Re:Other Best Buy stories
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2
Perhaps they do now, but that wasn't always the case. When my parents were first married, my father got cancer and couldn't work for many months. They called all their creditors and asked for permission to defer payments for a few months until my Dad returned to work. All agreed except Sears. From that day no one in my family has ever purchased from Sears and that was probably 40 years ago. Sears pissed off enough customers that in the mid 80's they had to file chapter 7 (11?) re-org. My family had a nice little party that day. Boycotting does, on occasion, work.
Eclipse is built on SWT. You can get all the source and the API that eclipse is built with. SWT is a very thin layer (one-to-one by design) to the underlying windowing toolkit. So far, Win32, Motif, and gtk are supported although I had some problems with the gtk one. Qt is sadly missing, but I suspect once SWT catches people attention, a Qt binding will be created.
Try SWT, it run circles around AWT/Swing. Sure it breaks platform independence to a degree; you'll have to distribute the appropriate dll/so along with your app, but who cares? That is a very small price to pay for a good java GUI.
Exactly. I've been playing with SWT for the last couple weeks and I've decided there is no need for AWT/Swing anymore and all the baggage those two carry. SWT is fast and is tightly coupled to the OS. I don't care that its not platform dependent. I can distribute my SWT app with the appropriate OS/window manager binding. SWT just needs work on the gtk binding and it needs a qt binding.
Coupled with a native compiler like gcj or JET(free for personal use) and you have a winning combination. I pulled together a quick SWT app that was running IE inside of it (using SWT's Window binding which includes OLE) and compiled it native. It took about 12 lines of code to do this and it started up and ran very fast.
The same thing would happen on my laptop too. Since I run gkrellm I could tell when it happend. It was always a Konquerer browser going nuts. I quick run of top, then a kill would always fix it.
The Linksys WAP is horrible. I had mine lock up at least once a day and needed a hard reset. I upgraded the firmware to the latest on the website (1.39.2?) and the lockups went away. But the wireless functionality stopped working. Check out DSL Reports and go into the network hardware forum for Linksys. You'll see a huge number of complaints. In fact, they had a higher rev of the firmware (1.40.x) on the site, but had to pull it because it was even buggier.
So I bought the SMC router/wap, and guess what - it's just as buggy. It locks up every 2 or 3 days.
-tim
Re:Coming from a store owner...
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
With regards to tracking the serial number:
The only way I can see someone tracking you via a Euro is this: you go to an ATM to withdraw money. The bank knows you and can read the Euro as it is dispensed. You spend the bill. Assuming the merchant deposits all cash to their bank, the bank could resolve the bill from the merchant to the bill dispensed from the ATM assuming it is the same bank or banks share info. This is only likely for large denominations since smaller ones may be tendered as change. Once changed hands, any tracking data is bogus unless the merchant themselves are tracking the euros coming in and going out.
Every US bill has a serial number too, just not magnetically encoded. It would be quite easy to build a box that scans in US bills and reads the serial number. I believe cash is still the best anonymous tender. Magnetic encoding doesn't change anything.
When I worked at Georgia Tech, I had enough money in a project that I decided to buy some multiprocessor boxes to test out their capabilities as a real-time data acquisition box. I bought two boxes: a BeBox and an OS/2 box from Indelible Blue.
I was on vacation when the BeBox arrived so two co-op students unpacked it and decided to give it a whirl. Just for grins, they opened it up to look at it before powering it up. What a lucky break. They had a lot of trouble sliding the case off and couldn't figure it out. Then one of them noticed a metal bar wedged between the frame and the shell. They gingerly removed a foot long metal bar that was about 1/4" square in cross-section that had what looked like paint covering about 4" of one end. It looked like something that was used to stir some paint or resin. It was laying across the back of the motherboard.
Needless to say had they powered the box up, the bar would have shorted out a lot of the conductors. We would have loved to know how it got there. It certainly didn't look to be any part of the box that had simply come loose.
Aside from that the BeBox was fun to play around with. I think it still is serving MP3s in another lab.
No, I'm not kidding. I would have no problem posting a one-line patch to a buffer overflow check. I would have to see the patch and the NDA, but I don't see how it would violate the spirit of the agreement. But I would probably post anonymously anyway to avoid any issues. No, it's not my place to interpret the agreement/law, but this is too serious a problem with a simple solution.
