I'm guessing the majority of you haven't actually messed with an iMac, then.
The front parts (speakers, CD-ROM), are flush with the front plastic, so it might be possible to do it with them again in this task, assuming that the curvature is similar.
(and the CD isn't put in _that_ well...look at the enlarged picture of it closed, and you'll see it's not that straight of a cut that he made)
The rear ports on a normal iMac, for those that haven't looked, are behind a curved plastic privacy panel. They're not meant to be flush mounted.
(I'm not saying that it definately _is_ real, hell, they could even be doctored photos, I'm just saying that the previous reasons for it not being real, if anything, show that it's more likely to be legit.)
Oh...and as to 'hacking up' the back-- as he doesn't have the capability to flush mount the rear ports, it makes perfect sense that he'd have to cut away some extra so that he could easy grasp at connections.
Usually boys of average or above-average intelligence. Okay, I'm male, and graduated #6 of 400 or so.
Often loners, or have small circle of friend who are outsiders. I hung out in the computer lab at school, with kids mostly a year ahead of me, until my senior year, when I instead hung out in the print shop
Experience unstable self-esteem. You would, too, if your mother forced you to go to counseling ever since you were 11, because she wasn't taking the seperation well, and when my dad was there, I rememebr him telling my mom to shut the kids up, as he was trying to get work done.
Often fascinated by cults, Satanism, weapons, themes of violence and death. I played AD&D, ShadowRun, BattleTech, WH40K.
Experience a decline in schoolwork and marks. Nope, never happened.
Come from dysfunctional homes. See the section on self-esteem.
Have experience with chronic bullying and drug use. Well, I wouldn't say it was chronic, but I did pick on a kid on our bus. And I didn't use grugs other than caffeine...although I did get annoyed with 'red ribbon week', when people were supposed to wear red ribbons to show they were drug free, and I came up with an alternate coloring system, to show what drugs you were on (birth control, caffeine, nicotine, pain killers, etc.)
Engage in attention-seeking behavior, and don't accept criticism. Okay, so I heckled in class. So what? And I accepted criticism...although there was this one day junior year, when one of the ROTC kids in my class leaned over to me, and asked 'are you a loser?', and I grabbed him by the throat... then I started getting threats from a bunch of other ROTC pricks.
Which, as you can see, means that I said 'no' to a question, therefore, it doesn't apply to me, damnit.
It gives a chance to develop our social skills (which well, as we can see what's going on in current events, isn't working in many places), and it gives us a general smattering of many topics, so we can find what interests us, and what doesn't.
As for your concept of school, I believe there are schools that give the kids the materials to learn, and the kids are given the option to learn if they want to, but from my understanding of it, it's only shown to be an effective form of teaching at younger ages. (I wish I could remember the name of this style of teaching, but it escapes me)
Speed reading, if I recall correctly, was found to have a lower retention rate than standard reading. Unfortunately, as many people 'study for the test' rather than studying in general, it's a bit of a moot point, as students may prefer this method.
Math and the like are useful in life, but they're not typically taught in such a way as to show how useful they are. I mean, we've all had the stupid 'presentations' for an english/history class that we had to do, which effectively taught us how to prepare and execute a public presentation. (which as an introvert, I despised)
Math, unfortunately, many people see as useless... Geometry and Trig come into much more use when you're working on building something in a TechEd class; I've even heard of private schools in Vermont who have 'applied geometry' classes, which is essentially surveying. I thought Differential Equations was the most useless thing, until I actually had a chance to apply it in fluid dynamics and solid mechanics.
What's more important than just teaching, is in finding how each student learns. Some people are hands-on, some prefer self-learning. Some like lectures, some need the one-on-one question/answer sessions.
It's not what's more convenient for me, it's what's more convenient for the recipient of the gift. Again, know your recipient...
If they're not going to have that type of store in their area to return to, then that's a bad choice to buy from.
In your example, however, you bought the item yourself, and had the original packaging, which when given as a gift, the recipient wouldn't have.
Also, especially in the case of kids, Christmas, now being the over commercialized 'Hallmark' type holiday (over-hyped so you send a card and they can sell stuff), it's more and more about the whole instant gradification thing. You don't want to have to wait for a package to be returned to exchange it.
(yeah, it's a sad look on life, but it's true...as people get older, it's not quite like that, but if you were expecting 'Age of Kings', and someone gave you 'Age of Empires' instead for Christmas, you're not going to want to wait the extra week it's going to take to get it straightened back out again)
The SR71 pre-dates most computer hacks, as the SR-71's design predates most computers...
