Talk about an active guy! He helps Colonel Sanders start a chicken business, then founds his own restaurant chain, then dies, THEN writes a book about Ruby on Rails?
This guy just wants to cool his room; he doesn't care about the rest of the house, or he'd have one of these buckets in every room. Let the kitchen get so hot you can fry bacon on the floor, his computer room will be COOOOOOL and COMFY.
Not a terrible bit of redneck engineering (and I mean that is a positive way), but I can't imagine anyone having a limitless supply of ice and water.
Not that the idea I'm about to present is any better, but this guy really needs to make this a closed system. Put that bucket'o'water in the refridgerator (or freezer), get an aquarium pump, and run the pickup line to the bottom of the bucket and the return line on the top of the bucket. Cut out the door gaskets to allow the lines to go through, and just add some ice cubes every so often as needed.
Sure, you'll be wasting electricity and may burn out the refridgerator compressor because its running all the time, but at least you won't be buying bags and bags of ice and wasting water.
And hell, if the landlord is paying for the fridge, you're home free!
The problem here is that I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic...
So I was thinking that, if indeed these Intel processors are just P4s and Pentium Ms and such, I bet it will only be a matter of time before someone figures out how to run Windows on the thing.
Firefox's first major flaws turned up earlier this month. Its Version 1.0.3 exhibited at least two errors that, when manipulated together, enabled hackers access to the user's computer. The flaws prompted a Version 1.0.4, which was issued three days later.
Netscape 8.0's developers, it turned out, had used components of Firefox 1.0.3 in their framework.
That Firefox sported cracks in its shining veneer seemed inevitable, browser experts warned....
I'm trying to see where the problem is, especially when noting how Microsoft handles inevitable flaws that make their way into every software package.
The Mozilla team discovers flaws and gets out a new package in 3 days.
The Microsoft Internet Explorer team discovers a flaw (or more likely, is told about about a flaw), and it takes, weeks or months for a patch to be released.
Now, what strikes you as the more hazardous situation?
Though the focus of the article seems to be that every browser has problems, he seriously downplays the Mozilla's aggressive stance on solving those problems as opposed to Microsoft.
Were it not for the need for wireless comunication, I would *still* be using my beloved Psion 3c as my daily PDA. While its time-scheduling abilities were top-notch, it came with, IN THE ROM, a very good word processor, spreadsheet, and flat-file database.
The 3c has a small, but complete, keyboard, and typing with two fingers, I could get 20-25 wpm. It has a built-in spell checker, 80-column wide screen by at least 10 or 14 lines, can print to many printers, and with PsiWin software, import and export MS Word and Excel files seamlessly. And it runs for weeks on a pair of AA's, and there's a good backlight.
The 5mx has bigger keys, a touchscreen, and a prettier GUI, along with all the benefits described above.
Both fit in a hip or coat pocket easily. Both connect to a PC via a serial port, and your PC probably still has one of those.
Check ebay for units with PsiWin software. Then Google around for a huge library of 3rd party software.
Yes, they are both old, but Psion had more PDA experience in 1992 than Palm has now. Psion software is almostly always amazingly good.
I use a top-o-the-line color wireless Palm these days, but I still think my Psion 3c had it beat in almost all areas relating to software, power, and convenience.
Yes, the world could be Apple II based, not PC-XT.
on
Apple's First Flops
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· Score: 1
Take it from someone in the industry back then:
Apple did all it could to DISCOURAGE people from buying the most popular computer sold at the time, the Apple II, so that they would buy Apple///'s first, then Macintoshes later. Meanwhile, the Apple II kept selling in SPITE of Apple's (Jobs')efforts, and kept the company afloat.
We're talking about ZERO dollars advertising. Practically ZERO dollars developing. Practically ZERO support help for developers (who fortunately could work without it.) We're talking about crippling later Apple II's (such as the IIgs) so that they wouldn't "compete" against more "advanced" Macintoshes. The IIgs had super-high-res color and true 32-channel Esoniq music synthesis while the Mac had Black and White and 4-channel beeps and squawks.