I don't trade in warez. I don't download music I don't already have. I disagree with most of the zealots on/. who feel "information should be free". I'm trying to exercise common sense.
I thought the exact same thing. If I were into video production, etc. as a hobby, I'd even feel comfortable emailing the guy about doing some of his short stories. How many Hollywood stars can you say that about?
Great interview. The best I've read on Slashdot yet.
In Georgia, your 5 years of EIT have to be done under the tutelage of a full fledged PE. Also, you have to have a PE working for you if you have the word "Engineering" in your company's name.
Black magic is reserved for those fields you know nothing or only a little about. Analog is pretty simple to me. Digital is pretty simple also. But trying to do analog functions with digital (aka: DSP - digital signal processing) is black magic. Which is why I'm trying to re-learn the stuff. I didn't pay enough attention when I took those classes. Which is a shame since I had two of the profs most noted in the field: Dr. Ronald Shafer and Dr. Jim McClellan (of Parks-McClellan fame).
Plus, a typical embedded CPU is a Z80, a 6502 or a 68000 or StrongARM at most. There's absolutely no need for a PC-class processor for embedded tasks.
Really? You want aircraft, ships, spacecraft, air control towers, radars, etc. running off a 68k or SA1100 at most?
I've built many systems where an entire PC is shoved into a 19" rack and is considered embedded because it performed a set of defined tasks and is not used for general computing. One system analyzed radar jammer signals and consisted of one 486 host with 20+ 32-bit transputers plugged into the 486's expansion slots. There is quite a market for "big" embedded systems.
Firstly - to the crack-head moderator - how is this offtopic? It is a direct repercussion of the attack.
To the original poster - raising the price of gas is not illegal unless the area is in a state of emergency usually declared by the Governor. Here is a link in my home town about possible price gouging.
It is, however, amoral. I would love to see people take pictures of the price signs and the stores to be posted on the web as a "Hall of Shame" of selfish cretins that would take advantage of one of the worst disasters in American history. I would never, ever, buy from them again and pass the word along.
When I read this statement, the image that came to my mind was of the floor of the Senate (or House). But in this case each senator is wearing a uniform with corporate logos. Junior senators probably look like golfers where they have two or three small logos on their sleeves or hat. The real crufty senators look like a stock-car driver where there isn't a single square inch of un-logoed material visible.
When they have to floor and begin to speak, they preface everything with, "The AOL-Charmin-Tidy Bowl gentleman from Virginia believes that Bill 1234 is baloney!"
I'm not going to argue whether Bush's decision was right or wrong, but what struck me as unusual during the speech was his decision to let the research continue on stem cells whose embryos were already dead. This smacks of "washing his hands" of the one aspect he thinks is wrong- the destruction of embryos (aka potential human life).
Again, I'm not judging the right or left wings here, but his justification could be a bad precedent. During WWII, German and Japanese "doctors" were known to have performed horrible experiments on Jews and POWs (and others). Maybe I'm confusing this with an X-files episode, but wasn't it decided not to use the results of any those experiments, no matter how beneficial, since the experiments themselves were totally unjustifiable?
If Bush is against abortion, embryo destructions, etc. isn't his decision to use these stem cell lines hypocritical? Fruit from a poison tree (or however that saying goes)?
Right - I should have said air-to-air. I was too quick typing.
But the test did occur. Or perhaps Candid Camera got Eglin AFB to pretend this test happened so I could be embarrased on slashdot 10 years later... hmmm:)
One of the funnier tests I've seen go wrong was the test launch of an AAMRAM air-to-ground missile from a Hummer. I'm not sure the point of the test, but it was interesting.
We were running some radar/countermeasure tests at an airforce base when this test was scheduled to happen. Not being a part of the test, we had to turn all our emitters off. But what is cool about these test radars is that they have very powerful cameras fixed on the boresight of the radar. This way, you can watch a tv and get a quick-and-dirty feeling for the radar track - that is, if the target is held steady in the center of the tv, the radar has good track. If the target is moving all around the tv, it is probably jamming you pretty well.
