As a guy who thinks the boat chase scene in 'Live and Let Die' is still one of the seminal movie chase scenes, I can't wait until this contraption shows up in a Bond movie. Hope they pay the stunt guy well.
Re:Spelling does not seem to be your forte
on
Root Zone Changed
·
· Score: 2
Hmm, the bartleby page has, as the very first pronunciation, the two-syllable one that you say is wrong. Etomologically, you're correct, it should be fort, but 74% of people in their 'Usage Panel' use the two-syllable form. Word pronunciations change over time. We don't often say 'thou' or 'thee' anymore. (At least not the people I know.) From this page:
This word, meaning "strong point," from French fort, meaning "strong," can be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort, or with two syllables. The two-syllable pronunciation, (fôrt), is probably the most common in American English, but some people dislike it, arguing that it properly belongs to the music term forte from Italian.
It was discussed on alt.english.usage a long time ago, and I have taken it upon myself to add an accent, similar to café to show what I consider the correct pronunciation, at least on my side of the pond. Every time I hear it here (mid-Atlantic region of the US), it's two syllables.
Slashdot is a global communication device. I try not to judge people based on their spelling or grammar. I was lambasting someone for making snide comments about technological issues, when they were obviously lacking in knowledge on those issues. I think, although perhaps rude, that I was, technically, correct. You, however, make the assumption that everyone lives in your neighborhood, went to your school, dresses like you, acts like you, and should therefore think (and speak) like you.
It's OK to flame someone for a spelling mistake if they were in turn flaming someone for a spelling mistake. If you think you 'won' the argument by pointing out a technical flaw in my writing, perhaps you should take a course in logic and reasoning.
P.S. I consider the OED to be the final word on these kinds of disputes. The OED says the two-syllable pronunciation is just fine. The accent mark is my own little attempt to change the world.
Have a nice day.
Wow. Score: 5. For calling someone an idiot. Perhaps there's too many mod points floating around.:)
Has anyone noticed that Michael likes to post snide insider-like comments in articles he posts? The problem is that they're sometimes wrong. It's like he's the outsider kid trying to get into the in-clique, but he keeps screwing it up.
Wonder how long it will be before he discovers this threads and super-mods me down to -1?
"verisign-causing-instability-as-usual dept."
Michael Sims, you're a fucking idiot. You know nothing about the way the internet works. In no way, shape, or form does this cause any instability whatsoever. It improves stability, however slightly.
You might want to stick to articles about politics or censorship or something. Technical issues don't appear to be your forté.
Cable does not have a monopoly on broadband. There are many alternatives. If cable access starts to cost too much, people will go to other solutions.
Aside from DSL, the most obvious solution I can come up with is: get your apartment building or townhouse community or neighborhood chipping in together, buying a T1 and splitting it out to everyone, either by wireless or running Cat-5.
DirecTV sells Satellite Internet service. High latency, but that's not really a problem for web, email and usenet. ISDN is still an option, too.
I see the future as wireless, though. You can find out right now whether it's feasible. Call the phone company up and ask them exactly how much it would cost to get a T-1 line to your house. Get pricing on routers, wireless access points and such. Put a flier together, distribute it to your neighbors, asking them how much they would be willing to spend for fast access. A wireless access point with strategically placed antennas can go pretty far. I've seen people say they've gone as much as 4 miles. If you get 20 people ready to go for $50, you could be making money within a couple of months. There are solutions. (The downside in this case is: Who provides tech support? Could be a problem, depending on your neighbors.)
Everyone likes to complain about cable companies being monopolies, but I'm not sure they qualify in the Internet access business. Can't believe the phone companies would let an opportunity slip by, if they saw a bunch of people ready to leave cable companies. I know that Sky Dayton (Scientologist head of Earthlink) is working heavily on getting wireless everywhere.
Jesus H. Christ, people. +5, Interesting. This is a completely made-up post by a troll. How the fuck did anyone mod this up? I've got 5 moderator points right now, but what's the fucking use? People will believe anything if it's posted and sounds reasonably possible. There's no way to stem the tide of bad mod points.
Taco, the quality of mods is way down. As a long-time reader, there just aren't that many +5 comments. Go back to the old number of mod points. I doubt this shit will be caught in meta-moderation, either. Who's got the time to do research to see whether the info is bogus? You've given an amazing amount of power to a new form of troll - the 'post-wrong-but-seemingly-astute-information' troll. We'll start seeing a lot of these, I imagine. Gotta be a lot more fun than bottom-feeding at -1 where no-one except fellow trolls and the unemployed see you.
Please, Rob. I don't have time to read even at +5 anymore. It's too much. And too much of it's crap. There just aren't that many insightful posts. Please, think of the children.
... the things that are really cool are always a couple of years away?
I guess that's a rhetorical question. Likely because by the time they finally get here, they're so over-hyped and over-advertised that it would be impossible to still find them cool. Bleh.
This is the sig that doesn't end, it goes on and on my friend, some people started typing it, not knowing what it was...
Malda's Law: All sigs end at 120 characters.
Re:Wardriving is not illegal
on
Wartrapping?
