Do you have your own tweaks, and if you do would you mind sharing your secret tweaking tips?
[sarcasm mode on]
Well, it is kind of personal, but I like to take the nipple between my forefinger and thumb, squeeze mildly hard, and rotate just slightly. The tweek isn't too painful, and the nipple hardens up just nicely.
[sarcasm mode off]
OH COME ON! You can't tell me that was the first thing to enter your mind when you saw the word "tweak." If it wasn't, your mind is not far enough in the gutter.
Haven't the US patent office worked out yet the system is being abuse?
The problem is, that the US Patent Office sees itself as a government profit center. It has no desire to correct any abuses because it doesn't see abuses, it sees all the money it is raking in with the fees it charges in granting and maintaining patents. To make any kind of reform in the USTPO, a major paradigm shift needs to occur within the USTPO concerning its place in the United States Government.
We may all agree that the place of the USTPO is to encourage innovation by rewarding those who perform the research nessessary to create advancements. It is my belief that this was the original purpose of the USTPO. In 1980, The United States Supreme Court broadened the scope of what is patentable - allowing "anything under the sun that is made by man" to be patented. Then again in 1998, the scope was broadened even further allowing "methods of doing business" patentable.
We are now seeing the fallout of these decisions. Individuals and corporations patenting ideas and concepts that previously were not patentable, irregardless as to any prior art of such ideas or concepts. Perhaps someone should patent the idea of a corporation or a business and sue anyone who would use a patent as a cudgel to extort a small organization instead of using it for its intended purpose - defense of inventions from those who would profit from their research.
Silence is required as this PC is being used in my dorm room,
You are living in a dorm room. I would think that the guys playing Xbox with the volume at max until 5am down the hall would keep you up more than some fan on your computer.
I ended up purchasing a fan that I could run at night just so I could drown out the noises down the hall. Now I can't sleep without it.
You are hearing noises from yout computer?
Ok, this is what you need to do:
Listen to music. LOUD music. For years on end. Eventually, you will get to the point where you will no longer hear the noises coming from your computer. Problem solved!
A duplicate within the story. Sources within the Slashdot editing staff were quoted as saying, "We're not going to wait for someone else to submit the story again, we decided to be preemtive, and duplicate the story ourselves!"
We obviously have different understandings of the word 'responsibility'. And while yes, there have been times I have worked late, or come in early, my take on work is this: They pay me for 9 to 5, so they are going to get 9 to 5. I am not allowing myself to be abused as an employee because of the dept I work in. Why should I, or anyone in the IT dept. be any different from the people in Accounting? Marketing? Bldg. Maintenance?
Then again, I guess we see other things differently. From my perspective, labor is the single most expensive line item on our budget. Why throw more money out the window paying for overtime, an extra employee to play games all night long, etc., when we can purchase a piece of equpment, and rely on redundancy to pick up the slack until things can be fixed on our primary systems the next business day?
The poster of this topic looked for solutions to his problem, and while mine might not work where he is currently employed, it might give him something to think about if he finds a different job.
Best solution I heard about was from a colleague of mine who's company pays a $5K bonus to employees (limit 4) who carry the phone/pager in rotation.
I've been working here for 5 years (67 months), and my boss has been to my house several times. Either he has never thought about that conversation since then, or his cell provider is different from what we use at work.
When I got my most recent job in IT, and was handed a phone, I decided I didn't want to be a slave, even if I was expected to answer the phone/pager. So I turned it off when I got home in the afternoon, and turned it on when I left home in the morning for work.
After a couple of 'emergencies' (don't get me started - one person's emergency is usually another's lack of planning) took place and I was unreachable, I was called into my boss' office. A little white lie later, and we decided that my house was in a 'dead zone' between cell towers, and since the company didn't want to buy me a new house, I was suddenly passed over when it came time to 'carry the phone/pager.'
Problem solved. I never had to deal with late night emergencies, and I never had to give more hours to my job than were nessessary. It is nice to have my evenings free for my family and myself.
