OK, maybe it wasn't MAD magazine, but it was one of those cheezy mags that did interviews of stars and celebrities that girls would buy. I remember a red color theme to the thing, but the interview pages themselves were black and white.
Hmmm, you're right, that doesn't sound much like MAD does it? Oh well, it's all a big blur now...only a glimpse...do you see it Enterprise? Do you see it?? I'll be better in the morning.
Also, Nimoy said that he loves his wife's lasagna, he can't get enough of it. Does that pin it down?
Throughout the years of "Star Trek" episodes and movies, Jimmy's relationship with series star Shatner was tense.
"To this day, they don't know why," Chris said, "but they've made up within the last year."
"It was a long battle," he said. "It came to the point that neither of them knew why they were angry at each other, and they're getting old."
Probably because Shatner is a pompous ass, and you can quote me on that.
I recall reading my sister's MAD magazine from the 1960s in which they interviewed Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley. I cannot forget the quote by Shatner that "I can't stand conceited, pompous people."
Then when the reports from conventions, interviews with co-stars, and other indications of how Shatner really is, that quote became particularly interesting to me, much like the pot calling the kettle black.
Conversely, I've never heard a bad word about Jimmy Doohan from anyone who has met him or worked with him. He just seems like an affable guy who doesn't take things too seriously; just think of the calm way he said "Aye" in the TNG episode "Relics" at the end as he boarded his shuttlecraft gift.
Contrasted against Shatner I can see how they would rub each other the wrong way.
No, actually if you shorted the stock and the company goes out of business you pocket every penny for which you sold it. SCH-WING!!
Those little witticisms about 'the past is prologue' and 'those who ignore history...' are really cute. But then I remind myself: this is Slashdot and it all falls into the proper perspective.
Don't be silly! Slashdotters never over-react, panic, or fly off the handle in childish tantrums because they can't have a particular toy. What planet are you from???
My hard-earned experience with Wall Street is that it really doesn't give a rat's patootie about the past (earnings report), but rather pays attention to the forecast for the next quarter and year.
Watch what they hint at and see the reaction in their stock price next week after everyone gets back from Summer vacation and the real traders start to move things en masse.
The telemarketing scumbags have been masking their identities for quite some time without this 'service' so I am just finishing yawning over the article, which has a few inaccuracies that I correct below.
The ICLID (Individual Caller ID) field is separate from the ANI field in the SS7 message. Depending on your tariffs you might or might not be able to stuff the ANI field; you almost always can stuff the ICLID field with whatever nummer you want.
What the other end displays is not always consistent across the various operating companies and carriers, so don't go strutting around like you've pulled the wool over everyone's eyes just yet.
Further, the name lookup that you see on your display is performed by the terminating switch (serving you), so you can't spoof that. Of course, if you spoof John Q. Smith's nummer it will usually show his name, unless he is not a subscriber of your local tephone cumpny; in that case you get nuttin and like it. Even that is subject to variations due to interexchange agreements.
All in all, this service does not meet the technical neatness test, can't overcome the stupidity and ineptness of the various carriers, and is just a jolly good way for somebody to make some extra bucks. It's probably easier just to go down to 7-11 and use their coin box and get it over with.
Doesn't a browser simply need to follow the HTML specification, CSS 2 (this week, at least), maybe some extra fanciness thrown in for coolness factor?
Gmail seems to be about as plain an interface as I can create with a text editor: some text, a few buttons and a drop-down listbox control, all of which is apparently pumped out by Javascript code. What fails when visiting Google mail with an Opera browser? The Javascript execution?
While you're at it, somebody explain to me why I'm supposed to get wood over Gmail? I've had an account since they started doling them out. I'm going to keep the address restricted to myself only in order to see when the junk mail starts pouring in. Like I really need *another* e-mail account to check.
Surely, a MicroSoft product would not create output with excessive numbers of questionable HTML tags, no? There's a lot of junky legit mail floating around out there.
I just question the tone of this press release that fed this/. article. Talking about their "firewall" in absolute terms struck me as being as foolish as claiming "our encryption technology is unbreakable!"
