Along the way, the beach-ball-shaped device, roughly two meters (six feet) in diameter, used the global Iridium satellite network to send information about its position, the surrounding air temperature, pressure, humidity and light intensity to a JPL ground station.
Note that the wind-propelled rover used an existing overbuilt satellite constellation to communicate its data back to the engineers. The implication there is that the rover couldn't use the sort of non-androsynchronous communications satellite that is currently available on Mars. So unreliable communications is one notable problem.
Also, look at the data that were being recorded... position, air temperature, pressure, humidity, and light intensity. Position is likely hard to determine without a Martian GPS system. Even so, the rest of those parameters can be deduced from current orbiters, especially "humidity". I can tell you that now -- it's somewhere close to 0%. It's a dry heat^w cold.
The nature of the object means that those are pretty much all the sensor readings you're going to get, too... add pretty pictures to the mix, of course. But this isn't something that can bore holes in rocks or take detailed spectra of interesting spots, because there's no way to anchor the ball to the ground.
If it can be done "fast and cheap", go for it. It might give some good close-up photos of places to send a more capable lander. But I'd suggest launching another Beagle (with airbags) first, if we're wanting best bang for the buck.
I cannot believe companies are caving in to SCO and paying these bogus licensing fees. Can you believe Questar's logic?
I tried to work out what Questar was thinking, while compiling a post to this Ghost article (it got yanked 'cause bigger news emerged). Here's my theory:
Questar, one of the licensees mentioned in Heiss's letter, said that its decision to purchase the IP Licence for Linux was a matter of simple economics. "Our usage of (Linux) is so small and isolated that's why we went ahead and signed the contract.," said Chad Jones a spokesman with the Salt Lake City company. "This was small enough that we made a business decision based on the modest cost of SCO's claim that it was in our interest to settle rather than litigate this thing," he said.
If a company has "small and isolated" Linux useage, why would SCO even notice them?
I figure SCO has simply decided to move up a notch in the gangster hierarchy, and move from lawsuit-slinging to leg breaking. Imagine a large guy in a tailored suit walking up to Questar's front office -- and he's no missionary.
"I hear youse gots some Linux boxes? Youse also gots some piplelines youse proud of. I'd hate to see them on the news tonight. Kapiche?"
Foo:...the latest variants of the Bagle/Beagle virus use password protected encrtypted zip attachments [...] The virus companies better hurry the heck up and come up with a solution.
Bar: Seems a bit odd to me that a worm can propagate when you have to enter a key to run it, for god's sake that's like getting a grenade in the mail with a note saying 'Pull this pin and hold'.
What's odd is the grandparent's suggestion that the "virus companies" (I'm not touching that one!) should find a solution.
Solution to what? Clueless users who blindly follow any official-sounding directions they receive in email?
In defense of the clueless users, though, the latest email had halfway decent human engineering. I didn't get it, but our IT Security folks sent a warning about it. Here's the message -- note that site is our corporate web site. If you overlook the obviously broken English ("Pay attention on attached file."), you could almost convince yourself:
From: staff@
site.com [staff@site.com] To: yournamehere [yournamehere@site.com] Sent: Tue Mar 02 17:27:52 2004 Subject: Important notify about your e-mail account.
*********************** Warning: Your file, Document.zip/jhlvbpgfu.exe, is password-protected. It was not scanned by InterScan MSS. ***********************
Hello user of site.com e-mail server,
Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content) outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe, follow the instructions.
Pay attention on attached file.
Attached file protected with the password for security reasons. Password is 50655.
In other news, Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, was unexpectedly killed yesterday when his vehicle's braking system inexplicably malfunctioned on I-40 yesterday...
What was he doing on I-40? It doesn't come within 100 miles of Utah!
Since it's about to get Slashdotted, here is the mirror list section from the xfree86.org site:
Web Mirrors
Our web site is very busy and often causes timed out connections. The following sites have been verified as being both accurate and reliable in their mirroring process, and so we recommend these for the best access:
[Acetone] is found among the products formed in destructive distillation of wood, sugar, cellulose, etc., and for this reason it is always present in crude wood spirit, from which the greater portion of it may be recovered by fractional distillation.
