Well, let's hope that the new Star Wars doesn't suck as bad as it's name suggests.
on getting mod'd down ... and crobots
on
RoboCup 2001 Underway
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Happened to me last week as well. I wrote a comment that got 5 responses, and was VERY similar to other responses that got moderated up... and here I thought talking about commercialization of the event was on topic.
I suppose I could have pondered about how much time and cycles could have been spared using a simpler operating system and perhaps retro-fitting some old-school code, e.g. Tom Poindexter's Crobots... or given my plug for a linux based version of C-Robots... but....
then again... in the words of Cowboy Neal"I said that karma bores me, and I don't understand why people get all hung up over it. It's not like having a high karma is gonna get you discounts in stores. If you're really worried about karma, go donate money to charity or donate your time to some place that can use it."
After recalling some of the complaints expressed in last month's article BYO BattleBot, let's hope this event isn't usurped, commercialized and consequently ruined by Comedy Central.
Though I have to admint, it might be interesting to put a few BattleBots in the stands to give the event the look-and-feel of a soccer riot.
The article does a good job at pointing out the seemingly chaotic and certainly cell-like nature the internet. However, unlike the article, I'm not sure if more research and/or more computer science will solve the problem.
THat's not to say that understanding how the various layers of complexity architecture and dynamics won't provide an answer... and not because I think such diciplines suck, but because we have and will continue to have commercial influences on how networks are established.
Certainly some, in fact many businesses will higher and follow good practice. The problem comes about when some large companies don't. Or worse when mergers and buyouts occur, e.g. Verizon, CIHost and a few others come to mind.
Not to sound anti-business, because business has footed much of the bill for Internet expansion... but rather to voice concern that sometimes there is a big disparity between technical solutions and the shareholder's bottom line.
Re:Hardware key=dongle+dongle+dongle+dongle+dongle
on
Dan Gillmor on WinXP
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· Score: 1
Youre post reminds me of the 'Hardware' dongles various software companies used in the late '80s and early '90s. I recall 12Tone's G.H. at the '89 NAMM show joking... "I can imagine a computer with several of these dongles hanging off... and entire new industry would be spawned to accomodate and support multipe-dongle installations... offices and cubicles would have to be redesigned to allow for long strings of hardware keys."
I think can speculate as to the basis of the author's desire for leadership. Here is all this energy and talent out there doing a million different things, each with their own motivations and agendas. One need only go as far as to look as some open source repositories, such as SourceForge.net. I suspect that the author would like to see an authoritative body that says, okay Joe, you work in X, Sally, you on Y. You know, bring it under some form of project management.
But while you're looking at places like FreshMeat.net, you might also notice that many of these endeavours reflect the wide variety personalities and desires that comprise the Open Source movement. In other words, in many ways, many Open Source softwares are the unique artistic expression of the individuals behind them. Instead of stroking paint and palette, we blast bits and bytes. And instead of museums and art stores, we the internet and individual computers as our showplace.
My fear is that bringing Open Source under a centralized effort _MAY_ have as chilling effect as Communism did on the arts in the former Soviet Union.
I mean are there that many hills we have to charge up, is someone throwing the ball, is the system that broke that we need to attempt fix it with a leader ?
When I was doing the night school thing for that 2nd masters, I was required to take several courses that required C & C++ programming, UNIX scripts, some database work, writing an operating system emulator and doing quite a bit of lexx & yacc for my classes in programming languages.
I had two choices, hump 30 to 40 minutes away to the college &/or stay late after classes... slugging it out on brain-damaged DEC Ultrixes... or programming my projects in the relaxed confines of my undies at home.
Granted, it cost me more money to have my own hardware as opposed to using the schools, and although I used a dual boot, I still gave Linux it's own hard disk. And at that time, Linux was and the web relatively new, so it took me almost an entire weekend to get it done.
That said, the productivity and privacy I enjoyed, along with the speed bump from not having to share resources, and the security of knowing my work was safe more than paid for itself.