This past week I was shutting down this here Win2k system when I was done with it because my APC 450 V.A. u.p.s. had exhausted its second set of batteries and would not hold through these brief power glitches (likely caused by Florida Power and Light cutting in replacement transformers around here) that we have been getting.[1]
A buddy gave me a large u.p.s. that had been in commercial service, so I hooked up two 12 volt deep cycle marine batteries in series to it and it fired up fine. Right while I was reading/. last night POW! the thing just shuts down a.c. output on me for no friggin reason. Yes, I was very upset.[2]
Nonetheless, I stand by my assertion unwaveringly. I was primarily thinking of power outages lasting no more than a few seconds, which are the most common where I have lived and worked. These are more troubling because they leave hardware gates and c.p.u.s in unknown states due to their brevity and result in the "wierdness" that I spoke of in my original post.
You are free to calculate a costs/benefits analysis of replacement hardware under a scenario in which a power failure fried your motherboard, but no matter how good you are at backups, if you actually *use* your computer you will have data that has not yet been backed up. I don't know about you, but my time is far more valuable than this pile of P.L.A.s and capacitors and printed circuits and I don't want to add to the potential to waste that time by going without a u.p.s. and suffering the ensuing headaches. A u.p.s. is a very worthwhile investment, as is a r.a.i.d. and other enhancements.
The primary reason for posting my original comments is that I assume that most subscribers here are software types, so they probably don't have the interest in or experience with these hardware considerations. Words to the wise; the rest can suffer.
SO: when you read a proponent of ReiserFS claim "Well, my ext3 fs lost data on me so it's no better than ReiserFS", ask them if they had a u.p.s. supplying clean power to the box running ext3 before jumping to any conclusions. Back on topic.
***
[1] By the way, turning the machine on and off places it under greater thermal stresses from heating and cooling cycles, thus shortening the life of box. My machine normally stays on all the time.
[2] This has happened about a dozen times to this NTFS in the past week and I haven't lost any data; I'm wondering about the motives of the subscriber who earlier commented that NTFS is the worst file system of all the ones being discussed here.
"EVERY computer needs an uninterruptible power supply. EVERY one."
There are so many problems of which you might not be aware, aside from those requiring you to run fsck afterwards, which are solved by a good u.p.s. that you'd be penny-wise, pound-foolish for not putting a u.p.s. on every machine in sight.
My clients think that I can walk on water simply because I eliminated a large share of unexplainable wierdnesses from their machines by installing an inexpensive u.p.s. on every single one.
Solid, clean power is very important to a stable computing system. I cannot stress this enough.
Wow! I feel a lot better about my 2048-bit PGP key from back in the day.
This article would make me worried that I can't remember the passphrase, except that I had to swallow the floppy to avoid being thrown in jail for trafficking in munitions.:-(
with the modern phones any decently put together site is viewable pretty well, as long as the creators weren't too narrow minded.
That qualification just excluded a good number of sites. I do occasional work at an art college and their web design class there focuses on how to gum up your web site with Flash widgets and scripts and animation...completely disregarding that a growing number of web site visitors on mobile devices will be unable or unwilling to partake of that 'rich user experience' that gobbles up their costly bandwidth. The kids eat this stuff up without any comprehension of the impact on the user, based on my discussions with some of them who take that class.
WAP will stay dead as long as narrow-minded people want to show the world how 'artistic' they can be, whether it takes the form of HTML, XHTML, XML, etc.; these just provide more ways for thoughtless web authors to paint themselves and their hapless clients into a corner.
The user of the phone was not placed in the loop in order to allow or deny the transmission of the text message. For the purposes of the game's author, this would not make sense to notify the user because they thought they were being really clever detecting "piracy" this way, but no application should ever have the ability to do this without the consent of the user.
I can envision a rare case where someone borrows this guy's phone to make a call, loads the pirated game on it, and the phone's owner has no idea that his phone has now labeled him a pirate, and runs up his phone bill with SMS charges!
The fact that the phone can perform automated functions without the express consent of the user is the root trouble here, that allows both malware and stupid-ware to do this in the first place.
Keep the user in the loop, if you know what's good for ya.
I'm well aware of the needed synergy between subscriber equipment and network infrastructure. As another poster mentioned, features like cameras and SMS drive up the traffic to the $$$ benefit of the carriers, so that much makes perfect sense as to why such features are developed.
