Damn... I think my Atari 800XL did that as well. I'd forgotten that.... it's very vague in my memory, I think because it got so clearly overwritten by the C-derived meaning in my memory.
Amiga doesn't mean 'girlfriend' in the English-language sense. It simply means friend; in Spanish, the word for friend is gender-sensitive (amigo/amiga).
I mean, you didn't think guys describing each other as "amigos" were all gay, did you?
SYNTAX ERROR at line 10. What the hell is that colon thing?! You think this is one of those posh multiuser UNIX systems??! Ooh, C. You damn spoilt little git, BASIC not good enough for you, is it?
You'll be wanting structured programming next.
Damn, kids today make me sick.
Signed, your friendly Radio Shack Computer.
Only to have the tape break (or get sucked into the capstans) because they had to manufacture it a little too thin for tolerances in order to get 100 minutes into that little space.
Really? I recall reading warnings against C-120 cassettes in several manuals, but I *never* had any problems with them I didn't have with the shorter lengths.
My guess is that in the early 1970s when cassettes were becoming very popular, the materials used for tape (and possibly just quality of manufacture) weren't as good. By the late 1980s, they'd probably improved both by quite a lot (I reckon materials technology is one of those things that doesn't get anything like the credit it deserves, particularly as many of the improvements are hidden). But the "don't use C-120!" paranoia remained....
Personally, I would have liked 120s to be much more common; there were a few albums in the 1980s which I couldn't fit onto a normal C-90, and by the 1990s, even a C-100 wouldn't have been long enough for most CDs. It's a moot point now anyway; I stopped using cassettes altogether a while back.
If you don't want anyone to find out what you have been doing on your computer, then a hammer is the best choice.
I found that too... I got Hammer to defend my computer, and any time someone tries to take the drive away for forensic examination Hammer stops them by saying "You can't touch this!"
I was looking for personal ads, dating sites, child or extreme porn
What the heck is 'extreme porn'?!
People f*****g on snowboards at 120MPH? Some naked chick with massive fake breasts doing skateboard stunts on a halfpipe while guys standing at the top on each side try to bukakke her while she's paused in mid-air?
This isn't really paranoia. A sideways-inserted bank statement shredded into relatively wide (non-crosscut) strips still has a worryingly high chance of containing lots of information intact, in context and *at a glance*.
The cross-cut shredder *won't*, and that's the point I was trying to prove. You *might* be able to determine what the shredded piece was originally part of (e.g. photo, bank statement etc.), but I wouldn't lose sleep over anyone being able to extract any useful information from it.
And if considering the possibilities is 'paranoia', stick with your cheap wide-strip shredder, but don't be surprised if the information remains intact. And I don't see why the makers of the bulk shredder didn't bother fitting a cross-cut, for all the difference in price.
Your suggestion might be relevant if the FBI were after you, but they'd call your bank for that sort of info, so why bother?
Rightly or wrongly, the first version I was familiar with was 'expresso', and I live in the UK. 'Espresso' seems to be far more common now, but that wasn't always the case.
To prove I'm not going mad, Dire Straits have a song called 'Expresso Love' on their album Making Movies (that dates back to 1980, but I remember it from way more recently than that).
...since a cross-cut unit isn't that much more than a strip unit. The guy says he doesn't need cross cut... well, perhaps.
But consider this; assume the shredder takes a vertically-aligned piece of A4/US-Letter paper. That's not too bad if you've printed the document in the same orientation.
On the other hand, if you've printed the document as 'landscape' (or simply fed it in that way), the text is rotated by 90 degrees, and it's quite possible to get a COMPLETE LINE OF TEXT LEFT INTACT. Sure, it might get cut in half. Or it *might not*... and this is a near-certainty if you have one of those cheap shredders that only does really wide strips (7-8mm). Not to mention that the latter, assuming the documents in the bin haven't become too mixed, will be relatively easy to reconstruct because there are so few pieces.
In addition, feeding the paper 'correctly' (as a printer mechanism would) improves the alignment and hence *increases the problem*!
I bought a cross-cut shredder which reduces to fairly small pieces (4 x 22mm). Although it might be possible to have some meaningful information remain intact (e.g. a short account number), this is far less probable. Even if this happens, as it's not part of a long run of text, the context and meaning will be separated (e.g. the account number might not be recognised as such), and unless someone *really* knows what they're looking for, they'll probably miss it.
Plus, they have *many* more pieces to search through, and they're easier to mix up if you're really paranoid.
