Back when I was 14, we bought our first computer. Packard Bell 486SX/25, with get this, a CD-ROM drive! I remember it in the paper at $1200. Great little machine; works to this day.
Anyway, at some point, my dad had downloaded a 'joke' from a BBS. It acted like you had 'won' a free format of your computer, and it started acting like it was doing so. I panicked and shut down. I booted off a floppy and ran Dr. Watson, which MS used as an antivirus back then. Being new to computers, I wasn't particularly sure of what I was doing. When Dr. Watson reported that some file had changed, it asked what I wanted to do. Of course, I told it to Wipe the file clean of viruses.
What I didn't realize was that Wipe actually meant it was zeroing the file.
Goodbye, win.ini. Goodbye, system.ini.
I learned how to format and re-install from scratch that weekend.
Re:What is with PDI/Dreamworks?
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Shrek 2 How-To
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Happens all the time. Armageddon = Deep Impact = that terrible NBC movie about meteorites. Volcano = Dante's Peak. Antz = Bug's Life. Mission To Mars = Red Planet. Lake Placid = Anaconda. That ABC movie about Jessica Lynch = That NBC movie about Jessica Lynch.
There is a good comment at the end of the parent article. The comment is, predators have their eyes close together - to focus on prey. Prey has eyes far apart, to see predators better.
This is grossly offtopic, but I just thought I'd comment anyway.
From my understanding, it's not eye spread that counts. Predators have eyes on the front of their heads, so they get all those good advantages that come with binocular vision, particularly judging distance. And, typically, the wider the eyes are spaced apart, the better, since you get more parallax.
Prey, on the other hands, have their eyes on the side of their heads for the best all-around view possible. Some hooved animals have nearly 360-degree vision. Not so great with distance judging. The only advantage to spreading these eyes out further is that you can reduce blind spots.
Not likely. I was much more dismayed when a far more promising series that some may remember, called "Farscape," was cancelled. To this day, I still don't understand why SciFi was stupid enough to can a show that was carrying Number-One ratings.
Actually, at the time, Farscape was #2. Stargate's first season on Sci-Fi had surpassed Farscape (due largely, IMO, to an already existing fanbase, a less complicated and important backstory, and more episodic episodes).
Still, it's like NBC canceling ER because it wasn't doing as good as Friends.
Some program called "Hotbar" is the worst.
Oh, if only that were true.
There's this relatively new thing out there that's called Morze. I think it comes with the package that installs VirtualBouncer and Ad Destroyer.
It's awful. It creates 10+ randomly-named executable files in the Windows directory, and puts shortcuts to them in the start menu (in 98, it also puts duplicates in windows\all users\start menu\programs\startup, so it still tries to load them even if you deleted the visible stuff). Morze re-creates the EXEs and shortcuts, so if you delete them without getting rid of Morze...
It also seems to install other crap like ClearSearch and EZula. As a bonus, it looks like it interferes with Ad Aware, and maybe Spybot.
Last weekend, I went over to a co-worker's house to try to get his 'high speed' dialup connection working. I spend three hours manually removing accumulated spyware, mostly because I stupidly forgot my USB key with those on it. I delete something evil, and it breaks his winsock. I come back the next day armed with Ad Aware, Spybot, CWShredder, LSPFix, HijackThis, BHODemon, and my Microsoft security update CD. Spybot finds 641 entries (and this after I spent 3 hours removing stuff). I run Ad Aware next, and it finds another 300.
You name a piece of spyware, and he probably had it. There were at least 4 different toolbar programs installed. His active processes list was about 3 pages long.
After I got done with it, his 2GHz P4 was no longer acting like a P200 with a glitchy WinME install.
This this shit is a bane upon the Internet, and I fully support the public execution of those who create it. They're worse than spammers. I worship the ground Ad-Aware and Spybot tread upon.
My dad had something like that on his computer. Pain in the ass to get rid of. W2k was so unstable it wouldn't even boot in safe mode. I finally wound up booting off a Knoppix CD and removing the executables.
Try to catch the Mythbusters episode about eelskin wallets. They show that you need a field of thousands of gauss to affect the magnetic strip on credit cards, and even then, only when you wave it over the magnet. Magnets used to attach the seat covers in this car are probably only a few hundred gauss--fridge magnet level.
