When private, unaffiliated individuals claim that voting for 3rd parties is wrong, vote for ... it's deceptive.
When Al Gore or other public officials/candidates do it, it should be illegal election tampering, and subject to sanctions all the way up to disqualification for public office. Those people make me sick.
Two issues here. It's not the cellular company refusing to give out info... the free market would eventually correct that if it were a problem. It's the federal government prohibiting it. Which brings us to the second part...
Strangely, in the USA (well, pre-Dubya USA), we basically have all rights that aren't specifically disallowed. Not the other way around. You see, they can only list non-rights, in theory. So, until the Constitution is ammended so that we don't have the right of outtage reports, by default we have those rights.
Then again, maybe you'd move it really slowly. Figure from midnight until 4am is slow, can it do the entire distance in 4 hours, and would that motion be perceptible?
Your favorite is just as dumb. Let's take scenario #4, the only one where you are alive. If cryonics works, and you're preserved, and some guy from the year 2678 feels like going to the expense of not only reviving you but cloning a liver from your stem cells, and if a giant boulder didn't crunch the stainless steel barrel, and if your body chemistry isn't one of the weird 1 out of 100 that would reject freezing, and if the power doesn't go out, and if humanity survives long enough to develop the medical technology...
What if the chances of surviving that way are only slightly better than a miraculous ressurection? This matrix makes it sound simple, even though it ignores many of the costs that your next of kin have to pay for, on the off chance that you will walk the earth 500 years from now.
Congress repeals mandatory cattle RFID tagging. (It makes them nervous, they produce less milk, lose weight). Congressmen Disney "There is no reason to extend this repeal to humans though, their increasesd self-awareness makes it possible for them shrug off the effect."
Also in the news, Olsen triplets (clones of the twins) debut in their new triple XXX movie tonight, experts expect NBC to win sweeps month.
Personally, I want to build a quiet robot, no more than 3 inches tall (but flat and wide, 2' x 2' or so?). Cover the top with tile look alikes for the store under attack. From a distant B&W security camera, it should be invisible. Drive it around in a 24/7 walmart late at night, having it drag stuff off.
RFID means it can actively search out the things I want it to find, without having to be so heavy on the remote control.
Let's reverse it for added realism. (My own situation at my former employer)
Willing AND able : Me. Shitcanned. Willing and not able : No one they ever interviewed, but if they had, he would have been hired. Why? Because that's the kind of person they would hire, someone that doesn't have a clue. Not willing and able The other 20 or so monkeys they had repairing H(self-censored)'s iBooks. Having worked on iBooks for in some cases, just as long as I had, they still repaired less than 8 per shift, and complained about anything and everything. They also earned more than me. Not willing and not able Or maybe this was their proper category. I never was convinced.
So, what does that teach us?
Willing and able : Terminate with extreme prejudice. Willing and not able : Inconclusive. Not willing but able : Hire them. If you need 10, hire 20. Not willing and not able : Hire these guys also. Hire at least as many as you did from the previous category.
Stupid, lots of money to waste: Buy the book! Stupid, broke: Buy the book anyway, you're stupid! Not stupid, lots of money to waste: Laugh Not stupid, broke: You just saved some money, laugh!
When all your problems in life and business can be neatly summed up into 4 absurdly simply outcomes, nothing beats the power of the 2x2 decision matrix. Examples:
Is there a God, and should I worship him?
........... Worship... Don't Worship God......| Great...... Hell No God | So-so.... Live it up!
So what, if non-idiots wish to ruin the pea-brained genius of this matrix with questions like "What if there is more than one god, or that a single god might not care about Christian ideals?". This matrix can show you the only way to live your life correctly. And who can forget the sarcastic logic of Scott Adams, in this comic strip favorite:
Finally, someone has discovered this breakthrough in philosophy that proves you are screwed no matter what you do. Before this, people actually had false hopes of something better, but they need not suffer under any such illusions today!
Pick up your copy at your local Barnes And Noble bookstore today, for these and many other incredible matrices!
Apple 1= $10,000+ and all known machines are in the hands of collectors.
Lisa is almost as bad, but you can probably snag one off ebay if for $1-2k, if you don't insist on perfectly working one.
Amigas... you'll want a 2000, 3000, or 4000 if you're like me, a 1200 if like most others. 2000 = $100-$300 3000 = $300-500 4000 = $350-700 All easily gotten on ebay.
