That has the same inherent problems as an automated layoff script. If you fail to check in, it will do the action without positive verification.
Someone was telling me just a few days ago about an ex-employee who had a layoff script in place. She worked every day, and only took a weekend at most. She safely left a 7 day window for her to do the action that told the system that she was still employed. The action required her to have physical access to the network. It was something like it would check that she logged into a local console. No problem there.
There was a family emergency, and she had to leave town quickly. She planned to be gone for 6 days, which left time to check in when she got back. She forgot to log in for that last day she was in town. Then her return flight was delayed. That was just long enough where her layoff script had to believe she wasn't working any more. It shut down the network, and attempts to bring it back up resulted in it being shut down automatically.
Her employers weren't very happy about that. They weren't told about the layoff script. It just looked like there was some catastrophic emergency that required the employee to fix things.
The linked dead man's switch relies on answering an email. That's great, unless an email is blocked (rejected by a spam filter, etc). They are sent at 30, 45, and 52 days. That's a long enough period where you may not notice that you didn't receive a notice lately. At least not until your friends and family start calling because they received the email saying you're dead.
Well, if it was set up properly, a dead battery wouldn't give a false alarm. It should expect a signal being sent from the wristband saying that there is no pulse. Now, the wristband coming loose or being torn off, could result in poor results. Friends and family will stop ignoring the alerts after the 2nd or 3rd time you died.:)
If you are expecting the possibility of a civil insurrection, it's better to already be prepared, than to try purchasing the necessary supplies at the last minute. Rifles, as most weapons and ammunition, will be in short supply. At very least, those supplies will be in high demand, and the prices will be adjusted accordingly.
Think of it like trying to buy water, canned foods, survival supplies, and building supplies, the day a hurricane is expected to hit. You may want to buy them, but you'll be hard pressed to find stores that have anything in stock.
The FSM, Jebus, and Thor were playing poker last Tuesday. Guess who lost, and has to babysit this rock? Here's a hint, he passed the job of rewriting history to Loki.
Thank you. I didn't hear it in the video. More likely, I forgot everything from before the launch.:)
It does lead to my belief that we shouldn't try to build up so much speed at a low altitude. Save the fuel until they're higher, with less air resistance. Of course, that's a bit more difficult with solid fuels.
You realize that the US military is probably the only part of the government that's nearly always fully funded, right?
Umm.. If you were in charge of the country, who would you make sure was first on the funding lists? Picking the group with the best armed people in the world, who were specifically trained to kill, doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Sticking them at the end of the list, where they won't ever see funding, would be a rather poor idea. Well, unless you want an armed revolution with no one to protect you.
[and then the light over AC's head blinks on]
So kids, that's why your schools are shutting down. Because you don't pose an immediate threat to the government. Wait til you turn 18, and they train you to kill. You'll get funding. Well, until you are broken. By then, you aren't as much of a threat, and a good bit of the brainwashing will still stick.
(No offense intended to any service men or women who are reading this. I do intend offense towards our government.)
I'm a believer that humans will need to be involved (i.e., on the ship) as we continue space exploration. Partly it's so we can say "We did this."
Think of it on a smaller context. Do you want to look at pictures of the Grand Canyon, or do you want to be there? I saw plenty of pictures before I went. Standing on the edge, with my toes just over the edge and my girlfriend saying that I was fucking nuts, was something I won't ever forget.
I've been to a lot of places. Sometimes, no matter how many photos you see, it will never be the same as being there.
As the post was about alien hunting, consider this. We make first contact with an intelligent alien species. Should that first contact be a robot claw reproducing the sound of our voice, or a human in a suit.
That's not to say I expect it to happen any time soon, but with as large as the universe is, there is a very good chance that it will happen eventually. The whole idea that we can send robots out to do it for us, while we sit in the air conditioned comfort of our homes and offices, just doesn't sit well with me.
Shouldn't that be, people in the small sample set, suck at organizing emails?
I think some of us do pretty damned well. I have a dozen primary folders, and dated archives (year and month). Searching one huge box for say resumes that came in regarding a position we were hiring for in April. Despite how nice it may be to search by message content, applicants suck. You might think it's ok, because applicants who can't write a cover letter aren't worth finding. That's ok, except for when a superior wants to audit the hiring, and see all the applicant submissions. So the better option is to read all the mail that came in during that period? Great. That'll take a while.
