They didn't define the "trunk" to be enclosed, so the bed would count too. I agree, I've never heard anyone say "trunk" in relation to the back of a truck. It's always "cargo area", "back of the truck", or "bed of the truck". The rear doors are usually "cargo doors" or "rear doors". In helping my friend with his suburban, we needed to replace the "cargo door seal", as GM described it. My car has a rear hatch seal. The trunk on a sedan would be a trunk seal.:)
The rumble seat was shown in the picture on the wiki article, which just adds to the confusion. The rumble seat is uncomfortable, but it is a seat where a passenger could ride.
My ex has a iPhone 3. I've used it a few times, and was generally annoyed. My girlfriend just got a LG Rumor Touch. I was trying to help her figure out things, and got very annoyed with the touch screen also. It's dumb. To scroll through a menu, you make a motion opposite of what is intuitive. When you try it, sometimes it'll think you wanted to scroll, but usually it will think you tried to select an option. To back out of that selection, it would frequently take you all the way back to the beginning. At least the LG has a keyboard too, so I gave up touching the screen, and did everything with the keyboard.
Not that I'm totally against new and innovative. I love new and innovative, but if they can't make it work reliably, it's not much good as a tool. That's all a phone is. A tool to make calls on. I like the fact I can check my email also. How fancy do you need to make the interface to do simple functions? It seems like a race to make simple things overly complicated, and they completely forget about the basics like "the user will want to make a phone call." I love watching people with touch screen phones try to make a call. They do a whole little dance with their fingers trying to get to the right screen or number, and many times you can see their frustration as they can't actually make it dial. Despite that, they'll keep the annoying phone, because they spent so much money on it. "It was expensive, so it *HAS* to be good."
You know, I was thinking the same thing. The area commonly called "trunk" is usually under the rear deck of a passenger car, separated from the passenger compartment.
Then I thought about my car (2000 TransAm). It has what's called a trunk area, but it's under the rear hatch, and doesn't necessarily have a separation to it. There is a removable interior cover, but I'd hardly call it a separator.
I went looking for a more accurate definition of the "trunk". It's the main cargo, luggage, or storage area in a vehicle. It would not generally be the passenger area, as humans prefer to not be considered "cargo".:) A "trunk" area could be anything from the little space in my TransAm to the rear of a 26' cargo truck. You'd be hard pressed to call a 26' cargo truck a "SUV" though, but you could include something as big as a International XT series. A SUV trunk could be defined in several ways. We'll use a large fully enclosed SUV for an example, the Chevrolet Suburban. I was helping a friend of mine with his, and in the process, we removed everything from the interior, so I became very familiar with it. I'm using rather inaccurate numbers, as the true dimensions are a bit tricky. Somehow they made that truck without a straight edge anywhere in it. We found that out when building panels to replace the interior. They required many measurements to create properly sized templates.
With all the seats installed, it had two front captains chairs, two mid captains chairs, and a bench in the rear. The cross section dimensions were roughly 4' wide by 5' tall. The "trunk" area (between the rear of the rearmost seat and the cargo doors) would be roughly 2'x4'x5', or 40 cubic feet.
The rear bench seat was easily removable, which would change the "trunk" area to roughly 4'x4'x5' or 80 cubic feet.
Removal of the interior trim in creased the cross section to approximately 5.5' wide by 5' tall. This would increase the "trunk" area of the rear to 4'x5.5'x5', or 110 cubic feet.
Removal of the mid captains chairs and associated interior trim increased the distance from the back of the front seats to the rear of the truck to 8', so the "trunk" area would be 4'x5.5'x8', or 176 cubic feet. This would be about standard if the truck was configured from the manufacturer as a work truck, rather than a passenger truck.
So the article's precision explanation for stupid people of "about the size of an SUV's trunk" is just plain wrong. They did also say each side is nearly 1 square meter, or nearly 9 square feet. As 1 square meter is 10.76 square feet, which is over the given sizes, we can deduct it to be not larger than 9 square feet, or 0.83 square meters. So 6 equal sides of 9 sq/ft would make it 81 cubic feet.
Easy, huh? Well, they threw us with "each wall is 9 square feet", because that lets us assume the walls are square. Looking at the picture provided, it appears to be a cube. But, if you look at this NASA photo, you'll see there are 6 square sides, and two hexagonal sides. So, if it were a cube, it would be the size of the cargo area of a suburban with the third row. But, it's not a cube, and there are no less than two different sizes for the sides.
I do agree that most of the manufacturers do go overboard with the drive bays. I built a new machine around Christmas time for myself. It's in the cheapest case they had, with a power supply that would handle my motherboard. It also has a clear sid, so I can look straight in.:) It has 4 5.25" bays and 6 3.5" bays. While it's overkill, I do appreciate having the extra space. It makes for a larger air mass, so the machine doesn't try to overheat as much. The ambient temp in the house is 82F right now. The motherboard temp is 99F, and the CPU is at 113F. That is with a 90CFM exhaust fan (added on), and the smaller (probably 20-30CFM) intake fan.
But, for utilization of all the bays, you do not have to depend on just the onboard ports. I built a backup server a few years ago. I just grabbed some old parts that were laying around, including 8 120GB IDE drives. Two drives were set up as RAID1 for the OS. The other 6 were RAID5 for backup storage. it's an intermediary step between the servers and the tapes. I can't say that I've seen too many machines with 6 IDE ports onboard. I picked up 3 Promise IDE controllers.
The first two drives went on as PRI and SEC master. The CD went on as PRI slave. The remaining 6 drives were all configured master, and put on their own channel (one PRI master and one SEC master per card).
In theory with this configuration, I could have put in 16 drives.