To be precice, though, Acetone doesn't appear to be produced by brewing beer but by distilling spirits. So the good Doctor would have needed to pour in a can of, say, Jack Daniels Hard Cola.
Behind the curtain of Slashdot
on
Meet the Nasalnaut
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Just a little tidbit. This article was nearly posted a couple of hours ago -- it showed up as a "Mysterious Future" article at about 1:45 Eastern time. Then it was yanked -- see my journal for other "Ghosts of Slashdot", articles that got yanked just before going live.
I guess someone realized that the NASA news conference was just about to begin, and that we didn't really need to have the two stories back-to-back.
There's a lot of whining about Slashdot's editors. This article's hidden history shows that they're not just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and posting dupes. As I'm sure someone has suggested before -- if you're so upset, go make your own "news for nerds" site!
Looks like two significant figures to me. I want my thirty one cubits.
Actually, it looks like we're measuring to the nearest multiple of 5 cubits. Diameter = 10 (+/- 2.5), circumference = 30 (+/- 2.5).
Of course, the entire exercise is silly. It's like trying to back into Bruce Willis' orbital calculations.
When I want to know how big a sphere is, I'll get a ruler. When I want to know the meaning of life, I'll turn to faith. When I want to reply to anonymous troll, I'll visit Slashdot.
The NASA scientist held up a sample of Jarosite. For the curious, here's a definition. Note -- the page referenced has several very cool links for more information.
THE MINERAL JAROSITE Chemistry: KFe3(SO4)2(OH)6, Potassium Iron Sulfate Hydroxide. Class: Sulfates Group: Alunite Uses: Only as mineral specimens. Specimens Jarosite is not a common mineral. It is closely related to the mineral natrojarosite. Jarosite is isostructural with natrojarosite which means that they have the same crystal structure but different chemistries. In this case, jarosite contains potassium instead of natrojarosite's sodium (natro is derived from the Latin for sodium, natrium, from where sodium gets its symbol, Na). The two minerals are difficult to distinguish without a chemical test.
Both minerals are isostructural with alunite with a formula of KAl3(SO4)2(OH)6, who lends its name to the Alunite Group of which all three minerals belong.
The symmetry of jarosite is the same as the members of the Tourmaline Group. Crystals of jarosite however do not form prismatic crystals like those of the typical tourmaline mineral. Jarosite's crystals are more flattened and resemble nearly cubic rhombohedrons. The "rhombohedrons" are actually a combination of two trigonal pyramids.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: Color is an amber yellow or brown. Luster is vitreous to resinous. Transparency: Crystals are transparent to translucent. Crystal System is trigonal; 3 m Crystal Habits include tabular to flattened rhombohedral looking crystals. The "rhombohedrons" are actually a combination of two trigonal pyramids. Crystals are somewhat scarce and small, more commonly as earthy masses, films or crusts, botryoidal and granular. Cleavage is good in one direction but only seen in the larger crystals. Fracture is uneven. Hardness is 2.5 - 3.5. Specific Gravity is approximately 2.9 - 3.3 (average to slightly heavy for translucent minerals, but hard to obtain from crusts) Streak is a pale yellow. Associated Minerals are barite, turquoise, galena, goethite, limonite, hematite and other iron minerals. Notable Occurrences include Jaroso ravine, Sierra Almagrera, Spain and Iron Arrow Mine, Colorado; Maricopa Co., Arizona; Idaho and California, USA. Best Field Indicators are crystal habit, associations, color and hardness.
For you, Pi is a value that is easily deduced from observation and from your education.
3000 years ago, observation was difficult and education was rare. And IIRC, the decimal number system would not have been the standard -- more like halves, quarters, and eighths. For those occasions requiring knowlege of the ratio of a diameter to a circumference, "3" is useful. "3 and an eighth" would be more accurate but more difficult, and "3.14" would likely be outside the layman's grasp.
But I respect your honesty about your lack of faith in a higher power. What irritates me are those who profess their faith (often loudly), but find it threatened by something as simple as a random numeric configuration.
As far as Christianity is concerned, where in the Bible does it say life only exists / was created on earth?
