I would guess a good percentage of the Slashdot community worked in college radio (seems the nerdly thing to do). But for those who didn't, let me tell you about the old Emergency Broadcast System...
The radio station DJs were taught to take the EBS equipment in the studio very seriously. Our studio was located in an actual fallout shelter... thick concrete walls and no windows... we even had the cool fallout shelter sign outside the door. If one needed to take shelter from nuclear fallout there was plenty of vinyl to keep you company but not much else. The space was tiny.
We had to know the procedures for handling both an automatic EBS test (triggered at random times) and a manual test which we performed weekly. More importantly we had to know the procedure in the event of an actual emergency.
The automatic test would just happen randomly in the middle of your show any time of day or night (I don't recall how frequently this happened). My normal broadcast would get hijacked by the EBS equipment (which was connected to the transmitter) and the alert system would begin broadcasting the test message, followed by the tone, followed by closing message. After this test we had to manually reset the EBS equipment by pressing a button (or power cycling the damned thing) in order to regain control of the local broadcast from the studio.
The manual test was performed weekly by the DJs (we did it at 6AM on Monday). I'd play a cart with the opening message, "This is a test..." and then I'd have to press a button on the EBS to play the tone. It tested the system's ability to interrupt my broadcast. At the end of the tone I hit the reset (or as previously mentioned, power cycled it) and then played a second cart with the closing message "this concludes a test of the Emergency Broadcast System..."
In both test cases I had to log the time of the test (or risk going to FCC, bang you in the ass, prison??).
If the message turned out NOT to be a test I was to tear open the special red envelope hanging by the equipment. Sadly, I never got to do this. The envelope contained a codeword. One would compare the code transmitted to the EBS with the code in the envelope. If it was a match there were further instructions in the envelope which remain a mystery to me (although someone once told me that since we were a small station we would likely be instructed to shut down our transmitter while stations with more kilowatts would be instructed to boost their signal).
Can you imagine the personal information gathering and targeted advertising you could do with fixed IPs?
Imagine how much Google and Apple could compile... the targeted ads they could send you... the lists they could make available for sale to advertisers...
This would be fantastic. I prefer ads to be targeted to my interests. I find it to be much more useful than random ads for things I do not care about.
I had a cablecard installed in my Tivo Premiere within days of calling Verizon with no hassle at all.
I have the same setup as you and can tell you there is a hassle. The cablecard Verizon Fios installed on my Tivo Premiere has one way communication. That means if I want any of the On Demand services I have to also keep my regular Verizon cable box (and pay the monthly rental fee). On Demand is an important part of the service as there are a ton of free movies and free replays of network and cable TV shows. Not all of this content is matched by the services on the Tivo alone.
Take for example one of the premium channels (HBO). With the Verizon cable box I can watch any of the HBO movies or series on demand. I cannot do this with the Tivo. I would have to plan ahead and record everything my wife might want to watch. And I am no mind reader.
The idea of creating your own college major reminds me of puzzle master Will Shortz. He spoke in an NPR interview about creating his own major at Indiana University. His major was enigmatology... the study of puzzles. And now he is the greatest puzzle master of all time. It takes a special mind and tremendous passion for something to pull this off. When I was 18 the best I could have come up with was majoring in skirt chasing or beer bong engineering.
I cashed out $200 a few weeks ago from Full Tilt and it was released successfully to my bank account. I guess the rest of my bankroll is stuck. I cannot even fathom how the government thinks thy can lock up my money like this.
Poker should be legalized. It is not gambling. The casino only takes a rake.
A text adventure with very basic graphics... you started out in prison and had to escape by getting some cheese and catching a mouse, etc. I recall that you had to send away for a pilots license that you later picked up at the warden's house in his mailbox. Anyone recall this game?
I cannot imagine a situation where I would recommend to a company that they use money and resources to upgrade a Windows XP box to a newer OS. What a waste of time.
When the XP box reaches end of life you replace it with new hardware and put your ready to go Windows 7 image on it. Duh.
