What one really has to wonder about is that this has become an arms race for the sake of an arms race. Does anyone really imagine that someone who's gone to the trouble of filtering spam out will suddenly receive this amazing offer for Gen3r@c v|agar@ and think to himself "oh! I sure am glad that one slipped through - I'm going to buy some v|agar@ now!" ?
If this means people like my friend's father no longer fill their house with discard-sale books like "1958: A Year Of Changes" and think that makes them distinguished, learned individuals, I'm all for it.
I got very disillusioned a few years ago when I decided to follow the recycling truck.
It went to the dump, and deposited its load in exactly the same place as the garbage trucks did.
I asked the site manager about this, and was told that while it's the law to recycle in our area, we didn't actually have a recycling program in effect, so they just mix the trash and recyclables at the dump.
This had been going on for 8 years already in 1999.
Or, use SpamAssassin+Razor+Pyzor+DCC, and keep your install updated.
I've been dmd@3e.org since 1996, and several other addresses before that (many of which forward to my current address). I've posted many hundreds of articles to usenet, discussion boards, etc., using that address.
I get a LOT of spam; on the order of 3000+ messages/day. (That's three thousand. Not a typo.) Of those, around 2 or 3 make it through the filter (false-negative).
I had a few false positives when I first started using SA, but careful whitelisting has ended that... I haven't had a false positive in over three years.
There's another, far more important reason amateur radio doesn't grow; its obsession with itself.
Imagine if all telephone conversations went something like this:
Joe: Hello? Anyone out there? Anyone at all? I'm willing to talk to absolutely anyone!
Bob: Hi there Joe! I can kinda hear you... I'm in Toejam, WV, and I've got a model AB123 rotary telephone with Bakelite trim that I added myself, and the weather's nice!
Joe: Oh, wow, hi Bob, one of those AB123s, eh? Those are nice old phones, I've got a brand new Verizon cell phone, and the weather's pretty nice here too.
Bob: Well, great, nice talkin' to you!
Joe: You too.
Joe: Anyone out there? Hello? Anyone?
[repeat nearly identical conversation several hundred times, win award for doing so]
An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter The Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers Perdido Street Station, China Mieville The Scar, China Mieville Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
Darwin's Blade, Dan Simmons Enchantment, Orson Scott Card Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond He, She, and It, Marge Piercy Lo's Diary, Pia Pera Pattern Recognition, William Gibson The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
Panix and Agora were good for what I wanted from them; I never had any real problems, but then I never really used them for much besides email and a place to store a few files.
Hurricane Electric and Pair are in my opinion the Walmart/Targets of the hosting world. They're fast, they're reasonably reliable, they treat you as a nameless, faceless customer-unit. I would recommend either of them to someone with no exceptional needs who doesn't anticipate ever needing support or special configuration of any kind.
Voxel, by comparison, has time and time again blown my socks off. Their machines are blazingly fast, their pipes are wide -- they're not in any way lacking in raw "hosting horsepower". More importantly, though, their technical ability is unmatched. Voxel staff have written quite a bit of useful management software which they've contributed to the community. They've always been extremely helpful in working through configuration issues; they respond to support emails generally within minutes; they will work on problems with me on the phone, and treat me as an equal.
Their support people are extraordinary, perhaps because they're not just warm-body "have you tried reinstalling" types -- Voxel support are the people who actually set up their network and machines, so they know exactly how everything fits together.
Voxel isn't as cheap as some other providers, but they're not expensive either, and they're certainly far and away the best hosting provider I've ever encountered, and anyone who chooses to use them either directly or through a provider will not be disappointed.
January 25, 1999:
Two days ago I was: OD -11.75, -1.5
OS -12.00, -1.5
Yesterday I had lasik at TLC Manhattan with Dr. Fox...
Today I'm around 20/30 or so, and 20/20 if I douse my eyes with eye drops... the vision is there, just not the crispness. (I still have some surface irritation, so that's clouding things a bit.)
But... I can see! Two days ago, I literally could not make out distinct objects beyond about 18 inches, today I walked around
Manhattan without glasses and could see street signs from blocks away...
