I used to be in the army cadets here in the UK and they used to make you do your boots like this - especially when you showed them there was a better way.
The problem is that you ONLY have one end of the lace to tie off. This is clearly a PROBLEM because it is HARD . Now. How about a way of lacing shoes where you only have one crossing of the lace between each pair of holes, but you can still tie in a bow, like 99% of human shoe users do?
Pay attention. Here comes the science bit...
5a 5b 4a 4b 3a 3b 2a 2b 1a 1b
Start with the lace threaded halfway through 1a and 1b from the outside in. Now do this... 1a, 2a, 3b, 4b, 4a... 1b, 3b, 3a, 5a, 5b... Sometimes at the top you need to frig it just a little.
Re:Soldiers Have Been Carrying Optical Cell For Ye
on
Optical Cellphones
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It's called a heliograph and a CD would make a very good substitute. Take a CD and an ice lolly stick. Make a hole in one end of the stick and hold the CD up in front of your face, shiny side facing out. Be facing the sun, more or less. Hold the lolly stick up in front of that (about 12 inches away) and sight through the hole in the CD and the hole in the lolly stick at the aeroplane, boat, visitor craft or whatever you are trying to signal to. Now wiggle the CD until the shadow of the hole in the middle of the CD falls over the hole in the lolly stick. Now you are shining your light right at your target. By flicking your hand, you can turn the light on and off and so make morse. Or binary. Whatever. If you do do this to a visitor, they will probably just decode the information on the CD and try to work out the meaning. Do not expect to be rescued. Expect instead to get Barry Manilow's greatest hits beamed back to you some days later. If this saves your life, paypal me!;)
I can't remember which book it was, but Arthur C Clarke predicted that we would send a magnesium flare to the moon before any other missions, so that people could see it from Earth when they blew it up. How about that? How big would it have to be?
It's not as if I know the first thing about clusters, but this is a linux device with networking capabilities, provided you buy an interface card. So my guess is, yes.
Thank you obsessive-compulsives for breeding several new strains of super bugs that will kill us all.
I think it's amazing that this kind of attitude still exists. Where do you think your great grandparents' organic waste is now? Rotted away on a compost heap, that's where.
You need to realise that sometimes the low-tech solution is the best one.
In my experience this occurs in outfits where the people who hold the purse strings are not also the people who understand computers. They may have no experience of what real systems can do for them. I used to work at a place where mission critical data was stored in a massive Paradox database to which all these crazy jarheads had admin rights. Just stupid. You ended up with thousands of copies of tables and no-one knew which one was the right one to use. Then they decided to go SQL Server and what did they do? Remodel the data structure? No. They just copied the damn Paradox tables one for one. They used to back up the c:\ drives of every machine in the office every lunchtime in that place. Dickheads.
...the computer will begin to make a hideous noise. [click] Aha! I was right!
What is the point of trying to find out what a cube or a set of dominoes or whatever 'sounds like'?
I can tell you right now, that if you try to find out what a chess board sounds like, you will find that it sounds bloody awful! The same goes for almost all other geometric models or mathematical sequences.
Sure, look to maths for your inspiration; mess about with different equations and sequences until you find one that sounds interesting (supposing you aren't bothered by such pedestrian concepts as music that is pleasing to the ear). For instance, take a look at Aphex Twin's album 'windowlicker' through a scrolling spectrum analyser. There are some deliberately geometric shapes in there, and while they don't exactly sound great, they don't sound out of place in the music.
Don't, however, assume that because something can be done that there is a benefit in doing it.
This kind of balls-to-the-wall turbo-charging is not only un-necessary, it's wasteful too. Most PC's are pretty power hungry as it is, without introducing a whole new load of cooling equipment. Although it appears to make the processor perform more efficiently, actually it makes the whole box a whole lot less efficient in terms of power consumption. Much more encouraging is the recent trend to making silent PC's. These tend to be pretty energy efficient as well as nicer to have about the place.
First, get yourselves a decent problem management tool.
Steer away from the market leaders like Peregrine and Remedy (or Heat, Quetzal, Helpdesk etc.) as they are vastly over complicated, over priced, opaque in use and just generally suck the fat one.
