Also, with the new Cingular Nation plan - you roam all the available GSM network through out the US with 0 ( zero ) roaming charges Good. Now that Cingular owns ATT, maybe I won't be incurring roaming charges 15 miles from my house? (let alone anywhere in the rest of California, Arizona, or Nevada...) I still think I'll be switching as soon as i figure out what kind of new phone I want.
Don't forget that their main concern is roping people into service contracts. If there was a wide range of simple, cheap cell phones with no bells or whistles, they wouldn't be able to charge exorbinant prices with huge discounts if you sign up for a long service contract. (Not that I'm feeling bitter towards Cingular right now...)
real LED lights (perhaps spectrally tuned to the wavelength of sunlight) The problem is that LEDs generaly emit particular colors. "White" LEDs involve a combination of select emitters which combine to make something which seems white (like a white pixel), but is really nothing like sunlight (which really does contain all visible wavelengths). The fact that LEDs are colored does work out well for brakelights and stoplights, where it's more efficient to generate red or green light in the first place than to use an incandescent bulb to make white light and then put a colored filter over it. (Tangent: yellow lights aren't generally replaced when the red and green lights are, which IIRC is because they are on for such short periods of time that any increased efficiency or lifespan doesn't balance the cost of replacing them).
Possibly even more fun, round up a bunch of (legit) albums on ebay, used music store, whatever. Mabye scratch them up, or repackage them in cases which are clearly different from normal cases so they appear to the average rent-a-pig like pirate disks. Then go try to sell them on the street near RIAA headquarters, (with plenty of A/V recording gear hidden around). Be prepared to make their life difficult without doing anything illegal, so you can still sue the shit out of them later if they try anything. Fun, and profit!
(At the risk of being redundant) How about playback edit scripts for homebrew PVRs? A user could record a show straight through, then download a little script (a couple kilobytes) which instructs the PVR which parts of the recording to play back. It could have some kind of hash of one of the opening frames so that the system could synchronize the script to the show. How would they be distributed? Enthusiastic users would watch the shows when they were on, or shortly after, and note the exact time that each commercial break starts and stops. They'd then post these to a forum, where there could be some form of/. style moderation. You then go downwload the file, watch your show with the commercials cut out, and then rate the quality of the edit. I think the rating system would prevent the entertainment industry from flooding the system with crap, and I think there would be, for lack of a better term, karma whores who would provide the scripts. (It really wouldn't require much more effort than watching tv).
If it would allow people to share legitimate, free music (live concert recordings and indy groups who want their music available, as well as music old enough to not be copyrighted (Bach, for instance) assuming the performers are willing), they might have something worth using. Otherwise, they'll never get a user base.
So a hardware engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer are driving along when the car starts having problems. The get to the side of the road just as it dies. Having called a tow truck, the ME says "why don't I check the drivetrain, just in case it's a simple mechanical problem?" "Good idea," says the EE. "I'll see if I can find anything wrong with the ignition system." "Guys," says the software engineer, "why don't we just close all the windows, get out of the car, then get back in?"
A computer scientist is found dead in the shower, apparently due to blood loss throgh the scalp, which was severly abraded. The only clue was a bottle of shampoo which read "Lather, Rinse, Repeat."
An engineer is walking through a park on his way to work when he hears a voice. He looks down an sees a frog on the sidewalk. "Kiss me" says the frog. The engineer thinks for a moment, then picks up the frog and puts it in his pocket. Once he gets to work, he takes the frog out and sets it on his disk. Again, the frog says "Kiss me!" The engineer chuckles, then puts the frog in a drawer and starts working. At lunch time, he opens the drawer and looks inside. "Hey," says the frog, "don't you know that talking frogs turn into beatufil women when kissed?" "Yeah," says the engineer, "but I'm an engineer, so I don't really do well with women. But a talking frog? Now _that's_ cool."
