Oh, I wish I had pics of the Winnebago I built when I was a kid... It was complete with a toilet, a ladder that extended down from a hatch in the bottom, and of course the ludicrouspeed drives that flipped out from a compartment in the back.
To add another George Carlin quote, "the problem isn't homelessness, it's houselessness."
There's no reason for houses to have the inflated cost they do these days, other than to serve as a mechanism to transfer more wealth to the wealthy through mortgage interest. People complain about paying 10% - 30% of their income in taxes... over the course of the typical 30-year mortgage, you'll end up paying twice your original loan (and effectively more if you keep selling your house and getting a new mortgage before you enter into your mortgage's "golden years"). It's pretty much nuts, and has pretty much inflated our national worth many times over with "imaginary" assets.
And it doesn't have to be this way. We could be building affordable houses. Maybe even on golf courses;-)
Yeah, you're right, and they did block outgoing smtp. I had to configure an authenticated ssl/tls smarthost to send mail.
But I did want to be able to receive mail direct to my host, so that was another reason to go with Business FiOS. And it wasn't really much more expensive.
My biggest complaint about FiOS was that it would die after a 30-minute neighborhood power outage, even with though my ONT and all my local gear was on UPS. Something upstream had a crap battery. This was during the snowmaggedons, when we had a couple of week-long outages every other year, and a handful of hours-long outages as well throughout the year.
Oh, this story takes me back to my days of trying to mirror linux distros on sunsite over a 14.4k external modem (I was too cheap to spend $50 on some of the 56K modems that were available in 2000.)
I would pretty much obsess over maxing out my connection 24/7, with various extra compression tricks and proxies to better-connected lower latency servers my friends had on the internet. At some point, I got a bill for $150 from Verizon because one of the condos I was renting at the time turned out to not have unlimited local phone service. I was really pissed about that. Oh yeah, I even bothered to write a diatribe way back then: http://hairball.mine.nu/~rwa2/misc/verizontotallysucks.html
I'm glad I finally grew out of that phase in my life, but at the same time I'm delighted that there are people out there still trying to get the maximum out of their services:-D... and I did end up going back to Verizon, for work, and then at home when they rolled out FiOS to my neighborhood. Unlike the guy in this article, though, I paid extra for the Business service so they'd unblock incoming SMTP and HTTP(S) ports. Getting transferred from the droll residential CSR to the sharp and peppy business CSR during that call was like night and day and sticks out in my mind.
Nowadays I'm on Frontier FiOS, which was an offshoot of Verizon, I guess, except they don't do any silly port blocking on the residential accounts.
Everyone should have to power to take the life of someone else who is making them miserable. They just should also be forced to face the music for it as well.
But when you have asymmetry in the balance of this power... that would allow one person to take the lives of several people with limited consequence, then they'll probably start using it indiscriminately and frivolously.
It sounds like the main beef the police have is that these weapons are untraceable. Maybe if there was some way of putting some kind of watermark on the Liberator, it'd probably be all right. Anonymous first amendment sounds like a pretty good thing. Anonymous second amendment... not so much.
I'm kinda annoyed that Google+ automatically uploads everything from my phone's camera gallery, but there's not really a good way to pull down from my Picasa albums shared on Google+ to my phone's Gallery, without swimming through a bunch of third-party apps.
FWIW, the only "third party" picture interface app that I've really liked is "Floating Image", which can pull from various feeds including Facebook and Flickr and probably Picasa / Google+ / or whatever passes for Google's photo service du jour. But it pulls to its own cache dir rather than to your Gallery.
I think that's a plus... most people I know with serious entertainment systems always complained about how the oddly-shaped consoles never fit well in their systems.
My father always said, "computers are a tool, not a trade".
But with most trades, it's useful to be able to apply your tools well. So most IT/CS geeks would do well for themselves to "diversify" somewhat into a specific trade, and not limit their knowledge/education solely to kicking computer HW/SW. Focus on what you do with it, not the tool itself.
Bonus for having the same interface as gkrellm on your Linux boxes. And maybe being able to remote display it using its own client server protocol.
I don't know why it isn't easier to monitor disk utilization, after all, it's pretty much the slowest component in your PC. On Linux, try iotop, iftop, dstat, etc. to get more detailed views of what processes are using up your precious I/O. That said, I'm pretty envious of the new Windows Performance Monitor introduced since Vista for all of the fine-grained process info it presents in one interface.
In government by Kickstarter, money would truly equal political power (and Kickstarter would be the world's largest megacorp from all those transaction fees)...doesn't sound good to me.
Ha, well, my "Not Sure if Serious" political science theory is that everything will be better if representative democracy was run like OKCupid, where you could answer a ton of questions about your positions on things, and then delegate your voting authority on the issue to the politician that has the highest % match to you in those matters.
Ha ha, just as well. I can imagine the poor guy.... when I was a kid a decade or so ago I was a devmin for a small UN site and, uh "accidentally" filed the West Bank and Gaza under Israel in the database hierarchy.
