Seriously. I've noticed this too, lately, as I work for a small Verizon Wireless store in our local mall. More and more phones are coming with the big PDA-type screens preloaded with MS's PocketPC software with a myriad of other Microsoft exclusives. Kyocera, Samsung, Sony, Broyhill, Nokia, all of the major cell phone brands have begun releasing PocketPC and Palm based PDA/phone combos.
This is fine for competition, except Microsoft has been known to leverage their monopoly power to expand it to other businesses. What gives them the right to prepackage their PocketPC software on other companies' phones? It's absolutely dispicable.
What the EU claims is that Microsoft is using their.NET Passport authentication to tie customers into a spiralling frenzy of tie-ins and products, such as Excel and Age of Empires. More and more of our consumers are being forced into purchasing these telephones and using them to converse with their cohorts while Bill Gates and Co. can listen in on their conversations. These consumer terrorists are forced to browse their email through Microsoft's scrupulous Pocket Outlook for their telephones and MSN Messenger for their SMS replacements.
In short, I just hope that the EU can finally bring down the Micro$oft empire that threatens competition in a market trying to be free. Their behavior is absolutely disgusting and unwarranted in a free market system, which is exactly why the EU must do everything they can to bring them down, because Ashcroft won't.
Solar eclipses are very rare, but one thing that most people forget is the inherrent danger in witnessing one with your bare vision. I study meterology at MIT, so I feel that I am qualified enough to comment on the situation at hand.
First, solar eclipses occur when the moon passes through the path of the earth and the sun, creating its own umbral shadow casted upon the earth. This blackens the sky to almost nighttime for a few minutes, an often spectacular display of nature's erraticism and beauty at the same time.
What most people forget, however, is that while the visible straight-line rays of color are blocked by the moon, most of the diffracting patterns of raycasting shadows and harmful radiation, such as UV, infrared and gamma, are not blocked by a line-of-sight blockade by the moon. This is why you often see cancerous lumps on the exposed skin of viewers of eclipses mere days after the event has passed.
Not even sunglasses can block the longitudinal waves of harmful gamma radiation, which penetrates the skin and malforms cells into cancerous, replicating destroyers. So, while many people often embark a solar eclipse as a marvelous display of beauty, if you dare to venture near a window or even outside in Ceduna, Australia, dress up heavily, and don't look directly at the sun's raycasting aura.
I've actually contributed several patches to the SMP cycle router in the new 2.5.47 kernel. Me, as well as several of my associates, have had the privilege of testing Linux on our quad-proc machines at our development firm where we work. The speed is absolutely marvelous, my manager's jaw dropped when he saw how fast we could compile our corporation's PHP scripts.
On the video front, the bus core of the latest AGP 8x cards are now implemented with dual-feed data ports, as BSD has implemented in their last main release. This increases the pixels per second speed by order of magnitudes, all with about two hours worth of code tweaking.
As a side note, however, I recommend if you want to try these significant kernel improvements on your boxen at home, please use extreme caution - the stability of these releases are questionable, and they have been known to cone dump into various output files. Please, do not deploy this on mission critical desktops or NT workstations!
By the looks of it, the Linux 2.5 kernel is ahead of schedule, and it looks as though it may be fully ready by year-end 2002. How's that for a Christmas present!
one of the OSes (only Windows versions) it works with are certified for TOP SECRET data
This is, incidentally, the one weakness of the press release offered today by the NSA. While this in essence is wonderful for the 802.11b community, it still cannot be effectively used by the Open Source community which the NSA is now an ardent supporter of.
The reason why it usually ends up this way is because of M$'s stranglehold on the wireless developer market, and thusly, its influence on "purchasing" coders at NSA. It's truly ruthless what measures they will do to prevent Open Sauce's entrance into the anti-hacker prosecution that the NSA prides itself on.
Because of Micro$haft's monopolistic practices, we may never be able to use these secure drivers offered to the National Security Agency, funded by taxpayer dollars. Why, you ask, is it that the NSA can get away with throwing our hard-earned tax dollars at evil corporations like M$ so that we are left without the DLLs to use our wireless routers on the free-as-in-beer OS we tout so much. Quite frankly, if we want to wirelessly pirate the efforts of hard-earned artists over our broadband, why should it be any of the NSA's business or M$'s evil-handedness to prevent us from porting their drivers to the PERL so we can use them on our Linux boxen?
Just another evil underhanded tactic utilized by Micro$haft.
Yes, that's right,
yet another
Linux bug was discovered the other day. So, right about now, if you're a clear headed Capitalist, you're probably thinking "Who cares? They find a new bug in Linux daily." Well, you're right. But there's more to the story. Apparently Alan Cocks (a Red Menace Commie who censors documents under the cloak of the DMCA) is trying to pass the blame on another co-conspirator of Communism.
Apparently, if you'd believe the Linux community, you'd be hard-pressed upon where to place the blame. You see, the Linuxist Manifesto's number one rule is to lie to protect the best interests of Linux. No self-respectable Linux zealot would insult or place blame upon AMD, because AMD's philosophy centers around tackling American Corporations with their Asian sweatshops, selling their chips at bargain-basement prices like the Red Menace Commies do with their Wal-Mart shit.
So, right about now, you're probably thinking that the zealots are clearly in a dilemma. Who are they going to blame? If you have a prediction before I tell you, the poll is on the right. Or maybe the left. Either way, take your pick.
You'd think that the parasitic community would place blame upon Microsoft, right? Alas, Microsoft has had the bug patched since September 2000. Not only that, Windows XP, the latest in the suite of high-powered, stable operating systems from Microsoft Corp., has this patch built in. That's right, built in. Keep in mind that Windows XP was released in October 2001, over three months ago. Meanwhile, no one knows what the hell Alan Cocks has been doing since then, since he hides under the cloak of secrecy. nVidia has been informing users via tech support, even to the Linux community, how to fix the problem for months now. Clearly the blame is upon Alan Cocks's shoulder, but to place the blame where it is rightfully justified is inexcusable in the Linux community. The drones are in disarray.
The actual bug occurs when Linux users contract the Tux Racer virus via KEmail. When first run, Tux Racer enables a feature in your third-world sweatshop AMD processor called "extended paging." Now, I know you're probably thinking that this sounds like some sort of Nokia feature. Well, you're wrong. It's yet another feature that AMD illegally hacked from Intel. It allows your browser to seamlessly view pages up to 4Mb in size. Before its introduction in the early days of the Intel Pentium processor, web pages were broken up into 4K segments, because any pages larger would freeze the computer. That's why Microsoft didn't invent Javascript until after the Pentium, every time they went to use it, their pages exceeded 4K, and henceforth froze the computer. Intel came to the rescue with the Pentium line of chips, and, as usual, AMD got out their super high tech Asian hacking tools and "reverse-engineered" (code-name for 'illegally hacked') Intel's technology. Thus, users of the inferior AMD Cyrix Kx86-2 Now! processor could also view large web pages without crashing. So why did no one notice that pages larger than 4K would crash AMD processors? Well, Microsoft has had a fix for 16 months, like we mentioned earlier. But why did no one from the Linux community notice? Well, apparently, there does not exist a page devoted to Linux that is morethan 4K in size. Since most of the Linux installations out there denounce color as 'feature bloat,' all Linux pages follow an unwritten oath to suck. Believe me, they all do.
So, for the good of Linux, you may now disperse. Head off to various techsites and continue blaming Microsoft for not telling you sooner. Your community will thank you.
Yes, that's right, yet another Linux bug was discovered the other day. So, right about now, if you're a clear headed Capitalist, you're probably thinking "Who cares? They find a new bug in Linux daily." Well, you're right. But there's more to the story. Apparently Alan Cocks (a Red Menace Commie who censors documents under the cloak of the DMCA) is trying to pass the blame on another co-conspirator of Communism.
Apparently, if you'd believe the Linux community, you'd be hard-pressed upon where to place the blame. You see, the Linuxist Manifesto's number one rule is to lie to protect the best interests of Linux. No self-respectable Linux zealot would insult or place blame upon AMD, because AMD's philosophy centers around tackling American Corporations with their Asian sweatshops, selling their chips at bargain-basement prices like the Red Menace Commies do with their Wal-Mart shit.
So, right about now, you're probably thinking that the zealots are clearly in a dilemma. Who are they going to blame? If you have a prediction before I tell you, the poll is on the right. Or maybe the left. Either way, take your pick.