Get something simple, or get it developed in house. 9 times out of 10 you don't need the bells and whistles offered by a 'professional' system as these are just bundled in to make a weak product easier to sell. If you develop it yourself then you can at least add the bits you need later on.
Second, some kind of knowledge base. It needn't be a big whizzy database - you can get all the detail you need in a word document or html page.
Third, get headsets for your phones. You might think they are a bit wussy or funny looking at first, but you will soon realise how much more efficient they make you and your staff; you can actually type whilst on the phone. Which brings me onto...
Four: make sure you can all type at least 40 wpm. If you can't do this then you shouldn't be allowed to use a computer, let alone be an IT professional (who in their right mind would employ a developer at $80 per hour who can't type > 20 wpm - but it happens!). This will make the whole experience a whole lot more enjoyable for both the customer and the operator.
Five: If you can't get technical experts for staff, get intelligent, pleasant people. Do not pay minimum wage and get people who want to move into IT from, say, shelf stacking. Make sure they know they need to be polite, considerate and efficient with all customers (note: this includes 'internal customers')
Running a support desk is hard work, but is also essentially a simple thing to get right - just keep thinking about customer service the whole time and your 3/4 of the way there.
user: "Hello, I have a problem with my computer" me: "What does it say?" user: "unable to find pointer device" me: "I think that means there is a problem with the mouse" user: "Oh my god! It's been stolen"
Slashdot Mirror
...and a slashdotter?
The slashdotter has less chance of getting kissed by a princess.
This is typical army shithead technique.
.
I used to be in the army cadets here in the UK and they used to make you do your boots like this - especially when you showed them there was a better way.
The problem is that you ONLY have one end of the lace to tie off. This is clearly a PROBLEM because it is HARD
Now. How about a way of lacing shoes where you only have one crossing of the lace between each pair of holes, but you can still tie in a bow, like 99% of human shoe users do?
Pay attention. Here comes the science bit...
5a 5b
4a 4b
3a 3b
2a 2b
1a 1b
Start with the lace threaded halfway through 1a and 1b from the outside in. Now do this...
1a, 2a, 3b, 4b, 4a...
1b, 3b, 3a, 5a, 5b...
Sometimes at the top you need to frig it just a little.
It's called a heliograph and a CD would make a very good substitute. ;)
Take a CD and an ice lolly stick. Make a hole in one end of the stick and hold the CD up in front of your face, shiny side facing out. Be facing the sun, more or less.
Hold the lolly stick up in front of that (about 12 inches away) and sight through the hole in the CD and the hole in the lolly stick at the aeroplane, boat, visitor craft or whatever you are trying to signal to. Now wiggle the CD until the shadow of the hole in the middle of the CD falls over the hole in the lolly stick. Now you are shining your light right at your target. By flicking your hand, you can turn the light on and off and so make morse. Or binary. Whatever.
If you do do this to a visitor, they will probably just decode the information on the CD and try to work out the meaning. Do not expect to be rescued. Expect instead to get Barry Manilow's greatest hits beamed back to you some days later.
If this saves your life, paypal me!
I can't remember which book it was, but Arthur C Clarke predicted that we would send a magnesium flare to the moon before any other missions, so that people could see it from Earth when they blew it up. How about that? How big would it have to be?
...always getting advertised on Slashdot (except for when you want to find out what they're called - can anyone remember?)
Pretty cheap - in fact you could buy them all and just develop your own OS distro. Save you lots of time and $$$
Imagine one node of this thing on it's own!
Thank Christ we don't use cellulose based currency any more.
It's not as if I know the first thing about clusters, but this is a linux device with networking capabilities, provided you buy an interface card. So my guess is, yes.
But is Zaurus a faux-Latin word? If so, then you would have thought that Latin rules would apply.
Thank you obsessive-compulsives for breeding several new strains of super bugs that will kill us all.
I think it's amazing that this kind of attitude still exists. Where do you think your great grandparents' organic waste is now? Rotted away on a compost heap, that's where.
You need to realise that sometimes the low-tech solution is the best one.
