This is a definate case where you *MUST* hire an electrician. I emphasize *MUST* because you're probably going to kill yourself in the process.
Most states and communities have laws saying electrical work must be done by a licensed electrician.
I forewarn you though, he's going to want to kill the power to that box while he works. If it's as much of a mess as you're saying, it's more than just the box that needs rewiring. All those old cloth insulated wires go somewhere, probably to more fire hazards throughout your building.
Get a contractor to have a look at it. Where you caused a short just by putting the lid on, you're not far from starting a fire, and be glad those breakers are working, they may have just saved your life, and your equipment.
I'm not saying this because I think work should be farmed out. I'm a firm believer that I can do anything. But, even I have limits. Rewiring a building is a bit beyond what I'm willing to do. Even if I was willing, I know perfectly well it would take too long doing by myself, which will probably be unhealthy for your companies income, if the servers are all down for too long.
I still don't understand the second alternator thing. In an ambulance type of vehicle, they have lots of room. Why didn't they mount a generator externally, and have 110/220v and still be able to keep their air conditioning, without putting an extra load and dependance on the vehicles electrical system? People with RV's do it all the time. A generator can pull from the regular fuel tank, and run for quite a while (like a *LONG* time on a 20+ gallon tank). A friend had an RV, and they'd run the generator for days to power the roof mounted air conditioning, TV, refrigerator, etc, etc, etc..
You can't use GPS. It doesn't have the resolution to keep you between the lines. I played with some mapping software once, that always showed me running parallel to the roads. I believe the gov't still makes the civilian frequencies fuzzy intentionally. I did hear that they did make it better in the last couple years though.
I've been dreaming of a system like that for a while now. Just remember, lines may be obscured, poorly drawn (adding and removing lanes), unmarked roads.
Also, remember to put proximity sensors of some sort on. It's good to know your range and closing speed to objects ahead of you, plus range and closing speed of vehicles on your sides (cars changing lanes or coming at intersections).
You'll need a bit of visualization too, to spot for stop signs and red lights. California is great, it's the only state I've ever seen that has traffic lights (red-yellow-green light) on it's expressways.
Blindly following the lines, making sure you avoid other cars, and properly obeying traffic control devices, and you're driving better than most people on the road.:) I suppose obeying the speed limits would take a good bit of programming.:)
Volvo had the proximity part done on one of their prototypes (shown here on/. a while back), but it was just for collision avoidance. Too bad they were using Win95 machines in the trunk to manage it. They kept crashing (software, not vehicular).
I've only experienced the Fry's in Burbank. Pretty much, if you talk to a salesman, they want to sell you the most expensive thing.
I looked at their Linux machine in the past. I managed to find it on my own, but when I approached a salesman to ask questions (like, how do I log in), they were quick to push me to more expensive machines.
I'm never really happy to shop there. They do have a decent selection of cat5 cable and fiber patch cables.
I went to look for a stereo receiver there a couple months ago. They annoyed the shit out of me. I had an old Sony receiver that was way behind the times. I wanted another Sony as a replacement. They were hell-bent on selling me another brand. So I told him, "take out the books, and let me compare features", since their feature list is really just what's on the box, which was almost nothing on most of the boxes. They wouldn't do it. I warned him that he was loosing the sale if he couldn't give me an accurate feature list. I ended up going down to Circuit City. They had the brand that Fry's was hard-selling me on. Ya, it was more expensive, but the Sony was better, especially for what I wanted.
We went to Fry's to buy some parts for my friends new computer. He had bought some parts already, and needed a few final parts, including memory. He wanted it done that day, so we *HAD* to get at least some memory for it, and then ordered name-brand memory online. I opted for 256Mb of cheap memory. It was like $69 for the cheap brand DIMM. The salesman was trying to fast-talk my friend. The salesman offered him 2 128Mb DIMMS of what he said was a better brand for $69 each. Since none of them were name brand, it was all shades of crap.. I asked a few careful questions, being very sure to include verbage that had no way of being mistaken. He *SAID* my friend was getting both 128MB DIMMS for a total of $69 ($35.50 ea). He verified twice, and then rang up $138 ($69*2). My friend wasn't reading the nasty monochrome terminal screen that they work on, but I'm an asshole like that, and stopped him in mid-order. Like, WTF, I told him cheap. Cheapest you have, he's only using it for a few days til good memory comes in.
BTW, my apologies if I got the prices or sizes wrong on that last example. It's the general idea that they were doubling the price on him.
Generally, if I can make it through the store without talking to a salesman, it's a relatively pleasant shopping experience. I find it best to walk around with a "I'm going to kill you if you approach me" attitude, and growl if they ask "Can I help you." That actually works in most stores.:)
Well, I have familiar Linux installed on my iPaq, and the 203Mhz processor seems slow.. Ok, very slow.. It's nowhere near as peppy as the other machines I work with (all 1Ghz or faster now). This sounds like a very nice replacement for it.
I do all kinds of things on it with Familiar and Opie. What I want to finally do is wireless network diagnostics, with something a bit easier to carry around than my laptop. I'm being very slow at getting things compiled for it. Work things have been occupying my time to the point that I don't get things I want to do done.
Knowing AMD's announcement to production record (when did they announce the Clawhammer/Sledgehammer? Years ago.), I expect it'll be a little while before we see these actually in production.
The problem with that is, pennies are legal American currency. Lead isn't.