You'd think that the parasitic community would place blame upon Microsoft, right? Alas, Microsoft has had the bug patched since September 2000. Not only that, Windows XP, the latest in the suite of high-powered, stable operating systems from Microsoft Corp., has this patch built in. That's right, built in. Keep in mind that Windows XP was released in October 2001, over three months ago. Meanwhile, no one knows what the hell Alan Cocks has been doing since then, since he hides under the cloak of secrecy. nVidia has been informing users via tech support, even to the Linux community, how to fix the problem for months now. Clearly the blame is upon Alan Cocks's shoulder, but to place the blame where it is rightfully justified is inexcusable in the Linux community. The drones are in disarray.
The actual bug occurs when Linux users contract the Tux Racer virus via KEmail. When first run, Tux Racer enables a feature in your third-world sweatshop AMD processor called "extended paging." Now, I know you're probably thinking that this sounds like some sort of Nokia feature. Well, you're wrong. It's yet another feature that AMD illegally hacked from Intel. It allows your browser to seamlessly view pages up to 4Mb in size. Before its introduction in the early days of the Intel Pentium processor, web pages were broken up into 4K segments, because any pages larger would freeze the computer. That's why Microsoft didn't invent Javascript until after the Pentium, every time they went to use it, their pages exceeded 4K, and henceforth froze the computer. Intel came to the rescue with the Pentium line of chips, and, as usual, AMD got out their super high tech Asian hacking tools and "reverse-engineered" (code-name for 'illegally hacked') Intel's technology. Thus, users of the inferior AMD Cyrix Kx86-2 Now! processor could also view large web pages without crashing. So why did no one notice that pages larger than 4K would crash AMD processors? Well, Microsoft has had a fix for 16 months, like we mentioned earlier. But why did no one from the Linux community notice? Well, apparently, there does not exist a page devoted to Linux that is morethan 4K in size. Since most of the Linux installations out there denounce color as 'feature bloat,' all Linux pages follow an unwritten oath to suck. Believe me, they all do.
So, for the good of Linux, you may now disperse. Head off to various techsites and continue blaming Microsoft for not telling you sooner. Your community will thank you.
I don't see the problems. You will still be able to modify things to suit you. AOL users will get what they want. Red Hat will be assured survival under the world's largest ISP. Microsoft will improve or die.
There is no way for AOL to destroy the modular design of Linux/GNU software. To do so, they would have to custom modify and maintain far too many packages. Why would they go to such effort and cost? The average AOL user never ever bothers to venture furthers that far, so "digital rights management" and advert cramming will be maintained by default, just like they are on M$ platforms today. AOL useres actually use AOL's client and browser there and they will under Linux. You will still be able to replace bogus packages and use the ones you want.
What this is going to be, is AOL being able to send out a shiny new CD when M$ breaks their customer's machines. The customer can sit happy knowing that they won't have to buy a new computer and that they can get the things they expect from AOL. My mom is a good example. She has used her computers for three application and only three applications. She has used AOL, Word Perfect, and Quicken. I'm not sure she uses Quicken any more. She uses AOL's instant messenger and email. The rest of her computer means nothing to her, and could be running anything. When ME meets it's two year obsolescence and her flaming nice PIII laptop starts spitting chunks, I hope AOL sends her a nice Red Hat CD. The other stuff, like Netscape, Electric Eyes, Gimp.... might have her actually use her machine some more and definatly enjoy it more. If AOL bought Correl, she would be very happy indeed.
This could kill Microsoft. It's one thing for my mom to have some friends and her son using Linux, it's another thing when she gets it, it works and does everything she wants it to. AOL has 100 million clients, think of the change in perception the world will have if just 1% revive their dead machines this way instead of buying a new $1,000 computer. AOL users, the scorn of M$ elitist derision having computers that work and cost less. Supposedly the most clueless computer population on earth suddenly having tools and stability M$ loosers pay big money for but never recieve. Surely word of mouth will sweep the world, and M$'s already weakened position with hardware makers will collapse.
Reasonable hardware standards may yet see light of day. Without M$ to hord up ever changing API's and that magic flag on the box, we may see hardware maintains stable open interfaces. I am trully filled with hope today. This is great news.
Slashdot Moderators: The Truth Revealed
on
Pheromone Robotics
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Rob Malda has barely made any effort to fully describe the process of selecting Slashdot moderators. What little information that has been supplied is an outright lie. The story of Malda's moderation system is far more insidious than merely separating wheat from chaff.
Last night, as I leaned over to give my Natalie Portman poster a tender kiss goodnight, I was psychically cast into a hypnotic trance. While entranced, my spirit guides delivered unto me the tale of the Slashdot moderators. Prepare to have your faith in Mr. Malda and moderation shaken to the core.
Not long ago, Rob Malda was an outcast teenager. He did well in some of his classes, but was terrible with English. As is so often the tragic case today, his teachers passed him anyway, just to get rid of him. Since Malda had no real life, he spent much of his time on the computer (of course), and watching the public-access cable channel. It was there that Malda heard of the mysterious Mongolian monks.
Malda was watching his favorite talk show, "Elizabeth Claire prophet." the guests that night were a group of monks based in Mongolia. The monks described how they had been traveling to china to trade some of their cute teen daughters for Natalie Portman memorabilia. The monks had traveled no more than three days when they noticed a brilliant light in the daytime sky. The light grew larger. In addition, larger. And larger. Soon the sky was completely hidden, from horizon to horizon, by a giant metallic disk.
The monks were taken aboard the craft and placed under some sort of alien mind-control. There, they were given the deepest possible insights into the nature of man, the universe and god. A week later, the alien beings returned the monks to the earth and vanished forever.
The monks considered the area holy ground and constructed a new temple there, not bothering to return to their old monastery. They took their daughters as wives and began their own commune of worship, based on the teachings of the aliens. The monks practiced meditations, which unleashed powerful spiritual forces within them. As the wives bore children, the community grew.
Malda was intrigued by the spiritual insights received by the monks and excited by the idea of incestuous pleasures. Unfortunately, the monks had no internet connection and so Malda could not email them. Without hesitation, Malda booked a flight and left for Mongolia. The plane ride was long and tiring, but his curiosity kept him driven.
After a month of searching, Malda finally located the commune. Initially, he kept a safe distance, for fear of rejection. He studied the monks from afar. Malda had heard stories of the monks' bizarre meditations, which gave them extraordinary powers. Malda was somewhat skeptical of these stories at first, until he saw the truth first-hand.
In the week, that Malda studied the monks; he witnessed the breaking of every natural law. He was astonished as he watched the monks levitate, create pockets of lush weather within the commune and communicated with spirit forces. Malda grew more and more excited and he devised a plan for meeting them.
Malda knew the monks would respect him if he could display his own "magical" powers. He was determined to win their confidence, and he had with him all of the necessary tools. He approached the commune confidently. The monks greeted him with skepticism at the gate. Malda took a deep breath and began his show.
Using an Aibo, a can of jolt cola and an inflatable sex doll, Malda shocked the monks with his display of magical powers. The monks accepted him into the commune. Malda's head was shaved and he was given a robe and a room. The monks warned Malda to stay away from their daughters-wives.
The monks methodically taught Malda the word of the great messengers. He learned eagerly at first, but soon grew bored with his life in the commune. Malda's life was further stressed when his blow-up doll suffered a puncture-wound and became useless. A few days later, his Aibo's power dried up. With no pet and no woman, Malda slowly grew crazed.
Malda had hit rock bottom. His penis chafed from dry-hand masturbation and the cold, dry climate. One dark night, he snuck into the kitchen and convinced one of the daughter-wives to join him in his room. Malda was quite relieved that he would finally get some female tenderness... for the first time in his life. He was so excited; he almost closed the deal prematurely.
Unluckily for Malda, the daughter-wife's father-husband was expecting her in bed at that particular moment. The women were expected to be with the monks at a very specific time for retirement. The monk went on a violent rampage throughout the temple, ending with Malda's room. He flung open the door to behold his daughter-wife half disrobed and lying on top of Malda. Malda looked up at the monk and gasped. The daughter-wife giggled.
The monk unsheathed his sword and the daughter-wife was beheaded on the spot. Malda kicked the unviable head away from him and jumped out of the bed. He backed himself into a corner, terrified. The monk approached him with sword raised. Just as he reached striking distance, he dropped the sword and collapsed, crying for the loss of his daughter and the betrayal of his adopted son. Malda was dishonorably discharged from the commune.
Malda wandered into the forest and took shelter in a cave. He spent the next five days curled up in a fetal position, feeding on bat guano and insects. The bitterness and hatred consumed Malda. Once again, he was an outsider. He decided that this time, he would not be trampled on.
Malda wandered for three days until he came upon a small village. He entered the shop of the local blacksmith and killed the ironworker by bashing him in the head with the Aibo. Malda crafted himself a massive machete. He took apart the Aibo and used its quality Sony components to enhance the machete with a nuclear driven flaming mechanism.
