is pretty trivial without training as the newest release of Dragon Naturally Speaking, version 9, demonstrates. With training, it can become nearly flawless. Speech-to-text is another area where AT&T's research lab has made some pretty good progress. I'm looking forward to the future of voice-interaction with my computer with a certain optimism, especially if somebody will just (please) do the cranial-mic thing. (Contact me for licensing! My idea! heh.)
the history on the pegasus arc of the sg1 panoply indicates atlantis was both the first and last inabited city in that galaxy, but it has no zpm factory?
I don't call that a stupid tactical blunder, I call that a stupid viewer. I'm sorry, but a little bit needs to be left to the imagination so that you can "what if" the story a little bit, opening your mind to a new possibility. Asking for every single thing to be written out for you is the mark of complete mental laziness.
All of the cities similar to Atlantis are actually starships--they have hyperdrives and other systems for interstellar and intergalactic travel--so maybe the "ZPM factory" left Pegasus to some other galaxy which will be brought in on another plot arc? Maybe communications were cut off between Atlantis and the factory and its departure was not recorded in the ancient database? Maybe the factory was obliterated during the many centuries of war with the Wraith, but that section of the ancient database hasn't yet been decoded? Or, maybe you'll just have to keep watching to find out, lazy viewer!
The democrats are the ones that are ushering in the nanny state, while the republicans are the ones ushering in the police state. What's the difference, you ask? One of them says "none for you!" and the other says "if you even think about it, I'll shoot you!"
The democrats have all their "for the children!" legislation, but the republicans have all their "omgz terrorists!" legislation. We need a party that doesn't have either type of legislation, and I still don't know which party that is.
I smell BS. An ID for a lighter? Bah.
I was in Montana when I was 17 (7 years ago), and I wanted to buy a lighter from the 7-11. No dice. They wouldn't let me buy a lighter at 17. I had to have my buddy who was with me (and was 18) go in and buy it for me. 100% no joke.
The 40 images-of-paedophilia thing has me a little curious.
If I used javascript to preload an image without displaying it, or if I hid a 640x480 image as a 1x1 pixel on a webpage, wouldn't that image end up in the browser cache? Is it really even technically accurate to believe that anything that is in the browser cache has indeed been intentionally viewed by the user doing the browsing?
Say you run a website and you want people to stop linking to your images from offsite, so you have any off-site requests for an image responded to with kiddy porn. You don't even need to host the porn, just redirect to an image stored on some server in Amsterdam or whatever. Then you can get kiddy porn onto everyone's computer, and I think they'll all be as guilty as this Romm fellow was.
If that would cause the heat to travel internally and make a person explode from within, then yes, it's exactly like that.
Where I work, we've got a 60 or 90 day period (I forget how long it is, really) between mandatory password changes, and my "base" password is 12 characters long to begin with, upper and lower case letters and numbers and symbols mixed.
When the time comes to change my password, you know what I do? I add an exclamation point. I'm up to four now.
People just need to devise their own system that they can use to make their password more secure, but memorable. Here's a fairly easy to remember, secure password: 1234qwer!@#$ -- numbers, letters, symbols, 12 characters, not going to be thwarted by a dictionary attack any time soon. When the time comes to change the password, just add a period, or a semicolon, or a backslash, or a pair of brackets around the whole thing, or whatever. Unless you're prohibited from using part of your old password in your new password, it's relatively easy to keep a secure password that changes on a regular basis. If you always need to change your password so it doesn't contain the previous password, consider reversing the password: $#@!rewq4321 or consider putting something between each character: 1.2.3.4.q.w.e.r.!.@.#.$ or whatever... You'd have to be pretty dim-witted to not realize how easy this is...
"How is the server deployment coming?"
or
"Did we initiate deployment on the new software upgrades?"
Deployment has different connotations to different people. To me it means "organized distribution" and is subject-neutral.
"fuck you" has a colloquial meaning which is widely known and understood. "Kill Soandso" does not have a colloquial meaning, it only has one possible very literal interpretation.
If the teacher believes 99% that it's a joke, then the kid is still making the teacher feel threatened (even if only by 1%) and there's still cause to remove him for the safety of the teacher. That teacher needs to properly educate 20-30 other students, to ensure that they grow mentally and psychologically in healthy ways. If having the threat of death is even mildly suspected, it can infringe upon the ability of that teacher to undertake this aforementioned responsibility.
If you think that "Kill [Person's Name]" can be readily interpreted as a joke 100% of the time, then please make a T-shirt that says "Kill President Bush" and wear it down to a comedy club, and let us known if the Secret Service come by to pay you a visit. I'm 99% sure you'll be fine, do you want to take a 1% chance?
Read my sig.
This isn't about the mechanics of the system, it's about the mechanics of the human mind.
The point that keeps getting made is that people don't always enter their "maximum" bid. Not everyone has their budget planned down to the last dollar, most are just flying by the seat of their pants. When the auction is about to end, the bid rate on a hot item will generally increase, especially if the current top bid is low. It increases because people will bid what they want or would prefer to pay as a minimum, but in reality they'll go a few bucks more. They'll justify itself to themselves somehow: skip a pack of smokes, a rented movie, dinner with the girlfriend... They'll find a reason to pull out that extra $5, $10, $20 or more so they can bid just a little higher.
And the email alerts, with their excited exclamation points and bold text and the obvious-to-some-of-us encouraging phrase, "You have been outbid. Bid again now!" are just about all it takes to get average Joe to start looking for ways he can save a few bucks so he can have his new thingamagadget.
Let's say this hypothetical item starts at $1. So the item starts at $1, you watch it. Somebody comes along and bids $5, the current bid is increased to $2. Somebody else comes along and bids $4, the current bid is increased to $5. The same bidder turns it over in his mind and decides that given the number of search results for this item, he can go to $7. He bids, and the current bid is $7. Another bidder comes along, she's willing to pay $10 because it retails for $18. She bids $10, the current bid is set to $10. She rethinks this though, goes back, and alters her bid to be $11, after calculating shipping charges and realising it's still a good deal. High bid is stil $10. You come along and snipe in the end, and win at $11.
Let's look at it again, but with your initial $100 maximum bid. Item starts at $1, you bid $100. Somebody comes along and bids $5, the current bid is increased to $6. Somebody else comes along and does his mental gymnastics and determines that he'll go for $8, just a couple bucks more than the current bid. ("just a couple bucks more" is such a loaded phrase) So somebody else comes along and she bids $10, current bid is set to $11. She thinks about it for a bit, and it's just a couple bucks more, so she bids $12. The bid is incremented to $13, and you win.
I'm not saying that it would go either way necessarily. What I am saying is that there are variables involved which may not make sense to you, but they make sense to the average Mary, Dick, Jane and Bob that come along and empty their wallets for a thingamawhatchamacallit.
Just remember this: "it's just a couple bucks more..." and "You have been outbid. Bid again now!" and then mentally picture the "average" person buying stuff on eBay.
It isn't the system, it's the people. They're weak and easily manipulated by cheap psychological tricks.
WTF, it undid all my moderations, even though I posted anonymously. :(