Possibly also of interest: The/. thread for the Belkin incident, and I put a small collection of related Google Group links in a weblog post back then.
The Belkin incident was the first thing I thought of when I saw this story post. Good to know I'm not the only one who remembered that.
> Nah, that's not Woody's (Michael Hanscom to those of you who don't know him) posting style...
Heh. Now I'm curious who you are...fewer and fewer people call me "Woody" anymore.
And, just to give the definitive answer as to who I was and why I lost the position (just on the off chance that anyone's paying attention to this particular thread _and_ this gets modded up enough for anyone to see...):
Here's the original weblog posts for [the photo][1], the [day I lost the position][2], and my [final wrap-up][3].
When I read your comment, not having a background in electical components, my brain immediately translated 'CV' as 'Curriculum Vitae'.
Logically, it followed that 'E' was something related to employment -- 'Employability' works.
The end result was that I ended up reading the equation as "Employability = 1/2(Curriculum Vitae)^2" -- or, in layman's terms, any given job will only require half of what you know, but will require proportionately more experience than you have.
I actually figured this out a few months ago after completing ripping my music collection onto my computer.
* Total songs in my iTunes library: 14,622
* Total time: 49.6 days (49 days, 15 hours, 8 minutes, 23 seconds)
* Total space: 65.09 GB
* Copied from friends or downloaded from P2P networks (technically illegal): 610 (4.172%)
* Original rips (my own mixes, GarageBand creations, or imports from vinyl): 51 (0.349%)
* Bought from the iTunes Music Store (legally owned, though without the physical CD): 232 (1.587%)
* Ripped from CDs that I own: 13,729 (93.893%)
Full post here: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2004/07/ theres_no_such_.html
(This was also posted on my weblog, so my apologies for babbling about things most/.'ers would already know...)
I did wonder a bit about the G5/Xbox2 link back in November, when news first broke that the Xbox2 would likely be running on the G5 chip. At the time, I was idly wondering about the possibility of an Xbox emulator for the Mac (similar to Connectix' old Virtual Gamestation software that allowed Mac users to run Playstation games on their home computer).
Now, though, the news that the seeded G5's are running a custom NT kernel has me wondering along different lines.
In February of '03, Microsoft bought Virtual PC, the PC-emulation software for Macs that allows them to run Windows software inside an emulated PC. They've continued to support and update Virtual PC for the Mac, along with releasing Virtual PC for the PC, allowing Windows machines to run multiple virtual machines on one physical box handy for software testing purposes. Unfortunately, Virtual PC depends on a feature of earlier PowerPC processors that is not present in the G5, so there hasn't been a version of Virtual PC released yet that will run on Apple's flagship G5 desktop machines.
Last month, Microsoft announced that a new G5-compatible version of Virtual PC would be released along with Office 2004. Considering that the Xbox2 SDK is apparently running a customized NT kernel that runs on G5 systems, could some of those same customizations be worked into Virtual PC 7, making for a major speed increase, as more of the low-level code would be running natively on the Mac rather than having to pass through an emulator? I don't really know enough about the innards of how software like this works, so I could be entirely off-base here the differences between the emulation required for Virtual PC and the customizations needed to get the NT kernel running on the PowerPC processor may have absolutely nothing in common but it was enough to get me wondering.
Even more interesting, though, would be if someone could leak some form of benchmarks, even rough ones, showing what kind of performance this customized NT kernel was getting on the SDK machines. I'm assuming it must be at least somewhat respectable, as the machines are being used for creating software for the Xbox2 but how respectable?
And going even more wildly out of the bounds of realityfor years now, there have been rumors of Apple porting the Mac OS to be able to run on Intel-based PCs (realistically, that's not likely to ever be released publicly, but the technology is there). However, what about going the other direction? What if Microsoft were to take these customizations to their kernel and and eventually supplant Virtual PC with an actual build of Longhorn for the G5, either as a "red box" that would allow you to run Windows applications concurrently with Mac OS X applications (we can already run Mac OS X apps, "Classic" Mac OS apps, Unix command-line apps, and Unix X-11 apps all at the same time as it is), or as a dual-boot option (Which OS would you like to run today)?
Likely? I seriously doubt it. But fun to play with.
And I'd still love to find out just how zippy those G5s are running NT. Wouldn't it be a fun little tweak if they were running as fast as (or faster, even) than high-end PCs?
