SPRINGFIELD -- On-line marketers would be required to clearly label unsolicited "spam" e-mail sent to Illinois residents as advertising or pornography under a measure passed by the Illinois Senate Tuesday and sent to Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Designed to reduce the flood of unwanted e-mail, the bill also would penalize businesses that sell customers' e-mail addresses after they have requested removal from mailing lists. It would require a spammer to set-up a toll-free telephone number or valid reply address that consumers can call or write to demand removal from the company's solicitation lists.
There's an online poll on that Chicago Tribune page on whether the anti-spam bill should be signed. Vote!...in the Chicago tradition - Vote early and often.../. em!
What surprises me is that they went for 2 years developing this project "in secret"... why would they want to do that? It's neat to see that they've already done some rocket testing and all, but why announce now after two years when they don't even have a full scale version done? What did they get by waiting to announce?
1 - Because the X-pize is a competition2 - The X-prize didn't have the $10 million for the prize until recently.
It wasn't that much of a secret. Rutan let it be known that the long-flying Proteus was (the prototype of) the launch vehicle.
They are also two full scale aircraft. One has been flying already.
I could understand the secrecy if they wanted to develop the whole thing first to avoid the vaporware critiques, and then bam they come out with a ready-to-use orbiter, man that'd be sweet huh? But why announce in the middle of it? Need funding? Sick of keeping it quiet? Poor planning? Any ideas?
Yeah, that's it. The article also says they don't need or want outside funding, but to know that and the above you would have had to have read the article.
To do it manually using the following as the PPPoE login
Username: sbcyahooreg@sbcglobal.net
Password: sbcyahooreg
[this is the replacement for dslreguser/reguser, for those who were familiar with that.]
And go to the following URL to complete registration https://sbcreg.sbcglobal.net/
You can also get quick help with SBC DSL by IMing a tech directly through DSLreports.com! What great support!
I've been using the PPoE built-in to my NetGear firewall/router/switch on my SBC DSL line for years with no trouble. I have no Enternet software on my PC. I removed the software after I signed up, but as per above, you don't have to install it all.
The thing that struck me the most about the Osbourne 1 was the screen. At 4", it was very small and hard to read unless you practically glued your eye to it. The first Kaypro machines had much nicer screens.
Right. The alleged 4 inches was early monitor spec hype. The text area is more like 2 1/2 inches diagonal.
In those early days I hooked up with fellow Osborne users and we banged away on our machines. In an hour or so we all had red, bleary eyes from using that tiny screen. But as the resident Osborne guru with us said then, "Right. My Osborne has a tiny built-in screen....and just what size screen is built-in on your computer?" In those days there weren't any others. Compaq came along with a PC compativble version with a 9 inch screen many years later.
But a few of my extended family members still have Osborne 1s in their basements/attics/garages.
My original Osborne 1 is in my computer room. I haven't tried booting it lately, but I *think* it'll work if all of my floppies haven't lost critical bits.
I have an Osborne Executive (the promised one that killed existing sales and thus the company) and a Kaypro 4 bought at firesale closeout prices well after the PC era. Both were very useful in my business at the time. There was also the Osborne Vixen, which was an Osborne One in a package less than half the size. Those were almost all sold by the contracted overseas manufactuter in the years after Osborne Corporation was gone.
The article is correct, it's almost exactly like a portable sewing machine.
The original Osborne One case WAS a sewing machine case. The computer was built into the cover and the keyboard was fitted in the what would have been the base of the sewing machine. The sewing machine was used "keyboard tray" down.
Is that why laptops have an external transformer "brick", or is that just for convenience?
Laptops typically have AC power supplies in external "bricks" to separate the bulk and weight of the AC transformer from the laptop. You don't need that brick when you're running off battery.
The irony is you still usually have to lug the birck and power cord along in your laptop bag when you hit the road - along with the swappable floppy drive, CD-RW or DVD drive, and the spare battery. That's why carrying my "4 pound" laptop puts a painful dent in my shoulder.
Tell your grandfather to tell the alum, Scott McNeeley that in order for the doantion to ge accepted he has to donate and least five times as much in Sun Hardware and StarOffice licenses.
Darwin, I believe, said something to the effect of "oh though I may not agree with what you are saying, I will fight to the death for your right to say it."
That quote is incorrectly attributed to "Voltaire."
The other thing I find difficult about amazon is the amount of pointless reviews I have to wade through to find something that actually evaluates a book beyond the simple, "oh mi gawd, it sucks. i had to read this for english class and it rilly rilly sucked."
Or my favorites, which always accompany books with titles like "MCSE - The compleate guide by Tome Righter (788pps)" Review: "It SUCKS. IT'S 788 PAGES! Am I SUPPOSED TO READ ALL THAT? I just want to be an MCSE. I don't want to read the whole BIBLE!
