and how much spam does it get?
on
Email Turns 34
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· Score: 1
I just got rid of my mindspring address from 1997, in recent years it was getting well over 100 spams a day. No doubt that's nowhere near a record number.
And when was the first "Dave Rhodes" spam received? This probably came from the SECOND email address ever to exist.
I'm wondering why you think using one would be impractical. Lasers may have been exotic tech back in the '60s, but they're everywhere now--many consumer devices use lasers.
How time flies - remember about ten years ago, when handheld laser pointers were being sold at every convenience store for under $10? They're probably 99 cents each at the surplus sellers now.
Less is a measure of amount (e.g. "Put less milk in if it bothers your stomach."), whereas "fewer" describes a measure of something you can count (like cookies, cars, etc.).
Life is getting better for pedants, many supermarket express lanes now say "12 items or fewer."
But (OOTC) aren't you putting in FEWER molecules of milk?
This has nothing to do with the accuracy of the breathalyzer and everything to do with the sleazy practices of DUI defense attorneys.
An attorney is the last defense between a defendant and The Government, which can, at the point of a gun, take away one's money, freedom or even life. It should be plainly obvious that The Government is much more powerful than the individual, and so it is vitally important that the individual be allowed a representative who will point out when The Government doesn't have an i dotted or a t crossed. Having a defense attorney that gets his client off on "a technicality" is the best way to insure that the government will do ITS job properly, fairly and fully, rather than putting someone in prison unjustly.
Let me assure you I'm not happy with drunk drivers or any lawbreaker getting off, but it would be much worse for an innocent person to be found guilty.
I once inherited a "simple" project, a pressure transducer with microcontroller that gave readings to a 'main' computer in decimal. While testing it I noticed that readings were sometimes way off. There was a bug in the binary to decimal conversion routine that causes about a 10 percent error in 1 out of about every 50 values (I recall it was an odd little table lookup thing).
So these days it DOES happen, and with bugs in "simple" devices perhaps moreso than ever, a "simple device" CAN be very wrong, and in this case it could cause the defendant a large fine, loss of license or even a jail term even though he may have actually below the legal limit.
You may argue that the legal limit for DUI alcohol tests is too high and should be lowered (further than has been done in recent decades), and there's probably a good argument for that (based on the punishment and very low drunk driving rates in some European contries), but again, this is a different matter than properly enforcing the current law.
Yeah, really, it's stupid. 20 million is what NASA pays for six weeks worth of drinking water on ISS. Designing, building and testing a successful sub-orbital spacecraft for 20 million is totally stupid, why do that when you could spend it on bottled water?
Okay, let's see you get that water up to orbital speed. Safely, and at no more than about 5 gee's or so of acceleration.
Actually, the water could take a lot more gee's, but they keep sending up these special bags of water called "astronauts" that are sensitive about that "hi gee" thing.
"Anonymous Coward" asked a perfectly reasonable question: Just a silly thought. Why didn't we plant it in a gravitationally "null" spot? Ie som place where the moon mojo and the earths mojo will work such that it doesn't need a 'orbital readjustment' in the first place.
It's where it is so the Space Shuttle can service it. The Space Shuttle has a maximum orbit of about 300 miles above Earth's surface. Perhaps that (among other things) was bad planning on the Shuttle design. Of course, they never planned on going a year or more at a time between Shuttle flights, especially when someone is left up there (intentionally!). Thanks to the Cold War and Space Race, there's an alternative way to supply them.
... There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:
Aha, I see, each year it uses a different 'slice' of the cylinder. Well, as you say, it's not quite a cylinder. It actually looks like the stomach-and-hips area of a human female. I'm not projecting, am I?
Perhaps future humans will see it and think "Oh, that's the shape of the most desirable female at the time this thing was built."
I've been looking for a really complex clock to put on my desk. A kit is fine too.
I just want something that's mechanically complex, has maybe some kind of ingenious escapement, and something that is not cheaply made (made of solid, heavy pieces of metal). I've searched the net high and low and I can't find anything.