If we could legally pay in anything at it's fair market value, I'd like to send them say 14 1988 Yugo GV's. Junk yards make the fair market value of any car at least $50 as scrap. Hopefully they wouldn't send me my change as a Pinto.
I believe you could send them as some obscure legal currency, and they'd almost to take it. But, if you show up at their offices and offer South African Krugerrands, you may have more problems than you wanted.
As far as the legal currency thing goes, have you ever tried to pay for a tank of gas with pennies? Sometimes (like, when I was making part time mininum wage when I was a kid), that was the only way I could pay.. I had an attendant refuse $10 in mixed change. There was a cop there when it happened. I gave her the $10 (mostly pennies), and she tried to get the cop to arrest me for not paying, simply because she was refusing my money. He told her that it's legal tender in America, and that she couldn't refuse it. If she wanted to refuse it, she'd have to get the gas out of my car.:) I left with the gas, and without the $10 in change.
Don't worry, I completely understand what you're saying.. I had to get a bigger closet to keep my skeletons in..
Lets take accusitions for instance. Over the years, I've met some real lying assholes.. One said I threw rocks at his dogs in his yard, even though I never knew where he lived, and am nice to dogs. Another went to the FBI and InterPol with accusitions of DoS attacks, hacking, industrial esponiage, and international drug running.
From both people, those were idle lies. But if you took every lie that everyone ever told you and put them together in a big file, it would make for some terrible reading.
Knowing how lies get on your credit report and are difficult (but possible) to remove, imagine how impossible it would be to straighten out your files in such an intelligence database.
BTW, there are still a few bogus marks on my credit history, including one for "Sprint". SprintPCS and Sprint Long Distance show me as an ex-customer from long ago with no problems. Sprint phones show me as having a home phone in a city I never lived in, which has long since been disconnected with $100 outstanding and no real information, so I can't even bribe them to take it off (i.e., pay what they say is owed).
Time Warner Communication had a record like that for me too, which it took about 4 years to get someone to find the record. There's nothing like a $50 bad credit mark on your credit history to just annoy you.:)
As long as we leave blackmail, physical threats, drug running, gun running, and Internet crimes out, I have absolutely nothing to hide.:)
In Australia we have this think called a "Fly Buys" card. Everytime you buy something you rack up points
Most grocery stores here in the states do that.. If you don't carry their card, they charge you more money for the same product. I find it really irritating that they always read my name off the reciept when they hand it to me. I didn't introduce myself, but they say "Thanks for shopping today Mr. Smythe." I'm just happy that they have a fake name, wrong address and bogus phone number on file.:)
Btw, you're also assuming that you pay for everything with a credit card. Anyone in their right mind that is planning on doing something illegal would pay cash and leave no/false details
It's the little details that'll always get you. Think about the Oklahoma City bombing a few years ago. They were proven to be in the area by a security camera at a fast food restraunt where they stopped for breakfast.
The way personal privacy is going, you'd be risking everything if you thought you could travel anywhere unidentified. (RFID tags)
I really feel sorry for the conspiracy nuts.. They honestly have a lot to fear now, besides trying to decide of the clicking they hear on the phone is the FBI with a wire tap or just line noise.
Unless I read it wrong, isn't it a Chinese company building it? AMD is only shipping the CPU's, which wouldn't constitute a 10 teraflop system.
The feds could mess with AMD because they're helping a foreign power build one though. But the same could probably be said for other vendors too.. You know for storage they're going to have 2 Maxtor 80Gb hard drives bought from CompUSA..:)
I wonder if the CIA, FBI, and NSA are just letting them work the bugs out, and they'll have their own built. We'll never read about *THAT* contract though. They'd probably call it workstation parts to keep it under the radar of everyone, and then *poof*, Big Brother 3 is born.
I wouldn't say to ever arrest someone purely on the results a computer spits out, even if I was the one writing the software (I'm always perfect, hehe).
I'm not really comfortable with the idea that people track what I do. As it is right now, individual companies track everything they can. It's just a matter of time before they tie everthing together.
My cell phone provider knows my general location (down to a few miles), and everyone I talk to. My bank knows every purchase I make, and every time I get cash from an ATM (to avoid the 'man' tracking me). The bank even knows my travel habits. Even the grocery store knows my food habits. Mmmm.. Beer and Pizza.. I'm making myself hungry.
It shouldn't be hard to spot the illegal things I do.. The most obvious being
1) registration of performance car
2) large purchases at race car shops
3) fuel purchase at race track
4) frequent expensive tire purchases
Now tie that in with New York's EZ-Pass or Florida's SunPass, and they'd know I was driving too. I'm surprised they don't use the distance between tolls for issuing tickets. On many expressways, I average over the speedlimit.
The circumstantial evidence that would bust me would be stuff like
1) calling known drug dealer
2) being in area of drug dealer.
Ok, I'm friends with some drug dealers. Doesn't mean I'm buying or doing 'em though. From the circumstances, I could easily be harassed.
Next thing you know, it'll mark you as a potential pedo loading up for a "party" where you get the kids wasted and do unspeakable things.
Actually, I made the same relationship when I was writing it, but didn't want to go there.:) Maybe I solicit the kids with the toys, and then offer them a beer (or whatever), and the pictures go straight up to my site hosted in [pick a 3rd world country].