Atari STs are later than the 400/800, the 600XL/800XL. They start at the 520, then the 1024 and the Mega, the Atari laptops, then the TT030 and finally the Falcon. All cool, all wantable. The earlier ones are cheap on ebay.
The common C= machines, don't pay more than $5 per for, and then only if in great shape with the power supplies and such. If in perfect, never touched by human hands still sealed condition, maybe $25-50 for.
If you're anywhere near Richmond, VA then I'd give you an Apple GS. Rom1 I think, no extras.
I have about 3 vic20s, 2 c64, 2 c128, a 4plus, and a few others.
Then again, if you have a PET, that would be most welcome. I've found a GPIB pci card, and I've love to see if I could get a 1978 PET networked to a linux box, lord knows what that would mean (probably just a terminal program of some kind, at best).
Oh, and since I forgot in the last post... I *desperately* need a TRS-80 Model 2/12/16/6000 arcnet card. I have several of these computers, but the nic is almost impossible to find. Also, a TI99 peripheral expansion box would be nice too (I have a serial card for one, and the computer to use it with)...
Depends on the sparcstation. Personally, I'd love anything sun3 or earlier, and I'd even consider later stuff. At the moment, only have 2 ss2's, which aren't much. Maybe Santa will bring me a ultrasparc this christmas.
Nifty little thing, I have 3. One of them, I've managed to get a Palm foling keyboard working on, but I really wish I could make a laptop thickness proper keyboard for it, that would fit on top. Z80 was a hell of a CPU. I plan on writing some custom firmware, and doing a serial LCD display on it too, maybe even a meg of bankswitched ram or a 256M compactflash.
And then, get it all running off a few 9volts so I can have a cool laptop, not this Dell piece of shit. Too bad that 802.11 is such a power hungry thing, or it could have wireless too... (IRDA maybe?)
Beboxes Amigas Atari STs HP PArisc systems SGI Systems Apple 2s Apple Lisas Any Xerox computers IBM RS6000/AS400 (especially microchannel based) Sun Ultrasparc Any Alpha based systems Any Cray systems Any ATM622 nics Any HIPPI equipment (Any unusual nics for that matter) Any Vaxen
1) Sensors on the gun, that if triggered, disable it for a few seconds. 2) Somehow, build a bunch of smaller sensors, and by this I mean alot. If every person has to wear coveralls that have a few hundred sensors on them, it's alot harder to cheat and just cover yours with your hand. 3) Have a wearable computer that interprets the sensor data. Not sure how to have it affect gameplay, but it seems you could tell the difference between a "kill" and a "flesh wound". 4) If you have an arena of sorts, have sensors on the outdoor lights for night play. Would be cool to "shoot them out". 5) Have lots of little 4" x 4" mirrors up in odd places, for bank shots. 6) Have everyone wear GPS. Send the output to a modified quake server... let people from around the world watch the virtual version of the game.
Troll, flamebait, maybe even overrated. Offtopic? I knew there would be trouble when the new slashcode automatically fedex'ed a vial of crack cocaine to moderators.
You see, Mr. Crackmoderator, that is what you call a metaphor in the loose sense of the word, or perhaps an analogy. A quite apt one, I would think. Because while such a Pinto might be a more comfortable ride, will it not crash just as often as any other Pinto? Maybe even more so, if the driver is busy watching the in-dash DVD player.
But for those of you that don't know, this is a typical M$ strategy, one that they've used effectively in the past. I'll illustrate two scenarios, and leave it to the reader to pick the most realistic of the two.
1) Linux has so many compelling, eye candy applications that Windows can't possibly hope to compete, except maybe on its stability and user-friendliness. So, being the fine coding engineers that they are, the Redmond boys set up a Linux compatibility layer, so that you can run all those fine Linux apps, without the horrendous linux crashing every 10 seconds.
2) Linux is barely making its way in the world, but with a little luck, lots of talent, and a metric fuckton of perserverence, Linux may when the war by attrition (or at least force them to a stalemate). However, as Windows did with OS/2 on the desktop, and Netware on the server, they'll offer compatibility understanding that this is a migration strategy. In many cases, the only truly critical reason to stay with linux might be some gee-whiz app that was just created, and they can't live without it. Therefor, until that changes, the Microsoft salesmen are continually rebuked in their bullying tactics and threats when they demand all linux servers be landfilled. But if Longhorn can also run the app (even if it does a shitty job of it), then there will be no way that middle managers and even CTOs can refuse their "offer". After all, it will kind of work, you know? Does it make Longhorn any better than before? Hell no, it's about as frivolous as pimping out a Pinto, for instance.