Excellent point. I think my fundamentalist brethren tend to forget that when God came to Moses, he wasn't dealing with a Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking -- or even a Galileo. He was dealing with a guy whose claim to fame was running away from a life of luxury to tend sheep. At the best, Moses' idea of the universe might have dealt with Egyptian gods, and a universe whose origin was a direct result of some rather kinky onanism.
God came to Moses in a way Moses could understand, in a way that his fellow shepherds and stonemasons could understand.
Imagine Moses up on the mountain, getting the first four books of what we now call the Old Testament from the Almighty:
Moses: So, where did we come from?
God: Well, I started with a singularity. Pretty much an undifferentiated soup of degenerate nucleons at first, but a little stir here and there produced some dense spots. Of course, it was just a few million years until the nucleons were able to condense into fermions, and then baryons...
Moses: tilt!
God: Oh, just tell 'em that the world was created from the void.
Moses: How long did it take to create the world?
God: Well, it took a few billion years to... oh, never mind, let's call it "seven days".
A bit cheeky, but the point is: God comes to us in a way we can understand. That's different for an illiterate goat breeder in 2000 BC than it is for a nuclear physicist in 2000 AD. Whether you choose to believe doesn't have as much to do with how God appears as it does with your own faith.
I'd just gotten started surfing the net from work when Sunny Delight ran an online promotion. They gave cryptic hints about where to find a hidden bottle of SunnyD on some web site. You'd get a score based on how long it took for you to find the bottle, and the best score got the cool prizes. I won a $20 CDNow gift cert and a T-Shirt.
But better than that was the online community that sprung up. When we discovered that SunnyD was using banner ads from a single source, I compiled a JavaScript application to automatically generate BurstNet banner ads with every possible serial number. We pushed the limits of 1996 search engine technology doing reverse lookups on the bottle image filename. Other coders found creative ways around HTTP-REFERER when SunnyD caught on to our "creative" techniques. I learned the joys and pitfalls of message board moderation -- skills I still use today.
I guess the thing I miss from those days that's not available now is the sense of discovery. The 'net (or at least the www part) was new, and we (the searchers as well as the SunnyD admins) were exploring its limits.
For the curious, check out the Sunny D entry in this online Trophy Case. It's about 3/4 of the way down the page.
I don't know you and you don't know me, and there is a slim chance in hell that I'll be able to find out where you live. But I might, you know. So, based on your policy of paying off bullies, please send me $1000, and maybe I will not find you and take a dump on your front lawn. But then again, maybe I will... Pleas send the money soon...
Well, the carrot has to be proportional to the stick. In our case, I don't think we'd be able to distinguish your "presents" from those left by the five horses, five dogs plus strays, four cats plus suitors, and the occasional duck.
Though I might pay $1.00 to see you come and try it... those five dogs can get rather testy at times, especially the big one.
You tell EV1 that you're taking your business elsewhere, you take your business elsewhere, and you tell your friends to stay the hell away from EV1 as a hosting company.
I'm not a hosting customer, but I am a dialup customer. The initial news that they've paid their protection money to SCO annoyed me, but then I remembered why I signed up with them in the first place.
Back in mid-2003, they suffered a transformer explosion and fire. Their backup systems kicked in, and they could have easily gotten away with letting the whole thing pass. But they didn't.
They brought in two backup generators -- one to run things, and one as a backup for the backup. That ain't cheap -- it was a 3000 kVa transformer that exploded, and that sounds like an awfully large item to replace (times 2) in 12 hours -- especially since the explosion happened at 7pm local time, when Generators-R-Us is probably closed for the day.
But that's not all -- instead of sweeping the whole mess under the rug, EV1.net's senior technical personnel were on the message boards with up-to-the-minute updates throughout the ordeal. They even posted pictures of the aftermath. That takes some guts!
So they paid SCO's mobsters. Disgusting, yes, but I see it as insurance... like having a plan for a second backup generator in case the fail-proof first backup generator fails. The chances of SCO prevailing are slim, but non-zero... just like the chances of the backup generator failing.
Stay with EV1, folks. They're victims, like you... they're just trying to limit the damage.