Anyhow, although we couldn't radiate, we could slew the radar over and watch the missile fired off the back of the Hummer about a mile away. We also had the base PA system tuned to listen to the test center, the missile launch guy, and the radar operator. It went something like this:
control: "T-10 seconds to launch"
control: "3, 2, 1, launch!"
launch: "missile away"
us: wow! big cloud of smoke...
control: "T+5 seconds. radar X, do you have track?"
radar: "Did you guys launch?"
us: "hahahahhahahahahaaahha"
The cost of the wasted AAMRAM is nothing compared to the cost of the 1 hour of rental for the entire radar base.
On the plus side, we got to see the same test again the next day. BTW, the Hummer was a charred hunk of metal afterwards.
This is a good argument. The SCCA (sports car club of america) has a solution. When a penalty is protested, a fee has to be filed (usually $50). If the reviews find in favor of the plantiff, the fee plus whatever else (points, trophy, etc.) is given to the plantiff. If the plantiff loses on a baseless protest, the original penalty stands and the $50 is kept by the SCCA. If the plantiff loses, but the protest was well founded/argued/etc., the penalty stands, but the $50 fee is returned.
To translate this, if the small company brings a legitimate complaint to the courts but loses, the judge could decide if any additional court costs should be paid by the small company. If the complaint is frivilous the court could slam the plantiff (small company) with some (or all) of the defendants court costs.
It's ironic you should mention Sears as an example of where to invest your money. Sears pulled the same crap on their customers in the early 1980s.
Way back in the 60's or so, my Dad got cancer and couldn't work for several months. My Mom called all their creditors and asked for extensions for payments. _All_ of them allowed this because my dad was sick - all except Sears. After that, no one in my familar ever shopped at Sears again. I don't, my kids won't - none of my family.
Although my family alone didn't take Sears out, that was one of many screw-overs that caused them to file Chapter 7 (or 11?) in the mid 80s. Given time, consumer boycotts do work.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they do now, but that wasn't always the case. When my parents were first married, my father got cancer and couldn't work for many months. They called all their creditors and asked for permission to defer payments for a few months until my Dad returned to work. All agreed except Sears. From that day no one in my family has ever purchased from Sears and that was probably 40 years ago. Sears pissed off enough customers that in the mid 80's they had to file chapter 7 (11?) re-org. My family had a nice little party that day. Boycotting does, on occasion, work.
Eclipse is built on SWT. You can get all the source and the API that eclipse is built with. SWT is a very thin layer (one-to-one by design) to the underlying windowing toolkit. So far, Win32, Motif, and gtk are supported although I had some problems with the gtk one. Qt is sadly missing, but I suspect once SWT catches people attention, a Qt binding will be created.
Try SWT, it run circles around AWT/Swing. Sure it breaks platform independence to a degree; you'll have to distribute the appropriate dll/so along with your app, but who cares? That is a very small price to pay for a good java GUI.
API javadoc
-tim
Coupled with a native compiler like gcj or JET(free for personal use) and you have a winning combination. I pulled together a quick SWT app that was running IE inside of it (using SWT's Window binding which includes OLE) and compiled it native. It took about 12 lines of code to do this and it started up and ran very fast.
-tim
The same thing would happen on my laptop too. Since I run gkrellm I could tell when it happend. It was always a Konquerer browser going nuts. I quick run of top, then a kill would always fix it.
-tim
The Linksys WAP is horrible. I had mine lock up at least once a day and needed a hard reset. I upgraded the firmware to the latest on the website (1.39.2?) and the lockups went away. But the wireless functionality stopped working. Check out DSL Reports and go into the network hardware forum for Linksys. You'll see a huge number of complaints. In fact, they had a higher rev of the firmware (1.40.x) on the site, but had to pull it because it was even buggier.
So I bought the SMC router/wap, and guess what - it's just as buggy. It locks up every 2 or 3 days.
-tim
With regards to tracking the serial number:
The only way I can see someone tracking you via a Euro is this: you go to an ATM to withdraw money. The bank knows you and can read the Euro as it is dispensed. You spend the bill. Assuming the merchant deposits all cash to their bank, the bank could resolve the bill from the merchant to the bill dispensed from the ATM assuming it is the same bank or banks share info. This is only likely for large denominations since smaller ones may be tendered as change. Once changed hands, any tracking data is bogus unless the merchant themselves are tracking the euros coming in and going out.
