> Any prank that occurs witht he frequency of email and goes on for 3 days is just abusive.
As I said, I assumed the victim would catch on fairly quickly. His colleagues knew what was going on and could've notified me. And the victim was most certainly in a position to retaliate if he'd taken offense, but didn't.
> sent her running. That is just not even remotely funny.
Everyone - including the victim herself, after she'd calmed down a bit - thought otherwise.
> They are just abuses of the power granted to the IT staff
Not when the prank and the victim are properly chosen. There are a lot of people I'd never dream of pulling anything on, for a variety of reasons. But then there are a few lucky enough to be born with both a sense of humor and a naturally-occuring "kick me" sign...
Well, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I've pulled a coupla good ones:
- record someone's cellphone ring on your PC, then install it as their new-mail-received sound. (when I did this, I didn't realize the guy had had 3-4 cellphones over the past year, all of which were stowed in his desk; I presumed he'd catch on after a couple hours, but apparently it was a 3-day ordeal for him and his neighbors...) - there was a young girl who was (un-justifyably) a little scared of her boss: I had him record his voice saying her name, then added a trace of an echo, and waited until a day when he was out of town and I knew she'd be working late... I set her Windows shutdown sound to that sample, so she'd hear him calling her after everyone else had gone home. From what others on that floor told me, she ran screaming down the hallway... - put up a phony form someplace, like a "Microwave Usage Tracking Form" in the break room... have lines for what's been heated, how long it took, etc... (when I did this, the only person who fell for the prank and actually filled out a line was the office manager - the very person who'd have been in charge of putting up such a form, if it were real!) - others I forget
The easiest office pranks are those which involve people who leave their terminals unattended in a situation where security is assumed to be tight; I have dozens of stories about those cases, but they're not as funny to me 'cos, well, the more tight-assed the environment, the easier it is to spoof (and you have an unfair advantage if you're the IT guy)... I prefer to pull stuff in a relaxed, casual environment, where people aren't expecting anything.
(I'm sure people have mentioned places like National Parks etc already, so I'll skip them)
Glenwood Canyon, along I-70 in Colorado, is not only a stunning vista but also represents the most complex and expensive 12 miles of road in the world. I believe it can be hiked, and you can travel through it by train and raft as well. If you take the train, start from Denver - you'll go through the 29-mile-long Moffit Tunnel, also rather a feat of engineering, and a couple days later you'll be in San Francisco. The highest paved road on the continent is Mt. Evans, just south of Idaho Springs along I-70 in (you guessed it) Colorado. Um, where I live is a veritable forest of big satellite dishes, since southeast Denver is home to almost every cable company in the nation... so if you're into that kind of thing... I'm pretty sure there's a Nikola Tesla museum/historical site south of Colorado Springs, too - lots of geek porn there no doubt - but I've never been and I'm too lazy to look it up now.
For non-Colorado ideas, how about the Hoover Dam? It's about 40 mins outside of Vegas, and there's a cool tour. If you can wait 'til winter, check out Death Valley. (or just go home and visit the NT...) Meteor Crater in Arizona - about 10 miles south of I-10 as I recall? You can see Apollo training equipment NASA left behind.
And don't be afraid to trade on your accent - at least in rural areas where foreigners are rare... my wife tells me about a trip through the southeast which she took before we met, where she never had to buy her own drinks - people would pay to hear her talk (then again, she's a charmer in any language).
A friend of mine (who happens to be Welsh) is a programmer on DEC VAXen. Computers aren't even his main focus - he's more into music, standup comedy, half a dozen other interests, plus his wife and daughter of course - but he's an experienced, competent programmer in his mid-40s. After 2 years in NYC on an H1B, he's back home in the UK and has recently landed an OOP/XML programming job... he has no experience, and was up against a 20-something newly-graduated kid, but the interviewer liked his "real-world experience" and promised to train him on the newer languages...
So for the past week I've been calling him every dirty name in the book, for being such a lucky @#$*%&. Get in touch if you want to help me heap abuse on the lil' @#$*%& (steal MY dream job, will he...)
(oh, if there's a point to this, it's that you can't generalize, I guess)
> contact the manufacturers themselves, and asking for > some of their 'grade-b' stuff? I'm sure they'll be > happy to either tell you to buzz off, or send you > oodles of broken monitors
This sounds like a great idea for other types of hardware (anyone for power supplies that produce 5 and 12 volts AC? heh), but I'd assume that they'd identify flaws in the panels before hooking up the driver electronics, cabling and the outer case etc. And (speculating futher - I don't know that much about the process) it's possible they have to dispose of un-usable material in accordance to some type of environmental regulations, too.
