See my comment below about Edison. Also there is a great biography about Thomas Edison called Edison, A Streak of Luck that goes into detail about the whole magnetic iron ore separation-cum-portland cement plant-cum-houses built with cement operation (including bathtubs and furniture).
Interesting history, that. It all started when Edison's grand idea to extract iron from low quality ore went bust. He then discovered that the leftover tailings (when mixed with some other ingredients and fired), made a fine cement. Then, the cement industry took a nosedive. So, Edison tried to create his own market for his cement buy patenting a way to build entire houses out of cement, including the furniture and the bathroom fixtures!
The engine control computer on my 1994 Jeep Wrangler decided to shut the engine down in the middle of a busy intersection on a hot Phoenix afternoon. Almost caused an accident that could have killed me. Chrysler never figured out if it was a software, hardware, or sensor error. They replaced the engine computer for free though, because it was still under the emissions warraynt.
I use irc, that's all I need.
on
ICQ Universe
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
I use IRC. Works fine. What's all of this IM stuff? Sounds lame.
Re: Harlan Ellison v. Stephen Robertson, America Online, Inc., RemarQ Communities, Inc., Critical Path, Inc., Citizen 513, and Does 1-10, Federal District Court, Central District of California Civil Case No. 00-04321 FMC (RCx)
22 February 2001
FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS MY ATTORNEY, M. CHRISTINE VALADA, AND I HAVE BEEN HIP-DEEP FIGHTING A LEGAL BATTLE, WHAT WE THINK IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CASE:
TO PROTECT WRITERS' CREATIVE PROPERTIES.
WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ABOVE PARTIES TO STOP THEM FROM POSTING MY WORKS ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. RAMPANT. OUT OF CONTROL. PANDEMIC.
AOL, REMARQ/CRITICAL PATH AND A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS' WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF "FAIR USE" OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN "INFORMATION MUST BE FREE." A WRITER'S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES' ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND "SCREW THE AUTHOR"? WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!
THIS IS NOT ONLY MY FIGHT, I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHOSE WORK IS BEING PIRATED. HUNDREDS OF WRITERS' STORIES, ENTIRE BOOKS, THE WORK OF A LIFETIME, EVERYONE FROM ISAAC ASIMOV TO ROGER ZELAZNY: THEIR WORK HAS BEEN THROWN ONTO THE WEB BY THESE SMARTASS VANDALS WHO FIND IT AN IMPOSITION TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE GOODS. (BUT GAWD FORBID YOU TRY TO APPROPRIATE SOMETHING OF THEIRS...LISTEN TO 'EM SQUEAL!) THE OUTCOME OF THIS CASE WILL AFFECT EVERY WRITER, EDITOR, PHOTOGRAPHER, ARTIST, MUSICIAN, POET, SCULPTOR, ACTOR, BOOK DESIGNER, PUBLISHER AND READER. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS THE ANARCHY OF IGNORANT THIEVES RIPPING OFF THOSE WHO LABOR FOR AN HONEST PAYDAY, BECAUSE THEY CONVENIENTLY HONOR THE LIE THAT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE THEIRS FOR THE TAKING.
LOOK, THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO. IF THAT DEMENTED, SELF-SERVING MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD "INFORMATION" PREVAILS, AND EVERY ZERO-ETHIC TOT WHO WANTS EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING, WHO EXISTS IN A TIME WHERE E-COMMERCE HUSTLERS HAVE CONVINCED HIM/HER THAT THEY'RE ENTITLED TO EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING PREVAILS, AND THEY ARE PERMITTED TO BELIEVE INFORMATION MUST BE FREE, WITH NO DIFFERENTIATION MADE BETWEEN RAW DATA AND THE CREATIVE PROPERTIES THAT PROVIDE ALL ARTISTS OF ANY KIND WITH AN ANNUITY, TO ALLOW THEM TO CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, THEN WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS THE EGREGIOUS INEVITABILITY OF NO ONE BUT AMATEURS GETTING THEIR WORK EXPOSED, WHILE THOSE WHO PRODUCE THE BULK OF ALL PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL ART FIND THEY CANNOT MAKE A DECENT LIVING.