It is free (ZLIB software licence - similar to BSD), runs on win32, linux, linuxppc, and can be played in both server and single player mode. FPS style of play, using OpenGL and SDL, it is smooth, fun, and looks great! We need more opensource games like this.
Most importantly of all, cleanup is simple, just delete the directory you unzipped the archive to, and it is all gone.
In my opinion (and it is just that, an opinion), medication only tries to fix the symtoms, and does nothing to correct the underlying problem. Have you looked at alternative medicine? She is obviously far and away better than anyone in her class, have you considered finding some way to teach her in a manner that would be condusive to her mode of learning? Even if it meant home schooling?
I can relate to her problem as I was mentally ahead of everyone in class when I was in elementary school, and I got poor grades because I had a hard time slowing myself down to their level. I survived by finding things that interested me, both academically, and extra-curricular. Perhaps you can help her find something that she can focus her raw mental abilities toward that will keep her interest, and stimulate her development.
If I may make some conjecture, and a suggestion, her imagination is most likely to be very powerful. Help her to find something that will hold her imagination, yet keep her somewhat grounded. (like what comic books did for us when we were younger.)
With a business model like this, you could find revenue from several different sources. Especially when starting out, who would want to advertise on a web site, or a streaming site where "unpopular" artists are played? Perhaps to start out, one would charge a small fee from the artists themselves to help with the upkeep of the connection and the servers.
Beyond that, as the site becomes more popular, replace it with streaming advertisements, advertisements on the site, and keep a minimal fee for the artists (consider it an investment fee - we'll play you, but there is no guarantee the listeners, or the DJs will like you).
This doesn't have so much to do with technology as it does with policy and the lack of customer service in an industry with little or no competition. Since cable companies have monopolies in the areas they service (no one wants to see 10 seperate cable backbones running on the telephone poles) the cable companies get to dictate how their service is used.
What about Satellite service you say? Well, Satellite is limited in what they can offer, and how they can provide their service. Your cable company is very aware of what Satellite can provide, because they know that Satellite is their only real threat. Your cable company figures that as long as their service is one step above what Satellite can offer, you aren't going to take a 'downgrade'.
Thus, instead of working to provide a better user experience, they are trying to offer as little as possible, while maximizing their profits. How does it feel to be used?
That is exactly right! Unfortunately many people would rather look for supernatural explanations rather than take 2 minutes to understand the world around them. For example:
My Father went down to his kitchen one morning, and found his sliding glass door unlocked. Now he locks it every night before he goes to sleep, so he thought it very odd. He exits the house though the sliding glass door to get the morning paper, and returns to find the sliding glass door locked.
Instead of realising that he had locked the sliding glass door the previous night - and it had just failed to latch, he was more willing to blame prankster spirits, or poltergeists. We need to teach people scientific method, and how it applies to the world around them. As long as there are 'psychics' on television telling people what they want to hear, we are going to be fighting an uphill battle.
Actually, they record your signature for their protection, and put it in a database that record what you bought when you used your credit card. They do this because if you dispute the charges, the Credit Card company always falls on the side of their customer, unless they have a great reason why they should not believe them. So the first thing the credit card company is going to ask for is proof that the customer made the purchase they claim they did not make. If the merchant can provide the signature, credit card number, and an invoice of what they bought, they are half way towards winning their side of the dispute.
All that the signature pad does is give them a digital carbon copy that they can more easily manage. No more paper receits, and it is easier to keep them all in one centralized repository that they can access if a dispute arrises.
However, this does not mean that you or the merchant can be lax in their duties. You must still watch out for the fraudulent merchant who may charge you for more than the purchase is worth. The waiter who will slip extra items on your bill. We may not have to worry if merchants shred their carbons anymore, but worry about how those who have access to the new storage medium use that access. Always review your credit card statement, and compare it with receits you saved from your purchases. Double check everyone's work, because it is your money they are playing around with.
Why don't you just be patient, and wait for Ximian to do their own thing in their own time. Unlike the Gnome Foundation who offers their software 'as is', Ximian tests all of the software, to make sure that it runs as stated, and they also make sure that it is easy to install. This means they ship it with all required libraries, pre-compiled for your flavor of *nix.