The expansion problems had to be completely handled by slide rules. The Blackbird was 'pre-heated' by a jet engine to get the seams to seal, before filling it with fuel.
Another interesting fact-- by the time the SR71 was in heavy use as a spy plane, computer controls were used to insure the place was in the proper place for the photographs. The human was primarily there to land the plane.
That wasn't a Mazda 'planned' item, from what I know of the situation...basically it's this--
you've got _1_ major moving part. (okay, not counting valves, not counting the 3 little springy bits used to seperate the 3 chambers)
The design simply doesn't have redundancy... say, with a V-6...you blow a cylinder, there's still 5 more...
With a rotary combustion engine, there's one main part, and if it gets messed up, it either stops, or you lose 2 of the 3 chambers, which makes it functionally useless.
Now, what I'm surprised no one ever did was to make a 'double' engine, off from each other by 60 degrees, which means there'd be 6 power strokes per rotation, rather than 3. (Mind you, a 6-cylinder standard engine gets 3, as it's a 4-stroke)
Naturally, it also doesn't help that they get worse power per gallon, due to it behaving more like a 2-stroke engine, however, they're ideally suited to small cars, as they're signficantly lighter and smaller than other other engines.
I think the important thing to any gift giving is to know your recipient. I mean, sure, we may all qualify as 'geeks' here, but to imply that we all want the same thing is just another form of stereotyping.
Take for instance what I asked for at my birthday, when my mom was bugging me--
Ties. (Star Wars, Cirque du Soleil, Wolverine, etc.) However, I'm in the process of changing jobs, so I don't know if I'll be required to wear a tie at my next job, so this isn't on my list.
When in doubt, the best choice are 'gift cards', from somewhere you know the person shops-- Best Buy, Tower Records, etc.
Of course, one of the biggest problems with buying things over the internet is the problem with returns. I have no problem ordering stuff for myself over the internet, but if I have even the slightest thought that someone may possibly want to return something, chances are, I'll order through Border Books or Barnes and Noble over Amazon.
So, to restate the whole point -- there is no 'one perfect gift'. (even cash may not qualify, if there's someone who never leaves the house, and so, would need for you to handle direct deposit instead, so they could make use of it)
Sure, it's about someone working as a phone sex operator, and masterbating too much, but still, they have a legitimate problem, too.
Personally, I don't touch type, so because I move my hands how I feel they're comfortable, I don't tend to have so much problem with typing for long periods of time, although I'm not 100% accurate. (which I attribute to mental mistakes more than physical typing difficulties).
And writing with common stylii (whatever the plural of stylus is) hurts more than typing or using a mouse... especially for those of us who don't hold a pencil 'correctly' in the first place (lefties being the most common ones, and I learned to write from a lefty), but imagine taking 3 years of drafting classes, trying to write ANSI compliant letters, and holding your pencils completely ass-backwards...
For common activities, I can the benefits of this, however, there are a few tasks where it may not be in the best interest to actually practice something of this sort...
(I mean, if you can get virtual walking-- who's to say we can't do virtual rock climbing?)
For the most part, I would think that this would have to be limited to practicing dangerous activities that aren't dependant upon dynmaics due to the human body -- I mean, the speed at which you rotate in gymnastics/diving/ski jumping/etc is based on the size of each limb in an individual's body, and it's relative position to your center of mass.
Of course, as with anything else, you'd have to decide if the cost to develop the program would offset the risks associated with performing the actions in real life.
Otherwise, you'd have to have it developed by someone who knows they'll be able to recoup their money within an acceptable period of time, which would most likely be the entertainment industry. (Although, I'm guessing that any 'interactive movies' would have to be more like Dragon's Lair than anything else, which wouldn't really depend on this topic, as you're forced to take one of a limited choice of paths)
Spidering suggests to me that you're copying everything word for word, which is bad. Linking to someone is one thing, but copying their content is asking for trouble.
Your safest method of automation would be to parse their headlines, and link to their content for the details, making it clearly known that they're the original source.
I'm still surprised that Americans are so keen on sticking with a measurement system that was so blatantly European to start with. (C'mon...how many of you know how many feet in a rod? Bushels in a peck? Acres in a square mile? Pounds in a stone? or even what type of measurement a hectare is?)