I haven't watched the full video yet. Did it melt from the temperature of the rocket, or from friction with the air? It was apparent that the camera lens had already melted when it got near its apogee.
Don't forget the idiots who fuck up the whole flow. You know, the ones that'll pull up to a closed lane, but not actually far enough so someone will override the gate. Then they'll back up into traffic, and then try to drive across every lane, and eventually just stop for about a minute while they try to figure out how much they had screwed up.
That's almost as bad as the people aimed for the sunpass lane doing 60, just to stand on the brakes and stop when they reach the gate. I'm not sure which was more difficult to understand. "Speed Limit 25mph", or "Do Not Stop".
I was surprised that they do that when you're trying to leave the parking garage at LAX also. The funny part was, at night my taillights were too bright for their camera. I'd pull up to the booth, and have my foot on the brakes, and they couldn't read the license plate. I had to shut off the lights and take my foot off the brakes. I never got a satisfactory answer to why I couldn't just pay. Cash, no change, open the gate. Why do they *need* a record that I left.
The common excuse was that it was to prevent car thefts. But, they never verified that the car was mine. All they know is that someone left the parking garage in that car.
We don't have the luxury of very many cash toll booths where I am now. They've gone almost completely automated. If you have a transponder, it charges your account right away. If you don't, they'll send a bill to you at home, because they still take photos of every license plate. If the plate doesn't correspond to a transponder transaction, they mail it to you. Then it's up to you to dispute it if they try to charge you both ways. I haven't run into that, but people I know have. Maybe it has something to do with driving around with an opaque license plate cover.:)
1) "... because hackers took control of most of the network."
2) "... because a paramilitary group seized control of our datacenters."
3) "... because we don't want our customers retrieving the records before they leave over the $5/transaction fee"
4) "... because the IT people have been real busy fixing it. So busy in fact, that we couldn't ask one of them for clarification on if it was a hack, DoS, or gross negligence."
5) "... because... FUCK YOU , that's why. It's our bank, you're just the customer. That'll be another $5 fee for asking. Get back in line before we charge you more."
Oddly enough, the reason I have absolutely refused to deal with BoA for several years, is because they seem to prefer the 5th option. I see they haven't changed their bad habits.
Molten platters won't tell anyone anything, other than you went out of your way to destroy something.
You don't know me very well, do you?:)
Virtually anything, in various stages of disassembly or destruction (or reconstruction) is perfectly normal. And heck, I've been slowly collecting materials for trying my hand at casting metals. Molten lump of metal? Was it a hard drive, or an old car part? Who knows.
They have this new fangled device, called "sun glasses".:)
For people who have had their lenses replaced, it's strongly advised to use UV filtering sunglasses. I'm one of them, for almost 20 years now, but only in one eye. I haven't actually checked, but I'm fairly sure that you are right. I can see UV, but I suspect my pupils don't contract, as I my night vision is maintained normally. Bright UV tends to hurt, so I normally react by closing that eye. At least that natural function works (bright light, close eye.)
Before you go off calling someone a liar, maybe you should check up on it first. Google "see ultravilot". I just replied to another of your messages. I have a replacement lens in one eye, so I see both ways (normal and altered vision).
These harmful effects are reduced by the lens, which absorbs UV and prevents it entering the eye. When the lens becomes opaque due to cataracts, it may be surgically removed, and can be replaced with an artificial lens. Even with the lens removed (a condition known as aphakia) the patient can still see, as the lens is only responsible for about 30% of the eyes' focusing power.
However, aphakic patients report that the process has an unusual side effect: they can see ultraviolet light. It is not normally visible because the lens blocks it. Some artificial lenses are also transparent to UV with the same effect. The receptors in the eye for blue light can actually see ultraviolet better than blue. Military intelligence is said to have used this talent in the second world war, recruiting aphakic observers to watch the coastline for German U-boats signalling to agents on the shore with UV lamps....
An illustration of how ultraviolet appears is provided by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Following cataract surgery in 1923, his colour palette changed significantly; after the operation he painted water lilies with more blue than before. This may be because after lens removal he could see ultraviolet light, which would have given a blue cast to the world.