A company sends 3 engineers and 3 marketing guys to a conference. At the train station, the marketing guys each but a ticket, and then the engineers split the cost of one ticket between them. The marketing guys are curious, but the engineers just say "you'll see." When the train arrives, they take seats and resume discussing company business, until the conductor comes into the car. At that point, the engineers excuse themselves, and stealthily pile into a restroom at the far end of the car. Eventually, the conductor makes his way down, knocks on the door, and says "Ticket, please." The door opens ajar and a hand reaches out with a ticket. On the return trip, the marketing guys take a hint and buy one ticket beween the three of them. This time, though, the engineers don't buy any tickets. Again, the marketing guys are curious, but the engineers just say "you'll see." This time, when the conductor enters the car, the marketing guys pile into a bathroom at the far end. A few minutes later, the engineers do the same, one of the stopping to knock on the first bathroom and say "Ticket, please."
The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says it's half empty. The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
How many prolog prolog programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? No.
What do you get if you cross a mountain climber and a billy goat? You can't cross scalars.
I try to do the same thing, but my fear is that I'll eventually be living in a tent in a dry riverbed. Unless REI starts misbehaving. Then I'll just be living in a dry river bed.
You can disable the Messenger service if you want to although doing so may result in Windows not being able to alert you to some conditions. A list of circumstances when Windows will use the Messenger service to pop up informative windows isn't available right now but may include things like "print job complete", anti-virus, and event logger status messages. Also, "new mail" notifications may not be available in an Exchange/Outlook environment.
Windows 2000
1. Click Start->Programs->Administrative Tools->Services
2. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
3. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
4. Click the STOP button.
5. Select Disable in the Startup Type scroll bar
6. Click OK
Windows XP
1. Click Start->Control Panel
2. Click Performance and Maintenance
3. Click Administrative Tools
4. Double click Services
5. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
6. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
7. Click the STOP button.
8. Select Disable in the Startup Type scroll bar
9. Click OK
You can verify the service is disabled by typing the following at a command prompt. If no message appears, the Messenger service has been disabled.
* net send 127.0.0.1 "test"
(blatantly ripped from http://www.jmu.edu/computing/security/info/winmsg. shtml)
I have a 180, which is similarly bulky but not really a problem. I generally wear something like cargo pants, or the dockers with the "stealth" cargo pockets that zipper along the seam. Otherwise, I use the belt clip and put the phone in my left front pocket. The clip is about as obtrusinve as a pager clip- not very. And it keeps it from sitting in the bottom of my pocket with my keys and loose change (which I worry about getting stuck into the slot for the connecting cable). They have something similar for 600, it looks like.
Ok, so the two problems we've pointed out so far are that 1: an attacker can just capture the mouse movements (a problem with any unencrypted data stream), and 2: the signal will vary with the type of pointing device. If you really want to use a system like this (not that I would), just make a secure uber mouse which forms a secure connection to the mouse drivers (which also do the signature recognition), and require everyone to use that. Then the signature sequence is never seen in the clear unless someone 0wNz your box. Make it a nice, accurate, ergonomic optical mouse, (maybe cordless) so people won't complain that they like X mouse better, and explain that the hardware cost is part of making the security system work. And go ahead and design it to work like a normal mouse when the right drivers aren't there (but then no signature), and put a few megs of mass storage on it to keep a driver installer so you can use the signature software when you need to (again assuming you can trust the box).
cruise control that would limit the speed based on GPS data and a database
Great. I was using a Garmin GPS V (higher grade consumer model) and the thing was constantly condfusing the 4 lane highway we were on with the 1 lane country road beside it. If that had been setting out speed we would have been run over within 5 minutes. Or even if it did know I was on a 5 lane freeway, the first time I crossed an overpass of a small road, the speed would instantaneously drop by 40 mph and cause a 50 car pileup.
And don't try to tell me the technology would improve. We have the technology for good GPS tracking. We have the technology for crystal clear cell phones. But to large organizations, better tech means "about the same performance but cheaper." It'd only be a matter of time before this failed.
been there, done that (warning: big jpg). We had a pioneer p2at for outdoor mobility, eye-level conferencing screen, 802.11b teleconferencing (admittedly, we usually ran netmeeting), about 2 years ago. Berkeley had stuff before that. HP labs has done some actually interesting stuff in this area.
