Five years ago we got my niece a Dell Vostro 1500 (the business version of the Inspiron 1520). It was getting really long in the tooth and she was considering getting a new laptop. After doing a little research I discovered that the Vostro 1500 is one of the most upgradable laptops out there. Using a combination of craigslist, newegg, and amazon I was able to perform the following upgrades for a total of $203:
Battery: 6-cell -> 9-cell (the old one had died long ago) Storage: 5400RPM HDD (160GB) -> SSD (90GB) Memory: 2GB -> 4GB CPU: Intel T5270 @1.4GHz (65nm) -> Intel T9500 @2.6GHz (45nm) Optical: DVD/CD-RW -> DVD-RW
I could have added bluetooth, a blu-ray player, or even upgraded the graphics card (!), but there was no pressing need (and I was trying to stay under $200). My goal is that she gets another two years out of it.
I guess my point is that, even though some of these upgrades aren't for the faint of heart, upgradability is something to consider.
if i RTFA correctly, by 'limited turing test' they mean to see if any second-lifers fail to notice that there's a bot in their midst; that's been happening for a long while now (e.g. Barry's fateful encounter with Julia on TinyMUD).
if on the other hand the occupants know there is a bot in their midst, determination will be trivial to achieve and impossible to prevent:
"hope you don't mind if i start typing everything backwards... ?eman rouy s'tahw os" "c4n u r3ad this @nd r35p0nd |n p|g l@t|n?"
As a child (12-14 yrs old) I used to go to Radio Shack all the time and leaf through those giant hinged doors covered in little bags of electronic parts. Soon after I got my VIC-20 I opened it up and began doing small projects (anyone rememer Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar?).
I went in there a few weeks ago to pick up some component video cables, hoping for a little nostalgia, and guess what? Gone were the $1.49 RCA cables; now they only have $59.99 super fancy-shmancy cables. Even if their gold-plated goodness does deliver some kind of audiovisual miracle (which I doubt), I definitely felt out of my element - this was no longer a store for hobbyists, but for... well, I don't know what you'd call them.
Anyway, I headed over to Home Depot, and picked up a beautiful component video component cables (RGB + LR) for $3.49.
I spoke to a Brit living in Germany for a while once, and he said, "Yeah, I pay taxes that are pretty high, but I don't have to pay for health care at all. What do you get for YOUR taxes in the states?"
a military capable of saving Brits from Germany's repeated attempts to enslave the world?
Call me a typing elitist but I just can't bring myself to trust programmers who can't keep their eyes on their code as they write it. It just seems so -jarring- to have to alternate looking up at the screen and down at the keyboard every few keystrokes....
Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 00:20:46 -0400 From: Brian Bartholomew Subject: Questions for prospective employers
In a healthy job interview, information flows both ways. Some employers have written tests for interviewees. Candidates may get the same win even if they don't present an actual list of test questions on paper. These are blunt questions at any time, as they directly question management's competence. They are incredibly rude at a job interview because you flaunt the respect you should be showing to a potential new employer. Nevertheless you will be much happier finding out these answers before you are on the payroll. And remember, twenty minutes logged into the potential employer's system reveals more truth than an arbitrary amount of interviewing. Ask your interviewer to sit down with you in front of a machine and go through their new-user information together with you. You drive and ask questions.
How will you evaluate my job performance?
Exactly how many people have the root password?
I feel I've hit a technical glass ceiling where any further growth will occur due to political skill, not engineering skill. Introduce me to computing employees who are paid to remain technical.
What is the name of the person with budgetary authority who will approve my purchase recommendations? What is their spending limit?
Are you paying me to treat symptoms or to avoid problems?
Who were the previous System Administrators? May I speak with them?
Approximately what percentage of the total cost of software ownership do you spend in the initial purchase?
When the computers are working, they make us ___ $/hr. When the computers are broken, they cost us ___ $/hr. We spend a grand total of ___ $/hr in computer support.