Joking aside, I can see these being heartily adopted by the hotel industry. Now they can offer you PPV pornos while you're on the toilet!
You may already know, but there's historical precedent for the concept. When I was 14, my folks and I passed through Wizard Wells, Texas, a declining community once known for its mineral water baths. There was still a small hotel/bathhouse there at the time (mid '80s) -- a very cool place, even to a tired, bored teenager.
But within the wooden bathroom stalls was the sort of surprise every tired, bored teenage boy dreams of -- each stall had a magazine rack filled with Playboy! w00t! (or the '80s equivalent thereof) Alas, it was time to hit the road.
Never have manged to go back that way... hope the place is still in business, Playboy or no.
... it'll also give more gaps for those zig-zagging idiots who can't stand to wait in line with everyone else.
The page's author has a thought on that point: so what? He points out that you don't really want those bozos in the traffic stream anyway, so the gaps they fill in actually keep them from causing trouble for everyone else.
Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, if everyone was taught to leave a gap in front of them, a significant fraction of drivers would play dirty and take the space for themselves. Actually, everyone *is* taught to leave a gap, and a significant fraction *does* take advantage.
Which gets back to the point of the article, and its rebuttal: anything we do to smooth out traffic will eventually lead to increased traffic, and the cycle starts all over again.
The "intelligent roadway" concept sounds all gee-whiz and cool, but the fact still remains that it's we, the drivers, who are responsible for both the volume and the density of traffic. Our being on the roads in the first place generates the volume, and our need to get "there" first generates the density.
Someone posted a link to this site about how one driver can singlehandedly eliminate traffic waves simply by not driving like a nut. I've tried it, and it's not difficult, but I can't imagine convincing my wife to let a gap open up in front of her... there's something in human nature that rebels at the thought of someone else getting ahead of you in line.
My prediction: If these devices and systems lead to more efficient roads, then there will simply be more people on the roads. The end result will be *worse* congestion than before. That's why building new expressways is so futile -- you just can't build your way out of gridlock. [Insert mass transit rant here]
Slashdot Mirror
Done! Thanks for the hint.
.sig has taken my nirvana away from me.
I'd make sure to post this reply with no Karma bonus, but the mod war referenced in the
Along the way, the beach-ball-shaped device, roughly two meters (six feet) in diameter, used the global Iridium satellite network to send information about its position, the surrounding air temperature, pressure, humidity and light intensity to a JPL ground station.
Note that the wind-propelled rover used an existing overbuilt satellite constellation to communicate its data back to the engineers. The implication there is that the rover couldn't use the sort of non-androsynchronous communications satellite that is currently available on Mars. So unreliable communications is one notable problem.
Also, look at the data that were being recorded... position, air temperature, pressure, humidity, and light intensity. Position is likely hard to determine without a Martian GPS system. Even so, the rest of those parameters can be deduced from current orbiters, especially "humidity". I can tell you that now -- it's somewhere close to 0%. It's a dry heat^w cold.
The nature of the object means that those are pretty much all the sensor readings you're going to get, too... add pretty pictures to the mix, of course. But this isn't something that can bore holes in rocks or take detailed spectra of interesting spots, because there's no way to anchor the ball to the ground.
If it can be done "fast and cheap", go for it. It might give some good close-up photos of places to send a more capable lander. But I'd suggest launching another Beagle (with airbags) first, if we're wanting best bang for the buck.
I cannot believe companies are caving in to SCO and paying these bogus licensing fees. Can you believe Questar's logic?
I tried to work out what Questar was thinking, while compiling a post to this Ghost article (it got yanked 'cause bigger news emerged). Here's my theory:
Questar, one of the licensees mentioned in Heiss's letter, said that its decision to purchase the IP Licence for Linux was a matter of simple economics. "Our usage of (Linux) is so small and isolated that's why we went ahead and signed the contract.," said Chad Jones a spokesman with the Salt Lake City company. "This was small enough that we made a business decision based on the modest cost of SCO's claim that it was in our interest to settle rather than litigate this thing," he said.
If a company has "small and isolated" Linux useage, why would SCO even notice them?
The simple answer: the litigious bastards are just a few miles away from their helpless victim.
