This is my standard answer for everyone who calls me for polls, surveys, etc. I have no idea who the caller is or how the information will be used, and in this watch-what-you-say era I would be nuts to tell some "pollster" something somebody might not approve of. Hey, I have to fly on airplanes sometimes. Assuming there are lots of others like me (or even people who LIE to pollsters) this would be an even better reason to distrust polls than any statistical demographic difference between cell phone and non-cell phone users.
Bill Gates announced today that the source code for Microsoft Bob® and Microsoft Clippy®, valued on Microsoft's books at $175 million, has been donated to the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt entity.
EPROMS, my boy, EPROMS. The kind where you zap the bits onto the chip with high voltage. Or if you don't think the Aliens would have an IC Master or National TTL databook handy, there are always -diodes-. About a billion 1N34s soldered into double-helixes ought to do the trick....
Since there is no air in space, you would only need a little bit of air to fully inflate the vehicle. By the time you fell sufficiently near to earth that you would need more air pressure to keep the vehicle fully inflated, who knows, maybe it would then be feasible to then scoop up and compress some air. If the vehicle was falling at a sufficient velocity, you might have a ready supply of high-velocity air that would be readily compressed. Maybe some rocket-science blowhard can reply and tell me whether this idea will float....
Hey! I just thought of the idea of frequent-teleportation miles. You earn enough miles, you can redeem them for upgrades such as being teleported at a higher resolution without having to pay extra $. Patent!!
Sprint has just changed its Product Replacement plan. You used to be able to take your phone to a Sprint store nationwide and get a replacement, tho refurbished. I just received a mailer from some insurance company that has taken over the plan, has introduced a deductible, and promises to replace your unit with a refurbished unit within 90 days (!) if you fill out a bunch of forms (that make rebate claims seem simple). I cancelled my Sprint Product Replacement non-plan.
The pic of the Treo 650 has a display that says "Phone Off", presumably in lieu of "Wireless Mode Off". I predict that 1) the new message will be less convincing to flight attendants; and 2) PalmOne won't go to bat for its users as against the airline pinheads.
The Treo 600 is awesome and the envy of others around you when it works. But mine has not been without problems:
1. If you have a PalmOS 4.x app floating around your palm directory (like from my old kyocera 6035) you will totally break PalmOS 5.x when you hotsync. Took me forever to figure this one out, and Sprint support is no help. It is not immediately obvious what the incompatible apps are, and there is no known automated way of cleaning up your Treo.
2. My Treo 600 is still somehow corrupted and is subject to occasional frustrating hangs and crashes. There are about 10-20 pixels that are permanently bright yellow, and the location of the pixels changes from day to day. I have given up trying to fix this and I have to reset the phone 1-2x/day.
3. I lost a bunch of camera photos on the SD card when attempting to copy to/from the phone's internal memory, the SD card files are corrupted and the photos don't display. The hotsync transfers only the phone-memory photos to your PC.
4. Airline rules for the use of the PDA inflight are inconsistent. I thought I had won this battle with the help of Slashdot readers. American Airlines has changed its policy and now prints sane PDA rules in the back of the magazine, to wit, you can use your Treo's PDA features if you are able to show the FA the displayed message, "Wireless Mode Off." However, other airlines have divergent policies:
America West -- Treo use not allowed even with Wireless Mode Off. Strictly enforced.
JetBlue -- Ditto.
Southwest -- Magazine has incomprehensible, ambiguous rules that forbid "transmitting." Permission to use Treo depends on schmoozing individual FAs.
I recently had a real bad experience trying to buy an office chair online. It turned out I had bought from a Yahoo merchant that was only an order taking service. They charged my card as soon as the order was taken and then, first they said it would be backordered 6 weeks and then they tried to get me to accept some other chair. Finally, only after about 8 weeks and tracking down the actual owners of the company and having a lawyer write them a letter did they refund my money. This particular outfit goes by the name of officechairsonline.com and several other names, and the legal name is Allied Marketing of Oklahoma City. If I had googled for complaints against the company before placing the order I could have saved months of hassle and aggravation.