They'd be able to make similiar relationships if I bought blank video tapes, cool aide, and xanax. It would raise a flag, and then they'd have to investigate further.. They'd only find out that the video tapes were to film a kids birthday, the cool aide was for the party, and the xanax is for me, 'cause kids stress me out.:)
But, maybe those flags really should be raised. A second look should be given to me. What if I had a pedophile history, or the schools had a suspicion of abuse and no way to prove it.
For the record, I'm not a pedophile, and I don't have a kiddy porn site in any country.
You didn't read on.. One piece of evidence is rarely enough. So, they spotted my car.. But then I use my credit card, or do something that validates my identity. Say I buy beer (like, I did say), I'd get carded. Most grocery stores will catch on that the name on the drivers license is different than the credit card, and not sell on that card.
I wasn't saying that a camera saw my car drive by. What I was implying is that say my car was seen leaving the scene of a crime or potential crime.
A simpler explanation would be, my car is spotted driving through an area known for selling crack. They get my plate number, but don't touch me (yet). I have priors for selling crack and violent crimes, and a couple hours ago I bought ammunition for a gun.. There's no background check for buying ammunition, only for buying the weapon itself.
Maybe later they'll find that there was a drug dealer shot in the area. More bits of evidence. Maybe I did it. Maybe I sold or traded the ammunition to someone. If I'm not a suspect, I'm very possibly a witness.
But, as it stands now, if they do get my plate number, they probably won't run it to find my priors, and they almost definately won't find out that I bought ammunition.
Now imagine this scenerio. A body is found dumped on the side of the road. It's wrapped in duct tape, plastic tarp, and there's a tire track from most likely a large sedan tire.. If they could pull a report of anyone who bought plastic tarp and/or duct tape recently in the area, who drives or has access to a sedan that could have that size tire (cross referencing rental cars and known associates), and had any relationship to the corpse, they could have the killer in custody in no time. It would definately tie me in, if I had bought gas in the area, or did anything else that was traceable, including cell phone calls. After a 2 hour bitch session with SprintPCS about 3 years ago, where they completely raped me on my phone bill, they were naming off the towers I had connected through for all my calls during the month in question.
Right now, that same evidence would be run backwards.. After they guess at who it is, they can go back and check if he has that car or find someone to admit they loaned him that car, and find if he bought the tarp and tape.
This sounds like great material for every conspiracy theorist to work with..
It's perfectly possible, and concievable, but the question is, does it really exist?
I saw a few comments on here. So what if someone sees your license plate? Lets go through an easy path for the feds to follow. I'm basing this off of the US. I'm sure similiar stuff applies in Europe.
Your car is spotted in a particular area..
1) Run the plate. Now they have your name, address, SS#, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and your history of driving.
2) Check the credit bureau's and Chex Systems. Now they know all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc, etc.. Even if your bank doesn't exactly report that you have an account, you'll show up when they checked your credit (or with Chex).
3) Have you ever bought groceries or gas with your ATM/Debit card or credit cards? Do you use the grocery store's "discount" cards? Even if you bought your groceries with cash, if you used your discount card it's easy enough to track your purchases.
So, was the driver of the car you? Sure. You bought gas a few miles away on your credit card.
*IF* (that's a big if) they have a tracking system put together to keep all this information in the same place, it'd be easy to track any single person. Even if the police were interested in tracking an individual, it wouldn't be very hard.
Think about what you did today. Using the simple outline I gave today, they know just about everything you did.
I'm out of town. So, they know when I bought my plane tickets online from what IP, which is tracable back to my home. My home Internet provider would give up my info in a heart beat, including what checking account I pay my bill with. They know when I got on the plane, who I was with, and were I got off. Checking either with the rental car places at the airport or my credit cards, they know what car I'm driving. They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies(for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).
Based on that, they could easily know where I am. I didn't get a hotel, and I haven't purchased gas yet, I'm probably still in the area, so who do I know in the area (phone records, previous contacts). They could go as far as to ask my cell phone provider what tower is my closest contact. That'll narrow me down to 4 miles.
Based on that, they probably know what house or apartment I'm in, and it wouldn't take much creativity to figure out what's here (phones, Internet).
So (oh my goodness), the big brother system knows what house I'm in, that I'm drinking beer and reading/writing on Slashdot. If they're really good, they can see two SSH connections back to one of my servers too.
4:30am, he's drinking beer, working on servers, and on/.
But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).
If the big brother system was this good, it may actually be a good thing. Got someone with a warrant? Wait til they show up anywhere, and voila, send the cops to pick them up. *AND* if say something happens in my home city (where I'm not at right now), it would be obvious that it wasn't me.
Ybor City, in Tampa Florida, put together a more difficult system. It was facial recognition, where it would check against NCIC and try to guess pedestrians with warrants. From what I've read in the press, it failed miserably. Why hope that someone will walk past a camera and hope to get a cop there before he gets away? You could wait for him to go grocery shopping, and have a patrol car show up while he's still loading the car.
Would a big brother system be good? Probably not. The detectives now are overworked, underpaid, and don't have the time to make a few phone calls (outlines in the first few steps) to track dow
So for those that exercise regularly, what keeps you from saying "aw, fuckit. I'll exercise tomorrow instead."? How do you keep motivated to do it?