The Windows XP to Vista to Windows 7 path seems even more unlikely. Chalk this article up as an academic exercise, not a real world scenario.
Funny as your comment was, I have to agree. My flash drive has been through washer/dryer and then to hell and back. It still works like a charm.
A second flash drive I own lost its plastic cover in the dryer (the glue holding it together must have melted). Without the cover the chips and USB link still work fine.
I have a client that did exactly that. They put the family PC in the family room with the screen facing out. Their 16 year old son was instructed to not use the PC if his parents weren't home.
The results weren't so good. Mom went shopping and came back home early because she forgot something. She ended up getting an eyeful of her son with his pants around his ankles jerking off in the living room. An embarrassing situation for everyone. Although it was a good laugh for me and his father when he told me the story.
There are gateway devices that can be configured for blocking of pornographic sites. SonicWall Gateway Filtering comes to mind. But a 16 year old can easily jerk off to non-porn pictures of women. They are pretty horny at that age. Heck, George Castanza got caught by his mon wanking it to a Glamour Magazine. Now that was a funny Seinfeld episode.
The other issue with wireless networking protocols that we have found is it works very poorly with certain applications with a database backend. For anyone that uses Sage Timeslips, try running a large report over wireless. It can hang for up to 15 minutes where it will only take seconds over a wired network. The difference in network speed cannot explain this anamoly.
I do not know the technical reason for this, but I have seen it happen with numerous applications that attach to a server based database.
I read in the news that anywhere from 10,000 to 17,000sq. miles is being searched for Fosset's plane. This Google Earth tool only has updated images covering an area of about 500 square miles. I wonder if they plan to expand the area with new images.
4 Years ago we purchased and deployed 12 new workstations at one of my client sites. Over that 4 year period we have had 10 hard drive failures.
While this failure rate may seem exceptional, it's not too far from reality. Today's hard drives have extremely unpredictable lifespans. If you get a bad lot of drives like we did here you are in for a lot of headaches. Sure they were covered by warranty, but time is lost waiting for the overnight replacement part and then re-imaging the new drive.
Frankly, I'm hopeful that eliminating moving parts will remove a serious potential point of failure.
I'm not sure I want retailers dumping the upgrade/replacement parts I need for otherwise perfectly good PCs that I have. I admit I have purchased SATA cards for systems with IDE only on the motherboard, but I have PCs where this is simply not possible as I am out of PCI slots.
It would be a disaster if retailers immediately dumped old technology when new stuff came to market. More people have IDE drives at home than SATA at the moment. That is why retailers still carry the old stuff. That is what is in demand. The only reason I could see for vanishing the technology immediately would be to force obsolescence and drive the new PC sales market.
I can assure you that upgrading from Outlook 2000 to Outlook 2003 does not convert your PST file to a newer format automatically. There isn't even a prompt to do this. It simply cannot happen.
FACT: The only way to get the 2003 Outlook PST format is to create a new, blank PST file in Outlook 2003 and then import your old Outlook 2000 PST data.
I have to agree that my FUD detector is going off. This story is made up for certain.
I recall Mad Magazine releasing singles on then flexible (and square) records. You could play them on a standard 45 record player. That was back in the 70s, but maybe they continued to do it after I stopped my subscription. I wish I still had those records. But I'd have to buy a record player somewhere if I did.
Wash your hands after you eat and don't eat while you are sitting at your computer. My keyboard stays pristine this way with the exception of some dust which compressed air handles nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
I would guess a good percentage of the Slashdot community worked in college radio (seems the nerdly thing to do). But for those who didn't, let me tell you about the old Emergency Broadcast System...
The radio station DJs were taught to take the EBS equipment in the studio very seriously. Our studio was located in an actual fallout shelter... thick concrete walls and no windows... we even had the cool fallout shelter sign outside the door. If one needed to take shelter from nuclear fallout there was plenty of vinyl to keep you company but not much else. The space was tiny.
We had to know the procedures for handling both an automatic EBS test (triggered at random times) and a manual test which we performed weekly. More importantly we had to know the procedure in the event of an actual emergency.