I've looked at plenty of the rovers' pictures, and I haven't seen anything that's obviously water ice.
Levin's had an axe to grind with NASA for the past thirty years. You'll note he doesn't say -what- pictures clearly show ice, and there are ten thousand pictures to sort through.
His 'reverse rain' hypotehsis is pretty silly, too.
Er, you got your units confused there. Mars Global Surveyor has seen temperatures of about 30 degrees fahrenheit (~0 degrees C). 20 degrees celcius is 68F, which is significantly warmer than we have ever seen Mars.
Check out http://www.spywareinfo.com . They've got a lot of useful stuff. In my network drive at work, I've got Spybot, AdAware, CWShredder (you -must- use this to clean off CoolWebSearch safely), and HijackThis. HijackThis is more for diagnosing an infection than cleaning it, since using it to clean either requires you to be quite familiar with your system or to ask for help on the spywareinfo forums (which they are only too happy to provide).
I've also got BHODemon and Windows Startup Inspector, but I haven't really used either.
Satellites are so highly specialized that there'd be virtually no point in scavenging them. Their components are designed to save weight, volume, and power, and would be all-but useless in any other task. As for their raw materials, we don't have the ability to process them in space (and by the time we do, we won't care about the recoverables in satellites).
Would they really need sensors peppering the surface to detect holes? I, in my completely un-expert opinion, think that they could just have a wire mesh, with wires separated by 6 or fewer inches (depending on location). Run light current through those wires. If any are broken by a puncture, the current will cease and a warning is sent. Assume a potentially lethal hole and investigate further (with the arm or a free-floating remote-controlled camera or something).
The mesh itself could be relatively light, and I don't think the entire setup would be prohibitively weight-expensive or complicated.
I imagine it'd be tougher to implement on the underside, thanks to the tiles' mounting surfaces, the spaces between them, and their thickness (a 40" 'hole' in the tiles could be undetected if it isn't deep enough to cut the mesh).
I'm sure my imagination conflicts with reality, though. What are the reasons my idea wouldn't work?:)
Actually, looking further, this is more like what you were looking for. Analog tinting (unlike the opaque glazings on normal switchable glass), and they never get completely opaque. But, doesn't look like they're on the market yet.
Actually, long, long before Mindstorms came out (it may have pre-dated Blacktron/Space Police), they released a handful of Space sets that include several of these. The flats have metal contacts running underneath and going up into the side of the studs. To these, you could attach bricks with LEDs and a simple little sound brick (which made a couple different siren noises). It ran off a 9-volt in a 4x8x2 (two bricks tall) battery case that had a 2x7 row of contacts down the middle. Here's a picture of the sets; I'm not sure any others were released.
I had 6783. Last time I checked, though, it wasn't working. I'm gonna have to dig it out again and do some real testing.
Oh, if only it were minifig scale. There's about 2.8 studs to a meter (for minifig scaling), which would mean a minifig-scale Star Destroyer would be 4480 studs long. At about.3125 inches for 1 stud, that would mean that a minifig-scale Star Destroyer would be 1400 inches long. 116'8". The 37" model Lego produces isn't quite to minifig scale.:)
My district also uses Accelerated Reader extensively, as well as some of RenLearn's other products (STAR Reader, STAR Math, STAR Early Literacy). At some sites, we also use a comprehensive (read: bloody expensive) program called Plato, and we're using a newer program called Academy of Reading at most sites now. I'm only there in a tech support role for a couple hours a day at 5 different schools, but such software does certainly seem to help. RenLearn's great; when the Holes movie came out, they offered an updated version of their quiz on the book so that students couldn't use the movie to answer the questions.
In one of my labs, most classes come in once or twice a week, and they almost all start with 10-15 minutes in one of the learning programs or our typing tutor (All the Right Type) before they move on to an 'educational' game. A lot of the 'bane' complaints I'm seeing here are really centered around a lack of teacher supervision and a generally poor computer/network policy.
I saw that letter; it caused quite a commotion, at least among fans. I wrote a hasty reply, but it was too long to print and I wasn't too happy with it afterwards. By then, though, the letter was already over a week old, so my reply probably wouldn't've been printed even if I had revised it. I'll be better prepared next time; I predict some parent(s) will go into a fit when Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex starts airing.