I like the way I look when I exercise. I'll lift weights and stuff, so it makes my muscles more defined defined.. Without, I'm not happy with the way I look.. I'm not happy right now, because I haven't done it in a while, but I'm starting again tommorrow morning (baring any 6am pages)
On this method, I was loosing between 3 and 5 pounds per week day, but would only sustain my weight on weekends.
I went down to 150 pounds, and stayed there for a long time, no matter how hard I tried. Then I dropped to 145 recently. I've been walking more than driving. I've been holding around 145, which is about perfect for me.
First off, stop drinking soda. No coke, diet coke, whatever.. Drink water, and lots of it. Carry bottles of water to work, since most places just have soda machines. Don't drink the Dasani water. It is salted and tastes nasty. Read the label. Bottled water shouldn't have anything but water in it. Once your away from it for a while, then it's ok to have the occasional coke. I know, most people drink coke instead of water, and haven't had a glass of water in years. Coke encourages this. They encourage people to put soda machines out and make sure that they have a presence in every supermarket, gas station, and convinence store. They want your money, and don't care that their product isn't good for you (just like cigarettes).
Coke, at 200 calories per 20oz bottle, isn't really good. Ask your doctor if you should be taking in say 400 to 600 calories per day in soda. Then ask your dentist (it's really bad for your teeth too). I'm not a doctor or dentist, so ask them for confirmation.
I don't eat breakfast.. That's a rule that I've lived by since I was a kid. My metabolism doesn't support it (maybe I need an upgrade?). If I eat breakfast, I feel sick all day. Makes mornings a lot faster though.:)
Don't snack. Snacking just brings in extra calories, and if you're getting fat, then you're bringing in too much.. If you want to reverse the getting fat trend, lower your intake. Think of it like a bucket with a small drain in it.. The drain represents the energy you burn during the day. A water hose into the top of the bucket represents your food intake. If you fill the bucket faster than it drains, it gets too full (you get fat). If you fill it too slowly, the bucket will run out of water (you get think and die). There's a happy medium, where there's enough water going in, and enough water going out,and everything remains happy. But, you have to lower your intake for a while, or increase your output, to bring the level of water (your weight) down.
My daily routine was:
8am wake up. Go to my exercise area, which initially consisted of a towel on the floor. Do stretching exercises, situps and pushups, and more stretching. After I got to 100 situps and pushups without getting tired, I got bored with it, and got weights too. I slowly worked up to 30 pounds of weights in my hands crossed over my chest, for 100 situps.. And I added a decent array of weight bench exercises over time. Don't try too hard at first, if you keep doing it, you'll see improvement. Always stretch before and after.
8:45am stop exercising, shower, etc, etc, and go to work.
10am arrive at work (this is my shift)
1:30pm small lunch. I limited myself to 300-400 calories for lunch. Don't eat fast food. If you consider it, check their web sites. A Big Mac is 580 calories. Personally, I like the Lean Cuisine meals.. The Healthy Choice frozen pizzas aren't bad either.
8pm leave work.
8:05pm, meet up with friends for drinks. 5 or 6 pints of Guinness sometime between 8pm and midnight. Ok, socially drinking every night probably isn't the best thing for a diet (or my liver),
We both make the same point then. Even standing at a point, looking in all directions not seeing anything isn't a big deal. There could be a big city just a few miles away.
Ya, I guess at one nanometer tall, the horizon may be a bit closer than for the average Joe.:)
Sorry, I've been going to sensitivity classes, but for some reason everyone gets mad when I call them whiny bitches. They cry. I laugh. They ask me to leave, and I go to the bar and tell the story of the night yet again..
I make a run for the old Russian probe, sacrifice all my fellow explorers in the process, blow up an insane dog robot, climb into a rock sample container with no air and a one-way ticket, get saved by a hot chick that's been sitting in the safety of her spaceship for a week, and bone her for the whole trip back to Earth.
just like last time...
And they said, "what are the odds of *THAT* happening twice?"
If I remember correctly, the horizon is 15 miles from the viewer at sea level. Living on a farm for all my childhood years, not having anything on the visible horizon isn't that amazing.
Driving across the US, you drive through some rather isolated area, where you think you'll never get out of the desert.
I flew across the Atlantic once. I was staring out the window of the plane at the reflection of the moon on the water, and after a few hours realized how isolated we then were..
I've lived in metro areas for the last 10 years. It was wierd at first to not drive for an hour through wooded areas to get anywhere. Now I kind of expect to see buildings when there are none. I'm definately loosing my navigational sense. I used to be able to point you in a direction within a few degrees, or navigate unknown roads just on the knowlege of the direction of my destination. Maybe it's the LA smog killing that in me..:)
I have trouble believing some people make it across town alive on most days.. Lately, some don't.. 10 dead, 60 injured, because an old man doesn't know how to operate his car. He pressed the gas instead of the brakes. The rest is history.
If I was an alien species monitoring and evaluating the Earth, I'd have to say humans would never achieve space travel.
Luckly, I'm human, waiting for NASA to ask for volunteers to be colonists on Mars.:)
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This is a definate case where you *MUST* hire an electrician. I emphasize *MUST* because you're probably going to kill yourself in the process.
Most states and communities have laws saying electrical work must be done by a licensed electrician.
I forewarn you though, he's going to want to kill the power to that box while he works. If it's as much of a mess as you're saying, it's more than just the box that needs rewiring. All those old cloth insulated wires go somewhere, probably to more fire hazards throughout your building.