What makes no sense is that if the network coverage is suffering from what it could be, I can't take full advantage of these premium services. I can't send you a picture of my--uh, me if I get a weak or non-existent signal.
Has anyone noticed that newer phones are shaped as pure rectangles? Remember the phones like my ancient, antiquated Nokia 6160 that had a little stub of an antenna sticking out the top? It has better range because of it, but it's not "kewl" so the marketers don't want it. (This came direct from a marketing VP at a major U.S. carrier.) So you drop calls more often so that your phone can look cool. Gee, thanks for that feature!
This same major carrier even ordered the manufacturer to develop a much more cumbersome keypad layout because they didn't want their phone to look too much like a competitor's model, even though the guts are identical. So now you have to contort your fingers to dial rather than dialing by feel because--ta da--a marketing geek decided what you need, rather than asking you. Back to square one, above.
There are other issues impacting the basic handling of calls, such as layoffs and cutbacks in the performance departments of some of the major carriers, as well as some clueless upper managers, that prevent them from ensuring better network performance. That much is beyond the reach of equipment vendors, but both sides suffer when either does not maximize its potential performance.
These computer-like features that will ultimately be used for malware unbeknownst to the user do not improve the phone's performance for me, the forgotten user.
The problem is that marketers, in league with the propeller heads, keep finding more and more features that we don't need while ignoring the one feature that we all demand: reliable voice coverage.
Just because we can do something does not mean that we must or should do it. This is yet another example of a solution searching desperately for a problem; a feature (of J2ME) which is rushed to market in the hopes that everyone will go ga-ga over it, while the basic cellular service problems go ignored.
There isn't enough money in the universe to pay those girls to keep them from screaming at the top of their lungs and running at warp speed away from the most important open source developers.
I just installed XP SP2 on a client's XP Home machine. The FIRST WORDS out of his mouth before I even told him what I was going to do were "Well, I hope it doesn't make it any harder to use that damned computer. It took me long enough to figure it out as it is now..." and other related expressions of exasperation.
I can't wait (actually I can) to hear from him when the first SP2 pop-up question asks for permission to do something.
It is users like this that M$ sought to appease. M$ would rather open the thing up as wide as a 2 dollar whore rather than have millions of idiot lusers calling up their tech support lines asking how to answer the latest security question dialog.
Now M$ sees the egg on their face from the many security breaches as a bigger and growing problem, thus we have SP2 now. Expect the complaints from lusers over the coming months to increase exponentially.
Maybe this is the big chance for you linux sycophants to swoop down on unsuspecting Windoze lusers and lure them over?
Between the later years of TNG, the movies, and the final episode of V'ger, they have pussified the Borg so much that they are cut-out cartoon characters any more.
I remember watching the first-run of the Best of Both Worlds episodes with my non-Trekkie roommates and even THEY couldn't wait for the cliff-hanger conclusion 3 months away! Now *THAT* was scary Borgness! We didn't know much about them and they could kick ass while being impervious to our pea shooters. How will Humanity survive them??!
Now we throw a few quantum torpedos at them, raise our multiphasic shields, and press on undeterred. Big deal. The mystery has been solved, no puttin the genie back into the bottle, even via timeline manipulation.
Maybe Shatner would look good as a Borg drone? Or could the costume department even come up with enough piping and leather to cover his fat ass?
That would be the SUMO YATTA! if Shatner were performing it.
Actually, I believe Shatner was somewhat (or quite?) accomplished in the martial arts in his younger days; say, somewhere around the invention of electricity or so. A pity what time and self-neglect can do to us.
I agree. I used to swear by Zone Alarm also, but now I swear at it. Exceedingly long load times at boot and some blocked activity whose source is not clearly detectable leave me longing for better these days.
If the firewall is more configurable than it has been in the past and actually works without being unnecessarily intrusive, I'm all for it.
So far, the very few reviews of SP2 that I have heard are promising, and I hold no love for Micro$loth, believe me. If this thing is as good as they say it is, then I say "release the hounds!"
Slashdot Mirror
OK, maybe it wasn't MAD magazine, but it was one of those cheezy mags that did interviews of stars and celebrities that girls would buy. I remember a red color theme to the thing, but the interview pages themselves were black and white.
Hmmm, you're right, that doesn't sound much like MAD does it? Oh well, it's all a big blur now...only a glimpse...do you see it Enterprise? Do you see it?? I'll be better in the morning.