Malda returned to the commune. He took one last look at the peaceful community, and then hit the ignition switch on his machete. The weapon screamed like a thousand tortured souls as it ignited with flame. Malda then inserted the rechargeable battery from the Aibo into his rectum. Malda stormed the compound, beheading all of the monks and devouring their brains, thus capturing their souls into the battery in his anus.
The sky turned the color of blood and a great storm of pestilence swept over the village. Malda barely escaped before the commune was decimated by the hand of god, thus purging the terrible evil that had been committed. His face stained with blood and his heart stained with the forces of evil, Malda returned to the United States.
Malda was crazed with power. He devised another insidious plan. He would build an army of mindless followers, which he would use to bring the world to its knees. He would use an online site for the tech-savvy elite to build this army. But he needed a way to control the chaotic masses that would come flocking to his new site. He needed his generals.
Malda prowled the streets of his hometown, enticing male prostitutes with promises of cheap crack cocaine and sexual favors. Once the prostitutes agreed to join Malda in his basement, he would tie them up and place the Aibo battery, upside down, in their rectum. He would then abuse the hapless victim with words of derision and samples of his writing.
The abuse was so severe, that the spirit of the victim would be broken and the soul of one monk would be absorbed from the battery. The resultant creature was not a man, nor a zombie. It was some pathetic monstrosity. The beaten souls of the monks were enslaved to Malda's terrible evil. They depended upon his evil powers for sustenance. Malda labeled his terrible, elite guard the "moderators."
Malda's site grew quickly in popularity and the moderators enforced blandness and conformance with a heavy hand. No good army has room for an individual. The moderators are psychically connected to Malda and know his word. That word is enforced on Slashdot. The subtle moderations effectively warped the minds of those who visited the site and grew addicted, due to the powerful evil force exuded by its words.
Today, Malda sits in his office, strumming his electric guitar, waiting for his army of darkness to ripen.
Coming from a store owner...
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I own a chain of stores here in London, and after several meetings with lower management, we have decided to not accept the Euro currency in favor of the pound from foreigners. We came to this conclusion for several reasons, which make both economic and political sense for a store dealing mainly in jewlery such as ourselves.
The Euro costs us £0.50 to exchange for every transaction made. That's right, the banks charge us to convert our money back into pounds! They don't charge at the consumer level, just merchant to merchant, so we mandate consumers do this on their own, or pay via another means.
The new anti-counterfeit measures contained in the Euro. This may seem like a good thing, but the larger Euro demoniations contain coils electromagnetically charged to a certain serial number. This can thus be tracked, and as much as consumers are worried about their privacy, merchants are worried about ours in respect to competitors.
The attitude here in London is mostly anti-Euro, as Brits object to this new prospect of a continental government. We've been independent for this long, and under no means do we want to be governed by someone higher than the Parliament
The conversion rates fluctuate constantly. What's to say that one day, we charge 500 for a gold ring, and then going to the bank to exchange it, it's then worth 90% of that? That's lost money to us. We can't afford to be dealing in currency fluctuations. Both the pound and the US Dollar are stable enough to be dealing with, but I won't put my corporation's trust into the Euro.
Businesses like mine are doing the same thing. I can't find a single business here in London Square willing to redeem Euros for face value. So, when you come to London, be sure to bring your plastic, or redeem it for pounds.
I don't know what OS you use, but if you use Windows, you should try out Microsoft Reader and see if you see a significant improvement in readability of your fonts within the application with its ClearType technology, which really improves fonts on LCD screens. I have also heard that ClearType will be included in Windows XP when that is released.
If you use Windows and don't want to download Microsoft Reader, I suggest trying out Steve Gibson's ClearType Sub-Pixel Font Rendering Demo, available here, which is a small application to demonstrate ClearType technology.
Also, Slashdot (last year) ran an article on ClearType technology here.
There is some research work that has been carried out that suggests that LCDs should be easier on the eye than CRT monitors, because the eye finds it easier to focus on the sharply-defined pixel edge. One or two small research projects have found evidence to support faster reading speeds on LCDs. Anecdotal evidence also points to users being happier to spend longer periods looking at LCDs. There are also reports from users that they can find it difficult to constantly switch between the two technologies.
In the future, LCDs are likely to run at higher resolutions than CRTs, with consequent improvements in reading speed and accuracy.
If you want to learn more about this topic, I suggest you check out this link: Employer Rights in Employee Inventions. Sometimes seeing what rights they have will help you on your way to learning what rights you have.
...is obtain and compile a list of sites that you may need to visit for research purposes (I'm sure many Bill Clinton sites are blocked that describe the premise of impeachment). Get a lot of sites on that list.
Then, start a petition. I don't suggest giving it to students, because the Big guys' response will be that of "yeah, of course the students want the censorware gone." Get teachers to sign it. Get librarians who have to explain to students why they are shown a "Bess can't go there" page when they want to get the information they need. Explain to them how N2H2 is selling out to advertisers the browsing habits of the school's students. Propose your petition and list to the school board, along with convincing arguments why any type of censorware is bad, and how it's just a replacement for proper supervision. Check out Peacefire for arguments against the most common censorware applications. Good luck to you, and I'd like to hear the outcome of your scenario, as I'm in the same situation with Bess.
it's not like it's hard to find one. I went to Altavista (just for giggles though, real men use Google), hoping to get a good link for the story, entered in movie archive mpeg and got mostly porn anyway. Hell, at altavista, searching for Franklin Roosevelt would turn up porn.
Here's Scott R. White's bio as reported in the WP article. Looks like he and his students have been working on this for quite awhile:
A.J. Hegeman, "Self-repairing polymers: repair mechanisms and micromechanical modeling," M.S. Thesis, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, June, 1997.
D. Jung, "Performance and properties of embedded microspheres for self-repairing applications," M.S. Thesis, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, July, 1997.
The Census Bureau says it's your civic duty to answer these snooping questions. In reality, it's your patriotic duty to refuse to answer. You can strike a blow for privacy, equality, and liberty by declining to answer every question on the Census form except the one required by the Constitution: How many people live in your home?
The U.S. Constitution says the purpose of the Census is to make an "actual enumeration." That is, to take an accurate count of Americans for the purpose of apportioning congressional districts. But the federal government has gone far beyond that mandate. The long version of the Census -- which one in every six households will receive -- contains a whopping 52 questions. That's 51 more than the Constitution requires. Maybe that's why compliance with the Census had plummeted to just 65% by 1990.
Unfortunately, the government has ways of making you talk. Title 13, Chapter 7 of the U.S. code mandates a $100 fine for those who decline to answer Census questions. What kind of government demands, under penalty of law, reams of personal data -- including racial characteristics -- from its citizens? Ours does. That's why it's time for some polite, patriotic civil disobedience. If you care about privacy, genuine equality, and old-fashioned American liberty, the arrival of the Census form is your chance to literally stand up and be counted.
Tell them how many people live in your home, and that's all. Maybe $100 is a small price to pay for making a principled stand for privacy and freedom.
Yes, this is logical. if the authorities are saying "we know you're copying copywrited works - you have a computer so you MUST be guilty of this. so lets dispense with trials and such and just slap a fine on you. you know you're guilty - just pay the fine" then I guess since we've already been judged and are paying the fine, we at least owe it to ourselves to enjoy the fruits of our 'crimes'.
don't they see that this promotes breaking the laws?
its like a cop that stops you before you enter a very fast highway and says "we're collecting in advance for any speeding you're likely to do". who in their right mind would NOT speed after being charged for it? especially if your car is up to it.
OK, so most Linux people don't like the fact that winmodems are closed devices that are not supported on Linux. The conventional wisdom complains that existing winmodems give poor performance and kill the CPU. However in a recent/. post no less a personage than John Carmack suggested that winmodems could be implemented in a way that is better than conventional modems for the needs of interactive games.
In the process of doing a web search I then turned up Stuart Cheshire's old home page. For those who don't know who he is, well before the web was popular he wrote a classic networked Mac game called bolo. (In fact when the web became popular the bolo players used to curse that the web was dragging the internet down too much...) Most links to it are dead, but the official home page is still up although there has not been a release since 1995. (This was apparently done as research into the needs of interactive networked programs. Gee, all of those hours that I spent as a test subject without knowing it...)
With Stuart's credentials established, it is well worth looking at his rants. In particular his latency rant, which was expanded out into a white paper.
Once you are through reading those you will see that for anything interactive, particularly games, what really matters is latency, not bandwidth. And modems are a major source of this latency. In addition he and John Carmack agree that software modems (AKA winmodems) can be (though they are not currently) programmed to operate in a mode that reduces latency, and the result would be better for interactive games than conventional modems.