Well, I can say that your assertion is flawed. I am a male. I can also see UV light with one eye. I had a congenital cataract (it was there from birth). When I was 19 (almost 20 years ago), the vision in one eye was 20/200 due to this. They cut the old lens out, and slid the new one in. At the time, we were advised to leave the bandage on for a week, so I did.
When I removed the bandage, I didn't see anything remarkable, other than I could see clearly. I also found that the lens was not easy to bend, so my focus in that eye has been fixed ever since.
Around Halloween time, I had my first experience under black lights. Well, it was more like extreme pain. The natural lens filters out the UV light. Being bathed in this bright UV light was roughly like looking straight into a very bright light.
Over the next 5 years or so, I became adjusted to being able to see UV. It's not a big deal. Sometimes I see the rough equivalent to visual feedback when looking at particular colors (blue, violet, and UV). Each eye is seeing a different color on the same object.
It's hard to explain what it looks like to most people though. A black light normally doesn't really look like anything. I see a bright blue light instead, only in one eye. Sometimes I close one eye, then alternate, so I can figure out what color the rest of you see. It's a very bright blue. Kind of like the difference between bottle of mustard, and a yellow caution sign. Well, except most of you would never have seen the yellow caution sign, so you won't have a frame of reference.
So is it the whole UV range? Hell if I know. Maybe. Maybe not. I've never been presented with a color wheel that covers UV colors to help determine the full range.
I always wear UV & polarized sunglasses when I'm outside. Light is really bright, especially in areas with a clear sky. Going from LA's smog to Florida's bright blue sky is like living in a house with 40W bulbs, and then replacing them all with 100W bulbs. Sunglasses are generally a good idea, but if I don't have them, I end up walking around with one eye open.
About 20 years later, I still see it. I was at a convention over the weekend, and they had blue backdrops behind the speakers, with black lights pointing at them. In one eye, it was a dull blue glow. In the other eye, it was a distracting bright blue light. So I watched most of the time with one eye open.:) It could have been worse. I would be blind in that eye by now.
From everything I've seen, you'll do fine with a magnesium strip to start it. If you don't have a pure magnesium strip, those fireworks "sparklers" will do. You can also do a direct ignition with a torch, but run the risk of heating the entire mixture, causing an explosion rather than just igniting it. All of which is why I suggest, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.:)
I as a web-developer aim to support 99% of my traffic
I love seeing people say crap like that. If you watch your demographics, 99% of your market could be MSIE 6.0 on WinXP. That would be true if your page didn't work on anything else. The 1% would be people coming in, then not able to use your site, and leaving.
If you put just a little bit of work into compatibility, you'd likely find that your traffic (and sales, assuming you expect an income) would increase.
I catch all kinds of users coming into my sites. We check them in Windows with Firefox, MSIE, Chrome, and Safari. We spot check with Firefox and Safari on OS X. We do further spot checking with various tablets and phones. We make efforts not to include incompatible functions on our sites. So, no ActiveX controls. No mandatory plugins. No "well, this works in MSIE 6, screw the rest of 'em". No "well this cool plugin works on Firefox".
I was trying to book airline tickets last night. I was checking prices through a few different places. When it was time to buy, I couldn't get through the damned forms with Firefox. It just wouldn't go. So I switched over to MSIE. I got a little farther, but I got hung up on a warm fuzzy CSS error box. It showed a red button, and said "Error" beside it. No hint to what the error was.. I was left wondering, If they aren't writing for MSIE or Firefox on Windows, who the hell are they targeting? I gave up on them, and bought from another airline, where I could actually buy the tickets.
So, if you're targeting a specific browser type, you're limiting your potential users and therefore your sales. In my case, that decision to make the site work with some unknown browser, cost them several hundred dollars. I did check, and the flight is only half booked. So they'll most likely be flying with an empty seat. The cost of the flight is the same regardless if there is a warm body in that seat.