So, Mr. Crackmoderator, how many comments older than mine, that are all but fellating this new Longhorn "feature", will I find that you didn't bother to mod down? 1 or 2? 10? 75? Next time you consider modding something offtopic, think carefully. Is it an article talking about the Apple G6 chip, and I just posted "My cat had kittens" comment? Or is it merely that I used words too big for you (at a guess, more than 2 syllables), that I used an analogy/metaphor you couldn't wrap your tiny little brain around, or even that I had just too much sarcasm in my words? Lord forbid someone touch on a tangential subject here, with you allowed to have mod points.
You'd pop the cover off it. Sampling the memory would get you a primitive black and white image. Maybe even grayscale, with software trickery. A parallel port interface isn't out of the question, would be as simple as an electronic camera could be, I'd suppose... look it up on google, used to be in a bunch of amateur robotics books of the 1980s.
If I were a purchasing executive, and had just blown a large amount of money on an SL8500, I'd seriously reconsider buying from StorageTek in the future if they were going to lock me in to their own service plans with such an ability to set prices without any competition.
Except that you'd be hard-pressed to find a vendor that won't pull stunts like this. Sure, you can boycott every one of them after they have invoked DCMA... but 20 years later you'll have run out of vendors, without ever discouraging even one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
When private, unaffiliated individuals claim that voting for 3rd parties is wrong, vote for ... it's deceptive.
When Al Gore or other public officials/candidates do it, it should be illegal election tampering, and subject to sanctions all the way up to disqualification for public office. Those people make me sick.
Two issues here. It's not the cellular company refusing to give out info... the free market would eventually correct that if it were a problem. It's the federal government prohibiting it. Which brings us to the second part...
Strangely, in the USA (well, pre-Dubya USA), we basically have all rights that aren't specifically disallowed. Not the other way around. You see, they can only list non-rights, in theory. So, until the Constitution is ammended so that we don't have the right of outtage reports, by default we have those rights.
Nifty, eh?
Both Nvidea and ATI are on the Id kickback program. He can give the game away and still be profitable.
True. Still would be cool as hell.
Then again, maybe you'd move it really slowly. Figure from midnight until 4am is slow, can it do the entire distance in 4 hours, and would that motion be perceptible?
Your favorite is just as dumb. Let's take scenario #4, the only one where you are alive. If cryonics works, and you're preserved, and some guy from the year 2678 feels like going to the expense of not only reviving you but cloning a liver from your stem cells, and if a giant boulder didn't crunch the stainless steel barrel, and if your body chemistry isn't one of the weird 1 out of 100 that would reject freezing, and if the power doesn't go out, and if humanity survives long enough to develop the medical technology...
What if the chances of surviving that way are only slightly better than a miraculous ressurection? This matrix makes it sound simple, even though it ignores many of the costs that your next of kin have to pay for, on the off chance that you will walk the earth 500 years from now.
Congress repeals mandatory cattle RFID tagging. (It makes them nervous, they produce less milk, lose weight). Congressmen Disney "There is no reason to extend this repeal to humans though, their increasesd self-awareness makes it possible for them shrug off the effect."
Also in the news, Olsen triplets (clones of the twins) debut in their new triple XXX movie tonight, experts expect NBC to win sweeps month.
Deserve their own slashdot icon. Give this thing 3 months, and if they're still around, do the right thing Taco.
Personally, I want to build a quiet robot, no more than 3 inches tall (but flat and wide, 2' x 2' or so?). Cover the top with tile look alikes for the store under attack. From a distant B&W security camera, it should be invisible. Drive it around in a 24/7 walmart late at night, having it drag stuff off.
RFID means it can actively search out the things I want it to find, without having to be so heavy on the remote control.
Let's reverse it for added realism.
(My own situation at my former employer)
Willing AND able : Me. Shitcanned.
Willing and not able : No one they ever interviewed, but if they had, he would have been hired. Why? Because that's the kind of person they would hire, someone that doesn't have a clue.