> Every project I've ever been on has insufficient time > combined with changing requirements. I'm not even sure > if I've heard of a project where that wasn't the case.
I had one, once... fond memories! I actually had all the time I needed and a fairly clear goal. There was even left-over time in the budget to do a second version with some nice new features that the users decided might come in handy down the road. I even was able to write user-level documentation as well as technical docs for any future programmer who might get called in after me. And what do you know - the software worked without a single reported problem, for 2 years, until the function it served was taken over by another agency. (as far as I know it's still in use - they've never contacted me with any questions or complaints)
Gad, those were the days.... (it was even an interesting challenge on a programming level, as opposed to most of my work which is event-driven GUI-logic-heavy busywork, or struggling against inaccurate Microsoft technical docs)
> > I've never had the pleasure of working on a project > > where there was anybody to say "no" to the customer's > > latest wacky, impractical, last-minute ideas > > You should look into the Extreme Programming > practice known as the Planning Game.
I should look into the practice reported in the Dilbert strip, where the customer refuses to tell him the product requirements and he replies "That's OK, I've budgeted for some goons to beat it out of you." Then again, I've gotten a lot of work cleaning up after messes caused by poor technical decisions. It's just not work I actually like to do... (I remember one in particular where a state government agency had hired a consultant to write an Access database, and the guy turned the job over to his 16-year-old son! The documentation was nonexistant, and I found signs that the system had been modified on at least two separate occasions by people who simply blocked off or disabled chunks of the code that they did not have time to understand and fix... they flew me out twice to look it over and try to make sense of it all, and in the end I just told them it'd be a lot easier to re-implement from scratch than to try to make it Y2k-OK. Never heard back from them after that!)
If I ever have the luxury of dictating to an employer that design must occur BEFORE implementation rather than in parallel with implementation, I'll certainly seize that opportunity with glee. However, I have never worked for a large company (difficult to get an interview anyplace big enough for a real HR department if you lack a college degree or other credentials - and I have nothing but real-world experience) so I've never been part of a team or any other sort of structure which might help that. I'm usually lucky just to have a job, actually (oh yeah, I don't have one right now...)
I'd like to rewrite most of the projects I've worked on, especially one in particular which gets used and re-worked year after year. A ground-up reworking of the code would make future changes hugely easier, but instead we spend vastly more time trying to force more cruft on top of the massive pile of cruft and hoping it'll work. Even when we start six months before the usual time-frame, we always - ALWAYS - end up making modifications right up to the time it goes live. (I've actually had to recompile a program on a laptop, while in the car heading to the install site!)
I found the comments of the first few posters to be insightful, but there's at least one situation they overlooked - what if the code is crummy for perhaps the most common reason of all: insufficient time combined with constantly changing requirements? In that case, given time to really do things right could make a difference. Taking the pressure off lets you actually design BEFORE you code, instead of doing them in parallel, and you might even get to shift some of the user interface planning off onto someone qualified to do it... (I've never had the pleasure of working within a team on a project, BTW, so YMMV. Oh, and I've never had the pleasure of working on a project where there was anybody to say "no" to the customer's latest wacky, impractical, last-minute ideas...)
OK, where were we - oh yes, I'd like to hear the answer to the poster's question too.
I need a booklight too, but I mostly read paperbacks and have had no luck finding a good one that is designed for the size/shape of a softcover book. I'm considering hot-gluing a keyring-size flashlight to my nose. Any better suggestions?
In the old days (early to mid-90s), I knew the author John Stith (casually) and spoke with him about the difficulties of making it into a movie. At the time, I myself was doing computer graphics for local TV commercials and industrial videos, so I'd noticed the unique challenge its setting represents, as had he. From my recollection, he felt at the time that technology would advance enough over the coming years to make it possible, and like most authors he was quite interested in seeing it made into a movie (or any of his other novels - several of which pose other interesting conditions, such as "Manhattan Transfer", which I understand is a bit further along in the film-option process) but was focusing on "User Hostile" at the time. I've long since lost touch with him, but I DO think cinematic technology has caught up with the visuals aboard the Redshift.
Regardless of anything else, it's a cool book and a very good read. (As is most of the rest of his stuff, IMO)
> Only on slashdot would you see someone describe the > ultimate material symbol of his lifelong unending love, as a sandwich.