I'm selling a bunch of 4 port Adaptec SATA RAID controllers on eBay right now. You could fill your case with SATA drives and hook them all up with just one card, assuming you have 4 ports already. The hard part is cabling it, and ensuring your power supply is strong enough to handle all those drives, and keeping it cool. I have 13 still listed. I'm keeping two for myself, in case I want to use them sometime.:)
They've had the adapters for years now. I always had a few laying around, in case I wanted to add yet another drive to a PC that didn't have any more 3.25" bays. Most of mine, I salvaged out of machines being thrown away. Folks seem to think I'm the person to give their junk PC's to, so I take the parts I want and trash the rest.
It all depends on your view of retirement. It could be argued that at the age of 65, you will retire. You can plan for your 65th birthday to be your retirement date, and then take the funds out at that time. As you said, you should shift your funds to "less risky" options. That in itself says it's without risk.
These days, we don't get the luxury of deciding that we are retiring at 65. Sometimes we get a few months notice when they cut you loose for early retirement. These days, you are lucky to have two weeks notice, and it's rarely at retirement age. You'll find your department is closing, your job is being outsourced, or any of hundreds of kind ways they can say "you no longer have work." About half the people I've known to be cut loose in the last couple years have only had the luxury of being called in to talk to the boss, followed by a less than friendly escort to the door, and a company wide email saying "To all staff, Kronos does not work here any more. He is not allowed access to any company resources, and staff are not permitted to have contact with him." Regardless of how insensitive that sounds, I've read that email more times than I care to.
So, when are you going to retire? I guarantee it won't be on your schedule. If your schedule and the stock market don't coincide, then you are SOL. If you retired in the last couple years, did you really have a choice of when to dip into the retirement fund? I guess if you were making mad money, and had a bunch of money in the bank, then you're ok. For the rest of the world, you take what's in the retirement funds and cry about it until it's gone.
... partly from nerve damage, but primarily because he was in an alcohol induced coma.
I've watched dogs eat, and they aren't exactly polite nor careful. That dog was probably yanking and biting. He would have noticed something if he wasn't out cold from the booze.
The dog didn't save him. He just smelled like rotting meat, which for some reason dogs like. We've all read reports where the owner died and the pets had no other source of food, so they went for the large but slightly rotting corpse.
I can't say I've ever heard of using fecal matter to clean a wound, but I've sure heard of avoiding fecal matter in wounds. Well, that and any contact with fecal matter in general.:).... unless you're tubgirl. {shivers}
I think what you're failing to see is that your "retirement investments" are a gamble. You may have invested $10,000 per year for 20 years (total investment: $200,000). If you had put your money in a safe and not touched it, you would have exactly that amount. By putting it in a retirement fund, it is being gambled with every day. You may have $1,000,000, or you may have $1.
I was recently reviewing someone's 401k. They were laid off about a year ago, and that 401k is all they have left. They have about $40,000 invested into it. Not too long ago, it was worth $115,000. Today, it's worth about $30,000, and still dropping daily. When they cash out, they'll come out with something in the ballpark of $25,000.
They will be cashing out soon, haven't found a job and it doesn't look hopeful to happen before their other savings have been completely depleted,
I'm sure plenty of people will argue with me, but taking a $40,000 investment and only getting $25,000 is not a a good plan. For those who do, I'll be more than happy to start up a retirement fund for you. I'll take your money, and give you 65% of it back when you need it most. Sounds stupid when it's put into those terms, doesn't it? That's because it was, no matter how it was decorated for you when you bought into it.
That's just a bit scary that people still run around believing that gambling is the solution to their hardships.
"Investing" is gambling on other people's pyramid schemes. They have little reflection on real world performance of a company. The best illustration of this is the "pump and dump" scams.
I watched people think they were so well off because of their investments. As you say, look at history. How many times have large numbers of people come out of their investments with a small fraction of what they put in?
If, rather than gambling, they put the money "under their mattress", while all the gamblers (err, investors) are crying about their losses, the smart person still has every penny that they saved.
Sure, it comes out better sometimes. Sometimes people win in Vegas too. Once every week or so, someone wins big on your states lottery (assuming your state has one). There are always winners and losers. Otherwise, you're not dealing with real currency. Casinos, the lottery, and the stock market are designed for the house to win. If you feel lucky and have money to lose, good for you. For the rest of us, it's better to actually save what we earn.
It doesn't matter what books or articles are written on the subject. If I were a successful stock trader, I would obviously write about the wonders of investing, and encourage as many people as I could to invest too. That way I could win. Who cares who else loses, right? It's easy to take money from faceless people. If you do well, fine. Robbing houses when people aren't home is ok too, as long as you don't have to face them, and see them cry when they find out that you've just taken everything they ever saved.
Typical Slashdot, a bit behind. This is the press release they sent out on Tuesday.
Aug. 03, 2010
Stephanie Schierholz Headquarters, Washington
James Hartsfield Johnson Space Center, Houston
MEDIA ADVISORY: M10-107
NASA MOVES SPACE STATION REPAIR SPACEWALK TO FRIDAY, SETS BRIEFINGS
HOUSTON -- The first of two spacewalks by NASA astronauts to replace a failed ammonia pump on the International Space Station has been delayed by 24 hours to Friday, Aug. 6. A second spacewalk is planned for Monday, Aug. 9, to complete the repairs.
Flight controllers and station managers made the decision Monday night after reviewing proposed timelines, final procedures for the repair work, and the results from a spacewalk dress rehearsal conducted in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson are scheduled to perform the spacewalks. The two NASA astronauts will replace an ammonia coolant pump that failed July 31.
NASA Television coverage of both spacewalks will begin at 5 a.m. CDT. Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson are expected to begin the spacewalks from the Quest airlock at 5:55 a.m. Friday's spacewalk will be the fourth for Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson's first.
Approximately two hours after the conclusion of each spacewalk, NASA TV will broadcast a briefing from Johnson. The briefing participants will be Mike Suffredini, International Space Station program manager; Courtenay McMillan, Expedition 24 spacewalk flight director; and David Beaver, Expedition 24 spacewalk officer.
Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA locations, and should contact their preferred NASA center to confirm participation. Johnson will operate a telephone bridge for reporters with valid media credentials issued by a NASA center. Journalists planning to use the service must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than 15 minutes prior to the start of a briefing. Phone bridge capacity is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Engineers and flight controllers continue to review data on the failure, which resulted in the loss of one of two cooling loops aboard the station. This caused a significant power down and required adjustments to provide the maximum redundancy possible for station systems. The systems are stable, and the six crew members aboard are not in any danger.
Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson originally were scheduled to perform a spacewalk to outfit the Russian Zarya module for future robotics work and prepare the station for the installation of a new U.S. permanent multipurpose module. However, because of the importance of restoring redundancy to the station's cooling and power systems, the two new spacewalks will be dedicated to the pump module replacement.
For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:
There was no mention of a Steven Ruhe in the story. He gave the alias of Steven Ruhe and the email address of chet.uber@mac.com on one of his domain registrations.
There is no Steven Ruhe living anywhere near where the person mentioned in the story lives. There *IS* a Chet Uber that not only lives in the same area, but at the same address as listed on one of his domains, which is just down the street from the listed address for the "Secretive Group" Project Vigilant (http://projectvigilant.us/)
But whatever. If you guys want to think that it couldn't possibly be the guy who lives at the address the domain is registered at, in the city that he said he lives in, and you want to believe it's another guy with the same name in another state, fine. It's good you don't try to play PI or anything.
I just took a leisurely browse through your recent posts. I think I understand you now.
You grow and smoke pot in large quantites. You restore antique cars that you can't find parts for. You work with high energy lasers, liquid mirrors, and power sources the size of large navy vessels. Beyond playing botanist, physicist, and military weapons engineer, you take the time to play classical music on your trombone for your plants, just a shade sharp on both B2 and B3.
Rather than playing random pieces of music and trying to guess at what frequencies your plants like, wouldn't it be an awful lot easier to just play pure tones?
user@linux $ play -n synth sine 125 sine 250
It does kind of have the sound of an alien spaceship sitting idle though. How loud did you say it had to be?
You could try this one..
user@linux $ play -n synth sine 600 sine 970
Played at 160dB, it's guaranteed to keep away bugs, girlfriends, and alien invaders.
projectvigilant.us is registered to Steven Ruhe steven.ruhe@bbhc-global.com of BBHC Global LLC in Fort Pierce, Florida
bbhc-global.com is registered to Ruhe, Steven chet.uber@mac.com in Fort Pierce, Florida. Specifically 5817 Sunberry Circle Fort Pierce, Florida 34951
The article specifically cites Chet Uber in Fort Pierce, FL.
That's because most information security professionals have never heard of the group, called Project Vigilant. The group's director, Chet Uber,...
The Florida DMV database shows no Steven Rhue in the area. It does show a Chet Lee Uber at the address the domain is registered to.
It doesn't take a lot of brain power to put that together. Everything matches the information provided. The "Steven Ruhe" is an alias. Well, a decoy if you will. If people are looking around for a Steven Ruhe, they are less likely to identify him as Chet Uber, even though there is significant crossover between the two identities.
It's possible you could find more people named "Steven Ruhe" or "Chet Uber" around the country, which may be what you found. I know if I search for either my real name or alias, I find lots of people all around the world with my name, some matching my general physical description.
I'd give the DMV database priority over anything from sources like Linkedin or Plaxo. Those places don't require any proof of who you are, where the DMV is a bit pissy about proving who you are. I just renewed my Florida drivers license, and needed my old drivers license, birth certificate, social security card, and two other proofs of your home address. I guess more importantly, he has two Chet Uber's listed as connections on Plaxo, each in different areas. Either he has two friends with the same name, or there's clearly no real validation of a persons identity.
Steven Ruhe BBHC Global LLC 4828 North Kings Highway #126 Fort Pierce, Florida 34951 Phone: +1.7723326988 Fax: +1.8667288650 Email: steven.ruhe@bbhc-global.com Registered: Mon Sep 21 23:36:10 GMT 2009
From the whois info on bbhc-global.com
Ruhe, Steven chet.uber@mac.com BBHC Global LLC 5817 Sunberry Circle Fort Pierce, Florida 34951 United States +1.7729401858 Fax -- +1.8667288650
The address "4828 North Kings Highway" is "Indrio Crossing Pack N Ship", a mail drop.
The address "5817 Sunberry Circle" is a 2,800 sq/ft 5br/3ba residence, purchased in 2004 for $205,000.
There are two businesses registered at this address:
Bbhc Global L.L.C. Registered by Steven E Ruhe in 2009 M J Jones, Inc. Registered by Jimita Johnson-Jones in 2004, with the fictitious name of "Today's Window Fashions"
There is a drivers license record for Chet Lee Uber (47yo male, other ethnicity) at the Sunberry Circle address. He is a registered voter, affiliated to the Democratic party.
There is a Barbara Uber (66yo white female) with a listed phone number at the same address.
hahahahahaha! Either this guy is living up the cougar lifestyle, or he's living with his mom.:)
I couldn't find a drivers license record for Mr. Steven E Ruhe. There is a Steven R Ruhe (58yo white male) in Merrit Island, FL, but probably isn't him.
Jimita Johnson-Jones (32yo black female) has a drivers license record in Orlando, FL.
Let the jokes about living in his mothers basement commence!... and all information gathered for this post was available through public resources. No electronic trespass was committed in the gathering of this data.
That would make for a nice paper. Sometimes all they have to work with are rumors. How many times have you heard or read in a news story that the one or both parties were unavailable for comment. Let me pick on a few overrun stories.
Michael Jackson's death. Everyone had a theory, and all a publication had to do was pick their favorite theory. He passed away on June 25, 2009. The coroner didn't come back with their findings until August 28, 2009. No one said "Michael Jackson dead, more to follow in a couple months." Everyone had speculation. We were shown photos from inside his house. Anyone who may or may not have been somewhere near by got quoted as a factual source. Until the autopsy results were complete, it was entirely speculation to his cause of death.