DO NOT, FOR AN INSTANT, BUY INTO THE CULTURAL MYTHOLOGY THAT ALL ARTISTS ARE RICH. A FEW ARE, BUT MOST HAVE A HARD ROW TO HOE JUST SUBSISTING, HOLDING DOWN SECOND JOBS. MOST CREATORS PRACTICE THEIR ART BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT. IF IT WERE ONLY FOR THE BUCKS, THEY'D FARE BETTER AS DENTISTS, PLUMBERS, OR STEAM FITTERS. I'M FIGHTING FOR MYSELF, OF COURSE, BUT I'M ALSO DOING THIS FOR AVRAM DAVIDSON, WHO DIED BROKE; FOR ROGER ZELAZNY, WHO HAD TO WORK LIKE A DOG TILL THE DAY HE PITCHED OVER; AND FOR GERALD KERSH, WHOSE WORK WAS REPRINTED AND PIRATED IN SIXTY-FIVE COUNTRIES, WHILE HE HAD TO BORROW MONEY FROM FRIENDS TO FIGHT OFF THE CANCER. THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO, GANG... AND NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP!
FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS, MY ATTORNEY AND I HAVE FOUGHT THIS ALONE. ALTHOUGH WE ARE LOATH TO ASK, WE DO NOT HAVE THE ENDLESS DEEP POCKETS AND LAWYERS (14 AT THE LAST COUNT) THAT BENEFIT LARGE, ARROGANT CORPORATIONS. WE NOW NEED YOUR FINANCIAL HELP. AS TO THE MONEY BEING SPENT FOR THE DAVID-vs.-AOL GOLIATH LAWSUIT: YEAH, IT'S BEEN A BEAR. WE'RE ABOUT FORTY GRAND OUT OF POCKET, AND I'VE HAD TO SELL OFF A FEW PERSONAL POSSESSIONS AND MAGAZINE
And neither is Chrysler. In fact, I hate Chrysler because of the poor quality jeeps they've been turning out (my 1994 YJ is a hunk of junk.) But I hate SCO worse. So, I am with Chrysler in this fight.
Lemme see, on my 1994 Chrysler hunk-of-junk Wrangler, I replaced two broken engine mounts, flushed the radiator a couple of times, replaced a leaking water pump, replaced the fan belt, replaced the spark plugs a couple of times, installed a hidden coil cutoff switch, change my own oil regularly, installed a two-filter oil extender, added a couple of piezoelectric buzzers to tell me when the turn signals are on, etc.etc.etc. And I have a couple of dozen other projects in the works for under the hood. I also plan on moving the Engine Control Computer from inside the engine compartment (where the heat from the engine and Arizona summers tend to cook the integrated circuit chips and other components) to the passenger compartment, where it's not so damned hot. I WISH I could buy a Chrysler DRB III so that I could do my own diagnostics, but I will have to settle for an after-market DRB, which doesn't do all the stuff that the Chrysler DRB does.
I should also mention that the engine computer had to be replaced four times. The first three times, luckily, was under the emissions warranty. It took them two tries to figure out that a short in the wiring harness, which is a pretty complex wiring harness (about 20 wire plug on the ECC), was causing the computer to destroy itself. The fourth time, the ECC had to be replaced because it had cooked itself to death from the heat inside of the engine compartment.
Actually there are some commands in the telnet interface that if not used properly, can permanently damage the ActionTec. I found this out by doing some googling and also talking to people on irc, and I've avoided fooling around with those commands... but why have a telnet interface at all? The answer from ActionTec is that the telnet interface is there for ActionTec engineers to diagnose a problem. Great. Open telnet port on my ActionTec. Really great. Luckily the ActionTec only supports one telnet connection at a time, so I wrote a tiny perl script that telnets into the router and continuously dumps some informational command outputs to a log file.
You have hit the crux of the problem. The automobile companies are hogging the DRBs (Diagnostic Readout Boxes). I STILL cannot purchase a Chrysler DRB III for my 1994 Jeep Wrangler. I can purchase after-market DRB's, but they can't perform all of the diagnostic tests that a Chrysler DRB III can. I think that Automobile Manufacturers should not only be ordered to publish the meanings of all engine check codes, but that all engine computers should come with a standard RS-232 serial port and software that runs on Windows and Linux so that anyone can use a laptop computer to diagnose engine problems.