(and the answers -- 16.5; trick question : 0.25, however, the Winchester Bushell is only 2150.42 cu.in., not 2218.2 cu.in.; Trick question: In England/US - 640, Scotland - 508, Ireland - 395; Depends on what you're measuring: hemp - 32, cheese - 16, humans - 14, meat - 8; It's actually metric - 10,000 m2)
And well, to go with the Neil Gaimen theme from last week -- From Good Omens :
*NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:
Two farthings = one Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupennies = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.
The first naming convention I got to deal with was cheeses. There's not really any order to it (as no one cheese is really above another one, so no server names particularly stick out), but they're not so silly that you look unprofessional.
(of course, there's still some humor in there, with velveta, whiz, nacho, rat, government, etc).
Other naming schemes I've seen:
Muppets
Songs (stain & vivid were printers, escape a router, etc)
Redneck names. (the boss named the servers after himself and his wife, and it went downhill from there)
adverbs. (mostly, extremely, etc. for 'annoying.org')
tools (engineering school, UMD)
military alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, etc.)
cereals (the dept. was abbreviated 'CoCo', and it grew from there)
movies
Other things which you could use (none of which are really professional):
Cuts of meat (rumproast, loinchop, backribs, chuck, etc.)
Alcohol (wines, hard liquor, or even beers)
Fruits & vegetables
If you think about it, there's plenty of lists to work with...
When I was working at GWU, they started trying to transition it so that servers were named after gods. (something about us naming a machine 'tiberium' right about when C&C came out) Of course, the only one that ever got named was the listserv box (hermes). I then suggested that we rename the quake server to Bacchus, and well, for some reason, we never used that naming convention again.
Did that, 6 out of 400. (and ~550 freshman class...gotta love the dropout rates in DC suburbs). I graduated college too, cum laude with an engineering degree, while sleeping through class and working 20-25hrs/week at a paying job, and some misc. time on the school's solar car team.
I sure as hell don't dye my hair to show school spirit, as I don't have any. I just had to be annoying when graduating on the Ellipse on the Mall in DC.
Now, what you need to do is to stop hiding behind that 'anonymous coward'.
Well, unless you're one of the freaks that I already know from Beaumont, there's more of you out in that area than you know.
(I say this based on the fact that all of the people that I know from that area had at least some bit of freak in them). Of course, they were mudders, and well, there aren't exactly too many people who fall in with that group, and in the 'passably normal' group, also.
(muah...and this topic's old enough that it's rare to get moderated...so I get to keep my karma, unless someone hits me just for spite after reading this sentance.)
Well, I'd have to say that my favorite issue was #4, which was the first one that I ever read. (insert plug here for Twilite Zone Comics, Glen Burnie [formerly in Annapolis], MD).
(and well, I was too stupid to bring it to get it signed when I went to a book signing in Crystal City, VA ~8-9 years ago)
However, my favorite Gaiman works weren't Sandman, (although, I'm 5 issues short for completing a second complete set). I really wish that there were some way of getting a NTSC copy of Neverwhere (the miniseries brought out quite a few things that I didn't see in the book, and visa-versa). Hell, I'd even get a DVD player for it, if it were available that way.
Another great work was Angels and Visitations. (which I seem to have never gotten back after loaning to someone). Erm...it wasn't available on Amazon last I looked, but Neil had some mention there of another book where you could get most of the stories, if memory serves) [it was a collection of short works]
yeah, there's some of us whose hair strips to yellow, so when we try to dye it blue, it turns green. And who really wants green hair?
(so, unfortunately, I've been sticking with red, however, the good news is that Manic Panic 'Flaming' doesn't look as bright under flourescent lighting, so those of us who work under poor lighting conditions in basements can get away with unusual hair.)
Well, I don't dye all of my hair, either, as I have a *cough* respectable job, nor do I consider myself a 'cracker', (It's much easier to trick someone into giving you access, if you really want it, anyway). Anyway, as to the hair, for those of you with long hair, if you tie up the hair on top, and only dye the hair on the back of your head, depending on how you tie back your hair, you can achieve normal-ish (brown, in my case), abnormal (the blue & orange stripes to match my school's graduation colors), or you can braid it for some interesting effects.
(okay, this started out as offtopic, edged towards funny there for a second, and then went to informative (yet off topic) for those who are trying to get away with dying their hair...end result--- no one probably cares enough about this post to moderate it, which is probably a good thing)
MTV may have once been something interesting, and bringing us interesting things that we couldn't find elsewhere--
Ren & Stimpy, Remote Control, stuff like that.
They had a few good shows, and they were smart enough to spin Ha! off on its own channel (which combined with Comedy Central to form The Comedy Channel). There were funny bits, with Randy of the Redwoods running for president, but it was something to go along with the music, not as a replacement for the music.