I figure SCO has simply decided to move up a notch in the gangster hierarchy, and move from lawsuit-slinging to leg breaking. Imagine a large guy in a tailored suit walking up to Questar's front office -- and he's no missionary.
"I hear youse gots some Linux boxes? Youse also gots some piplelines youse proud of. I'd hate to see them on the news tonight. Kapiche?"
I just keep wondering what a "proxy-relay trojan server" is...
It's just tech-sounding enough to fool your boss' secretary, that's what it is.
we need you *all* to get on it so we can *all* use it. And soon.
And then, when we *all* use it, *all* the skript kiddies will write programs to exploit it. Sounds like a plan to me...
Bar: Seems a bit odd to me that a worm can propagate when you have to enter a key to run it, for god's sake that's like getting a grenade in the mail with a note saying 'Pull this pin and hold'.
What's odd is the grandparent's suggestion that the "virus companies" (I'm not touching that one!) should find a solution.
Solution to what? Clueless users who blindly follow any official-sounding directions they receive in email?
In defense of the clueless users, though, the latest email had halfway decent human engineering. I didn't get it, but our IT Security folks sent a warning about it. Here's the message -- note that site is our corporate web site. If you overlook the obviously broken English ("Pay attention on attached file."), you could almost convince yourself:
Electromotive Systems makes a system called T.E.C. (Total Engine Control) that performs the functions you're looking for and much, much more.
Trending off-topic, but in their FAQ they say "We have systems for all vehicles with spark ignited engines."
Even this one?
(I had a friend who bought one of those... it had rust in the door frames within a week of purchase!)
In other news, Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, was unexpectedly killed yesterday when his vehicle's braking system inexplicably malfunctioned on I-40 yesterday...
What was he doing on I-40? It doesn't come within 100 miles of Utah!
Try one of these:
I-80
I-84
I-15
Or better yet, kill him off on a lonely stretch of US 50.
(Yes, I'm a road geek)
Since it's about to get Slashdotted, here is the mirror list section from the xfree86.org site:
Web Mirrors
Our web site is very busy and often causes timed out connections. The following sites have been verified as being both accurate and reliable in their mirroring process, and so we recommend these for the best access:
Costa Rica
Copenhagen, Denmark
Paris, France
St. Denis, France
Berlin, Germany
Dortmund, Germany
Athens, Greece
Seoul, Korea
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Bucharest, Romania
London, United Kingdom
Not posting as AC 'cause the troll potential would be too high...
Yeah, but that wasn't nearly as funny, and didn't have enough of a Back to the Future reference.
That's ok, though... my original joke fell flat, so it didn't have to make sense in either case.
Only if you pour the beer out of the can.
From Wikipedia:To be precice, though, Acetone doesn't appear to be produced by brewing beer but by distilling spirits. So the good Doctor would have needed to pour in a can of, say, Jack Daniels Hard Cola.
Just a little tidbit. This article was nearly posted a couple of hours ago -- it showed up as a "Mysterious Future" article at about 1:45 Eastern time. Then it was yanked -- see my journal for other "Ghosts of Slashdot", articles that got yanked just before going live.
I guess someone realized that the NASA news conference was just about to begin, and that we didn't really need to have the two stories back-to-back.
There's a lot of whining about Slashdot's editors. This article's hidden history shows that they're not just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and posting dupes. As I'm sure someone has suggested before -- if you're so upset, go make your own "news for nerds" site!
Looks like two significant figures to me. I want my thirty one cubits.
Actually, it looks like we're measuring to the nearest multiple of 5 cubits. Diameter = 10 (+/- 2.5), circumference = 30 (+/- 2.5).
Of course, the entire exercise is silly. It's like trying to back into Bruce Willis' orbital calculations.
When I want to know how big a sphere is, I'll get a ruler. When I want to know the meaning of life, I'll turn to faith. When I want to reply to anonymous troll, I'll visit Slashdot.
The NASA scientist held up a sample of Jarosite. For the curious, here's a definition. Note -- the page referenced has several very cool links for more information.
THE MINERAL JAROSITE
Chemistry: KFe3(SO4)2(OH)6, Potassium Iron Sulfate Hydroxide.