Was it: - Because I was typing in kind of a hurry and couldn't think of a clear, 1-word way to describe how the basically-toroidal shape the ring was divided up into gold and the black halves, or - because I also love sandwiches?
(And why would you equate Slashdot with inappropriate food similies anyway?)
Truthfully, we weren't even going to bother buying rings - she was going to wear her "nana's" ring (she's an Aussie) which she inherited, and I'm not into jewelry (or wearing anything else that isn't black). But one day she saw that diamond-like opal at a store, and nearby was a deep midnight wedding band, so - plans changed...
I mean, if you wanted a GPRS/Bluetooth ring, I'd understand...
Anyhow, one idea I can offer for "cool" rings, if you like black (clothes and etc), is Zirconium. It's not just for fake jewels; unlike its crystalline form, its metal state is non-tarnishing and a very cool greyish-black. My wedding ring is half zirconium, half yellow gold (like the top and bottom halves of a sandwich).
My wife has a big 'ol honkin' rock - it's a 4 carat clear Opal. It draws a lot of comment and was within our budget, but as it's a soft mineral it requires some extra care.
Firstly - it isn't just that Hollywood makes dreck, or that the public is at fault 'cos they pay to watch it. I reckon the truth is, your average Slashdot poster (and indeed, people in general) is unlikely to circulate with a very broad cross-section of humanity. And you know what? Not everybody likes science fiction, quirky stuff, or thoughtful, original premises. There are perfectly worthy people out there, who lead lives contributing positively to society, who just wanna kick back with a beer at the end of their day and watch "Jackass: The Motion Picture". To dislike and avoid movies like that is one thing, but to heap disdain on the whole idea of them at least borders on elitism.
Secondly, whatever you think of the arguably-insane power structure of Hollywood (of which this article gives only a peek), that's where the money is for performing artists and other creative types. You can rail against the idiots, neurotics, assholes and paranoids that run the system all you like (and rightfully so, if you have that kind of spare time), but I have to admit they have a heck of a counter-argument - they got the money.
Virtually all of my friends (wife included) are in showbiz in one form or another; only a few have achieved financial security outside of Hollywood, and they did so primarily by virtue of uncommon brilliance. And conversely, there are some genuinely brilliant people who ARE part of 'the system' and are not getting what they deserve, for reasons unrelated to anything under their control. But every now and then, someone good gets a break. So, it's not all bad.
But it's mostly bad. Anyone who's actually visited Hollywood knows how grimy, slimy, and generally depressing most of the city is, and anyone who Knows People in the business and has had the opportunity to listen in on gossip understands what an incredibly high proportion of people there have drug/alcohol problems, failing marriages, or both... it's darkly funny, from a distance, but sadly I'm about to move there myself. I need a drink.
In my closet is a TRS-80 PC1 - probably the first palmtop, purchased circa 1982 for ~$170. It had a bit over 1k of RAM, ran BASIC, included a full alphanumeric keyboard, and a 1-line text display. I also got the "cradle" which had a cash-register-like printer and a cassette interface. It's been in the closet for over 15 years at this point.
Apart from some leakage around the LCD, it's fully operational - I haven't even changed the batts since 1986 (!), but I can go check it every few months and it still fires up. But then, so does my old Kaypro IV (dual 5.25" drives!)... oh, and I got a VCR from 1985 that still runs fine.
Meanwhile, I bought a digital camera last fall that worked for a whole week.
Dave - you get a great deal of material from being ignorant, clueless and otherwise mentally deficient in one way or another. Most of the people I know are in standup comedy, and many of them are similarly afraid of computers and ungeekly when it comes to technology in general... but a few just pretend, in order to 'fit in'. Virtually all of them are intelligent (you almost have to be, to do comedy successfully) but it's as if most of them consider themselves to be inherently unable to understand computers. And the few exceptions play along.
Are you really as awkward with computers as you say? And if so, is part of you afraid that if you learned more, you'd be less funny?
(caveat - I haven't had time to read the article yet, so I'm spouting off without much backing to my opinions, except that I live near Rocky Flats...)
Isn't the real "nuclear waste problem" not just the fuel rods, but the kilotons of contaminated building materials, protective clothing, screwdrivers, air ducts, semi-trailer trucks, topsoil, reactor coolant, baseball caps, human remains...
I'm sure this is a great advance for many reasons, but it's barely gonna scratch the surface of how to deal with contaminated material - or am I wrong?