I don't win tin foil hats, but being fair-skinned and living in Arizona, my dermatologist has ordered me to wear on of these when I venture out into the Arizona summer sun. They do have a kind of summer Star Wars Rebel-wear look to them, and I was able to find one in camoflauge colors at the local Army Surplus Store.
Can you be sure, SURE, that a thermonuclear bomb on a satellite might not go off accidently in space?
Sure, Permissive Action Link technology is good, but nothing is perfect.
I'd cut a hatch and add a latch and some hinges so I could access the engine compartment. I like doing my own minor maintenance and repairs. Of course this would probably void the warranty.
Reminds me of my new ActionTec router modem. First thing I did when I got it was hook it up and telnet into it. There is a rich telnet interface to ActionTec R1524SU DSL router/modem. Then I noticed that the telnet interface was not documented in the pdf manual or on the ActionTec website. So I called the 1-800 tech support number, and got some guy in India who didn't know what to do (so much for outsourcing), so he escalated my call to 2nd tier tech support. I called THAT number, and got a techie in the United States who said "There is no documentation for the telnet interface, and if you telnet into the router/modem, you will void the warranty." Now that's about the STUPIDEST thing I've ever heard anybody say, and I told him so. Then I asked, "what if a cracker or packet kiddie telnets into my router... does that void the warranty?". He didn't have an answer for that, so I hung up on him.
Personally, I think that the union of computers and internal combustion engines is just plain stupid. One EMP burst and every automobile that has an Engine Control Computer within range of the EMP is dead. =/ Plus, I am mechanically inclined and often it is cheaper and easier for me to do my own maintenance and minor repairs. Welding the engine hood shut is doubly stupid. What if there is an engine fire?
OIL LENS. Force-field-enclosed hufu oil, used principally in telescopes. Oil lenses -- so accurate that they have yet to be surpassed, eight millenia after their invention -- share with many other enduring pieces of technology an elegant simplicity. Each lens is made up of a layer of hufuf oil (varying in thickness from.5 mm to 1.0 mm) held in static tension by an enclosing forcefield, and is places within a viewing tube as part of a magnifying or other light-manipulating system. Because of the extremely responsive nature of the enclosing force field, the oil layer can be adusted within microns of a desired setting. No other type of lens element approaches such accuracy.
in 7687, Marcus Vander, an Ixian Field Technician (Class 3) was experminenting with the effects of various force fields on compressed fluids. He had chosen hufuf oil (a derivitave of the hufuf plant, a native growth of Ecaz noted chiefly for its oil-filled seed pods) because of its viscosity and near-perfect transparency.
Vander wished to develop some means of transporting liquids using a force field as a container, an invention which would undoubtedly have had a wide array of useful applications. What he actually created -- as he discovered when the suspended oil focused a beam of white light onto his lab counter and melted its finish -- was the first oil lens.
The new lenses completely replaced all older, less accurate types within fifteen years of their entry into the marketplace. Their supremacy was threatened only once, in 8176, when a poor harvest of hufuf pods created a shortage of oil. Fortunately, the season following was an exceptionally good one; it was discovered that the hufufu plant adapted very nicely to cultivation on Yorba. The double cultivation has prevented any further shortages.
Right, I worked at an ISP years ago and that's what would happen when one of the 28.8k modems in our stacks would run amuck (probably from overheating) and start dialing random digits, eventually including 911. Two policemen would arrive, and we'd have to trace the number, tear the stack apart, and replace the offending modem. And when I say "stack", I mean exactly that. These were external 28.8k modems that were stacked on top of another. That's the high class way that this ISP ran it's computer room.
Or at least sued into oblivion. I don't understand why a massive class action lawsuit has not been brought against Microsoft for all of the hundreds of thousands of computers that have been infected with worms and viruses and cluttering up the internet with packet white noise.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose that eventually you would end up with pure, unadulterated, evil.
See my comment below about Edison. Also there is a great biography about Thomas Edison called Edison, A Streak of Luck that goes into detail about the whole magnetic iron ore separation-cum-portland cement plant-cum-houses built with cement operation (including bathtubs and furniture).