I'm really hoping that ms reasearch does have some cool stuff and that this is just a testament to the power of stupid PR drones.
Exactly. If you remember the RIAA goonimean lawyer debating Lessig a while ago, he tried to avoid that question with some hand waving, but it basically amounted to this: Q: When I buy music, am I buying a physical object which stores music, or am I buying a license to enjoy the music on that object? A: No. Which is why I try to avoid buying things from the entertainment industry- you don't really get anything (except maybe sued).
As well as making money, Mr Ishikawa's vision for BayTSP is to become a hi-tech version of Pinkerton, the legendary detective agency that protected presidents like Abraham Lincoln...
ok, for the trolls, yes, death is a good way to reduce one's resource consumption. There are, however, more ethical issues surrounding death than there are surrounding not wasting gasoline. So until we come to a consensus on which people should die and which ones are worth having around, we'll just consider this to be a constrained optimization problem (the optimization is minimzing resource use, the constraints are things like don't kill people). On the plus side, there are fewer ethical issues surrunding population control, so can be an excellent alternative.
So one product to look into for windows is LiquidView. (wow, free advertising on/. just for shipping copies with nec panels. clever bastards.)
The other thing which can help is the appearance tab in Windows's Display Settings.
Having said that, I don't think CRTs are going to be phased out that fast. Looking around online, I see a 21 inch sony crt for $762, running 2048 x 1536. Then I find a 21 inch samsung lcd which only does 1600 x 1200, for $1422. Even with shipping, you're still paying around 3x as much per pixel.
Also, how often do you really need to read the menu font? So long as Mozilla scales up the fonts in the documents I'm reading, I don't mind if the title bars and menus and such are small. I know where they are, and what they do. On the off chance I really have to read one I can lean in closer.
But on the other hand, OSX-type magnification would be friggin cool, especially if you could just trigger it with the 4th mouse button (and maybe adjust the degree with the scroll wheel).
How is "more sustainable" hard to comprehend? What makes you think that just because bicycling is better than driving automatically makes it perfect?
What you seem to miss is that environmentalists' goals aren't just some arbitrary crap that someone made up to punish you. The idea is to do the least damage to the environment. If you can do less damage by biking, great. If you can do even less than that by using fewer resources in the process, wonderful. Even if "the environmentalists" you refer to are overestimating the problems caused by burning fossil fuels, do you honestly think that driving an Excursion around is helping anything but Ford and Exxon's bottom lines?
I was just going to set up an address like I_unconditionally_agree_to_pay_one_dollar_per_byte _sent_to_this_address@domain.tld and then try the usual practice of posting it somewhere on the net with a notice that nothing is to be sent to it. Then anyone with a contact address is fair game. I doubt this would really hold up in court, but if it did, it might be worth buying the pills just to get a real address or bank account.
Heading down the coast, there's The Tech Museum in San Jose
There's Fry's stores all the way through California, and they have neat themes like alien invason, alice in wonder land, ancient rome, etc. (I plan to pilgrimage to all of them at some point.) Although they are getting to be more like a giant consumer electronics store than somewhere to go for parts.
Unfortunately it looks like the Griffith Observatory is closed, but I'm sure there's plenty of other geek stuff in LA that people could point you to. There's just so much that nothing uniquely cool comes to mind.
In San Diego we have Balboa Park which has a aerospace museum, model railroad museum, automotive museum, etc, plus the Zoo. And there's the Wild Animal park. And the Birch Aquarium up here at UCSD. And the Gaslamp area, which has good bars;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Also, with the new Cingular Nation plan - you roam all the available GSM network through out the US with 0 ( zero ) roaming charges
Good. Now that Cingular owns ATT, maybe I won't be incurring roaming charges 15 miles from my house? (let alone anywhere in the rest of California, Arizona, or Nevada...)
I still think I'll be switching as soon as i figure out what kind of new phone I want.