Yeah, the FBI could still get your information if they got their hands on the shredded paper (I bet they have pretty advanced 'stitching' software and the money to pay people to scan the pieces properly), but there's little information I have that the FBI couldn't find far easier in another manner. It'll stop everyone else, and that's good enough for what I use it for.
Not to be an asshole, but which is more useful to the chinese people, a censored google or no google at all.
From the bigger point-of-view, a censored Google that simply omits information without informing the user that it has been censored could *easily* be worse if it gives people the impression that they're getting free (and hence balanced) access to information, when in fact they're only being fed the facts the government considers acceptable.
Re:Of course Google has peaked
on
Has Google Peaked?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
That's why they're busily copying every "portal" feature from their superior competitor
They're pretty slow off the mark then. Yahoo had the "X-Cam Pop-Under ad" feature years back, and Google *still* haven't implemented it.
Interestingly the long wave is slightly different to the FM version (The long wave version regularly has more shipping forcasts)
That's true, and not particularly unusual- lots of stations did it with their respective MW and FM broadcasts. Actually, AFAIK, most commercial stations now have completely different programming on their MW and FM frequencies- in effect different stations, but the point was that Radio 4 are the only broadcaster still using LW for their non-FM service, as opposed to MW, and have been for most of my lifetime...
I like your title, but you're out of touch with The Archers
Hey, if I can't indulge in a bit of blatant stereotyping, what can I do?!
No Archers and they'll let off their nukes!
Typical rabid Radio 4 listeners, then.
I'm not sure how old you are, but Radio 2 used to broadcast on 198kHz (or 200kHz as it was then) until the 70's.
I was born in the 1970s, but I'm not old enough to remember that, Grandad;-)
Since that's Radio 4's frequency now, I assume that they used a different one back then. Or did they just put them both on the same frequency, and make them fight it out for the airtime?
"Later on Radio 4..."
"...you mean Radio 2...."
"Shut your cakehole!"
(Sound of someone being punched and hitting the floor)
"We'll either be playing the best of Liberace, Semprini and Mantovani, or an in-depth analysis of the oil crisis at 2PM. We don't know which yet, it depends whether Jimmy Young or Jenny Murray wins the fight in the Radio 4 boxing ring..."
(Muffled voice) "That's Radio 2 boxing ring...."
"Shut it, you slaaaaaag!"
And yet, I still cannot listen to a podcast of the Archers!!!
Can't imagine your average Radio 4 listener wanting podcasts; although I'm sure they'll yell blue murder the day that they can't listen to the station on Long Wave in their Volvos (*).
And really... The Archers on podcast... it doesn't gel in my mind. If an iPod popped up on an episode The Archers, it would be probably be burned at the stake as the work of the devil. As would a 78RPM record player.
(*) Radio 4 being, as far as I know, the only UK station that broadcasts on Long Wave these days (as well as FM)... in fact, Atlantic 252's ten-year reign (now dead) aside, it's the only UK station that *ever* used LW in my lifetime...
I might agree with some of what you said; for all the BBC's flaws, I'd take that model to most crappy unregulated commercial TV anyday. But taking the worst, cliched examples of commercial TV against the best "socialist" TV isn't doing your argument any favours.
Yeah I agree with you here. I don't want to get special treatment for having breasts. It's hard enough to get taken seriously in the tech world without also dealing with preferential treatment at Slashdot!
If you're getting special treatment, it's not because you have breasts; half of Slashdot is in that boat. Unfortunately, man-boobs just don't have the same appeal...
> > Many studios have commissioned market research to investigate the causes of
> > moviegoing behavior - or the lack thereof.
> Pay me, I guarantee you'll find out more and it will cost you less.
Are you sure? You might have the people who *do* go enjoy their films a lot more, but what matters at the end of the day is (ticket price + average snack spend) * bums on seats. And although my gut reaction is that there's some truth in what you say, I wouldn't automatically assume that it's all true, or that it'll necessarily lead to increased profit.
Market research is often very evil, but done properly it should give you the actual answers to your questions, not what you think *should* be the answer.
> > Audiences have gotten smart to the marketing, and they can smell the good ones
> > from the bad ones at a distance.
> If we can why can't you? Seems like an open and shut case to me.
Because that refers to *after* the film's been made. By then it's too late; the producers are still going to want to get some money out of it whether it stinks or not.