I could have NEVER accomplished this if I were entirely dependent on Windows.
You've obviously never dealt with, or forgotten what it's like to deal with a 2 year old... you could be in the same room, turn your back for just one second... and BAMMM.. they're outta there... and fast.
Which raises another interesting concept with this camera. Imagine how helpful it would be in dealing with children. I mean, anyone who's had to take their kids for shots can imagine the torture it must be to 'scope' a young child.
As long as they could dress-up the camera like a Flintstone Vitamin, then a swallowable camera is going to be a BIG step towards making EVERYONE more comfortable for an otherwise unpleasant process.
I realize that such a camera is going to radically improve medical treatment. I mean, talk about a Fantastic Voyage. But I just can't help thinking about my almost 2 year old old daughter.
Here we've spent the past year or so training her so she doesn't put things like rocks, button, the lens cap to my camera, a quarter that fell out of my pocket, a bug crawling along the ground out of fear she might swallow them (that and chewmarks on my lens cap really causes some problems).
Then again, it might be a valuable tool for trying to figure out if my car keys are in her cute little belly. Even more useful if they added a GPS so I could keep track of the little stinker when she decides she's had enough of the back yard.
but can it fortell assasinations
on
Share The Pi!
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· Score: 1
If PI contains every concievable message, then do you suppose we could use to predict the future ? Not the normal boring stuff, like will my daughter run off with tall swarthy mediterranean, but important stuff, like assasinations ?
My best war-story has to be when I was with a company that developed some biometric identification systems, hand geometry, coupled with OCR-B readable cards for the INS. One of the test sites was on both the U.S. and Canadian side of the Rainbow Bridge, that spans Niagra Falls, for use by athletes participating in the World Games.
Big brass was on the way to to see the system, running when some column changes were made in in a rather important database we used back in D.C. causing the system to go a little crazy with NULL data.
Our savvy manager asks me if I can get the Candian machine running. If so, he can work it where he shows one part (a working) part of the system on the U.S. side, buying us 30 minutes of programming time.
So there I am, on the border, at the Canadian check-point, with all sorts of tourists gawking at me, as I code my butt off while an associate keeps an eye on the bridge. I'm just about done when he yells "They're Coming"... I yell back... tell me FEET as I kick in the compiler and pray there are no syntax errors.
Sure enough a typo gags the compile and my assoc. is yelling 100 feet... 75 feet. Meanwhile I fix the errant code, get it to compile, get the kiosk closed and the system running by the time my associate jumps down from the window at the guard's desk and runs up to tell me 10 feet.
With the system up, I race into Canada so they don't see a nervously sweating and rather disheveled programmer... and perhaps to avoid any prosecution if things fail... fortunately enough though everything went as planned.
I'm not sure if we're the only ones, but I still say Screw It ! Incidents.Org is reporting expotential growth, it's a warm 80 degrees out, with a mild breeze. Let's go fishin !
I'm still fuming that I wasn't able to cash in on this one! You know, a lame book that I advertise on the 700 Club, scaring little-old-blue-haired ladies so bad that they nag their living-in-the-basement-35-year-old-sons to move out to the woods and build the bunker. Then again, at least they're out of the house.
I believe there is a museum located in Ruedesheim, Rhine, Germany that displays some tests I might consider for a sysadmin candidate. The theory being that if they can handle these tests, then dealing with lame users and moody system will be a snap.
MHz, 900 or otherwise doesn't really mean that much in light of how much traffic a computer can bus. Meaning, what good is it to process really fast if after processing, instructions get bogged down in a traffic jam getting back down to the backplane, up and down memory and/or various interface boards ?
Part of Sun's success is how well they address the bus/throughput issue, as opposed to 'other' computer architectures. And that's why JUST comparing MHz is like comparing apples and oranges.
Or perhaps a better anology is comparing a Formula 1 Racing car stuck in down-town NYC Traffic, versus a 6 cylinder Honda Accord on flat, wide-open highway in Montanta, during the daytime when the weather is perfect.