The automatic test would just happen randomly in the middle of your show any time of day or night (I don't recall how frequently this happened). My normal broadcast would get hijacked by the EBS equipment (which was connected to the transmitter) and the alert system would begin broadcasting the test message, followed by the tone, followed by closing message. After this test we had to manually reset the EBS equipment by pressing a button (or power cycling the damned thing) in order to regain control of the local broadcast from the studio.
The manual test was performed weekly by the DJs (we did it at 6AM on Monday). I'd play a cart with the opening message, "This is a test..." and then I'd have to press a button on the EBS to play the tone. It tested the system's ability to interrupt my broadcast. At the end of the tone I hit the reset (or as previously mentioned, power cycled it) and then played a second cart with the closing message "this concludes a test of the Emergency Broadcast System..."
In both test cases I had to log the time of the test (or risk going to FCC, bang you in the ass, prison??).
If the message turned out NOT to be a test I was to tear open the special red envelope hanging by the equipment. Sadly, I never got to do this. The envelope contained a codeword. One would compare the code transmitted to the EBS with the code in the envelope. If it was a match there were further instructions in the envelope which remain a mystery to me (although someone once told me that since we were a small station we would likely be instructed to shut down our transmitter while stations with more kilowatts would be instructed to boost their signal).
Can you imagine the personal information gathering and targeted advertising you could do with fixed IPs?
Imagine how much Google and Apple could compile... the targeted ads they could send you... the lists they could make available for sale to advertisers...
This would be fantastic. I prefer ads to be targeted to my interests. I find it to be much more useful than random ads for things I do not care about.
I had a cablecard installed in my Tivo Premiere within days of calling Verizon with no hassle at all.
I have the same setup as you and can tell you there is a hassle. The cablecard Verizon Fios installed on my Tivo Premiere has one way communication. That means if I want any of the On Demand services I have to also keep my regular Verizon cable box (and pay the monthly rental fee). On Demand is an important part of the service as there are a ton of free movies and free replays of network and cable TV shows. Not all of this content is matched by the services on the Tivo alone.
Take for example one of the premium channels (HBO). With the Verizon cable box I can watch any of the HBO movies or series on demand. I cannot do this with the Tivo. I would have to plan ahead and record everything my wife might want to watch. And I am no mind reader.
I for one welcome our new bookmaking overlords.
The idea of creating your own college major reminds me of puzzle master Will Shortz. He spoke in an NPR interview about creating his own major at Indiana University. His major was enigmatology... the study of puzzles. And now he is the greatest puzzle master of all time. It takes a special mind and tremendous passion for something to pull this off. When I was 18 the best I could have come up with was majoring in skirt chasing or beer bong engineering.
I cashed out $200 a few weeks ago from Full Tilt and it was released successfully to my bank account. I guess the rest of my bankroll is stuck. I cannot even fathom how the government thinks thy can lock up my money like this.
Poker should be legalized. It is not gambling. The casino only takes a rake.
A text adventure with very basic graphics... you started out in prison and had to escape by getting some cheese and catching a mouse, etc. I recall that you had to send away for a pilots license that you later picked up at the warden's house in his mailbox. Anyone recall this game?
I cannot imagine a situation where I would recommend to a company that they use money and resources to upgrade a Windows XP box to a newer OS. What a waste of time.
When the XP box reaches end of life you replace it with new hardware and put your ready to go Windows 7 image on it. Duh.
The Windows XP to Vista to Windows 7 path seems even more unlikely. Chalk this article up as an academic exercise, not a real world scenario.
If you RTFA you would know that there won't be any elevator music. Elevatornauts will pass the time by playing Duke Nukem Forever.
I guess I should mention that Randy Ruaro is Sarah Palin's deputy chief of staff.