Not willing and able The other 20 or so monkeys they had repairing H(self-censored)'s iBooks. Having worked on iBooks for in some cases, just as long as I had, they still repaired less than 8 per shift, and complained about anything and everything. They also earned more than me.
Not willing and not able Or maybe this was their proper category. I never was convinced.
So, what does that teach us?
Willing and able : Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Willing and not able : Inconclusive.
Not willing but able : Hire them. If you need 10, hire 20.
Not willing and not able : Hire these guys also. Hire at least as many as you did from the previous category.
That's easy.
Stupid, lots of money to waste: Buy the book!
Stupid, broke: Buy the book anyway, you're stupid!
Not stupid, lots of money to waste: Laugh
Not stupid, broke: You just saved some money, laugh!
When all your problems in life and business can be neatly summed up into 4 absurdly simply outcomes, nothing beats the power of the 2x2 decision matrix. Examples:
........... Worship ... Don't Worship ......| Great ...... Hell .... Live it up!
........... Competent .... Not Competent ..| Yeh, right ....... Hell ..| Hell ...... Finally, someone honest!
Is there a God, and should I worship him?
God
No God | So-so
So what, if non-idiots wish to ruin the pea-brained genius of this matrix with questions like "What if there is more than one god, or that a single god might not care about Christian ideals?". This matrix can show you the only way to live your life correctly. And who can forget the sarcastic logic of Scott Adams, in this comic strip favorite:
Bosses:
Good
Evil
Finally, someone has discovered this breakthrough in philosophy that proves you are screwed no matter what you do. Before this, people actually had false hopes of something better, but they need not suffer under any such illusions today!
Pick up your copy at your local Barnes And Noble bookstore today, for these and many other incredible matrices!
Apple 1= $10,000+ and all known machines are in the hands of collectors.
Lisa is almost as bad, but you can probably snag one off ebay if for $1-2k, if you don't insist on perfectly working one.
Amigas... you'll want a 2000, 3000, or 4000 if you're like me, a 1200 if like most others.
2000 = $100-$300
3000 = $300-500
4000 = $350-700
All easily gotten on ebay.
Atari STs are later than the 400/800, the 600XL/800XL. They start at the 520, then the 1024 and the Mega, the Atari laptops, then the TT030 and finally the Falcon. All cool, all wantable. The earlier ones are cheap on ebay.
The common C= machines, don't pay more than $5 per for, and then only if in great shape with the power supplies and such. If in perfect, never touched by human hands still sealed condition, maybe $25-50 for.
If you're anywhere near Richmond, VA then I'd give you an Apple GS. Rom1 I think, no extras.
I have about 3 vic20s, 2 c64, 2 c128, a 4plus, and a few others.
Then again, if you have a PET, that would be most welcome. I've found a GPIB pci card, and I've love to see if I could get a 1978 PET networked to a linux box, lord knows what that would mean (probably just a terminal program of some kind, at best).
Oh, and since I forgot in the last post... I *desperately* need a TRS-80 Model 2/12/16/6000 arcnet card. I have several of these computers, but the nic is almost impossible to find. Also, a TI99 peripheral expansion box would be nice too (I have a serial card for one, and the computer to use it with)...
Depends on the sparcstation. Personally, I'd love anything sun3 or earlier, and I'd even consider later stuff. At the moment, only have 2 ss2's, which aren't much. Maybe Santa will bring me a ultrasparc this christmas.
Nifty little thing, I have 3. One of them, I've managed to get a Palm foling keyboard working on, but I really wish I could make a laptop thickness proper keyboard for it, that would fit on top. Z80 was a hell of a CPU. I plan on writing some custom firmware, and doing a serial LCD display on it too, maybe even a meg of bankswitched ram or a 256M compactflash.
And then, get it all running off a few 9volts so I can have a cool laptop, not this Dell piece of shit. Too bad that 802.11 is such a power hungry thing, or it could have wireless too... (IRDA maybe?)
I'd give you a buck for the ram upgrade though..
Wanted:
Beboxes
Amigas
Atari STs
HP PArisc systems
SGI Systems
Apple 2s
Apple Lisas
Any Xerox computers
IBM RS6000/AS400 (especially microchannel based)
Sun Ultrasparc
Any Alpha based systems
Any Cray systems
Any ATM622 nics
Any HIPPI equipment
(Any unusual nics for that matter)
Any Vaxen
Email me!