Fortunately my client at the World Bank with a bit more knowledge of world events that I received from US HS History set me straight before we pushed it to production.
But I suppose this balances it all out then!
Still, it's amazing how much trouble "kids these days" can get into for doing the same shit we did when we were young.
Heh, speaking of anti-social... I really had no interest in Google Glass until I read about all of the people trying to ban them.
But technically, there doesn't seem to be much I could do with Google Glass that I couldn't do with a cellphone in a decent car / bike mount. Or do better with one of those GoPro Hero headcams. Maybe once Glass has the battery power to record all the time, so I can search and scroll back later to see where I put my keys, it'd be a different story.
I'm hoping the technology makes fully-immersive VR headsets better / more affordable someday, though.
All of which were rendered unnecessary because everyone adopted a 10-year-old nerdly thing: the smartphone. Scrawling notes: on the phone. Game playing: on the phone. File storage/transmission: on the phone. So yes, sometimes old nerd things don't become popular --- when there's a newer nerd thing to replace them.
This. 20 years ago I was fantasizing about having a low-profile wearable computer with internet access always attached to me in a low-profile package, so it wouldn't be too socially conspicuous.
So what does mainstream society do? Simply make it socially fashionable for everyone and their mother to walk around staring at a big unwieldy brick.
This is why nerds will never win at solving other people's problems. If you try to provide a rational smart solution, it'll be dismissed as being uncool for "trying too hard".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I wish I had pics of the Winnebago I built when I was a kid... It was complete with a toilet, a ladder that extended down from a hatch in the bottom, and of course the ludicrouspeed drives that flipped out from a compartment in the back.
I do all of my posts to Facebook via Twitter. That means the Library of Congress has all my content archived.
Also, it means I don't have to run the Facebook app on my Android device to post. Double win!
Yes, very much this.
To add another George Carlin quote, "the problem isn't homelessness, it's houselessness."
There's no reason for houses to have the inflated cost they do these days, other than to serve as a mechanism to transfer more wealth to the wealthy through mortgage interest. People complain about paying 10% - 30% of their income in taxes... over the course of the typical 30-year mortgage, you'll end up paying twice your original loan (and effectively more if you keep selling your house and getting a new mortgage before you enter into your mortgage's "golden years"). It's pretty much nuts, and has pretty much inflated our national worth many times over with "imaginary" assets.
And it doesn't have to be this way. We could be building affordable houses. Maybe even on golf courses ;-)
Skimmed through TFA, it doesn't seem like he has any suggestions on what to focus on, as long as it's not everyone dogpiling on one thing.
But the way things are going, maybe we should all be working on building these:
http://www.designboom.com/design/mobile-homeless-shelter/
You don't have to SHOUT; I'm hard of hearing!
I imagine the scientist comforting the molecules... "don't worry, you're just going to feel a tiny prick!"
J/K, I'm sure all the researches have big brass ones. Bravo!
Are you trying to say that you can't "see" braille?
Yeah, you're right, and they did block outgoing smtp. I had to configure an authenticated ssl/tls smarthost to send mail.
But I did want to be able to receive mail direct to my host, so that was another reason to go with Business FiOS. And it wasn't really much more expensive.
My biggest complaint about FiOS was that it would die after a 30-minute neighborhood power outage, even with though my ONT and all my local gear was on UPS. Something upstream had a crap battery. This was during the snowmaggedons, when we had a couple of week-long outages every other year, and a handful of hours-long outages as well throughout the year.
Hospitals aren't going to turn away critically ill people. And more importantly, the insurance companies need to make sure they get their dough.
This This is is a a simple simple test test for for double double vision. vision.
OGC OGC
How How many many wankers wankers do do you you see? see?
If If you you answered answered one, one, then then you you do do not not have have double double vision. vision.
Oh, this story takes me back to my days of trying to mirror linux distros on sunsite over a 14.4k external modem (I was too cheap to spend $50 on some of the 56K modems that were available in 2000.)
I would pretty much obsess over maxing out my connection 24/7, with various extra compression tricks and proxies to better-connected lower latency servers my friends had on the internet. At some point, I got a bill for $150 from Verizon because one of the condos I was renting at the time turned out to not have unlimited local phone service. I was really pissed about that. Oh yeah, I even bothered to write a diatribe way back then: http://hairball.mine.nu/~rwa2/misc/verizontotallysucks.html
I'm glad I finally grew out of that phase in my life, but at the same time I'm delighted that there are people out there still trying to get the maximum out of their services :-D ... and I did end up going back to Verizon, for work, and then at home when they rolled out FiOS to my neighborhood. Unlike the guy in this article, though, I paid extra for the Business service so they'd unblock incoming SMTP and HTTP(S) ports. Getting transferred from the droll residential CSR to the sharp and peppy business CSR during that call was like night and day and sticks out in my mind.
Nowadays I'm on Frontier FiOS, which was an offshoot of Verizon, I guess, except they don't do any silly port blocking on the residential accounts.