This may not be what you have in mind, but you remind me that I've got cheap plastic clock that moves metal balls around. Its 'readout' is four lines of balls, minutes holding 0 to 9 balls (a tenth ball makes the line tilt over, dumping all balls except one, which drops into the tens line), tens of minutes 0 to 5, etc. The syncronous motor runs an arm that rotates once a minute, picking up a ball from the bottom and dumping it into the top. This was probably in a Sears catalog or somesuch a couple decades ago, I got this one in recent years at a yard sale. It doesn't always work quite right, but if it were better engineered and made of better materials I think it would be reliable. But it makes noise every minute, especially when it "rolls over."
I've been seriously considering getting some books on clock design and finding someone local with access to machine tools. I used to be a machinist, so if I had to fab the parts, it wouldn't be that difficult. Just time consuming.
I've wanted to make a clock totally out of wood, with wooden gears and such. I've got a Fine Woodworking book with a clock on the front, forget the title, that talks about making wooden gears. The challenge would be to make it long-lasting so it doesn't wear out in a short time of operation. I would likely give in and make the escapement and highest-wear components of metal.
There was also an electronic clock ISTR seeing on/. from thinkgeek or something, that has four groups of LED's. Random ones light up in each group. You tell the time by adding up the number of lit LEDs in each group. Easily built with an AVR/PIC/8051 and appropriate C compiler.
IIRC it was a small blurb in Scientific American a few years back (perhaps even pre-Y2K) where I first read of the LongNow Clock, and it got me interested in other long-term projects and ideas as well (which there aren't many).
There's a HUGE time capsule at Oglethorpe University called "The Crypt of Civilization". Most time capsules you may have read about are small things about the size of a shoebox meant to be opened 50 to 100 years after they are sealed. The "Crypt" was a (indoor, apparently) swimming pool (emptied of water, of course) loaded up with many artifacts and sealed in 1930, and scheduled to be opened in about 6,000 years.
As I discussed on the forum at that site, it would be interesting to couple one or more time capsules to such a clock, to have each capsule be opened at a pre-programmed time.
Disclaimer: I have no connection to Oglethorpe, just a fan of the site, and the "most prolific" contributor to the site's time capsule forum (three of the six posts).
The clock is certainly a "Next-Generation" design, bring the very first Y10K-compliant device.
Readers of Wired Magazine (both of them!) have known about this since 1995. Go to this page and scroll down to "The Millennium Clock/An essay by Danny Hillis from 01995" They were already Y10K compliant ten years ago! http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/
I may have missed it when reading the article, but what drives this super clock? If its mechanical, I will assume that its going to rely on some sort of kinetic/potential energy transition, but I don't see a pendulum or a power source, nor can I think of one that will last 10,000 years.
I must admit I forget myself, but if you go to the Website Of The Clock:
This is certainly a problem when in a few years "obsolete technology" gets donated to the local thrift store and the local criminal sees it and knows "you can print money with this thing" and buys it for $50 cash. You can already find "interesting things" on old hard disk drives from thrift store computers. DAMHIK.
... do you know of any even more unlikely but true comspiracies?
Dunno why anyone would consider this unlikely, but I presume that EVERY consumer product with one or more microprocessors in it, from ipods to automobiles, CAN and WILL track its use and its user, in one or more of myriad ways.
This can have its "good" side which will be used to sell it- if your ipod/cellphone/whatever gets stolen, you can just report it stolen and its GPS will determine its location and it will transmit this to the police. When they get more than $number in the same location, they raid it, at least $number+1 owners get their hitek widget returned and are happy. Getting your stolen widget back is "TOTALLY" worth a Slight Possible Loss Of Privacy, isn't it? "AWESOME!"
Run the same experiment on the Moon or a chanmber in which the air is evacuated, the cat falls on its feet, then dies from breathing the obviously poisonous vacuum.:(
So here's a question: If I have never bought music, I have never entered into any contract with any music producer/industry etc. If I never upload or use downloaded music for profit (personal use only) have I actually violated a contract that I never agreed to uphold? ----Just a thought
About your words: "If I never [...] use downloaded music for profit" - there may be a specific legal meaning for "for profit", but it's clear that you "made out" financially by getting your music for free rather than paying money for it.
But where do you get this "contract" idea? Everything that I've read about copyright violations calls it copyright LAW, not copyright contract.
Darl: "Then sue the kid! Really! Just because the product you offer isn't appealing to anyone...