If you are so impatient to try it out, why not try Garnome? Garnome is a relatively easy way to install the stock Gnome 2 distribution from the source files. Unfortunately, you do have to find some obscure libraries (sp? sgml-data? DocBook?) before it will install, and it will take several hours to compile.
If you want Ximian's version of Gnome, you are just going to have to be patient and wait for them to put their unique finishing touches on it. If 1.4 was any indication, we could be waiting a month or more. And if 1.2-->1.4 upgrade path was any indication, you will have to install fresh as red carpet will not be able to handle an upgrade of this sort.
Although I could not find any information pertaining to the Fuji Finepix 6900 on their website I have been doing research in this area ever since Slashdot ran an article talking about Foveon's new CCD chip that is suppost to revolutionize the industry. Although Sigma's SD9 hasn't hit the market yet, other manufacturers have been lowering the prices on their cameras, binging 5 and 6+ Megapixel cameras closer to reach.
For example, Nikon's Coolpix 5000 is a 5Megapixel camera that retails for $1K US, but can be found on the Internet for closer to $700. It has the ability to add and remove lenses, but it is nothing like the bayonet mounts that you may be used to with a standard 35MM SLR. Canon recently came out with the EOS D60 digital camera with a 6.3Megapixel CCD chip , that retails for approximately twice as much as the Nikon. It is suppost to handle almost exactly like a 35MM SLR, including the ability to switch lenses, which is what a professional photographer would want to work with.
But if you are like me, then you will be waiting with baited breath for the Sigma SD9 and its revolutionary CCD chip. Even though the chip itself is only a 3Megapixel chip, the quality of the photographs taken are said to be comparible with 9+Megapixel cameras. Or you could stick with the tried and true 21+Megapixel analog film and emulsion camera.
Take a swim in the Great Salt Lake. Sure, it may not smell nice, but it is one of two places on earth (that I can handily think of) where you will float naturally in water. Has to do with the extremely high salt content, some freaky chemestry shit. Other place is the Dead Sea, and you really don't want to visit that place this time of year/decade/century. Take a swim in the Great Salt Lake, it will give you something to remember your trip by, and something to talk about for years from now.
Ya, nothing is going to get Linus to act on this like a bunch of laymen spamming his e-mail box. You know what the real reason Linus hasn't merged it yet? He is too fucking busy. The best thing to do is to be patient, and keep reminding him - POLITELY!
Make sure you ask some questions about your future, is it possible to get a sysadmin job on one of the comp. sci. computers to get real world experience? How good is their placement after graduation? How quickly do their graduates advance in their positions after finding employment? What projects is the department involved in that will bring prestiege to the university? What projects can I as a student get involved in that I could put on my resume? What is your stance on extra-curricular projects?
I put that last one in because I started a MUD at my university, which was a great learning project programming wise. I never got very many people visiting my mud, but I did enlist a lot of developers to help put the project together. My school shut me down when the university administrator did a port scan of every IP under his control and found it. He considered it a security breach and dangerous, no matter how beneficial the experience was to me in learning C, C++, Linux, registering my own domain (this was before they had the nice web interface), and administering a Red Hat box.
How can you get real world computer experience while spending 4 fine years at their institution? And how will they provide you a better chance at getting a well paying position after school?
Gummy fingers can even fool sensors being watched by guards. Simply form the clear gelatin finger over your own. This lets you hide it as you press your own finger onto the sensor. After it lets you in, eat the evidence.
I can see security being interviewed afterwards... "Well, ya, they are all a little eccentric, and I did see him sucking his thumb after scanning it, but I never thought anything about it. They're all a little... strange, if you know what I mean."
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have your own tweaks, and if you do would you mind sharing your secret tweaking tips?
[sarcasm mode on]
Well, it is kind of personal, but I like to take the nipple between my forefinger and thumb, squeeze mildly hard, and rotate just slightly. The tweek isn't too painful, and the nipple hardens up just nicely.
[sarcasm mode off]
OH COME ON! You can't tell me that was the first thing to enter your mind when you saw the word "tweak." If it wasn't, your mind is not far enough in the gutter.