Writing software with VB makes baby Jesus cry.
I would refer you to the section of the FAQ that desscribes .sigs. There is none. Sucks to be you.
1) Sensors on the gun, that if triggered, disable it for a few seconds.
2) Somehow, build a bunch of smaller sensors, and by this I mean alot. If every person has to wear coveralls that have a few hundred sensors on them, it's alot harder to cheat and just cover yours with your hand.
3) Have a wearable computer that interprets the sensor data. Not sure how to have it affect gameplay, but it seems you could tell the difference between a "kill" and a "flesh wound".
4) If you have an arena of sorts, have sensors on the outdoor lights for night play. Would be cool to "shoot them out".
5) Have lots of little 4" x 4" mirrors up in odd places, for bank shots.
6) Have everyone wear GPS. Send the output to a modified quake server... let people from around the world watch the virtual version of the game.
Just get the 3 people who watch PBS to sign a waiver or something?
They'd be offset at least an inch from each other. Close-ups would be screwed, parallax and all. Still, a nifty idea.
Troll, flamebait, maybe even overrated. Offtopic? I knew there would be trouble when the new slashcode automatically fedex'ed a vial of crack cocaine to moderators.
You see, Mr. Crackmoderator, that is what you call a metaphor in the loose sense of the word, or perhaps an analogy. A quite apt one, I would think. Because while such a Pinto might be a more comfortable ride, will it not crash just as often as any other Pinto? Maybe even more so, if the driver is busy watching the in-dash DVD player.
But for those of you that don't know, this is a typical M$ strategy, one that they've used effectively in the past. I'll illustrate two scenarios, and leave it to the reader to pick the most realistic of the two.
1) Linux has so many compelling, eye candy applications that Windows can't possibly hope to compete, except maybe on its stability and user-friendliness. So, being the fine coding engineers that they are, the Redmond boys set up a Linux compatibility layer, so that you can run all those fine Linux apps, without the horrendous linux crashing every 10 seconds.
2) Linux is barely making its way in the world, but with a little luck, lots of talent, and a metric fuckton of perserverence, Linux may when the war by attrition (or at least force them to a stalemate). However, as Windows did with OS/2 on the desktop, and Netware on the server, they'll offer compatibility understanding that this is a migration strategy. In many cases, the only truly critical reason to stay with linux might be some gee-whiz app that was just created, and they can't live without it. Therefor, until that changes, the Microsoft salesmen are continually rebuked in their bullying tactics and threats when they demand all linux servers be landfilled. But if Longhorn can also run the app (even if it does a shitty job of it), then there will be no way that middle managers and even CTOs can refuse their "offer". After all, it will kind of work, you know? Does it make Longhorn any better than before? Hell no, it's about as frivolous as pimping out a Pinto, for instance.
So, Mr. Crackmoderator, how many comments older than mine, that are all but fellating this new Longhorn "feature", will I find that you didn't bother to mod down? 1 or 2? 10? 75? Next time you consider modding something offtopic, think carefully. Is it an article talking about the Apple G6 chip, and I just posted "My cat had kittens" comment? Or is it merely that I used words too big for you (at a guess, more than 2 syllables), that I used an analogy/metaphor you couldn't wrap your tiny little brain around, or even that I had just too much sarcasm in my words? Lord forbid someone touch on a tangential subject here, with you allowed to have mod points.
Carmax annouced that from now on 1000 watt Bose stereo/DVD systems and hand-sewn italian leather seats will be available in all used Ford Pintos.
You'd pop the cover off it. Sampling the memory would get you a primitive black and white image. Maybe even grayscale, with software trickery. A parallel port interface isn't out of the question, would be as simple as an electronic camera could be, I'd suppose... look it up on google, used to be in a bunch of amateur robotics books of the 1980s.
If I were a purchasing executive, and had just blown a large amount of money on an SL8500, I'd seriously reconsider buying from StorageTek in the future if they were going to lock me in to their own service plans with such an ability to set prices without any competition.
Except that you'd be hard-pressed to find a vendor that won't pull stunts like this. Sure, you can boycott every one of them after they have invoked DCMA... but 20 years later you'll have run out of vendors, without ever discouraging even one of them.