Tiger Woods car crash. The only parts that were confirmed were that he was in his SUV. His SUV crashed. Publications dragged anything and everything they could out as if it were facts. Drug use, domestic violence, and infidelity were dragged out in the media. Because he had a car wreck, women were coming out of the woodwork saying they were his mistresses. I'm not sure if there were more than a handful of facts run with it, but speculation ran rampant.
Both of these were hot topics, and any publication that wanted to compete had to run at least something. If nothing was carried, then they just lost out to every publication who had something to run.
Or as Grace Hopper said, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
Publications can run retractions or make financial settlements in civil court, and make more money than if they waited for the real truth to be confirmed.
Dammit. I ran it through the FCC database for TV and Radio, but forgot to check the HAM call signs. Oh well, we'll just have to pretend I picked a totally imaginary station.:)
Well, I've been on the receiving end of a few C&D's for doing what Slashdot does. It all depends on who gets their panties in a wad that day. Carrying parts of their stories can be touchy. Duplicating large amounts of news is well beyond the fine gray line of copyright.
Generally, we (bloggers and aggregators) all do it with attribution (the read more links, or embedded links). It actually helps them out. Consider a Slashdot story and the Slashdot effect. If Slashdot runs a story, it'll likely get an extra 100,000 hits or so. Some of those hits will result in increased ad revenue. At very least it'll get them a bit more attention. When PoDunk Nebraska's Daily Times, who has a readership of 15 people (population of 30) runs a story, that'll be the total exposure. When someone like us runs it, it is now internationally known. You normally couldn't beg for that kind of exposure unless it's picked up as a wire service story. Even with it showing up in the wire services, it's rare that the viewers make their way back to the publication of origin.
If a publication is getting all their facts from another publication, it can seriously hurt their revenue stream. Why would I stay up and watch the 10pm news, when I know it'll be printed in the unrelated paper in the morning. I know they seed their news with mistakes, so it's traceable. For example, 15 people were injured in a major car crash, and it was a big story for the area (slow news day). The first media outlet may report 16 (oops, our mistake). When you see other outlets report 16 people were injured, it's pretty obvious that it was collected from you. It doesn't always have to be that obvious though. It could be an intentional misspelling of a name. "John Smithe" could be the subject of an article, although his name is really spelled "John Smythe". Unless the records were incorrect, (like, police or court records), that would have not been shown incorrectly twice.
There's always been a drive to get the scoop on a story, no matter what it takes. We've been getting away from real journalism though, where the journalists don't necessarily check up on the leads. Getting a lead from another publication is fine and dandy, but check your information. In the case of the article in question, it seems they jacked it straight out of an old publication rather than doing basic fact finding. Who needs fact finding these days, when rumors are more than enough to handle it. I hate it when I see false information from chain emails pop up in publications. It happens more than I'd like to see. Rather than try to check up on any of the facts, they'll just rehash the lore and publish it.
Show me the network map and details, and I can give a slightly better estimate. But since this is all hypothetical it really doesn't matter.
It's not impossible to rebuild the map. I'm assuming we're talking about a bunch of LANs with WANs connecting them. Just follow the trails. I believe I said it would take longer without all the details. That would mean following every circuit and finding out where each end terminated. Some beancounter has the bills and knows every circuit they're paying for. Knowing the circuits and termination points, you'd have to check out each physical location and see what's there.
I didn't say that would be a quick process. It would actually be quite time consuming. But I'd suspect someone at various sites would know at least some details of their setup. I seriously doubt he was running the whole network, and running around the city managing all the desktop machines.
I have been dropped into situations where folks on site have no clue, so you spend time wandering around back rooms and looking in closets to find something resembling a demarc. A few times when I've been sent off looking for things, I'm not even on the right floor. Sure the office is on the 12th floor and the telco says it's in a particular place on the first floor. A few years ago the moved from a suite on the 4th floor, and before that they were in a very small suite on the 7th floor. Voila, smartjack on the 7th floor. Now you have to wonder which rocket scientist extended it from the ground floor, to the 7th floor, to the 4th floor, then to another wiring closet across the floor, and then up to the 12th floor.
Another place I did work for had a wiring closet at the end of their building (building 4 of 10). It sure looked like where the telco ended. Nope, they ended in a locked closet in various buildings on the site arbitrarily. The line I was trying to find went from the closet building 1, to the closet in building 3, to the closet in building 3, and then finally to the customers suite. Even the guy who was responsible for the cabling confessed that he was thrown into the mess, and was trying to make sense of it as customers needed it. Most customers don't care where the wires go, they only care that if they plug into a jack it works.
It's not an impossible job. It just wouldn't necessarily be very fun.
That's the problem though, they frequently aren't verifying them, so they can't cite them. It's embarrassing to say "we found it at another publication, and are just guessing they did their homework."
I said it sarcastically but true. Hell, if you look at a lot of the crap being published these days, they're frequently full of spelling and syntax errors. It sucks, but it's the way it is. "Get it out" frequently overrides "make sure it's right".
As the summary said, the number was yanked out of someone's ass to make a deadline and published in a magazine years ago. The author probably just remembered seeing it somewhere, and assumed it was true. It's not exactly polite to go around stealing info from other publications, even though it happens all the time. Attributing that stolen information is just begging for lawsuits between the publications. What if Newspaper X in your town was getting most of their information from Television station WA2Z? Unless they have a contractual agreement saying it's ok to use their info as a source, bad (legal) things will likely happen. Of course, little errors will always show up here and there, which is a great indicator of when someone's using your info, rather than getting their info.
Do you know how long it would take them to verify all their sources. Come on, it'd take several extra hours to get a story up. There's no time for that. If you want for confirmation, you'll get scooped by someone else.