·
· Score: 2
Some airports have wireless networks that you have to pay to access. I have no problem with that. Some Starbucks have wireless networks that anyone can use for free. If I'm sitting outside a Starbucks and I sniff around for wireless access and the one I end up using is actually the one at the law office next door, can anyone really say that I'm breaking the law?
Right now, if you don't want me to use your wireless network, lock me out.
But, what's the point? Instead, why not have everyone leave their network open. Everyone pays for their own bandwidth, and by common agreement, we all share. Sure, some people will abuse it. Some people steal cars and VCR's. Doesn't mean the rest of us can't be cool with each other. Eventually, we'll figure out what to do about those who don't play nice.
Re:Wardriving is not illegal
on
Wartrapping?
·
· Score: 2
What is it with everyone trying to use the front door of a house analogy? Peoples' homes are private. Electromagnetic radiation is not.
You're allowed to walk up to the front door of most houses in the US. You are allowed to knock on the door. People do that all the time. There's nothing illegal about it. And some doors, you're allowed to open without knocking on, like the doors to restaurants or shops. (With locks to prevent you from entering while the shop is closed.) There's nothing wrong with looking around to see where the doors are and to see which ones are open with signs saying 'Come on in.'
Or, another analogy. DirecTV can have you prosecuted for breaking the encryption on their signals, even though their signals travel through your property. Their content is private. They've taken steps to make it private. Local TV stations, however, just broadcast TV signals. You're allowed to buy the appropriate equipment and watch their programming for free. Is this a slightly better analogy for you? Signals that are encrypted - private, signals that aren't encrypted - public. Just that simple. If you don't want people to access your wireless network, encrypt it.
Please tell me, enlightened one, what should we use for broadband net access outside our homes if it's not wireless? I just love how in your sig, you rail against closed minds.
Re:Wardriving is not illegal
on
Wartrapping?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Bad analogy. Really, really bad. It depends on whether there's any expectation of privacy. Here's some other examples:
You walk into a large public restroom. Is it illegal to bend down to see which stalls you can see people's feet in?
Is it illegal to look at pretty girls (or boys) on the beach? It would be illegal to try to look at them in a dressing room or in their bedrooms, but if they're in public, is it illegal?
If I'm walking down the hall in a hotel, is it illegal for me to look into a room where the door is open? If the door's open, there must not be much of an expectation of privacy at the moment. I don't have the right to walk into that room or to open any closed ones, but I can look to see which ones are open, can't I? And if it's open, I can see inside, right?
The way I see it, it's all just electromagnetic radiation. If you don't want people to see you naked, wear clothes, close the door, whatever. If you don't want people to access your wireless network, use access controls.
The trouble with it all is that some people DO put up public wireless networks. How will you find them if it's illegal to search for them? It's pretty friggin' easy to turn on the basic WEP encryption and not allow people in. The fact that it's insecure and can be easily broken is beside the point here. If there's even rudimentary safeguards against public use, you assume it's private. Otherwise, it's public.
The world you live in would have no wireless access for the masses (because, evidently, you're not allowed to find the access points.) That's a world I don't want to live in, unless you've come up with another way to get fast net access on the go.
Wardriving is not illegal
on
Wartrapping?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Driving around and finding unsecured wireless access points is not illegal. There's no reason to make it illegal. If you don't want people accessing your network, secure it. I have yet to see an article about anyone driving around, finding a secured wireless network and then trying to break in. What's the point? OK, fine, if you're stealing something or trying to find insider information, yeah, that's illegal.
For those of us looking for wireless acess, we just want to check email and check a few web pages. There's no way of telling whether a unsecured wireless network was deliberately unsecured to allow people to access the Internet, (like many people and some businesses - notably, Starbucks - do) or whether it was left unguarded due to ignorance, laziness, or boneheadedness.
If you find people accessing your network and you don't want to share, lock it down. What's the point of a honeypot? To find all those roving bloggers on park benches, obsessively updating their fans on the minutiae of their lives? What are you gonna do when you find them? Slap them on the wrist?
Doesn't everyone realize that this is the future? Unfettered access to information, whether you're in line at the DMV, at the park with the kids, Saturday morning soccer, whatever. What other technology is going to bridge that last mile? Nobody's putting fiber down in my neighborhood. Wireless seems like the best option for fast, ubiquitous acesss to me.
I got my eyes done in November 2000, so it's been almost 2 years. First, the bad: My eyes get a little dry at the end of a long day. Drops fix that. When my eyes are tired, I get the halo/starburst thing from lights at night. Again, drops help and it's not really a problem.
The rest of it is all good.
I recommend that you do your homework and you get the best surgeon your money can buy you. I wouldn't trust my eyes to the $500 per eye people. I went to the guy that did Tiger Woods. Dr. Watkins, across the street from White Flint Mall, in Bethesda/Rockville, Maryland. As far as I know, he doesn't do his own screening. You go to one of the referring Ophthamologists, who figure out if you're a good candidate, then you go to Dr. Watkins for the laser. It's like an assembly line once you get there, but you're paying a lot of money ($5500 for me, but my medical plan membership gave me a discount to $3600), so they give you lots of personal service. I didn't actually have anything to do with Dr. Watkins except for the 5 minutes it took him to do my eyes. I asked him if he really did Tiger Woods and he said "Yes. He laid in that exact same chair."