Of course, then, in about '93 or so, that music included Mr. Big, (who I do believe was the son of some MTV exec), and about that point, people began to see that the music on MTV really wasn't that good. Metallica had sold out, and produced video after video, and things started turning into the popularity concerts like the student Goverment elections in high school, and had nothing to do with how good a song was.
With the type of crap MTV was playing, I'm almost glad they stopped playing music, but it's a shame that they also stopped producing good shows.
I've heard other people mention these problems with the MCI merger...it seems that MCI passed over the circuits, in a broader sense to C&W, but they didn't pass over the details of the customer database, or something lame like that.
The result was that calling C&W was completely useless. But they're not the only fubar'd telecom company out there. Anyone with that large of a customer database is going to make mistakes once in a while (I've got soem Sprint paging & AT&T horror stories that'd make you wonder how anyone could be that stupid).
What bothers me, however, is that it seems as if there's no accountability. When a small company messes up, you know where they are. If you pressure them long enough, you'll get through to someone who can fix something. I know an ISP that's been in dispute with AT&T for years over a past bill, has had collection agencies on 'em, etc, and can't get anyone to talk to them. (and was even still getting offers from AT&T to sign up for their backbone)
Well, in the large score of things, the shareholders of the companies are supposed to benefit. If a company does something that isn't in the financial interest of the company, then the shareholders are allowed to sue the company, or something like that.
(Any business law people here? They'd probably know the full details).
Anyway, it's shit like this that gets us in trouble...I mean, who determines financial interest? What's the horizon on it? (profitable over 1 year, 5 years, 100 years?)
I mean, we could work right at the edge of the environmental laws, and turn a better profit this year, but it might hurt us in the 100year scope, when our area turns into a brown field.
My prefered method of dealing with phone solicitation is that anytime you're requested to give your phone number, give your cell phone number. You'll get a few solicitations starting about 2 weeks from that point, and they'll last a couple of weeks, however, as there's a burden on you for them calling you (as you get charged for time), it's a federal crime to solicit to cell phones.
They get 1 warning per year, and after that, you can hit them for $500/incident (including the first).
The only flaw with this is that you can get some phone calls at annoying times (ie, driving), but it feels good to completely bitch out solicitors, as with one of my conversations with CitiBank:
"Are you aware that you just called a cell phone?" "Um...no, I wasn't" "Are you aware that it's a federal crime to solicit to a cell phone" *click*
(of course, I never did sue them...could have gotten $2k for it.)
Besides, most smart autoresponders keep a short list of who they've responded to recently, and won't send a second response to them. (Hell, even president@whitehouse.gov will only send one message per day)
I'd definately have to agree on this one. What is the reason for lumping together the two types of attacks?
There are significantly different resources behind the two, defenses, and in my opinion, different motives. (I mean, you don't have someone spreading some minor disease everywhere, 'just to see if it would kill someone', yet you have script kiddies download exploit scripts and running them against every last machine they can find, hoping to get a kill)
That's not to say that at times, the motivations may be the same, but you don't often get some prankster deciding that it'd be cool to show someone a hole in their security by cultivating anthrax, and dropping it inside a building.
The article seemed to be missing quite a few important points (but then again, I got bored with it, and skimmed a few sections, so it might be my fault). All that's really needed for a computer hacker is someone who understand how/why things work, and has a good ability for problem solving.
There's quite a few good precautions to take... one is simply creating good policy on how to deal with perceived threats, especially internal.
Here's a real life example, as it happened to me:
I once put something on a web site discusing how a faculty member was using university equiptment to start up his own company (mind you, purchased tax exempt), and had given us inferior equiptment to use, with 'Property of NASA' stickers on it (where he also worked). Well, I also happened to use the word 'fuck' in reference to him and some others on the site in a few locations, which was a breach of the Code of Computer Conduct, so I got called to the dean's office, and they threatened to have me expelled (I wasn't aware at that time that they were getting a few mil in grant money from Ford for some other research the teacher was doing, and the school as more than willing to let me go rather than lose their funding). Anyway, in the course of the discussion (which I really should transcribe, along with the faculty member threatening me in the hallway afterwards, as I have it all on tape), they threatened to have me removed from my job at the university.