Also, Nimoy said that he loves his wife's lasagna, he can't get enough of it. Does that pin it down?
Throughout the years of "Star Trek" episodes and movies, Jimmy's relationship with series star Shatner was tense.
"To this day, they don't know why," Chris said, "but they've made up within the last year."
"It was a long battle," he said. "It came to the point that neither of them knew why they were angry at each other, and they're getting old."
Probably because Shatner is a pompous ass, and you can quote me on that.
I recall reading my sister's MAD magazine from the 1960s in which they interviewed Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley. I cannot forget the quote by Shatner that "I can't stand conceited, pompous people."
Then when the reports from conventions, interviews with co-stars, and other indications of how Shatner really is, that quote became particularly interesting to me, much like the pot calling the kettle black.
Conversely, I've never heard a bad word about Jimmy Doohan from anyone who has met him or worked with him. He just seems like an affable guy who doesn't take things too seriously; just think of the calm way he said "Aye" in the TNG episode "Relics" at the end as he boarded his shuttlecraft gift.
Contrasted against Shatner I can see how they would rub each other the wrong way.
No, actually if you shorted the stock and the company goes out of business you pocket every penny for which you sold it. SCH-WING!!
Those little witticisms about 'the past is prologue' and 'those who ignore history...' are really cute. But then I remind myself: this is Slashdot and it all falls into the proper perspective.
This may just be overpanic...
Don't be silly! Slashdotters never over-react, panic, or fly off the handle in childish tantrums because they can't have a particular toy. What planet are you from???
My hard-earned experience with Wall Street is that it really doesn't give a rat's patootie about the past (earnings report), but rather pays attention to the forecast for the next quarter and year.
Watch what they hint at and see the reaction in their stock price next week after everyone gets back from Summer vacation and the real traders start to move things en masse.
The telemarketing scumbags have been masking their identities for quite some time without this 'service' so I am just finishing yawning over the article, which has a few inaccuracies that I correct below.
The ICLID (Individual Caller ID) field is separate from the ANI field in the SS7 message. Depending on your tariffs you might or might not be able to stuff the ANI field; you almost always can stuff the ICLID field with whatever nummer you want.
What the other end displays is not always consistent across the various operating companies and carriers, so don't go strutting around like you've pulled the wool over everyone's eyes just yet.
Further, the name lookup that you see on your display is performed by the terminating switch (serving you), so you can't spoof that. Of course, if you spoof John Q. Smith's nummer it will usually show his name, unless he is not a subscriber of your local tephone cumpny; in that case you get nuttin and like it. Even that is subject to variations due to interexchange agreements.
All in all, this service does not meet the technical neatness test, can't overcome the stupidity and ineptness of the various carriers, and is just a jolly good way for somebody to make some extra bucks. It's probably easier just to go down to 7-11 and use their coin box and get it over with.
Have fun!
What, pray tell, is "Gmail support"?
Doesn't a browser simply need to follow the HTML specification, CSS 2 (this week, at least), maybe some extra fanciness thrown in for coolness factor?
Gmail seems to be about as plain an interface as I can create with a text editor: some text, a few buttons and a drop-down listbox control, all of which is apparently pumped out by Javascript code. What fails when visiting Google mail with an Opera browser? The Javascript execution?
While you're at it, somebody explain to me why I'm supposed to get wood over Gmail? I've had an account since they started doling them out. I'm going to keep the address restricted to myself only in order to see when the junk mail starts pouring in. Like I really need *another* e-mail account to check.
Thank you.
Surely, a MicroSoft product would not create output with excessive numbers of questionable HTML tags, no? There's a lot of junky legit mail floating around out there.
/. article. Talking about their "firewall" in absolute terms struck me as being as foolish as claiming "our encryption technology is unbreakable!"
:-)
I just question the tone of this press release that fed this
I see when I believe it.
Funny you should ask that.