The thing that really sold me was the testimonials: They've got a binder with pictures of all the famous people who've gone through there: Every major sport - football players, baseball players, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf; there's astronauts, movie stars, CEO's, foreign royalty (Saudi Princes and such) - pretty much anyone they'd put on the cover of Time. I figured if it was good enough for those people, it was good enough for me. The lobby is filled with autographed golf bags, baseballs, footballs, etc. If you managed to rob the place, you could make a killing on E-bay.
Can you think of anyone who's more dependent on his eyes than Tiger Woods? Don't you think he researched it and got about a million dollars worth of advice beforehand? I did research, too. I found out that most people who had problems (2 years ago, anyway) were going to cut-rate doctors. They would then come to Dr. Watkins to ask him to fix their problems. There's lots of doctors who do marginal candidates or even people whose eyes are so far from the norm that there's no way LASIK could help them. These are most of the people that are complaining.
For all you people on here advising against it because you had a bad experience: How much research did you do? How many opinions did you get? Did you use a coupon and try to find the cheapest price? Were you a marginal candidate and still chose to undergo the surgery? Are you an Ophthamologist afraid of losing more business?
There's a lot of options for correcting bad eyesight. LASIK was the right choice for me. I did a lot of research. I asked a lot of questions. I read all kinds of books and pamphlets. I'm an intelligent, thinking, rational human being and I can assess how much of a risk I'm willing to subject myself to. If I needed to do it over, I would. I've got 20/15 vision in both eyes and I love not having to wear glasses. It's especially nice when I'm going swimming. No fumbling with clips. No messing with contacts.
As an interesting side note, there's apparently a slight magnification that's done by glasses. Without glasses, things appear just a little smaller. Apparently, the only person to have ever noticed this is Tiger Woods. He told the doc on one of his follow-up visits that golf balls seemed a little smaller to him. My respect for the guy went up even further after I heard that. I think there's a reason he's the best golfer around.
You can call me white, gray, black, puce, ochre, whatever. I already break the law, every day. I speed; roll through stop signs; jaywalk; litter; drive after having a beer or two with dinner; try to get every conceivable deduction on my taxes; copy software and music CDs. In the past, I experimented with illegal drugs; shared prescription drugs; bought alcohol for minors; participated in sodomy in at least one state that outlaws it. Shit, the list's just too freakin' long.
I'm already a criminal. I imagine most people on here are. Who the hell hasn't broken a law today. We're in a drought here in Maryland. Water a plant today, did ya? Broke the law. have you let a teenager bum a cigarette? Criminal.
Why should anyone care what color hat they supposedly wear. It's an arbitrary label. I call myself a hacker. I don't break things. I don't steal things. I try not to hurt people I like. In my opinion, that makes me an OK guy. Of course, opinions vary.
Oh, and you... yeah you. Stop looking over your shoulder. I'm running crack against your password file right now. Might want to go change a few of 'em. Especially root. You know, the one that's your girlfriend's name. (And we both know she's not really your girlfriend. All you really have to do is ask her out, but you're scared. Pussy.) I'm only telling you all this because I like you. Now go ask her out, wimp.
You got a '+5 Insightful' - bravo. I do think you have a good point, but... (you knew there was going to be a but, right?)
In 1900, there was no one around to tell us not to exploit children. We (the US) did it. Britain did it. The rest of Europe did it. (That is, as far as I know. I don't know the exact history of every country over there, but I believe I'm correct enough.)
Here we are, 100 years later and we've grown up. Our mores are changing every day. As a society, we are 'evolving'. It used to be that we thought nothing of driving whole species extinct. Nowadays, that thought is abhorrent to most of us. Vegetarianism. Recycling. Etc.
So, why can't we help other countries skip the step of exploiting children? Lots of people excoriate the US for interfering in other countries' internal matters. Still, if we've learned better, can't we help out?
My 4-year old gets mad at me when I make him go to bed. That doesn't mean I'm not right to make him do that. If this dumping of old computers is bad (and I think we can all agree it's bad), then why not get a whole bunch of people up in arms about it and ban the exporting of dangerous chemicals to countries that don't handle it properly? Yes, we already have 7000 other things that we need to get up in arms about. Well, shit. That's what comes with being a parent. It's a horribly difficult and thankless job but apparently we're the only ones willing to do it.
There's all kinds of things we have to teach other countries: Judicial systems, building codes, nutrition, medicine. The list goes on and on. Even though most of what we export is pop music, movies, and MS Windows, that doesn't mean we can't try to put some good stuff in there, too.
The next time your dad introduces you to the bigshot CEO of some computer exporting or shipping firm, show him those pictures and then ask your dad why he's friends with someone who helps cause stuff like that. The next time your local politico is glad-handing his way around the Moose Lodge, try to get a plug in for not throwing our waste in our neighbors' yards.
I just got the Disney call again a few days ago. This is the third time I've gotten it. I'm sure it's a scam of some sort, but I don't know the full details. Does anybody have them?
It's this long message about how it's Disney's 100th anniversary and it's a free trip to Disney World, blah-blah-blah. Anybody know what the catch is? Two nights free at a hotel, but you have to pay for everything else? Free entrance to Disney World, but again you gotta pay everything else? Forced to listen to a condo advertising spiel while you're down there? It's gotta be something like that.