Anyone who suggests using sprinklers in the datacenter should be immediately fired. Datacenter fire extinguishing systems should only be gas-based. That's in fact the way it is in any well-equipped datacenter.
Yeah, right. You don't have to deal with Chigaguh.
This particular (small) data center had a Halon system. It also still had sprinkler heads.
Sprinklers can be required because the building owners or city code will not allow them to removed. If the rules or building code say "All rooms on all floors must be equipped with a sprinkler system" it will be interpreted to mean exactly that, no substitutes allowed.
BTW, electrical conduits MUST be metal, we don't get to use the plastic sheathed stuff like the rest of world. Ditto for plumbing pipes, although PVC plastic waste pipes are legal in the city now, after 40 years of being banned. The unions/building departments (often headed by the same person) claim that the plastic would contribute toxic fumes in the event of a fire.
BTW II, Halon is effectively banned now, too. Because the EPA banned freon because of risk to the ozone layer, the gas is not made and thus is so expensive that a installing Halon or replacing it after a discharge would cost $100,000.
The IBM monitors that shipped with IBM PS/2 computers in the late 1980's were notorious for bursting into flame. Flames would shoot out of the monitor's vents at the top of the case. One morning I found one had charred the top of its case overnight. Luckily it burned itself out without tripping the office sprinklers. THAT would have been more exciting.
Which reminds me of the sick joke I dreamed up for our IT boss at that job. We were thinking of calling him up on his honeymoon vacation, and saying, "Don't worry about the fire in the data center. The sprinklers put it out!"
Around that time I was interviewing at a 100% "True Blue" IBM shop. I mentioned that the new IBM monitors are known to burst into flame. The response was, "Oh yes, the monitors do often catch on fire. But then IBM replaces them for free under warranty!"
IBM's immediate response was to send adhesive labels for the monitors that advised powering them off when not in use. New monitors came with the sticker pre-applied at the factory.
We had many war stories in the early CP/M days in the Osborne and Kaypro user groups. Remember that these things were the first portable computers. The original Osborne One case was actually a sewing machine case.
I came into my office one morning to find a waterfall running onto my desk and into the vent at the top of the case for my Osborne 1. An apartment upstairs had a high-flow sloan valve on the toilet freeze and burst, and the water poured down through the floors. The power cord was live on the O-1 but it was powered off. In those days it took only a few seconds for the PC to boot so we turned 'em off.
I poured the water out of the keyboard and the case. I think the keyboard shell held three quarts of water. I let it air dry then powered it up. It worked fine! I still have that O-1 to this day and it still boots.
One of our members had his Osborne One in the back of his hatchback car when the car was hit in the rear by another car. The hatch flew open and the computer flew high into the air and crashed onto the sidewalk along the street. The main case and the keyboard shell broke into large pieces.
Can you guess it? Yep. When he tried it, it worked fine. It just looked awful.
They don't make 'em let that anymore. I will admit that they didn't have cards in slots or a lot of peripherals that could break loose and do damage.
This was on TechTV in January, I thought. It was around the time of the MacWorld SF.
Did someone just come across the article in an archive?
It's not old. It may have discussed here when he started the "switch" trial, but the end result is news.
He reported his experience the first time on last night's (02/26/2003) "The Screen Savers" TV show on TechTV. That's when the article was posted to the web site.
They're still working in Chicago. Ward is a systems engineer who happened to be assigned to my workplace. I walked in and found him toiling away in our computer lab.
Read more from when this story was mentioned a few days ago.
It had a wired remote control that had a silver slider bar that would allow playback in any speed from 15x to 1/4x. It had a patented chip that made the sound intelligible at any of those speeds. In other words, when you played the program at 4 times normal, the sound stayed live and instead of hearing people talk like Mickey Mouse, they talked in their regular voices but 4 times faster. Some mini-tape recorders of that time got the same technology.
It had skip and rewind to mark where any time your made a new recording it would put a undetectable audio mark on the tape where you can skip forwards or backwards to the mark.
The whole thing was mechanical so when you pressed play or rewind cams and gears and belts would come into play with a sequence of clunk-clunks-clunkc to change modes by pushing up and down on the piano keys on the front.
It was one of the first VCRs with a remote control. I still have tapes I recorded in those days, like the original Lathe of Heaven from PBS and Walter Cronkite's last CBS Evening News.
From the comments I am surprised at how few people here fly small planes. There are over 9000 airstrips in the US and over 100,000 small planes.
Ditto. You would think that flying would be natural progression for a techie. When I trained a few years ago, most of my fellow students were also IT professionals. There were more of us getting our Round Tuit and visiting the airport pre-9/11 pre-dot-bomb when our stock was worth a lot more.