Haven't the US patent office worked out yet the system is being abuse?
The problem is, that the US Patent Office sees itself as a government profit center. It has no desire to correct any abuses because it doesn't see abuses, it sees all the money it is raking in with the fees it charges in granting and maintaining patents. To make any kind of reform in the USTPO, a major paradigm shift needs to occur within the USTPO concerning its place in the United States Government.
We may all agree that the place of the USTPO is to encourage innovation by rewarding those who perform the research nessessary to create advancements. It is my belief that this was the original purpose of the USTPO. In 1980, The United States Supreme Court broadened the scope of what is patentable - allowing "anything under the sun that is made by man" to be patented. Then again in 1998, the scope was broadened even further allowing "methods of doing business" patentable.
We are now seeing the fallout of these decisions. Individuals and corporations patenting ideas and concepts that previously were not patentable, irregardless as to any prior art of such ideas or concepts. Perhaps someone should patent the idea of a corporation or a business and sue anyone who would use a patent as a cudgel to extort a small organization instead of using it for its intended purpose - defense of inventions from those who would profit from their research.
Silence is required as this PC is being used in my dorm room,
You are living in a dorm room. I would think that the guys playing Xbox with the volume at max until 5am down the hall would keep you up more than some fan on your computer.
I ended up purchasing a fan that I could run at night just so I could drown out the noises down the hall. Now I can't sleep without it.
You are hearing noises from yout computer?
Ok, this is what you need to do:
Listen to music. LOUD music. For years on end. Eventually, you will get to the point where you will no longer hear the noises coming from your computer. Problem solved!
Ehh? What did you say? Speak up, son!
If you can't beat 'em . . . BUY 'EM!
A duplicate within the story. Sources within the Slashdot editing staff were quoted as saying, "We're not going to wait for someone else to submit the story again, we decided to be preemtive, and duplicate the story ourselves!"
We obviously have different understandings of the word 'responsibility'. And while yes, there have been times I have worked late, or come in early, my take on work is this: They pay me for 9 to 5, so they are going to get 9 to 5. I am not allowing myself to be abused as an employee because of the dept I work in. Why should I, or anyone in the IT dept. be any different from the people in Accounting? Marketing? Bldg. Maintenance?
Then again, I guess we see other things differently. From my perspective, labor is the single most expensive line item on our budget. Why throw more money out the window paying for overtime, an extra employee to play games all night long, etc., when we can purchase a piece of equpment, and rely on redundancy to pick up the slack until things can be fixed on our primary systems the next business day?
The poster of this topic looked for solutions to his problem, and while mine might not work where he is currently employed, it might give him something to think about if he finds a different job.
Best solution I heard about was from a colleague of mine who's company pays a $5K bonus to employees (limit 4) who carry the phone/pager in rotation.
I've been working here for 5 years (67 months), and my boss has been to my house several times. Either he has never thought about that conversation since then, or his cell provider is different from what we use at work.
When I got my most recent job in IT, and was handed a phone, I decided I didn't want to be a slave, even if I was expected to answer the phone/pager. So I turned it off when I got home in the afternoon, and turned it on when I left home in the morning for work.
After a couple of 'emergencies' (don't get me started - one person's emergency is usually another's lack of planning) took place and I was unreachable, I was called into my boss' office. A little white lie later, and we decided that my house was in a 'dead zone' between cell towers, and since the company didn't want to buy me a new house, I was suddenly passed over when it came time to 'carry the phone/pager.'
Problem solved. I never had to deal with late night emergencies, and I never had to give more hours to my job than were nessessary. It is nice to have my evenings free for my family and myself.
One word, Cube.
It is free (ZLIB software licence - similar to BSD), runs on win32, linux, linuxppc, and can be played in both server and single player mode. FPS style of play, using OpenGL and SDL, it is smooth, fun, and looks great! We need more opensource games like this.
Most importantly of all, cleanup is simple, just delete the directory you unzipped the archive to, and it is all gone.
Enjoy!