I sometimes think about what could have been. The moden PC is a decendant of the original IBM-XT and then AT, which are more or less equivalent (though we can argue this point) the Apple IIe and Apple IIGS. Imagine if Apple had actually applied the weight of its marketing and development to the Apple II market and focussed IT on business customers: the entire PC industry might be based on the original 6502 instead of the 8088. We might have operating systems evolved from ProDOS instead of MS-DOS. Imagine a PCI/AGP-like set of slots running in machines with 64-bit wide paths with USB and wireless that could have its lineages traced back directly to the Apple I and Apple II.
Sure, this seems crazy on the surface, but if you ever worked with an IBM-PC or -XT and thought about how it has evolved into what we use today, you'd see that it isn't.
Yes, I spend way too much time dwelling on this stuff...
Let's see. How does a spreading worm look? Perhaps it looks like users blindly downloading an EXECUTABLE program for Windows after essentially being told that "this is a safe download" becuase it is linked to from the front page a major website.
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at the humor or the irony.
If this thing is a virus that Norton has preprogrammed its antivirus product to ignore, I'll be laughing myself into an early grave...
Having read Smith's excellent collection of thoughts, I have to wonder what the deal is with worrying about "Spoiling" various plot elements.
We all know the following if we've seen Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi:
1. Anakin becomes Darth Vader and survives the movie.
2. Ben Kenobi survives the movie.
3. Anakin fathers twins who become Luke and Lea, who survive the movie.
4. The Emporer and Darth Vader exterminate almost all the Jedi save those who go into hiding on desert or jungle planets. The emporer survives the movie too.
5. Those clone warriors in the white armor will probably morph into what other white armor wearing group of warriors? Hmmm. I wonder.
6. And on and on..
All I'm saying here is that people are so used to worrying about spoilers in movies that they never stop and THINK about situations where it isn't called for...
What to offended whiners think about Viruses???
on
Phishing for Credit
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Boy, if the whiners there are complaining like this about nothing more than losing their dignity due to BENIGN phishing, imagine how loud their whining will be when they've lost their banking information and social security information due to REAL phishing.
It seems their primary complaint is that, GASP, "evil" email looked like it was coming from people they know. WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE!!! All the Slammer and Melissa viruses (and their mutated children) DO THE SAME THING: they scan through the address books of their victims, rewrite the "From" line to be one name in the address book, and then write the "To" line to be you (whose name is also in the address book) -- and then there's a good chance that you'll then know the person's name in the "From" line, which (it is hoped) makes you let your guard down and open the infected attachment.
I'll bet $1028 that 90% of the whiners there have been infected by these viruses in the past, and probably still are. And now they've been fooled a second time the same way. How does that old expression go again?
When I find some sympathy these whiners, I'll let them know...
Though I can't seem to google this now, I seem to recall that pollsters asked a random sampling of Americans if they were in favor of various rights, like freedom to worship, freedom to assemble, and so forth. Basically, the pollsters were repeating various sentences and phrases from the Bill of Rights.
Turns out that the majority of respondants were against the idea of of creating new constitutional ammendments ensuring these rights, and the majority were ALSO unaware that there was ALREADY a set of ammendments ensuring these rights.
Thank God we actually live in a Republic and not a Democracy...
The VERY FIRST THING you should do as an Ubuntu user is go to The Unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide at http://ubuntuguide.org/
Ubuntu, in an attempt to be totally free, can't do things like play DVDs right "out of the box," or isn't configured to list or mount Windows partitions in Gnome. Even if you are a total beginner, spending half an hour at the Unofficial Ubuntu Startup Guiide will get you up and running and totally happy with your new distro.
The Unoffical Startup Guide should be required reading for any Ubuntu user. Heck, EVERY Distro should have a site just like it -- the Linux world would be a better place for it. And no, I have nothing to do with it other than being a grateful reader...
Look, I don't LOVE Microsoft, but SP2 has been out for, what, 3/4 of a year now? And betas were out even earlier. If you currently sell a product that doesn't work in SP2, then SHAME ON YOU!!!
