That entire server was actually a proof of concept, Flock does not currently have plans to host its own bookmarks service and instead intends on having multiple options for which web service will be used (and easily extendable, similarly to search engines in firefox)
Seriously.
I am a web developer and I work from home on many occasions (the office isn't too far away so I go there sometimes) and I'd have to say the urge to click that Slashdot button has killed many a train of thought.
I have a little extra lee-way, however, as I do not have working hours, only projects that need finishing, and as such if I take an extended Slashdot break I just factor it out of my hours for the day.
The other main problem for me is having a stocked refridgerator so near me. I've got an extremely high metabolism and I am hungry continously. If I added up the hours I've spent standing in front of that thing I could likely afford a larger apartment.
Ever since I saw a mod long ago when a man fit a dismantled Furby into his case, I have wanted to do something similar.
With a bit of hacking and some knowledge of electronics and device communication, I think one might be able to design one hell of a fun gimmick.
Tear apart the Furby, leaving it's eyes and mouth and whatever sensors it needs, stuff em into a flat face plate for the 5.25. Add in a seperate mic and digital camera.
If you have the programming capabilities, hook the Furby's 'on' switch into a screensaver, as well as giving network access to the camera and microphone, maybe even the Furby's speaker.
When your computer goes idle, your Furby will turn on and start talking to the people walking by, people who will hopefully start talking back, all of which you can watch, interact with, and/or record from another computer on the network. Every once in a while have the Furby say "Satan" in a deep voice just to get a rise out of em...
It could work...
I heard some talk of this at the Game Developer's Conference. A couple of the speakers (Warren Spector is the only one who's name I remember) mentioned it in their lectures.
I have found that (while I haven't used iTunes) the random feature on both Winamp and the arbitrary Creative Labs PlayCenter (comes with the Audigy, and won't even support more than a couple thousand songs anyways) is very lacking. I have done enough observation to note that it simply chooses certain songs more than others. Out of around 10k songs on my hard drive, it will "randomly" select the same songs many many more times than others.
I never really understood where the flaw in the feature would be, but it seemed related to some sort of theoretical maximum threshold for random play.
I started using a new computer at work that various people had used before me, but there didn't appear to be much spyware on it.
Atleast, until I opened IE. The first URL I type in that is a typo, I get sent to something at www.lop.com or something like that which brings up pop-ups.
Every single time I mis-type a url, bam, pop-ups. It was the single most annoying thing I ever used. After a week of this, I formatted the computer.
Well, after careful thought and deliberation I have decided that in return for the almighty broadband access granted to me, I would be willing to give up God. Yes, God. So, see ya later, I have the combined knowledge of the human race, and you just don't make sense anymore. -peace sign-
I wonder how big of an explosion it would take to disrupt the globular star cluster enough for the blackhole to eat em all.
Mmm star cluster.
No but really, how delicate do you suppose that balance is between the other stars and the black hole? Can these things stay around for a long time, or would they be pretty temporary things (on an astronomical scale)?
I believe Bad Religion was actually giving anyone who sent in a proof of purchase of their CD a free ticket to their next concert in the area. For them this was really a great idea, considering a large portion of their following is based on their live shows, since the don't get much airplay.
Concepts like this are the kind of thing that would really make me want to buy a CD. Hell, I barely even like Bad Religion and I wanted to buy their CD jsut because it got me a free ticket to a concert.
My question was (1) What kind of system was being used to acquire the software? For example, people would somewhere buy a retail copy, copy it, return it, crack the stuff on it, add that to an archive, and cd's and warez be distributed fom that... or whatever.
(2) The interest I see in doing something such as obtaining copies of massive amounts of different software, movies, songs, and all that sort of thing, is to use it as some sort of anti-establishment campaign. If you can spread the stuff out enough, keep enough backups hidden away, they won't be able to stop anyone who wants it from getting software for free. A goal like this seems to be a good way of combatting "The System," as it were. Were these any part of your intentions?
Troll? What?? This is trolling: "Anyone stupid enough to be working with a screen in the sunlight deserves all the consequences they get. They are stupid morons who are too obsessed with their pathetic "outdoors" than about getting a job done effectively. I would never hire someone like that."
So, meta-moderate that person! or just mod me up a couple more times.