Good: "Pthreads for Dummies"
Better: "Pthreads for Managers"
Best: "Pthreads for the Mentally Retarded"
In my opinion (and it is just that, an opinion), medication only tries to fix the symtoms, and does nothing to correct the underlying problem. Have you looked at alternative medicine? She is obviously far and away better than anyone in her class, have you considered finding some way to teach her in a manner that would be condusive to her mode of learning? Even if it meant home schooling?
I can relate to her problem as I was mentally ahead of everyone in class when I was in elementary school, and I got poor grades because I had a hard time slowing myself down to their level. I survived by finding things that interested me, both academically, and extra-curricular. Perhaps you can help her find something that she can focus her raw mental abilities toward that will keep her interest, and stimulate her development.
If I may make some conjecture, and a suggestion, her imagination is most likely to be very powerful. Help her to find something that will hold her imagination, yet keep her somewhat grounded. (like what comic books did for us when we were younger.)
With a business model like this, you could find revenue from several different sources. Especially when starting out, who would want to advertise on a web site, or a streaming site where "unpopular" artists are played? Perhaps to start out, one would charge a small fee from the artists themselves to help with the upkeep of the connection and the servers.
Beyond that, as the site becomes more popular, replace it with streaming advertisements, advertisements on the site, and keep a minimal fee for the artists (consider it an investment fee - we'll play you, but there is no guarantee the listeners, or the DJs will like you).
Could this be the new radio?
Mmmmm, our favorite penguin...
``I don't know what you do to protect your shareholders and preserve your market capitalization except to out-innovate the Linux community.''
Good luck.
24% from Unix, 31% from Windows - That only makes up 55% of the migrations to linux. Where are the other 45% of migrations coming from?
This doesn't have so much to do with technology as it does with policy and the lack of customer service in an industry with little or no competition. Since cable companies have monopolies in the areas they service (no one wants to see 10 seperate cable backbones running on the telephone poles) the cable companies get to dictate how their service is used.
What about Satellite service you say? Well, Satellite is limited in what they can offer, and how they can provide their service. Your cable company is very aware of what Satellite can provide, because they know that Satellite is their only real threat. Your cable company figures that as long as their service is one step above what Satellite can offer, you aren't going to take a 'downgrade'.
Thus, instead of working to provide a better user experience, they are trying to offer as little as possible, while maximizing their profits. How does it feel to be used?
Hey Boss! I found this computer in my cubical. I'll sell it to the company for $500!
It's only a junky Pentium II, I'd only pay $300 for it.
But it recently got a memory and hard drive upgrade. It is worth at least $400.
Hey! That's the computer you are suppost to work on! Give it back!
No! It's mine! I found it! You can't have it, I have been looking for a computer before I came to work here!
You're fired! Give us back the computer, or we'll sue you!
Never! It's mine!
See you in court!
That is exactly right! Unfortunately many people would rather look for supernatural explanations rather than take 2 minutes to understand the world around them. For example:
My Father went down to his kitchen one morning, and found his sliding glass door unlocked. Now he locks it every night before he goes to sleep, so he thought it very odd. He exits the house though the sliding glass door to get the morning paper, and returns to find the sliding glass door locked.
Instead of realising that he had locked the sliding glass door the previous night - and it had just failed to latch, he was more willing to blame prankster spirits, or poltergeists. We need to teach people scientific method, and how it applies to the world around them. As long as there are 'psychics' on television telling people what they want to hear, we are going to be fighting an uphill battle.
Actually, they record your signature for their protection, and put it in a database that record what you bought when you used your credit card. They do this because if you dispute the charges, the Credit Card company always falls on the side of their customer, unless they have a great reason why they should not believe them. So the first thing the credit card company is going to ask for is proof that the customer made the purchase they claim they did not make. If the merchant can provide the signature, credit card number, and an invoice of what they bought, they are half way towards winning their side of the dispute.
All that the signature pad does is give them a digital carbon copy that they can more easily manage. No more paper receits, and it is easier to keep them all in one centralized repository that they can access if a dispute arrises.