They haven't filled up my answering machine yet, but I do get a lot of voice spam. We stopped answering the phone about a year ago. Pisses off some of our friends, ("Why are you screening your calls?!") but not jumping up to answer the phone every time it rings is oddly liberating. Didn't realize I was a slave to the phone company. Makes you re-evaluate a lot of the little things like that in your life.
Man, who doesn't have a copy of Doom 2? Somewhere in my pile of, uh, stuff, I've got copies of Doom, Doom 2, Ultimate Doom, Final Doom, Simpsons Doom, Aliens Doom, Crack of Doom, Doom's in the House, Doom-Doom, Killer Doom, Doom Redux, Doom and Robin, Doom: The Final Chapter, Doom X, Doomed Again, Doomenator... well, you get the idea.
For a few years there, it was pretty much all Doom. A little side-tracking for Descent and Duke Nukem, but other than that, from about 93 to 96, I was 'Doomed', so to speak. My relationships were doomed. My pay raises were doomed. Going out with friends was doomed. Movies were doomed to not get any money from me. The only ones who weren't doomed were the hardware manufacturers. Everyone else... yeah, doomed.
Got it all out of my system. Haven't touched a first-person shooter in years. Of course, the little rugrat is turning 4 in a couple of weeks and he wants a new bike and a gaming system. Oh man, the wife's gonna hate us spending hours on the couch. Quality time, sweetie. Quality time.
I've got a 3-year old Pentium III-450. Tried running XP for a couple of weeks. It was slow and there was no way to get my scanner, graphics tablet, video capture card, or on-board sound card to work. Non-supported hardware. Oh, and my printer wasn't supported - Xerox Docuprint C20. Not supported. Tried it for a couple of weeks, then tried the 'go-back' uninstall. Didn't work. Had to reformat. Lost my Linux partition when I did that. Taught me my lesson.
The post I was responding to was this one:
"That's less than $1 for each major feature," he quipped." Bah, I can get Windows XP for only $99 and get thousands of bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures for my money!
Where in there or in my post was any comparison done to OS-X? And I don't mean to call you an idiot or anything, but why can't I compare one operating system to another? Seems like that's the whole fucking point. Did I miss a memo somewhere? My car is 6 years old. When deciding on whether I should buy a new one I can't compare it to the new one? I have to compare it only to all the new models out there? Can't compare it to the older ones or to one by a different manufacturer?
As an aside, Windows 2000 is an entirely different operating system than XP. You shouldn't conflate them like that.
If I have to buy a whole new PC to run XP then MS is going to have to wait a while to get my money. And aside from all that, nothing's really changed. Windows 95 was a big step up from Windows 3.1. The same way that 98 was a step up from 95. When the next version of Windows comes out, do you really think MS is going to say "Well, it's really not any better than XP. You don't need to upgrade." No fucking way. They'll say the same thing they've been saying about every version: "More stable. Fewer crashes. More this. Less that. Upgrade now!" If the next version is more stable (and you know it will be) then this one is not as fucking stable as it could be. Which I experienced, btw. I'm sure it's because I had non-supported hardware. A scanner by HP. A Wacom graphics tablet. A Xerox printer. All obscure stuff that doesn't need to be supported, I'm sure.
I'm still waiting for the 'pay by the feature' Windows. I wouldn't pay for the 'file losing' feature, the 'crash when you really, really don't want it to' feature, and the 'it takes forever to start up' feature. I guess I'll continue to run Win98 for my games and such until that version comes out. Anyone know when? Is that what.NET is all about?
First, the comment I was replying to said that we won WWII because of the bomb. Germany surrendered in May, we didn't drop the bomb until August. So for all of June and July, we were concentrating on beating the crap out of the Japanese. We'd been bombing them continously since November 1944. If there was no Atomic Bomb, we were still beating them so badly that by the end of 1945 we would have run out of targets to bomb. We would have been relegated to bombing individual homes if they hadn't surrendered.
On July 27th, 1945, with the Potsdam Proclamation, we told the Japanese to surrender unconditionally. The Japanese considered their emperor a god. There were high level talks between Truman's cabinet and the Japanese cabinet about the surrender. J. F. Byrnes (looked it up this time), Truman's Secretary of State insisted that we not accept Japan's surrender with the condition that they keep their emperor.
On the 6th of August, we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. On the 9th, Russia invaded Manchuria at the same time we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Up until this point, Russia and Japan had been neutral and Japan had been trying to negotiate a conditional surrender through the Russians.
For the next 4 days, the Japanese Cabinet debated whether to surrender. It required a unanimous vote to do so and the 'hawks' weren't having any of it. On the 14th, Emperor Hirohito himself told the cabinet to accept the surrender. This was after he'd learned, through diplomatic channels, that 'unconditional surrender' didn't mean the same thing to us as it did to the Japanese. The Japanese were afraid it meant that we might execute the emperor or put him on trial for war crimes. We told them it actually meant we didn't care if they kept the emperor, as long as there was a democratically elected government. The cabinet voted to surrender then and the head of the War Department committed hara-kiri the day after.
