In the process of repairing someone's hard drive, you might actually wipe out the data through your own negligence.
This happens all the time; it's called "not good enough to get the job done."
We tried to get our car repaired for months, and each reputable and industry certified mechanic we tried thought they fixed the problem but it always came back.
You can go to three different doctors before they give you the right diagnosis for a complicated problem. I've heard about it from friends, seen it on ER, and have heard that if you have a serious medical problem you should consider hiring a personal nurse to keep an eye out for you anytime you go in for treatment.
If you're certified by a well-designed examination for your industry AND former customers speak highly of you, then you're probably a reliable choice.
If you only have certification, then you might be good on paper but lousy in the field, in which case I'm not interested. On the other side, you may be a smart guy who just never got certified, but for important procedures I'd like a little confidence that you've been properly educated to handle those rare situations you may not have experienced during your hobbyist years.
So I always look for both official certification and word-of-mouth reputation when I need a service. But there's no 100%. Even after 8 years of med school and residency, or 25 years as a computer hardware hobbiest, people are going to make mistakes.
... which you can buy at newegg.com [newegg.com] for less than $400. Do-it-yourselfers could save more than a few bucks making these into an equivalent media PC.
No they couldn't; at least, not until MS makes WinMCE available as a separate purchase. Currently you can get teh OS if it's pre-installed on an approved Media Center PC.
Why would I want to sit at my PC for a couple of hours and watch a movie on my monitor??
If all you want is a DVD player, then buy a DVD player; the Media Center PC probably isn't for you. But if you want a Super PVR, then get the PC.
For families, I think the idea is that you could hook this up to your living room TV and stereo system, and it becomes an expandable, multi-function, Super TiVo, PLUS it's a state-of-the-art computer when you want it to be.
For college dorms or small apartments, you probably wouldn't have a TV much larger that a 19 or 21 inch computer monitor anyway. I watched DVD movies all the time on my 19" Samsung 955DF and ATI All-In-Wonder card in my college dorm, and it was excellent. Heck, I also had an old 13" hitachi TV on the other side of the room, and would watch two shows at once sometimes.
However, as I said before, if we let people sit around inventing product/company names and registering the domain names with no intention of putting them to use, but only so they can resell them to prospective real businesses, we end up in a situation in which you are at the mercy of some random guy when you create a new business or product.
I agree. I think some thinking needs to be done on this issue by public policy makers. What stops people right now from doing the same "naming speculation" in other areas? Books? Television shows? Patents? Trademarks? Copyrights? Is it the fact that many domain names, for existing companies anyway, were sought after long after the company's name was established elsewhere (ie the Pepsi example, but also applying to smaller businesses)? A business trademarks a name similar to the way they register a domain name, but their trademarked lasts much longer than 3 years, I believe. Is that fair? Should it be so easy to reserve a domain name in the first place?
Should you have to show some reasonable effort to make commercial use of a ".com" domain name (or even need to have a real company of the same name registered in some country), or prove that you're a real organization for a ".org", just as you have to be a college (or university, etc.) to get a ".edu"?
Well, the same thing happened when clever folks in the early 90's registered "pepsi.com" and similar, trademarked, registered words. They eventually had to give them up to the owner corporations. I think Magicosm is a unique word (you made it up, I assume?) and your product is clearly identifyable by it by your market, and no other product or business can claim the same thing.
Another big question would be who registered first? If he registered the.com first, and didn't know about your game or did know about your game but did not sign a NDA, then I'd have to side with him.
Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble
on
Cryptome Log Subpoenaed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The exact statement was "As this subpoena is related to an ongoing criminal investigation, please do not reveal this request to any individual not necessary to comply with the supoena or to the subcriber." It is written in the cover letter, and not in the actual subpoena itself, because in public trials without a specific gag order, a piece of mail is still a piece of mail and you can show it to whomever you like. The cover letter was not marked "confidential" and the only reason cryptome would have had to comply with this friendly request to keep it on the down low would be to appease the Attorney General.
And then someone, without enough wit to create his own "if someone else had written it" post, would go and add to that with a corresponding TolkienRing joke.
But he gains back some "haphazardly clever" points for the fact that someone named "sparky" can appropriately be associated with a "bzzzzzt" sound:-)
Damn, I just lost some geek points for using the word "haphazardly"...
If you hook it up to your sink
on
Computer Room Hot?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Hook the tube up to a water faucet, and connect it to your computer's intake fan (rather than exhaust), you can lower the temperature of your computer with an efficient, cooling mist!
