Heh, when is the last time that you saw a BBS announce that it was closing? For me, it was always a shocker. I'd get home from school and dial up, only to get a ring-no-answer or phone-line-disconnected message. A few weeks later, you'd see their BBS in the nodelist diff and know that it was indeed over.
Actually, we are bound to the UCMJ *and* the rest of the laws that you non-military folk are bound to. If I get busted for public intoxication here in downtown San Antonio, I can be prosecuted by the City of San Antonio as well as the United States Army.
In the military, just because you own something does not mean that you can do with it as you wish. Here's an analogy. As officers, we have to purchase our own uniforms. However, we are not free to use these uniforms in ways that are not permitted. If I were to take my uniform and wear it in violation of AR 670-1 ("Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia"), I could be subject to punishment under the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice).
When you enlist (or commission, or contract [ROTC]) in the military, you sign a peice of paper acknowledging your submission to the UCMJ. Once you sign this paper, you must be prepared to follow all military rules and regs or face the consequences. Interestingly, you do not become immune from non-military prosecution, either. These midshipmen could very well be prosecuted by the USNA as well as the federal (or local, depending...) court system.
The important thing to remember here, as others have pointed out, is that cadets/midshipment are future officers and are expected to conform to a much higher standard than regular college students or even enlisted military. We are supposed to set a pristine example to our peers.
I feel sorry for these guys/gals but they're probably going to get screwed on this one. In a military academy, you can get tossed out for the craziest shit. A high school buddy of mine was tossed from the USAFA because his roommate cheated and he did not turn him in. And here is the really crappy thing--if you're a sophomore or above and you are kicked out of the academy (or quit...), you will likely have to re-emburse the federal government for the expense of your education. This expense can easily total $250,000 or more.
They could have saved money in other ways. Why the office in San Francisco? Could they have not officed in, say, a small strip mall office in Lubbock TX and conducted the publisher/reporter/journalist interactions via e-mail and telephone? Being located in SFO really racks up the bills--everything is more expensive out there.
With regards to your USA Today comment--no wonder it took them so long to be profitable. Have you seen their office building in Northern VA?
These dot.commers really need to get it out of their heads that they don't need an SFBA/LA/NYC/BOS/NOVA office to succeed.
What a bunch of crap. Car makers like MB make tens of thousands of cars every year--of course some are going to have problems. If there was a fordproblems.com (there probably is!), you could spend all week reading about peoples' problems with F-150s, despite their outstanding consumer ratings. What matters most is how the dealership treats you, but that's not even all that important. Many states have lemon laws: if a dealership makes too many unsucessful attempts to repair a problem, they must provide you with a new car.
I'm not sure about the situation down there now, but back in 1996, I used to traceroute and finger their machines occasionally for fun and I never had much of a problem reaching them. IIRC, the last hop ping times were in the 800-2000ms range. I'm not sure about the bandwidth but I seriously doubt it was as low as 300Bps.
They used to have a machine, mcmvax.mcmurdo.gov, that you could finger. It felt kind of funny, you know, screwing around with a machine all the way down there.:)
Not all of us here are fat slobs, munching cheesy-poofs in front of the CRT! I spent the weekend with my Texas Army National Guard unit in the field. We're an infantry unit so there wasn't much sitting around the office. On Saturday night, I got a great view of meteor showers while I was doing a nighttime land navigation course. Speaking of meteors (and since that is our topic here), you're not out of luck if you don't make it out tonight or tomorrow. They've been falling in great numbers for the past few weeks.
These servers are pointless in most datacenters. In order to fill one rack with this much horsepower, you would need at least two empty racks next to it to compensate for the power draw and (much) increased cooling needs. I would argue that the target market for this equipment is government labs, research institutes and universities--not usually starved for floor space.
None of the corporations that I've worked for have ever considered using Solaris x86. They've all bought new Sun hardware from a Sun reseller or leased it from a leasing agency. The users of Solaris x86 that I know of are smaller ISPs and home hobbyists--and both of these types of users may be apt to purchase a used Sun on eBay or abandon Solaris altogether for *BSD or Linux.