What percentage of your programmers use revision control software?
What level are you at in the SEI Process Maturity Model?
How many interfaces do you have on your IP network? How many interfaces do you have on your non-IP network?
Our computer equipment cost us $___ new, and we could sell it today for $___.
We have ___ UNIX users and ___ UNIX System Administrators.
How many boxes will I have authority over?
What is the median number of 3 hour uninterrupted blocks of total single-task concentration that your SAs get each week?
When a user requests a feature that isn't in the budget, what is the name of the person who tells them "no"?
How many SAs do you send to the USENIX ___, LISA ___, and InterOp ___ conferences each year?
When a disk fills up, do you usually buy another disk or delete something? How many partitions do you have which are at this moment more than 90% full?
What percentage of your hosts are configured as testbeds on separate networks so that you can routinely experiment and regression test new system software?
What is the throughput in bytes per second of your direct Internet connection? Describe your firewall.
What percentage of your help desk people use a trouble ticket system?
Is quality the top priority in your company? If so, describe several instances when schedules slipped because someone felt the quality was too low.
Summarize your written computing growth plans and their budgets for the next few years.
Chaitin's ideas are quite profound both in expanding upon theories of computation:
Goedel -> Turing -> Chaitin
and also in opening up new areas of mathematics and physics, much as chaos theory did.
Understand - the randomness Chaitin is dealing with is NOT the pseudo-random output of a transcendental equation, or of finite state automata (ala Wolfram) - these are truly random numbers that are not being computed, but rather revealed.
Chaitin is also a lisp hacker who (at least in previous books) includes lots and lots of code so you can play with the numbers yourself.
His writing style is a little bit too casual for me (lots of exclamation points), but if you want to learn more about TRUE randomness then go to the source.
Also let me add that Chaitin is a really nice guy - sent him some questions after reading one of his essays several years ago and he answered them straight away.
that's a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility... basically a safe, protected against intrusion and surveillance, that is large enough for a human being to work inside. The advantage is that you can do things like leave top secret documents lying around... disadvantages include:
- muzak must be playing continuously to mask out secret conversations. if muzak wasn't bad enough, the one i was working in only contained two working tapes (it can hold ten).
- the procedures for getting in/out of the SCIF are so onerous, once you get in, you pretty much stay there the whole day. this means getting sandwiches handed to you through a little door (actually two doors, like an airlock) and occasionally peeing into a bottle (or just deciding not to drink much at all).
> The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars.
if a day of driving consumes 365 days of plant life...
then a year of driving consumes 365 years of plant life...
then it will take us another million years of driving to consume the last 365 million years worth of plants life
> The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars.
if a day of driving consumes 365 days of plants...
a year of driving consumes 365 years of plants...
so we have another million years of driving to do before we've used up the 365 million years plants have been around
"There is an over-riding principle in Judaism (every movement) that any Jewish law can be broken when it comes to saving a human life. The only exceptions are for idolotry, adultery, or murder. These are the only situation in which is Jew must choose death to avoid violating the law."
A friend of mine had one of these watches. He said his father had brought it back from Japan and that it had cost "thousands of dollars". This was in 1983 or 1984 and functioned exactly as you describe. My friend thought it strange that the symbol for division was a slash... made perfect sense to me!
Creationists often discredit evolution by citing the fact that we see species go extinct every day and few if any arising to take their place.
Many people here seem to think that the era of the mega-merger implies the same thing about business and capitalism in general, but they are wrong for the same reasons as the creationists.
Big mergers are big news; the creation of new businesses is not. We hear about certain IPO's, but these represent a very small proportion of new businesses. We're not going to know every time a couple of high school kids start a lawnmowing service in their neighborhood, or start hacking on a better DOS, or whatever.
Neat solution - easy to imagine moveable, virtual interfaces making their way into everything, from remote controls to screens to telephones... imagine an entire office fitting into a tiny cube you can carry around.