This is way more than I expected... I had been expecting at least a week or so to go by before I felt comfortable driving, and while due to the post-op glare I'm not going to try night driving yet, I'm certainly fine to drive during the day. (Two days ago, sitting in the car without glasses I couldn't see the steering wheel, much less the road.)
February 9, 1999:
My screen is back to 1024x768 and normal fonts, though it's a bit blurry still. Significant ghosting at night -- night driving is not pleasant on unfamiliar roads as signs are unreadable until 2-3 seconds away at 55 mph.
Eye chart test says I'm 20/40 left, 20/80 right -- but that fluctuates every day. I am using Bion Tears every hour, and everything clears up quite a bit for a few minutes after putting those in. My Dr says that the surface of my cornea is extremely dry and not smooth and that is causing the blurriness. I'd have to say he's right, considering I can see nearly 20/20 for a few minutes after using eye drops. He says that as long as I keep using the drops for a few more weeks, the roughness will go away. My flaps were completely invisible by 1-week postop, with no wrinkles.
June 26, 1999:
Post-surgery:
OD plano, -0.50
OS plano, -1.00
Post-correction (same MD, 30 June 1999): OD plano, 0
OS plano, 0
I've had serious problems with healing due to dry eye and my vision has been consistently cloudy. My co-manage eye doctor says my eyes are gunked up with sloughed-off epithelial cells. Dry-eye is made worse by my eyelids not closing all the way at night.
Although my eyes are technically zero sph/cyl, I get about 20/40 OD and 20/80 OS on the Snellen. Problems with photophobia since the June correction -- I need to wear sunglasses outside even in very overcast weather.
At no time since the original procedure in January has my vision been better than 20/40 for more than a day or two.
The dry-eye is treated with lots of drops (celluvisc) during the day, and Refresh PM at night with eyes taped shut. I've had significant improvement in the past week or so since I've started taping my eyes shut at night, but still no better than 20/40 or so.
My night vision is worse than 20/100.
December 28, 2000:
I wear glasses again. Thin ones, granted, and I don't always have to wear them -- in fact, sometimes I forget to put them on, and don't realize so until hours later...
... but wasn't the point of LASIK to not have to wear glasses?
I think the technology still has a ways to go before it's ready for primetime.
I still have NO night vision. I need at least a 25-watt bulb to navigate.
April 2001: If I could go back in time and undo my LASIK, I would.
Provigil, also known by its generic name of modafinil, is a wakefulness-promoting agent for the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness. It is prescribed primarily for the treatment of EDS in persons with narcolepsy.
For nearly fifty years, the only medications available to treat narcolepsy were high-abuse-potential, amphetamine-based drugs such as Dexedrine and Ritalin. Unlike traditional stimulants, Provigil does not mediate wakefulness by a dopaminergic mechanism; furthermore, it is (also unlike amphetamine/methylphenidate) highly selective to the anterior hypothalamus, a region of the brain believed to regulate normal wakefulness.
Provigil improves one's ability to stay awake and participate in daily activities. In one study, its efficacy (measured using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale was documented at 20%, versus 7% placebo (p<0.001).
It works.
Throughout my life (since age seven), I've suffered fainting spells, depression, and even seizures, all of which had a hugely negative impact on both my grades and my social life - and which went undiagnosed until age twenty, when a correct diagnosis of narcolepsy brought medication and treatment. The medication has had a profoundly positive effect - I can concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, can stay awake and alert for more than just an hour or two, can study and retain knowledge - all things that the disease had debilitating effects on for nearly all of my life. I do not feel it to be an exaggeration to say that much of my academic, social, and emotional life before Provigil was more representative of the disease than of my own personality and intellect.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Clearly you've never graded papers... I've never, in years of grading, found anything like a normal distribution.
Note that #2 is incorrect - change 'average' to 'median'.
RTFA.
Damn, I feel old.
- user 404, born 1978
What one really has to wonder about is that this has become an arms race for the sake of an arms race. Does anyone really imagine that someone who's gone to the trouble of filtering spam out will suddenly receive this amazing offer for Gen3r@c v|agar@ and think to himself "oh! I sure am glad that one slipped through - I'm going to buy some v|agar@ now!" ?
Now I have this image of vast hordes of zebra mussels stampeding across the midwestern plains....
Or are those zebras?
But... but... VNC isn't an operating system!