What many of these bad movies have in common is they were directed by the notorious Alan Smithee. I will never go to any more of his pictures. I wrote him and told him so.
Drive-ins are really cool to take your little kids to if there is a good kid movie playing. Unfortunately, the 3 or 4 remaining drive-ins have concession and bathroom facilities out of 42nd St Port Authority Bus Station-land.
My DVDs are licensed for "noncommercial home use only." If you are projecting on the side of a home, and you don't charge admission, seems to me you are in total compliance with the license terms as written by the studios' high-priced lawyers. (Yes, it is a public performance, but the license trumps copyright law.) If the studios don't like it, how about tearing down some Wal-Marts and resurrecting the drive-ins that were torn down to build the Wal-Marts? Or how about building drive-ins atop the roofs of the Wal-Marts?
4. What are the biggest obstacles in developing pervasive trustworthiness in the Federal and private sector cyber infrastructure?
Stop placing non-technical people (e.g. political appointees who do not personally use computers or perceive them as having value) as managers overseeing Federal government IT operations and budgets.
5. What are the most essential, the most challenging, and the most promising technical research problems that need to be solved in order to substantially improve the security of the nation's cyber infrastructure?
I would start by establishing a national-level forensic disassembly lab, one that could analyze hard drives from a random statistical sample of servers and workstations and that would provide definitive answers as to how many machines are infected with malware and of what kind.
8. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the open source software model in supporting improved cyber security?
Theoretically OSS would be an advantage. But you have to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk.
9. How well do the operational practices within organizations manage the risk from cyber security threats?
Enumerating risks is easy. It's also a pointless exercise unless there is management buy-in as far as mitigating known risks.
11. Is the pool of knowledgeable researchers, developers, and managers in cyber security adequate to protect the nation's cyber infrastructure? If not, how does the pool need to be strengthened?
No. As just one example, there are thousands of job vacancies in the government cyber security field that require pre-existing security clearances, but very few sponsorship opportunities. One solution would be to allow individuals to apply for their own clearances.
Also, the government should provide its cyber security personnel with the same job security and dignity as its other employees, by hiring us as Federal employees. Hiring us through contractors wastes money and deprives us of important workplace protections.
12. What are the major legal issues that need to be addressed that would promote the development and deployment of cyber security technologies? What can be done to enhance the capabilities of law enforcement to prevent and prosecute cyber space attacks?
As it stands now, it's too much hassle for many government IT shops to report incidents or initiate prosecutions -- the response protocols can involve "freezing" production systems and other procedures that are inherently disruptive to business operations. IT shops need to have backup hard drives/machines for those incidents that truly require "frozen" machines -- and less disruptive protocols for less serious incidents to encourage incident reporting and to allow prosecution of more badguys.
13. Where and how should the Federal government invest its cyber security R&D funds? Is the Federal government investing enough in cyber security R&D? Is the allocation for research vs. development optimal?
In my experience lots of money gets spent on hardware, usually at the end of the fiscal year. But there is none available for training personnel to use the new gizmos.
The biggest bummer with Wikipedia is that no sooner do you put time and effort into writing an article than some bozo goes and trashes it. Why not let people write their own articles that would be read-only, and scored by other users a la Slashdot. For any given topic, a list of articles would appear with scores/capsule reviews.
They say the IPO has to happen by the end of the next two weeks or else Google has to refile with the SEC. And tech stocks have been in the dumper this month.
Y'all got taken in. Obviously this "news" story is movie hype for Alien vs. Predator (8/15 release). If you had gone to the movies this weekend you would have seen the trailer (scientists find pyramid buried 1000s of feet under Antarctic ice cap, it contains Alien-style aliens which emerge from their pods and eat you.
More to the point, MIT doesn't offer free downloadable textbooks, or even links to someplace where you can buy this year's overpriced monopoly-college-bookstore-scam textbooks online. They have a list of texts, and it is up to you to go and try to find them.