Does anyone other than X10.com make a camera like this? I will never purchase from those clowns again. A couple of years ago, I tried to buy their X10 starter kit. I placed an order but they let me go for over a month without any communications before I finally called to enquire about the status my purchase (which I then cancelled).
I don't really understand the obsession with fast RC cars. A couple of years ago, I built an HPI Super Nitro kit and ran it around the parking lot. It was fun. A few weeks later, I threw a $70 exhaust system on it, which increased the performance dramatically. Unfortunately, the damned thing became so fast that it was just about undrivable. Even in the biggest of parking lots, you could only run it for a few seconds before you had to cut power and turn to avoid a curb. With all this new speed, my car went through tires like mad and every crash was much more expensive.
IMHO, R/C is a crazy money pit. The more you spend, the more you have to spend. I ended up giving the car to a friend when I could no longer justify spending $30 on repairs every time I drove it.
Holy Cow, I complain about lack of free GPS support and two hours later, look what I find on VersionTracker! So, I guess the next step is to merge the GPS code from this into MacStumbler.
WiReD says the TiBook may become the "Ultimate Wardriving Machine". As an owner of a TiBook/667, let me tell you why this laptop isn't going to be the ultimate wardriving machine, at least not without a lot of work:
1) Lack of decent OS X wardriving software -- Yes, there is MacStumbler but it does not support the WirelessDriver Project yet. On top of that, it's been a while since the last release of MacStumbler. Is it still being actively developed?
2) Lack of (free) GPS hardware support and lack of GPS integration into MacStumbler.
3) Suitability for in-care use -- Let's face it, the TiBook is fragile as hell. The outer casing is easily dented. Secondly, it's not a small laptop and doesn't fit easily on the dashboard or even on the passenger seat of my Honda. To solve this, we need to come up with some kind of padded mount.
I have a gripe regarding the theme used in this screenshot:
UI developers: please stop using curves in widgets and window decorations unless use can use alpha blending to make the edges of the curve look smooth. I'm sorry but monitor resolution just isn't sharp enough to make curves look good without alpha blending and anti-aliasing.
The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim
A Korean man named Kim...that certainly narrows it down!
Re:Not sure about cooking up a Python, but...
on
The Python Cookbook
·
· Score: 2
Gotta love the New-York-attorney-goes-to-the-dude-ranch sound of "Cactus-Corn Succotash". You find this sort of crap at upscale eateries in places like Aspen and Telluride. This recipe is proof that any mediocre ingredient can be dressed up enough to taste good. I've had cactus and rattlesnake. While both are edible, I'd rather have Cornmeal-crusted Amberjack with a Roasted Polenta Succotash any day.
11. explain to dad why the driveway has heat blisters
That reminds me of the time a friend and I made napalm and lit a large glob of it on dad's driveway. It burned for like three hours and we ended up having to put it out with the hose before he got home. I have no idea how long it would have kept burning.
Here's the funny thing: we did this back in 1989 or so (9th grade) and there's still a large, black, un-removable circle of charred napalm permanently affixed to dad's driveway. I think he's still pissed at us.
Does anyone know how to remove these from Mozilla for OS X? On this platform, you simply download a.dmg and copy the binary to wherever you want it. You're not (unfortunately) given a choice of components to install/not install.
I'd love to nuke Composer and ChatZilla if I could.
Here is a fun little prank that I did back when I was in school (1993-1997):
When I was a freshman at Vanderbilt University, we used the campus VAX to register for classes. It worked like this: you would go to one of several large computer labs on campus and log onto the VAX as user REGISTER (or something). Once you logged in, the registration program would fire up automatically (via the VMS equivalent of.login). Anyway, one day at the beginning of the semester, I was feeling a bit mischevious. I was in one of the larger labs and it was packed to the gills with students trying to register. I logged on to the REGISTER account and did something that was similar to ctrl-z suspending and suspended the registration app. Now I had a command prompt. Next, I used the VMZ equivalent of write(1) (...gosh, what was it?) and sent a message out to everybody else using the REGISTER account--literally hundreds of students...