"Two guys who worked on SNL and Conan" - possible translation - two guys who fielded phonecalls for SNL and fetched coffee on Conan... I know people who've WRITTEN for both shows, and there's a huge number of hangers-on who work there just for the resume credit.
"InsideJoke.TV" is, in my experience, one of a number of groups who spam the standup comedy newsgroup (and others) with pointless drivel a few times a week. I dunno how they got on Slashdot... I don't know from Slushfactory.com, perhaps they have some decent stuff elsewhere on the site, but like several previous posters, I don't have the time to go look for it.
If you have to TELL people how funny you are, you aren't.
I bought my wife a Treo 270 for her birthday a few months ago, and our experiences have been mixed but mostly positive.
She's thrilled with the Treo's features and look. The battery life isn't what we were lead to expect from the ads (we get about 2 days +/-, regardless of airtime use, not "1 week of standby"...) but otherwise it's been great. We particularly like the SMS-Email gateway, which lets us send short messages back and forth to the home PC without using airtime for going online. (of course they finally released the GPRS upgrade, but it's more money than we can justify for how much we'd use it) It's the first palmtop organizer device for her, and my first experience with a cellphone. Pricey, but worth it (if you want a biggish-screen, in color, and a keyboard); all she really misses is MP3 playback.
T-Mobile has been another matter. After considerable trouble signing up (several long stories in itself; but after 2 weeks we finally found a competent person who got us going within minutes), we've had few real problems with our service in Denver. However, traveling is another matter. The Treo has no analog mode to fall back on, so we're reliant on spotty GSM coverage on the highways. Vegas is OK; but in L.A. we're roaming fulltime on some other netowrk. When we went to South Dakota recently, there was zero coverage in Northern Colorado, Wyoming, and western Nebraska (except for a few brief blips in Scottsbluff...) In general, cities with 7-figure populations and the Interstate highways near to them are pretty well-supplied, but elsewhere, forget it.
There is the Treo 300, which uses Sprint's PCS network that I'm told has far better coverage. However, we wanted a GSM phone since we also travel to Australia and Europe. I'm sure that GSM coverage in the USA will improve over time (heck, it could hardly get much worse...) - I hope it does sooner rather than later, since I want options other than those idiots at T-Mobile!
This connects with this thread earlier I think... not only are we facing loss of privacy at every turn on planet Earth, but now the Moon Men and Martians can't so much as take their blurgs for a walk without being scrutinized by everyone from teenage girls with camera-phones to government agencies with high-powered telescopes... Big Brother has finally made it to space.
The NOTS story and etc are interesting, but I think a more careful definition of "junk" would involve the first thing that was launched and did not come back down (stayed up longer than the actual satellite/whatever). Maybe Sputnik had a housing/shell of some kind; if not, at what point did rocket technology advance enough so that extraneous mass of any kind traveled along with the actual payload?
And for that matter, when did Sputnik de-orbit? Presumably it would have been due to traces of atmospheric drag, since there wouldn't have been anything resembling thrusters.
> Should I buy MMC or SD? Where can I find more info? Any real > world experiences?
You're talking about, what, a $40 item? Buy the first, non-Naziesque one, and if it doesn't work for you, friggin' return it to the store. Easy.
I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of griping here, but on the surface this seems to be Yet Another "why did this ever get on Slashdot?" post...
(Maybe I'm just in a bad mood 'cos I've been in Windows Project Hell for the past few weeks, but I've been trying to keep up here, do bits of moderating, and have noticed quite a few complaints about relevance and significance of some recent items...)
Yeah, I know about "viral marketing" - it's like when you get a post onto the homepage of Slashdot, advertising^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H containing interesting links to various other sites (isn't Everything2 affiliated with OSDN...?), thus generating positive discussions and a sort of underground 'buzz' about something...
Only you forgot to tell us what the product is - but I've figured it out! It's gotta be MY VIRAL MARKETING COMPANY, which I've just started and which is poised to take over the world within hours! Tell your friends, they'll like you even better.
Slashdot Mirror
> Any prank that occurs witht he frequency of email and goes on for 3 days is just abusive.
As I said, I assumed the victim would catch on fairly quickly. His colleagues knew what was going on and could've notified me. And the victim was most certainly in a position to retaliate if he'd taken offense, but didn't.
> sent her running. That is just not even remotely funny.
Everyone - including the victim herself, after she'd calmed down a bit - thought otherwise.