Three edits altogether, actually. In episode two, they muted Haruko's "Shit!" when she hears the sirens at the end of the episode. In episode six, they enlarged the mosaic over Kamon's crotch, and they cut the closing credits for time (episode six clocks in at almost exactly thirty minutes). All in all, pretty puny edits, especially considering Haurko's bare-assed antics in episode five, and her 'activity' with Kamon in episode 3.
Problem is, I'm fairly sure that they can't just 'swing by' the Hubble and dump it into the atmosphere in the course of another mission (just like how the Columbia could not possibly have reached the ISS if they had seen the hole in the leading edge before re-entry). It would have to be a mission dedicated to changing the Hubble's orbit, which wouldn't be much (if any) cheaper than a mission dedicated to refurbing it for another decade-plus of use.
Yes, and that is probably a pretty big catch. Still, sibling posts indicate that NASA always wanted to bring the HST back, so one would presume that the support structure wouldn't weigh nearly as much as the 'scope. It seems that it's not really a matter of weight, but cost in dollars and human risk (of course, I bet most everyone in the astronaut corps would volunteer; I know I would).
>That would most likely be a no-go. You'd need an >extremely sophisticated craft in order to match >velocities and orbit
No you wouldn't. The Russians were doing this for years with their unmanned Progress resupply/trash modules. It'd be no harder for NASA to do it to Hubble. The only problem regarding sophistication involves finding a way to apply the thrust in the right vector without breaking the thing apart or putting it off the center of mass. Anything needing more sophistication than what the Shuttle does on its own would easily be handled by remote operation.
>The only powerful enough rockets we have today, >are ballistic missiles for satellite launches.
We have plenty of other launch vehicles: Scout, Delta, Atlas, and Titan. Altas and Delta are capable of putting payloads into geosynch orbit (although Delta can only put something into a high eliptical orbit, so the payload must be able to take itself to true geosynch). All of our launch vehicles should be easily capable of reaching the Hubble.
If NASA isn't willing to spend the $600m to refurb the Hubble (most of this cost is the shuttle launch itself), their -only- deorbit option is an unmanned launch.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, at some point, my dad had downloaded a 'joke' from a BBS. It acted like you had 'won' a free format of your computer, and it started acting like it was doing so. I panicked and shut down. I booted off a floppy and ran Dr. Watson, which MS used as an antivirus back then. Being new to computers, I wasn't particularly sure of what I was doing. When Dr. Watson reported that some file had changed, it asked what I wanted to do. Of course, I told it to Wipe the file clean of viruses.
What I didn't realize was that Wipe actually meant it was zeroing the file.
Goodbye, win.ini. Goodbye, system.ini.
I learned how to format and re-install from scratch that weekend.
Happens all the time.
Armageddon = Deep Impact = that terrible NBC movie about meteorites.
Volcano = Dante's Peak.
Antz = Bug's Life.
Mission To Mars = Red Planet.
Lake Placid = Anaconda.
That ABC movie about Jessica Lynch = That NBC movie about Jessica Lynch.
Last time I was at Fry's, the rackmount cases were in the same aisle as the desktop & tower cases.
There is a good comment at the end of the parent article. The comment is, predators have their eyes close together - to focus on prey. Prey has eyes far apart, to see predators better.
This is grossly offtopic, but I just thought I'd comment anyway.
From my understanding, it's not eye spread that counts. Predators have eyes on the front of their heads, so they get all those good advantages that come with binocular vision, particularly judging distance. And, typically, the wider the eyes are spaced apart, the better, since you get more parallax. Prey, on the other hands, have their eyes on the side of their heads for the best all-around view possible. Some hooved animals have nearly 360-degree vision. Not so great with distance judging. The only advantage to spreading these eyes out further is that you can reduce blind spots.
Not likely. I was much more dismayed when a far more promising series that some may remember, called "Farscape," was cancelled. To this day, I still don't understand why SciFi was stupid enough to can a show that was carrying Number-One ratings.
Actually, at the time, Farscape was #2. Stargate's first season on Sci-Fi had surpassed Farscape (due largely, IMO, to an already existing fanbase, a less complicated and important backstory, and more episodic episodes).
Still, it's like NBC canceling ER because it wasn't doing as good as Friends.