Get a contractor to have a look at it. Where you caused a short just by putting the lid on, you're not far from starting a fire, and be glad those breakers are working, they may have just saved your life, and your equipment.
I'm not saying this because I think work should be farmed out. I'm a firm believer that I can do anything. But, even I have limits. Rewiring a building is a bit beyond what I'm willing to do. Even if I was willing, I know perfectly well it would take too long doing by myself, which will probably be unhealthy for your companies income, if the servers are all down for too long.
Do like I do, don't use my real identity. If someone starts using one of my identities, I stop using it, and continue with another one.
Just kidding. But some people do this..
I still don't understand the second alternator thing. In an ambulance type of vehicle, they have lots of room. Why didn't they mount a generator externally, and have 110/220v and still be able to keep their air conditioning, without putting an extra load and dependance on the vehicles electrical system? People with RV's do it all the time. A generator can pull from the regular fuel tank, and run for quite a while (like a *LONG* time on a 20+ gallon tank). A friend had an RV, and they'd run the generator for days to power the roof mounted air conditioning, TV, refrigerator, etc, etc, etc..
Like, take one of those depth-finder/fish-finder boxes, and watch for deviation.. Sounds like a good plan. If the road goes higher or lower, log it.
You can't use GPS. It doesn't have the resolution to keep you between the lines. I played with some mapping software once, that always showed me running parallel to the roads. I believe the gov't still makes the civilian frequencies fuzzy intentionally. I did hear that they did make it better in the last couple years though.
:) I suppose obeying the speed limits would take a good bit of programming. :)
/. a while back), but it was just for collision avoidance. Too bad they were using Win95 machines in the trunk to manage it. They kept crashing (software, not vehicular).
I've been dreaming of a system like that for a while now. Just remember, lines may be obscured, poorly drawn (adding and removing lanes), unmarked roads.
Also, remember to put proximity sensors of some sort on. It's good to know your range and closing speed to objects ahead of you, plus range and closing speed of vehicles on your sides (cars changing lanes or coming at intersections).
You'll need a bit of visualization too, to spot for stop signs and red lights. California is great, it's the only state I've ever seen that has traffic lights (red-yellow-green light) on it's expressways.
Blindly following the lines, making sure you avoid other cars, and properly obeying traffic control devices, and you're driving better than most people on the road.
Volvo had the proximity part done on one of their prototypes (shown here on
I've only experienced the Fry's in Burbank. Pretty much, if you talk to a salesman, they want to sell you the most expensive thing.
:)
I looked at their Linux machine in the past. I managed to find it on my own, but when I approached a salesman to ask questions (like, how do I log in), they were quick to push me to more expensive machines.
I'm never really happy to shop there. They do have a decent selection of cat5 cable and fiber patch cables.
I went to look for a stereo receiver there a couple months ago. They annoyed the shit out of me. I had an old Sony receiver that was way behind the times. I wanted another Sony as a replacement. They were hell-bent on selling me another brand. So I told him, "take out the books, and let me compare features", since their feature list is really just what's on the box, which was almost nothing on most of the boxes. They wouldn't do it. I warned him that he was loosing the sale if he couldn't give me an accurate feature list. I ended up going down to Circuit City. They had the brand that Fry's was hard-selling me on. Ya, it was more expensive, but the Sony was better, especially for what I wanted.
We went to Fry's to buy some parts for my friends new computer. He had bought some parts already, and needed a few final parts, including memory. He wanted it done that day, so we *HAD* to get at least some memory for it, and then ordered name-brand memory online. I opted for 256Mb of cheap memory. It was like $69 for the cheap brand DIMM. The salesman was trying to fast-talk my friend. The salesman offered him 2 128Mb DIMMS of what he said was a better brand for $69 each. Since none of them were name brand, it was all shades of crap.. I asked a few careful questions, being very sure to include verbage that had no way of being mistaken. He *SAID* my friend was getting both 128MB DIMMS for a total of $69 ($35.50 ea). He verified twice, and then rang up $138 ($69*2). My friend wasn't reading the nasty monochrome terminal screen that they work on, but I'm an asshole like that, and stopped him in mid-order. Like, WTF, I told him cheap. Cheapest you have, he's only using it for a few days til good memory comes in.
BTW, my apologies if I got the prices or sizes wrong on that last example. It's the general idea that they were doubling the price on him.
Generally, if I can make it through the store without talking to a salesman, it's a relatively pleasant shopping experience. I find it best to walk around with a "I'm going to kill you if you approach me" attitude, and growl if they ask "Can I help you." That actually works in most stores.
Well, I have familiar Linux installed on my iPaq, and the 203Mhz processor seems slow.. Ok, very slow.. It's nowhere near as peppy as the other machines I work with (all 1Ghz or faster now). This sounds like a very nice replacement for it.
I do all kinds of things on it with Familiar and Opie. What I want to finally do is wireless network diagnostics, with something a bit easier to carry around than my laptop. I'm being very slow at getting things compiled for it. Work things have been occupying my time to the point that I don't get things I want to do done.
Knowing AMD's announcement to production record (when did they announce the Clawhammer/Sledgehammer? Years ago.), I expect it'll be a little while before we see these actually in production.
The problem with that is, pennies are legal American currency. Lead isn't.
.
:) I left with the gas, and without the $10 in change.