> They are just abuses of the power granted to the IT staff
Not when the prank and the victim are properly chosen. There are a lot of people I'd never dream of pulling anything on, for a variety of reasons. But then there are a few lucky enough to be born with both a sense of humor and a naturally-occuring "kick me" sign...
Well, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I've pulled a coupla good ones:
- record someone's cellphone ring on your PC, then install it as their new-mail-received sound. (when I did this, I didn't realize the guy had had 3-4 cellphones over the past year, all of which were stowed in his desk; I presumed he'd catch on after a couple hours, but apparently it was a 3-day ordeal for him and his neighbors...)
- there was a young girl who was (un-justifyably) a little scared of her boss: I had him record his voice saying her name, then added a trace of an echo, and waited until a day when he was out of town and I knew she'd be working late... I set her Windows shutdown sound to that sample, so she'd hear him calling her after everyone else had gone home. From what others on that floor told me, she ran screaming down the hallway...
- put up a phony form someplace, like a "Microwave Usage Tracking Form" in the break room... have lines for what's been heated, how long it took, etc... (when I did this, the only person who fell for the prank and actually filled out a line was the office manager - the very person who'd have been in charge of putting up such a form, if it were real!)
- others I forget
The easiest office pranks are those which involve people who leave their terminals unattended in a situation where security is assumed to be tight; I have dozens of stories about those cases, but they're not as funny to me 'cos, well, the more tight-assed the environment, the easier it is to spoof (and you have an unfair advantage if you're the IT guy)... I prefer to pull stuff in a relaxed, casual environment, where people aren't expecting anything.
(I'm sure people have mentioned places like National Parks etc already, so I'll skip them)
Glenwood Canyon, along I-70 in Colorado, is not only a stunning vista but also represents the most complex and expensive 12 miles of road in the world. I believe it can be hiked, and you can travel through it by train and raft as well.
If you take the train, start from Denver - you'll go through the 29-mile-long Moffit Tunnel, also rather a feat of engineering, and a couple days later you'll be in San Francisco.
The highest paved road on the continent is Mt. Evans, just south of Idaho Springs along I-70 in (you guessed it) Colorado.
Um, where I live is a veritable forest of big satellite dishes, since southeast Denver is home to almost every cable company in the nation... so if you're into that kind of thing...
I'm pretty sure there's a Nikola Tesla museum/historical site south of Colorado Springs, too - lots of geek porn there no doubt - but I've never been and I'm too lazy to look it up now.
For non-Colorado ideas, how about the Hoover Dam? It's about 40 mins outside of Vegas, and there's a cool tour.
If you can wait 'til winter, check out Death Valley. (or just go home and visit the NT...)
Meteor Crater in Arizona - about 10 miles south of I-10 as I recall? You can see Apollo training equipment NASA left behind.
And don't be afraid to trade on your accent - at least in rural areas where foreigners are rare... my wife tells me about a trip through the southeast which she took before we met, where she never had to buy her own drinks - people would pay to hear her talk (then again, she's a charmer in any language).
A friend of mine (who happens to be Welsh) is a programmer on DEC VAXen. Computers aren't even his main focus - he's more into music, standup comedy, half a dozen other interests, plus his wife and daughter of course - but he's an experienced, competent programmer in his mid-40s. After 2 years in NYC on an H1B, he's back home in the UK and has recently landed an OOP/XML programming job... he has no experience, and was up against a 20-something newly-graduated kid, but the interviewer liked his "real-world experience" and promised to train him on the newer languages...
So for the past week I've been calling him every dirty name in the book, for being such a lucky @#$*%&. Get in touch if you want to help me heap abuse on the lil' @#$*%& (steal MY dream job, will he...)
(oh, if there's a point to this, it's that you can't generalize, I guess)
> contact the manufacturers themselves, and asking for
> some of their 'grade-b' stuff? I'm sure they'll be
> happy to either tell you to buzz off, or send you
> oodles of broken monitors
This sounds like a great idea for other types of hardware (anyone for power supplies that produce 5 and 12 volts AC? heh), but I'd assume that they'd identify flaws in the panels before hooking up the driver electronics, cabling and the outer case etc. And (speculating futher - I don't know that much about the process) it's possible they have to dispose of un-usable material in accordance to some type of environmental regulations, too.
But hey, if I'm wrong, sign me up for a couple!
> Every project I've ever been on has insufficient time
> combined with changing requirements. I'm not even sure
> if I've heard of a project where that wasn't the case.