It seems to me [...] that it's easier for me to remember one piece of meta-data (i.e. the path to the file) than several
That's true for a small number of files... But if you were organizing hundreds of news articles you would need some better form of organization than descriptively named files and folders. You might have divided your articles into folders by topic, but what if, for example, you have an article that is about both the Environment and Politics? Which folder would you put it into?
As data and files get more complicated and numerous, anything that gets us closer to a relational-db based filesystem (or access layer) is a good thing.
Well, I play the guitar, not that well but that's another story. I find I get more problems with my hands from using the wheel on the mouse then from playing the guitar. Although the motions are fairly simila, the extra bit of resistance on the guitar strings might be what prevents the stress.... I've never had any problems typing, and I've been doing that long enough. (though again I use clicky not soft keyboards).
I'm a guitarist too... I think the biggest difference is that with a mouse your wrist and fingers are constantly making small effortless movements, with most of the rest of your hand staying still. This is also done with the hand basically straightened out, like when you place your hand flat on a table. On guitar, your strumming/picking hand is usually in its natural curved state, with your fingers making broader and more varied motions (when fingerpicking). Your other hand (used to depress the strings) is also constantly moving, but even if it stays still on a chord for a while it's in a natural gripping position. On the computer when playing games or surfing the internet, people will often keep their hand on the mouse for long periods, unlike guitarists who move their hands around while playing and don't usually play for more than 5 minutes without a short break.
Plus, guitarists practice proper technique and exercise much more often than computer users practice proper mouse-using.
This has already been done... You manually rearrange oversize translucent colored pixels to create designs which appear when you turn on the lightbulb inside. It's called LiteBrite. (and u can play with a virtual LiteBrite here!.
The Direct Marketing Association is threatening to sue to save U.S. consumers from the potential loss of buying opportunities
Well in order for them to take any legal action on my behalf (along with the millions of other Americans with phones), I'd have to join their class action lawsuit. Which I wouldn't do even if it were the last class action lawsuit in the world, or even if me and their class action lawsuit were stranded on a desert island together.
It cost her nothing but the teacher has to pay an attorney.
The teacher could have used the public defender for free, just as the girl could use the public prosecuter (district attorney?) for free. To paraphrase a line from the miranda code: "You have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford one then one will be provided to you by the court." But I still think he should sue her for slander and his school for discrimination.
I'm concerned over the fact that the judge's instruction could apparently have so much weight in the outcome
IANALBIDTAJS101IC (i am not a lawyer but I did take American Justice System 101 in college), but you'd be surprised at how great an influence the judge has over a jury. Think of it: the jury is made up of people who have probably never even been inside a courtroom. The judge is the only other impartial person in the room besdes the jury, and the jury members take all their orders and instruction from him. He becomes something of a role model for courtroom behavior and attitude, in the jurors' eyes. If he seems to roll his eyes when the prosecution speaks, the jury will be think less of the prosecution. If he looks very interested in the defense's opening statement, the jury will pay more attention.
In america, with our amateur juries, we get a lot of benefits (the right to be judged by a jury of your peers, people just like you), but there are also a lot of drawbacks (you are judged by an amateur, impressionable groups of normal people).
If you can't afford Rackspace, don't go with a premium providor.
I think his most compelling issues was with the monthly charge for a one time memory upgrade. Especially if he's on a shared server, and no othe rupgrades were included. I can see a higher charge to move to a completely different, higher class webserver, but ~$150 per month to add one stick of 512 mb server ram (which has no recurring cost to Rackspace, just a one time labor and parts expenditure) is offensive.
Being a 'premium provider' doesn't give them the right to charge arbitrary fees (unless their customers don't mind). I'd rather be charged accurately and logically. If expenses have gone up, tack on a monthly charge and tell me why; don't just try to slip it under the door with a mislabeled monthly fee.
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In the process of repairing someone's hard drive, you might actually wipe out the data through your own negligence.
This happens all the time; it's called "not good enough to get the job done."
We tried to get our car repaired for months, and each reputable and industry certified mechanic we tried thought they fixed the problem but it always came back.
You can go to three different doctors before they give you the right diagnosis for a complicated problem. I've heard about it from friends, seen it on ER, and have heard that if you have a serious medical problem you should consider hiring a personal nurse to keep an eye out for you anytime you go in for treatment.
If you're certified by a well-designed examination for your industry AND former customers speak highly of you, then you're probably a reliable choice.
If you only have certification, then you might be good on paper but lousy in the field, in which case I'm not interested. On the other side, you may be a smart guy who just never got certified, but for important procedures I'd like a little confidence that you've been properly educated to handle those rare situations you may not have experienced during your hobbyist years.