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They didn't define the "trunk" to be enclosed, so the bed would count too. I agree, I've never heard anyone say "trunk" in relation to the back of a truck. It's always "cargo area", "back of the truck", or "bed of the truck". The rear doors are usually "cargo doors" or "rear doors". In helping my friend with his suburban, we needed to replace the "cargo door seal", as GM described it. My car has a rear hatch seal. The trunk on a sedan would be a trunk seal. :)
The rumble seat was shown in the picture on the wiki article, which just adds to the confusion. The rumble seat is uncomfortable, but it is a seat where a passenger could ride.
Nah, I wasn't that interested. :)
My ex has a iPhone 3. I've used it a few times, and was generally annoyed. My girlfriend just got a LG Rumor Touch. I was trying to help her figure out things, and got very annoyed with the touch screen also. It's dumb. To scroll through a menu, you make a motion opposite of what is intuitive. When you try it, sometimes it'll think you wanted to scroll, but usually it will think you tried to select an option. To back out of that selection, it would frequently take you all the way back to the beginning. At least the LG has a keyboard too, so I gave up touching the screen, and did everything with the keyboard.
Not that I'm totally against new and innovative. I love new and innovative, but if they can't make it work reliably, it's not much good as a tool. That's all a phone is. A tool to make calls on. I like the fact I can check my email also. How fancy do you need to make the interface to do simple functions? It seems like a race to make simple things overly complicated, and they completely forget about the basics like "the user will want to make a phone call." I love watching people with touch screen phones try to make a call. They do a whole little dance with their fingers trying to get to the right screen or number, and many times you can see their frustration as they can't actually make it dial. Despite that, they'll keep the annoying phone, because they spent so much money on it. "It was expensive, so it *HAS* to be good."
You know, I was thinking the same thing. The area commonly called "trunk" is usually under the rear deck of a passenger car, separated from the passenger compartment.
Then I thought about my car (2000 TransAm). It has what's called a trunk area, but it's under the rear hatch, and doesn't necessarily have a separation to it. There is a removable interior cover, but I'd hardly call it a separator.
I went looking for a more accurate definition of the "trunk". It's the main cargo, luggage, or storage area in a vehicle. It would not generally be the passenger area, as humans prefer to not be considered "cargo". :) A "trunk" area could be anything from the little space in my TransAm to the rear of a 26' cargo truck. You'd be hard pressed to call a 26' cargo truck a "SUV" though, but you could include something as big as a International XT series. A SUV trunk could be defined in several ways. We'll use a large fully enclosed SUV for an example, the Chevrolet Suburban. I was helping a friend of mine with his, and in the process, we removed everything from the interior, so I became very familiar with it. I'm using rather inaccurate numbers, as the true dimensions are a bit tricky. Somehow they made that truck without a straight edge anywhere in it. We found that out when building panels to replace the interior. They required many measurements to create properly sized templates.
With all the seats installed, it had two front captains chairs, two mid captains chairs, and a bench in the rear. The cross section dimensions were roughly 4' wide by 5' tall. The "trunk" area (between the rear of the rearmost seat and the cargo doors) would be roughly 2'x4'x5', or 40 cubic feet.
The rear bench seat was easily removable, which would change the "trunk" area to roughly 4'x4'x5' or 80 cubic feet.
Removal of the interior trim in creased the cross section to approximately 5.5' wide by 5' tall. This would increase the "trunk" area of the rear to 4'x5.5'x5', or 110 cubic feet.
Removal of the mid captains chairs and associated interior trim increased the distance from the back of the front seats to the rear of the truck to 8', so the "trunk" area would be 4'x5.5'x8', or 176 cubic feet. This would be about standard if the truck was configured from the manufacturer as a work truck, rather than a passenger truck.
So the article's precision explanation for stupid people of "about the size of an SUV's trunk" is just plain wrong. They did also say each side is nearly 1 square meter, or nearly 9 square feet. As 1 square meter is 10.76 square feet, which is over the given sizes, we can deduct it to be not larger than 9 square feet, or 0.83 square meters. So 6 equal sides of 9 sq/ft would make it 81 cubic feet.
Easy, huh? Well, they threw us with "each wall is 9 square feet", because that lets us assume the walls are square. Looking at the picture provided, it appears to be a cube. But, if you look at this NASA photo, you'll see there are 6 square sides, and two hexagonal sides. So, if it were a cube, it would be the size of the cargo area of a suburban with the third row. But, it's not a cube, and there are no less than two different sizes for the sides.
You can't blame the article's author for it though. They got the details from NASA's own article. Great. Dimensions from the same organization that said "oh, we made a mistake in our unit conversion, and lost a $125 million dollar satellite."
Sure, if you're going to go around saying a square meter is 9 square feet, there's obviously something wrong with your conversions. :)
If that's true, wouldn't it be more of a case design problem than an antenna or signal strength display issue?
Doesn't matter to me, I'm happy with my Blackberry. :)
asteriskzilla?
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want any word beginning with "ass" to be mentioned in relation to my penis.
People just call mine it's informal name, "Thor", although it would seem more appropriate to call it "Mjollnir".
I do agree that most of the manufacturers do go overboard with the drive bays. I built a new machine around Christmas time for myself. It's in the cheapest case they had, with a power supply that would handle my motherboard. It also has a clear sid, so I can look straight in. :) It has 4 5.25" bays and 6 3.5" bays. While it's overkill, I do appreciate having the extra space. It makes for a larger air mass, so the machine doesn't try to overheat as much. The ambient temp in the house is 82F right now. The motherboard temp is 99F, and the CPU is at 113F. That is with a 90CFM exhaust fan (added on), and the smaller (probably 20-30CFM) intake fan.
But, for utilization of all the bays, you do not have to depend on just the onboard ports. I built a backup server a few years ago. I just grabbed some old parts that were laying around, including 8 120GB IDE drives. Two drives were set up as RAID1 for the OS. The other 6 were RAID5 for backup storage. it's an intermediary step between the servers and the tapes. I can't say that I've seen too many machines with 6 IDE ports onboard. I picked up 3 Promise IDE controllers.
The first two drives went on as PRI and SEC master. The CD went on as PRI slave. The remaining 6 drives were all configured master, and put on their own channel (one PRI master and one SEC master per card).