If we could legally pay in anything at it's fair market value, I'd like to send them say 14 1988 Yugo GV's. Junk yards make the fair market value of any car at least $50 as scrap. Hopefully they wouldn't send me my change as a Pinto
I believe you could send them as some obscure legal currency, and they'd almost to take it. But, if you show up at their offices and offer South African Krugerrands, you may have more problems than you wanted.
As far as the legal currency thing goes, have you ever tried to pay for a tank of gas with pennies? Sometimes (like, when I was making part time mininum wage when I was a kid), that was the only way I could pay.. I had an attendant refuse $10 in mixed change. There was a cop there when it happened. I gave her the $10 (mostly pennies), and she tried to get the cop to arrest me for not paying, simply because she was refusing my money. He told her that it's legal tender in America, and that she couldn't refuse it. If she wanted to refuse it, she'd have to get the gas out of my car.
Don't worry, I completely understand what you're saying.. I had to get a bigger closet to keep my skeletons in..
:)
:)
Lets take accusitions for instance. Over the years, I've met some real lying assholes.. One said I threw rocks at his dogs in his yard, even though I never knew where he lived, and am nice to dogs. Another went to the FBI and InterPol with accusitions of DoS attacks, hacking, industrial esponiage, and international drug running.
From both people, those were idle lies. But if you took every lie that everyone ever told you and put them together in a big file, it would make for some terrible reading.
Knowing how lies get on your credit report and are difficult (but possible) to remove, imagine how impossible it would be to straighten out your files in such an intelligence database.
BTW, there are still a few bogus marks on my credit history, including one for "Sprint". SprintPCS and Sprint Long Distance show me as an ex-customer from long ago with no problems. Sprint phones show me as having a home phone in a city I never lived in, which has long since been disconnected with $100 outstanding and no real information, so I can't even bribe them to take it off (i.e., pay what they say is owed).
Time Warner Communication had a record like that for me too, which it took about 4 years to get someone to find the record. There's nothing like a $50 bad credit mark on your credit history to just annoy you.
As long as we leave blackmail, physical threats, drug running, gun running, and Internet crimes out, I have absolutely nothing to hide.
(just kidding, I'm mostly a good boy)
In Australia we have this think called a "Fly Buys" card. Everytime you buy something you rack up points
Most grocery stores here in the states do that.. If you don't carry their card, they charge you more money for the same product. I find it really irritating that they always read my name off the reciept when they hand it to me. I didn't introduce myself, but they say "Thanks for shopping today Mr. Smythe." I'm just happy that they have a fake name, wrong address and bogus phone number on file.
Btw, you're also assuming that you pay for everything with a credit card. Anyone in their right mind that is planning on doing something illegal would pay cash and leave no/false details
It's the little details that'll always get you. Think about the Oklahoma City bombing a few years ago. They were proven to be in the area by a security camera at a fast food restraunt where they stopped for breakfast.
The way personal privacy is going, you'd be risking everything if you thought you could travel anywhere unidentified. (RFID tags)
I really feel sorry for the conspiracy nuts.. They honestly have a lot to fear now, besides trying to decide of the clicking they hear on the phone is the FBI with a wire tap or just line noise.
Unless I read it wrong, isn't it a Chinese company building it? AMD is only shipping the CPU's, which wouldn't constitute a 10 teraflop system.
:)
The feds could mess with AMD because they're helping a foreign power build one though. But the same could probably be said for other vendors too.. You know for storage they're going to have 2 Maxtor 80Gb hard drives bought from CompUSA..
I wonder if the CIA, FBI, and NSA are just letting them work the bugs out, and they'll have their own built. We'll never read about *THAT* contract though. They'd probably call it workstation parts to keep it under the radar of everyone, and then *poof*, Big Brother 3 is born.
I wouldn't say to ever arrest someone purely on the results a computer spits out, even if I was the one writing the software (I'm always perfect, hehe).
I'm not really comfortable with the idea that people track what I do. As it is right now, individual companies track everything they can. It's just a matter of time before they tie everthing together.
My cell phone provider knows my general location (down to a few miles), and everyone I talk to. My bank knows every purchase I make, and every time I get cash from an ATM (to avoid the 'man' tracking me). The bank even knows my travel habits. Even the grocery store knows my food habits. Mmmm.. Beer and Pizza.. I'm making myself hungry.
It shouldn't be hard to spot the illegal things I do.. The most obvious being
1) registration of performance car
2) large purchases at race car shops
3) fuel purchase at race track
4) frequent expensive tire purchases
Now tie that in with New York's EZ-Pass or Florida's SunPass, and they'd know I was driving too. I'm surprised they don't use the distance between tolls for issuing tickets. On many expressways, I average over the speedlimit.
The circumstantial evidence that would bust me would be stuff like
1) calling known drug dealer
2) being in area of drug dealer.
Ok, I'm friends with some drug dealers. Doesn't mean I'm buying or doing 'em though. From the circumstances, I could easily be harassed.
Next thing you know, it'll mark you as a potential pedo loading up for a "party" where you get the kids wasted and do unspeakable things.
:) Maybe I solicit the kids with the toys, and then offer them a beer (or whatever), and the pictures go straight up to my site hosted in [pick a 3rd world country].
:)
Actually, I made the same relationship when I was writing it, but didn't want to go there.
They'd be able to make similiar relationships if I bought blank video tapes, cool aide, and xanax. It would raise a flag, and then they'd have to investigate further.. They'd only find out that the video tapes were to film a kids birthday, the cool aide was for the party, and the xanax is for me, 'cause kids stress me out.