The URL works, once you remove the normal slashdot-inserted space in the middle of it.
Oh, if only that were true.
There's this relatively new thing out there that's called Morze. I think it comes with the package that installs VirtualBouncer and Ad Destroyer.
It's awful. It creates 10+ randomly-named executable files in the Windows directory, and puts shortcuts to them in the start menu (in 98, it also puts duplicates in windows\all users\start menu\programs\startup, so it still tries to load them even if you deleted the visible stuff). Morze re-creates the EXEs and shortcuts, so if you delete them without getting rid of Morze...
It also seems to install other crap like ClearSearch and EZula. As a bonus, it looks like it interferes with Ad Aware, and maybe Spybot.
Last weekend, I went over to a co-worker's house to try to get his 'high speed' dialup connection working. I spend three hours manually removing accumulated spyware, mostly because I stupidly forgot my USB key with those on it. I delete something evil, and it breaks his winsock. I come back the next day armed with Ad Aware, Spybot, CWShredder, LSPFix, HijackThis, BHODemon, and my Microsoft security update CD. Spybot finds 641 entries (and this after I spent 3 hours removing stuff). I run Ad Aware next, and it finds another 300.
You name a piece of spyware, and he probably had it. There were at least 4 different toolbar programs installed. His active processes list was about 3 pages long.
After I got done with it, his 2GHz P4 was no longer acting like a P200 with a glitchy WinME install.
This this shit is a bane upon the Internet, and I fully support the public execution of those who create it. They're worse than spammers. I worship the ground Ad-Aware and Spybot tread upon.
The URL is fine. Just remove the space slashdot inserts.
My dad had something like that on his computer.
Pain in the ass to get rid of. W2k was so unstable it wouldn't even boot in safe mode.
I finally wound up booting off a Knoppix CD and removing the executables.
Try to catch the Mythbusters episode about eelskin wallets.
They show that you need a field of thousands of gauss to affect the magnetic strip on credit cards, and even then, only when you wave it over the magnet.
Magnets used to attach the seat covers in this car are probably only a few hundred gauss--fridge magnet level.
I've looked at plenty of the rovers' pictures, and I haven't seen anything that's obviously water ice. Levin's had an axe to grind with NASA for the past thirty years. You'll note he doesn't say -what- pictures clearly show ice, and there are ten thousand pictures to sort through. His 'reverse rain' hypotehsis is pretty silly, too.
Er, you got your units confused there. Mars Global Surveyor has seen temperatures of about 30 degrees fahrenheit (~0 degrees C). 20 degrees celcius is 68F, which is significantly warmer than we have ever seen Mars.
Check out http://www.spywareinfo.com . They've got a lot of useful stuff. In my network drive at work, I've got Spybot, AdAware, CWShredder (you -must- use this to clean off CoolWebSearch safely), and HijackThis. HijackThis is more for diagnosing an infection than cleaning it, since using it to clean either requires you to be quite familiar with your system or to ask for help on the spywareinfo forums (which they are only too happy to provide). I've also got BHODemon and Windows Startup Inspector, but I haven't really used either.
Satellites are so highly specialized that there'd be virtually no point in scavenging them. Their components are designed to save weight, volume, and power, and would be all-but useless in any other task.
As for their raw materials, we don't have the ability to process them in space (and by the time we do, we won't care about the recoverables in satellites).
Would they really need sensors peppering the surface to detect holes? I, in my completely un-expert opinion, think that they could just have a wire mesh, with wires separated by 6 or fewer inches (depending on location). Run light current through those wires. If any are broken by a puncture, the current will cease and a warning is sent. Assume a potentially lethal hole and investigate further (with the arm or a free-floating remote-controlled camera or something).
:)
The mesh itself could be relatively light, and I don't think the entire setup would be prohibitively weight-expensive or complicated.
I imagine it'd be tougher to implement on the underside, thanks to the tiles' mounting surfaces, the spaces between them, and their thickness (a 40" 'hole' in the tiles could be undetected if it isn't deep enough to cut the mesh).
I'm sure my imagination conflicts with reality, though. What are the reasons my idea wouldn't work?
Actually, looking further, this is more like what you were looking for. Analog tinting (unlike the opaque glazings on normal switchable glass), and they never get completely opaque. But, doesn't look like they're on the market yet.