Whoa! If it weren't appealing to anyone, why would anyone bother to get even a FREE copy of it?
Re:Heads up, it IS theft, get used to it.
on
RIAA Sues a Child
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· Score: 1
Fortunately, you're not in the majority
Fortunately, we (the USA) operate on rule of law, not (so far) rule of majority. Furthermore, while it may not be the same as theft of a physical object (as Travelsonic maintains), copyright violation IS a loss. It DOES take away the copyright holder's ability to sell copies when potential buyers get copies for free.
, which is why Draconian copyright laws will go largely unenforced.
Is the RIAA is rather mean-spirited to take legal action against a 14-year-old? It certainly seems so, but I recall a saying from decades ago that the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it. OTOH, I don't see where copyright laws are draconian.
And let's just pretend you WERE "injured" by losing some important data, why the hell didn't you create a backup before you tried something new on your precious bits and bytes? Don't plead ignorance there, plead stupidity, and that makes you culpable. Maybe it's you who needs to be sued (or fired) because you didn't use basic procedures to safeguard your data.
By then one was fortunate they fixed the "copy" command. IIRC it was MSDOS 3.0 (or 2.0?) that if the copy command copied over 255 files (as in "copy *.* d:"), it would skip every 256th file. No biggie, the 20 and 30 meg disk drives of the time wouldn't hold more than 255 files anyway...
Slashdot Mirror
I just got rid of my mindspring address from 1997, in recent years it was getting well over 100 spams a day. No doubt that's nowhere near a record number.
And when was the first "Dave Rhodes" spam received? This probably came from the SECOND email address ever to exist.
Okay, so it's not the most common application:
http://www.billsbest.com/thsidebender.html
But also, someone mentioned the Easy Bake oven. I suppose future versions will use a different heat source, perhaps a laptop computer.
Huh??? Since lamp sockets are AC, this can't be true. There is no 'polarity.'
I had two die in the same socket within just a few days. The other lasted a couple of years (around 3), but finally gave up. It was mounted base-up.
FWIW, I've read that going through many on/off cycles can reduce the life of CFL's.
I'm wondering why you think using one would be impractical. Lasers may have been exotic tech back in the '60s, but they're everywhere now--many consumer devices use lasers.
How time flies - remember about ten years ago, when handheld laser pointers were being sold at every convenience store for under $10? They're probably 99 cents each at the surplus sellers now.
Less is a measure of amount (e.g. "Put less milk in if it bothers your stomach."), whereas "fewer" describes a measure of something you can count (like cookies, cars, etc.).
Life is getting better for pedants, many supermarket express lanes now say "12 items or fewer."
But (OOTC) aren't you putting in FEWER molecules of milk?
This has nothing to do with the accuracy of the breathalyzer and everything to do with the sleazy practices of DUI defense attorneys.
An attorney is the last defense between a defendant and The Government, which can, at the point of a gun, take away one's money, freedom or even life. It should be plainly obvious that The Government is much more powerful than the individual, and so it is vitally important that the individual be allowed a representative who will point out when The Government doesn't have an i dotted or a t crossed. Having a defense attorney that gets his client off on "a technicality" is the best way to insure that the government will do ITS job properly, fairly and fully, rather than putting someone in prison unjustly.
Let me assure you I'm not happy with drunk drivers or any lawbreaker getting off, but it would be much worse for an innocent person to be found guilty.
I once inherited a "simple" project, a pressure transducer with microcontroller that gave readings to a 'main' computer in decimal. While testing it I noticed that readings were sometimes way off. There was a bug in the binary to decimal conversion routine that causes about a 10 percent error in 1 out of about every 50 values (I recall it was an odd little table lookup thing).
So these days it DOES happen, and with bugs in "simple" devices perhaps moreso than ever, a "simple device" CAN be very wrong, and in this case it could cause the defendant a large fine, loss of license or even a jail term even though he may have actually below the legal limit.
You may argue that the legal limit for DUI alcohol tests is too high and should be lowered (further than has been done in recent decades), and there's probably a good argument for that (based on the punishment and very low drunk driving rates in some European contries), but again, this is a different matter than properly enforcing the current law.