On one of my web sites, I have a huge viewer base, from all around the world. I've seen every browser that I know of, and plenty that I'd never heard of. Beyond the web site itself, we have quite a few users that use RSS. I got an email a while back from someone using a broken RSS reader. It barely works on most sites, and was broken on ours. I took that extra time to make sure it even worked for him. You never know who the end user is. It could be one person who never gets out of the house, or one person who has a huge base of coworkers, friends and family, and will refer all of them to my site in the future.
Another user was complaining that the mobile version didn't work on his phone. I couldn't find an emulator for it, and he wasn't anywhere near the US (where I am). I worked with him for a while to debug it. I'd make a change, test it against what should work, and then ask him to test. It took about 6 cycles of that to figure out what was wrong. Mobile device traffic from that country spiked up in the following months. I hadn't even considered that I'd have a lot of users in some Eastern European nation would love my content.
I barely recommend that anyone use my site with their mobile device, but *I* do use the mobile version. I know from my logs that other people do too. It's not just iPhones, iPads, and Androids either. I still have some people using ancient phones that are barely capable of browsing any sites, and they work perfectly with mine.
There are a couple videos on YouTube that I found interesting. Searching for "Thermite Turkey" was particularly nice. The other was something like "Thermite Volcano". I strongly recommend an ignition system that puts a good distance between the person and the reaction. A magnesium fuse is a very good idea. Direct ignition with a torch, not so good, unless you're wearing your asbestos underwear.:)
His prize wasn't worth the time of any data recovery company. Anyone can put a challenge like that up. It doesn't mean anyone will take it seriously. The only thing it proved was that data recovery companies aren't idiots.:)
You know what's funny? I have drives to destroy. 1,500 of them. There was sensitive data on them, so they have to be physically destroyed. If we were to go that route, it'd take... well, it'd probably cost more in drill bits than it's worth.:)
We found a local place that'll run drives through their shredder. No piece bigger than 1/4". They get to keep the scrap metal, but we have to transport the drives. Easy enough. If you look around enough, you're bound to find someone with such a facility.
Actually, there are a whole bunch of industries that have to destroy hard drives appropriately. Anything with names, address, DOB, SSN, CC#, etc... If an old drive that you let out of your custody is found, and even a small bit of data is recovered, that comes down on you like a ton of bricks. Well, a ton of lawsuits.
You are correct though, we have our procedures specifically outlined. There's no question, check with the boss. There should be a formal written policy on it somewhere. If not, you aren't handling sensitive information, and/or you aren't in compliance.
I wrote our book. It's only 107 pages. Of course, I am the IT boss.
Slashdot Mirror
That has the same inherent problems as an automated layoff script. If you fail to check in, it will do the action without positive verification.
Someone was telling me just a few days ago about an ex-employee who had a layoff script in place. She worked every day, and only took a weekend at most. She safely left a 7 day window for her to do the action that told the system that she was still employed. The action required her to have physical access to the network. It was something like it would check that she logged into a local console. No problem there.
There was a family emergency, and she had to leave town quickly. She planned to be gone for 6 days, which left time to check in when she got back. She forgot to log in for that last day she was in town. Then her return flight was delayed. That was just long enough where her layoff script had to believe she wasn't working any more. It shut down the network, and attempts to bring it back up resulted in it being shut down automatically.
Her employers weren't very happy about that. They weren't told about the layoff script. It just looked like there was some catastrophic emergency that required the employee to fix things.
The linked dead man's switch relies on answering an email. That's great, unless an email is blocked (rejected by a spam filter, etc). They are sent at 30, 45, and 52 days. That's a long enough period where you may not notice that you didn't receive a notice lately. At least not until your friends and family start calling because they received the email saying you're dead.
Well, if it was set up properly, a dead battery wouldn't give a false alarm. It should expect a signal being sent from the wristband saying that there is no pulse. Now, the wristband coming loose or being torn off, could result in poor results. Friends and family will stop ignoring the alerts after the 2nd or 3rd time you died. :)
If you are expecting the possibility of a civil insurrection, it's better to already be prepared, than to try purchasing the necessary supplies at the last minute. Rifles, as most weapons and ammunition, will be in short supply. At very least, those supplies will be in high demand, and the prices will be adjusted accordingly.
Think of it like trying to buy water, canned foods, survival supplies, and building supplies, the day a hurricane is expected to hit. You may want to buy them, but you'll be hard pressed to find stores that have anything in stock.