Everyone should have to power to take the life of someone else who is making them miserable. They just should also be forced to face the music for it as well.
But when you have asymmetry in the balance of this power... that would allow one person to take the lives of several people with limited consequence, then they'll probably start using it indiscriminately and frivolously.
It sounds like the main beef the police have is that these weapons are untraceable. Maybe if there was some way of putting some kind of watermark on the Liberator, it'd probably be all right. Anonymous first amendment sounds like a pretty good thing. Anonymous second amendment... not so much.
Guns are tools of the weak and afraid. They clutch them close to their chests to make them feel like they have some power in this crazy, cruel world.
But all we really want is love, approval, and security. Hence, teddy bears.
At least it's better than my first impulse to print a vagina.
Oooh, you just had to go the self-immolation route, you insensitive clod!
Oh, EMulate. OK.
So what's better?
I'm kinda annoyed that Google+ automatically uploads everything from my phone's camera gallery, but there's not really a good way to pull down from my Picasa albums shared on Google+ to my phone's Gallery, without swimming through a bunch of third-party apps.
FWIW, the only "third party" picture interface app that I've really liked is "Floating Image", which can pull from various feeds including Facebook and Flickr and probably Picasa / Google+ / or whatever passes for Google's photo service du jour. But it pulls to its own cache dir rather than to your Gallery.
I think that's a plus... most people I know with serious entertainment systems always complained about how the oddly-shaped consoles never fit well in their systems.
IT isn't a trade? Yeah, actually you're right.
My father always said, "computers are a tool, not a trade".
But with most trades, it's useful to be able to apply your tools well. So most IT/CS geeks would do well for themselves to "diversify" somewhat into a specific trade, and not limit their knowledge/education solely to kicking computer HW/SW. Focus on what you do with it, not the tool itself.
Well, supposedly they have enough CPU power to do a pretty reasonable simulation of insect and even small mammal brains, like rats and cats.
But supposedly there might be more going on in there than just interactions between connected neurons...
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/13-is-quantum-mechanics-controlling-your-thoughts#.UZQDe7VeZ30
There's a win32 build of GKrellm, which is probably just as useful if not more than Rainmeter:
http://www.srcbox.net/projects/gkrellm/
Bonus for having the same interface as gkrellm on your Linux boxes. And maybe being able to remote display it using its own client server protocol.
I don't know why it isn't easier to monitor disk utilization, after all, it's pretty much the slowest component in your PC.
On Linux, try iotop, iftop, dstat, etc. to get more detailed views of what processes are using up your precious I/O. That said, I'm pretty envious of the new Windows Performance Monitor introduced since Vista for all of the fine-grained process info it presents in one interface.
Not sure if serious...
In government by Kickstarter, money would truly equal political power (and Kickstarter would be the world's largest megacorp from all those transaction fees)...doesn't sound good to me.
Ha, well, my "Not Sure if Serious" political science theory is that everything will be better if representative democracy was run like OKCupid, where you could answer a ton of questions about your positions on things, and then delegate your voting authority on the issue to the politician that has the highest % match to you in those matters.
Ironically, L4D was pretty much the game that got me running Windows on my main graphics PC :-P
Well, the way I see it, a good engineering department can typically shave 5% - 10% off the cost it takes to make some widget.
A good marketing department can simply convince customers to spend 100% more on the product.
So which might have the higher ROI?
Ha ha, just as well. I can imagine the poor guy.... when I was a kid a decade or so ago I was a devmin for a small UN site and, uh "accidentally" filed the West Bank and Gaza under Israel in the database hierarchy.
Fortunately my client at the World Bank with a bit more knowledge of world events that I received from US HS History set me straight before we pushed it to production.
But I suppose this balances it all out then!
Still, it's amazing how much trouble "kids these days" can get into for doing the same shit we did when we were young.
Heh, speaking of anti-social... I really had no interest in Google Glass until I read about all of the people trying to ban them.
But technically, there doesn't seem to be much I could do with Google Glass that I couldn't do with a cellphone in a decent car / bike mount. Or do better with one of those GoPro Hero headcams. Maybe once Glass has the battery power to record all the time, so I can search and scroll back later to see where I put my keys, it'd be a different story.
I'm hoping the technology makes fully-immersive VR headsets better / more affordable someday, though.
All of which were rendered unnecessary because everyone adopted a 10-year-old nerdly thing: the smartphone. Scrawling notes: on the phone. Game playing: on the phone. File storage/transmission: on the phone. So yes, sometimes old nerd things don't become popular --- when there's a newer nerd thing to replace them.
This. 20 years ago I was fantasizing about having a low-profile wearable computer with internet access always attached to me in a low-profile package, so it wouldn't be too socially conspicuous.
So what does mainstream society do? Simply make it socially fashionable for everyone and their mother to walk around staring at a big unwieldy brick.
This is why nerds will never win at solving other people's problems. If you try to provide a rational smart solution, it'll be dismissed as being uncool for "trying too hard".