ALERT: THE REGISTRATION SYSTEM WILL BE CLOSING IN 30 SECONDS. PLEASE MAKE YOUR FINAL CLASS SELECTIONS AT THIS TIME.
The first thing that happened when I sent the message was several hundred PCs beeping loudly all at the same time. And immediately after that...you should have seen the looks of panic on all those sorority girls' faces!:)
I don't think this armor would be useful on Bradleys and the like, where you have infantrymen mounting and dismounting from the vehicle. The only time that you could turn it on would be when the soldiers were not on the vehicle and how do you make sure that it's shut off when soldiers are near?
I don't think this is a very good solution for mechanized warfare; to me, it sounds more suited to aircraft.
I think I saw a picture of this in National Geographic a few years back. The picture was of some ladies on an apparently scorching hot dockside somewhere in China. Ships would unload giant piles of computer boards and chips and it was their job to sort through this. Imagine piles of 80's-era boards nearly 15' high nearly melting in the tropical sun. When I saw this, I thought to myself that this had to be one of the world's worst jobs.
No reason to mod you down, you made some good points. However, I would like to respond to your comments about the superiority of the unix desktop (assuming that you are talking about KDE or Enlightenment here...).
I think "sleek and flowing" is kind of hard to quantify and is mostly personal opinion. If I had to make a choice between an OS X desktop with a few features borrowed from popular X11 windowmanagers, or an X11 desktop with a few things borrowed from OS X, I'd take the OS X desktop.
Here are a few things from the *nix world that I think Apple needs to add to their desktop:
Virtual Desktops - They could use Quartz to make a really cool translucent desktop switcher which had thumbnail images of the other desktops. Make the desktop layout configurable like FVWM2. 3x3, 1x4, 2x6 layouts should be possible. AND FOR THE LOVE OF DOG, let me switch between them with configurable hotkeys, like CTRL+ARROW_KEY
Optional Auto Cut-n-Paste - like you said, but make it optional and disabled be default because it will confuse the hell out of most users
Skins - This will probably never happen because the "branding" people at Apple would never let it happen but it sure would be nice if it could
Windowshade Mode - ala MacOS9/Afterstep/Unsanity's WindowShade app. Double-clicking an app's titlebar reduces the entire window to just the title bar.
Easier Desktop Background Choices - I'm not sure if they fixed this in Jaguar but it's very difficult to choose a custom solid color for your desktop background
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, when is the last time that you saw a BBS announce that it was closing? For me, it was always a shocker. I'd get home from school and dial up, only to get a ring-no-answer or phone-line-disconnected message. A few weeks later, you'd see their BBS in the nodelist diff and know that it was indeed over.
Actually, we are bound to the UCMJ *and* the rest of the laws that you non-military folk are bound to. If I get busted for public intoxication here in downtown San Antonio, I can be prosecuted by the City of San Antonio as well as the United States Army.
In the military, just because you own something does not mean that you can do with it as you wish. Here's an analogy. As officers, we have to purchase our own uniforms. However, we are not free to use these uniforms in ways that are not permitted. If I were to take my uniform and wear it in violation of AR 670-1 ("Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia"), I could be subject to punishment under the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice).
When you enlist (or commission, or contract [ROTC]) in the military, you sign a peice of paper acknowledging your submission to the UCMJ. Once you sign this paper, you must be prepared to follow all military rules and regs or face the consequences. Interestingly, you do not become immune from non-military prosecution, either. These midshipmen could very well be prosecuted by the USNA as well as the federal (or local, depending...) court system.
The important thing to remember here, as others have pointed out, is that cadets/midshipment are future officers and are expected to conform to a much higher standard than regular college students or even enlisted military. We are supposed to set a pristine example to our peers.
I feel sorry for these guys/gals but they're probably going to get screwed on this one. In a military academy, you can get tossed out for the craziest shit. A high school buddy of mine was tossed from the USAFA because his roommate cheated and he did not turn him in. And here is the really crappy thing--if you're a sophomore or above and you are kicked out of the academy (or quit...), you will likely have to re-emburse the federal government for the expense of your education. This expense can easily total $250,000 or more.