That's what the fire sale was for. It's not like it wasn't all over the news, and every tech site before it happened.
I call bullshit on that.
The FSM, Jebus, and Thor were playing poker last Tuesday. Guess who lost, and has to babysit this rock? Here's a hint, he passed the job of rewriting history to Loki.
Thank you. I didn't hear it in the video. More likely, I forgot everything from before the launch. :)
It does lead to my belief that we shouldn't try to build up so much speed at a low altitude. Save the fuel until they're higher, with less air resistance. Of course, that's a bit more difficult with solid fuels.
Umm.. If you were in charge of the country, who would you make sure was first on the funding lists? Picking the group with the best armed people in the world, who were specifically trained to kill, doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Sticking them at the end of the list, where they won't ever see funding, would be a rather poor idea. Well, unless you want an armed revolution with no one to protect you.
[and then the light over AC's head blinks on]
So kids, that's why your schools are shutting down. Because you don't pose an immediate threat to the government. Wait til you turn 18, and they train you to kill. You'll get funding. Well, until you are broken. By then, you aren't as much of a threat, and a good bit of the brainwashing will still stick.
(No offense intended to any service men or women who are reading this. I do intend offense towards our government.)
I'm a believer that humans will need to be involved (i.e., on the ship) as we continue space exploration. Partly it's so we can say "We did this."
Think of it on a smaller context. Do you want to look at pictures of the Grand Canyon, or do you want to be there? I saw plenty of pictures before I went. Standing on the edge, with my toes just over the edge and my girlfriend saying that I was fucking nuts, was something I won't ever forget.
I've been to a lot of places. Sometimes, no matter how many photos you see, it will never be the same as being there.
As the post was about alien hunting, consider this. We make first contact with an intelligent alien species. Should that first contact be a robot claw reproducing the sound of our voice, or a human in a suit.
That's not to say I expect it to happen any time soon, but with as large as the universe is, there is a very good chance that it will happen eventually. The whole idea that we can send robots out to do it for us, while we sit in the air conditioned comfort of our homes and offices, just doesn't sit well with me.
Shouldn't that be, people in the small sample set, suck at organizing emails?
I think some of us do pretty damned well. I have a dozen primary folders, and dated archives (year and month). Searching one huge box for say resumes that came in regarding a position we were hiring for in April. Despite how nice it may be to search by message content, applicants suck. You might think it's ok, because applicants who can't write a cover letter aren't worth finding. That's ok, except for when a superior wants to audit the hiring, and see all the applicant submissions. So the better option is to read all the mail that came in during that period? Great. That'll take a while.
I haven't watched the full video yet. Did it melt from the temperature of the rocket, or from friction with the air? It was apparent that the camera lens had already melted when it got near its apogee.
Don't forget the idiots who fuck up the whole flow. You know, the ones that'll pull up to a closed lane, but not actually far enough so someone will override the gate. Then they'll back up into traffic, and then try to drive across every lane, and eventually just stop for about a minute while they try to figure out how much they had screwed up.
That's almost as bad as the people aimed for the sunpass lane doing 60, just to stand on the brakes and stop when they reach the gate. I'm not sure which was more difficult to understand. "Speed Limit 25mph", or "Do Not Stop".
I was surprised that they do that when you're trying to leave the parking garage at LAX also. The funny part was, at night my taillights were too bright for their camera. I'd pull up to the booth, and have my foot on the brakes, and they couldn't read the license plate. I had to shut off the lights and take my foot off the brakes. I never got a satisfactory answer to why I couldn't just pay. Cash, no change, open the gate. Why do they *need* a record that I left.
The common excuse was that it was to prevent car thefts. But, they never verified that the car was mine. All they know is that someone left the parking garage in that car.
We don't have the luxury of very many cash toll booths where I am now. They've gone almost completely automated. If you have a transponder, it charges your account right away. If you don't, they'll send a bill to you at home, because they still take photos of every license plate. If the plate doesn't correspond to a transponder transaction, they mail it to you. Then it's up to you to dispute it if they try to charge you both ways. I haven't run into that, but people I know have. Maybe it has something to do with driving around with an opaque license plate cover. :)
Well, you have to figure what they could say...