I had one, once... fond memories! I actually had all the time I needed and a fairly clear goal. There was even left-over time in the budget to do a second version with some nice new features that the users decided might come in handy down the road. I even was able to write user-level documentation as well as technical docs for any future programmer who might get called in after me. And what do you know - the software worked without a single reported problem, for 2 years, until the function it served was taken over by another agency. (as far as I know it's still in use - they've never contacted me with any questions or complaints)
Gad, those were the days.... (it was even an interesting challenge on a programming level, as opposed to most of my work which is event-driven GUI-logic-heavy busywork, or struggling against inaccurate Microsoft technical docs)
> > I've never had the pleasure of working on a project
> > where there was anybody to say "no" to the customer's
> > latest wacky, impractical, last-minute ideas
>
> You should look into the Extreme Programming
> practice known as the Planning Game.
I should look into the practice reported in the Dilbert strip, where the customer refuses to tell him the product requirements and he replies "That's OK, I've budgeted for some goons to beat it out of you." Then again, I've gotten a lot of work cleaning up after messes caused by poor technical decisions. It's just not work I actually like to do... (I remember one in particular where a state government agency had hired a consultant to write an Access database, and the guy turned the job over to his 16-year-old son! The documentation was nonexistant, and I found signs that the system had been modified on at least two separate occasions by people who simply blocked off or disabled chunks of the code that they did not have time to understand and fix... they flew me out twice to look it over and try to make sense of it all, and in the end I just told them it'd be a lot easier to re-implement from scratch than to try to make it Y2k-OK. Never heard back from them after that!)
If I ever have the luxury of dictating to an employer that design must occur BEFORE implementation rather than in parallel with implementation, I'll certainly seize that opportunity with glee. However, I have never worked for a large company (difficult to get an interview anyplace big enough for a real HR department if you lack a college degree or other credentials - and I have nothing but real-world experience) so I've never been part of a team or any other sort of structure which might help that. I'm usually lucky just to have a job, actually (oh yeah, I don't have one right now...)
Where was I? Never mind.
I'd like to rewrite most of the projects I've worked on, especially one in particular which gets used and re-worked year after year. A ground-up reworking of the code would make future changes hugely easier, but instead we spend vastly more time trying to force more cruft on top of the massive pile of cruft and hoping it'll work. Even when we start six months before the usual time-frame, we always - ALWAYS - end up making modifications right up to the time it goes live. (I've actually had to recompile a program on a laptop, while in the car heading to the install site!)
I found the comments of the first few posters to be insightful, but there's at least one situation they overlooked - what if the code is crummy for perhaps the most common reason of all: insufficient time combined with constantly changing requirements? In that case, given time to really do things right could make a difference. Taking the pressure off lets you actually design BEFORE you code, instead of doing them in parallel, and you might even get to shift some of the user interface planning off onto someone qualified to do it... (I've never had the pleasure of working within a team on a project, BTW, so YMMV. Oh, and I've never had the pleasure of working on a project where there was anybody to say "no" to the customer's latest wacky, impractical, last-minute ideas...)
OK, where were we - oh yes, I'd like to hear the answer to the poster's question too.
I need a booklight too, but I mostly read paperbacks and have had no luck finding a good one that is designed for the size/shape of a softcover book. I'm considering hot-gluing a keyring-size flashlight to my nose. Any better suggestions?
> What happened to people reporting this sort of stuff before they had a grudge
What "happened"? Did that ever exist? Why rat out a company you like?
In the old days (early to mid-90s), I knew the author John Stith (casually) and spoke with him about the difficulties of making it into a movie. At the time, I myself was doing computer graphics for local TV commercials and industrial videos, so I'd noticed the unique challenge its setting represents, as had he. From my recollection, he felt at the time that technology would advance enough over the coming years to make it possible, and like most authors he was quite interested in seeing it made into a movie (or any of his other novels - several of which pose other interesting conditions, such as "Manhattan Transfer", which I understand is a bit further along in the film-option process) but was focusing on "User Hostile" at the time. I've long since lost touch with him, but I DO think cinematic technology has caught up with the visuals aboard the Redshift.
Regardless of anything else, it's a cool book and a very good read. (As is most of the rest of his stuff, IMO)
> wouldn't cost much for a company to hire a local starving
> actor to call random employees, spout some technical BS,
> and ask for their passwords.
So, all a hacker needs to do is pose as a local starving actor...?