But, maybe those flags really should be raised. A second look should be given to me. What if I had a pedophile history, or the schools had a suspicion of abuse and no way to prove it.
For the record, I'm not a pedophile, and I don't have a kiddy porn site in any country.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of......
:)
Ok, I'll shut up.
You didn't read on.. One piece of evidence is rarely enough. So, they spotted my car.. But then I use my credit card, or do something that validates my identity. Say I buy beer (like, I did say), I'd get carded. Most grocery stores will catch on that the name on the drivers license is different than the credit card, and not sell on that card.
I wasn't saying that a camera saw my car drive by. What I was implying is that say my car was seen leaving the scene of a crime or potential crime.
A simpler explanation would be, my car is spotted driving through an area known for selling crack. They get my plate number, but don't touch me (yet). I have priors for selling crack and violent crimes, and a couple hours ago I bought ammunition for a gun.. There's no background check for buying ammunition, only for buying the weapon itself.
Maybe later they'll find that there was a drug dealer shot in the area. More bits of evidence. Maybe I did it. Maybe I sold or traded the ammunition to someone. If I'm not a suspect, I'm very possibly a witness.
But, as it stands now, if they do get my plate number, they probably won't run it to find my priors, and they almost definately won't find out that I bought ammunition.
Now imagine this scenerio. A body is found dumped on the side of the road. It's wrapped in duct tape, plastic tarp, and there's a tire track from most likely a large sedan tire.. If they could pull a report of anyone who bought plastic tarp and/or duct tape recently in the area, who drives or has access to a sedan that could have that size tire (cross referencing rental cars and known associates), and had any relationship to the corpse, they could have the killer in custody in no time. It would definately tie me in, if I had bought gas in the area, or did anything else that was traceable, including cell phone calls. After a 2 hour bitch session with SprintPCS about 3 years ago, where they completely raped me on my phone bill, they were naming off the towers I had connected through for all my calls during the month in question.
Right now, that same evidence would be run backwards.. After they guess at who it is, they can go back and check if he has that car or find someone to admit they loaned him that car, and find if he bought the tarp and tape.
This sounds like great material for every conspiracy theorist to work with..
/.
It's perfectly possible, and concievable, but the question is, does it really exist?
I saw a few comments on here. So what if someone sees your license plate? Lets go through an easy path for the feds to follow. I'm basing this off of the US. I'm sure similiar stuff applies in Europe.
Your car is spotted in a particular area..
1) Run the plate. Now they have your name, address, SS#, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and your history of driving.
2) Check the credit bureau's and Chex Systems. Now they know all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc, etc.. Even if your bank doesn't exactly report that you have an account, you'll show up when they checked your credit (or with Chex).
3) Have you ever bought groceries or gas with your ATM/Debit card or credit cards? Do you use the grocery store's "discount" cards? Even if you bought your groceries with cash, if you used your discount card it's easy enough to track your purchases.
So, was the driver of the car you? Sure. You bought gas a few miles away on your credit card.
*IF* (that's a big if) they have a tracking system put together to keep all this information in the same place, it'd be easy to track any single person. Even if the police were interested in tracking an individual, it wouldn't be very hard.
Think about what you did today. Using the simple outline I gave today, they know just about everything you did.
I'm out of town. So, they know when I bought my plane tickets online from what IP, which is tracable back to my home. My home Internet provider would give up my info in a heart beat, including what checking account I pay my bill with. They know when I got on the plane, who I was with, and were I got off. Checking either with the rental car places at the airport or my credit cards, they know what car I'm driving. They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies(for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).
Based on that, they could easily know where I am. I didn't get a hotel, and I haven't purchased gas yet, I'm probably still in the area, so who do I know in the area (phone records, previous contacts). They could go as far as to ask my cell phone provider what tower is my closest contact. That'll narrow me down to 4 miles.
Based on that, they probably know what house or apartment I'm in, and it wouldn't take much creativity to figure out what's here (phones, Internet).
So (oh my goodness), the big brother system knows what house I'm in, that I'm drinking beer and reading/writing on Slashdot. If they're really good, they can see two SSH connections back to one of my servers too.
4:30am, he's drinking beer, working on servers, and on
But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).
If the big brother system was this good, it may actually be a good thing. Got someone with a warrant? Wait til they show up anywhere, and voila, send the cops to pick them up. *AND* if say something happens in my home city (where I'm not at right now), it would be obvious that it wasn't me.
Ybor City, in Tampa Florida, put together a more difficult system. It was facial recognition, where it would check against NCIC and try to guess pedestrians with warrants. From what I've read in the press, it failed miserably. Why hope that someone will walk past a camera and hope to get a cop there before he gets away? You could wait for him to go grocery shopping, and have a patrol car show up while he's still loading the car.
Would a big brother system be good? Probably not. The detectives now are overworked, underpaid, and don't have the time to make a few phone calls (outlines in the first few steps) to track dow
So for those that exercise regularly, what keeps you from saying "aw, fuckit. I'll exercise tomorrow instead."? How do you keep motivated to do it?
I like the way I look when I exercise. I'll lift weights and stuff, so it makes my muscles more defined defined.. Without, I'm not happy with the way I look.. I'm not happy right now, because I haven't done it in a while, but I'm starting again tommorrow morning (baring any 6am pages)
There was something I was doing, that worked really well for me..