Definitely not Dallas, but in a way I think these places are more a state of mind than a physical place ;)
Pure fantasy!
In my experience this occurs in outfits where the people who hold the purse strings are not also the people who understand computers. They may have no experience of what real systems can do for them.
I used to work at a place where mission critical data was stored in a massive Paradox database to which all these crazy jarheads had admin rights. Just stupid. You ended up with thousands of copies of tables and no-one knew which one was the right one to use. Then they decided to go SQL Server and what did they do? Remodel the data structure? No. They just copied the damn Paradox tables one for one.
They used to back up the c:\ drives of every machine in the office every lunchtime in that place.
Dickheads.
Be Robot Frank
...the computer will begin to make a hideous noise.
[click]
Aha! I was right!
What is the point of trying to find out what a cube or a set of dominoes or whatever 'sounds like'?
I can tell you right now, that if you try to find out what a chess board sounds like, you will find that it sounds bloody awful! The same goes for almost all other geometric models or mathematical sequences.
Sure, look to maths for your inspiration; mess about with different equations and sequences until you find one that sounds interesting (supposing you aren't bothered by such pedestrian concepts as music that is pleasing to the ear). For instance, take a look at Aphex Twin's album 'windowlicker' through a scrolling spectrum analyser. There are some deliberately geometric shapes in there, and while they don't exactly sound great, they don't sound out of place in the music.
Don't, however, assume that because something can be done that there is a benefit in doing it.
This kind of balls-to-the-wall turbo-charging is not only un-necessary, it's wasteful too.
Most PC's are pretty power hungry as it is, without introducing a whole new load of cooling equipment. Although it appears to make the processor perform more efficiently, actually it makes the whole box a whole lot less efficient in terms of power consumption.
Much more encouraging is the recent trend to making silent PC's. These tend to be pretty energy efficient as well as nicer to have about the place.
First, get yourselves a decent problem management tool.
Steer away from the market leaders like Peregrine and Remedy (or Heat, Quetzal, Helpdesk etc.) as they are vastly over complicated, over priced, opaque in use and just generally suck the fat one.
Get something simple, or get it developed in house. 9 times out of 10 you don't need the bells and whistles offered by a 'professional' system as these are just bundled in to make a weak product easier to sell. If you develop it yourself then you can at least add the bits you need later on.
Second, some kind of knowledge base. It needn't be a big whizzy database - you can get all the detail you need in a word document or html page.
Third, get headsets for your phones. You might think they are a bit wussy or funny looking at first, but you will soon realise how much more efficient they make you and your staff; you can actually type whilst on the phone. Which brings me onto...
Four: make sure you can all type at least 40 wpm. If you can't do this then you shouldn't be allowed to use a computer, let alone be an IT professional (who in their right mind would employ a developer at $80 per hour who can't type > 20 wpm - but it happens!).
This will make the whole experience a whole lot more enjoyable for both the customer and the operator.
Five: If you can't get technical experts for staff, get intelligent, pleasant people. Do not pay minimum wage and get people who want to move into IT from, say, shelf stacking. Make sure they know they need to be polite, considerate and efficient with all customers (note: this includes 'internal customers')
Running a support desk is hard work, but is also essentially a simple thing to get right - just keep thinking about customer service the whole time and your 3/4 of the way there.
Just my £0.02.
A quick search on Google returned this site.
...you have not made millions from manufacturing boy bands.
1. He knows what he seen.
2. You saw logs, not errors.
3. But you do get errors in logs sometimes.
user: "Hello, I have a problem with my computer"
me: "What does it say?"
user: "unable to find pointer device"
me: "I think that means there is a problem with the mouse"
user: "Oh my god! It's been stolen"
Or put the url in an anchor () tag?
I've lost my AOL disk - does anyone know where I can get a replacement? I may be in big trouble - it had the internet on it, too.
You mean to say that I'm not a "real-medical-care-person-that's-normally-referred -to-be-a-doctor"? Damn - I thought I was.
Where did you get your degree from, Einstein? Cereal packet?
I checked my pirourities and they said 'you don't play darts outside' followed by 'if you go outside for the rest of the day, your boss will fire you'