Of course, there's some stuff that people could "tell" is going to be horrible before it gets made... but then lots of horrible films still make big money at the box office, and never forget that Hollywood is in the business of making *money*.
I imagine it had more to do with the hundreds of thousands of obnoxious free ipod chasers signing up for accounts and then cancelling them.
If AOL got involved with the Free iPods scheme and got their fingers burnt, tough **** for them. They (and others involved in the scheme) are saying to people "Free iPod! Free iPod!". It's their business scheme; they rely on the ease of exit to bait people into it. They should't whine when it backfires and people decide to exit instead of remaining signed up to a number of crappy services that they were obliged to subscribe to in order to receive their "Free iPod" (*).
They can change the conditions if they like; of course, fewer people might sign up then, but that's their problem.
I don't always like the "Your business scheme sucks; not my problem" as an excuse to screw over businesses, but in this case they're promoting a "Free iPod", and they shouldn't ******* bitch if that's what people expect. That doesn't make people "obnoxious" if they try to obtain what was promised by following the rules (though it does if they put spam in their/. sigs about it).
Frankly, if I thought it was worth my time to play the scheme, I would. If AOL were misled about how the scheme worked, they should sue the promoters. Either way, you can't blame the end users.
(*) Matter of fact, the commonly-accepted modern use of the term by businesses and manufacturers is misleading in my opinion, because it's not "free" from obligation.
One thing I do remember from working on milspec projects many years ago was that our project failed an inspection because some pipe valves were black. The part number was identical to milspec, but they weren't painted milspec green.
Perhaps they were using such small points as a nit-picky "canary" check for standards elsewhere; in much the same manner that the No Brown M&Ms clause did for Van Halen.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn... I think my Atari 800XL did that as well. I'd forgotten that.... it's very vague in my memory, I think because it got so clearly overwritten by the C-derived meaning in my memory.
I believe it was the same game; I remember hearing that somewhere, but I can't find supporting evidence on the web, so don't take it as gospel.
The Amiga
Amiga doesn't mean 'girlfriend' in the English-language sense. It simply means friend; in Spanish, the word for friend is gender-sensitive (amigo/amiga).
I mean, you didn't think guys describing each other as "amigos" were all gay, did you?
10 print "Radio Shack Sucks! ";
20 goto 10
run
SYNTAX ERROR at line 10. What the hell is that colon thing?! You think this is one of those posh multiuser UNIX systems??! Ooh, C. You damn spoilt little git, BASIC not good enough for you, is it?
You'll be wanting structured programming next. Damn, kids today make me sick. Signed, your friendly Radio Shack Computer.
Ping isn't a game, it's a network test. Pong is the game
Ping was the British name for the 'Pong' game. Presumably because 'pong' sounds like a nasty smell.
Only to have the tape break (or get sucked into the capstans) because they had to manufacture it a little too thin for tolerances in order to get 100 minutes into that little space.
Really? I recall reading warnings against C-120 cassettes in several manuals, but I *never* had any problems with them I didn't have with the shorter lengths.
My guess is that in the early 1970s when cassettes were becoming very popular, the materials used for tape (and possibly just quality of manufacture) weren't as good. By the late 1980s, they'd probably improved both by quite a lot (I reckon materials technology is one of those things that doesn't get anything like the credit it deserves, particularly as many of the improvements are hidden). But the "don't use C-120!" paranoia remained....
Personally, I would have liked 120s to be much more common; there were a few albums in the 1980s which I couldn't fit onto a normal C-90, and by the 1990s, even a C-100 wouldn't have been long enough for most CDs. It's a moot point now anyway; I stopped using cassettes altogether a while back.
If you don't want anyone to find out what you have been doing on your computer, then a hammer is the best choice.
I found that too... I got Hammer to defend my computer, and any time someone tries to take the drive away for forensic examination Hammer stops them by saying "You can't touch this!"
I was looking for personal ads, dating sites, child or extreme porn
What the heck is 'extreme porn'?!
People f*****g on snowboards at 120MPH? Some naked chick with massive fake breasts doing skateboard stunts on a halfpipe while guys standing at the top on each side try to bukakke her while she's paused in mid-air?
"It's not XXX rated.... it's XXXTREME rated!"
Yeah; so do I. Bad example... there is, however, plenty of stuff with information almost as useful as bank statements that I normally wouldn't keep.
This isn't really paranoia. A sideways-inserted bank statement shredded into relatively wide (non-crosscut) strips still has a worryingly high chance of containing lots of information intact, in context and *at a glance*.