Every US bill has a serial number too, just not magnetically encoded. It would be quite easy to build a box that scans in US bills and reads the serial number. I believe cash is still the best anonymous tender. Magnetic encoding doesn't change anything.
Just food for thought.
-tim
When I worked at Georgia Tech, I had enough money in a project that I decided to buy some multiprocessor boxes to test out their capabilities as a real-time data acquisition box. I bought two boxes: a BeBox and an OS/2 box from Indelible Blue.
I was on vacation when the BeBox arrived so two co-op students unpacked it and decided to give it a whirl. Just for grins, they opened it up to look at it before powering it up. What a lucky break. They had a lot of trouble sliding the case off and couldn't figure it out. Then one of them noticed a metal bar wedged between the frame and the shell. They gingerly removed a foot long metal bar that was about 1/4" square in cross-section that had what looked like paint covering about 4" of one end. It looked like something that was used to stir some paint or resin. It was laying across the back of the motherboard.
Needless to say had they powered the box up, the bar would have shorted out a lot of the conductors. We would have loved to know how it got there. It certainly didn't look to be any part of the box that had simply come loose.
Aside from that the BeBox was fun to play around with. I think it still is serving MP3s in another lab.
-tim
No, I'm not kidding. I would have no problem posting a one-line patch to a buffer overflow check. I would have to see the patch and the NDA, but I don't see how it would violate the spirit of the agreement. But I would probably post anonymously anyway to avoid any issues. No, it's not my place to interpret the agreement/law, but this is too serious a problem with a simple solution.
/. who feel "information should be free". I'm trying to exercise common sense.
I don't trade in warez. I don't download music I don't already have. I disagree with most of the zealots on
-tim
You can post your patch here. That is why "Anonymous Coward" still exists.
-tim
Apparently it generates a lot more heat than a conventional battery. Too hot for a cell phone. New slogan:
"Reach out and torch someone."
-tim
This was blatantly ripped off from FuckedCompany.com. See the post here. Why not give credit where credit is due?
-tim
He actually sounded HUMAN.
I thought the exact same thing. If I were into video production, etc. as a hobby, I'd even feel comfortable emailing the guy about doing some of his short stories. How many Hollywood stars can you say that about?
Great interview. The best I've read on Slashdot yet.
-tim
In Georgia, your 5 years of EIT have to be done under the tutelage of a full fledged PE. Also, you have to have a PE working for you if you have the word "Engineering" in your company's name.
-tim
Black magic is reserved for those fields you know nothing or only a little about. Analog is pretty simple to me. Digital is pretty simple also. But trying to do analog functions with digital (aka: DSP - digital signal processing) is black magic. Which is why I'm trying to re-learn the stuff. I didn't pay enough attention when I took those classes. Which is a shame since I had two of the profs most noted in the field: Dr. Ronald Shafer and Dr. Jim McClellan (of Parks-McClellan fame).
-tim
Plus, a typical embedded CPU is a Z80, a 6502 or a 68000 or StrongARM at most. There's absolutely no need for a PC-class processor for embedded tasks.
Really? You want aircraft, ships, spacecraft, air control towers, radars, etc. running off a 68k or SA1100 at most?
I've built many systems where an entire PC is shoved into a 19" rack and is considered embedded because it performed a set of defined tasks and is not used for general computing. One system analyzed radar jammer signals and consisted of one 486 host with 20+ 32-bit transputers plugged into the 486's expansion slots. There is quite a market for "big" embedded systems.
-tim
Firstly - to the crack-head moderator - how is this offtopic? It is a direct repercussion of the attack.
To the original poster - raising the price of gas is not illegal unless the area is in a state of emergency usually declared by the Governor. Here is a link in my home town about possible price gouging.
It is, however, amoral. I would love to see people take pictures of the price signs and the stores to be posted on the web as a "Hall of Shame" of selfish cretins that would take advantage of one of the worst disasters in American history. I would never, ever, buy from them again and pass the word along.
-tim
by our corporately-sponsored government
When I read this statement, the image that came to my mind was of the floor of the Senate (or House). But in this case each senator is wearing a uniform with corporate logos. Junior senators probably look like golfers where they have two or three small logos on their sleeves or hat. The real crufty senators look like a stock-car driver where there isn't a single square inch of un-logoed material visible.