Yeah, really, it's stupid. 20 million is what NASA pays for six weeks worth of drinking water on ISS. Designing, building and testing a successful sub-orbital spacecraft for 20 million is totally stupid, why do that when you could spend it on bottled water?
Okay, let's see you get that water up to orbital speed. Safely, and at no more than about 5 gee's or so of acceleration.
Actually, the water could take a lot more gee's, but they keep sending up these special bags of water called "astronauts" that are sensitive about that "hi gee" thing.
"Anonymous Coward" asked a perfectly reasonable question:
Just a silly thought. Why didn't we plant it in a gravitationally "null" spot? Ie som place where the moon mojo and the earths mojo will work such that it doesn't need a 'orbital readjustment' in the first place.
It's where it is so the Space Shuttle can service it. The Space Shuttle has a maximum orbit of about 300 miles above Earth's surface. Perhaps that (among other things) was bad planning on the Shuttle design. Of course, they never planned on going a year or more at a time between Shuttle flights, especially when someone is left up there (intentionally!). Thanks to the Cold War and Space Race, there's an alternative way to supply them.
With all this fantastic clock technology, where can I get an alarm clock that has technology that wasn't cutting edge in 1969?
I'd like
* Ability to set different alarms... [more feaatures]
What you need is an 8051 and a C cross compiler.
Do you really think an LCD display will last 10000 years?
I recall LCD displays on gas pumps that didn't last through the winter. They were damaged by freezing weather and didn't have backheating.
Electronics can be made moderately reliable for 20 years, but I wouldn't bet on much longer than that.
There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/prototype1/
Aha, I see, each year it uses a different 'slice' of the cylinder. Well, as you say, it's not quite a cylinder. It actually looks like the stomach-and-hips area of a human female. I'm not projecting, am I?
Perhaps future humans will see it and think "Oh, that's the shape of the most desirable female at the time this thing was built."
I've been looking for a really complex clock to put on my desk. A kit is fine too.
/. from thinkgeek or something, that has four groups of LED's. Random ones light up in each group. You tell the time by adding up the number of lit LEDs in each group. Easily built with an AVR/PIC/8051 and appropriate C compiler.
I just want something that's mechanically complex, has maybe some kind of ingenious escapement, and something that is not cheaply made (made of solid, heavy pieces of metal). I've searched the net high and low and I can't find anything.
This may not be what you have in mind, but you remind me that I've got cheap plastic clock that moves metal balls around. Its 'readout' is four lines of balls, minutes holding 0 to 9 balls (a tenth ball makes the line tilt over, dumping all balls except one, which drops into the tens line), tens of minutes 0 to 5, etc. The syncronous motor runs an arm that rotates once a minute, picking up a ball from the bottom and dumping it into the top. This was probably in a Sears catalog or somesuch a couple decades ago, I got this one in recent years at a yard sale. It doesn't always work quite right, but if it were better engineered and made of better materials I think it would be reliable. But it makes noise every minute, especially when it "rolls over."
I've been seriously considering getting some books on clock design and finding someone local with access to machine tools. I used to be a machinist, so if I had to fab the parts, it wouldn't be that difficult. Just time consuming.
I've wanted to make a clock totally out of wood, with wooden gears and such. I've got a Fine Woodworking book with a clock on the front, forget the title, that talks about making wooden gears. The challenge would be to make it long-lasting so it doesn't wear out in a short time of operation. I would likely give in and make the escapement and highest-wear components of metal.
There was also an electronic clock ISTR seeing on
IIRC it was a small blurb in Scientific American a few years back (perhaps even pre-Y2K) where I first read of the LongNow Clock, and it got me interested in other long-term projects and ideas as well (which there aren't many).
There's a HUGE time capsule at Oglethorpe University called "The Crypt of Civilization". Most time capsules you may have read about are small things about the size of a shoebox meant to be opened 50 to 100 years after they are sealed. The "Crypt" was a (indoor, apparently) swimming pool (emptied of water, of course) loaded up with many artifacts and sealed in 1930, and scheduled to be opened in about 6,000 years.
Oglethorpe is also the home of The International Time Capsule Society. Notable pages on the website are Tips on Building a Time Capsule and The Nine Most Wanted Time Capsules.