That was a really bad move, as had I really been pissed off at them (which well, I admit, I hold grudges), I would have immediately gone to the system, and given myself a few backdoors in (as I worked in academic computing, and had root access on the 20k+ user mail server). So anyway, either fire people, or don't. If you've got a computer person whom you think is a problem, don't give them any warning. Lock them out as best you can, and begin a full audit of the system to see if they've left in any back doors. Never even hint at firing someone, or they could put a few hooks in there, just for the fun of it. (eg, something that would trigger should their account ever be removed, etc.)
Most places that are even reasonaly sensitive should already have protocols such as this, but I don't know the intended audiences for this article.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing the majority of you haven't actually messed with an iMac, then.
The front parts (speakers, CD-ROM), are flush with the front plastic, so it might be possible to do it with them again in this task, assuming that the curvature is similar.
(and the CD isn't put in _that_ well...look at the enlarged picture of it closed, and you'll see it's not that straight of a cut that he made)
The rear ports on a normal iMac, for those that haven't looked, are behind a curved plastic privacy panel. They're not meant to be flush mounted.
(I'm not saying that it definately _is_ real, hell, they could even be doctored photos, I'm just saying that the previous reasons for it not being real, if anything, show that it's more likely to be legit.)
Oh...and as to 'hacking up' the back-- as he doesn't have the capability to flush mount the rear ports, it makes perfect sense that he'd have to cut away some extra so that he could easy grasp at connections.
Okay, I'm male, and graduated #6 of 400 or so.
I hung out in the computer lab at school, with kids mostly a year ahead of me, until my senior year, when I instead hung out in the print shop
You would, too, if your mother forced you to go to counseling ever since you were 11, because she wasn't taking the seperation well, and when my dad was there, I rememebr him telling my mom to shut the kids up, as he was trying to get work done.
I played AD&D, ShadowRun, BattleTech, WH40K.
Nope, never happened.
See the section on self-esteem.
Well, I wouldn't say it was chronic, but I did pick on a kid on our bus. And I didn't use grugs other than caffeine...although I did get annoyed with 'red ribbon week', when people were supposed to wear red ribbons to show they were drug free, and I came up with an alternate coloring system, to show what drugs you were on (birth control, caffeine, nicotine, pain killers, etc.)
Okay, so I heckled in class. So what? And I accepted criticism...although there was this one day junior year, when one of the ROTC kids in my class leaned over to me, and asked 'are you a loser?', and I grabbed him by the throat... then I started getting threats from a bunch of other ROTC pricks.
Which, as you can see, means that I said 'no' to a question, therefore, it doesn't apply to me, damnit.
School does many things other than just teach --
It gives a chance to develop our social skills (which well, as we can see what's going on in current events, isn't working in many places), and it gives us a general smattering of many topics, so we can find what interests us, and what doesn't.
As for your concept of school, I believe there are schools that give the kids the materials to learn, and the kids are given the option to learn if they want to, but from my understanding of it, it's only shown to be an effective form of teaching at younger ages. (I wish I could remember the name of this style of teaching, but it escapes me)
Speed reading, if I recall correctly, was found to have a lower retention rate than standard reading. Unfortunately, as many people 'study for the test' rather than studying in general, it's a bit of a moot point, as students may prefer this method.
Math and the like are useful in life, but they're not typically taught in such a way as to show how useful they are. I mean, we've all had the stupid 'presentations' for an english/history class that we had to do, which effectively taught us how to prepare and execute a public presentation. (which as an introvert, I despised)
Math, unfortunately, many people see as useless...
Geometry and Trig come into much more use when you're working on building something in a TechEd class; I've even heard of private schools in Vermont who have 'applied geometry' classes, which is essentially surveying. I thought Differential Equations was the most useless thing, until I actually had a chance to apply it in fluid dynamics and solid mechanics.
What's more important than just teaching, is in finding how each student learns. Some people are hands-on, some prefer self-learning. Some like lectures, some need the one-on-one question/answer sessions.
It's not what's more convenient for me, it's what's more convenient for the recipient of the gift. Again, know your recipient...
If they're not going to have that type of store in their area to return to, then that's a bad choice to buy from.
In your example, however, you bought the item yourself, and had the original packaging, which when given as a gift, the recipient wouldn't have.
Also, especially in the case of kids, Christmas, now being the over commercialized 'Hallmark' type holiday (over-hyped so you send a card and they can sell stuff), it's more and more about the whole instant gradification thing. You don't want to have to wait for a package to be returned to exchange it.
(yeah, it's a sad look on life, but it's true...as people get older, it's not quite like that, but if you were expecting 'Age of Kings', and someone gave you 'Age of Empires' instead for Christmas, you're not going to want to wait the extra week it's going to take to get it straightened back out again)
The SR71 pre-dates most computer hacks, as the SR-71's design predates most computers...