So I always look for both official certification and word-of-mouth reputation when I need a service. But there's no 100%. Even after 8 years of med school and residency, or 25 years as a computer hardware hobbiest, people are going to make mistakes.
... which you can buy at newegg.com [newegg.com] for less than $400. Do-it-yourselfers could save more than a few bucks making these into an equivalent media PC.
No they couldn't; at least, not until MS makes WinMCE available as a separate purchase. Currently you can get teh OS if it's pre-installed on an approved Media Center PC.
Why would I want to sit at my PC for a couple of hours and watch a movie on my monitor??
If all you want is a DVD player, then buy a DVD player; the Media Center PC probably isn't for you. But if you want a Super PVR, then get the PC.
For families, I think the idea is that you could hook this up to your living room TV and stereo system, and it becomes an expandable, multi-function, Super TiVo, PLUS it's a state-of-the-art computer when you want it to be.
For college dorms or small apartments, you probably wouldn't have a TV much larger that a 19 or 21 inch computer monitor anyway. I watched DVD movies all the time on my 19" Samsung 955DF and ATI All-In-Wonder card in my college dorm, and it was excellent. Heck, I also had an old 13" hitachi TV on the other side of the room, and would watch two shows at once sometimes.
So... it's just like a MMORPG, except when some kid pisses you off, you can't murder him?
However, as I said before, if we let people sit around inventing product/company names and registering the domain names with no intention of putting them to use, but only so they can resell them to prospective real businesses, we end up in a situation in which you are at the mercy of some random guy when you create a new business or product.
I agree. I think some thinking needs to be done on this issue by public policy makers. What stops people right now from doing the same "naming speculation" in other areas? Books? Television shows? Patents? Trademarks? Copyrights? Is it the fact that many domain names, for existing companies anyway, were sought after long after the company's name was established elsewhere (ie the Pepsi example, but also applying to smaller businesses)? A business trademarks a name similar to the way they register a domain name, but their trademarked lasts much longer than 3 years, I believe. Is that fair? Should it be so easy to reserve a domain name in the first place?
Should you have to show some reasonable effort to make commercial use of a ".com" domain name (or even need to have a real company of the same name registered in some country), or prove that you're a real organization for a ".org", just as you have to be a college (or university, etc.) to get a ".edu"?
Well, the same thing happened when clever folks in the early 90's registered "pepsi.com" and similar, trademarked, registered words. They eventually had to give them up to the owner corporations. I think Magicosm is a unique word (you made it up, I assume?) and your product is clearly identifyable by it by your market, and no other product or business can claim the same thing.
.com first, and didn't know about your game or did know about your game but did not sign a NDA, then I'd have to side with him.
Another big question would be who registered first? If he registered the
The exact statement was "As this subpoena is related to an ongoing criminal investigation, please do not reveal this request to any individual not necessary to comply with the supoena or to the subcriber." It is written in the cover letter, and not in the actual subpoena itself, because in public trials without a specific gag order, a piece of mail is still a piece of mail and you can show it to whomever you like. The cover letter was not marked "confidential" and the only reason cryptome would have had to comply with this friendly request to keep it on the down low would be to appease the Attorney General.
Is it be possible to just write a quick script to delete all of the logs automatically? Or for that matter to not log anything at all?
Yes, it is very be possible to do that:
cd [log directory]
rm *.log
Would probably be more complicated than that in many systems, but not too much more.
* There'd be the Obligatory TokenRing Joke.
And then someone, without enough wit to create his own "if someone else had written it" post, would go and add to that with a corresponding TolkienRing joke.
But he gains back some "haphazardly clever" points for the fact that someone named "sparky" can appropriately be associated with a "bzzzzzt" sound :-)
Damn, I just lost some geek points for using the word "haphazardly"...
Hook the tube up to a water faucet, and connect it to your computer's intake fan (rather than exhaust), you can lower the temperature of your computer with an efficient, cooling mist!
1. Sendo sues MS.
2. MS fights for a little while.
3. Sendo gets more desperate, and settles with MS for enough money to appease their investors.
Case closed.
What about that file system the little girl used in Jurassic Park?
It seems to me [...] that it's easier for me to remember one piece of meta-data (i.e. the path to the file) than several
That's true for a small number of files... But if you were organizing hundreds of news articles you would need some better form of organization than descriptively named files and folders. You might have divided your articles into folders by topic, but what if, for example, you have an article that is about both the Environment and Politics? Which folder would you put it into?
As data and files get more complicated and numerous, anything that gets us closer to a relational-db based filesystem (or access layer) is a good thing.
Well, I play the guitar, not that well but that's another story.
I find I get more problems with my hands from using the wheel on the mouse then from playing the guitar.