Class: Sulfates
Group: Alunite
Uses: Only as mineral specimens.
Specimens
Jarosite is not a common mineral. It is closely related to the mineral natrojarosite. Jarosite is isostructural with natrojarosite which means that they have the same crystal structure but different chemistries. In this case, jarosite contains potassium instead of natrojarosite's sodium (natro is derived from the Latin for sodium, natrium, from where sodium gets its symbol, Na). The two minerals are difficult to distinguish without a chemical test.
Both minerals are isostructural with alunite with a formula of KAl3(SO4)2(OH)6, who lends its name to the Alunite Group of which all three minerals belong.
The symmetry of jarosite is the same as the members of the Tourmaline Group. Crystals of jarosite however do not form prismatic crystals like those of the typical tourmaline mineral. Jarosite's crystals are more flattened and resemble nearly cubic rhombohedrons. The "rhombohedrons" are actually a combination of two trigonal pyramids.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:
Color is an amber yellow or brown.
Luster is vitreous to resinous.
Transparency: Crystals are transparent to translucent.
Crystal System is trigonal; 3 m
Crystal Habits include tabular to flattened rhombohedral looking crystals. The "rhombohedrons" are actually a combination of two trigonal pyramids. Crystals are somewhat scarce and small, more commonly as earthy masses, films or crusts, botryoidal and granular.
Cleavage is good in one direction but only seen in the larger crystals.
Fracture is uneven.
Hardness is 2.5 - 3.5.
Specific Gravity is approximately 2.9 - 3.3 (average to slightly heavy for translucent minerals, but hard to obtain from crusts)
Streak is a pale yellow.
Associated Minerals are barite, turquoise, galena, goethite, limonite, hematite and other iron minerals.
Notable Occurrences include Jaroso ravine, Sierra Almagrera, Spain and Iron Arrow Mine, Colorado; Maricopa Co., Arizona; Idaho and California, USA.
Best Field Indicators are crystal habit, associations, color and hardness.
I find it hard to understand that PI equals 3.
Yeah, you're trolling, but still...
For you, Pi is a value that is easily deduced from observation and from your education.
3000 years ago, observation was difficult and education was rare. And IIRC, the decimal number system would not have been the standard -- more like halves, quarters, and eighths. For those occasions requiring knowlege of the ratio of a diameter to a circumference, "3" is useful. "3 and an eighth" would be more accurate but more difficult, and "3.14" would likely be outside the layman's grasp.
But I respect your honesty about your lack of faith in a higher power. What irritates me are those who profess their faith (often loudly), but find it threatened by something as simple as a random numeric configuration.
Excellent point. I think my fundamentalist brethren tend to forget that when God came to Moses, he wasn't dealing with a Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking -- or even a Galileo. He was dealing with a guy whose claim to fame was running away from a life of luxury to tend sheep. At the best, Moses' idea of the universe might have dealt with Egyptian gods, and a universe whose origin was a direct result of some rather kinky onanism.
God came to Moses in a way Moses could understand, in a way that his fellow shepherds and stonemasons could understand.
Imagine Moses up on the mountain, getting the first four books of what we now call the Old Testament from the Almighty:A bit cheeky, but the point is: God comes to us in a way we can understand. That's different for an illiterate goat breeder in 2000 BC than it is for a nuclear physicist in 2000 AD. Whether you choose to believe doesn't have as much to do with how God appears as it does with your own faith.
I wanted my free shrimp from Long John Silvers! Damn!
Well, at least we're getting "blueberries", to go along with the rotini and brine.
EV1 has become famous as a porn hosting site:
Well, at least now I know *why* I only pay $12/month (after "fees") for dialup: My surfing is subsidized by porn.
If you plugged that into a spreadsheet, wouldn't that be a "circular reference"?
I'd just gotten started surfing the net from work when Sunny Delight ran an online promotion. They gave cryptic hints about where to find a hidden bottle of SunnyD on some web site. You'd get a score based on how long it took for you to find the bottle, and the best score got the cool prizes. I won a $20 CDNow gift cert and a T-Shirt.