The expansion problems had to be completely handled by slide rules. The Blackbird was 'pre-heated' by a jet engine to get the seams to seal, before filling it with fuel.
Another interesting fact-- by the time the SR71 was in heavy use as a spy plane, computer controls were used to insure the place was in the proper place for the photographs. The human was primarily there to land the plane.
That wasn't a Mazda 'planned' item, from what I know of the situation...basically it's this--
you've got _1_ major moving part. (okay, not counting valves, not counting the 3 little springy bits used to seperate the 3 chambers)
The design simply doesn't have redundancy...
say, with a V-6...you blow a cylinder, there's still 5 more...
With a rotary combustion engine, there's one main part, and if it gets messed up, it either stops, or you lose 2 of the 3 chambers, which makes it functionally useless.
Now, what I'm surprised no one ever did was to make a 'double' engine, off from each other by 60 degrees, which means there'd be 6 power strokes per rotation, rather than 3. (Mind you, a 6-cylinder standard engine gets 3, as it's a 4-stroke)
Naturally, it also doesn't help that they get worse power per gallon, due to it behaving more like a 2-stroke engine, however, they're ideally suited to small cars, as they're signficantly lighter and smaller than other other engines.
Pokémon!
Then we can wait for the market values to fluctuate, and dump it off later to make more money.
Take for instance what I asked for at my birthday, when my mom was bugging me--
Ties. (Star Wars, Cirque du Soleil, Wolverine, etc.)
However, I'm in the process of changing jobs, so I don't know if I'll be required to wear a tie at my next job, so this isn't on my list.
When in doubt, the best choice are 'gift cards', from somewhere you know the person shops--
Best Buy, Tower Records, etc.
Of course, one of the biggest problems with buying things over the internet is the problem with returns. I have no problem ordering stuff for myself over the internet, but if I have even the slightest thought that someone may possibly want to return something, chances are, I'll order through Border Books or Barnes and Noble over Amazon.
So, to restate the whole point -- there is no 'one perfect gift'. (even cash may not qualify, if there's someone who never leaves the house, and so, would need for you to handle direct deposit instead, so they could make use of it)
Here's just a small example:
- http://live.av.com/scripts/editorial.dll?bfromind
= 940&eeid=990341&eetype=articl e&render=y&ck=
Sure, it's about someone working as a phone sex operator, and masterbating too much, but still, they have a legitimate problem, too.Personally, I don't touch type, so because I move my hands how I feel they're comfortable, I don't tend to have so much problem with typing for long periods of time, although I'm not 100% accurate. (which I attribute to mental mistakes more than physical typing difficulties).
And writing with common stylii (whatever the plural of stylus is) hurts more than typing or using a mouse... especially for those of us who don't hold a pencil 'correctly' in the first place (lefties being the most common ones, and I learned to write from a lefty), but imagine taking 3 years of drafting classes, trying to write ANSI compliant letters, and holding your pencils completely ass-backwards...
For common activities, I can the benefits of this, however, there are a few tasks where it may not be in the best interest to actually practice something of this sort...
(I mean, if you can get virtual walking-- who's to say we can't do virtual rock climbing?)
For the most part, I would think that this would have to be limited to practicing dangerous activities that aren't dependant upon dynmaics due to the human body -- I mean, the speed at which you rotate in gymnastics/diving/ski jumping/etc is based on the size of each limb in an individual's body, and it's relative position to your center of mass.
Of course, as with anything else, you'd have to decide if the cost to develop the program would offset the risks associated with performing the actions in real life.
Otherwise, you'd have to have it developed by someone who knows they'll be able to recoup their money within an acceptable period of time, which would most likely be the entertainment industry.
(Although, I'm guessing that any 'interactive movies' would have to be more like Dragon's Lair than anything else, which wouldn't really depend on this topic, as you're forced to take one of a limited choice of paths)
Spidering suggests to me that you're copying everything word for word, which is bad. Linking to someone is one thing, but copying their content is asking for trouble.
Your safest method of automation would be to parse their headlines, and link to their content for the details, making it clearly known that they're the original source.
(and the answers -- 16.5; trick question : 0.25, however, the Winchester Bushell is only 2150.42 cu.in., not 2218.2 cu.in.; Trick question: In England/US - 640, Scotland - 508, Ireland - 395; Depends on what you're measuring: hemp - 32, cheese - 16, humans - 14, meat - 8; It's actually metric - 10,000 m2)
And well, to go with the Neil Gaimen theme from last week -- From Good Omens :
(of course, there's still some humor in there, with velveta, whiz, nacho, rat, government, etc).