(C'mon, hacking into a system is one thing, but being paid by your victim in the process...)
> Only on slashdot would you see someone describe the
> ultimate material symbol of his lifelong unending love, as a sandwich.
Was it:
- Because I was typing in kind of a hurry and couldn't think of a clear, 1-word way to describe how the basically-toroidal shape the ring was divided up into gold and the black halves, or
- because I also love sandwiches?
(And why would you equate Slashdot with inappropriate food similies anyway?)
Truthfully, we weren't even going to bother buying rings - she was going to wear her "nana's" ring (she's an Aussie) which she inherited, and I'm not into jewelry (or wearing anything else that isn't black). But one day she saw that diamond-like opal at a store, and nearby was a deep midnight wedding band, so - plans changed...
I mean, if you wanted a GPRS/Bluetooth ring, I'd understand...
Anyhow, one idea I can offer for "cool" rings, if you like black (clothes and etc), is Zirconium. It's not just for fake jewels; unlike its crystalline form, its metal state is non-tarnishing and a very cool greyish-black. My wedding ring is half zirconium, half yellow gold (like the top and bottom halves of a sandwich).
My wife has a big 'ol honkin' rock - it's a 4 carat clear Opal. It draws a lot of comment and was within our budget, but as it's a soft mineral it requires some extra care.
> How might Microsoft be convinced to make its updates
> cacheable, so as not to waste unthinkable amounts of bandwidth?"
Well, you could try threatening them with legal action - that usually works...
Firstly - it isn't just that Hollywood makes dreck, or that the public is at fault 'cos they pay to watch it. I reckon the truth is, your average Slashdot poster (and indeed, people in general) is unlikely to circulate with a very broad cross-section of humanity. And you know what? Not everybody likes science fiction, quirky stuff, or thoughtful, original premises. There are perfectly worthy people out there, who lead lives contributing positively to society, who just wanna kick back with a beer at the end of their day and watch "Jackass: The Motion Picture". To dislike and avoid movies like that is one thing, but to heap disdain on the whole idea of them at least borders on elitism.
Secondly, whatever you think of the arguably-insane power structure of Hollywood (of which this article gives only a peek), that's where the money is for performing artists and other creative types. You can rail against the idiots, neurotics, assholes and paranoids that run the system all you like (and rightfully so, if you have that kind of spare time), but I have to admit they have a heck of a counter-argument - they got the money.
Virtually all of my friends (wife included) are in showbiz in one form or another; only a few have achieved financial security outside of Hollywood, and they did so primarily by virtue of uncommon brilliance. And conversely, there are some genuinely brilliant people who ARE part of 'the system' and are not getting what they deserve, for reasons unrelated to anything under their control. But every now and then, someone good gets a break. So, it's not all bad.
But it's mostly bad. Anyone who's actually visited Hollywood knows how grimy, slimy, and generally depressing most of the city is, and anyone who Knows People in the business and has had the opportunity to listen in on gossip understands what an incredibly high proportion of people there have drug/alcohol problems, failing marriages, or both... it's darkly funny, from a distance, but sadly I'm about to move there myself. I need a drink.
In my closet is a TRS-80 PC1 - probably the first palmtop, purchased circa 1982 for ~$170. It had a bit over 1k of RAM, ran BASIC, included a full alphanumeric keyboard, and a 1-line text display. I also got the "cradle" which had a cash-register-like printer and a cassette interface. It's been in the closet for over 15 years at this point.
Apart from some leakage around the LCD, it's fully operational - I haven't even changed the batts since 1986 (!), but I can go check it every few months and it still fires up. But then, so does my old Kaypro IV (dual 5.25" drives!)... oh, and I got a VCR from 1985 that still runs fine.
Meanwhile, I bought a digital camera last fall that worked for a whole week.
Dave - you get a great deal of material from being ignorant, clueless and otherwise mentally deficient in one way or another. Most of the people I know are in standup comedy, and many of them are similarly afraid of computers and ungeekly when it comes to technology in general... but a few just pretend, in order to 'fit in'. Virtually all of them are intelligent (you almost have to be, to do comedy successfully) but it's as if most of them consider themselves to be inherently unable to understand computers. And the few exceptions play along.
Are you really as awkward with computers as you say? And if so, is part of you afraid that if you learned more, you'd be less funny?
(caveat - I haven't had time to read the article yet, so I'm spouting off without much backing to my opinions, except that I live near Rocky Flats...)