Although the motions are fairly simila, the extra bit of resistance on the guitar strings might be what prevents the stress....
I've never had any problems typing, and I've been doing that long enough. (though again I use clicky not soft keyboards).
I'm a guitarist too... I think the biggest difference is that with a mouse your wrist and fingers are constantly making small effortless movements, with most of the rest of your hand staying still. This is also done with the hand basically straightened out, like when you place your hand flat on a table. On guitar, your strumming/picking hand is usually in its natural curved state, with your fingers making broader and more varied motions (when fingerpicking). Your other hand (used to depress the strings) is also constantly moving, but even if it stays still on a chord for a while it's in a natural gripping position. On the computer when playing games or surfing the internet, people will often keep their hand on the mouse for long periods, unlike guitarists who move their hands around while playing and don't usually play for more than 5 minutes without a short break.
Plus, guitarists practice proper technique and exercise much more often than computer users practice proper mouse-using.
This thread was listed as the top Sci/Tech story this morning on google :-) ...
...
AT&T/DoCoMo Deal For W-CDMA Deployment In US
Slashdot - 3 hours ago
murky.waters writes "The specifics of several amendments to the original deal are spelled out in a news.com article: AT&T gets $6.2 billion from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest telecom, for deploying a third generation wireless network in four of
NTT DoCoMo's $6 billion AT&T guarantee BusinessWeek
AT&T Wireless could owe $6B if W-CDMA rollout is late ComputerWorld
This has already been done... You manually rearrange oversize translucent colored pixels to create designs which appear when you turn on the lightbulb inside. It's called LiteBrite. (and u can play with a virtual LiteBrite here!.
So if Microsoft buys Macromedia, what will happen to the sharply named "Clean Up Word HTML" command in Dreamweaver? Would it change to...
"Remove Word HTML Enhancements"
"Downgrade From Word HTML"
"Reduce This Page's Functionality"
are a few that come to mind...although if I had it my way, it'd say
"You have Dreamweaver; what the hell are you doing making webpages in Microsoft Word??? Shame on you!!!"
So, like, I tried to sent an assassin robot back in time and it was like "beep beep..."
just spewed muffin and coffee all over my monitor, thank you very much!
The Direct Marketing Association is threatening to sue to save U.S. consumers from the potential loss of buying opportunities
Well in order for them to take any legal action on my behalf (along with the millions of other Americans with phones), I'd have to join their class action lawsuit. Which I wouldn't do even if it were the last class action lawsuit in the world, or even if me and their class action lawsuit were stranded on a desert island together.
It cost her nothing but the teacher has to pay an attorney.
The teacher could have used the public defender for free, just as the girl could use the public prosecuter (district attorney?) for free. To paraphrase a line from the miranda code: "You have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford one then one will be provided to you by the court." But I still think he should sue her for slander and his school for discrimination.
I'm concerned over the fact that the judge's instruction could apparently have so much weight in the outcome
IANALBIDTAJS101IC (i am not a lawyer but I did take American Justice System 101 in college), but you'd be surprised at how great an influence the judge has over a jury. Think of it: the jury is made up of people who have probably never even been inside a courtroom. The judge is the only other impartial person in the room besdes the jury, and the jury members take all their orders and instruction from him. He becomes something of a role model for courtroom behavior and attitude, in the jurors' eyes. If he seems to roll his eyes when the prosecution speaks, the jury will be think less of the prosecution. If he looks very interested in the defense's opening statement, the jury will pay more attention.
In america, with our amateur juries, we get a lot of benefits (the right to be judged by a jury of your peers, people just like you), but there are also a lot of drawbacks (you are judged by an amateur, impressionable groups of normal people).
Come on everyone, this whole post is basic 9th grade civics.
:-)
Come on, sckienle, this is Slashdot
If you can't afford Rackspace, don't go with a premium providor.
I think his most compelling issues was with the monthly charge for a one time memory upgrade. Especially if he's on a shared server, and no othe rupgrades were included. I can see a higher charge to move to a completely different, higher class webserver, but ~$150 per month to add one stick of 512 mb server ram (which has no recurring cost to Rackspace, just a one time labor and parts expenditure) is offensive.
Being a 'premium provider' doesn't give them the right to charge arbitrary fees (unless their customers don't mind). I'd rather be charged accurately and logically. If expenses have gone up, tack on a monthly charge and tell me why; don't just try to slip it under the door with a mislabeled monthly fee.
It's shocking how much complexity recursion adds to the mathematical description of a programming language.
:-)
I never said recursion wasn't completely annoying when trying to program it, but I still believe it's beautiful...once it works