The fact is that the Japanese did accept our terms for surrender and that it was 'unconditional', but there was an understanding that it didn't mean they had to get rid of the emperor. We can debate endlessly about what would have happened if we hadn't used nukes or if we'd dropped the 'unconditional surrender' or even if Russia had decided to switch sides or if we'd allowed Patton to roll the tanks and take on Russia like he wanted to.
Getting back to the original point, we didn't win WWII because of the atomic bomb. It helped decide when exactly the end was going to be, but without the backroom - 'yeah, we said unconditional, but we don't really care' - the Japanese would have fought on for quite some time. And I know we're looking back on it with 20/20 hindsight, but a diplomatic ending to the war could have been achieved much earlier, except for the fact that everyone was looking for a military solution. And there was the revenge factor for Pearl Harbor.
There's our history lesson for the day. Your inane comment about a few Japanese idiots in the Philippines has no bearing. I grew up in Georgia and to this day there's numbnuts down there who have rebel flags and vow 'the South's going to rise again.' The fact that some people are unable to accept defeat and move on with their lives says nothing about the Japanese (or American) people as a whole.
The U.S. winning WW2 started in Nevada at the test site.
Wow! Nice revisionist history. Maybe that's what they're teaching in school these days. Let's be clear: We didn't win World War II because of the atomic bomb. The Japanese were already negotiating their surrender before anyone outside Los Alamos knew about the bomb. Truman's whole cabinet was willing to accept their surrender except for his Secretary of State (can't remember his name - but it should live in infamy.)
The Japanese's one condition was that they get to keep their monarchy intact. The SoS didn't want that, so we kept bombing the crap out of them and then popped a couple of atomic bombs. They surrendered unconditionally after that. Yeah, us winning WWII was really dependent on those two nukes. The firestorm that raged through Tokyo (which really got the Japanese to have second thoughts about this whole 'conquering the world' thing) was started by which one of the nukes? Oh yeah, that's right, conventional bombing did that. Tell me, I forget in my dotage, which cities in Germany did we nuke to win the war there?
So, to sum up, Unicron doesn't have a pretty new license plate and the citizens of Washington, DC have no representatives in this country's legislature.
Slashdot Mirror
As a guy who thinks the boat chase scene in 'Live and Let Die' is still one of the seminal movie chase scenes, I can't wait until this contraption shows up in a Bond movie. Hope they pay the stunt guy well.
This word, meaning "strong point," from French fort, meaning "strong," can be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort, or with two syllables. The two-syllable pronunciation, (fôrt), is probably the most common in American English, but some people dislike it, arguing that it properly belongs to the music term forte from Italian.
It was discussed on alt.english.usage a long time ago, and I have taken it upon myself to add an accent, similar to café to show what I consider the correct pronunciation, at least on my side of the pond. Every time I hear it here (mid-Atlantic region of the US), it's two syllables.
Slashdot is a global communication device. I try not to judge people based on their spelling or grammar. I was lambasting someone for making snide comments about technological issues, when they were obviously lacking in knowledge on those issues. I think, although perhaps rude, that I was, technically, correct. You, however, make the assumption that everyone lives in your neighborhood, went to your school, dresses like you, acts like you, and should therefore think (and speak) like you.
It's OK to flame someone for a spelling mistake if they were in turn flaming someone for a spelling mistake. If you think you 'won' the argument by pointing out a technical flaw in my writing, perhaps you should take a course in logic and reasoning.
P.S. I consider the OED to be the final word on these kinds of disputes. The OED says the two-syllable pronunciation is just fine. The accent mark is my own little attempt to change the world. Have a nice day.
Has anyone noticed that Michael likes to post snide insider-like comments in articles he posts? The problem is that they're sometimes wrong. It's like he's the outsider kid trying to get into the in-clique, but he keeps screwing it up.
Wonder how long it will be before he discovers this threads and super-mods me down to -1?
Michael Sims, you're a fucking idiot. You know nothing about the way the internet works. In no way, shape, or form does this cause any instability whatsoever. It improves stability, however slightly.
You might want to stick to articles about politics or censorship or something. Technical issues don't appear to be your forté.
Aside from DSL, the most obvious solution I can come up with is: get your apartment building or townhouse community or neighborhood chipping in together, buying a T1 and splitting it out to everyone, either by wireless or running Cat-5.
DirecTV sells Satellite Internet service. High latency, but that's not really a problem for web, email and usenet. ISDN is still an option, too.
I see the future as wireless, though. You can find out right now whether it's feasible. Call the phone company up and ask them exactly how much it would cost to get a T-1 line to your house. Get pricing on routers, wireless access points and such. Put a flier together, distribute it to your neighbors, asking them how much they would be willing to spend for fast access. A wireless access point with strategically placed antennas can go pretty far. I've seen people say they've gone as much as 4 miles. If you get 20 people ready to go for $50, you could be making money within a couple of months. There are solutions. (The downside in this case is: Who provides tech support? Could be a problem, depending on your neighbors.)
Everyone likes to complain about cable companies being monopolies, but I'm not sure they qualify in the Internet access business. Can't believe the phone companies would let an opportunity slip by, if they saw a bunch of people ready to leave cable companies. I know that Sky Dayton (Scientologist head of Earthlink) is working heavily on getting wireless everywhere.
Does the .NET framework work via the Crossover plugin? I know IE does. Once it's exported to JPG, it doesn't matter which OS you use.