Other naming schemes I've seen:
Other things which you could use (none of which are really professional):
If you think about it, there's plenty of lists to work with...
When I was working at GWU, they started trying to transition it so that servers were named after gods. (something about us naming a machine 'tiberium' right about when C&C came out) Of course, the only one that ever got named was the listserv box (hermes). I then suggested that we rename the quake server to Bacchus, and well, for some reason, we never used that naming convention again.
In the off chance that someone will read this, even being a multi-day old topic, with plenty of comments already--
There's a part of an interview with Neil Gaiman at Aint-It-Cool-News:
http://www.aint-it-cool-news.c om/display.cgi?id=4583
(it's towards the bottom). It mentions what else he's currently working on, including a movie versions of Neverwhere.
Graduate high school?
Did that, 6 out of 400. (and ~550 freshman class...gotta love the dropout rates in DC suburbs). I graduated college too, cum laude with an engineering degree, while sleeping through class and working 20-25hrs/week at a paying job, and some misc. time on the school's solar car team.
I sure as hell don't dye my hair to show school spirit, as I don't have any. I just had to be annoying when graduating on the Ellipse on the Mall in DC.
Now, what you need to do is to stop hiding behind that 'anonymous coward'.
Well, unless you're one of the freaks that I already know from Beaumont, there's more of you out in that area than you know.
(I say this based on the fact that all of the people that I know from that area had at least some bit of freak in them). Of course, they were mudders, and well, there aren't exactly too many people who fall in with that group, and in the 'passably normal' group, also.
(muah...and this topic's old enough that it's rare to get moderated...so I get to keep my karma, unless someone hits me just for spite after reading this sentance.)
Well, I'd have to say that my favorite issue was #4, which was the first one that I ever read. (insert plug here for Twilite Zone Comics, Glen Burnie [formerly in Annapolis], MD).
(and well, I was too stupid to bring it to get it signed when I went to a book signing in Crystal City, VA ~8-9 years ago)
However, my favorite Gaiman works weren't Sandman, (although, I'm 5 issues short for completing a second complete set). I really wish that there were some way of getting a NTSC copy of Neverwhere (the miniseries brought out quite a few things that I didn't see in the book, and visa-versa). Hell, I'd even get a DVD player for it, if it were available that way.
Another great work was Angels and Visitations. (which I seem to have never gotten back after loaning to someone). Erm...it wasn't available on Amazon last I looked, but Neil had some mention there of another book where you could get most of the stories, if memory serves) [it was a collection of short works]
yeah, there's some of us whose hair strips to yellow, so when we try to dye it blue, it turns green. And who really wants green hair?
(so, unfortunately, I've been sticking with red, however, the good news is that Manic Panic 'Flaming' doesn't look as bright under flourescent lighting, so those of us who work under poor lighting conditions in basements can get away with unusual hair.)
Well, I don't dye all of my hair, either, as I have a *cough* respectable job, nor do I consider myself a 'cracker', (It's much easier to trick someone into giving you access, if you really want it, anyway). Anyway, as to the hair, for those of you with long hair, if you tie up the hair on top, and only dye the hair on the back of your head, depending on how you tie back your hair, you can achieve normal-ish (brown, in my case), abnormal (the blue & orange stripes to match my school's graduation colors), or you can braid it for some interesting effects.
(okay, this started out as offtopic, edged towards funny there for a second, and then went to informative (yet off topic) for those who are trying to get away with dying their hair...end result--- no one probably cares enough about this post to moderate it, which is probably a good thing)
MTV may have once been something interesting, and bringing us interesting things that we couldn't find elsewhere--
Ren & Stimpy, Remote Control, stuff like that.
They had a few good shows, and they were smart enough to spin Ha! off on its own channel (which combined with Comedy Central to form The Comedy Channel). There were funny bits, with Randy of the Redwoods running for president, but it was something to go along with the music, not as a replacement for the music.
Of course, then, in about '93 or so, that music included Mr. Big, (who I do believe was the son of some MTV exec), and about that point, people began to see that the music on MTV really wasn't that good. Metallica had sold out, and produced video after video, and things started turning into the popularity concerts like the student Goverment elections in high school, and had nothing to do with how good a song was.
With the type of crap MTV was playing, I'm almost glad they stopped playing music, but it's a shame that they also stopped producing good shows.