Don't forget that their main concern is roping people into service contracts. If there was a wide range of simple, cheap cell phones with no bells or whistles, they wouldn't be able to charge exorbinant prices with huge discounts if you sign up for a long service contract.
(Not that I'm feeling bitter towards Cingular right now...)
real LED lights (perhaps spectrally tuned to the wavelength of sunlight)
The problem is that LEDs generaly emit particular colors. "White" LEDs involve a combination of select emitters which combine to make something which seems white (like a white pixel), but is really nothing like sunlight (which really does contain all visible wavelengths).
The fact that LEDs are colored does work out well for brakelights and stoplights, where it's more efficient to generate red or green light in the first place than to use an incandescent bulb to make white light and then put a colored filter over it. (Tangent: yellow lights aren't generally replaced when the red and green lights are, which IIRC is because they are on for such short periods of time that any increased efficiency or lifespan doesn't balance the cost of replacing them).
Possibly even more fun, round up a bunch of (legit) albums on ebay, used music store, whatever. Mabye scratch them up, or repackage them in cases which are clearly different from normal cases so they appear to the average rent-a-pig like pirate disks. Then go try to sell them on the street near RIAA headquarters, (with plenty of A/V recording gear hidden around). Be prepared to make their life difficult without doing anything illegal, so you can still sue the shit out of them later if they try anything. Fun, and profit!
(At the risk of being redundant) How about playback edit scripts for homebrew PVRs? A user could record a show straight through, then download a little script (a couple kilobytes) which instructs the PVR which parts of the recording to play back. It could have some kind of hash of one of the opening frames so that the system could synchronize the script to the show. /. style moderation. You then go downwload the file, watch your show with the commercials cut out, and then rate the quality of the edit. I think the rating system would prevent the entertainment industry from flooding the system with crap, and I think there would be, for lack of a better term, karma whores who would provide the scripts. (It really wouldn't require much more effort than watching tv).
How would they be distributed? Enthusiastic users would watch the shows when they were on, or shortly after, and note the exact time that each commercial break starts and stops. They'd then post these to a forum, where there could be some form of
If you wanted more flexibility than you get from a kit, you could try 80/20 aluminum extrusion. They have various hardware, plastic panels, etc.
If it would allow people to share legitimate, free music (live concert recordings and indy groups who want their music available, as well as music old enough to not be copyrighted (Bach, for instance) assuming the performers are willing), they might have something worth using. Otherwise, they'll never get a user base.
So a hardware engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer are driving along when the car starts having problems. The get to the side of the road just as it dies. Having called a tow truck, the ME says "why don't I check the drivetrain, just in case it's a simple mechanical problem?" "Good idea," says the EE. "I'll see if I can find anything wrong with the ignition system." "Guys," says the software engineer, "why don't we just close all the windows, get out of the car, then get back in?"
A computer scientist is found dead in the shower, apparently due to blood loss throgh the scalp, which was severly abraded. The only clue was a bottle of shampoo which read "Lather, Rinse, Repeat."
An engineer is walking through a park on his way to work when he hears a voice. He looks down an sees a frog on the sidewalk. "Kiss me" says the frog. The engineer thinks for a moment, then picks up the frog and puts it in his pocket. Once he gets to work, he takes the frog out and sets it on his disk. Again, the frog says "Kiss me!" The engineer chuckles, then puts the frog in a drawer and starts working. At lunch time, he opens the drawer and looks inside. "Hey," says the frog, "don't you know that talking frogs turn into beatufil women when kissed?" "Yeah," says the engineer, "but I'm an engineer, so I don't really do well with women. But a talking frog? Now _that's_ cool."
A company sends 3 engineers and 3 marketing guys to a conference. At the train station, the marketing guys each but a ticket, and then the engineers split the cost of one ticket between them. The marketing guys are curious, but the engineers just say "you'll see." When the train arrives, they take seats and resume discussing company business, until the conductor comes into the car. At that point, the engineers excuse themselves, and stealthily pile into a restroom at the far end of the car. Eventually, the conductor makes his way down, knocks on the door, and says "Ticket, please." The door opens ajar and a hand reaches out with a ticket.