So, are winmodems just a bad idea, or are they just poorly implemented? Conventional wisdom says that they are bad no matter what. But the people who should know best suggest otherwise.
Although they often seem magical in their abilities, fabbers today are still far from the "Replicator" of Star Trek fame. Additive fabbers are generally limited in accuracy and resolution to about 0.1 mm (0.004 inch), although better results can be obtained by experienced operators or with some experimental techniques. Although fabbers are often much faster than alternative methods, they are not instantaneous, and sizable projects can run for days to be produced. Moreover, the maximum size that can be built in a single run of the largest additive fabbers is limited to less than half a cubic meter (a few cubic feet). Materials selection is also a limitation of the currently available machines. The commonly available materials include acrylics, epoxies, urethanes, and ABS, as well as wax for investment casting masters. Specialty materials also available include artificial wood and specially formulated ceramics, metallic alloys, and metallic composites. Finally, one must recognize that fabbers are still highly technical devices, requiring trained personnel and often industrial environmental controls for their use.
Of course, there are reasons to use a fabber too.
Some of the advantages of fabricators over other means of generating solid objects are:
Direct generation based on digital data, without the errors arising from a tradesman's interpretation of the designer's drawings
Ease of iteration. Part of a design can be changed and the object refabricated without the need to redo the design of the entire object
Accuracy and repeatability of dimensions on the order of 25 to 250 microns (0.001 to 0.01 inch)
For the additive processes, the ability to generate shapes of arbitrary geometric complexity, including composite and nested ("ship in a bottle") structures made without assembly and without seams
The advantages of using fabbers in design and production applications have been nothing short of dramatic. Manufacturers have typically realized time and cost savings of 50 to 80 per cent in product development, and even greater cost savings and schedule reductions are not uncommon. Along with reduced cost and development time, the practical ability to iterate designs leads to improved final product quality. Moreover, the ability to turn a new idea into a final product quickly can cause a stir of excitement and professional satisfaction in the product team. This in turn feeds back to high productivity and quality of performance from the individuals involved.
I am increasingly troubled by how many new applications are designed to work solely under a GUI. While this may make some amount of sense for people coming from the PC or Mac worlds, one of the strengths of Unix has always been the ability to use it from anywhere. These people don't seem to understand this.
Of how much ultimate utility is that nifty new spreadsheet, editor, or debugger if I can't dialup from the field and run it on my vt100? Too often a tool that "does windows" is little more than a marketing gimmick to dazzle impressionable users into not noticing that they don't have the real functionality they need.
GUI-minded programs seldom lend themselves to being used as components in larger tools. As such, they do not fit well into the UNIX tool-and-filter philosophy. Instead of each being a single program that modestly attempts to do one thing well, they are a throwback to the Bad Old Days when each program was a standalone, monolithic monster that didn't interface with anything else.
It's all well and good to place a GUI wrapper around an existing tool, but to design a new application with only a GUI interface in mind is to forever limit that tool's flexibility. After all, how to you write a shell script that drives an automated xrn session?
Providing programmability for the fancy graphics software remains an open problem. The most effective use of GUIs in UNIX environments is to design the nitty-gritty computational function as a "back end" that can be driven either manually or automatically.
The GUI wrapper should be a separable module. If they're plug-replaceable, the application isn't irretrievably wedded to any specific GUI technology, such as SunView, NeWS, or even X11 or its children, like Open Look or Motif. Sending standard commands down a pipe the way the STDWIN or wafe packages behave is also a reasonable approach.
This means your program should be runnable both with and without the GUI present, and accept input from a mouse or under programmed control. Preferably that means both a shell-level interface for convenience and a C-level interface for efficiency; Perl programmers could elect either method. That way, naive users can use push-button GUIs, blind users can use Braille terminals, and sophisticated users can program solutions to intricate problems.
It has been noted that GUIs make simple things simple, and complex ones impossible. Certainly it is worthwhile to make simple things simple. But too often software is geared to only one level of expertise. That which is novice-friendly is too frequently expert-hostile, and vice versa. Being needlessly forced to click the mouse over a menu will slow down the expert user who is more comfortable with a keyboard interface.
Gratuitous distractions from the keyboard only slow down the experienced user. A precision pointing device that didn't require taking your hands off the keyboard would help. There are cases where only a GUI makes sense, like a CAD system. Being able to delineate a region or draw a figure with a mouse is probably a reasonable use for it, but selection of a range of possibilities isn't, at least not after you've become familiar with the tool.
-snellac
To reproduce a hardware design, unlike software, is not within the capability of the average individual. It requires a large initial investment in time, and money to set up a production run for something. However, there are some rather interesting properties of solid-state electronics that are very similar to software. Like software, hardware requires a large investment of time and resources to design, and a small percentage to distribute. Creation a new design of a silicon chip, such as the Pentium processor, RAM, or any of the support chips on a computer requires a great deal of money and resources. First, an idea must be developed into a design, and then the design must be verified and tested. Then, after that, a great deal of resources will be put into setting up a production line to produce the design. These two steps require anywhere from 75% to 95% of the total resources involved in developing a new chip. Once the design is in production, the incremental cost of making another chip (from raw materials and running the production line itself) is extremely small. Semiconductor makers are effectively "printing money" after they have recouped their initial investment. This is why hardware and software are similiar: the incremental cost of distributing both is very small.
The role the organization I want to create would play would be to act as a focal point for the the exchange of information, and would profit by taking the best ideas and turning them into real and marketable products. Instead of having my organization go through the first step of design, I would encourage entities and stake holders outside my organization to do the design phase of the process. This way, the end customer is intimately involved in how my products turn out in a way that no current company in the high tech industry can match. By doing this, I will eliminate several of the major risk areas in high technology. No one has a better idea of what they actually want than the customers, and if they have a stake in the design of a product, they will be much more likely to buy it than if they did not. My customers for my hardware products will be my suppliers for my 'intellectual property'. I just hope that this OpenH stuff succeeds.
If you live in the Midwestern United States, you've already experienced several winter snow
storms this year. Local road commissions each have their own maintenance jurisdictions,
and where the borders end, they stop plowing. Wouldn't it be great if these
agencies could pool their limited resources? The Southeastern Michigan Snow
and Ice Management (SEMSIM) project is attempting to do just that by using technology
to manage snow plow operations over multiple jurisdictions.
SEMSIM Technologies include:
Tracking the real-time location of snow plow trucks using Global Positioning
System (GPS) technology. Agencies can assign nearby trucks to border roads
of another jurisdiction to improve efficiency.
Monitoring the air and pavement temperatures using truck mounted sensors
Determining if the truck "underbody" scraper is down by using
truck mounted sensors
Calculating the amount of salt spread using a computerized salt spreader
Tracking the real-time location of the trucks using a map-based computer
screen
Project Partners:
Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC)
Wayne County Department of Public Services
City of Detroit
Road Commission of Macomb County
Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART)
Project Goals:
Increase the safety of motorists in a snow storm
Protect the environment by regulating salt use
Respond quickly to changing weather conditions
Improve winter maintenance efficiency by working cooperatively with other
road agencies
I experienced problems with a rebate program offered by Logitech that was called "Buy More...Save More" and was offered to consumers during the period of July 15,2000 to October 15,2000.The amount of rebate was based on how much product you purchased at one time.The form that you needed had to be downloaded off the net from Logitechs site and filled in accordingly with bar codes attached and copies of invoices,the normal requests.The form header clearly reads to the consumer as follows: "BuyMore...SaveMore!""$200 of product=$70.00 Rebate"
Buy 2 or more Logitech products:Totaling $50.00 or more Get a $10.00 rebate by mail Totaling $100.00 or more Get a $25.00 rebate by mail
Totaling $200.00 or more Get a $70.00 rebate by mail.
I thought this was pretty simple so I bought $232.00 of Logitech product from Buy.com all on one invoice. I was looking for a $70.00 rebate check in the mail after submitting all the paperwork. Well here comes my check nine weeks later and it is for $25.00. I said, must be a mistake so I called 1-800-741-1365 (Rebate Express) a division of the express group,they are a rebate processing center.The woman I spoke to informed me that the reason that I was shorted on the rebate was that each item had to be sold over $50.00 each and since the four wireless track balls were only $44.94 each and the cordless I-Touch keyboard was only $46.87,that the only rebate due me was for the four trackballs with a combined value of $187.48 which gets the $100.00 or more status and a $25.00 rebate. I told her that that was not clear on the rebate form and we started the arguing process,but she was not going to see it my way.
I write this because I am tired of seeing the mail in rebate programs sucking us all in. I also want Logitech to know that I have nine workstations with there wireless products at each one....but all we be replaced with new product and all Logitech donated to others that don't have any,and that will keep nine users from purchasing Logitech products.