"We've been down for a week, because ...."
1) "... because hackers took control of most of the network."
2) "... because a paramilitary group seized control of our datacenters."
3) "... because we don't want our customers retrieving the records before they leave over the $5/transaction fee"
4) "... because the IT people have been real busy fixing it. So busy in fact, that we couldn't ask one of them for clarification on if it was a hack, DoS, or gross negligence."
5) "... because ... FUCK YOU , that's why. It's our bank, you're just the customer. That'll be another $5 fee for asking. Get back in line before we charge you more."
Oddly enough, the reason I have absolutely refused to deal with BoA for several years, is because they seem to prefer the 5th option. I see they haven't changed their bad habits.
You don't know me very well, do you? :)
Virtually anything, in various stages of disassembly or destruction (or reconstruction) is perfectly normal. And heck, I've been slowly collecting materials for trying my hand at casting metals. Molten lump of metal? Was it a hard drive, or an old car part? Who knows.
They have this new fangled device, called "sun glasses". :)
For people who have had their lenses replaced, it's strongly advised to use UV filtering sunglasses. I'm one of them, for almost 20 years now, but only in one eye. I haven't actually checked, but I'm fairly sure that you are right. I can see UV, but I suspect my pupils don't contract, as I my night vision is maintained normally. Bright UV tends to hurt, so I normally react by closing that eye. At least that natural function works (bright light, close eye.)
Before you go off calling someone a liar, maybe you should check up on it first. Google "see ultravilot". I just replied to another of your messages. I have a replacement lens in one eye, so I see both ways (normal and altered vision).
The following are quotes from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2002/may/30/medicalscience.research
Well, I can say that your assertion is flawed. I am a male. I can also see UV light with one eye. I had a congenital cataract (it was there from birth). When I was 19 (almost 20 years ago), the vision in one eye was 20/200 due to this. They cut the old lens out, and slid the new one in. At the time, we were advised to leave the bandage on for a week, so I did.
When I removed the bandage, I didn't see anything remarkable, other than I could see clearly. I also found that the lens was not easy to bend, so my focus in that eye has been fixed ever since.
Around Halloween time, I had my first experience under black lights. Well, it was more like extreme pain. The natural lens filters out the UV light. Being bathed in this bright UV light was roughly like looking straight into a very bright light.
Over the next 5 years or so, I became adjusted to being able to see UV. It's not a big deal. Sometimes I see the rough equivalent to visual feedback when looking at particular colors (blue, violet, and UV). Each eye is seeing a different color on the same object.
It's hard to explain what it looks like to most people though. A black light normally doesn't really look like anything. I see a bright blue light instead, only in one eye. Sometimes I close one eye, then alternate, so I can figure out what color the rest of you see. It's a very bright blue. Kind of like the difference between bottle of mustard, and a yellow caution sign. Well, except most of you would never have seen the yellow caution sign, so you won't have a frame of reference.
So is it the whole UV range? Hell if I know. Maybe. Maybe not. I've never been presented with a color wheel that covers UV colors to help determine the full range.
I always wear UV & polarized sunglasses when I'm outside. Light is really bright, especially in areas with a clear sky. Going from LA's smog to Florida's bright blue sky is like living in a house with 40W bulbs, and then replacing them all with 100W bulbs. Sunglasses are generally a good idea, but if I don't have them, I end up walking around with one eye open.
About 20 years later, I still see it. I was at a convention over the weekend, and they had blue backdrops behind the speakers, with black lights pointing at them. In one eye, it was a dull blue glow. In the other eye, it was a distracting bright blue light. So I watched most of the time with one eye open. :) It could have been worse. I would be blind in that eye by now.
From everything I've seen, you'll do fine with a magnesium strip to start it. If you don't have a pure magnesium strip, those fireworks "sparklers" will do. You can also do a direct ignition with a torch, but run the risk of heating the entire mixture, causing an explosion rather than just igniting it. All of which is why I suggest, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. :)
I love seeing people say crap like that. If you watch your demographics, 99% of your market could be MSIE 6.0 on WinXP. That would be true if your page didn't work on anything else. The 1% would be people coming in, then not able to use your site, and leaving.