As I discussed on the forum at that site, it would be interesting to couple one or more time capsules to such a clock, to have each capsule be opened at a pre-programmed time.
Disclaimer: I have no connection to Oglethorpe, just a fan of the site, and the "most prolific" contributor to the site's time capsule forum (three of the six posts).
The clock is certainly a "Next-Generation" design, bring the very first Y10K-compliant device.
Readers of Wired Magazine (both of them!) have known about this since 1995. Go to this page and scroll down to "The Millennium Clock/An essay by Danny Hillis from 01995" They were already Y10K compliant ten years ago!
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/
I may have missed it when reading the article, but what drives this super clock? If its mechanical, I will assume that its going to rely on some sort of kinetic/potential energy transition, but I don't see a pendulum or a power source, nor can I think of one that will last 10,000 years.
I must admit I forget myself, but if you go to the Website Of The Clock:
http://www.longnow.org/
you will find writings on a prototype discussing this very problem and various possibilities for powering it.
Looks like they redid the website since I was there last, the main clock page is here:
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/
Here are some of the details on possible power sources and other design decisions:
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/principles/
This is certainly a problem when in a few years "obsolete technology" gets donated to the local thrift store and the local criminal sees it and knows "you can print money with this thing" and buys it for $50 cash. You can already find "interesting things" on old hard disk drives from thrift store computers. DAMHIK.
Dunno why anyone would consider this unlikely, but I presume that EVERY consumer product with one or more microprocessors in it, from ipods to automobiles, CAN and WILL track its use and its user, in one or more of myriad ways.
This can have its "good" side which will be used to sell it- if your ipod/cellphone/whatever gets stolen, you can just report it stolen and its GPS will determine its location and it will transmit this to the police. When they get more than $number in the same location, they raid it, at least $number+1 owners get their hitek widget returned and are happy. Getting your stolen widget back is "TOTALLY" worth a Slight Possible Loss Of Privacy, isn't it? "AWESOME!"
I can think of several ways to anonymously buy such a printer. Well, I'm not SURE any of them would work, as I'm not going to try them.
Run the same experiment on the Moon or a chanmber in which the air is evacuated, the cat falls on its feet, then dies from breathing the obviously poisonous vacuum. :(
with an long and interesting history. Fortunately, someone has written it up so I don't have to do so here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
What's 69 in Roman Numerals? I recall this from a Rudy Rucker novel, I forget which one.
So here's a question: If I have never bought music, I have never entered into any contract with any music producer/industry etc. If I never upload or use downloaded music for profit (personal use only) have I actually violated a contract that I never agreed to uphold? ----Just a thought
About your words: "If I never [...] use downloaded music for profit" - there may be a specific legal meaning for "for profit", but it's clear that you "made out" financially by getting your music for free rather than paying money for it.
But where do you get this "contract" idea? Everything that I've read about copyright violations calls it copyright LAW, not copyright contract.
Darl: "Then sue the kid! Really! Just because the product you offer isn't appealing to anyone...
Whoa! If it weren't appealing to anyone, why would anyone bother to get even a FREE copy of it?
Fortunately, you're not in the majority
Fortunately, we (the USA) operate on rule of law, not (so far) rule of majority. Furthermore, while it may not be the same as theft of a physical object (as Travelsonic maintains), copyright violation IS a loss. It DOES take away the copyright holder's ability to sell copies when potential buyers get copies for free.
, which is why Draconian copyright laws will go largely unenforced.
Is the RIAA is rather mean-spirited to take legal action against a 14-year-old? It certainly seems so, but I recall a saying from decades ago that the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it. OTOH, I don't see where copyright laws are draconian.
And let's just pretend you WERE "injured" by losing some important data, why the hell didn't you create a backup before you tried something new on your precious bits and bytes? Don't plead ignorance there, plead stupidity, and that makes you culpable. Maybe it's you who needs to be sued (or fired) because you didn't use basic procedures to safeguard your data.
By then one was fortunate they fixed the "copy" command. IIRC it was MSDOS 3.0 (or 2.0?) that if the copy command copied over 255 files (as in "copy *.* d:"), it would skip every 256th file. No biggie, the 20 and 30 meg disk drives of the time wouldn't hold more than 255 files anyway...