Eventually the interfaces wouldn't have to be projected externally, but rather into the mind's eye. Why should a lightswitch have a fixed position, when each member of a household could have place them at the location and height they find most convenient?
Algorithm:
1) Mix up some flour and water. The ideal ratio is somewhere between watery and cementy.
2) Spoon the mixture onto the flat metal option and put in toaster oven. A light coat of anything oily is helpful.
3) Set the temperature somewhere in the 100-400 degree range.
4) They are done when they start to look sort of dry but before they brown too much. Set your timer to 5 minutes so you don't forget about them and burn your place down.
5) Stack them on a plate, dumping sugar on each one. You can use the sticky surface exposed when you bite into them to blot up more sugar from the plate.
I find that most things worth snacking on can be reduced to one or two ingredients (e.g. sweet potatoes, smoked turkey, cold apples, popcorn). This also makes it easier to count calories and to buy things in single-serving quantities.
No disrespect intended - but I was wondering if you've ever had any kind of speech or vocal training. It reminds me of the way Harry Hamlin talks - maybe you're from the same area?
Does anyone remember "Blip: The Digital Game"? It was an electro-mechanical game of Pong for one or two players put out by Tomy. The "ball" was a red LED, and the "paddles" were buttons. Blip used gears to generate random numbers which governed the path of the ball.
"Digital Derby" was another of Tomy's electro-mechanical games. Even though both games had "digital" in their names, the LED was the only digital thing about them; I suppose you could say they were 1-bit games.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only does it require a lens between you and the object, but it requires a lens behind the object as well.
"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
- Mohandas Gandhi, an Autobiography, page 446.
Five years ago we got my niece a Dell Vostro 1500 (the business version of the Inspiron 1520). It was getting really long in the tooth and she was considering getting a new laptop. After doing a little research I discovered that the Vostro 1500 is one of the most upgradable laptops out there. Using a combination of craigslist, newegg, and amazon I was able to perform the following upgrades for a total of $203:
Battery: 6-cell -> 9-cell (the old one had died long ago)
Storage: 5400RPM HDD (160GB) -> SSD (90GB)
Memory: 2GB -> 4GB
CPU: Intel T5270 @1.4GHz (65nm) -> Intel T9500 @2.6GHz (45nm)
Optical: DVD/CD-RW -> DVD-RW
I could have added bluetooth, a blu-ray player, or even upgraded the graphics card (!), but there was no pressing need (and I was trying to stay under $200). My goal is that she gets another two years out of it.
I guess my point is that, even though some of these upgrades aren't for the faint of heart, upgradability is something to consider.
if i RTFA correctly, by 'limited turing test' they mean to see if any second-lifers fail to notice that there's a bot in their midst; that's been happening for a long while now (e.g. Barry's fateful encounter with Julia on TinyMUD).
if on the other hand the occupants know there is a bot in their midst, determination will be trivial to achieve and impossible to prevent:
"hope you don't mind if i start typing everything backwards... ?eman rouy s'tahw os"
"c4n u r3ad this @nd r35p0nd |n p|g l@t|n?"
etc.
As a child (12-14 yrs old) I used to go to Radio Shack all the time and leaf through those giant hinged doors covered in little bags of electronic parts. Soon after I got my VIC-20 I opened it up and began doing small projects (anyone rememer Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar?).
... well, I don't know what you'd call them.
I went in there a few weeks ago to pick up some component video cables, hoping for a little nostalgia, and guess what? Gone were the $1.49 RCA cables; now they only have $59.99 super fancy-shmancy cables. Even if their gold-plated goodness does deliver some kind of audiovisual miracle (which I doubt), I definitely felt out of my element - this was no longer a store for hobbyists, but for
Anyway, I headed over to Home Depot, and picked up a beautiful component video component cables (RGB + LR) for $3.49.
heh heh... typo? or freudian slip???