The cross-cut shredder *won't*, and that's the point I was trying to prove. You *might* be able to determine what the shredded piece was originally part of (e.g. photo, bank statement etc.), but I wouldn't lose sleep over anyone being able to extract any useful information from it.
And if considering the possibilities is 'paranoia', stick with your cheap wide-strip shredder, but don't be surprised if the information remains intact. And I don't see why the makers of the bulk shredder didn't bother fitting a cross-cut, for all the difference in price.
Your suggestion might be relevant if the FBI were after you, but they'd call your bank for that sort of info, so why bother?
Rightly or wrongly, the first version I was familiar with was 'expresso', and I live in the UK. 'Espresso' seems to be far more common now, but that wasn't always the case.
To prove I'm not going mad, Dire Straits have a song called 'Expresso Love' on their album Making Movies (that dates back to 1980, but I remember it from way more recently than that).
...since a cross-cut unit isn't that much more than a strip unit. The guy says he doesn't need cross cut... well, perhaps.
But consider this; assume the shredder takes a vertically-aligned piece of A4/US-Letter paper. That's not too bad if you've printed the document in the same orientation.
On the other hand, if you've printed the document as 'landscape' (or simply fed it in that way), the text is rotated by 90 degrees, and it's quite possible to get a COMPLETE LINE OF TEXT LEFT INTACT. Sure, it might get cut in half. Or it *might not*... and this is a near-certainty if you have one of those cheap shredders that only does really wide strips (7-8mm). Not to mention that the latter, assuming the documents in the bin haven't become too mixed, will be relatively easy to reconstruct because there are so few pieces.
In addition, feeding the paper 'correctly' (as a printer mechanism would) improves the alignment and hence *increases the problem*!
I bought a cross-cut shredder which reduces to fairly small pieces (4 x 22mm). Although it might be possible to have some meaningful information remain intact (e.g. a short account number), this is far less probable. Even if this happens, as it's not part of a long run of text, the context and meaning will be separated (e.g. the account number might not be recognised as such), and unless someone *really* knows what they're looking for, they'll probably miss it.
Plus, they have *many* more pieces to search through, and they're easier to mix up if you're really paranoid.
Yeah, the FBI could still get your information if they got their hands on the shredded paper (I bet they have pretty advanced 'stitching' software and the money to pay people to scan the pieces properly), but there's little information I have that the FBI couldn't find far easier in another manner. It'll stop everyone else, and that's good enough for what I use it for.
Not to be an asshole, but which is more useful to the chinese people, a censored google or no google at all.
From the bigger point-of-view, a censored Google that simply omits information without informing the user that it has been censored could *easily* be worse if it gives people the impression that they're getting free (and hence balanced) access to information, when in fact they're only being fed the facts the government considers acceptable.
That's why they're busily copying every "portal" feature from their superior competitor
They're pretty slow off the mark then. Yahoo had the "X-Cam Pop-Under ad" feature years back, and Google *still* haven't implemented it.
Working. What are YOU doing, Cringely?
He's working. As a journalist and columnist, it's his JOB to write stuff.
Interestingly the long wave is slightly different to the FM version (The long wave version regularly has more shipping forcasts)
That's true, and not particularly unusual- lots of stations did it with their respective MW and FM broadcasts. Actually, AFAIK, most commercial stations now have completely different programming on their MW and FM frequencies- in effect different stations, but the point was that Radio 4 are the only broadcaster still using LW for their non-FM service, as opposed to MW, and have been for most of my lifetime...
I like your title, but you're out of touch with The Archers
;-)
Hey, if I can't indulge in a bit of blatant stereotyping, what can I do?!
No Archers and they'll let off their nukes!
Typical rabid Radio 4 listeners, then.
I'm not sure how old you are, but Radio 2 used to broadcast on 198kHz (or 200kHz as it was then) until the 70's.
I was born in the 1970s, but I'm not old enough to remember that, Grandad
Since that's Radio 4's frequency now, I assume that they used a different one back then. Or did they just put them both on the same frequency, and make them fight it out for the airtime?
"Later on Radio 4..."
"...you mean Radio 2...."
"Shut your cakehole!"
(Sound of someone being punched and hitting the floor)
"We'll either be playing the best of Liberace, Semprini and Mantovani, or an in-depth analysis of the oil crisis at 2PM. We don't know which yet, it depends whether Jimmy Young or Jenny Murray wins the fight in the Radio 4 boxing ring..."