Very slippery Logitech,we are catching on to your under handed ways and the consumer will prevail.
By the way...cordless trackballs aren't worth a flip.
Logitech does not even supply an email address for customers to write email to.
Now, it's just a digital piece of the old economy.
When I shop and communicate online, it is not more convenient than going to the store or making a phone call. It is sometimes faster, sometimes cheaper, and it is always more anonymous.
Let's say you want to order, say, satanic texts. You can go to the bookstore, but then your neighbors might see you do it. Especially if you are well known. If you go on the internet it might take 6 weeks, but nobody will see you do it. They might get a record of it, but you won't have to make any kind of public action, like going into an occult bookstore, that would make people even think to do it.
It's a situational, social kind of anonymity you get on the Internet.
Registration of every email address will destroy the avatars, the characters, the pirates, the trolls, and everybody else who uses situational, social anonymity.
Crime comes from anonymity, but so does creativity, innovation, and the courage to try new things. I know this from experience.:))
Alas, alack... One of the only reasons keeping me from switching completely over to Linux running Gnome and Wine is the fact that my video capture device just doesn't cut the mustard under linux.
It's not an appropriate card for gaming, but I have another card for that in the same machine. It even outperforms newer video capture devices in terms of quality and capture stability. Better yet, it works pefectly on a machine as slow as a P1 133. (A 3dfx 3500 TV card has problems with synchronization on anything slower than a p3 550)
Unfortuneately, this problem is pretty standard across the board. Matrox is unwilling to support this card on newer OS's (Linux or Win2k) and Linux drivers just don't exist. Unfortuneately, I'm an artist and don't have anywhere near the coding skills necessary to craft my own. I doubt anyone else could because of this line I found in a Matrox email post: "Matrox has evaluated the required resources to produce a "black-box" for Linux to enable the use of the non-Matrox components. Unfortunately we concluded that many man months would be required and we cannot assign such resources to this project."
Older, yet servicable hardware is getting more and more support on linux, but because of crap like this, it's still lacking in a big way.
Slashdot Mirror
This is fine for competition, except Microsoft has been known to leverage their monopoly power to expand it to other businesses. What gives them the right to prepackage their PocketPC software on other companies' phones? It's absolutely dispicable.
What the EU claims is that Microsoft is using their .NET Passport authentication to tie customers into a spiralling frenzy of tie-ins and products, such as Excel and Age of Empires. More and more of our consumers are being forced into purchasing these telephones and using them to converse with their cohorts while Bill Gates and Co. can listen in on their conversations. These consumer terrorists are forced to browse their email through Microsoft's scrupulous Pocket Outlook for their telephones and MSN Messenger for their SMS replacements.
In short, I just hope that the EU can finally bring down the Micro$oft empire that threatens competition in a market trying to be free. Their behavior is absolutely disgusting and unwarranted in a free market system, which is exactly why the EU must do everything they can to bring them down, because Ashcroft won't.
First, solar eclipses occur when the moon passes through the path of the earth and the sun, creating its own umbral shadow casted upon the earth. This blackens the sky to almost nighttime for a few minutes, an often spectacular display of nature's erraticism and beauty at the same time.
What most people forget, however, is that while the visible straight-line rays of color are blocked by the moon, most of the diffracting patterns of raycasting shadows and harmful radiation, such as UV, infrared and gamma, are not blocked by a line-of-sight blockade by the moon. This is why you often see cancerous lumps on the exposed skin of viewers of eclipses mere days after the event has passed.
Not even sunglasses can block the longitudinal waves of harmful gamma radiation, which penetrates the skin and malforms cells into cancerous, replicating destroyers. So, while many people often embark a solar eclipse as a marvelous display of beauty, if you dare to venture near a window or even outside in Ceduna, Australia, dress up heavily, and don't look directly at the sun's raycasting aura.
On the video front, the bus core of the latest AGP 8x cards are now implemented with dual-feed data ports, as BSD has implemented in their last main release. This increases the pixels per second speed by order of magnitudes, all with about two hours worth of code tweaking.
As a side note, however, I recommend if you want to try these significant kernel improvements on your boxen at home, please use extreme caution - the stability of these releases are questionable, and they have been known to cone dump into various output files. Please, do not deploy this on mission critical desktops or NT workstations!
By the looks of it, the Linux 2.5 kernel is ahead of schedule, and it looks as though it may be fully ready by year-end 2002. How's that for a Christmas present!
This is, incidentally, the one weakness of the press release offered today by the NSA. While this in essence is wonderful for the 802.11b community, it still cannot be effectively used by the Open Source community which the NSA is now an ardent supporter of.
The reason why it usually ends up this way is because of M$'s stranglehold on the wireless developer market, and thusly, its influence on "purchasing" coders at NSA. It's truly ruthless what measures they will do to prevent Open Sauce's entrance into the anti-hacker prosecution that the NSA prides itself on.
Because of Micro$haft's monopolistic practices, we may never be able to use these secure drivers offered to the National Security Agency, funded by taxpayer dollars. Why, you ask, is it that the NSA can get away with throwing our hard-earned tax dollars at evil corporations like M$ so that we are left without the DLLs to use our wireless routers on the free-as-in-beer OS we tout so much. Quite frankly, if we want to wirelessly pirate the efforts of hard-earned artists over our broadband, why should it be any of the NSA's business or M$'s evil-handedness to prevent us from porting their drivers to the PERL so we can use them on our Linux boxen?
Just another evil underhanded tactic utilized by Micro$haft.
Apparently, if you'd believe the Linux community, you'd be hard-pressed upon where to place the blame. You see, the Linuxist Manifesto's number one rule is to lie to protect the best interests of Linux. No self-respectable Linux zealot would insult or place blame upon AMD, because AMD's philosophy centers around tackling American Corporations with their Asian sweatshops, selling their chips at bargain-basement prices like the Red Menace Commies do with their Wal-Mart shit.
So, right about now, you're probably thinking that the zealots are clearly in a dilemma. Who are they going to blame? If you have a prediction before I tell you, the poll is on the right. Or maybe the left. Either way, take your pick.
You'd think that the parasitic community would place blame upon Microsoft, right? Alas, Microsoft has had the bug patched since September 2000. Not only that, Windows XP , the latest in the suite of high-powered, stable operating systems from Microsoft Corp., has this patch built in. That's right, built in. Keep in mind that Windows XP was released in October 2001, over three months ago. Meanwhile, no one knows what the hell Alan Cocks has been doing since then, since he hides under the cloak of secrecy. nVidia has been informing users via tech support, even to the Linux community, how to fix the problem for months now. Clearly the blame is upon Alan Cocks's shoulder, but to place the blame where it is rightfully justified is inexcusable in the Linux community. The drones are in disarray.
The actual bug occurs when Linux users contract the Tux Racer virus via KEmail. When first run, Tux Racer enables a feature in your third-world sweatshop AMD processor called "extended paging." Now, I know you're probably thinking that this sounds like some sort of Nokia feature. Well, you're wrong. It's yet another feature that AMD illegally hacked from Intel. It allows your browser to seamlessly view pages up to 4Mb in size. Before its introduction in the early days of the Intel Pentium processor, web pages were broken up into 4K segments, because any pages larger would freeze the computer. That's why Microsoft didn't invent Javascript until after the Pentium, every time they went to use it, their pages exceeded 4K, and henceforth froze the computer. Intel came to the rescue with the Pentium line of chips, and, as usual, AMD got out their super high tech Asian hacking tools and "reverse-engineered" (code-name for 'illegally hacked') Intel's technology. Thus, users of the inferior AMD Cyrix Kx86-2 Now! processor could also view large web pages without crashing. So why did no one notice that pages larger than 4K would crash AMD processors? Well, Microsoft has had a fix for 16 months, like we mentioned earlier. But why did no one from the Linux community notice? Well, apparently, there does not exist a page devoted to Linux that is more than 4K in size. Since most of the Linux installations out there denounce color as 'feature bloat,' all Linux pages follow an unwritten oath to suck. Believe me, they all do.
So, for the good of Linux, you may now disperse. Head off to various tech sites and continue blaming Microsoft for not telling you sooner. Your community will thank you.
Apparently, if you'd believe the Linux community, you'd be hard-pressed upon where to place the blame. You see, the Linuxist Manifesto's number one rule is to lie to protect the best interests of Linux. No self-respectable Linux zealot would insult or place blame upon AMD, because AMD's philosophy centers around tackling American Corporations with their Asian sweatshops, selling their chips at bargain-basement prices like the Red Menace Commies do with their Wal-Mart shit.