I forgot to mention that Ward and Randy acutally Coined the term BBS. As Ward says Randy copyrighted CBBS instead of BBS, but he could have easily claimed the shorter term. The term BBS didn't exist until they came up with it. If he had protected the name all of those [A-Z]BBS's that came along would gave had to choose a different name.
BTW, One of my favorite USENET threads begins at article 3 here where a guy with the handle "BBS2" challenges Randy about his online attitude and a few chimed in and attempted to clue in "BBS2" that he owed Randy for his name among other things. You may have to search threads elsewhere on chi.* for the rest of that conversation thread.
Here's goes the off-topic part: Ward, the problem with mod scores is that the moderators tend to only look at recent articles. "Recent" is measured in hours. I tried to get your previous post modded by posting a reply up but it didn't happen. *sigh*
We were working on a campaign to get into the Smithsonian. I'm pretty sure that I know who owns it, Roy Lipscomb. He bought it from Randy for $20 (? maybe less). Randy was using it to hold up a table. Hes not known for sentiment.
Like was common for hobbiests in those days, Randy built it from chips they salvaged from old mainframe boards. They would heat the back of the boards with a blowtorch to melt the solder and then slam it against a table to pop out the chips.
It didn't even have an OS in the beginning. There was not even CP/M in those days. The first versions of CBBS talked directly to the hardware. Later Ward rewote CBBS to run over CP/M.
Slashdot Mirror
The Chicago Tribune story [Free registration required] There's an online poll on that Chicago Tribune page on whether the anti-spam bill should be signed.
Vote!...in the Chicago tradition - Vote early and often
It wasn't that much of a secret. Rutan let it be known that the long-flying Proteus was (the prototype of) the launch vehicle. They are also two full scale aircraft. One has been flying already.
Yeah, that's it. The article also says they don't need or want outside funding, but to know that and the above you would have had to have read the article.http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5764 You can also get quick help with SBC DSL by IMing a tech directly through DSLreports.com! What great support!
I've been using the PPoE built-in to my NetGear firewall/router/switch on my SBC DSL line for years with no trouble. I have no Enternet software on my PC. I removed the software after I signed up, but as per above, you don't have to install it all.
In those early days I hooked up with fellow Osborne users and we banged away on our machines. In an hour or so we all had red, bleary eyes from using that tiny screen. But as the resident Osborne guru with us said then, "Right. My Osborne has a tiny built-in screen. ...and just what size screen is built-in on your computer?" In those days there weren't any others. Compaq came along with a PC compativble version with a 9 inch screen many years later.
I have an Osborne Executive (the promised one that killed existing sales and thus the company) and a Kaypro 4 bought at firesale closeout prices well after the PC era. Both were very useful in my business at the time. There was also the Osborne Vixen, which was an Osborne One in a package less than half the size. Those were almost all sold by the contracted overseas manufactuter in the years after Osborne Corporation was gone.The original Osborne One case WAS a sewing machine case. The computer was built into the cover and the keyboard was fitted in the what would have been the base of the sewing machine. The sewing machine was used "keyboard tray" down.
The irony is you still usually have to lug the birck and power cord along in your laptop bag when you hit the road - along with the swappable floppy drive, CD-RW or DVD drive, and the spare battery. That's why carrying my "4 pound" laptop puts a painful dent in my shoulder.
Tell your grandfather to tell the alum, Scott McNeeley that in order for the doantion to ge accepted he has to donate and least five times as much in Sun Hardware and StarOffice licenses.
Review: "It SUCKS. IT'S 788 PAGES! Am I SUPPOSED TO READ ALL THAT? I just want to be an MCSE. I don't want to read the whole BIBLE!
This particular (small) data center had a Halon system. It also still had sprinkler heads.
Sprinklers can be required because the building owners or city code will not allow them to removed. If the rules or building code say "All rooms on all floors must be equipped with a sprinkler system" it will be interpreted to mean exactly that, no substitutes allowed.
BTW, electrical conduits MUST be metal, we don't get to use the plastic sheathed stuff like the rest of world. Ditto for plumbing pipes, although PVC plastic waste pipes are legal in the city now, after 40 years of being banned. The unions/building departments (often headed by the same person) claim that the plastic would contribute toxic fumes in the event of a fire.
BTW II, Halon is effectively banned now, too. Because the EPA banned freon because of risk to the ozone layer, the gas is not made and thus is so expensive that a installing Halon or replacing it after a discharge would cost $100,000.
The IBM monitors that shipped with IBM PS/2 computers in the late 1980's were notorious for bursting into flame. Flames would shoot out of the monitor's vents at the top of the case. One morning I found one had charred the top of its case overnight. Luckily it burned itself out without tripping the office sprinklers. THAT would have been more exciting.
Which reminds me of the sick joke I dreamed up for our IT boss at that job. We were thinking of calling him up on his honeymoon vacation, and saying, "Don't worry about the fire in the data center. The sprinklers put it out!"