Similarly, if you're using an older version of a product that fails to work in SP2, you should be seeking a solution (in the form of a patch or other workaround) from the software vendor, not Microsoft. If it is an internal program your company wrote itself for internal workflow, there should have been a project to make it work under SP2 all this time. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on Microsoft's part.
The security benefits of SP2 to the average user are real, and worth having. It isn't Microsoft's fault that 3rd party developers are still dragging their feet after all this time.
That said, it is unfortunate when otherwsie perfectly good software stops working in SP2 and the poor user is forced to perform a non-free upgrade to a new version. But again, this is not Microsoft's fault.
And finally, please don't tell my copies of NAV 2003 and Photoshop CS to stop working on my computer because SP2 is installed. They both work fine now, so I guess they didn't get the memo.
I'm sure I'll be modded down, but keep in mind I'm writing this with Firefox under Ubuntu.;-)
PIII @ 900, 6 years old, runs XP just fine...
on
Mac OS X Tiger Goes Gold
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· Score: 2, Informative
So the previous mac-head said, "can you say that you can use a 6-year old PC without any siginificant upgrades and still run the latest OS and software and be productive with it?"
Sigh.
I'm currently typing this on a Pentium III @ 900 with 512 megs of ram and a 60 gig hard drive which is, hey, what do you know, SIX years old. Though I'm running Ubuntu at this instant, I was happily running Windows XP all day to run FrameMaker and Lotus Notes (along with Opera and Firefox) perfecly fine.
Look, I'm very fond of my Mac (and even older Blue and White G3), making silly statements isn't going to win any converts...
I commend this fellow. I wish I had similar luck in the past...
Last year Wells Fargo calls me. It seems some doofus used my Wells Fargo Mastercard to buy, among other things, $1000 in Victoria's Secret gift certificates from the VS Website. The expriation date was wrong, and the transaction flagged. Wells Fargo did NOT authorize the purchase, and I wasn't billed. (Other smaller purchases, under $50, had been authorized earlier in the day, but they were now being charged back since I said I didn't make them.) Bravo to Wells Fargo for being diligent about this.
Of course, I want to catch these shitheats. Victoria's Secret has their shipping address, so I think it should be pretty easy to get that address, call the police, and have justice done.
WRONGO!!
I call Victorias Secret. They say they can only give the shipping address out to a police officer/detective conducting an investigation, or at the request of the Credit Card company (Wells Fargo.). OK. Fine. They don't want vigilantes.
I call local PD. They say that since I didn't lose any money (WF blocked or refunded all charges) there was no crime for them to persue. If anyone lost money, Wells Fargo did. Call them and have them call police.
I call Wells Fargo. They say THEY didn't lose any money; they cancelled or blocked the charges. If anyone lost anything of value, it is Victorias Secret for (apparently) shipping out the gift certificates immediately without a valid payment now, or a valid expiration date eariler. They would need to call the Police to start an investigation.
"But I just called them! They don't care about who did this. They sent me to the local PD, and they sent me to you," I say. "I just want to know who did this. They have an address, but they'll only issue it to you or the PD."
The conversation took TWO more laps around these three parties before I gave up.
The story linked to in this post gives basically the same story in the sense that the local PD didn't give a shit about this crime in terms of investing ANY investigational effort. It was up to the poor victim to do all the legwork, and even THEN, the police seem like they take their sweet time getting there to catch the jerk-off criminals.
I bet the local DA pleads them down to nothing without a trial too.
In short, it seems that only determined application of stupidity on the part of credit card theives, along with an angry, lucky, motivated victom working hard at finding the theif, is the ONLY way these shitheads will ever get caught.
The answer for programs like this is GTKLP. Just install it via whatever installer system you have (Synaptic Package Manager or whatever).
Then in the Print dialog box, change the "print command" from "lp" to "gtklp." Bingo! A friendly, usable, and full-featured Print dialog box that does everything you'd ever want in CUPS.
Anyone who says xpdf, Preview, kpdf, or "whatever"pdf is Good Enough, or better/faster than genuine Adobe Acrobat isn't really dealing with professional-level PDF files.