Yeah, okay, so nothing says you're an old fart coder like an Altair or Sol... but not so many years after these bad boys came 15lb laptops and 35lb luggables.
I remember the strange looks I'd get in the in the NYC Subway with my early Compaq as some people thought I was bringing a sowing machine along. Or how about that steel encased Kaypro... mine had 2 floppy drives & 64k !
Still, the best example of showing my grey hairs is a working Heath-Zenith portable I've got in the basement. So much fun going through airport security with a device that took 10 AA batteries!
So what I'm reading hereis that aside from putting aside $$ for my young daughter's college, I'm also going to have to allocate some funds so she'll be the geekiest kid in the class when she enters kindergarden. Great, anyone know where I can find some Veggie Tale skins ?
GAD ! If the Internet shuts down, I'll actually have to do some real work on my computer !!!
If I didn't know any better, I'd think Code Red and similar viri are the product of conspiracy put into place by pointy-heads of management-types to keep us from our Constitutional right to goof-off ! !
Slashdot Mirror
When I first heard the title would be "Attack of the Clones"
Well, let's hope that the new Star Wars doesn't suck as bad as it's name suggests.
I suppose I could have pondered about how much time and cycles could have been spared using a simpler operating system and perhaps retro-fitting some old-school code, e.g. Tom Poindexter's Crobots ... or given my plug for a linux based version of C-Robots ... but ....
then again ... in the words of Cowboy Neal "I said that karma bores me, and I don't understand why people get all hung up over it. It's not like having a high karma is gonna get you discounts in stores. If you're really worried about karma, go donate money to charity or donate your time to some place that can use it."
Though I have to admint, it might be interesting to put a few BattleBots in the stands to give the event the look-and-feel of a soccer riot.
THat's not to say that understanding how the various layers of complexity architecture and dynamics won't provide an answer ... and not because I think such diciplines suck, but because we have and will continue to have commercial influences on how networks are established.
Certainly some, in fact many businesses will higher and follow good practice. The problem comes about when some large companies don't. Or worse when mergers and buyouts occur, e.g. Verizon, CIHost and a few others come to mind.
Not to sound anti-business, because business has footed much of the bill for Internet expansion ... but rather to voice concern that sometimes there is a big disparity between technical solutions and the shareholder's bottom line.
After reading the guidelines to the contest, I figured I'd offer the following models/design specs for those interested in participating:
Everyone laughed except C.B. of Voyetra.
But while you're looking at places like FreshMeat.net, you might also notice that many of these endeavours reflect the wide variety personalities and desires that comprise the Open Source movement. In other words, in many ways, many Open Source softwares are the unique artistic expression of the individuals behind them. Instead of stroking paint and palette, we blast bits and bytes. And instead of museums and art stores, we the internet and individual computers as our showplace.
My fear is that bringing Open Source under a centralized effort _MAY_ have as chilling effect as Communism did on the arts in the former Soviet Union.
With abusive leaders also comes the cronyism and worse ... the bureaucrats that can take a fast moving project and/or movement and grind it down to a painful crawl.
I mean are there that many hills we have to charge up, is someone throwing the ball, is the system that broke that we need to attempt fix it with a leader ?
I had two choices, hump 30 to 40 minutes away to the college &/or stay late after classes ... slugging it out on brain-damaged DEC Ultrixes ... or programming my projects in the relaxed confines of my undies at home.
Granted, it cost me more money to have my own hardware as opposed to using the schools, and although I used a dual boot, I still gave Linux it's own hard disk. And at that time, Linux was and the web relatively new, so it took me almost an entire weekend to get it done.
That said, the productivity and privacy I enjoyed, along with the speed bump from not having to share resources, and the security of knowing my work was safe more than paid for itself.
I could have NEVER accomplished this if I were entirely dependent on Windows.