Interesting history, that. It all started when Edison's grand idea to extract iron from low quality ore went bust. He then discovered that the leftover tailings (when mixed with some other ingredients and fired), made a fine cement. Then, the cement industry took a nosedive. So, Edison tried to create his own market for his cement buy patenting a way to build entire houses out of cement, including the furniture and the bathroom fixtures!
Actually they are called associative arrays now, and they are pretty vulcanized. Just try doing the same thing in java.
The engine control computer on my 1994 Jeep Wrangler decided to shut the engine down in the middle of a busy intersection on a hot Phoenix afternoon. Almost caused an accident that could have killed me. Chrysler never figured out if it was a software, hardware, or sensor error. They replaced the engine computer for free though, because it was still under the emissions warraynt.
I use IRC. Works fine. What's all of this IM stuff? Sounds lame.
errm, how the hell do I mod this up? =D
HARLAN ELLISON FIGHTS FOR CREATORS' RIGHTS
Re: Harlan Ellison v. Stephen Robertson, America Online, Inc., RemarQ Communities, Inc., Critical Path, Inc., Citizen 513, and Does 1-10, Federal District Court, Central District of California Civil Case No. 00-04321 FMC (RCx)
22 February 2001
FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS MY ATTORNEY, M. CHRISTINE VALADA, AND I HAVE BEEN HIP-DEEP FIGHTING A LEGAL BATTLE, WHAT WE THINK IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CASE:
TO PROTECT WRITERS' CREATIVE PROPERTIES.
WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ABOVE PARTIES TO STOP THEM FROM POSTING MY WORKS ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. RAMPANT. OUT OF CONTROL. PANDEMIC.
AOL, REMARQ/CRITICAL PATH AND A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS' WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF "FAIR USE" OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN "INFORMATION MUST BE FREE." A WRITER'S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES' ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND "SCREW THE AUTHOR"? WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!
THIS IS NOT ONLY MY FIGHT, I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHOSE WORK IS BEING PIRATED. HUNDREDS OF WRITERS' STORIES, ENTIRE BOOKS, THE WORK OF A LIFETIME, EVERYONE FROM ISAAC ASIMOV TO ROGER ZELAZNY: THEIR WORK HAS BEEN THROWN ONTO THE WEB BY THESE SMARTASS VANDALS WHO FIND IT AN IMPOSITION TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE GOODS. (BUT GAWD FORBID YOU TRY TO APPROPRIATE SOMETHING OF THEIRS...LISTEN TO 'EM SQUEAL!) THE OUTCOME OF THIS CASE WILL AFFECT EVERY WRITER, EDITOR, PHOTOGRAPHER, ARTIST, MUSICIAN, POET, SCULPTOR, ACTOR, BOOK DESIGNER, PUBLISHER AND READER. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS THE ANARCHY OF IGNORANT THIEVES RIPPING OFF THOSE WHO LABOR FOR AN HONEST PAYDAY, BECAUSE THEY CONVENIENTLY HONOR THE LIE THAT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE THEIRS FOR THE TAKING.
LOOK, THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO. IF THAT DEMENTED, SELF-SERVING MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD "INFORMATION" PREVAILS, AND EVERY ZERO-ETHIC TOT WHO WANTS EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING, WHO EXISTS IN A TIME WHERE E-COMMERCE HUSTLERS HAVE CONVINCED HIM/HER THAT THEY'RE ENTITLED TO EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING PREVAILS, AND THEY ARE PERMITTED TO BELIEVE INFORMATION MUST BE FREE, WITH NO DIFFERENTIATION MADE BETWEEN RAW DATA AND THE CREATIVE PROPERTIES THAT PROVIDE ALL ARTISTS OF ANY KIND WITH AN ANNUITY, TO ALLOW THEM TO CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, THEN WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT IS THE EGREGIOUS INEVITABILITY OF NO ONE BUT AMATEURS GETTING THEIR WORK EXPOSED, WHILE THOSE WHO PRODUCE THE BULK OF ALL PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL ART FIND THEY CANNOT MAKE A DECENT LIVING.