(Muffled voice) "That's Radio 2 boxing ring...."
"Shut it, you slaaaaaag!"
And yet, I still cannot listen to a podcast of the Archers!!!
Can't imagine your average Radio 4 listener wanting podcasts; although I'm sure they'll yell blue murder the day that they can't listen to the station on Long Wave in their Volvos (*).
And really... The Archers on podcast... it doesn't gel in my mind. If an iPod popped up on an episode The Archers, it would be probably be burned at the stake as the work of the devil. As would a 78RPM record player.
(*) Radio 4 being, as far as I know, the only UK station that broadcasts on Long Wave these days (as well as FM)... in fact, Atlantic 252's ten-year reign (now dead) aside, it's the only UK station that *ever* used LW in my lifetime...
Korporate Funded ... Korporate TV
Can't you spell?
I might agree with some of what you said; for all the BBC's flaws, I'd take that model to most crappy unregulated commercial TV anyday. But taking the worst, cliched examples of commercial TV against the best "socialist" TV isn't doing your argument any favours.
Yeah I agree with you here. I don't want to get special treatment for having breasts. It's hard enough to get taken seriously in the tech world without also dealing with preferential treatment at Slashdot!
If you're getting special treatment, it's not because you have breasts; half of Slashdot is in that boat. Unfortunately, man-boobs just don't have the same appeal...
Unfortunately they were serious.
I didn't say that they weren't; the article I linked to makes a serious point (which might or might not be the case, but wasn't intended as a joke).
> > Many studios have commissioned market research to investigate the causes of
> > moviegoing behavior - or the lack thereof. > Pay me, I guarantee you'll find out more and it will cost you less.
Are you sure? You might have the people who *do* go enjoy their films a lot more, but what matters at the end of the day is (ticket price + average snack spend) * bums on seats. And although my gut reaction is that there's some truth in what you say, I wouldn't automatically assume that it's all true, or that it'll necessarily lead to increased profit.
Market research is often very evil, but done properly it should give you the actual answers to your questions, not what you think *should* be the answer.
> > Audiences have gotten smart to the marketing, and they can smell the good ones
> > from the bad ones at a distance.
> If we can why can't you? Seems like an open and shut case to me.
Because that refers to *after* the film's been made. By then it's too late; the producers are still going to want to get some money out of it whether it stinks or not.
Of course, there's some stuff that people could "tell" is going to be horrible before it gets made... but then lots of horrible films still make big money at the box office, and never forget that Hollywood is in the business of making *money*.
Okay; now you're confusing me. Who are "they"? The people who run the Free iPod scheme?
Don't they get paid by the companies like AOL who gain new "customers" (they wish), give the end-users a free iPod and pocket the difference?
At any rate, if AOL chose to get involved in that scheme it's their business, not the end user's...
And do you mean that 99% of the time, the user didn't get the iPod, or the companies didn't get their customers?
I imagine it had more to do with the hundreds of thousands of obnoxious free ipod chasers signing up for accounts and then cancelling them.
/. sigs about it).
If AOL got involved with the Free iPods scheme and got their fingers burnt, tough **** for them. They (and others involved in the scheme) are saying to people "Free iPod! Free iPod!". It's their business scheme; they rely on the ease of exit to bait people into it. They should't whine when it backfires and people decide to exit instead of remaining signed up to a number of crappy services that they were obliged to subscribe to in order to receive their "Free iPod" (*).
They can change the conditions if they like; of course, fewer people might sign up then, but that's their problem.
I don't always like the "Your business scheme sucks; not my problem" as an excuse to screw over businesses, but in this case they're promoting a "Free iPod", and they shouldn't ******* bitch if that's what people expect. That doesn't make people "obnoxious" if they try to obtain what was promised by following the rules (though it does if they put spam in their
Frankly, if I thought it was worth my time to play the scheme, I would. If AOL were misled about how the scheme worked, they should sue the promoters. Either way, you can't blame the end users.
(*) Matter of fact, the commonly-accepted modern use of the term by businesses and manufacturers is misleading in my opinion, because it's not "free" from obligation.
One thing I do remember from working on milspec projects many years ago was that our project failed an inspection because some pipe valves were black. The part number was identical to milspec, but they weren't painted milspec green.
Perhaps they were using such small points as a nit-picky "canary" check for standards elsewhere; in much the same manner that the No Brown M&Ms clause did for Van Halen.