Overall, there's still too many mod points floating around, I think.
Taco, the quality of mods is way down. As a long-time reader, there just aren't that many +5 comments. Go back to the old number of mod points. I doubt this shit will be caught in meta-moderation, either. Who's got the time to do research to see whether the info is bogus? You've given an amazing amount of power to a new form of troll - the 'post-wrong-but-seemingly-astute-information' troll. We'll start seeing a lot of these, I imagine. Gotta be a lot more fun than bottom-feeding at -1 where no-one except fellow trolls and the unemployed see you.
Please, Rob. I don't have time to read even at +5 anymore. It's too much. And too much of it's crap. There just aren't that many insightful posts. Please, think of the children.
I guess that's a rhetorical question. Likely because by the time they finally get here, they're so over-hyped and over-advertised that it would be impossible to still find them cool. Bleh.
Malda's Law: All sigs end at 120 characters.
Right now, if you don't want me to use your wireless network, lock me out.
But, what's the point? Instead, why not have everyone leave their network open. Everyone pays for their own bandwidth, and by common agreement, we all share. Sure, some people will abuse it. Some people steal cars and VCR's. Doesn't mean the rest of us can't be cool with each other. Eventually, we'll figure out what to do about those who don't play nice.
You're allowed to walk up to the front door of most houses in the US. You are allowed to knock on the door. People do that all the time. There's nothing illegal about it. And some doors, you're allowed to open without knocking on, like the doors to restaurants or shops. (With locks to prevent you from entering while the shop is closed.) There's nothing wrong with looking around to see where the doors are and to see which ones are open with signs saying 'Come on in.'
Or, another analogy. DirecTV can have you prosecuted for breaking the encryption on their signals, even though their signals travel through your property. Their content is private. They've taken steps to make it private. Local TV stations, however, just broadcast TV signals. You're allowed to buy the appropriate equipment and watch their programming for free. Is this a slightly better analogy for you? Signals that are encrypted - private, signals that aren't encrypted - public. Just that simple. If you don't want people to access your wireless network, encrypt it.
Please tell me, enlightened one, what should we use for broadband net access outside our homes if it's not wireless? I just love how in your sig, you rail against closed minds.
You walk into a large public restroom. Is it illegal to bend down to see which stalls you can see people's feet in?
Is it illegal to look at pretty girls (or boys) on the beach? It would be illegal to try to look at them in a dressing room or in their bedrooms, but if they're in public, is it illegal?
If I'm walking down the hall in a hotel, is it illegal for me to look into a room where the door is open? If the door's open, there must not be much of an expectation of privacy at the moment. I don't have the right to walk into that room or to open any closed ones, but I can look to see which ones are open, can't I? And if it's open, I can see inside, right?
The way I see it, it's all just electromagnetic radiation. If you don't want people to see you naked, wear clothes, close the door, whatever. If you don't want people to access your wireless network, use access controls.
The trouble with it all is that some people DO put up public wireless networks. How will you find them if it's illegal to search for them? It's pretty friggin' easy to turn on the basic WEP encryption and not allow people in. The fact that it's insecure and can be easily broken is beside the point here. If there's even rudimentary safeguards against public use, you assume it's private. Otherwise, it's public.
The world you live in would have no wireless access for the masses (because, evidently, you're not allowed to find the access points.) That's a world I don't want to live in, unless you've come up with another way to get fast net access on the go.
For those of us looking for wireless acess, we just want to check email and check a few web pages. There's no way of telling whether a unsecured wireless network was deliberately unsecured to allow people to access the Internet, (like many people and some businesses - notably, Starbucks - do) or whether it was left unguarded due to ignorance, laziness, or boneheadedness.
If you find people accessing your network and you don't want to share, lock it down. What's the point of a honeypot? To find all those roving bloggers on park benches, obsessively updating their fans on the minutiae of their lives? What are you gonna do when you find them? Slap them on the wrist?
Doesn't everyone realize that this is the future? Unfettered access to information, whether you're in line at the DMV, at the park with the kids, Saturday morning soccer, whatever. What other technology is going to bridge that last mile? Nobody's putting fiber down in my neighborhood. Wireless seems like the best option for fast, ubiquitous acesss to me.
The rest of it is all good.
I recommend that you do your homework and you get the best surgeon your money can buy you. I wouldn't trust my eyes to the $500 per eye people. I went to the guy that did Tiger Woods. Dr. Watkins, across the street from White Flint Mall, in Bethesda/Rockville, Maryland. As far as I know, he doesn't do his own screening. You go to one of the referring Ophthamologists, who figure out if you're a good candidate, then you go to Dr. Watkins for the laser. It's like an assembly line once you get there, but you're paying a lot of money ($5500 for me, but my medical plan membership gave me a discount to $3600), so they give you lots of personal service. I didn't actually have anything to do with Dr. Watkins except for the 5 minutes it took him to do my eyes. I asked him if he really did Tiger Woods and he said "Yes. He laid in that exact same chair."