HE is the hobbit king of New Zealand, hailed throughout the land as the saviour of hope, goodness, truth and the national economy. Now director Peter Jackson can burrow into his own little hobbit-hole, snug inside a grassy hillside.
The set of Bag End, the round-walled underground home of hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, always felt cosy to Jackson over the past seven years of creating the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
But big Hollywood studios aren't known for their sentimentality and New Line Cinema wanted the set demolished as soon as shooting was completed.
The rotund and furry Jackson, who often describes himself as being like a hobbit, couldn't bear to let it go.
"I love the Bag End set, so I asked New Line: 'If I pay for all the storage costs, can I keep it?"' Jackson told The Australian in Wellington before the opening of the trilogy's third film, Return of the King.
Jackson's films will make an estimated $NZ5.3 billion ($4.6 billion) for the studio, but the hard-headed money men of New Line weren't letting the director have a freebie.
He paid for storage and now Jackson is having Bag End installed under a hillside on his property north of Wellington.
"I'll have it as a guesthouse. I love it, its so round," he says. "It's amazing how comforting roundness is in a building. Why aren't we making round buildings? Why all these square, flat walls?"
As the "loose cannon" in question, I wanted to address a few of the points here.
How did he take a photo with the camera inside his "bag."? Why did he have his bag at the loading dock when he worked in the print shop?
I carry a bag with me on a fairly regular basis. Contents of said bag are generally a bit of random crap in the outside pocket, whatever book I'm currently reading for the trip between home and work, and -- yes -- my digital camera. I'm no major photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to play point-and-shoot when I can, and you never know when you're going to happen across a decent shot, or something interesting going on.
You also described me earlier as a "loose cannon who was wandering around the campus taking digital photos and posting them on his own web page." That's just a bit of an exaggeration. I worked in the same building as the shipping department, and usually walked in the building through the loading dock (showing my badge to the security guards posted there as I went through). I rarely went to any other section of the campus, and the few times I did, I didn't take my bag with me hence, no camera.
If it's a public area, drive your car onto the campus and then go to that supposed "public" area. My guess? You'll be arrested.
It happens all the time -- that is, the driving up, not the arresting. If it's an employee or someone with a delivery of some sort, they check in with security. If it's someone with another reason to be in the building, they're asked to go to the front desk and check in with the receptionist. Just about like any other business, I'd expect.
The picture was shot from INSIDE of the building. How can it be "outside of work" when he's inside of the building where he works?
Actually, it was outside the building. Admittedly, by about three feet or so, but outside, standing on the loading dock. I could offer to draw a schematic, but given what's already happened, I don't think I want to tick MS off any more than I already have.;)
Employers can terminate employees without cause.
Or with cause, which is what happened in my case.
I'd like a job where I could steal computers, be insubordinate, show up in shorts and t-shirts every day, work whatever hours I chose, and spend my lunch hour banging some exhibitionist chick on the conference room table.
Goddamn -- me too! Anybody fitting that description hiring?;)
The downside of this is that catastrophic system failure (or theft) will lose one of your keys. Or if you authorize a computer and then re-format the drive to do a clean re-install without having de-authorized first, then again you lose the key.
Actually, no and I'm quite glad of that.
This past weekend I did a complete nuke-and-pave on my old G3, as I'm now using it solely as a server and doing day-to-day work on my G5. I forgot to de-authorize the G3 before the nuke-and-pave, and so was concerned that I'd just lost that authorization key for good.
While you may need to enter your account information again after initializing the hard disk,
initializing the hard disk itself does not remove the computer from the list of authorized computers. If you plan to initialize the hard disk prior to selling or donating your computer, deauthorize the computer first, then initialize the hard disk.
So, after re-installing, I brought up iTunes, chose Advanced > De-authorize Computer, and was good to go.
They also note on the same page that if you do for some reason "lose" a key (for instance, forgetting to de-authorize a computer before selling it or giving it away) than you can contact them and have the key reset somehow.
All in all, they seem to have covered most (if not all) eventualities with this.
My digital camera uses Lithium AA batteries. I can pick them up at any local grocery store and many drug stores (I just have to ask for them, as they're kept behind the customer service desk apparently they can be used in small-scale meth production or something), and they last far longer in my camera than standard AAs do (months vs. weeks, or weeks vs. days if I actually use the camera's LCD). I'd be willing to bet that the keyboard and mouse pull less power than a digital camera, too. So where's the problem again?