On the return trip, the marketing guys take a hint and buy one ticket beween the three of them. This time, though, the engineers don't buy any tickets. Again, the marketing guys are curious, but the engineers just say "you'll see."
This time, when the conductor enters the car, the marketing guys pile into a bathroom at the far end. A few minutes later, the engineers do the same, one of the stopping to knock on the first bathroom and say "Ticket, please."
The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says it's half empty. The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
How many prolog prolog programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
No.
What do you get if you cross a mountain climber and a billy goat?
You can't cross scalars.
I try to do the same thing, but my fear is that I'll eventually be living in a tent in a dry riverbed. Unless REI starts misbehaving. Then I'll just be living in a dry river bed.
I swear there was an ewok cartoon when I was a kid (say mid 80s). And were any parts of the Star Wars Xmas Special animated?
I think even non-slashdotters colud manage:
. shtml)
Disabling the Messenger Service
You can disable the Messenger service if you want to although doing so may result in Windows not being able to alert you to some conditions. A list of circumstances when Windows will use the Messenger service to pop up informative windows isn't available right now but may include things like "print job complete", anti-virus, and event logger status messages. Also, "new mail" notifications may not be available in an Exchange/Outlook environment.
Windows 2000
1. Click Start->Programs->Administrative Tools->Services
2. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
3. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
4. Click the STOP button.
5. Select Disable in the Startup Type scroll bar
6. Click OK
Windows XP
1. Click Start->Control Panel
2. Click Performance and Maintenance
3. Click Administrative Tools
4. Double click Services
5. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
6. Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
7. Click the STOP button.
8. Select Disable in the Startup Type scroll bar
9. Click OK
You can verify the service is disabled by typing the following at a command prompt. If no message appears, the Messenger service has been disabled.
* net send 127.0.0.1 "test"
(blatantly ripped from http://www.jmu.edu/computing/security/info/winmsg
I have a 180, which is similarly bulky but not really a problem. I generally wear something like cargo pants, or the dockers with the "stealth" cargo pockets that zipper along the seam. Otherwise, I use the belt clip and put the phone in my left front pocket. The clip is about as obtrusinve as a pager clip- not very. And it keeps it from sitting in the bottom of my pocket with my keys and loose change (which I worry about getting stuck into the slot for the connecting cable). They have something similar for 600, it looks like.
Computers, mp3 players.... all they need now is a BSD based OS to ship on their machines.
Ok, so the two problems we've pointed out so far are that 1: an attacker can just capture the mouse movements (a problem with any unencrypted data stream), and 2: the signal will vary with the type of pointing device.
If you really want to use a system like this (not that I would), just make a secure uber mouse which forms a secure connection to the mouse drivers (which also do the signature recognition), and require everyone to use that. Then the signature sequence is never seen in the clear unless someone 0wNz your box. Make it a nice, accurate, ergonomic optical mouse, (maybe cordless) so people won't complain that they like X mouse better, and explain that the hardware cost is part of making the security system work. And go ahead and design it to work like a normal mouse when the right drivers aren't there (but then no signature), and put a few megs of mass storage on it to keep a driver installer so you can use the signature software when you need to (again assuming you can trust the box).
cruise control that would limit the speed based on GPS data and a database
Great. I was using a Garmin GPS V (higher grade consumer model) and the thing was constantly condfusing the 4 lane highway we were on with the 1 lane country road beside it. If that had been setting out speed we would have been run over within 5 minutes. Or even if it did know I was on a 5 lane freeway, the first time I crossed an overpass of a small road, the speed would instantaneously drop by 40 mph and cause a 50 car pileup.
And don't try to tell me the technology would improve. We have the technology for good GPS tracking. We have the technology for crystal clear cell phones. But to large organizations, better tech means "about the same performance but cheaper." It'd only be a matter of time before this failed.