Isn't the real "nuclear waste problem" not just the fuel rods, but the kilotons of contaminated building materials, protective clothing, screwdrivers, air ducts, semi-trailer trucks, topsoil, reactor coolant, baseball caps, human remains...
I'm sure this is a great advance for many reasons, but it's barely gonna scratch the surface of how to deal with contaminated material - or am I wrong?
"Two guys who worked on SNL and Conan" - possible translation - two guys who fielded phonecalls for SNL and fetched coffee on Conan... I know people who've WRITTEN for both shows, and there's a huge number of hangers-on who work there just for the resume credit.
"InsideJoke.TV" is, in my experience, one of a number of groups who spam the standup comedy newsgroup (and others) with pointless drivel a few times a week. I dunno how they got on Slashdot... I don't know from Slushfactory.com, perhaps they have some decent stuff elsewhere on the site, but like several previous posters, I don't have the time to go look for it.
If you have to TELL people how funny you are, you aren't.
I bought my wife a Treo 270 for her birthday a few months ago, and our experiences have been mixed but mostly positive.
She's thrilled with the Treo's features and look. The battery life isn't what we were lead to expect from the ads (we get about 2 days +/-, regardless of airtime use, not "1 week of standby"...) but otherwise it's been great. We particularly like the SMS-Email gateway, which lets us send short messages back and forth to the home PC without using airtime for going online. (of course they finally released the GPRS upgrade, but it's more money than we can justify for how much we'd use it) It's the first palmtop organizer device for her, and my first experience with a cellphone. Pricey, but worth it (if you want a biggish-screen, in color, and a keyboard); all she really misses is MP3 playback.
T-Mobile has been another matter. After considerable trouble signing up (several long stories in itself; but after 2 weeks we finally found a competent person who got us going within minutes), we've had few real problems with our service in Denver. However, traveling is another matter. The Treo has no analog mode to fall back on, so we're reliant on spotty GSM coverage on the highways. Vegas is OK; but in L.A. we're roaming fulltime on some other netowrk. When we went to South Dakota recently, there was zero coverage in Northern Colorado, Wyoming, and western Nebraska (except for a few brief blips in Scottsbluff...) In general, cities with 7-figure populations and the Interstate highways near to them are pretty well-supplied, but elsewhere, forget it.
There is the Treo 300, which uses Sprint's PCS network that I'm told has far better coverage. However, we wanted a GSM phone since we also travel to Australia and Europe. I'm sure that GSM coverage in the USA will improve over time (heck, it could hardly get much worse...) - I hope it does sooner rather than later, since I want options other than those idiots at T-Mobile!
When the march of progress starts putting industrial assembly-line robots out of work - now THAT's technology!
This connects with this thread earlier I think... not only are we facing loss of privacy at every turn on planet Earth, but now the Moon Men and Martians can't so much as take their blurgs for a walk without being scrutinized by everyone from teenage girls with camera-phones to government agencies with high-powered telescopes...
Big Brother has finally made it to space.
The NOTS story and etc are interesting, but I think a more careful definition of "junk" would involve the first thing that was launched and did not come back down (stayed up longer than the actual satellite/whatever). Maybe Sputnik had a housing/shell of some kind; if not, at what point did rocket technology advance enough so that extraneous mass of any kind traveled along with the actual payload?
And for that matter, when did Sputnik de-orbit? Presumably it would have been due to traces of atmospheric drag, since there wouldn't have been anything resembling thrusters.
> Should I buy MMC or SD? Where can I find more info? Any real
> world experiences?
You're talking about, what, a $40 item? Buy the first, non-Naziesque one, and if it doesn't work for you, friggin' return it to the store. Easy.
I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of griping here, but on the surface this seems to be Yet Another "why did this ever get on Slashdot?" post...
(Maybe I'm just in a bad mood 'cos I've been in Windows Project Hell for the past few weeks, but I've been trying to keep up here, do bits of moderating, and have noticed quite a few complaints about relevance and significance of some recent items...)
Yeah, I know about "viral marketing" - it's like when you get a post onto the homepage of Slashdot, advertising^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H containing interesting links to various other sites (isn't Everything2 affiliated with OSDN...?), thus generating positive discussions and a sort of underground 'buzz' about something...
Only you forgot to tell us what the product is - but I've figured it out! It's gotta be MY VIRAL MARKETING COMPANY, which I've just started and which is poised to take over the world within hours! Tell your friends, they'll like you even better.
I need to go back to bed now.