I was using Apple's Preview for a while to view contracts, but I never saw certain deadlines - I kept emailing people asking about them, and one day I got the reply that they're where there are supposed to be in the PDF: look again. Whatdayaknow!? Preview didn't display certain form data, AND didn't alert the user that it wasn't displaying it either. Group-based markups frequently get ignored in "alternative" PDF viewers too.
So sure, if all you're reading in PDF are static data sheets and what are essentially "print files," this really isn't big news, but if you actually use PDF files to work with big companies ino order to earn a living, this is great news!
Slashdot Mirror
Talk about an active guy! He helps Colonel Sanders start a chicken business, then founds his own restaurant chain, then dies, THEN writes a book about Ruby on Rails?
I'm clearly not doing enough with my life...
This guy just wants to cool his room; he doesn't care about the rest of the house, or he'd have one of these buckets in every room. Let the kitchen get so hot you can fry bacon on the floor, his computer room will be COOOOOOL and COMFY.
On second thought, why go to to wal-mart and buy a real air conditioner and put it in the window where you would otherwise be wasting water?
Not that the idea I'm about to present is any better, but this guy really needs to make this a closed system. Put that bucket'o'water in the refridgerator (or freezer), get an aquarium pump, and run the pickup line to the bottom of the bucket and the return line on the top of the bucket. Cut out the door gaskets to allow the lines to go through, and just add some ice cubes every so often as needed.
Sure, you'll be wasting electricity and may burn out the refridgerator compressor because its running all the time, but at least you won't be buying bags and bags of ice and wasting water.
And hell, if the landlord is paying for the fridge, you're home free!
The problem here is that I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic...
I *still* miss my Psion for this sort of thing. (I needed wireless internet for my work, and had to switch.)
Then I'm reading Macworld (http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/06/06/intelappl eanalysts/index.php) quoting David Moody, Apple's vice president of worldwide Mac product marketing:
"We will not sell or support Windows, but we are not doing anything in the hardware that would preclude someone from using it," said Moody.
Furthermore, the article states:
"Apple also confirmed that they would not stop customers from running Windows on the Intel-based Mac, although the Mac OS will not run on another PC."
So, hmmm. I can have ONE COMPUTER run Windows, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu (or whatever distro I like)?
SIGN ME THE HELL UP! I'LL TAKE TWO!!!
Firefox's first major flaws turned up earlier this month. Its Version 1.0.3 exhibited at least two errors that, when manipulated together, enabled hackers access to the user's computer. The flaws prompted a Version 1.0.4, which was issued three days later. Netscape 8.0's developers, it turned out, had used components of Firefox 1.0.3 in their framework. That Firefox sported cracks in its shining veneer seemed inevitable, browser experts warned....
I'm trying to see where the problem is, especially when noting how Microsoft handles inevitable flaws that make their way into every software package.
The Mozilla team discovers flaws and gets out a new package in 3 days.
The Microsoft Internet Explorer team discovers a flaw (or more likely, is told about about a flaw), and it takes, weeks or months for a patch to be released.
Now, what strikes you as the more hazardous situation?
Though the focus of the article seems to be that every browser has problems, he seriously downplays the Mozilla's aggressive stance on solving those problems as opposed to Microsoft.
Seems like FUD to me...
The 3c has a small, but complete, keyboard, and typing with two fingers, I could get 20-25 wpm. It has a built-in spell checker, 80-column wide screen by at least 10 or 14 lines, can print to many printers, and with PsiWin software, import and export MS Word and Excel files seamlessly. And it runs for weeks on a pair of AA's, and there's a good backlight.
The 5mx has bigger keys, a touchscreen, and a prettier GUI, along with all the benefits described above.
Both fit in a hip or coat pocket easily. Both connect to a PC via a serial port, and your PC probably still has one of those.
Check ebay for units with PsiWin software. Then Google around for a huge library of 3rd party software.
Yes, they are both old, but Psion had more PDA experience in 1992 than Palm has now. Psion software is almostly always amazingly good.
I use a top-o-the-line color wireless Palm these days, but I still think my Psion 3c had it beat in almost all areas relating to software, power, and convenience.