I've heard other people mention these problems with the MCI merger...it seems that MCI passed over the circuits, in a broader sense to C&W, but they didn't pass over the details of the customer database, or something lame like that.
The result was that calling C&W was completely useless. But they're not the only fubar'd telecom company out there. Anyone with that large of a customer database is going to make mistakes once in a while (I've got soem Sprint paging & AT&T horror stories that'd make you wonder how anyone could be that stupid).
What bothers me, however, is that it seems as if there's no accountability. When a small company messes up, you know where they are. If you pressure them long enough, you'll get through to someone who can fix something. I know an ISP that's been in dispute with AT&T for years over a past bill, has had collection agencies on 'em, etc, and can't get anyone to talk to them. (and was even still getting offers from AT&T to sign up for their backbone)
Well, in the large score of things, the shareholders of the companies are supposed to benefit. If a company does something that isn't in the financial interest of the company, then the shareholders are allowed to sue the company, or something like that.
(Any business law people here? They'd probably know the full details).
Anyway, it's shit like this that gets us in trouble...I mean, who determines financial interest? What's the horizon on it? (profitable over 1 year, 5 years, 100 years?)
I mean, we could work right at the edge of the environmental laws, and turn a better profit this year, but it might hurt us in the 100year scope, when our area turns into a brown field.
My prefered method of dealing with phone solicitation is that anytime you're requested to give your phone number, give your cell phone number. You'll get a few solicitations starting about 2 weeks from that point, and they'll last a couple of weeks, however, as there's a burden on you for them calling you (as you get charged for time), it's a federal crime to solicit to cell phones.
They get 1 warning per year, and after that, you can hit them for $500/incident (including the first).
The only flaw with this is that you can get some phone calls at annoying times (ie, driving), but it feels good to completely bitch out solicitors, as with one of my conversations with CitiBank:
"Are you aware that you just called a cell phone?"
"Um...no, I wasn't"
"Are you aware that it's a federal crime to solicit to a cell phone"
*click*
(of course, I never did sue them...could have gotten $2k for it.)
Isn't that what the X-Loop header is for?
Besides, most smart autoresponders keep a short list of who they've responded to recently, and won't send a second response to them. (Hell, even president@whitehouse.gov will only send one message per day)
I'd definately have to agree on this one. What is the reason for lumping together the two types of attacks?
There are significantly different resources behind the two, defenses, and in my opinion, different motives. (I mean, you don't have someone spreading some minor disease everywhere, 'just to see if it would kill someone', yet you have script kiddies download exploit scripts and running them against every last machine they can find, hoping to get a kill)
That's not to say that at times, the motivations may be the same, but you don't often get some prankster deciding that it'd be cool to show someone a hole in their security by cultivating anthrax, and dropping it inside a building.
The article seemed to be missing quite a few important points (but then again, I got bored with it, and skimmed a few sections, so it might be my fault). All that's really needed for a computer hacker is someone who understand how/why things work, and has a good ability for problem solving.
There's quite a few good precautions to take... one is simply creating good policy on how to deal with perceived threats, especially internal.
Here's a real life example, as it happened to me:
I once put something on a web site discusing how a faculty member was using university equiptment to start up his own company (mind you, purchased tax exempt), and had given us inferior equiptment to use, with 'Property of NASA' stickers on it (where he also worked). Well, I also happened to use the word 'fuck' in reference to him and some others on the site in a few locations, which was a breach of the Code of Computer Conduct, so I got called to the dean's office, and they threatened to have me expelled (I wasn't aware at that time that they were getting a few mil in grant money from Ford for some other research the teacher was doing, and the school as more than willing to let me go rather than lose their funding). Anyway, in the course of the discussion (which I really should transcribe, along with the faculty member threatening me in the hallway afterwards, as I have it all on tape), they threatened to have me removed from my job at the university.
That was a really bad move, as had I really been pissed off at them (which well, I admit, I hold grudges), I would have immediately gone to the system, and given myself a few backdoors in (as I worked in academic computing, and had root access on the 20k+ user mail server). So anyway, either fire people, or don't. If you've got a computer person whom you think is a problem, don't give them any warning. Lock them out as best you can, and begin a full audit of the system to see if they've left in any back doors. Never even hint at firing someone, or they could put a few hooks in there, just for the fun of it. (eg, something that would trigger should their account ever be removed, etc.)
Most places that are even reasonaly sensitive should already have protocols such as this, but I don't know the intended audiences for this article.