However, this does not mean that you or the merchant can be lax in their duties. You must still watch out for the fraudulent merchant who may charge you for more than the purchase is worth. The waiter who will slip extra items on your bill. We may not have to worry if merchants shred their carbons anymore, but worry about how those who have access to the new storage medium use that access. Always review your credit card statement, and compare it with receits you saved from your purchases. Double check everyone's work, because it is your money they are playing around with.
Why don't you just be patient, and wait for Ximian to do their own thing in their own time. Unlike the Gnome Foundation who offers their software 'as is', Ximian tests all of the software, to make sure that it runs as stated, and they also make sure that it is easy to install. This means they ship it with all required libraries, pre-compiled for your flavor of *nix.
If you are so impatient to try it out, why not try Garnome? Garnome is a relatively easy way to install the stock Gnome 2 distribution from the source files. Unfortunately, you do have to find some obscure libraries (sp? sgml-data? DocBook?) before it will install, and it will take several hours to compile.
If you want Ximian's version of Gnome, you are just going to have to be patient and wait for them to put their unique finishing touches on it. If 1.4 was any indication, we could be waiting a month or more. And if 1.2-->1.4 upgrade path was any indication, you will have to install fresh as red carpet will not be able to handle an upgrade of this sort.
Although I could not find any information pertaining to the Fuji Finepix 6900 on their website I have been doing research in this area ever since Slashdot ran an article talking about Foveon's new CCD chip that is suppost to revolutionize the industry. Although Sigma's SD9 hasn't hit the market yet, other manufacturers have been lowering the prices on their cameras, binging 5 and 6+ Megapixel cameras closer to reach.
For example, Nikon's Coolpix 5000 is a 5Megapixel camera that retails for $1K US, but can be found on the Internet for closer to $700. It has the ability to add and remove lenses, but it is nothing like the bayonet mounts that you may be used to with a standard 35MM SLR. Canon recently came out with the EOS D60 digital camera with a 6.3Megapixel CCD chip , that retails for approximately twice as much as the Nikon. It is suppost to handle almost exactly like a 35MM SLR, including the ability to switch lenses, which is what a professional photographer would want to work with.
But if you are like me, then you will be waiting with baited breath for the Sigma SD9 and its revolutionary CCD chip. Even though the chip itself is only a 3Megapixel chip, the quality of the photographs taken are said to be comparible with 9+Megapixel cameras. Or you could stick with the tried and true 21+Megapixel analog film and emulsion camera.
Take a swim in the Great Salt Lake. Sure, it may not smell nice, but it is one of two places on earth (that I can handily think of) where you will float naturally in water. Has to do with the extremely high salt content, some freaky chemestry shit. Other place is the Dead Sea, and you really don't want to visit that place this time of year/decade/century. Take a swim in the Great Salt Lake, it will give you something to remember your trip by, and something to talk about for years from now.
Ya, nothing is going to get Linus to act on this like a bunch of laymen spamming his e-mail box. You know what the real reason Linus hasn't merged it yet? He is too fucking busy. The best thing to do is to be patient, and keep reminding him - POLITELY!
Make sure you ask some questions about your future, is it possible to get a sysadmin job on one of the comp. sci. computers to get real world experience? How good is their placement after graduation? How quickly do their graduates advance in their positions after finding employment? What projects is the department involved in that will bring prestiege to the university? What projects can I as a student get involved in that I could put on my resume? What is your stance on extra-curricular projects?
I put that last one in because I started a MUD at my university, which was a great learning project programming wise. I never got very many people visiting my mud, but I did enlist a lot of developers to help put the project together. My school shut me down when the university administrator did a port scan of every IP under his control and found it. He considered it a security breach and dangerous, no matter how beneficial the experience was to me in learning C, C++, Linux, registering my own domain (this was before they had the nice web interface), and administering a Red Hat box.
How can you get real world computer experience while spending 4 fine years at their institution? And how will they provide you a better chance at getting a well paying position after school?
The best line from the article is as follows:
I can see security being interviewed afterwards... "Well, ya, they are all a little eccentric, and I did see him sucking his thumb after scanning it, but I never thought anything about it. They're all a little... strange, if you know what I mean."