Bidding For Travel has space hotels going for about $35 on PL, but you won't get Hilton HHonors points. Anybody who still pays $50,000-100,000 per night is getting ripped off big time!!
wonder 5 years from now why all of the business are running Slinux (simple Linux - easy enough for Grandma to figure out how to change the screen resolution)
What's Slinux? You mean a Linux with device drivers for the devices I have?
Attempted Debugging of Microsoft Products Causes Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling)
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure you wear a helmet to avoid the obsessive-compulsive disorder-inducing effects of attempting to modify the registry.
SYMPTOMS If a user attempts to debug a problem with certain Microsoft products, the user will become frustrated and pull all of his or her hair out. This issue affects operating systems, servers, workstations, networking components, application programs, user groups, end user support personnel, and the ability to get a date.
RESOLUTION WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may exacerbate the problem. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you will be able to regrow your hair either with the assistance of a psychiatrist or with Rogaine(TM). Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
Windows debugging is inherently frustrating and causes users, administrators, managers, and shareholders to pull all their hair out, sometimes with needlenose pliers.
You can override this behavior in the registry. To do so, modify the FormatHardDiskOnStartup REG_DWORD value in the following registry key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Run ,Dammi t!
The default value is 0x0; change this value to 0x1.
STATUS Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the end of this article.
WORKAROUND It feels good when you stop. Also, try Hair Club for Men.
PRODUCTS AFFECTED Windows 3.1 Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows ME Windows NT Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows Server 2000 Windows Advanced Server 2000 Windows Server 2003 Windows Advanced Server 2003 Windows Media Player Windows Update Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Microsoft Visio Microsoft Flight Simulator Microsoft Access Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft Visual Studio
The World Series of Poker on ESPN features a poker player who can slice a banana with a thrown playing card. Maybe you could try slicing a raw potato or other object in this manner with a CD. Then you could organize a contest and sell the TV rights.
Slashdot Mirror
This is my standard answer for everyone who calls me for polls, surveys, etc. I have no idea who the caller is or how the information will be used, and in this watch-what-you-say era I would be nuts to tell some "pollster" something somebody might not approve of. Hey, I have to fly on airplanes sometimes. Assuming there are lots of others like me (or even people who LIE to pollsters) this would be an even better reason to distrust polls than any statistical demographic difference between cell phone and non-cell phone users.
Bill Gates announced today that the source code for Microsoft Bob® and Microsoft Clippy®, valued on Microsoft's books at $175 million, has been donated to the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt entity.
Um, how about a $5,812 bounty for a Treo 600 OS that can go 24 hours without crashing??!?
EPROMS, my boy, EPROMS. The kind where you zap the bits onto the chip with high voltage. Or if you don't think the Aliens would have an IC Master or National TTL databook handy, there are always -diodes-. About a billion 1N34s soldered into double-helixes ought to do the trick....
Since there is no air in space, you would only need a little bit of air to fully inflate the vehicle. By the time you fell sufficiently near to earth that you would need more air pressure to keep the vehicle fully inflated, who knows, maybe it would then be feasible to then scoop up and compress some air. If the vehicle was falling at a sufficient velocity, you might have a ready supply of high-velocity air that would be readily compressed. Maybe some rocket-science blowhard can reply and tell me whether this idea will float....
We can't allow that. You'd probably push all 32,768 buttons just for fun, making the sucka stop at every floor.....
Hey! I just thought of the idea of frequent-teleportation miles. You earn enough miles, you can redeem them for upgrades such as being teleported at a higher resolution without having to pay extra $. Patent!!
Sprint has just changed its Product Replacement plan. You used to be able to take your phone to a Sprint store nationwide and get a replacement, tho refurbished. I just received a mailer from some insurance company that has taken over the plan, has introduced a deductible, and promises to replace your unit with a refurbished unit within 90 days (!) if you fill out a bunch of forms (that make rebate claims seem simple). I cancelled my Sprint Product Replacement non-plan.
The pic of the Treo 650 has a display that says "Phone Off", presumably in lieu of "Wireless Mode Off". I predict that 1) the new message will be less convincing to flight attendants; and 2) PalmOne won't go to bat for its users as against the airline pinheads.