DO NOT, FOR AN INSTANT, BUY INTO THE CULTURAL MYTHOLOGY THAT ALL ARTISTS ARE RICH. A FEW ARE, BUT MOST HAVE A HARD ROW TO HOE JUST SUBSISTING, HOLDING DOWN SECOND JOBS. MOST CREATORS PRACTICE THEIR ART BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT. IF IT WERE ONLY FOR THE BUCKS, THEY'D FARE BETTER AS DENTISTS, PLUMBERS, OR STEAM FITTERS. I'M FIGHTING FOR MYSELF, OF COURSE, BUT I'M ALSO DOING THIS FOR AVRAM DAVIDSON, WHO DIED BROKE; FOR ROGER ZELAZNY, WHO HAD TO WORK LIKE A DOG TILL THE DAY HE PITCHED OVER; AND FOR GERALD KERSH, WHOSE WORK WAS REPRINTED AND PIRATED IN SIXTY-FIVE COUNTRIES, WHILE HE HAD TO BORROW MONEY FROM FRIENDS TO FIGHT OFF THE CANCER. THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO, GANG... AND NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP!
FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS, MY ATTORNEY AND I HAVE FOUGHT THIS ALONE. ALTHOUGH WE ARE LOATH TO ASK, WE DO NOT HAVE THE ENDLESS DEEP POCKETS AND LAWYERS (14 AT THE LAST COUNT) THAT BENEFIT LARGE, ARROGANT CORPORATIONS. WE NOW NEED YOUR FINANCIAL HELP. AS TO THE MONEY BEING SPENT FOR THE DAVID-vs.-AOL GOLIATH LAWSUIT: YEAH, IT'S BEEN A BEAR. WE'RE ABOUT FORTY GRAND OUT OF POCKET, AND I'VE HAD TO SELL OFF A FEW PERSONAL POSSESSIONS AND MAGAZINE
But he writes good sci fi. =)
Maybe Sindarin will replace Esperanto.
And neither is Chrysler. In fact, I hate Chrysler because of the poor quality jeeps they've been turning out (my 1994 YJ is a hunk of junk.) But I hate SCO worse. So, I am with Chrysler in this fight.
I find this zdnet news article to be velly intellesting.
You rule. =)
Lemme see, on my 1994 Chrysler hunk-of-junk Wrangler, I replaced two broken engine mounts, flushed the radiator a couple of times, replaced a leaking water pump, replaced the fan belt, replaced the spark plugs a couple of times, installed a hidden coil cutoff switch, change my own oil regularly, installed a two-filter oil extender, added a couple of piezoelectric buzzers to tell me when the turn signals are on, etc.etc.etc. And I have a couple of dozen other projects in the works for under the hood. I also plan on moving the Engine Control Computer from inside the engine compartment (where the heat from the engine and Arizona summers tend to cook the integrated circuit chips and other components) to the passenger compartment, where it's not so damned hot. I WISH I could buy a Chrysler DRB III so that I could do my own diagnostics, but I will have to settle for an after-market DRB, which doesn't do all the stuff that the Chrysler DRB does. I should also mention that the engine computer had to be replaced four times. The first three times, luckily, was under the emissions warranty. It took them two tries to figure out that a short in the wiring harness, which is a pretty complex wiring harness (about 20 wire plug on the ECC), was causing the computer to destroy itself. The fourth time, the ECC had to be replaced because it had cooked itself to death from the heat inside of the engine compartment.
Actually there are some commands in the telnet interface that if not used properly, can permanently damage the ActionTec. I found this out by doing some googling and also talking to people on irc, and I've avoided fooling around with those commands... but why have a telnet interface at all? The answer from ActionTec is that the telnet interface is there for ActionTec engineers to diagnose a problem. Great. Open telnet port on my ActionTec. Really great. Luckily the ActionTec only supports one telnet connection at a time, so I wrote a tiny perl script that telnets into the router and continuously dumps some informational command outputs to a log file.
You have hit the crux of the problem. The automobile companies are hogging the DRBs (Diagnostic Readout Boxes). I STILL cannot purchase a Chrysler DRB III for my 1994 Jeep Wrangler. I can purchase after-market DRB's, but they can't perform all of the diagnostic tests that a Chrysler DRB III can. I think that Automobile Manufacturers should not only be ordered to publish the meanings of all engine check codes, but that all engine computers should come with a standard RS-232 serial port and software that runs on Windows and Linux so that anyone can use a laptop computer to diagnose engine problems.