Apple did all it could to DISCOURAGE people from buying the most popular computer sold at the time, the Apple II, so that they would buy Apple ///'s first, then Macintoshes later. Meanwhile, the Apple II kept selling in SPITE of Apple's (Jobs')efforts, and kept the company afloat.
We're talking about ZERO dollars advertising. Practically ZERO dollars developing. Practically ZERO support help for developers (who fortunately could work without it.) We're talking about crippling later Apple II's (such as the IIgs) so that they wouldn't "compete" against more "advanced" Macintoshes. The IIgs had super-high-res color and true 32-channel Esoniq music synthesis while the Mac had Black and White and 4-channel beeps and squawks.
I sometimes think about what could have been. The moden PC is a decendant of the original IBM-XT and then AT, which are more or less equivalent (though we can argue this point) the Apple IIe and Apple IIGS. Imagine if Apple had actually applied the weight of its marketing and development to the Apple II market and focussed IT on business customers: the entire PC industry might be based on the original 6502 instead of the 8088. We might have operating systems evolved from ProDOS instead of MS-DOS. Imagine a PCI/AGP-like set of slots running in machines with 64-bit wide paths with USB and wireless that could have its lineages traced back directly to the Apple I and Apple II.
Sure, this seems crazy on the surface, but if you ever worked with an IBM-PC or -XT and thought about how it has evolved into what we use today, you'd see that it isn't.
Yes, I spend way too much time dwelling on this stuff...
(Former Beagle Bros tech support)
Let's see. How does a spreading worm look? Perhaps it looks like users blindly downloading an EXECUTABLE program for Windows after essentially being told that "this is a safe download" becuase it is linked to from the front page a major website.
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at the humor or the irony.
If this thing is a virus that Norton has preprogrammed its antivirus product to ignore, I'll be laughing myself into an early grave...
We all know the following if we've seen Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi:
1. Anakin becomes Darth Vader and survives the movie.
2. Ben Kenobi survives the movie.
3. Anakin fathers twins who become Luke and Lea, who survive the movie.
4. The Emporer and Darth Vader exterminate almost all the Jedi save those who go into hiding on desert or jungle planets. The emporer survives the movie too.
5. Those clone warriors in the white armor will probably morph into what other white armor wearing group of warriors? Hmmm. I wonder.
6. And on and on..
All I'm saying here is that people are so used to worrying about spoilers in movies that they never stop and THINK about situations where it isn't called for...
It seems their primary complaint is that, GASP, "evil" email looked like it was coming from people they know. WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE!!! All the Slammer and Melissa viruses (and their mutated children) DO THE SAME THING: they scan through the address books of their victims, rewrite the "From" line to be one name in the address book, and then write the "To" line to be you (whose name is also in the address book) -- and then there's a good chance that you'll then know the person's name in the "From" line, which (it is hoped) makes you let your guard down and open the infected attachment.
I'll bet $1028 that 90% of the whiners there have been infected by these viruses in the past, and probably still are. And now they've been fooled a second time the same way. How does that old expression go again?
When I find some sympathy these whiners, I'll let them know...
Turns out that the majority of respondants were against the idea of of creating new constitutional ammendments ensuring these rights, and the majority were ALSO unaware that there was ALREADY a set of ammendments ensuring these rights.
Thank God we actually live in a Republic and not a Democracy...
Obligatory tech support joke...
Ubuntu, in an attempt to be totally free, can't do things like play DVDs right "out of the box," or isn't configured to list or mount Windows partitions in Gnome. Even if you are a total beginner, spending half an hour at the Unofficial Ubuntu Startup Guiide will get you up and running and totally happy with your new distro.
The Unoffical Startup Guide should be required reading for any Ubuntu user. Heck, EVERY Distro should have a site just like it -- the Linux world would be a better place for it. And no, I have nothing to do with it other than being a grateful reader...
Similarly, if you're using an older version of a product that fails to work in SP2, you should be seeking a solution (in the form of a patch or other workaround) from the software vendor, not Microsoft. If it is an internal program your company wrote itself for internal workflow, there should have been a project to make it work under SP2 all this time. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on Microsoft's part.