The Treo 600 is awesome and the envy of others around you when it works. But mine has not been without problems:
1. If you have a PalmOS 4.x app floating around your palm directory (like from my old kyocera 6035) you will totally break PalmOS 5.x when you hotsync. Took me forever to figure this one out, and Sprint support is no help. It is not immediately obvious what the incompatible apps are, and there is no known automated way of cleaning up your Treo.
2. My Treo 600 is still somehow corrupted and is subject to occasional frustrating hangs and crashes. There are about 10-20 pixels that are permanently bright yellow, and the location of the pixels changes from day to day. I have given up trying to fix this and I have to reset the phone 1-2x/day.
3. I lost a bunch of camera photos on the SD card when attempting to copy to/from the phone's internal memory, the SD card files are corrupted and the photos don't display. The hotsync transfers only the phone-memory photos to your PC.
4. Airline rules for the use of the PDA inflight are inconsistent. I thought I had won this battle with the help of Slashdot readers. American Airlines has changed its policy and now prints sane PDA rules in the back of the magazine, to wit, you can use your Treo's PDA features if you are able to show the FA the displayed message, "Wireless Mode Off." However, other airlines have divergent policies:
America West -- Treo use not allowed even with Wireless Mode Off. Strictly enforced.
JetBlue -- Ditto.
Southwest -- Magazine has incomprehensible, ambiguous rules that forbid "transmitting." Permission to use Treo depends on schmoozing individual FAs.
I recently had a real bad experience trying to buy an office chair online. It turned out I had bought from a Yahoo merchant that was only an order taking service. They charged my card as soon as the order was taken and then, first they said it would be backordered 6 weeks and then they tried to get me to accept some other chair. Finally, only after about 8 weeks and tracking down the actual owners of the company and having a lawyer write them a letter did they refund my money. This particular outfit goes by the name of officechairsonline.com and several other names, and the legal name is Allied Marketing of Oklahoma City. If I had googled for complaints against the company before placing the order I could have saved months of hassle and aggravation.
What many of these bad movies have in common is they were directed by the notorious Alan Smithee. I will never go to any more of his pictures. I wrote him and told him so.
Drive-ins are really cool to take your little kids to if there is a good kid movie playing. Unfortunately, the 3 or 4 remaining drive-ins have concession and bathroom facilities out of 42nd St Port Authority Bus Station-land.
My DVDs are licensed for "noncommercial home use only." If you are projecting on the side of a home, and you don't charge admission, seems to me you are in total compliance with the license terms as written by the studios' high-priced lawyers. (Yes, it is a public performance, but the license trumps copyright law.) If the studios don't like it, how about tearing down some Wal-Marts and resurrecting the drive-ins that were torn down to build the Wal-Marts? Or how about building drive-ins atop the roofs of the Wal-Marts?
4. What are the biggest obstacles in developing pervasive trustworthiness in the Federal and private sector cyber infrastructure?
Stop placing non-technical people (e.g. political appointees who do not personally use computers or perceive them as having value) as managers overseeing Federal government IT operations and budgets.
5. What are the most essential, the most challenging, and the most promising technical research problems that need to be solved in order to substantially improve the security of the nation's cyber infrastructure?
I would start by establishing a national-level forensic disassembly lab, one that could analyze hard drives from a random statistical sample of servers and workstations and that would provide definitive answers as to how many machines are infected with malware and of what kind.
8. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the open source software model in supporting improved cyber security?
Theoretically OSS would be an advantage. But you have to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk.
9. How well do the operational practices within organizations manage the risk from cyber security threats?
Enumerating risks is easy. It's also a pointless exercise unless there is management buy-in as far as mitigating known risks.
11. Is the pool of knowledgeable researchers, developers, and managers in cyber security adequate to protect the nation's cyber infrastructure? If not, how does the pool need to be strengthened?
No. As just one example, there are thousands of job vacancies in the government cyber security field that require pre-existing security clearances, but very few sponsorship opportunities. One solution would be to allow individuals to apply for their own clearances.