When they have to floor and begin to speak, they preface everything with, "The AOL-Charmin-Tidy Bowl gentleman from Virginia believes that Bill 1234 is baloney!"
Hell, I'd be watching CSPAN every night for that!
-tim
I'm not going to argue whether Bush's decision was right or wrong, but what struck me as unusual during the speech was his decision to let the research continue on stem cells whose embryos were already dead. This smacks of "washing his hands" of the one aspect he thinks is wrong- the destruction of embryos (aka potential human life).
Again, I'm not judging the right or left wings here, but his justification could be a bad precedent. During WWII, German and Japanese "doctors" were known to have performed horrible experiments on Jews and POWs (and others). Maybe I'm confusing this with an X-files episode, but wasn't it decided not to use the results of any those experiments, no matter how beneficial, since the experiments themselves were totally unjustifiable?
If Bush is against abortion, embryo destructions, etc. isn't his decision to use these stem cell lines hypocritical? Fruit from a poison tree (or however that saying goes)?
-tim
Right - I should have said air-to-air. I was too quick typing.
:)
But the test did occur. Or perhaps Candid Camera got Eglin AFB to pretend this test happened so I could be embarrased on slashdot 10 years later... hmmm
oops - you're right. I should have said air-to-air. The point of the test was to see if it could be lauched from a pod mounted to a Hummer.
Um, that's what I said. I also said I couldn't figure out the point of the test. That's sort of what makes the story funny. Or so I thought...
One of the funnier tests I've seen go wrong was the test launch of an AAMRAM air-to-ground missile from a Hummer. I'm not sure the point of the test, but it was interesting.
We were running some radar/countermeasure tests at an airforce base when this test was scheduled to happen. Not being a part of the test, we had to turn all our emitters off. But what is cool about these test radars is that they have very powerful cameras fixed on the boresight of the radar. This way, you can watch a tv and get a quick-and-dirty feeling for the radar track - that is, if the target is held steady in the center of the tv, the radar has good track. If the target is moving all around the tv, it is probably jamming you pretty well.
Anyhow, although we couldn't radiate, we could slew the radar over and watch the missile fired off the back of the Hummer about a mile away. We also had the base PA system tuned to listen to the test center, the missile launch guy, and the radar operator. It went something like this:
control: "T-10 seconds to launch"
control: "3, 2, 1, launch!"
launch: "missile away"
us: wow! big cloud of smoke...
control: "T+5 seconds. radar X, do you have track?"
radar: "Did you guys launch?"
us: "hahahahhahahahahaaahha"
The cost of the wasted AAMRAM is nothing compared to the cost of the 1 hour of rental for the entire radar base.
On the plus side, we got to see the same test again the next day. BTW, the Hummer was a charred hunk of metal afterwards.
-tim
This is a good argument. The SCCA (sports car club of america) has a solution. When a penalty is protested, a fee has to be filed (usually $50). If the reviews find in favor of the plantiff, the fee plus whatever else (points, trophy, etc.) is given to the plantiff. If the plantiff loses on a baseless protest, the original penalty stands and the $50 is kept by the SCCA. If the plantiff loses, but the protest was well founded/argued/etc., the penalty stands, but the $50 fee is returned.
To translate this, if the small company brings a legitimate complaint to the courts but loses, the judge could decide if any additional court costs should be paid by the small company. If the complaint is frivilous the court could slam the plantiff (small company) with some (or all) of the defendants court costs.
-tim
It's ironic you should mention Sears as an example of where to invest your money. Sears pulled the same crap on their customers in the early 1980s.
Way back in the 60's or so, my Dad got cancer and couldn't work for several months. My Mom called all their creditors and asked for extensions for payments. _All_ of them allowed this because my dad was sick - all except Sears. After that, no one in my familar ever shopped at Sears again. I don't, my kids won't - none of my family.
Although my family alone didn't take Sears out, that was one of many screw-overs that caused them to file Chapter 7 (or 11?) in the mid 80s. Given time, consumer boycotts do work.
-tim
move it down your head a little and you'll look like Toucan Sam or Opus.
move it down your body even further and you can play Quake by performing Elvis gyrations.