Oh, wait. Are you one of those people who uses the 'telnet' OS?
And I thought I led a boring life.
If this means people like my friend's father no longer fill their house with discard-sale books like "1958: A Year Of Changes" and think that makes them distinguished, learned individuals, I'm all for it.
Aren't quotation marks usually used to indicate that something is a quote?
"Pound sand" doesn't seem to be one.
I got very disillusioned a few years ago when I decided to follow the recycling truck.
It went to the dump, and deposited its load in exactly the same place as the garbage trucks did.
I asked the site manager about this, and was told that while it's the law to recycle in our area, we didn't actually have a recycling program in effect, so they just mix the trash and recyclables at the dump.
This had been going on for 8 years already in 1999.
Or, use SpamAssassin+Razor+Pyzor+DCC, and keep your install updated.
I've been dmd@3e.org since 1996, and several other addresses before that (many of which forward to my current address). I've posted many hundreds of articles to usenet, discussion boards, etc., using that address.
I get a LOT of spam; on the order of 3000+ messages/day. (That's three thousand. Not a typo.) Of those, around 2 or 3 make it through the filter (false-negative).
I had a few false positives when I first started using SA, but careful whitelisting has ended that... I haven't had a false positive in over three years.
There's another, far more important reason amateur radio doesn't grow; its obsession with itself.
Imagine if all telephone conversations went something like this:
Joe: Hello? Anyone out there? Anyone at all? I'm willing to talk to absolutely anyone!
Bob: Hi there Joe! I can kinda hear you... I'm in Toejam, WV, and I've got a model AB123 rotary telephone with Bakelite trim that I added myself, and the weather's nice!
Joe: Oh, wow, hi Bob, one of those AB123s, eh? Those are nice old phones, I've got a brand new Verizon cell phone, and the weather's pretty nice here too.
Bob: Well, great, nice talkin' to you!
Joe: You too.
Joe: Anyone out there? Hello? Anyone?
[repeat nearly identical conversation several hundred times, win award for doing so]
-- Daniel, N2SXX (tech plus)
An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks
The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
The Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
The Scar, China Mieville
Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
Darwin's Blade, Dan Simmons
Enchantment, Orson Scott Card
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
He, She, and It, Marge Piercy
Lo's Diary, Pia Pera
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
books in my library rated 'excellent' or 'great'
Babelfish's English translation of the Watch Impress article makes several references to "wooden vice president".
Is there something we should know about Al Gore's involvement in Sony?
I've been a client of a number of hosting providers:
1993-1994: Panix
1994-1996: Agora (Raindrop Labs)
1996-1998: Hurricane Electric
1998-2000: Pair Networks
2000-present: Voxel.net
Panix and Agora were good for what I wanted from them; I never had any real problems, but then I never really used them for much besides email and a place to store a few files.
Hurricane Electric and Pair are in my opinion the Walmart/Targets of the hosting world. They're fast, they're reasonably reliable, they treat you as a nameless, faceless customer-unit. I would recommend either of them to someone with no exceptional needs who doesn't anticipate ever needing support or special configuration of any kind.
Voxel, by comparison, has time and time again blown my socks off. Their machines are blazingly fast, their pipes are wide -- they're not in any way lacking in raw "hosting horsepower". More importantly, though, their technical ability is unmatched. Voxel staff have written quite a bit of useful management software which they've contributed to the community. They've always been extremely helpful in working through configuration issues; they respond to support emails generally within minutes; they will work on problems with me on the phone, and treat me as an equal.
Their support people are extraordinary, perhaps because they're not just warm-body "have you tried reinstalling" types -- Voxel support are the people who actually set up their network and machines, so they know exactly how everything fits together.
Voxel isn't as cheap as some other providers, but they're not expensive either, and they're certainly far and away the best hosting provider I've ever encountered, and anyone who chooses to use them either directly or through a provider will not be disappointed.
Brilliant!
This brings a whole new meaning to the term "crumple zone".
Echo... echo... echo...
As proud user number 404, I'm glad to say I was there...
January 25, 1999:
... I can see! Two days ago, I literally could not make out distinct objects beyond about 18 inches, today I walked around
Manhattan without glasses and could see street signs from blocks away...