Also, the government should provide its cyber security personnel with the same job security and dignity as its other employees, by hiring us as Federal employees. Hiring us through contractors wastes money and deprives us of important workplace protections.
12. What are the major legal issues that need to be addressed that would promote the development and deployment of cyber security technologies? What can be done to enhance the capabilities of law enforcement to prevent and prosecute cyber space attacks?
As it stands now, it's too much hassle for many government IT shops to report incidents or initiate prosecutions -- the response protocols can involve "freezing" production systems and other procedures that are inherently disruptive to business operations. IT shops need to have backup hard drives/machines for those incidents that truly require "frozen" machines -- and less disruptive protocols for less serious incidents to encourage incident reporting and to allow prosecution of more badguys.
13. Where and how should the Federal government invest its cyber security R&D funds? Is the Federal government investing enough in cyber security R&D? Is the allocation for research vs. development optimal?
In my experience lots of money gets spent on hardware, usually at the end of the fiscal year. But there is none available for training personnel to use the new gizmos.
I was going to mod the parent up as Interesting, but instead I will point out there is a whitespace character in the link that shouldn't be there.
The biggest bummer with Wikipedia is that no sooner do you put time and effort into writing an article than some bozo goes and trashes it. Why not let people write their own articles that would be read-only, and scored by other users a la Slashdot. For any given topic, a list of articles would appear with scores/capsule reviews.
They say the IPO has to happen by the end of the next two weeks or else Google has to refile with the SEC. And tech stocks have been in the dumper this month.
Y'all got taken in. Obviously this "news" story is movie hype for Alien vs. Predator (8/15 release). If you had gone to the movies this weekend you would have seen the trailer (scientists find pyramid buried 1000s of feet under Antarctic ice cap, it contains Alien-style aliens which emerge from their pods and eat you.
More to the point, MIT doesn't offer free downloadable textbooks, or even links to someplace where you can buy this year's overpriced monopoly-college-bookstore-scam textbooks online. They have a list of texts, and it is up to you to go and try to find them.
Bidding For Travel has space hotels going for about $35 on PL, but you won't get Hilton HHonors points. Anybody who still pays $50,000-100,000 per night is getting ripped off big time!!
wonder 5 years from now why all of the business are running Slinux (simple Linux - easy enough for Grandma to figure out how to change the screen resolution)
What's Slinux? You mean a Linux with device drivers for the devices I have?
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 12AFB02819B23
n ,Dammi t!
Attempted Debugging of Microsoft Products Causes Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling)
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure you wear a helmet to avoid the obsessive-compulsive disorder-inducing effects of attempting to modify the registry.
SYMPTOMS
If a user attempts to debug a problem with certain Microsoft products, the user will become frustrated and pull all of his or her hair out. This issue affects operating systems, servers, workstations, networking components, application programs, user groups, end user support personnel, and the ability to get a date.
RESOLUTION
WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may exacerbate the problem. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you will be able to regrow your hair either with the assistance of a psychiatrist or with Rogaine(TM). Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
Windows debugging is inherently frustrating and causes users, administrators, managers, and shareholders to pull all their hair out, sometimes with needlenose pliers.
You can override this behavior in the registry. To do so, modify the FormatHardDiskOnStartup REG_DWORD value in the following registry key:
HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Ru
The default value is 0x0; change this value to 0x1.
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the end of this article.
WORKAROUND
It feels good when you stop. Also, try Hair Club for Men.
PRODUCTS AFFECTED
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Server 2000
Windows Advanced Server 2000
Windows Server 2003
Windows Advanced Server 2003
Windows Media Player
Windows Update
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Visio
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Microsoft Access
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Visual Studio
The World Series of Poker on ESPN features a poker player who can slice a banana with a thrown playing card. Maybe you could try slicing a raw potato or other object in this manner with a CD. Then you could organize a contest and sell the TV rights.
Don't assume your local judge has never heard of MMORPGs. Why do you think they have laptops on the bench? Answer: Most trials are really boring.