Around that time I was interviewing at a 100% "True Blue" IBM shop. I mentioned that the new IBM monitors are known to burst into flame. The response was, "Oh yes, the monitors do often catch on fire. But then IBM replaces them for free under warranty!"
IBM's immediate response was to send adhesive labels for the monitors that advised powering them off when not in use. New monitors came with the sticker pre-applied at the factory.
I came into my office one morning to find a waterfall running onto my desk and into the vent at the top of the case for my Osborne 1. An apartment upstairs had a high-flow sloan valve on the toilet freeze and burst, and the water poured down through the floors. The power cord was live on the O-1 but it was powered off. In those days it took only a few seconds for the PC to boot so we turned 'em off.
I poured the water out of the keyboard and the case. I think the keyboard shell held three quarts of water. I let it air dry then powered it up. It worked fine! I still have that O-1 to this day and it still boots.
One of our members had his Osborne One in the back of his hatchback car when the car was hit in the rear by another car. The hatch flew open and the computer flew high into the air and crashed onto the sidewalk along the street. The main case and the keyboard shell broke into large pieces.
Can you guess it? Yep. When he tried it, it worked fine. It just looked awful.
They don't make 'em let that anymore. I will admit that they didn't have cards in slots or a lot of peripherals that could break loose and do damage.
He reported his experience the first time on last night's (02/26/2003) "The Screen Savers" TV show on TechTV. That's when the article was posted to the web site.
They're still working in Chicago. Ward is a systems engineer who happened to be assigned to my workplace. I walked in and found him toiling away in our computer lab.
Read more from when this story was mentioned a few days ago.
It had a wired remote control that had a silver slider bar that would allow playback in any speed from 15x to 1/4x. It had a patented chip that made the sound intelligible at any of those speeds. In other words, when you played the program at 4 times normal, the sound stayed live and instead of hearing people talk like Mickey Mouse, they talked in their regular voices but 4 times faster. Some mini-tape recorders of that time got the same technology.
It had skip and rewind to mark where any time your made a new recording it would put a undetectable audio mark on the tape where you can skip forwards or backwards to the mark.
The whole thing was mechanical so when you pressed play or rewind cams and gears and belts would come into play with a sequence of clunk-clunks-clunkc to change modes by pushing up and down on the piano keys on the front.
It was one of the first VCRs with a remote control. I still have tapes I recorded in those days, like the original Lathe of Heaven from PBS and Walter Cronkite's last CBS Evening News.
Here's a newspaper from February 21, 2003. When all of these stocks are flying high in 1999-2000 SELL SHORT, SELL SHORT, SELL SHORT!!!
You should also bet to win on these horses on February 19th 2003.
This is one of those times where "old" fxrts like me tell nostalgic war stories that begin with "You used to be able to do that...."
You used to able to do that with Desqview/X but Microsoft's "innovations" sidled it out of the market.
Now let me tell you about my what my late-1970s VCR could do that modern ones can't...
A preposition is what you meant to end your sentence with.
There are also hero nerds who really deserve to be rich like Woz.
Comedian Paul Rodriguez:
You remember those kids in school who you called Nerds?
You know what you call 'em now?
BOSS!
Visit (and join!) AOPA as you mentioned, also EAA which does the annual EAA AirVenture world's largest fly-in in Oshkosh, WI. As in my sig at Be-A-Pilot you can get a coupon to get your first flight lesson for US$49.00.
THANKS, WARD!
I forgot to mention that Ward and Randy acutally Coined the term BBS. As Ward says Randy copyrighted CBBS instead of BBS, but he could have easily claimed the shorter term. The term BBS didn't exist until they came up with it. If he had protected the name all of those [A-Z]BBS's that came along would gave had to choose a different name.
BTW, One of my favorite USENET threads begins at article 3 here where a guy with the handle "BBS2" challenges Randy about his online attitude and a few chimed in and attempted to clue in "BBS2" that he owed Randy for his name among other things. You may have to search threads elsewhere on chi.* for the rest of that conversation thread.
Here's goes the off-topic part: Ward, the problem with mod scores is that the moderators tend to only look at recent articles. "Recent" is measured in hours. I tried to get your previous post modded by posting a reply up but it didn't happen. *sigh*
We were working on a campaign to get into the Smithsonian. I'm pretty sure that I know who owns it, Roy Lipscomb. He bought it from Randy for $20 (? maybe less). Randy was using it to hold up a table. Hes not known for sentiment.
Like was common for hobbiests in those days, Randy built it from chips they salvaged from old mainframe boards. They would heat the back of the boards with a blowtorch to melt the solder and then slam it against a table to pop out the chips.
It didn't even have an OS in the beginning. There was not even CP/M in those days. The first versions of CBBS talked directly to the hardware. Later Ward rewote CBBS to run over CP/M.