So, right about now, you're probably thinking that the zealots are clearly in a dilemma. Who are they going to blame? If you have a prediction before I tell you, the poll is on the right. Or maybe the left. Either way, take your pick.
You'd think that the parasitic community would place blame upon Microsoft, right? Alas, Microsoft has had the bug patched since September 2000. Not only that, Windows XP , the latest in the suite of high-powered, stable operating systems from Microsoft Corp., has this patch built in. That's right, built in. Keep in mind that Windows XP was released in October 2001, over three months ago. Meanwhile, no one knows what the hell Alan Cocks has been doing since then, since he hides under the cloak of secrecy. nVidia has been informing users via tech support, even to the Linux community, how to fix the problem for months now. Clearly the blame is upon Alan Cocks's shoulder, but to place the blame where it is rightfully justified is inexcusable in the Linux community. The drones are in disarray.
The actual bug occurs when Linux users contract the Tux Racer virus via KEmail. When first run, Tux Racer enables a feature in your third-world sweatshop AMD processor called "extended paging." Now, I know you're probably thinking that this sounds like some sort of Nokia feature. Well, you're wrong. It's yet another feature that AMD illegally hacked from Intel. It allows your browser to seamlessly view pages up to 4Mb in size. Before its introduction in the early days of the Intel Pentium processor, web pages were broken up into 4K segments, because any pages larger would freeze the computer. That's why Microsoft didn't invent Javascript until after the Pentium, every time they went to use it, their pages exceeded 4K, and henceforth froze the computer. Intel came to the rescue with the Pentium line of chips, and, as usual, AMD got out their super high tech Asian hacking tools and "reverse-engineered" (code-name for 'illegally hacked') Intel's technology. Thus, users of the inferior AMD Cyrix Kx86-2 Now! processor could also view large web pages without crashing. So why did no one notice that pages larger than 4K would crash AMD processors? Well, Microsoft has had a fix for 16 months, like we mentioned earlier. But why did no one from the Linux community notice? Well, apparently, there does not exist a page devoted to Linux that is more than 4K in size. Since most of the Linux installations out there denounce color as 'feature bloat,' all Linux pages follow an unwritten oath to suck. Believe me, they all do.
So, for the good of Linux, you may now disperse. Head off to various tech sites and continue blaming Microsoft for not telling you sooner. Your community will thank you.
I don't see the problems. You will still be able to modify things to suit you. AOL users will get what they want. Red Hat will be assured survival under the world's largest ISP. Microsoft will improve or die.
.... might have her actually use her machine some more and definatly enjoy it more. If AOL bought Correl, she would be very happy indeed.
There is no way for AOL to destroy the modular design of Linux/GNU software. To do so, they would have to custom modify and maintain far too many packages. Why would they go to such effort and cost? The average AOL user never ever bothers to venture furthers that far, so "digital rights management" and advert cramming will be maintained by default, just like they are on M$ platforms today. AOL useres actually use AOL's client and browser there and they will under Linux. You will still be able to replace bogus packages and use the ones you want.
What this is going to be, is AOL being able to send out a shiny new CD when M$ breaks their customer's machines. The customer can sit happy knowing that they won't have to buy a new computer and that they can get the things they expect from AOL. My mom is a good example. She has used her computers for three application and only three applications. She has used AOL, Word Perfect, and Quicken. I'm not sure she uses Quicken any more. She uses AOL's instant messenger and email. The rest of her computer means nothing to her, and could be running anything. When ME meets it's two year obsolescence and her flaming nice PIII laptop starts spitting chunks, I hope AOL sends her a nice Red Hat CD. The other stuff, like Netscape, Electric Eyes, Gimp
This could kill Microsoft. It's one thing for my mom to have some friends and her son using Linux, it's another thing when she gets it, it works and does everything she wants it to. AOL has 100 million clients, think of the change in perception the world will have if just 1% revive their dead machines this way instead of buying a new $1,000 computer. AOL users, the scorn of M$ elitist derision having computers that work and cost less. Supposedly the most clueless computer population on earth suddenly having tools and stability M$ loosers pay big money for but never recieve. Surely word of mouth will sweep the world, and M$'s already weakened position with hardware makers will collapse.
Reasonable hardware standards may yet see light of day. Without M$ to hord up ever changing API's and that magic flag on the box, we may see hardware maintains stable open interfaces. I am trully filled with hope today. This is great news.
Rob Malda has barely made any effort to fully describe the process of selecting Slashdot moderators. What little information that has been supplied is an outright lie. The story of Malda's moderation system is far more insidious than merely separating wheat from chaff.
Last night, as I leaned over to give my Natalie Portman poster a tender kiss goodnight, I was psychically cast into a hypnotic trance. While entranced, my spirit guides delivered unto me the tale of the Slashdot moderators. Prepare to have your faith in Mr. Malda and moderation shaken to the core.
Not long ago, Rob Malda was an outcast teenager. He did well in some of his classes, but was terrible with English. As is so often the tragic case today, his teachers passed him anyway, just to get rid of him. Since Malda had no real life, he spent much of his time on the computer (of course), and watching the public-access cable channel. It was there that Malda heard of the mysterious Mongolian monks.
Malda was watching his favorite talk show, "Elizabeth Claire prophet." the guests that night were a group of monks based in Mongolia. The monks described how they had been traveling to china to trade some of their cute teen daughters for Natalie Portman memorabilia. The monks had traveled no more than three days when they noticed a brilliant light in the daytime sky. The light grew larger. In addition, larger. And larger. Soon the sky was completely hidden, from horizon to horizon, by a giant metallic disk.
The monks were taken aboard the craft and placed under some sort of alien mind-control. There, they were given the deepest possible insights into the nature of man, the universe and god. A week later, the alien beings returned the monks to the earth and vanished forever.
The monks considered the area holy ground and constructed a new temple there, not bothering to return to their old monastery. They took their daughters as wives and began their own commune of worship, based on the teachings of the aliens. The monks practiced meditations, which unleashed powerful spiritual forces within them. As the wives bore children, the community grew.
Malda was intrigued by the spiritual insights received by the monks and excited by the idea of incestuous pleasures. Unfortunately, the monks had no internet connection and so Malda could not email them. Without hesitation, Malda booked a flight and left for Mongolia. The plane ride was long and tiring, but his curiosity kept him driven.
After a month of searching, Malda finally located the commune. Initially, he kept a safe distance, for fear of rejection. He studied the monks from afar. Malda had heard stories of the monks' bizarre meditations, which gave them extraordinary powers. Malda was somewhat skeptical of these stories at first, until he saw the truth first-hand.
In the week, that Malda studied the monks; he witnessed the breaking of every natural law. He was astonished as he watched the monks levitate, create pockets of lush weather within the commune and communicated with spirit forces. Malda grew more and more excited and he devised a plan for meeting them.
Malda knew the monks would respect him if he could display his own "magical" powers. He was determined to win their confidence, and he had with him all of the necessary tools. He approached the commune confidently. The monks greeted him with skepticism at the gate. Malda took a deep breath and began his show.
Using an Aibo, a can of jolt cola and an inflatable sex doll, Malda shocked the monks with his display of magical powers. The monks accepted him into the commune. Malda's head was shaved and he was given a robe and a room. The monks warned Malda to stay away from their daughters-wives.
The monks methodically taught Malda the word of the great messengers. He learned eagerly at first, but soon grew bored with his life in the commune. Malda's life was further stressed when his blow-up doll suffered a puncture-wound and became useless. A few days later, his Aibo's power dried up. With no pet and no woman, Malda slowly grew crazed.
Malda had hit rock bottom. His penis chafed from dry-hand masturbation and the cold, dry climate. One dark night, he snuck into the kitchen and convinced one of the daughter-wives to join him in his room. Malda was quite relieved that he would finally get some female tenderness... for the first time in his life. He was so excited; he almost closed the deal prematurely.
Unluckily for Malda, the daughter-wife's father-husband was expecting her in bed at that particular moment. The women were expected to be with the monks at a very specific time for retirement. The monk went on a violent rampage throughout the temple, ending with Malda's room. He flung open the door to behold his daughter-wife half disrobed and lying on top of Malda. Malda looked up at the monk and gasped. The daughter-wife giggled.
The monk unsheathed his sword and the daughter-wife was beheaded on the spot. Malda kicked the unviable head away from him and jumped out of the bed. He backed himself into a corner, terrified. The monk approached him with sword raised. Just as he reached striking distance, he dropped the sword and collapsed, crying for the loss of his daughter and the betrayal of his adopted son. Malda was dishonorably discharged from the commune.