Unfortunately, OmniWeb's CSS implementation is near-nonexistant, and it completely breaks any site using CSS for layout.
For instance, I just tested my site under 10 different browsers (plus 2 other screenshots that a friend sent me) and the only browsers to completely muck up the page were OmniWeb, iCab, and links (big surprise there...), as I've stopped using tables and use CSS specifications for my layout (browser test summary for my site is right here).
I like OmniWeb's speed, size, and rendering quality, but until they actually support CSS like they claim to, they're not going to be my browser of choice.
Why use an external speech box when the built-in speech synthesis software will do just fine? With better pronunciation (most of the time, and depending on how well you spell), to boot.
Slashdot Mirror
Possibly also of interest: The /. thread for the Belkin incident, and I put a small collection of related Google Group links in a weblog post back then.
The Belkin incident was the first thing I thought of when I saw this story post. Good to know I'm not the only one who remembered that.
You mean there's still someone left who missed it?
(Though, judging by the sudden spike in hits I got...sheesh. Of all the stupid things to get (in)famous for....)
> Nah, that's not Woody's (Michael Hanscom to those of you who don't know him) posting style...
/ even_microsoft.html/ of_blogging_and.html/ fifteen_minutes.html
Heh. Now I'm curious who you are...fewer and fewer people call me "Woody" anymore.
And, just to give the definitive answer as to who I was and why I lost the position (just on the off chance that anyone's paying attention to this particular thread _and_ this gets modded up enough for anyone to see...):
Here's the original weblog posts for [the photo][1], the [day I lost the position][2], and my [final wrap-up][3].
[1]: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10
[2]: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10
[3]: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10
And that's about the meat of everything.
This is completely off-topic, but amusing.
When I read your comment, not having a background in electical components, my brain immediately translated 'CV' as 'Curriculum Vitae'.
Logically, it followed that 'E' was something related to employment -- 'Employability' works.
The end result was that I ended up reading the equation as "Employability = 1/2(Curriculum Vitae)^2" -- or, in layman's terms, any given job will only require half of what you know, but will require proportionately more experience than you have.
Sounds about right to me. ;)
I actually figured this out a few months ago after completing ripping my music collection onto my computer.
/ theres_no_such_.html
* Total songs in my iTunes library: 14,622
* Total time: 49.6 days (49 days, 15 hours, 8 minutes, 23 seconds)
* Total space: 65.09 GB
* Copied from friends or downloaded from P2P networks (technically illegal): 610 (4.172%)
* Original rips (my own mixes, GarageBand creations, or imports from vinyl): 51 (0.349%)
* Bought from the iTunes Music Store (legally owned, though without the physical CD): 232 (1.587%)
* Ripped from CDs that I own: 13,729 (93.893%)
Full post here: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2004/07
From the FAQ on the site:
(This was also posted on my weblog, so my apologies for babbling about things most /.'ers would already know...)
I did wonder a bit about the G5/Xbox2 link back in November, when news first broke that the Xbox2 would likely be running on the G5 chip. At the time, I was idly wondering about the possibility of an Xbox emulator for the Mac (similar to Connectix' old Virtual Gamestation software that allowed Mac users to run Playstation games on their home computer).
Now, though, the news that the seeded G5's are running a custom NT kernel has me wondering along different lines.
In February of '03, Microsoft bought Virtual PC, the PC-emulation software for Macs that allows them to run Windows software inside an emulated PC. They've continued to support and update Virtual PC for the Mac, along with releasing Virtual PC for the PC, allowing Windows machines to run multiple virtual machines on one physical box handy for software testing purposes. Unfortunately, Virtual PC depends on a feature of earlier PowerPC processors that is not present in the G5, so there hasn't been a version of Virtual PC released yet that will run on Apple's flagship G5 desktop machines.
Last month, Microsoft announced that a new G5-compatible version of Virtual PC would be released along with Office 2004. Considering that the Xbox2 SDK is apparently running a customized NT kernel that runs on G5 systems, could some of those same customizations be worked into Virtual PC 7, making for a major speed increase, as more of the low-level code would be running natively on the Mac rather than having to pass through an emulator? I don't really know enough about the innards of how software like this works, so I could be entirely off-base here the differences between the emulation required for Virtual PC and the customizations needed to get the NT kernel running on the PowerPC processor may have absolutely nothing in common but it was enough to get me wondering.
