I was under the impression that the initial use for Radar was as an early-warning system set up on the English coast and islands/platforms in the English Channel to detect the presence of incoming German bombers. When the Brits had some advanced warning, they could put up a screen of fighters to meet the incoming bombers.
I wonder if the platform that Sealand is built on is left over from this kind of duty?
I remember it like it was yesterday- rank upon rank of students sitting behind Macs in the computer labs, forcing helpless drama students to go to the engineering labs and use windows machines to get their homework done. Countless hours lost, students failing left and right, the university computer store replacinging record numbers of worn-out Mac mice and keyboards.... The cause: Snood. The year: 1998.
Good thing Slashdot stays on top of the latest trends in the Mac world.
Among my friends, Snood has come and gone, enjoyed a brief renaissance, and finally slipped into obscurity. In fact, the year I graduated, in 1998, the term 'Bad Snood'- for a stupid move, or a stroke of bad luck- was in common usage on campus.
Obviously, games and my day job also keep me on Windows, but so do my freelance customers- when you show them the design work you're doing and they see that your computer looks different from theirs, they ask if it's a Mac. If you say No, they get all confused. Are they 'Lusers'? Yep. Does their money spend just like everyone elses? Yep. So I'm on Windows, until the Mom-and-Pop shops I work for get savvy enough to understand there are more than 2 OS choices (Mac or Windows), or I get rich enough to buy more than one or two machines. Perception is everything.
but in this context do not see it as a free-speach issue, just a funding issue
I would argue that it's a free speech issue thinly disguised as a funding issue. Does anyone remember when the Federal Gov't made the drinking age into a 'Funding Issue'? It said that it would only give highway money to states which had a drinking age of 21. Now all 50 states have a drinking age of 21 now, and have for decades, even though every state has the 'right' to determine its own drinking age. Funding is the government's traditional tool for overriding the states' rights and other constitutional guarantees, until and unless the supreme court comes along and whacks its nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Until the libraries have the ability to exist without this money, and many don't, it is effectively a law requiring filtering software.
Not to be argumentative, but the use of stock photos does not, in and of itself, mean the whole ad is a sham- although this ad clearly was a sham.
At my first job, with a company of 7 people, we assumed that when the ad agency did our web site they would be taking pictures of us- especially because the founders considered themselves quite good-looking. But the ad agency used stock photos- they said they ALWAYS used stock photos, and seemed surprised that we thought we'd be photographed. They may have used the stock photo because the day they decided to do it, the PR rep had spilled coffee on herself, or for any number of other minor reasons. It's SOP for an ad company.
I just think the issue of stock photos is really tangential and unrelated to the larger issue- that the *ad itself* was false, or at best misleading.
There are several well-known examples, referred to in posts above, of the Navy using dolphins, etc as 'guard whales' or in hare-brained assasination attempts. The best-known story is the one about dolphins who were taught to search for swimmers in the ports of South Vietnam, and poke them with large, head mounted needles which injected a large amount of pressurized gas into the swimmer's body, killing them in a painful manner and depositing them neatly on the surface for someone to find. I have no idea if it ever worked- it seems unlikely to me.
As a recent grad and former student IT employee, I can vouch that our school had significantly *better* IT people, especially where network security and infrastructure were concerned, than the IT companies that I have experienced since then. Better educated, more experienced, more willing to listen. But also more willing to put the almighty smackdown on a student that violates the rules.
Don't turn the thing back on, please- even if you weren't originally breaking the rules, you're breaking the rules if you turn it on after they asked you to leave it off. They may well expel you for that, and they would be within their rights.
This is worth fighting, but college is worth completing, for the credentials if nothing else. Besides, where else are you going to find thousands of single women (or men, if that's your thing) between 18-23 all grouped together? To ensure that you get to stay in school, fight this fight through the proper channels. You may well win- but even if you lose, you can drown your sorrows in cheap beer and impresssionable young women (or men, if that's your thing).
Having spent a good chunk of my early years in Terre Haute (the town, not the prisons, and there are several), I can honestly say that spending 33 months in a minimum security prison in Mass is preferable to spending 33 months in Terre Haute, IN as a free man. At least in prison there might be a crooked stockbroker or accountant that can string together a coherent sentence!
Unfortunately, this is exactly the case- the IT guys at work look at me sympathetically and shake their heads with sad little smiles when I try to get something other than Win 2000 on my laptop. "It's not that we want to give you this," they say. "We don't have any choice." They're not idiots, but they answer to one. And now they are going to be calling me asking about these sites in the web log....
I wont get fired, because they understand that these things happen, but if it happened in front of a female coworker, it might be bad. Of course, I work in IT, so there's just the one female in our office. It cuts down the chances. It would just be better all around to not have it happen. That's all I'm saying.
Ummm, I clicked the 'War on Terrorism' link- I might have gotten the game- I don't know because I restarted my machine to expedite the closing of about half a dozen adult site popups. Can we check these out before our friends who might be reading from work stumble into them? I know better than to click on a link in a post, but this was *in the article*.
I worked near a guy for a while who used to work from 3PM-11PM. He would come to our lab to test code he had written on different OS's, and sing opera arias, but since he didn't speak Italian, German, etc. he would substitute different phrases, the most common being 'bite me'. He ate the same dinner at the same place every night and insisted on writing code for NT4 and 98 in Pascal.
On the other hand, he was good- one of those guys that writes 100 lines of code with no syntax errors. And he WAS the team, so as long as he got everything done on time, there were no interaction problems. And it was ALWAYS done on time. He definitely had skills.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like roughly 480 of the current 512 posts are Offtopic. Oh, but what I wouldn't do for moderator points right now...