Oakleys do offer great protection from the sunlight, and believe it or not cut glare. Now, most people have a fear of wearing sunglasses in doors, but in this situation where most of the light is natural light I see no good reason for it. Just wait until it hits 7:30 in the afternoon and a ray of sun is shining right into your eyes over the top of the computer monitor and you can't see the keyboard much less the computer monitor. I bet a nice pair of $180 Oakleys would seem pretty nice about then.
To me the ideal setup to use the two monitors would be for RTS games. In an FPS you really kind of want the three monitors, because two doesn't give the right effect. But if you could have a zoomed out view of a map or something on one monitor and your zoomed in one on another. That new game, Medieval: Total War should use some kind of set up like that and give you a detailed overview of the battle on one screen while you can control stuff on the other.
That's is odd, since, I can very easily do that. You may have to switch your "primary" monitor to be the televison if you are using a fullscreen plugin. I don't have problems with that anymore, but on older graphcis cards that is what I needed to do.
Alright look at this little dude, he's somethign like 900 years old and is one heck of a badass when it comes to using the force, and apparently a skilled swordsman too. But does he ever show it? Nope. Only when it comes down to the clutch situation does he bust out his skills.
That is how I'd like to live. Sure I may be able to hack some 133t system, or social engineer the pants off secretaries, but why publicize it. When it is somethign important, by all means, bust out the skills and show what you are made of, but don't go bragging about it, Eventually someone will find out for themselves and you will be hailed as some sort of hidden computer god.
Sure, I'd work in a security company, but I'd feel really useless knowing that everybody and their brother is going to be taking shots at my software/hardware, and that some dumbass admin could screw the whole thing up anyways.
I'd rather work in education, and teach people to live like Yoda.
I was previously trying to do somethign similar with the music at my local Red Lobster, so, I had my friend steal one of the old CDs so I could attempt to make my own version. What I found out was such:
The CD is played backwards in their CD drive.
The compression was not mp3, ogg, wma, or anythign to that effect, it was a proprietary format used by whatever the distributing company is.
There is a security section at the end (beginning) of the CD that it requires to even acknowledge the disks presence. That part atleast was easy to duplicate. It however, may be based on the songs that are on the CD itself, meaning it would be hard to reproduce for a new set of tracks.
Basically, they had no fancy "wobble tracks" or anything like that, they just made it really complicated to actually create a new CD with new music. In order to you'd have to firt come up with their codec (which I am sure is probably possible) or use some technique to reverse engineer the codec based on the output from the machine that will read them. After you come up with all that, you are going to have to reverse the CD Image, which is going to confuse the hell out of any burning software you have (there's probably some that does it, I just haven't tried them) and I've never actually seen a program that simply reverses a binary file.
So basically, I stopped trying to make new CDs. My new approach would be the circumvention approach, using an mp3-cd player and wiring it into the system.. unless ofcourse there is some sort encryption it sends (it's a bunch of really big boxes... so who knows.)
Would be that it is the Windows Update system. If you check the wrong box somewhere it will automatically check for new updates all teh time and tell you to download them. I'd bet that turning that feature off would remove that connection.
After all, why would you want to be connected to Microsoft any more than you have to?
Sitting in a Jacuzi for two hours to watch a movie can get a little... warm. I guess if you jsut had to see Friends tonight, but you wanted to go in the Jacuzi too, this way you wouldn't miss it.
Now, if we can figure out how to use this to keep my car from overheating...
I guess until then I will have to stick to my toggle switch for the radiator cooling fan.
Some kind of design use for this. Give it a grid of metric graph paper and some basic drawing tools (line, curve, angle) as well as add note capabilities (put the cursor on part of the drawing and see the author's design notes on it). It would be great in 3D too, but even straying from that add graphing calculator abilities to it as well.
Alright, so you can do that stuff with a full-fledged PDA on a smaller screen, but I know when I was a kid I would have definitely enjoyed something where I get to design things. Even as a kid I knew I couldn't draw worth crap, but I loved graph paper, rulers, compasses, and protractors. Hell, I still love that stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
That entire server was actually a proof of concept, Flock does not currently have plans to host its own bookmarks service and instead intends on having multiple options for which web service will be used (and easily extendable, similarly to search engines in firefox)
In Ultima VIII it was quite refreshing to name your character God.