Even more interesting, though, would be if someone could leak some form of benchmarks, even rough ones, showing what kind of performance this customized NT kernel was getting on the SDK machines. I'm assuming it must be at least somewhat respectable, as the machines are being used for creating software for the Xbox2 but how respectable?
And going even more wildly out of the bounds of realityfor years now, there have been rumors of Apple porting the Mac OS to be able to run on Intel-based PCs (realistically, that's not likely to ever be released publicly, but the technology is there). However, what about going the other direction? What if Microsoft were to take these customizations to their kernel and and eventually supplant Virtual PC with an actual build of Longhorn for the G5, either as a "red box" that would allow you to run Windows applications concurrently with Mac OS X applications (we can already run Mac OS X apps, "Classic" Mac OS apps, Unix command-line apps, and Unix X-11 apps all at the same time as it is), or as a dual-boot option (Which OS would you like to run today)?
Likely? I seriously doubt it. But fun to play with.
And I'd still love to find out just how zippy those G5s are running NT. Wouldn't it be a fun little tweak if they were running as fast as (or faster, even) than high-end PCs?
From news.com.au:
As the "loose cannon" in question, I wanted to address a few of the points here.
I carry a bag with me on a fairly regular basis. Contents of said bag are generally a bit of random crap in the outside pocket, whatever book I'm currently reading for the trip between home and work, and -- yes -- my digital camera. I'm no major photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to play point-and-shoot when I can, and you never know when you're going to happen across a decent shot, or something interesting going on.
You also described me earlier as a "loose cannon who was wandering around the campus taking digital photos and posting them on his own web page." That's just a bit of an exaggeration. I worked in the same building as the shipping department, and usually walked in the building through the loading dock (showing my badge to the security guards posted there as I went through). I rarely went to any other section of the campus, and the few times I did, I didn't take my bag with me hence, no camera.
It happens all the time -- that is, the driving up, not the arresting. If it's an employee or someone with a delivery of some sort, they check in with security. If it's someone with another reason to be in the building, they're asked to go to the front desk and check in with the receptionist. Just about like any other business, I'd expect.
Actually, it was outside the building. Admittedly, by about three feet or so, but outside, standing on the loading dock. I could offer to draw a schematic, but given what's already happened, I don't think I want to tick MS off any more than I already have. ;)
Or with cause, which is what happened in my case.
Goddamn -- me too! Anybody fitting that description hiring? ;)
Actually, no and I'm quite glad of that.
This past weekend I did a complete nuke-and-pave on my old G3, as I'm now using it solely as a server and doing day-to-day work on my G5. I forgot to de-authorize the G3 before the nuke-and-pave, and so was concerned that I'd just lost that authorization key for good.
However, a little poking around in Apple's iTunes Customer Service pages, and I stumbled across this page (emphasis mine):
So, after re-installing, I brought up iTunes, chose Advanced > De-authorize Computer, and was good to go.
They also note on the same page that if you do for some reason "lose" a key (for instance, forgetting to de-authorize a computer before selling it or giving it away) than you can contact them and have the key reset somehow.
All in all, they seem to have covered most (if not all) eventualities with this.
My digital camera uses Lithium AA batteries. I can pick them up at any local grocery store and many drug stores (I just have to ask for them, as they're kept behind the customer service desk apparently they can be used in small-scale meth production or something), and they last far longer in my camera than standard AAs do (months vs. weeks, or weeks vs. days if I actually use the camera's LCD). I'd be willing to bet that the keyboard and mouse pull less power than a digital camera, too. So where's the problem again?
but my take on the whole shebang can be found here.
It's always looked to me like the unfortunate result of an all-night mixed drink and marshmallow bender.
Unfortunately, OmniWeb's CSS implementation is near-nonexistant, and it completely breaks any site using CSS for layout.
For instance, I just tested my site under 10 different browsers (plus 2 other screenshots that a friend sent me) and the only browsers to completely muck up the page were OmniWeb, iCab, and links (big surprise there...), as I've stopped using tables and use CSS specifications for my layout (browser test summary for my site is right here).
I like OmniWeb's speed, size, and rendering quality, but until they actually support CSS like they claim to, they're not going to be my browser of choice.
Crap - I usually like to think that I'm a bit brighter than the average monkey, but you just proved me wrong...I got bit by that. Grrrrr.
Why use an external speech box when the built-in speech synthesis software will do just fine? With better pronunciation (most of the time, and depending on how well you spell), to boot.