Check this out.
They don't list any prices, but I don't imagine it's anything resembling cheap.
Actually, long, long before Mindstorms came out (it may have pre-dated Blacktron/Space Police), they released a handful of Space sets that include several of these. The flats have metal contacts running underneath and going up into the side of the studs. To these, you could attach bricks with LEDs and a simple little sound brick (which made a couple different siren noises). It ran off a 9-volt in a 4x8x2 (two bricks tall) battery case that had a 2x7 row of contacts down the middle.
Here's a picture of the sets; I'm not sure any others were released.
I had 6783. Last time I checked, though, it wasn't working. I'm gonna have to dig it out again and do some real testing.
Oh, if only it were minifig scale. .3125 inches for 1 stud, that would mean that a minifig-scale Star Destroyer would be 1400 inches long. 116'8". :)
There's about 2.8 studs to a meter (for minifig scaling), which would mean a minifig-scale Star Destroyer would be 4480 studs long. At about
The 37" model Lego produces isn't quite to minifig scale.
My district also uses Accelerated Reader extensively, as well as some of RenLearn's other products (STAR Reader, STAR Math, STAR Early Literacy). At some sites, we also use a comprehensive (read: bloody expensive) program called Plato, and we're using a newer program called Academy of Reading at most sites now.
I'm only there in a tech support role for a couple hours a day at 5 different schools, but such software does certainly seem to help.
RenLearn's great; when the Holes movie came out, they offered an updated version of their quiz on the book so that students couldn't use the movie to answer the questions.
In one of my labs, most classes come in once or twice a week, and they almost all start with 10-15 minutes in one of the learning programs or our typing tutor (All the Right Type) before they move on to an 'educational' game. A lot of the 'bane' complaints I'm seeing here are really centered around a lack of teacher supervision and a generally poor computer/network policy.
I saw that letter; it caused quite a commotion, at least among fans. I wrote a hasty reply, but it was too long to print and I wasn't too happy with it afterwards. By then, though, the letter was already over a week old, so my reply probably wouldn't've been printed even if I had revised it. I'll be better prepared next time; I predict some parent(s) will go into a fit when Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex starts airing.
Three edits altogether, actually.
In episode two, they muted Haruko's "Shit!" when she hears the sirens at the end of the episode. In episode six, they enlarged the mosaic over Kamon's crotch, and they cut the closing credits for time (episode six clocks in at almost exactly thirty minutes).
All in all, pretty puny edits, especially considering Haurko's bare-assed antics in episode five, and her 'activity' with Kamon in episode 3.
Problem is, I'm fairly sure that they can't just 'swing by' the Hubble and dump it into the atmosphere in the course of another mission (just like how the Columbia could not possibly have reached the ISS if they had seen the hole in the leading edge before re-entry). It would have to be a mission dedicated to changing the Hubble's orbit, which wouldn't be much (if any) cheaper than a mission dedicated to refurbing it for another decade-plus of use.
Yes, and that is probably a pretty big catch. Still, sibling posts indicate that NASA always wanted to bring the HST back, so one would presume that the support structure wouldn't weigh nearly as much as the 'scope.
It seems that it's not really a matter of weight, but cost in dollars and human risk (of course, I bet most everyone in the astronaut corps would volunteer; I know I would).
>That would most likely be a no-go. You'd need an
>extremely sophisticated craft in order to match
>velocities and orbit
No you wouldn't. The Russians were doing this for years with their unmanned Progress resupply/trash modules. It'd be no harder for NASA to do it to Hubble.
The only problem regarding sophistication involves finding a way to apply the thrust in the right vector without breaking the thing apart or putting it off the center of mass.
Anything needing more sophistication than what the Shuttle does on its own would easily be handled by remote operation.
>The only powerful enough rockets we have today,
>are ballistic missiles for satellite launches.
We have plenty of other launch vehicles: Scout, Delta, Atlas, and Titan. Altas and Delta are capable of putting payloads into geosynch orbit (although Delta can only put something into a high eliptical orbit, so the payload must be able to take itself to true geosynch). All of our launch vehicles should be easily capable of reaching the Hubble.
If NASA isn't willing to spend the $600m to refurb the Hubble (most of this cost is the shuttle launch itself), their -only- deorbit option is an unmanned launch.