Call me a typing elitist but I just can't bring myself to trust programmers who can't keep their eyes on their code as they write it. It just seems so -jarring- to have to alternate looking up at the screen and down at the keyboard every few keystrokes....
Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 00:20:46 -0400
From: Brian Bartholomew
Subject: Questions for prospective employers
In a healthy job interview, information flows both ways. Some employers have written tests for interviewees. Candidates may get the same win even if they don't present an actual list of test questions on paper. These are blunt questions at any time, as they directly question management's competence. They are incredibly rude at a job interview because you flaunt the respect you should be showing to a potential new employer. Nevertheless you will be much happier finding out these answers before you are on the payroll. And remember, twenty minutes logged into the potential employer's system reveals more truth than an arbitrary amount of interviewing. Ask your interviewer to sit down with you in front of a machine and go through their new-user information together with you. You drive and ask questions.
How will you evaluate my job performance?
Exactly how many people have the root password?
I feel I've hit a technical glass ceiling where any further growth will occur due to political skill, not engineering skill. Introduce me to computing employees who are paid to remain technical.
What is the name of the person with budgetary authority who will approve my purchase recommendations? What is their spending limit?
Are you paying me to treat symptoms or to avoid problems?
Who were the previous System Administrators? May I speak with them?
Approximately what percentage of the total cost of software ownership do you spend in the initial purchase?
When the computers are working, they make us ___ $/hr.
When the computers are broken, they cost us ___ $/hr.
We spend a grand total of ___ $/hr in computer support.
What percentage of your programmers use revision control software?
What level are you at in the SEI Process Maturity Model?
How many interfaces do you have on your IP network?
How many interfaces do you have on your non-IP network?
Our computer equipment cost us $___ new, and we could sell it today for $___.
We have ___ UNIX users and ___ UNIX System Administrators.
How many boxes will I have authority over?
What is the median number of 3 hour uninterrupted blocks of total single-task concentration that your SAs get each week?
When a user requests a feature that isn't in the budget, what is the name of the person who tells them "no"?
How many SAs do you send to the USENIX ___, LISA ___, and InterOp ___ conferences each year?
When a disk fills up, do you usually buy another disk or delete something? How many partitions do you have which are at this moment more than 90% full?
What percentage of your hosts are configured as testbeds on separate networks so that you can routinely experiment and regression test new system software?
What is the throughput in bytes per second of your direct Internet connection? Describe your firewall.
What percentage of your help desk people use a trouble ticket system?
Is quality the top priority in your company? If so, describe several instances when schedules slipped because someone felt the quality was too low.
Summarize your written computing growth plans and their budgets for the next few years.
Chaitin's ideas are quite profound both in expanding upon theories of computation:
Goedel -> Turing -> Chaitin
and also in opening up new areas of mathematics and physics, much as chaos theory did.
Understand - the randomness Chaitin is dealing with is NOT the pseudo-random output of a transcendental equation, or of finite state automata (ala Wolfram) - these are truly random numbers that are not being computed, but rather revealed.
Chaitin is also a lisp hacker who (at least in previous books) includes lots and lots of code so you can play with the numbers yourself.
His writing style is a little bit too casual for me (lots of exclamation points), but if you want to learn more about TRUE randomness then go to the source.
Also let me add that Chaitin is a really nice guy - sent him some questions after reading one of his essays several years ago and he answered them straight away.
> The point is that there is no air in space
of course there's air in space; obviously you haven't been to the air in space museum...
that's a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility... basically a safe, protected against intrusion and surveillance, that is large enough for a human being to work inside. The advantage is that you can do things like leave top secret documents lying around... disadvantages include:
- muzak must be playing continuously to mask out secret conversations. if muzak wasn't bad enough, the one i was working in only contained two working tapes (it can hold ten).