Malda wandered into the forest and took shelter in a cave. He spent the next five days curled up in a fetal position, feeding on bat guano and insects. The bitterness and hatred consumed Malda. Once again, he was an outsider. He decided that this time, he would not be trampled on.
Malda wandered for three days until he came upon a small village. He entered the shop of the local blacksmith and killed the ironworker by bashing him in the head with the Aibo. Malda crafted himself a massive machete. He took apart the Aibo and used its quality Sony components to enhance the machete with a nuclear driven flaming mechanism.
Malda returned to the commune. He took one last look at the peaceful community, and then hit the ignition switch on his machete. The weapon screamed like a thousand tortured souls as it ignited with flame. Malda then inserted the rechargeable battery from the Aibo into his rectum. Malda stormed the compound, beheading all of the monks and devouring their brains, thus capturing their souls into the battery in his anus.
The sky turned the color of blood and a great storm of pestilence swept over the village. Malda barely escaped before the commune was decimated by the hand of god, thus purging the terrible evil that had been committed. His face stained with blood and his heart stained with the forces of evil, Malda returned to the United States.
Malda was crazed with power. He devised another insidious plan. He would build an army of mindless followers, which he would use to bring the world to its knees. He would use an online site for the tech-savvy elite to build this army. But he needed a way to control the chaotic masses that would come flocking to his new site. He needed his generals.
Malda prowled the streets of his hometown, enticing male prostitutes with promises of cheap crack cocaine and sexual favors. Once the prostitutes agreed to join Malda in his basement, he would tie them up and place the Aibo battery, upside down, in their rectum. He would then abuse the hapless victim with words of derision and samples of his writing.
The abuse was so severe, that the spirit of the victim would be broken and the soul of one monk would be absorbed from the battery. The resultant creature was not a man, nor a zombie. It was some pathetic monstrosity. The beaten souls of the monks were enslaved to Malda's terrible evil. They depended upon his evil powers for sustenance. Malda labeled his terrible, elite guard the "moderators."
Malda's site grew quickly in popularity and the moderators enforced blandness and conformance with a heavy hand. No good army has room for an individual. The moderators are psychically connected to Malda and know his word. That word is enforced on Slashdot. The subtle moderations effectively warped the minds of those who visited the site and grew addicted, due to the powerful evil force exuded by its words.
Today, Malda sits in his office, strumming his electric guitar, waiting for his army of darkness to ripen.
- The Euro costs us £0.50 to exchange for every transaction made. That's right, the banks charge us to convert our money back into pounds! They don't charge at the consumer level, just merchant to merchant, so we mandate consumers do this on their own, or pay via another means.
- The new anti-counterfeit measures contained in the Euro. This may seem like a good thing, but the larger Euro demoniations contain coils electromagnetically charged to a certain serial number. This can thus be tracked, and as much as consumers are worried about their privacy, merchants are worried about ours in respect to competitors.
- The attitude here in London is mostly anti-Euro, as Brits object to this new prospect of a continental government. We've been independent for this long, and under no means do we want to be governed by someone higher than the Parliament
- The conversion rates fluctuate constantly. What's to say that one day, we charge 500 for a gold ring, and then going to the bank to exchange it, it's then worth 90% of that? That's lost money to us. We can't afford to be dealing in currency fluctuations. Both the pound and the US Dollar are stable enough to be dealing with, but I won't put my corporation's trust into the Euro.
Businesses like mine are doing the same thing. I can't find a single business here in London Square willing to redeem Euros for face value. So, when you come to London, be sure to bring your plastic, or redeem it for pounds.-snellac
If you use Windows and don't want to download Microsoft Reader, I suggest trying out Steve Gibson's ClearType Sub-Pixel Font Rendering Demo, available here, which is a small application to demonstrate ClearType technology.
Also, Slashdot (last year) ran an article on ClearType technology here.
Quoted directly:
21. Are LCDs better for you?
There is some research work that has been carried out that suggests that LCDs should be easier on the eye than CRT monitors, because the eye finds it easier to focus on the sharply-defined pixel edge. One or two small research projects have found evidence to support faster reading speeds on LCDs. Anecdotal evidence also points to users being happier to spend longer periods looking at LCDs. There are also reports from users that they can find it difficult to constantly switch between the two technologies.
In the future, LCDs are likely to run at higher resolutions than CRTs, with consequent improvements in reading speed and accuracy.
-snellac
-snellac
...is obtain and compile a list of sites that you may need to visit for research purposes (I'm sure many Bill Clinton sites are blocked that describe the premise of impeachment). Get a lot of sites on that list.
Then, start a petition. I don't suggest giving it to students, because the Big guys' response will be that of "yeah, of course the students want the censorware gone." Get teachers to sign it. Get librarians who have to explain to students why they are shown a "Bess can't go there" page when they want to get the information they need. Explain to them how N2H2 is selling out to advertisers the browsing habits of the school's students. Propose your petition and list to the school board, along with convincing arguments why any type of censorware is bad, and how it's just a replacement for proper supervision. Check out Peacefire for arguments against the most common censorware applications. Good luck to you, and I'd like to hear the outcome of your scenario, as I'm in the same situation with Bess.
it's not like it's hard to find one. I went to Altavista (just for giggles though, real men use Google), hoping to get a good link for the story, entered in movie archive mpeg and got mostly porn anyway. Hell, at altavista, searching for Franklin Roosevelt would turn up porn.
The Census Bureau says it's your civic duty to answer these snooping questions. In reality, it's your patriotic duty to refuse to answer. You can strike a blow for privacy, equality, and liberty by declining to answer every question on the Census form except the one required by the Constitution: How many people live in your home?
The U.S. Constitution says the purpose of the Census is to make an "actual enumeration." That is, to take an accurate count of Americans for the purpose of apportioning congressional districts. But the federal government has gone far beyond that mandate. The long version of the Census -- which one in every six households will receive -- contains a whopping 52 questions. That's 51 more than the Constitution requires. Maybe that's why compliance with the Census had plummeted to just 65% by 1990.
Unfortunately, the government has ways of making you talk. Title 13, Chapter 7 of the U.S. code mandates a $100 fine for those who decline to answer Census questions. What kind of government demands, under penalty of law, reams of personal data -- including racial characteristics -- from its citizens? Ours does. That's why it's time for some polite, patriotic civil disobedience. If you care about privacy, genuine equality, and old-fashioned American liberty, the arrival of the Census form is your chance to literally stand up and be counted.
Tell them how many people live in your home, and that's all. Maybe $100 is a small price to pay for making a principled stand for privacy and freedom.
-snellac
Yes, this is logical. if the authorities are saying "we know you're copying copywrited works - you have a computer so you MUST be guilty of this. so lets dispense with trials and such and just slap a fine on you. you know you're guilty - just pay the fine" then I guess since we've already been judged and are paying the fine, we at least owe it to ourselves to enjoy the fruits of our 'crimes'.
don't they see that this promotes breaking the laws?
its like a cop that stops you before you enter a very fast highway and says "we're collecting in advance for any speeding you're likely to do". who in their right mind would NOT speed after being charged for it? especially if your car is up to it.
...and the fight escalates further.
-snellac
OK, so most Linux people don't like the fact that winmodems are closed devices that are not supported on Linux. The conventional wisdom complains that existing winmodems give poor performance and kill the CPU. However in a recent /. post no less a personage than John Carmack suggested that winmodems could be implemented in a way that is better than conventional modems for the needs of interactive games.
In the process of doing a web search I then turned up Stuart Cheshire's old home page. For those who don't know who he is, well before the web was popular he wrote a classic networked Mac game called bolo. (In fact when the web became popular the bolo players used to curse that the web was dragging the internet down too much...) Most links to it are dead, but the official home page is still up although there has not been a release since 1995. (This was apparently done as research into the needs of interactive networked programs. Gee, all of those hours that I spent as a test subject without knowing it...)
With Stuart's credentials established, it is well worth looking at his rants. In particular his latency rant, which was expanded out into a white paper.
Once you are through reading those you will see that for anything interactive, particularly games, what really matters is latency, not bandwidth. And modems are a major source of this latency. In addition he and John Carmack agree that software modems (AKA winmodems) can be (though they are not currently) programmed to operate in a mode that reduces latency, and the result would be better for interactive games than conventional modems.
So, are winmodems just a bad idea, or are they just poorly implemented? Conventional wisdom says that they are bad no matter what. But the people who should know best suggest otherwise.
-snellac
Of course, there are reasons to use a fabber too.
Some of the advantages of fabricators over other means of generating solid objects are:
The advantages of using fabbers in design and production applications have been nothing short of dramatic. Manufacturers have typically realized time and cost savings of 50 to 80 per cent in product development, and even greater cost savings and schedule reductions are not uncommon. Along with reduced cost and development time, the practical ability to iterate designs leads to improved final product quality. Moreover, the ability to turn a new idea into a final product quickly can cause a stir of excitement and professional satisfaction in the product team. This in turn feeds back to high productivity and quality of performance from the individuals involved.