"Hello God, it's been so long since we've spoken..."
Seriously.
I am a web developer and I work from home on many occasions (the office isn't too far away so I go there sometimes) and I'd have to say the urge to click that Slashdot button has killed many a train of thought.
I have a little extra lee-way, however, as I do not have working hours, only projects that need finishing, and as such if I take an extended Slashdot break I just factor it out of my hours for the day.
The other main problem for me is having a stocked refridgerator so near me. I've got an extremely high metabolism and I am hungry continously. If I added up the hours I've spent standing in front of that thing I could likely afford a larger apartment.
Ever since I saw a mod long ago when a man fit a dismantled Furby into his case, I have wanted to do something similar.
With a bit of hacking and some knowledge of electronics and device communication, I think one might be able to design one hell of a fun gimmick.
Tear apart the Furby, leaving it's eyes and mouth and whatever sensors it needs, stuff em into a flat face plate for the 5.25. Add in a seperate mic and digital camera.
If you have the programming capabilities, hook the Furby's 'on' switch into a screensaver, as well as giving network access to the camera and microphone, maybe even the Furby's speaker.
When your computer goes idle, your Furby will turn on and start talking to the people walking by, people who will hopefully start talking back, all of which you can watch, interact with, and/or record from another computer on the network. Every once in a while have the Furby say "Satan" in a deep voice just to get a rise out of em...
It could work...
I heard some talk of this at the Game Developer's Conference. A couple of the speakers (Warren Spector is the only one who's name I remember) mentioned it in their lectures.
I have found that (while I haven't used iTunes) the random feature on both Winamp and the arbitrary Creative Labs PlayCenter (comes with the Audigy, and won't even support more than a couple thousand songs anyways) is very lacking. I have done enough observation to note that it simply chooses certain songs more than others. Out of around 10k songs on my hard drive, it will "randomly" select the same songs many many more times than others.
I never really understood where the flaw in the feature would be, but it seemed related to some sort of theoretical maximum threshold for random play.
I started using a new computer at work that various people had used before me, but there didn't appear to be much spyware on it.
Atleast, until I opened IE. The first URL I type in that is a typo, I get sent to something at www.lop.com or something like that which brings up pop-ups.
Every single time I mis-type a url, bam, pop-ups. It was the single most annoying thing I ever used. After a week of this, I formatted the computer.
Well, after careful thought and deliberation I have decided that in return for the almighty broadband access granted to me, I would be willing to give up God.
Yes, God.
So, see ya later, I have the combined knowledge of the human race, and you just don't make sense anymore.
-peace sign-
I wonder how big of an explosion it would take to disrupt the globular star cluster enough for the blackhole to eat em all.
Mmm star cluster.
No but really, how delicate do you suppose that balance is between the other stars and the black hole? Can these things stay around for a long time, or would they be pretty temporary things (on an astronomical scale)?
I believe Bad Religion was actually giving anyone who sent in a proof of purchase of their CD a free ticket to their next concert in the area. For them this was really a great idea, considering a large portion of their following is based on their live shows, since the don't get much airplay.
Concepts like this are the kind of thing that would really make me want to buy a CD. Hell, I barely even like Bad Religion and I wanted to buy their CD jsut because it got me a free ticket to a concert.
My question was (1) What kind of system was being used to acquire the software? For example, people would somewhere buy a retail copy, copy it, return it, crack the stuff on it, add that to an archive, and cd's and warez be distributed fom that... or whatever.
(2) The interest I see in doing something such as obtaining copies of massive amounts of different software, movies, songs, and all that sort of thing, is to use it as some sort of anti-establishment campaign. If you can spread the stuff out enough, keep enough backups hidden away, they won't be able to stop anyone who wants it from getting software for free. A goal like this seems to be a good way of combatting "The System," as it were. Were these any part of your intentions?
Troll? What??
This is trolling:
"Anyone stupid enough to be working with a screen in the sunlight deserves all the consequences they get. They are stupid morons who are too obsessed with their pathetic "outdoors" than about getting a job done effectively.
I would never hire someone like that."
So, meta-moderate that person! or just mod me up a couple more times.