/. last night POW! the thing just shuts down a.c. output on me for no friggin reason. Yes, I was very upset.[2]
This past week I was shutting down this here Win2k system when I was done with it because my APC 450 V.A. u.p.s. had exhausted its second set of batteries and would not hold through these brief power glitches (likely caused by Florida Power and Light cutting in replacement transformers around here) that we have been getting.[1]
A buddy gave me a large u.p.s. that had been in commercial service, so I hooked up two 12 volt deep cycle marine batteries in series to it and it fired up fine. Right while I was reading
Nonetheless, I stand by my assertion unwaveringly. I was primarily thinking of power outages lasting no more than a few seconds, which are the most common where I have lived and worked. These are more troubling because they leave hardware gates and c.p.u.s in unknown states due to their brevity and result in the "wierdness" that I spoke of in my original post.
You are free to calculate a costs/benefits analysis of replacement hardware under a scenario in which a power failure fried your motherboard, but no matter how good you are at backups, if you actually *use* your computer you will have data that has not yet been backed up. I don't know about you, but my time is far more valuable than this pile of P.L.A.s and capacitors and printed circuits and I don't want to add to the potential to waste that time by going without a u.p.s. and suffering the ensuing headaches. A u.p.s. is a very worthwhile investment, as is a r.a.i.d. and other enhancements.
The primary reason for posting my original comments is that I assume that most subscribers here are software types, so they probably don't have the interest in or experience with these hardware considerations. Words to the wise; the rest can suffer.
SO: when you read a proponent of ReiserFS claim "Well, my ext3 fs lost data on me so it's no better than ReiserFS", ask them if they had a u.p.s. supplying clean power to the box running ext3 before jumping to any conclusions. Back on topic.
***
[1] By the way, turning the machine on and off places it under greater thermal stresses from heating and cooling cycles, thus shortening the life of box. My machine normally stays on all the time.
[2] This has happened about a dozen times to this NTFS in the past week and I haven't lost any data; I'm wondering about the motives of the subscriber who earlier commented that NTFS is the worst file system of all the ones being discussed here.
Write on the blackboard 10^10000000 times:
"EVERY computer needs an uninterruptible power supply. EVERY one."
There are so many problems of which you might not be aware, aside from those requiring you to run fsck afterwards, which are solved by a good u.p.s. that you'd be penny-wise, pound-foolish for not putting a u.p.s. on every machine in sight.
My clients think that I can walk on water simply because I eliminated a large share of unexplainable wierdnesses from their machines by installing an inexpensive u.p.s. on every single one.
Solid, clean power is very important to a stable computing system. I cannot stress this enough.
Wow! I feel a lot better about my 2048-bit PGP key from back in the day.
:-(
This article would make me worried that I can't remember the passphrase, except that I had to swallow the floppy to avoid being thrown in jail for trafficking in munitions.
Stay on Sony's side.
I mean, after the stellar job they did with promoting the BetaMax format a while back they will undoubtedly succeed here, right?
I guess MS has two outputs: Software and bugs?
Does M$ distinguish between those two?
CRAP! I just threw out a big box of real, live, gennywine SCO Xenix paper manuals, complete with Larry Michaels-era logos on the binders.
I probably could have gotten serious dollars on eBay for them.
That qualification just excluded a good number of sites. I do occasional work at an art college and their web design class there focuses on how to gum up your web site with Flash widgets and scripts and animation...completely disregarding that a growing number of web site visitors on mobile devices will be unable or unwilling to partake of that 'rich user experience' that gobbles up their costly bandwidth. The kids eat this stuff up without any comprehension of the impact on the user, based on my discussions with some of them who take that class.
WAP will stay dead as long as narrow-minded people want to show the world how 'artistic' they can be, whether it takes the form of HTML, XHTML, XML, etc.; these just provide more ways for thoughtless web authors to paint themselves and their hapless clients into a corner.
The user of the phone was not placed in the loop in order to allow or deny the transmission of the text message. For the purposes of the game's author, this would not make sense to notify the user because they thought they were being really clever detecting "piracy" this way, but no application should ever have the ability to do this without the consent of the user.
I can envision a rare case where someone borrows this guy's phone to make a call, loads the pirated game on it, and the phone's owner has no idea that his phone has now labeled him a pirate, and runs up his phone bill with SMS charges!
The fact that the phone can perform automated functions without the express consent of the user is the root trouble here, that allows both malware and stupid-ware to do this in the first place.
Keep the user in the loop, if you know what's good for ya.