The thing that really sold me was the testimonials: They've got a binder with pictures of all the famous people who've gone through there: Every major sport - football players, baseball players, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf; there's astronauts, movie stars, CEO's, foreign royalty (Saudi Princes and such) - pretty much anyone they'd put on the cover of Time. I figured if it was good enough for those people, it was good enough for me. The lobby is filled with autographed golf bags, baseballs, footballs, etc. If you managed to rob the place, you could make a killing on E-bay.
Can you think of anyone who's more dependent on his eyes than Tiger Woods? Don't you think he researched it and got about a million dollars worth of advice beforehand? I did research, too. I found out that most people who had problems (2 years ago, anyway) were going to cut-rate doctors. They would then come to Dr. Watkins to ask him to fix their problems. There's lots of doctors who do marginal candidates or even people whose eyes are so far from the norm that there's no way LASIK could help them. These are most of the people that are complaining.
For all you people on here advising against it because you had a bad experience: How much research did you do? How many opinions did you get? Did you use a coupon and try to find the cheapest price? Were you a marginal candidate and still chose to undergo the surgery? Are you an Ophthamologist afraid of losing more business?
There's a lot of options for correcting bad eyesight. LASIK was the right choice for me. I did a lot of research. I asked a lot of questions. I read all kinds of books and pamphlets. I'm an intelligent, thinking, rational human being and I can assess how much of a risk I'm willing to subject myself to. If I needed to do it over, I would. I've got 20/15 vision in both eyes and I love not having to wear glasses. It's especially nice when I'm going swimming. No fumbling with clips. No messing with contacts.
As an interesting side note, there's apparently a slight magnification that's done by glasses. Without glasses, things appear just a little smaller. Apparently, the only person to have ever noticed this is Tiger Woods. He told the doc on one of his follow-up visits that golf balls seemed a little smaller to him. My respect for the guy went up even further after I heard that. I think there's a reason he's the best golfer around.
I'm already a criminal. I imagine most people on here are. Who the hell hasn't broken a law today. We're in a drought here in Maryland. Water a plant today, did ya? Broke the law. have you let a teenager bum a cigarette? Criminal.
Why should anyone care what color hat they supposedly wear. It's an arbitrary label. I call myself a hacker. I don't break things. I don't steal things. I try not to hurt people I like. In my opinion, that makes me an OK guy. Of course, opinions vary.
Oh, and you... yeah you. Stop looking over your shoulder. I'm running crack against your password file right now. Might want to go change a few of 'em. Especially root. You know, the one that's your girlfriend's name. (And we both know she's not really your girlfriend. All you really have to do is ask her out, but you're scared. Pussy.) I'm only telling you all this because I like you. Now go ask her out, wimp.
Holy Shit. Leonard Kleinrock reads /. Now I've seen everything. I'm coming, 'lizabeth!
So, you're telling us you buy Maxim for the Physics articles? Yeah, right. Still not buying it...
In 1900, there was no one around to tell us not to exploit children. We (the US) did it. Britain did it. The rest of Europe did it. (That is, as far as I know. I don't know the exact history of every country over there, but I believe I'm correct enough.)
Here we are, 100 years later and we've grown up. Our mores are changing every day. As a society, we are 'evolving'. It used to be that we thought nothing of driving whole species extinct. Nowadays, that thought is abhorrent to most of us. Vegetarianism. Recycling. Etc.
So, why can't we help other countries skip the step of exploiting children? Lots of people excoriate the US for interfering in other countries' internal matters. Still, if we've learned better, can't we help out?
My 4-year old gets mad at me when I make him go to bed. That doesn't mean I'm not right to make him do that. If this dumping of old computers is bad (and I think we can all agree it's bad), then why not get a whole bunch of people up in arms about it and ban the exporting of dangerous chemicals to countries that don't handle it properly? Yes, we already have 7000 other things that we need to get up in arms about. Well, shit. That's what comes with being a parent. It's a horribly difficult and thankless job but apparently we're the only ones willing to do it.
There's all kinds of things we have to teach other countries: Judicial systems, building codes, nutrition, medicine. The list goes on and on. Even though most of what we export is pop music, movies, and MS Windows, that doesn't mean we can't try to put some good stuff in there, too.
The next time your dad introduces you to the bigshot CEO of some computer exporting or shipping firm, show him those pictures and then ask your dad why he's friends with someone who helps cause stuff like that. The next time your local politico is glad-handing his way around the Moose Lodge, try to get a plug in for not throwing our waste in our neighbors' yards.
You never know. It might work.
It's this long message about how it's Disney's 100th anniversary and it's a free trip to Disney World, blah-blah-blah. Anybody know what the catch is? Two nights free at a hotel, but you have to pay for everything else? Free entrance to Disney World, but again you gotta pay everything else? Forced to listen to a condo advertising spiel while you're down there? It's gotta be something like that.
They haven't filled up my answering machine yet, but I do get a lot of voice spam. We stopped answering the phone about a year ago. Pisses off some of our friends, ("Why are you screening your calls?!") but not jumping up to answer the phone every time it rings is oddly liberating. Didn't realize I was a slave to the phone company. Makes you re-evaluate a lot of the little things like that in your life.
Fools who think there are
"hidden portions of headers"
are foolish indeed
For a few years there, it was pretty much all Doom. A little side-tracking for Descent and Duke Nukem, but other than that, from about 93 to 96, I was 'Doomed', so to speak. My relationships were doomed. My pay raises were doomed. Going out with friends was doomed. Movies were doomed to not get any money from me. The only ones who weren't doomed were the hardware manufacturers. Everyone else... yeah, doomed.