Which raises another interesting concept with this camera. Imagine how helpful it would be in dealing with children. I mean, anyone who's had to take their kids for shots can imagine the torture it must be to 'scope' a young child.
As long as they could dress-up the camera like a Flintstone Vitamin, then a swallowable camera is going to be a BIG step towards making EVERYONE more comfortable for an otherwise unpleasant process.
Here we've spent the past year or so training her so she doesn't put things like rocks, button, the lens cap to my camera, a quarter that fell out of my pocket, a bug crawling along the ground out of fear she might swallow them (that and chewmarks on my lens cap really causes some problems).
Then again, it might be a valuable tool for trying to figure out if my car keys are in her cute little belly. Even more useful if they added a GPS so I could keep track of the little stinker when she decides she's had enough of the back yard.
If PI contains every concievable message, then do you suppose we could use to predict the future ? Not the normal boring stuff, like will my daughter run off with tall swarthy mediterranean, but important stuff, like assasinations ?
Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide
We already have laws on the books that have been used effectively against teens as well as adults.
Big brass was on the way to to see the system, running when some column changes were made in in a rather important database we used back in D.C. causing the system to go a little crazy with NULL data.
Our savvy manager asks me if I can get the Candian machine running. If so, he can work it where he shows one part (a working) part of the system on the U.S. side, buying us 30 minutes of programming time.
So there I am, on the border, at the Canadian check-point, with all sorts of tourists gawking at me, as I code my butt off while an associate keeps an eye on the bridge. I'm just about done when he yells "They're Coming" ... I yell back ... tell me FEET as I kick in the compiler and pray there are no syntax errors.
Sure enough a typo gags the compile and my assoc. is yelling 100 feet ... 75 feet. Meanwhile I fix the errant code, get it to compile, get the kiosk closed and the system running by the time my associate jumps down from the window at the guard's desk and runs up to tell me 10 feet.
With the system up, I race into Canada so they don't see a nervously sweating and rather disheveled programmer ... and perhaps to avoid any prosecution if things fail ... fortunately enough though everything went as planned.
I love it when a plan comes together.
I'm not sure if we're the only ones, but I still say Screw It ! Incidents.Org is reporting expotential growth, it's a warm 80 degrees out, with a mild breeze. Let's go fishin !
I'm still fuming that I wasn't able to cash in on this one! You know, a lame book that I advertise on the 700 Club, scaring little-old-blue-haired ladies so bad that they nag their living-in-the-basement-35-year-old-sons to move out to the woods and build the bunker. Then again, at least they're out of the house.
What did you learn from it ?
I believe there is a museum located in Ruedesheim, Rhine, Germany that displays some tests I might consider for a sysadmin candidate. The theory being that if they can handle these tests, then dealing with lame users and moody system will be a snap.
Part of Sun's success is how well they address the bus/throughput issue, as opposed to 'other' computer architectures. And that's why JUST comparing MHz is like comparing apples and oranges.
Or perhaps a better anology is comparing a Formula 1 Racing car stuck in down-town NYC Traffic, versus a 6 cylinder Honda Accord on flat, wide-open highway in Montanta, during the daytime when the weather is perfect.
I remember the strange looks I'd get in the in the NYC Subway with my early Compaq as some people thought I was bringing a sowing machine along. Or how about that steel encased Kaypro ... mine had 2 floppy drives & 64k !
Still, the best example of showing my grey hairs is a working Heath-Zenith portable I've got in the basement. So much fun going through airport security with a device that took 10 AA batteries!
So what I'm reading hereis that aside from putting aside $$ for my young daughter's college, I'm also going to have to allocate some funds so she'll be the geekiest kid in the class when she enters kindergarden. Great, anyone know where I can find some Veggie Tale skins ?
Yeah, see my earlier comment about blowing a chance to make millions.
If I didn't know any better, I'd think Code Red and similar viri are the product of conspiracy put into place by pointy-heads of management-types to keep us from our Constitutional right to goof-off ! !