Lucky bastards, you guys had more(1)? We had to use dd(1) to read our mail.
They could have saved money in other ways. Why the office in San Francisco? Could they have not officed in, say, a small strip mall office in Lubbock TX and conducted the publisher/reporter/journalist interactions via e-mail and telephone? Being located in SFO really racks up the bills--everything is more expensive out there.
With regards to your USA Today comment--no wonder it took them so long to be profitable. Have you seen their office building in Northern VA?
These dot.commers really need to get it out of their heads that they don't need an SFBA/LA/NYC/BOS/NOVA office to succeed.
What a bunch of crap. Car makers like MB make tens of thousands of cars every year--of course some are going to have problems. If there was a fordproblems.com (there probably is!), you could spend all week reading about peoples' problems with F-150s, despite their outstanding consumer ratings. What matters most is how the dealership treats you, but that's not even all that important. Many states have lemon laws: if a dealership makes too many unsucessful attempts to repair a problem, they must provide you with a new car.
I'm not sure about the situation down there now, but back in 1996, I used to traceroute and finger their machines occasionally for fun and I never had much of a problem reaching them. IIRC, the last hop ping times were in the 800-2000ms range. I'm not sure about the bandwidth but I seriously doubt it was as low as 300Bps.
They used to have a machine, mcmvax.mcmurdo.gov, that you could finger. It felt kind of funny, you know, screwing around with a machine all the way down there.
Not all of us here are fat slobs, munching cheesy-poofs in front of the CRT! I spent the weekend with my Texas Army National Guard unit in the field. We're an infantry unit so there wasn't much sitting around the office. On Saturday night, I got a great view of meteor showers while I was doing a nighttime land navigation course. Speaking of meteors (and since that is our topic here), you're not out of luck if you don't make it out tonight or tomorrow. They've been falling in great numbers for the past few weeks.
These servers are pointless in most datacenters. In order to fill one rack with this much horsepower, you would need at least two empty racks next to it to compensate for the power draw and (much) increased cooling needs. I would argue that the target market for this equipment is government labs, research institutes and universities--not usually starved for floor space.
Correct me if I am wrong but are there not some patches on SunSolve that are only available to support contract holders?
I seem to recall that for some (non-security-related) patches, they let the support contract holders get the first crack at them.
None of the corporations that I've worked for have ever considered using Solaris x86. They've all bought new Sun hardware from a Sun reseller or leased it from a leasing agency. The users of Solaris x86 that I know of are smaller ISPs and home hobbyists--and both of these types of users may be apt to purchase a used Sun on eBay or abandon Solaris altogether for *BSD or Linux.
Does anyone other than X10.com make a camera like this? I will never purchase from those clowns again. A couple of years ago, I tried to buy their X10 starter kit. I placed an order but they let me go for over a month without any communications before I finally called to enquire about the status my purchase (which I then cancelled).
I don't really understand the obsession with fast RC cars. A couple of years ago, I built an HPI Super Nitro kit and ran it around the parking lot. It was fun. A few weeks later, I threw a $70 exhaust system on it, which increased the performance dramatically. Unfortunately, the damned thing became so fast that it was just about undrivable. Even in the biggest of parking lots, you could only run it for a few seconds before you had to cut power and turn to avoid a curb. With all this new speed, my car went through tires like mad and every crash was much more expensive.
IMHO, R/C is a crazy money pit. The more you spend, the more you have to spend. I ended up giving the car to a friend when I could no longer justify spending $30 on repairs every time I drove it.
Holy Cow, I complain about lack of free GPS support and two hours later, look what I find on VersionTracker! So, I guess the next step is to merge the GPS code from this into MacStumbler.
WiReD says the TiBook may become the "Ultimate Wardriving Machine". As an owner of a TiBook/667, let me tell you why this laptop isn't going to be the ultimate wardriving machine, at least not without a lot of work:
1) Lack of decent OS X wardriving software -- Yes, there is MacStumbler but it does not support the WirelessDriver Project yet. On top of that, it's been a while since the last release of MacStumbler. Is it still being actively developed?