Oakleys do offer great protection from the sunlight, and believe it or not cut glare. Now, most people have a fear of wearing sunglasses in doors, but in this situation where most of the light is natural light I see no good reason for it. Just wait until it hits 7:30 in the afternoon and a ray of sun is shining right into your eyes over the top of the computer monitor and you can't see the keyboard much less the computer monitor. I bet a nice pair of $180 Oakleys would seem pretty nice about then.
Oakleys!
Perhaps it is poorly mixed asphault-tar that under heat or pressure has decided to melt up through a crack in the road.
To me the ideal setup to use the two monitors would be for RTS games. In an FPS you really kind of want the three monitors, because two doesn't give the right effect. But if you could have a zoomed out view of a map or something on one monitor and your zoomed in one on another.
That new game, Medieval: Total War should use some kind of set up like that and give you a detailed overview of the battle on one screen while you can control stuff on the other.
That's is odd, since, I can very easily do that. You may have to switch your "primary" monitor to be the televison if you are using a fullscreen plugin. I don't have problems with that anymore, but on older graphcis cards that is what I needed to do.
Alright look at this little dude, he's somethign like 900 years old and is one heck of a badass when it comes to using the force, and apparently a skilled swordsman too. But does he ever show it? Nope. Only when it comes down to the clutch situation does he bust out his skills.
That is how I'd like to live. Sure I may be able to hack some 133t system, or social engineer the pants off secretaries, but why publicize it. When it is somethign important, by all means, bust out the skills and show what you are made of, but don't go bragging about it, Eventually someone will find out for themselves and you will be hailed as some sort of hidden computer god.
Sure, I'd work in a security company, but I'd feel really useless knowing that everybody and their brother is going to be taking shots at my software/hardware, and that some dumbass admin could screw the whole thing up anyways.
I'd rather work in education, and teach people to live like Yoda.
My personal favorite was:
"I love the powerglove. It's SO bad."
I was previously trying to do somethign similar with the music at my local Red Lobster, so, I had my friend steal one of the old CDs so I could attempt to make my own version. What I found out was such: The CD is played backwards in their CD drive. The compression was not mp3, ogg, wma, or anythign to that effect, it was a proprietary format used by whatever the distributing company is. There is a security section at the end (beginning) of the CD that it requires to even acknowledge the disks presence. That part atleast was easy to duplicate. It however, may be based on the songs that are on the CD itself, meaning it would be hard to reproduce for a new set of tracks. Basically, they had no fancy "wobble tracks" or anything like that, they just made it really complicated to actually create a new CD with new music. In order to you'd have to firt come up with their codec (which I am sure is probably possible) or use some technique to reverse engineer the codec based on the output from the machine that will read them. After you come up with all that, you are going to have to reverse the CD Image, which is going to confuse the hell out of any burning software you have (there's probably some that does it, I just haven't tried them) and I've never actually seen a program that simply reverses a binary file. So basically, I stopped trying to make new CDs. My new approach would be the circumvention approach, using an mp3-cd player and wiring it into the system.. unless ofcourse there is some sort encryption it sends (it's a bunch of really big boxes... so who knows.)
Would be that it is the Windows Update system. If you check the wrong box somewhere it will automatically check for new updates all teh time and tell you to download them. I'd bet that turning that feature off would remove that connection. After all, why would you want to be connected to Microsoft any more than you have to?
I can see it now... Jacuzi SPL contests. The water is a goner.
Sitting in a Jacuzi for two hours to watch a movie can get a little... warm. I guess if you jsut had to see Friends tonight, but you wanted to go in the Jacuzi too, this way you wouldn't miss it.
Now, if we can figure out how to use this to keep my car from overheating... I guess until then I will have to stick to my toggle switch for the radiator cooling fan.
Some kind of design use for this. Give it a grid of metric graph paper and some basic drawing tools (line, curve, angle) as well as add note capabilities (put the cursor on part of the drawing and see the author's design notes on it). It would be great in 3D too, but even straying from that add graphing calculator abilities to it as well. Alright, so you can do that stuff with a full-fledged PDA on a smaller screen, but I know when I was a kid I would have definitely enjoyed something where I get to design things. Even as a kid I knew I couldn't draw worth crap, but I loved graph paper, rulers, compasses, and protractors. Hell, I still love that stuff.