- the procedures for getting in/out of the SCIF are so onerous, once you get in, you pretty much stay there the whole day. this means getting sandwiches handed to you through a little door (actually two doors, like an airlock) and occasionally peeing into a bottle (or just deciding not to drink much at all).
quote from doctor friend: "nobody dies of ebola without covering the floor, ceiling, and all four walls with blood"
> The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars.
if a day of driving consumes 365 days of plant life...
then a year of driving consumes 365 years of plant life...
then it will take us another million years of driving to consume the last 365 million years worth of plants life
Q.E.D.
> The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars.
if a day of driving consumes 365 days of plants...
a year of driving consumes 365 years of plants...
so we have another million years of driving to do before we've used up the 365 million years plants have been around
Q.E.D.
A recent article (too lazy to google again) recently suggested antibacterial and regular soaps do an equally good job of cleaning you of bugs anyway
If this was true, then the bacteria wouldn't have developed resistance to the triclosan.
> Seriously, how is this "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters"??
Nerds are into automata. The story would have been just as interesting if it was about authentic monkey automata.
From the Soc.Culture.Newsgroups FAQ:
"There is an over-riding principle in Judaism (every movement) that any Jewish law can be broken when it comes to saving a human life. The only exceptions are for idolotry, adultery, or murder. These are the only situation in which is Jew must choose death to avoid violating the law."
And from the Chassidism FAQ:
"You shall live by these laws, not die by them."
"Violate one Sabbath that you may live to keep many Sabbaths"
A friend of mine had one of these watches. He said his father had brought it back from Japan and that it had cost "thousands of dollars". This was in 1983 or 1984 and functioned exactly as you describe. My friend thought it strange that the symbol for division was a slash... made perfect sense to me!
Creationists often discredit evolution by citing the fact that we see species go extinct every day and few if any arising to take their place.
Many people here seem to think that the era of the mega-merger implies the same thing about business and capitalism in general, but they are wrong for the same reasons as the creationists.
Big mergers are big news; the creation of new businesses is not. We hear about certain IPO's, but these represent a very small proportion of new businesses. We're not going to know every time a couple of high school kids start a lawnmowing service in their neighborhood, or start hacking on a better DOS, or whatever.
Neat solution - easy to imagine moveable, virtual interfaces making their way into everything, from remote controls to screens to telephones... imagine an entire office fitting into a tiny cube you can carry around.
Eventually the interfaces wouldn't have to be projected externally, but rather into the mind's eye. Why should a lightswitch have a fixed position, when each member of a household could have place them at the location and height they find most convenient?
You can build a Helium bomb. There are billions of them going off at this very moment. Where do you think the carbon in your body came from?
Input: Flour, water, sugar
Hardware: Toaster oven, spatula
Algorithm:
1) Mix up some flour and water. The ideal ratio is somewhere between watery and cementy.
2) Spoon the mixture onto the flat metal option and put in toaster oven. A light coat of anything oily is helpful.
3) Set the temperature somewhere in the 100-400 degree range.
4) They are done when they start to look sort of dry but before they brown too much. Set your timer to 5 minutes so you don't forget about them and burn your place down.
5) Stack them on a plate, dumping sugar on each one. You can use the sticky surface exposed when you bite into them to blot up more sugar from the plate.
I find that most things worth snacking on can be reduced to one or two ingredients (e.g. sweet potatoes, smoked turkey, cold apples, popcorn). This also makes it easier to count calories and to buy things in single-serving quantities.
No disrespect intended - but I was wondering if you've ever had any kind of speech or vocal training. It reminds me of the way Harry Hamlin talks - maybe you're from the same area?
Does anyone remember "Blip: The Digital Game"? It was an electro-mechanical game of Pong for one or two players put out by Tomy. The "ball" was a red LED, and the "paddles" were buttons. Blip used gears to generate random numbers which governed the path of the ball.
"Digital Derby" was another of Tomy's electro-mechanical games. Even though both games had "digital" in their names, the LED was the only digital thing about them; I suppose you could say they were 1-bit games.