The security benefits of SP2 to the average user are real, and worth having. It isn't Microsoft's fault that 3rd party developers are still dragging their feet after all this time.
That said, it is unfortunate when otherwsie perfectly good software stops working in SP2 and the poor user is forced to perform a non-free upgrade to a new version. But again, this is not Microsoft's fault.
And finally, please don't tell my copies of NAV 2003 and Photoshop CS to stop working on my computer because SP2 is installed. They both work fine now, so I guess they didn't get the memo.
I'm sure I'll be modded down, but keep in mind I'm writing this with Firefox under Ubuntu. ;-)
Wienee. ;-)
Sigh.
I'm currently typing this on a Pentium III @ 900 with 512 megs of ram and a 60 gig hard drive which is, hey, what do you know, SIX years old. Though I'm running Ubuntu at this instant, I was happily running Windows XP all day to run FrameMaker and Lotus Notes (along with Opera and Firefox) perfecly fine.
Look, I'm very fond of my Mac (and even older Blue and White G3), making silly statements isn't going to win any converts...
In-N-Out Buger's menu consists of *nothing* but burgers, fries, and shakes, all of the highest quality...
It looks like they figured it out after all. I just hope Martin is OK...
Last year Wells Fargo calls me. It seems some doofus used my Wells Fargo Mastercard to buy, among other things, $1000 in Victoria's Secret gift certificates from the VS Website. The expriation date was wrong, and the transaction flagged. Wells Fargo did NOT authorize the purchase, and I wasn't billed. (Other smaller purchases, under $50, had been authorized earlier in the day, but they were now being charged back since I said I didn't make them.) Bravo to Wells Fargo for being diligent about this.
Of course, I want to catch these shitheats. Victoria's Secret has their shipping address, so I think it should be pretty easy to get that address, call the police, and have justice done.
WRONGO!!
I call Victorias Secret. They say they can only give the shipping address out to a police officer/detective conducting an investigation, or at the request of the Credit Card company (Wells Fargo.). OK. Fine. They don't want vigilantes.
I call local PD. They say that since I didn't lose any money (WF blocked or refunded all charges) there was no crime for them to persue. If anyone lost money, Wells Fargo did. Call them and have them call police.
I call Wells Fargo. They say THEY didn't lose any money; they cancelled or blocked the charges. If anyone lost anything of value, it is Victorias Secret for (apparently) shipping out the gift certificates immediately without a valid payment now, or a valid expiration date eariler. They would need to call the Police to start an investigation.
"But I just called them! They don't care about who did this. They sent me to the local PD, and they sent me to you," I say. "I just want to know who did this. They have an address, but they'll only issue it to you or the PD."
The conversation took TWO more laps around these three parties before I gave up.
The story linked to in this post gives basically the same story in the sense that the local PD didn't give a shit about this crime in terms of investing ANY investigational effort. It was up to the poor victim to do all the legwork, and even THEN, the police seem like they take their sweet time getting there to catch the jerk-off criminals.
I bet the local DA pleads them down to nothing without a trial too.
In short, it seems that only determined application of stupidity on the part of credit card theives, along with an angry, lucky, motivated victom working hard at finding the theif, is the ONLY way these shitheads will ever get caught.
I don't even know why I work for a living...
Then in the Print dialog box, change the "print command" from "lp" to "gtklp." Bingo! A friendly, usable, and full-featured Print dialog box that does everything you'd ever want in CUPS.
It works for Opera too...
I was using Apple's Preview for a while to view contracts, but I never saw certain deadlines - I kept emailing people asking about them, and one day I got the reply that they're where there are supposed to be in the PDF: look again. Whatdayaknow!? Preview didn't display certain form data, AND didn't alert the user that it wasn't displaying it either. Group-based markups frequently get ignored in "alternative" PDF viewers too.
So sure, if all you're reading in PDF are static data sheets and what are essentially "print files," this really isn't big news, but if you actually use PDF files to work with big companies ino order to earn a living, this is great news!
You know, I thought Rubber Magazine was about a different subject matter entirely...
..then I have no problem with the remake.