I'm well aware of the needed synergy between subscriber equipment and network infrastructure. As another poster mentioned, features like cameras and SMS drive up the traffic to the $$$ benefit of the carriers, so that much makes perfect sense as to why such features are developed.
What makes no sense is that if the network coverage is suffering from what it could be, I can't take full advantage of these premium services. I can't send you a picture of my--uh, me if I get a weak or non-existent signal.
Has anyone noticed that newer phones are shaped as pure rectangles? Remember the phones like my ancient, antiquated Nokia 6160 that had a little stub of an antenna sticking out the top? It has better range because of it, but it's not "kewl" so the marketers don't want it. (This came direct from a marketing VP at a major U.S. carrier.) So you drop calls more often so that your phone can look cool. Gee, thanks for that feature!
This same major carrier even ordered the manufacturer to develop a much more cumbersome keypad layout because they didn't want their phone to look too much like a competitor's model, even though the guts are identical. So now you have to contort your fingers to dial rather than dialing by feel because--ta da--a marketing geek decided what you need, rather than asking you. Back to square one, above.
There are other issues impacting the basic handling of calls, such as layoffs and cutbacks in the performance departments of some of the major carriers, as well as some clueless upper managers, that prevent them from ensuring better network performance. That much is beyond the reach of equipment vendors, but both sides suffer when either does not maximize its potential performance.
These computer-like features that will ultimately be used for malware unbeknownst to the user do not improve the phone's performance for me, the forgotten user.
The problem is that marketers, in league with the propeller heads, keep finding more and more features that we don't need while ignoring the one feature that we all demand: reliable voice coverage.
Just because we can do something does not mean that we must or should do it. This is yet another example of a solution searching desperately for a problem; a feature (of J2ME) which is rushed to market in the hopes that everyone will go ga-ga over it, while the basic cellular service problems go ignored.
There isn't enough money in the universe to pay those girls to keep them from screaming at the top of their lungs and running at warp speed away from the most important open source developers.
Get real!
I just installed XP SP2 on a client's XP Home machine. The FIRST WORDS out of his mouth before I even told him what I was going to do were "Well, I hope it doesn't make it any harder to use that damned computer. It took me long enough to figure it out as it is now..." and other related expressions of exasperation.
I can't wait (actually I can) to hear from him when the first SP2 pop-up question asks for permission to do something.
It is users like this that M$ sought to appease. M$ would rather open the thing up as wide as a 2 dollar whore rather than have millions of idiot lusers calling up their tech support lines asking how to answer the latest security question dialog.
Now M$ sees the egg on their face from the many security breaches as a bigger and growing problem, thus we have SP2 now. Expect the complaints from lusers over the coming months to increase exponentially.
Maybe this is the big chance for you linux sycophants to swoop down on unsuspecting Windoze lusers and lure them over?
I'm wondering how they will get Dr. Phlox to utter those famous words: "He's dead, Jim!"
Between the later years of TNG, the movies, and the final episode of V'ger, they have pussified the Borg so much that they are cut-out cartoon characters any more.
I remember watching the first-run of the Best of Both Worlds episodes with my non-Trekkie roommates and even THEY couldn't wait for the cliff-hanger conclusion 3 months away! Now *THAT* was scary Borgness! We didn't know much about them and they could kick ass while being impervious to our pea shooters. How will Humanity survive them??!
Now we throw a few quantum torpedos at them, raise our multiphasic shields, and press on undeterred. Big deal. The mystery has been solved, no puttin the genie back into the bottle, even via timeline manipulation.
Maybe Shatner would look good as a Borg drone? Or could the costume department even come up with enough piping and leather to cover his fat ass?
That would be the SUMO YATTA! if Shatner were performing it.
Actually, I believe Shatner was somewhat (or quite?) accomplished in the martial arts in his younger days; say, somewhere around the invention of electricity or so. A pity what time and self-neglect can do to us.
I agree. I used to swear by Zone Alarm also, but now I swear at it. Exceedingly long load times at boot and some blocked activity whose source is not clearly detectable leave me longing for better these days.
If the firewall is more configurable than it has been in the past and actually works without being unnecessarily intrusive, I'm all for it.
So far, the very few reviews of SP2 that I have heard are promising, and I hold no love for Micro$loth, believe me. If this thing is as good as they say it is, then I say "release the hounds!"