I am increasingly troubled by how many new applications are designed to work solely under a GUI. While this may make some amount of sense for people coming from the PC or Mac worlds, one of the strengths of Unix has always been the ability to use it from anywhere. These people don't seem to understand this. Of how much ultimate utility is that nifty new spreadsheet, editor, or debugger if I can't dialup from the field and run it on my vt100? Too often a tool that "does windows" is little more than a marketing gimmick to dazzle impressionable users into not noticing that they don't have the real functionality they need. GUI-minded programs seldom lend themselves to being used as components in larger tools. As such, they do not fit well into the UNIX tool-and-filter philosophy. Instead of each being a single program that modestly attempts to do one thing well, they are a throwback to the Bad Old Days when each program was a standalone, monolithic monster that didn't interface with anything else. It's all well and good to place a GUI wrapper around an existing tool, but to design a new application with only a GUI interface in mind is to forever limit that tool's flexibility. After all, how to you write a shell script that drives an automated xrn session? Providing programmability for the fancy graphics software remains an open problem. The most effective use of GUIs in UNIX environments is to design the nitty-gritty computational function as a "back end" that can be driven either manually or automatically. The GUI wrapper should be a separable module. If they're plug-replaceable, the application isn't irretrievably wedded to any specific GUI technology, such as SunView, NeWS, or even X11 or its children, like Open Look or Motif. Sending standard commands down a pipe the way the STDWIN or wafe packages behave is also a reasonable approach. This means your program should be runnable both with and without the GUI present, and accept input from a mouse or under programmed control. Preferably that means both a shell-level interface for convenience and a C-level interface for efficiency; Perl programmers could elect either method. That way, naive users can use push-button GUIs, blind users can use Braille terminals, and sophisticated users can program solutions to intricate problems. It has been noted that GUIs make simple things simple, and complex ones impossible. Certainly it is worthwhile to make simple things simple. But too often software is geared to only one level of expertise. That which is novice-friendly is too frequently expert-hostile, and vice versa. Being needlessly forced to click the mouse over a menu will slow down the expert user who is more comfortable with a keyboard interface. Gratuitous distractions from the keyboard only slow down the experienced user. A precision pointing device that didn't require taking your hands off the keyboard would help. There are cases where only a GUI makes sense, like a CAD system. Being able to delineate a region or draw a figure with a mouse is probably a reasonable use for it, but selection of a range of possibilities isn't, at least not after you've become familiar with the tool. -snellac
To reproduce a hardware design, unlike software, is not within the capability of the average individual. It requires a large initial investment in time, and money to set up a production run for something. However, there are some rather interesting properties of solid-state electronics that are very similar to software. Like software, hardware requires a large investment of time and resources to design, and a small percentage to distribute. Creation a new design of a silicon chip, such as the Pentium processor, RAM, or any of the support chips on a computer requires a great deal of money and resources. First, an idea must be developed into a design, and then the design must be verified and tested. Then, after that, a great deal of resources will be put into setting up a production line to produce the design. These two steps require anywhere from 75% to 95% of the total resources involved in developing a new chip. Once the design is in production, the incremental cost of making another chip (from raw materials and running the production line itself) is extremely small. Semiconductor makers are effectively "printing money" after they have recouped their initial investment. This is why hardware and software are similiar: the incremental cost of distributing both is very small.
The role the organization I want to create would play would be to act as a focal point for the the exchange of information, and would profit by taking the best ideas and turning them into real and marketable products. Instead of having my organization go through the first step of design, I would encourage entities and stake holders outside my organization to do the design phase of the process. This way, the end customer is intimately involved in how my products turn out in a way that no current company in the high tech industry can match. By doing this, I will eliminate several of the major risk areas in high technology. No one has a better idea of what they actually want than the customers, and if they have a stake in the design of a product, they will be much more likely to buy it than if they did not. My customers for my hardware products will be my suppliers for my 'intellectual property'. I just hope that this OpenH stuff succeeds.
High Tech Snow Plow Trucks
If you live in the Midwestern United States, you've already experienced several winter snow storms this year. Local road commissions each have their own maintenance jurisdictions, and where the borders end, they stop plowing. Wouldn't it be great if these agencies could pool their limited resources? The Southeastern Michigan Snow and Ice Management (SEMSIM) project is attempting to do just that by using technology to manage snow plow operations over multiple jurisdictions.
SEMSIM Technologies include:- Tracking the real-time location of snow plow trucks using Global Positioning
System (GPS) technology. Agencies can assign nearby trucks to border roads
of another jurisdiction to improve efficiency.
- Monitoring the air and pavement temperatures using truck mounted sensors
- Determining if the truck "underbody" scraper is down by using
truck mounted sensors
- Calculating the amount of salt spread using a computerized salt spreader
- Tracking the real-time location of the trucks using a map-based computer
screen
Project Partners:- Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC)
- Wayne County Department of Public Services
- City of Detroit
- Road Commission of Macomb County
- Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART)
Project Goals:I experienced problems with a rebate program offered by Logitech that was called "Buy More...Save More" and was offered to consumers during the period of July 15,2000 to October 15,2000.The amount of rebate was based on how much product you purchased at one time.The form that you needed had to be downloaded off the net from Logitechs site and filled in accordingly with bar codes attached and copies of invoices,the normal requests.The form header clearly reads to the consumer as follows: "BuyMore...SaveMore!""$200 of product=$70.00 Rebate" Buy 2 or more Logitech products:Totaling $50.00 or more Get a $10.00 rebate by mail Totaling $100.00 or more Get a $25.00 rebate by mail Totaling $200.00 or more Get a $70.00 rebate by mail. I thought this was pretty simple so I bought $232.00 of Logitech product from Buy.com all on one invoice. I was looking for a $70.00 rebate check in the mail after submitting all the paperwork. Well here comes my check nine weeks later and it is for $25.00. I said, must be a mistake so I called 1-800-741-1365 (Rebate Express) a division of the express group,they are a rebate processing center.The woman I spoke to informed me that the reason that I was shorted on the rebate was that each item had to be sold over $50.00 each and since the four wireless track balls were only $44.94 each and the cordless I-Touch keyboard was only $46.87,that the only rebate due me was for the four trackballs with a combined value of $187.48 which gets the $100.00 or more status and a $25.00 rebate. I told her that that was not clear on the rebate form and we started the arguing process,but she was not going to see it my way. I write this because I am tired of seeing the mail in rebate programs sucking us all in. I also want Logitech to know that I have nine workstations with there wireless products at each one....but all we be replaced with new product and all Logitech donated to others that don't have any,and that will keep nine users from purchasing Logitech products. Very slippery Logitech,we are catching on to your under handed ways and the consumer will prevail. By the way...cordless trackballs aren't worth a flip. Logitech does not even supply an email address for customers to write email to.
That's the end of the new economy, folks.
:))
Now, it's just a digital piece of the old economy.
When I shop and communicate online, it is not more convenient than going to the store or making a phone call. It is sometimes faster, sometimes cheaper, and it is always more anonymous.
Let's say you want to order, say, satanic texts. You can go to the bookstore, but then your neighbors might see you do it. Especially if you are well known. If you go on the internet it might take 6 weeks, but nobody will see you do it. They might get a record of it, but you won't have to make any kind of public action, like going into an occult bookstore, that would make people even think to do it.
It's a situational, social kind of anonymity you get on the Internet.
Registration of every email address will destroy the avatars, the characters, the pirates, the trolls, and everybody else who uses situational, social anonymity.
Crime comes from anonymity, but so does creativity, innovation, and the courage to try new things. I know this from experience.
It's not an appropriate card for gaming, but I have another card for that in the same machine. It even outperforms newer video capture devices in terms of quality and capture stability. Better yet, it works pefectly on a machine as slow as a P1 133. (A 3dfx 3500 TV card has problems with synchronization on anything slower than a p3 550)
Unfortuneately, this problem is pretty standard across the board. Matrox is unwilling to support this card on newer OS's (Linux or Win2k) and Linux drivers just don't exist. Unfortuneately, I'm an artist and don't have anywhere near the coding skills necessary to craft my own. I doubt anyone else could because of this line I found in a Matrox email post: "Matrox has evaluated the required resources to produce a "black-box" for Linux to enable the use of the non-Matrox components. Unfortunately we concluded that many man months would be required and we cannot assign such resources to this project."
Older, yet servicable hardware is getting more and more support on linux, but because of crap like this, it's still lacking in a big way.