Ruaro, Randall P (GOV) Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger / Container Tax Thu, 8/28/08 12KB Read
Ruaro, Randall P (GOV) FW: DPS Personnel and Budget Issues Tue, 8/19/08 11KB Read
Ruaro, Randall P (GOV) Court of Appeals Nominations Sat, 8/16/08 11KB Read
Nizich, Michael A (GOV) another records request Fri, 8/15/08 5KB Read
Nizich, Michael A (GOV) FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter Thu, 8/7/08 5KB Read
Funny as your comment was, I have to agree. My flash drive has been through washer/dryer and then to hell and back. It still works like a charm.
A second flash drive I own lost its plastic cover in the dryer (the glue holding it together must have melted). Without the cover the chips and USB link still work fine.
Didn't they even stick around to give him a rez?
I have a client that did exactly that. They put the family PC in the family room with the screen facing out. Their 16 year old son was instructed to not use the PC if his parents weren't home.
The results weren't so good. Mom went shopping and came back home early because she forgot something. She ended up getting an eyeful of her son with his pants around his ankles jerking off in the living room. An embarrassing situation for everyone. Although it was a good laugh for me and his father when he told me the story.
There are gateway devices that can be configured for blocking of pornographic sites. SonicWall Gateway Filtering comes to mind. But a 16 year old can easily jerk off to non-porn pictures of women. They are pretty horny at that age. Heck, George Castanza got caught by his mon wanking it to a Glamour Magazine. Now that was a funny Seinfeld episode.
The other issue with wireless networking protocols that we have found is it works very poorly with certain applications with a database backend. For anyone that uses Sage Timeslips, try running a large report over wireless. It can hang for up to 15 minutes where it will only take seconds over a wired network. The difference in network speed cannot explain this anamoly.
I do not know the technical reason for this, but I have seen it happen with numerous applications that attach to a server based database.
I'm actually now being given locations that cover a much larger area then when I first tried this. It is no longer confined to the 500 sq. miles.
I read in the news that anywhere from 10,000 to 17,000sq. miles is being searched for Fosset's plane. This Google Earth tool only has updated images covering an area of about 500 square miles. I wonder if they plan to expand the area with new images.
This feature of interest is much too small to be the plane. Examine it closely you will see it is just the top of a rock formation.
4 Years ago we purchased and deployed 12 new workstations at one of my client sites. Over that 4 year period we have had 10 hard drive failures.
While this failure rate may seem exceptional, it's not too far from reality. Today's hard drives have extremely unpredictable lifespans. If you get a bad lot of drives like we did here you are in for a lot of headaches. Sure they were covered by warranty, but time is lost waiting for the overnight replacement part and then re-imaging the new drive.
Frankly, I'm hopeful that eliminating moving parts will remove a serious potential point of failure.
Verizon's Fios face won't be in my house until they offer a static IP for something less than the current $100 a month.
Clearly this is the classic group velocity vs. velocity error again. And I don't even know what that means.
I'm not sure I want retailers dumping the upgrade/replacement parts I need for otherwise perfectly good PCs that I have. I admit I have purchased SATA cards for systems with IDE only on the motherboard, but I have PCs where this is simply not possible as I am out of PCI slots.
It would be a disaster if retailers immediately dumped old technology when new stuff came to market. More people have IDE drives at home than SATA at the moment. That is why retailers still carry the old stuff. That is what is in demand. The only reason I could see for vanishing the technology immediately would be to force obsolescence and drive the new PC sales market.
I can assure you that upgrading from Outlook 2000 to Outlook 2003 does not convert your PST file to a newer format automatically. There isn't even a prompt to do this. It simply cannot happen.
FACT: The only way to get the 2003 Outlook PST format is to create a new, blank PST file in Outlook 2003 and then import your old Outlook 2000 PST data.
I have to agree that my FUD detector is going off. This story is made up for certain.
I recall Mad Magazine releasing singles on then flexible (and square) records. You could play them on a standard 45 record player. That was back in the 70s, but maybe they continued to do it after I stopped my subscription. I wish I still had those records. But I'd have to buy a record player somewhere if I did.
Wash your hands after you eat and don't eat while you are sitting at your computer. My keyboard stays pristine this way with the exception of some dust which compressed air handles nicely.