I don't win tin foil hats, but being fair-skinned and living in Arizona, my dermatologist has ordered me to wear on of these when I venture out into the Arizona summer sun. They do have a kind of summer Star Wars Rebel-wear look to them, and I was able to find one in camoflauge colors at the local Army Surplus Store.
Can you be sure, SURE, that a thermonuclear bomb on a satellite might not go off accidently in space? Sure, Permissive Action Link technology is good, but nothing is perfect.
I'd cut a hatch and add a latch and some hinges so I could access the engine compartment. I like doing my own minor maintenance and repairs. Of course this would probably void the warranty. Reminds me of my new ActionTec router modem. First thing I did when I got it was hook it up and telnet into it. There is a rich telnet interface to ActionTec R1524SU DSL router/modem. Then I noticed that the telnet interface was not documented in the pdf manual or on the ActionTec website. So I called the 1-800 tech support number, and got some guy in India who didn't know what to do (so much for outsourcing), so he escalated my call to 2nd tier tech support. I called THAT number, and got a techie in the United States who said "There is no documentation for the telnet interface, and if you telnet into the router/modem, you will void the warranty." Now that's about the STUPIDEST thing I've ever heard anybody say, and I told him so. Then I asked, "what if a cracker or packet kiddie telnets into my router... does that void the warranty?". He didn't have an answer for that, so I hung up on him.
Personally, I think that the union of computers and internal combustion engines is just plain stupid. One EMP burst and every automobile that has an Engine Control Computer within range of the EMP is dead. =/ Plus, I am mechanically inclined and often it is cheaper and easier for me to do my own maintenance and minor repairs. Welding the engine hood shut is doubly stupid. What if there is an engine fire?
OIL LENS. Force-field-enclosed hufu oil, used principally in telescopes. Oil lenses -- so accurate that they have yet to be surpassed, eight millenia after their invention -- share with many other enduring pieces of technology an elegant simplicity. Each lens is made up of a layer of hufuf oil (varying in thickness from .5 mm to 1.0 mm) held in static tension by an enclosing forcefield, and is places within a viewing tube as part of a magnifying or other light-manipulating system. Because of the extremely responsive nature of the enclosing force field, the oil layer can be adusted within microns of a desired setting. No other type of lens element approaches such accuracy.
in 7687, Marcus Vander, an Ixian Field Technician (Class 3) was experminenting with the effects of various force fields on compressed fluids. He had chosen hufuf oil (a derivitave of the hufuf plant, a native growth of Ecaz noted chiefly for its oil-filled seed pods) because of its viscosity and near-perfect transparency.
Vander wished to develop some means of transporting liquids using a force field as a container, an invention which would undoubtedly have had a wide array of useful applications. What he actually created -- as he discovered when the suspended oil focused a beam of white light onto his lab counter and melted its finish -- was the first oil lens.
The new lenses completely replaced all older, less accurate types within fifteen years of their entry into the marketplace. Their supremacy was threatened only once, in 8176, when a poor harvest of hufuf pods created a shortage of oil. Fortunately, the season following was an exceptionally good one; it was discovered that the hufufu plant adapted very nicely to cultivation on Yorba. The double cultivation has prevented any further shortages.
Zones kind of sound like IBM's VM (Virtual Machine) OS, except that with VM, you could run a different operating system in each "zone".
Owner/admins were too stupid to figure that out, I guess.
Right, I worked at an ISP years ago and that's what would happen when one of the 28.8k modems in our stacks would run amuck (probably from overheating) and start dialing random digits, eventually including 911. Two policemen would arrive, and we'd have to trace the number, tear the stack apart, and replace the offending modem. And when I say "stack", I mean exactly that. These were external 28.8k modems that were stacked on top of another. That's the high class way that this ISP ran it's computer room.
Or at least sued into oblivion. I don't understand why a massive class action lawsuit has not been brought against Microsoft for all of the hundreds of thousands of computers that have been infected with worms and viruses and cluttering up the internet with packet white noise.