Two days ago I was:
OD -11.75, -1.5
OS -12.00, -1.5
Yesterday I had lasik at TLC Manhattan with Dr. Fox...
Today I'm around 20/30 or so, and 20/20 if I douse my eyes with eye drops... the vision is there, just not the crispness. (I still have some surface irritation, so that's clouding things a bit.)
But
This is way more than I expected... I had been expecting at least a week or so to go by before I felt comfortable driving, and while due to the post-op glare I'm not going to try night driving yet, I'm certainly fine to drive during the day. (Two days ago, sitting in the car without glasses I couldn't see the steering wheel, much less the road.)
February 9, 1999:
My screen is back to 1024x768 and normal fonts, though it's a bit blurry still. Significant ghosting at night -- night driving is not pleasant on unfamiliar roads as signs are unreadable until 2-3 seconds away at 55 mph.
Eye chart test says I'm 20/40 left, 20/80 right -- but that fluctuates every day. I am using Bion Tears every hour, and everything clears up quite a bit for a few minutes after putting those in. My Dr says that the surface of my cornea is extremely dry and not smooth and that is causing the blurriness. I'd have to say he's right, considering I can see nearly 20/20 for a few minutes after using eye drops. He says that as long as I keep using the drops for a few more weeks, the roughness will go away. My flaps were completely invisible by 1-week postop, with no wrinkles.
June 26, 1999:
Post-surgery:
OD plano, -0.50
OS plano, -1.00
Post-correction (same MD, 30 June 1999):
OD plano, 0
OS plano, 0
I've had serious problems with healing due to dry eye and my vision has been consistently cloudy. My co-manage eye doctor says my eyes are gunked up with sloughed-off epithelial cells. Dry-eye is made worse by my eyelids not closing all the way at night.
Although my eyes are technically zero sph/cyl, I get about 20/40 OD and 20/80 OS on the Snellen. Problems with photophobia since the June correction -- I need to wear sunglasses outside even in very overcast weather.
At no time since the original procedure in January has my vision been better than 20/40 for more than a day or two.
The dry-eye is treated with lots of drops (celluvisc) during the day, and Refresh PM at night with eyes taped shut. I've had significant improvement in the past week or so since I've started taping my eyes shut at night, but still no better than 20/40 or so.
My night vision is worse than 20/100.
December 28, 2000:
I wear glasses again. Thin ones, granted, and I don't always have to wear them -- in fact, sometimes I forget to put them on, and don't realize so until hours later...
... but wasn't the point of LASIK to not have to wear glasses?
I think the technology still has a ways to go before it's ready for primetime.
I still have NO night vision. I need at least a 25-watt bulb to navigate.
April 2001:
If I could go back in time and undo my LASIK, I would.
June 2002:
No change in my opinion.
It would require an infinite amount of energy to do this, and I think that counts as excessive.
I've been here just slightly longer than you have, and I'll be first to say that editorial control was never all that wonderful to begin with.
my writeup on Provigil from Everything2:
Provigil, also known by its generic name of modafinil, is a wakefulness-promoting agent for the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness. It is prescribed primarily for the treatment of EDS in persons with narcolepsy.
For nearly fifty years, the only medications available to treat narcolepsy were high-abuse-potential, amphetamine-based drugs such as Dexedrine and Ritalin. Unlike traditional stimulants, Provigil does not mediate wakefulness by a dopaminergic mechanism; furthermore, it is (also unlike amphetamine/methylphenidate) highly selective to the anterior hypothalamus, a region of the brain believed to regulate normal wakefulness.
Provigil improves one's ability to stay awake and participate in daily activities. In one study, its efficacy (measured using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale was documented at 20%, versus 7% placebo (p<0.001).
It works.
Throughout my life (since age seven), I've suffered fainting spells, depression, and even seizures, all of which had a hugely negative impact on both my grades and my social life - and which went undiagnosed until age twenty, when a correct diagnosis of narcolepsy brought medication and treatment. The medication has had a profoundly positive effect - I can concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, can stay awake and alert for more than just an hour or two, can study and retain knowledge - all things that the disease had debilitating effects on for nearly all of my life. I do not feel it to be an exaggeration to say that much of my academic, social, and emotional life before Provigil was more representative of the disease than of my own personality and intellect.