2) Lack of (free) GPS hardware support and lack of GPS integration into MacStumbler.
3) Suitability for in-care use -- Let's face it, the TiBook is fragile as hell. The outer casing is easily dented. Secondly, it's not a small laptop and doesn't fit easily on the dashboard or even on the passenger seat of my Honda. To solve this, we need to come up with some kind of padded mount.
Err, that's "you can use", not "use can use".
("Yeah, jerky, use guys better fix that damned theme or I'm gonna wrap your head in with a crescent wrench!")
I have a gripe regarding the theme used in this screenshot:
UI developers: please stop using curves in widgets and window decorations unless use can use alpha blending to make the edges of the curve look smooth. I'm sorry but monitor resolution just isn't sharp enough to make curves look good without alpha blending and anti-aliasing.
The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim
A Korean man named Kim...that certainly narrows it down!
Gotta love the New-York-attorney-goes-to-the-dude-ranch sound of "Cactus-Corn Succotash". You find this sort of crap at upscale eateries in places like Aspen and Telluride. This recipe is proof that any mediocre ingredient can be dressed up enough to taste good. I've had cactus and rattlesnake. While both are edible, I'd rather have Cornmeal-crusted Amberjack with a Roasted Polenta Succotash any day.
11. explain to dad why the driveway has heat blisters
That reminds me of the time a friend and I made napalm and lit a large glob of it on dad's driveway. It burned for like three hours and we ended up having to put it out with the hose before he got home. I have no idea how long it would have kept burning.
Here's the funny thing: we did this back in 1989 or so (9th grade) and there's still a large, black, un-removable circle of charred napalm permanently affixed to dad's driveway. I think he's still pissed at us.
Does anyone know how to remove these from Mozilla for OS X? On this platform, you simply download a
I'd love to nuke Composer and ChatZilla if I could.
Here is a fun little prank that I did back when I was in school (1993-1997):
.login). Anyway, one day at the beginning of the semester, I was feeling a bit mischevious. I was in one of the larger labs and it was packed to the gills with students trying to register. I logged on to the REGISTER account and did something that was similar to ctrl-z suspending and suspended the registration app. Now I had a command prompt. Next, I used the VMZ equivalent of write(1) (...gosh, what was it?) and sent a message out to everybody else using the REGISTER account--literally hundreds of students...
:)
When I was a freshman at Vanderbilt University, we used the campus VAX to register for classes. It worked like this: you would go to one of several large computer labs on campus and log onto the VAX as user REGISTER (or something). Once you logged in, the registration program would fire up automatically (via the VMS equivalent of
ALERT: THE REGISTRATION SYSTEM WILL BE CLOSING IN 30 SECONDS. PLEASE MAKE YOUR FINAL CLASS SELECTIONS AT THIS TIME.
The first thing that happened when I sent the message was several hundred PCs beeping loudly all at the same time. And immediately after that...you should have seen the looks of panic on all those sorority girls' faces!
I don't think this armor would be useful on Bradleys and the like, where you have infantrymen mounting and dismounting from the vehicle. The only time that you could turn it on would be when the soldiers were not on the vehicle and how do you make sure that it's shut off when soldiers are near?
I don't think this is a very good solution for mechanized warfare; to me, it sounds more suited to aircraft.
I think I saw a picture of this in National Geographic a few years back. The picture was of some ladies on an apparently scorching hot dockside somewhere in China. Ships would unload giant piles of computer boards and chips and it was their job to sort through this. Imagine piles of 80's-era boards nearly 15' high nearly melting in the tropical sun. When I saw this, I thought to myself that this had to be one of the world's worst jobs.
I think "sleek and flowing" is kind of hard to quantify and is mostly personal opinion. If I had to make a choice between an OS X desktop with a few features borrowed from popular X11 windowmanagers, or an X11 desktop with a few things borrowed from OS X, I'd take the OS X desktop.
Here are a few things from the *nix world that I think Apple needs to add to their desktop:
Anyone else have something to add?