:)
,and everything remains happy. But, you have to lower your intake for a while, or increase your output, to bring the level of water (your weight) down.
I decided I was overweight at 170 pounds (5'8", average frame). My face was fat, and I wasn't particulary happy with my overall look.
On this method, I was loosing between 3 and 5 pounds per week day, but would only sustain my weight on weekends.
I went down to 150 pounds, and stayed there for a long time, no matter how hard I tried. Then I dropped to 145 recently. I've been walking more than driving. I've been holding around 145, which is about perfect for me.
First off, stop drinking soda. No coke, diet coke, whatever.. Drink water, and lots of it. Carry bottles of water to work, since most places just have soda machines. Don't drink the Dasani water. It is salted and tastes nasty. Read the label. Bottled water shouldn't have anything but water in it. Once your away from it for a while, then it's ok to have the occasional coke. I know, most people drink coke instead of water, and haven't had a glass of water in years. Coke encourages this. They encourage people to put soda machines out and make sure that they have a presence in every supermarket, gas station, and convinence store. They want your money, and don't care that their product isn't good for you (just like cigarettes).
Coke, at 200 calories per 20oz bottle, isn't really good. Ask your doctor if you should be taking in say 400 to 600 calories per day in soda. Then ask your dentist (it's really bad for your teeth too). I'm not a doctor or dentist, so ask them for confirmation.
I don't eat breakfast.. That's a rule that I've lived by since I was a kid. My metabolism doesn't support it (maybe I need an upgrade?). If I eat breakfast, I feel sick all day. Makes mornings a lot faster though.
Don't snack. Snacking just brings in extra calories, and if you're getting fat, then you're bringing in too much.. If you want to reverse the getting fat trend, lower your intake. Think of it like a bucket with a small drain in it.. The drain represents the energy you burn during the day. A water hose into the top of the bucket represents your food intake. If you fill the bucket faster than it drains, it gets too full (you get fat). If you fill it too slowly, the bucket will run out of water (you get think and die). There's a happy medium, where there's enough water going in, and enough water going out
My daily routine was:
8am wake up. Go to my exercise area, which initially consisted of a towel on the floor. Do stretching exercises, situps and pushups, and more stretching. After I got to 100 situps and pushups without getting tired, I got bored with it, and got weights too. I slowly worked up to 30 pounds of weights in my hands crossed over my chest, for 100 situps.. And I added a decent array of weight bench exercises over time. Don't try too hard at first, if you keep doing it, you'll see improvement. Always stretch before and after.
8:45am stop exercising, shower, etc, etc, and go to work.
10am arrive at work (this is my shift)
1:30pm small lunch. I limited myself to 300-400 calories for lunch. Don't eat fast food. If you consider it, check their web sites. A Big Mac is 580 calories. Personally, I like the Lean Cuisine meals.. The Healthy Choice frozen pizzas aren't bad either.
8pm leave work.
8:05pm, meet up with friends for drinks. 5 or 6 pints of Guinness sometime between 8pm and midnight. Ok, socially drinking every night probably isn't the best thing for a diet (or my liver),
Thanks for fixing my number.
We both make the same point then. Even standing at a point, looking in all directions not seeing anything isn't a big deal. There could be a big city just a few miles away.
I still doing good with the time thing. When I wake up in the morning, I say "damn, I overslept again" before I look at the clock. :)
Of course, I haven't made it to work on time in like 8 years. They never mind though, I never leave at a reasonable hour either.
Ya, I guess at one nanometer tall, the horizon may be a bit closer than for the average Joe.
Sorry, I've been going to sensitivity classes, but for some reason everyone gets mad when I call them whiny bitches. They cry. I laugh. They ask me to leave, and I go to the bar and tell the story of the night yet again..
I make a run for the old Russian probe, sacrifice all my fellow explorers in the process, blow up an insane dog robot, climb into a rock sample container with no air and a one-way ticket, get saved by a hot chick that's been sitting in the safety of her spaceship for a week, and bone her for the whole trip back to Earth.
just like last time...
And they said, "what are the odds of *THAT* happening twice?"
If I remember correctly, the horizon is 15 miles from the viewer at sea level. Living on a farm for all my childhood years, not having anything on the visible horizon isn't that amazing.
:)
Driving across the US, you drive through some rather isolated area, where you think you'll never get out of the desert.
I flew across the Atlantic once. I was staring out the window of the plane at the reflection of the moon on the water, and after a few hours realized how isolated we then were..
I've lived in metro areas for the last 10 years. It was wierd at first to not drive for an hour through wooded areas to get anywhere. Now I kind of expect to see buildings when there are none. I'm definately loosing my navigational sense. I used to be able to point you in a direction within a few degrees, or navigate unknown roads just on the knowlege of the direction of my destination. Maybe it's the LA smog killing that in me..
I have trouble believing some people make it across town alive on most days.. Lately, some don't.. 10 dead, 60 injured, because an old man doesn't know how to operate his car. He pressed the gas instead of the brakes. The rest is history.
:)
If I was an alien species monitoring and evaluating the Earth, I'd have to say humans would never achieve space travel.
Luckly, I'm human, waiting for NASA to ask for volunteers to be colonists on Mars.
Hey, it could happen in my lifetime.
"Oh no, not again."
{crash}