In theory with this configuration, I could have put in 16 drives.
I'm selling a bunch of 4 port Adaptec SATA RAID controllers on eBay right now. You could fill your case with SATA drives and hook them all up with just one card, assuming you have 4 ports already. The hard part is cabling it, and ensuring your power supply is strong enough to handle all those drives, and keeping it cool. I have 13 still listed. I'm keeping two for myself, in case I want to use them sometime. :)
They've had the adapters for years now. I always had a few laying around, in case I wanted to add yet another drive to a PC that didn't have any more 3.25" bays. Most of mine, I salvaged out of machines being thrown away. Folks seem to think I'm the person to give their junk PC's to, so I take the parts I want and trash the rest.
It sounds so simple when you say it. It's pretty obvious that if it had been this way, there would have been no legal case.
"Give us the passwords" ...."
"I can only release the passwords to specific authorized individuals, who are
"Ok, we'll get one of them to call you."
Oh, sorry. :) It's been a while since I saw Fight Club. I'll have to go add it to my Netflix queue.
It all depends on your view of retirement. It could be argued that at the age of 65, you will retire. You can plan for your 65th birthday to be your retirement date, and then take the funds out at that time. As you said, you should shift your funds to "less risky" options. That in itself says it's without risk.
These days, we don't get the luxury of deciding that we are retiring at 65. Sometimes we get a few months notice when they cut you loose for early retirement. These days, you are lucky to have two weeks notice, and it's rarely at retirement age. You'll find your department is closing, your job is being outsourced, or any of hundreds of kind ways they can say "you no longer have work." About half the people I've known to be cut loose in the last couple years have only had the luxury of being called in to talk to the boss, followed by a less than friendly escort to the door, and a company wide email saying "To all staff, Kronos does not work here any more. He is not allowed access to any company resources, and staff are not permitted to have contact with him." Regardless of how insensitive that sounds, I've read that email more times than I care to.
So, when are you going to retire? I guarantee it won't be on your schedule. If your schedule and the stock market don't coincide, then you are SOL. If you retired in the last couple years, did you really have a choice of when to dip into the retirement fund? I guess if you were making mad money, and had a bunch of money in the bank, then you're ok. For the rest of the world, you take what's in the retirement funds and cry about it until it's gone.
I've watched dogs eat, and they aren't exactly polite nor careful. That dog was probably yanking and biting. He would have noticed something if he wasn't out cold from the booze.
The dog didn't save him. He just smelled like rotting meat, which for some reason dogs like. We've all read reports where the owner died and the pets had no other source of food, so they went for the large but slightly rotting corpse.
No, he said "no shit". :)
I can't say I've ever heard of using fecal matter to clean a wound, but I've sure heard of avoiding fecal matter in wounds. Well, that and any contact with fecal matter in general. :) .... unless you're tubgirl. {shivers}
I think what you're failing to see is that your "retirement investments" are a gamble. You may have invested $10,000 per year for 20 years (total investment: $200,000). If you had put your money in a safe and not touched it, you would have exactly that amount. By putting it in a retirement fund, it is being gambled with every day. You may have $1,000,000, or you may have $1.
I was recently reviewing someone's 401k. They were laid off about a year ago, and that 401k is all they have left. They have about $40,000 invested into it. Not too long ago, it was worth $115,000. Today, it's worth about $30,000, and still dropping daily. When they cash out, they'll come out with something in the ballpark of $25,000.
They will be cashing out soon, haven't found a job and it doesn't look hopeful to happen before their other savings have been completely depleted,
I'm sure plenty of people will argue with me, but taking a $40,000 investment and only getting $25,000 is not a a good plan. For those who do, I'll be more than happy to start up a retirement fund for you. I'll take your money, and give you 65% of it back when you need it most. Sounds stupid when it's put into those terms, doesn't it? That's because it was, no matter how it was decorated for you when you bought into it.
That's just a bit scary that people still run around believing that gambling is the solution to their hardships.
"Investing" is gambling on other people's pyramid schemes. They have little reflection on real world performance of a company. The best illustration of this is the "pump and dump" scams.
I watched people think they were so well off because of their investments. As you say, look at history. How many times have large numbers of people come out of their investments with a small fraction of what they put in?
If, rather than gambling, they put the money "under their mattress", while all the gamblers (err, investors) are crying about their losses, the smart person still has every penny that they saved.
Sure, it comes out better sometimes. Sometimes people win in Vegas too. Once every week or so, someone wins big on your states lottery (assuming your state has one). There are always winners and losers. Otherwise, you're not dealing with real currency. Casinos, the lottery, and the stock market are designed for the house to win. If you feel lucky and have money to lose, good for you. For the rest of us, it's better to actually save what we earn.
It doesn't matter what books or articles are written on the subject. If I were a successful stock trader, I would obviously write about the wonders of investing, and encourage as many people as I could to invest too. That way I could win. Who cares who else loses, right? It's easy to take money from faceless people. If you do well, fine. Robbing houses when people aren't home is ok too, as long as you don't have to face them, and see them cry when they find out that you've just taken everything they ever saved.
Typical Slashdot, a bit behind. This is the press release they sent out on Tuesday.
Aug. 03, 2010
Stephanie Schierholz
Headquarters, Washington
James Hartsfield
Johnson Space Center, Houston
MEDIA ADVISORY: M10-107
NASA MOVES SPACE STATION REPAIR SPACEWALK TO FRIDAY, SETS BRIEFINGS
HOUSTON -- The first of two spacewalks by NASA astronauts to replace a
failed ammonia pump on the International Space Station has been
delayed by 24 hours to Friday, Aug. 6. A second spacewalk is planned
for Monday, Aug. 9, to complete the repairs.
Flight controllers and station managers made the decision Monday night
after reviewing proposed timelines, final procedures for the repair
work, and the results from a spacewalk dress rehearsal conducted in
the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near NASA's Johnson Space Center in
Houston.
Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson
are scheduled to perform the spacewalks. The two NASA astronauts will
replace an ammonia coolant pump that failed July 31.
NASA Television coverage of both spacewalks will begin at 5 a.m. CDT.
Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson are expected to begin the spacewalks from
the Quest airlock at 5:55 a.m. Friday's spacewalk will be the fourth
for Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson's first.
Approximately two hours after the conclusion of each spacewalk, NASA
TV will broadcast a briefing from Johnson. The briefing participants
will be Mike Suffredini, International Space Station program manager;
Courtenay McMillan, Expedition 24 spacewalk flight director; and
David Beaver, Expedition 24 spacewalk officer.
Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA locations, and
should contact their preferred NASA center to confirm participation.
Johnson will operate a telephone bridge for reporters with valid
media credentials issued by a NASA center. Journalists planning to
use the service must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 no
later than 15 minutes prior to the start of a briefing. Phone bridge
capacity is limited and will be available on a first-come,
first-serve basis.
Engineers and flight controllers continue to review data on the
failure, which resulted in the loss of one of two cooling loops
aboard the station. This caused a significant power down and required
adjustments to provide the maximum redundancy possible for station
systems. The systems are stable, and the six crew members aboard are
not in any danger.
Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson originally were scheduled to perform a
spacewalk to outfit the Russian Zarya module for future robotics work
and prepare the station for the installation of a new U.S. permanent
multipurpose module. However, because of the importance of restoring
redundancy to the station's cooling and power systems, the two new
spacewalks will be dedicated to the pump module replacement.
For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For more information about the station and the Expedition 24 crew,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station
-end-
There was no mention of a Steven Ruhe in the story. He gave the alias of Steven Ruhe and the email address of chet.uber@mac.com on one of his domain registrations.
There is no Steven Ruhe living anywhere near where the person mentioned in the story lives. There *IS* a Chet Uber that not only lives in the same area, but at the same address as listed on one of his domains, which is just down the street from the listed address for the "Secretive Group" Project Vigilant (http://projectvigilant.us/)
But whatever. If you guys want to think that it couldn't possibly be the guy who lives at the address the domain is registered at, in the city that he said he lives in, and you want to believe it's another guy with the same name in another state, fine. It's good you don't try to play PI or anything.
I just took a leisurely browse through your recent posts. I think I understand you now.
You grow and smoke pot in large quantites. You restore antique cars that you can't find parts for. You work with high energy lasers, liquid mirrors, and power sources the size of large navy vessels. Beyond playing botanist, physicist, and military weapons engineer, you take the time to play classical music on your trombone for your plants, just a shade sharp on both B2 and B3.
Rather than playing random pieces of music and trying to guess at what frequencies your plants like, wouldn't it be an awful lot easier to just play pure tones?
user@linux $ play -n synth sine 125 sine 250
It does kind of have the sound of an alien spaceship sitting idle though. How loud did you say it had to be?
You could try this one..
user@linux $ play -n synth sine 600 sine 970
Played at 160dB, it's guaranteed to keep away bugs, girlfriends, and alien invaders.
Follow the trail.
projectvigilant.us is registered to Steven Ruhe steven.ruhe@bbhc-global.com of BBHC Global LLC in Fort Pierce, Florida
bbhc-global.com is registered to Ruhe, Steven chet.uber@mac.com in Fort Pierce, Florida. Specifically 5817 Sunberry Circle Fort Pierce, Florida 34951
The article specifically cites Chet Uber in Fort Pierce, FL.
The Florida DMV database shows no Steven Rhue in the area. It does show a Chet Lee Uber at the address the domain is registered to.
It doesn't take a lot of brain power to put that together. Everything matches the information provided. The "Steven Ruhe" is an alias. Well, a decoy if you will. If people are looking around for a Steven Ruhe, they are less likely to identify him as Chet Uber, even though there is significant crossover between the two identities.
It's possible you could find more people named "Steven Ruhe" or "Chet Uber" around the country, which may be what you found. I know if I search for either my real name or alias, I find lots of people all around the world with my name, some matching my general physical description.
I'd give the DMV database priority over anything from sources like Linkedin or Plaxo. Those places don't require any proof of who you are, where the DMV is a bit pissy about proving who you are. I just renewed my Florida drivers license, and needed my old drivers license, birth certificate, social security card, and two other proofs of your home address. I guess more importantly, he has two Chet Uber's listed as connections on Plaxo, each in different areas. Either he has two friends with the same name, or there's clearly no real validation of a persons identity.
From the whois info for projectvigilant.us:
From the whois info on bbhc-global.com
The address "4828 North Kings Highway" is "Indrio Crossing Pack N Ship", a mail drop.
The address "5817 Sunberry Circle" is a 2,800 sq/ft 5br/3ba residence, purchased in 2004 for $205,000.
There are two businesses registered at this address:
There is a drivers license record for Chet Lee Uber (47yo male, other ethnicity) at the Sunberry Circle address. He is a registered voter, affiliated to the Democratic party.
There is a Barbara Uber (66yo white female) with a listed phone number at the same address.
hahahahahaha! Either this guy is living up the cougar lifestyle, or he's living with his mom. :)
I couldn't find a drivers license record for Mr. Steven E Ruhe. There is a Steven R Ruhe (58yo white male) in Merrit Island, FL, but probably isn't him.
Jimita Johnson-Jones (32yo black female) has a drivers license record in Orlando, FL.
Let the jokes about living in his mothers basement commence! ... and all information gathered for this post was available through public resources. No electronic trespass was committed in the gathering of this data.
That would make for a nice paper. Sometimes all they have to work with are rumors. How many times have you heard or read in a news story that the one or both parties were unavailable for comment. Let me pick on a few overrun stories.
Michael Jackson's death. Everyone had a theory, and all a publication had to do was pick their favorite theory. He passed away on June 25, 2009. The coroner didn't come back with their findings until August 28, 2009. No one said "Michael Jackson dead, more to follow in a couple months." Everyone had speculation. We were shown photos from inside his house. Anyone who may or may not have been somewhere near by got quoted as a factual source. Until the autopsy results were complete, it was entirely speculation to his cause of death.