I was under the impression that the initial use for Radar was as an early-warning system set up on the English coast and islands/platforms in the English Channel to detect the presence of incoming German bombers. When the Brits had some advanced warning, they could put up a screen of fighters to meet the incoming bombers.
I wonder if the platform that Sealand is built on is left over from this kind of duty?
I remember it like it was yesterday- rank upon rank of students sitting behind Macs in the computer labs, forcing helpless drama students to go to the engineering labs and use windows machines to get their homework done. Countless hours lost, students failing left and right, the university computer store replacinging record numbers of worn-out Mac mice and keyboards.... The cause: Snood. The year: 1998.
Good thing Slashdot stays on top of the latest trends in the Mac world.
Among my friends, Snood has come and gone, enjoyed a brief renaissance, and finally slipped into obscurity. In fact, the year I graduated, in 1998, the term 'Bad Snood'- for a stupid move, or a stroke of bad luck- was in common usage on campus.
Obviously, games and my day job also keep me on Windows, but so do my freelance customers- when you show them the design work you're doing and they see that your computer looks different from theirs, they ask if it's a Mac. If you say No, they get all confused. Are they 'Lusers'? Yep. Does their money spend just like everyone elses? Yep. So I'm on Windows, until the Mom-and-Pop shops I work for get savvy enough to understand there are more than 2 OS choices (Mac or Windows), or I get rich enough to buy more than one or two machines. Perception is everything.
Too bad.
but in this context do not see it as a free-speach issue, just a funding issue
I would argue that it's a free speech issue thinly disguised as a funding issue. Does anyone remember when the Federal Gov't made the drinking age into a 'Funding Issue'? It said that it would only give highway money to states which had a drinking age of 21. Now all 50 states have a drinking age of 21 now, and have for decades, even though every state has the 'right' to determine its own drinking age. Funding is the government's traditional tool for overriding the states' rights and other constitutional guarantees, until and unless the supreme court comes along and whacks its nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Until the libraries have the ability to exist without this money, and many don't, it is effectively a law requiring filtering software.
Not to be argumentative, but the use of stock photos does not, in and of itself, mean the whole ad is a sham- although this ad clearly was a sham.
At my first job, with a company of 7 people, we assumed that when the ad agency did our web site they would be taking pictures of us- especially because the founders considered themselves quite good-looking. But the ad agency used stock photos- they said they ALWAYS used stock photos, and seemed surprised that we thought we'd be photographed. They may have used the stock photo because the day they decided to do it, the PR rep had spilled coffee on herself, or for any number of other minor reasons. It's SOP for an ad company.
I just think the issue of stock photos is really tangential and unrelated to the larger issue- that the *ad itself* was false, or at best misleading.
There are several well-known examples, referred to in posts above, of the Navy using dolphins, etc as 'guard whales' or in hare-brained assasination attempts. The best-known story is the one about dolphins who were taught to search for swimmers in the ports of South Vietnam, and poke them with large, head mounted needles which injected a large amount of pressurized gas into the swimmer's body, killing them in a painful manner and depositing them neatly on the surface for someone to find. I have no idea if it ever worked- it seems unlikely to me.
As a recent grad and former student IT employee, I can vouch that our school had significantly *better* IT people, especially where network security and infrastructure were concerned, than the IT companies that I have experienced since then. Better educated, more experienced, more willing to listen. But also more willing to put the almighty smackdown on a student that violates the rules.
Don't turn the thing back on, please- even if you weren't originally breaking the rules, you're breaking the rules if you turn it on after they asked you to leave it off. They may well expel you for that, and they would be within their rights.
This is worth fighting, but college is worth completing, for the credentials if nothing else. Besides, where else are you going to find thousands of single women (or men, if that's your thing) between 18-23 all grouped together? To ensure that you get to stay in school, fight this fight through the proper channels. You may well win- but even if you lose, you can drown your sorrows in cheap beer and impresssionable young women (or men, if that's your thing).
Having spent a good chunk of my early years in Terre Haute (the town, not the prisons, and there are several), I can honestly say that spending 33 months in a minimum security prison in Mass is preferable to spending 33 months in Terre Haute, IN as a free man. At least in prison there might be a crooked stockbroker or accountant that can string together a coherent sentence!
Yeah, I know how to check- the site itself was fine, it was the site's popups that had the pictures of young ladies behaving in an unladylike manner.
You're right, though- I should just stop looking at anything that's not directly related to my job.
Naaaahhhhh!
Unfortunately, this is exactly the case- the IT guys at work look at me sympathetically and shake their heads with sad little smiles when I try to get something other than Win 2000 on my laptop. "It's not that we want to give you this," they say. "We don't have any choice." They're not idiots, but they answer to one. And now they are going to be calling me asking about these sites in the web log....
I wont get fired, because they understand that these things happen, but if it happened in front of a female coworker, it might be bad. Of course, I work in IT, so there's just the one female in our office. It cuts down the chances.
It would just be better all around to not have it happen. That's all I'm saying.
Ummm, I clicked the 'War on Terrorism' link- I might have gotten the game- I don't know because I restarted my machine to expedite the closing of about half a dozen adult site popups. Can we check these out before our friends who might be reading from work stumble into them? I know better than to click on a link in a post, but this was *in the article*.
I worked near a guy for a while who used to work from 3PM-11PM. He would come to our lab to test code he had written on different OS's, and sing opera arias, but since he didn't speak Italian, German, etc. he would substitute different phrases, the most common being 'bite me'. He ate the same dinner at the same place every night and insisted on writing code for NT4 and 98 in Pascal.
On the other hand, he was good- one of those guys that writes 100 lines of code with no syntax errors. And he WAS the team, so as long as he got everything done on time, there were no interaction problems. And it was ALWAYS done on time. He definitely had skills.