You mean like this?
been there, done that (warning: big jpg). We had a pioneer p2at for outdoor mobility, eye-level conferencing screen, 802.11b teleconferencing (admittedly, we usually ran netmeeting), about 2 years ago. Berkeley had stuff before that. HP labs has done some actually interesting stuff in this area.
I'm really hoping that ms reasearch does have some cool stuff and that this is just a testament to the power of stupid PR drones.
software project is 93% done
Great. The first 93% is done. Now they can start worknig on the other 93%.
Exactly. If you remember the RIAA goonimean lawyer debating Lessig a while ago, he tried to avoid that question with some hand waving, but it basically amounted to this:
Q: When I buy music, am I buying a physical object which stores music, or am I buying a license to enjoy the music on that object?
A: No.
Which is why I try to avoid buying things from the entertainment industry- you don't really get anything (except maybe sued).
As well as making money, Mr Ishikawa's vision for BayTSP is to become a hi-tech version of Pinkerton, the legendary detective agency that protected presidents like Abraham Lincoln ...
Ok, that may not be the best example there, guys.
ok, for the trolls, yes, death is a good way to reduce one's resource consumption. There are, however, more ethical issues surrounding death than there are surrounding not wasting gasoline. So until we come to a consensus on which people should die and which ones are worth having around, we'll just consider this to be a constrained optimization problem (the optimization is minimzing resource use, the constraints are things like don't kill people).
On the plus side, there are fewer ethical issues surrunding population control, so can be an excellent alternative.
So one product to look into for windows is LiquidView. (wow, free advertising on /. just for shipping copies with nec panels. clever bastards.)
The other thing which can help is the appearance tab in Windows's Display Settings.
Having said that, I don't think CRTs are going to be phased out that fast. Looking around online, I see a 21 inch sony crt for $762, running 2048 x 1536. Then I find a 21 inch samsung lcd which only does 1600 x 1200, for $1422. Even with shipping, you're still paying around 3x as much per pixel.
Also, how often do you really need to read the menu font? So long as Mozilla scales up the fonts in the documents I'm reading, I don't mind if the title bars and menus and such are small. I know where they are, and what they do. On the off chance I really have to read one I can lean in closer.
But on the other hand, OSX-type magnification would be friggin cool, especially if you could just trigger it with the 4th mouse button (and maybe adjust the degree with the scroll wheel).
How is "more sustainable" hard to comprehend? What makes you think that just because bicycling is better than driving automatically makes it perfect?
What you seem to miss is that environmentalists' goals aren't just some arbitrary crap that someone made up to punish you. The idea is to do the least damage to the environment. If you can do less damage by biking, great. If you can do even less than that by using fewer resources in the process, wonderful. Even if "the environmentalists" you refer to are overestimating the problems caused by burning fossil fuels, do you honestly think that driving an Excursion around is helping anything but Ford and Exxon's bottom lines?
I was just going to set up an address like I_unconditionally_agree_to_pay_one_dollar_per_byte _sent_to_this_address@domain.tld and then try the usual practice of posting it somewhere on the net with a notice that nothing is to be sent to it. Then anyone with a contact address is fair game.
I doubt this would really hold up in court, but if it did, it might be worth buying the pills just to get a real address or bank account.
Other cool stuff in San Fran: The Exploratorium and California Academy of Sciences.
;-)
Heading down the coast, there's The Tech Museum in San Jose
There's Fry's stores all the way through California, and they have neat themes like alien invason, alice in wonder land, ancient rome, etc. (I plan to pilgrimage to all of them at some point.) Although they are getting to be more like a giant consumer electronics store than somewhere to go for parts.
Unfortunately it looks like the Griffith Observatory is closed, but I'm sure there's plenty of other geek stuff in LA that people could point you to. There's just so much that nothing uniquely cool comes to mind.
In San Diego we have Balboa Park which has a aerospace museum, model railroad museum, automotive museum, etc, plus the Zoo. And there's the Wild Animal park. And the Birch Aquarium up here at UCSD. And the Gaslamp area, which has good bars