If you put just a little bit of work into compatibility, you'd likely find that your traffic (and sales, assuming you expect an income) would increase.
I catch all kinds of users coming into my sites. We check them in Windows with Firefox, MSIE, Chrome, and Safari. We spot check with Firefox and Safari on OS X. We do further spot checking with various tablets and phones. We make efforts not to include incompatible functions on our sites. So, no ActiveX controls. No mandatory plugins. No "well, this works in MSIE 6, screw the rest of 'em". No "well this cool plugin works on Firefox".
I was trying to book airline tickets last night. I was checking prices through a few different places. When it was time to buy, I couldn't get through the damned forms with Firefox. It just wouldn't go. So I switched over to MSIE. I got a little farther, but I got hung up on a warm fuzzy CSS error box. It showed a red button, and said "Error" beside it. No hint to what the error was.. I was left wondering, If they aren't writing for MSIE or Firefox on Windows, who the hell are they targeting? I gave up on them, and bought from another airline, where I could actually buy the tickets.
So, if you're targeting a specific browser type, you're limiting your potential users and therefore your sales. In my case, that decision to make the site work with some unknown browser, cost them several hundred dollars. I did check, and the flight is only half booked. So they'll most likely be flying with an empty seat. The cost of the flight is the same regardless if there is a warm body in that seat.
On one of my web sites, I have a huge viewer base, from all around the world. I've seen every browser that I know of, and plenty that I'd never heard of. Beyond the web site itself, we have quite a few users that use RSS. I got an email a while back from someone using a broken RSS reader. It barely works on most sites, and was broken on ours. I took that extra time to make sure it even worked for him. You never know who the end user is. It could be one person who never gets out of the house, or one person who has a huge base of coworkers, friends and family, and will refer all of them to my site in the future.
Another user was complaining that the mobile version didn't work on his phone. I couldn't find an emulator for it, and he wasn't anywhere near the US (where I am). I worked with him for a while to debug it. I'd make a change, test it against what should work, and then ask him to test. It took about 6 cycles of that to figure out what was wrong. Mobile device traffic from that country spiked up in the following months. I hadn't even considered that I'd have a lot of users in some Eastern European nation would love my content.
I barely recommend that anyone use my site with their mobile device, but *I* do use the mobile version. I know from my logs that other people do too. It's not just iPhones, iPads, and Androids either. I still have some people using ancient phones that are barely capable of browsing any sites, and they work perfectly with mine.
You don't need it. Powdered aluminum and powdered iron oxide will do fine. You should be able to find those easily.
There are a couple videos on YouTube that I found interesting. Searching for "Thermite Turkey" was particularly nice. The other was something like "Thermite Volcano". I strongly recommend an ignition system that puts a good distance between the person and the reaction. A magnesium fuse is a very good idea. Direct ignition with a torch, not so good, unless you're wearing your asbestos underwear. :)
eBay. :)
The guy I talked to was "Kevin". His site is: http://site.onepcbsolution.com/
His partner site was "HDD-parts", which appears to be http://www.hdd-parts.com/ .
Ya, it was here
His prize wasn't worth the time of any data recovery company. Anyone can put a challenge like that up. It doesn't mean anyone will take it seriously. The only thing it proved was that data recovery companies aren't idiots. :)
You know what's funny? I have drives to destroy. 1,500 of them. There was sensitive data on them, so they have to be physically destroyed. If we were to go that route, it'd take ... well, it'd probably cost more in drill bits than it's worth. :)
We found a local place that'll run drives through their shredder. No piece bigger than 1/4". They get to keep the scrap metal, but we have to transport the drives. Easy enough. If you look around enough, you're bound to find someone with such a facility.
Actually, there are a whole bunch of industries that have to destroy hard drives appropriately. Anything with names, address, DOB, SSN, CC#, etc... If an old drive that you let out of your custody is found, and even a small bit of data is recovered, that comes down on you like a ton of bricks. Well, a ton of lawsuits.
You are correct though, we have our procedures specifically outlined. There's no question, check with the boss. There should be a formal written policy on it somewhere. If not, you aren't handling sensitive information, and/or you aren't in compliance.
I wrote our book. It's only 107 pages. Of course, I am the IT boss.