Got it all out of my system. Haven't touched a first-person shooter in years. Of course, the little rugrat is turning 4 in a couple of weeks and he wants a new bike and a gaming system. Oh man, the wife's gonna hate us spending hours on the couch. Quality time, sweetie. Quality time.
The post I was responding to was this one:
Where in there or in my post was any comparison done to OS-X? And I don't mean to call you an idiot or anything, but why can't I compare one operating system to another? Seems like that's the whole fucking point. Did I miss a memo somewhere? My car is 6 years old. When deciding on whether I should buy a new one I can't compare it to the new one? I have to compare it only to all the new models out there? Can't compare it to the older ones or to one by a different manufacturer?
As an aside, Windows 2000 is an entirely different operating system than XP. You shouldn't conflate them like that.
If I have to buy a whole new PC to run XP then MS is going to have to wait a while to get my money. And aside from all that, nothing's really changed. Windows 95 was a big step up from Windows 3.1. The same way that 98 was a step up from 95. When the next version of Windows comes out, do you really think MS is going to say "Well, it's really not any better than XP. You don't need to upgrade." No fucking way. They'll say the same thing they've been saying about every version: "More stable. Fewer crashes. More this. Less that. Upgrade now!" If the next version is more stable (and you know it will be) then this one is not as fucking stable as it could be. Which I experienced, btw. I'm sure it's because I had non-supported hardware. A scanner by HP. A Wacom graphics tablet. A Xerox printer. All obscure stuff that doesn't need to be supported, I'm sure.
I'm still waiting for the 'pay by the feature' Windows. I wouldn't pay for the 'file losing' feature, the 'crash when you really, really don't want it to' feature, and the 'it takes forever to start up' feature. I guess I'll continue to run Win98 for my games and such until that version comes out. Anyone know when? Is that what .NET is all about?
On July 27th, 1945, with the Potsdam Proclamation, we told the Japanese to surrender unconditionally. The Japanese considered their emperor a god. There were high level talks between Truman's cabinet and the Japanese cabinet about the surrender. J. F. Byrnes (looked it up this time), Truman's Secretary of State insisted that we not accept Japan's surrender with the condition that they keep their emperor.
On the 6th of August, we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. On the 9th, Russia invaded Manchuria at the same time we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Up until this point, Russia and Japan had been neutral and Japan had been trying to negotiate a conditional surrender through the Russians.
For the next 4 days, the Japanese Cabinet debated whether to surrender. It required a unanimous vote to do so and the 'hawks' weren't having any of it. On the 14th, Emperor Hirohito himself told the cabinet to accept the surrender. This was after he'd learned, through diplomatic channels, that 'unconditional surrender' didn't mean the same thing to us as it did to the Japanese. The Japanese were afraid it meant that we might execute the emperor or put him on trial for war crimes. We told them it actually meant we didn't care if they kept the emperor, as long as there was a democratically elected government. The cabinet voted to surrender then and the head of the War Department committed hara-kiri the day after.
The fact is that the Japanese did accept our terms for surrender and that it was 'unconditional', but there was an understanding that it didn't mean they had to get rid of the emperor. We can debate endlessly about what would have happened if we hadn't used nukes or if we'd dropped the 'unconditional surrender' or even if Russia had decided to switch sides or if we'd allowed Patton to roll the tanks and take on Russia like he wanted to.
Getting back to the original point, we didn't win WWII because of the atomic bomb. It helped decide when exactly the end was going to be, but without the backroom - 'yeah, we said unconditional, but we don't really care' - the Japanese would have fought on for quite some time. And I know we're looking back on it with 20/20 hindsight, but a diplomatic ending to the war could have been achieved much earlier, except for the fact that everyone was looking for a military solution. And there was the revenge factor for Pearl Harbor.
There's our history lesson for the day. Your inane comment about a few Japanese idiots in the Philippines has no bearing. I grew up in Georgia and to this day there's numbnuts down there who have rebel flags and vow 'the South's going to rise again.' The fact that some people are unable to accept defeat and move on with their lives says nothing about the Japanese (or American) people as a whole.
Wow! Nice revisionist history. Maybe that's what they're teaching in school these days. Let's be clear: We didn't win World War II because of the atomic bomb. The Japanese were already negotiating their surrender before anyone outside Los Alamos knew about the bomb. Truman's whole cabinet was willing to accept their surrender except for his Secretary of State (can't remember his name - but it should live in infamy.)
The Japanese's one condition was that they get to keep their monarchy intact. The SoS didn't want that, so we kept bombing the crap out of them and then popped a couple of atomic bombs. They surrendered unconditionally after that. Yeah, us winning WWII was really dependent on those two nukes. The firestorm that raged through Tokyo (which really got the Japanese to have second thoughts about this whole 'conquering the world' thing) was started by which one of the nukes? Oh yeah, that's right, conventional bombing did that. Tell me, I forget in my dotage, which cities in Germany did we nuke to win the war there?
So, to sum up, Unicron doesn't have a pretty new license plate and the citizens of Washington, DC have no representatives in this country's legislature.