Tiger Woods car crash. The only parts that were confirmed were that he was in his SUV. His SUV crashed. Publications dragged anything and everything they could out as if it were facts. Drug use, domestic violence, and infidelity were dragged out in the media. Because he had a car wreck, women were coming out of the woodwork saying they were his mistresses. I'm not sure if there were more than a handful of facts run with it, but speculation ran rampant.
Both of these were hot topics, and any publication that wanted to compete had to run at least something. If nothing was carried, then they just lost out to every publication who had something to run.
Or as Grace Hopper said, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
Publications can run retractions or make financial settlements in civil court, and make more money than if they waited for the real truth to be confirmed.
Dammit. I ran it through the FCC database for TV and Radio, but forgot to check the HAM call signs. Oh well, we'll just have to pretend I picked a totally imaginary station. :)
Well, I've been on the receiving end of a few C&D's for doing what Slashdot does. It all depends on who gets their panties in a wad that day. Carrying parts of their stories can be touchy. Duplicating large amounts of news is well beyond the fine gray line of copyright.
Generally, we (bloggers and aggregators) all do it with attribution (the read more links, or embedded links). It actually helps them out. Consider a Slashdot story and the Slashdot effect. If Slashdot runs a story, it'll likely get an extra 100,000 hits or so. Some of those hits will result in increased ad revenue. At very least it'll get them a bit more attention. When PoDunk Nebraska's Daily Times, who has a readership of 15 people (population of 30) runs a story, that'll be the total exposure. When someone like us runs it, it is now internationally known. You normally couldn't beg for that kind of exposure unless it's picked up as a wire service story. Even with it showing up in the wire services, it's rare that the viewers make their way back to the publication of origin.
If a publication is getting all their facts from another publication, it can seriously hurt their revenue stream. Why would I stay up and watch the 10pm news, when I know it'll be printed in the unrelated paper in the morning. I know they seed their news with mistakes, so it's traceable. For example, 15 people were injured in a major car crash, and it was a big story for the area (slow news day). The first media outlet may report 16 (oops, our mistake). When you see other outlets report 16 people were injured, it's pretty obvious that it was collected from you. It doesn't always have to be that obvious though. It could be an intentional misspelling of a name. "John Smithe" could be the subject of an article, although his name is really spelled "John Smythe". Unless the records were incorrect, (like, police or court records), that would have not been shown incorrectly twice.
There's always been a drive to get the scoop on a story, no matter what it takes. We've been getting away from real journalism though, where the journalists don't necessarily check up on the leads. Getting a lead from another publication is fine and dandy, but check your information. In the case of the article in question, it seems they jacked it straight out of an old publication rather than doing basic fact finding. Who needs fact finding these days, when rumors are more than enough to handle it. I hate it when I see false information from chain emails pop up in publications. It happens more than I'd like to see. Rather than try to check up on any of the facts, they'll just rehash the lore and publish it.
[soapbox mode off]
Show me the network map and details, and I can give a slightly better estimate. But since this is all hypothetical it really doesn't matter.
It's not impossible to rebuild the map. I'm assuming we're talking about a bunch of LANs with WANs connecting them. Just follow the trails. I believe I said it would take longer without all the details. That would mean following every circuit and finding out where each end terminated. Some beancounter has the bills and knows every circuit they're paying for. Knowing the circuits and termination points, you'd have to check out each physical location and see what's there.
I didn't say that would be a quick process. It would actually be quite time consuming. But I'd suspect someone at various sites would know at least some details of their setup. I seriously doubt he was running the whole network, and running around the city managing all the desktop machines.
I have been dropped into situations where folks on site have no clue, so you spend time wandering around back rooms and looking in closets to find something resembling a demarc. A few times when I've been sent off looking for things, I'm not even on the right floor. Sure the office is on the 12th floor and the telco says it's in a particular place on the first floor. A few years ago the moved from a suite on the 4th floor, and before that they were in a very small suite on the 7th floor. Voila, smartjack on the 7th floor. Now you have to wonder which rocket scientist extended it from the ground floor, to the 7th floor, to the 4th floor, then to another wiring closet across the floor, and then up to the 12th floor.
Another place I did work for had a wiring closet at the end of their building (building 4 of 10). It sure looked like where the telco ended. Nope, they ended in a locked closet in various buildings on the site arbitrarily. The line I was trying to find went from the closet building 1, to the closet in building 3, to the closet in building 3, and then finally to the customers suite. Even the guy who was responsible for the cabling confessed that he was thrown into the mess, and was trying to make sense of it as customers needed it. Most customers don't care where the wires go, they only care that if they plug into a jack it works.
It's not an impossible job. It just wouldn't necessarily be very fun.
That's the problem though, they frequently aren't verifying them, so they can't cite them. It's embarrassing to say "we found it at another publication, and are just guessing they did their homework."
I said it sarcastically but true. Hell, if you look at a lot of the crap being published these days, they're frequently full of spelling and syntax errors. It sucks, but it's the way it is. "Get it out" frequently overrides "make sure it's right".
As the summary said, the number was yanked out of someone's ass to make a deadline and published in a magazine years ago. The author probably just remembered seeing it somewhere, and assumed it was true. It's not exactly polite to go around stealing info from other publications, even though it happens all the time. Attributing that stolen information is just begging for lawsuits between the publications. What if Newspaper X in your town was getting most of their information from Television station WA2Z? Unless they have a contractual agreement saying it's ok to use their info as a source, bad (legal) things will likely happen. Of course, little errors will always show up here and there, which is a great indicator of when someone's using your info, rather than getting their info.
Do you know how long it would take them to verify all their sources. Come on, it'd take several extra hours to get a story up. There's no time for that. If you want for confirmation, you'll get scooped by someone else.
[sarcastic but unfortunately true soapbox off]