But better than that was the online community that sprung up. When we discovered that SunnyD was using banner ads from a single source, I compiled a JavaScript application to automatically generate BurstNet banner ads with every possible serial number. We pushed the limits of 1996 search engine technology doing reverse lookups on the bottle image filename. Other coders found creative ways around HTTP-REFERER when SunnyD caught on to our "creative" techniques. I learned the joys and pitfalls of message board moderation -- skills I still use today.
I guess the thing I miss from those days that's not available now is the sense of discovery. The 'net (or at least the www part) was new, and we (the searchers as well as the SunnyD admins) were exploring its limits.
For the curious, check out the Sunny D entry in this online Trophy Case. It's about 3/4 of the way down the page.
I don't know you and you don't know me, and there is a slim chance in hell that I'll be able to find out where you live. But I might, you know. So, based on your policy of paying off bullies, please send me $1000, and maybe I will not find you and take a dump on your front lawn. But then again, maybe I will... Pleas send the money soon...
Well, the carrot has to be proportional to the stick. In our case, I don't think we'd be able to distinguish your "presents" from those left by the five horses, five dogs plus strays, four cats plus suitors, and the occasional duck.
Though I might pay $1.00 to see you come and try it... those five dogs can get rather testy at times, especially the big one.
You tell EV1 that you're taking your business elsewhere, you take your business elsewhere, and you tell your friends to stay the hell away from EV1 as a hosting company.
I'm not a hosting customer, but I am a dialup customer. The initial news that they've paid their protection money to SCO annoyed me, but then I remembered why I signed up with them in the first place.
Back in mid-2003, they suffered a transformer explosion and fire. Their backup systems kicked in, and they could have easily gotten away with letting the whole thing pass. But they didn't.
They brought in two backup generators -- one to run things, and one as a backup for the backup. That ain't cheap -- it was a 3000 kVa transformer that exploded, and that sounds like an awfully large item to replace (times 2) in 12 hours -- especially since the explosion happened at 7pm local time, when Generators-R-Us is probably closed for the day.
But that's not all -- instead of sweeping the whole mess under the rug, EV1.net's senior technical personnel were on the message boards with up-to-the-minute updates throughout the ordeal. They even posted pictures of the aftermath. That takes some guts!
So they paid SCO's mobsters. Disgusting, yes, but I see it as insurance... like having a plan for a second backup generator in case the fail-proof first backup generator fails. The chances of SCO prevailing are slim, but non-zero... just like the chances of the backup generator failing.
Stay with EV1, folks. They're victims, like you... they're just trying to limit the damage.
This isn't a sub-surface exploration mission, so complaining about that is like saying Slashdot sucks because there's not enough advice on cosmetics.
Yeah, really. Slashdot has plenty of advice on cosmetics. Sheesh!
Joking aside, I can see these being heartily adopted by the hotel industry. Now they can offer you PPV pornos while you're on the toilet!
You may already know, but there's historical precedent for the concept. When I was 14, my folks and I passed through Wizard Wells, Texas, a declining community once known for its mineral water baths. There was still a small hotel/bathhouse there at the time (mid '80s) -- a very cool place, even to a tired, bored teenager.
But within the wooden bathroom stalls was the sort of surprise every tired, bored teenage boy dreams of -- each stall had a magazine rack filled with Playboy! w00t! (or the '80s equivalent thereof) Alas, it was time to hit the road.
Never have manged to go back that way... hope the place is still in business, Playboy or no.
... it'll also give more gaps for those zig-zagging idiots who can't stand to wait in line with everyone else.
The page's author has a thought on that point: so what? He points out that you don't really want those bozos in the traffic stream anyway, so the gaps they fill in actually keep them from causing trouble for everyone else.
Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, if everyone was taught to leave a gap in front of them, a significant fraction of drivers would play dirty and take the space for themselves. Actually, everyone *is* taught to leave a gap, and a significant fraction *does* take advantage.
Which gets back to the point of the article, and its rebuttal: anything we do to smooth out traffic will eventually lead to increased traffic, and the cycle starts all over again.
The "intelligent roadway" concept sounds all gee-whiz and cool, but the fact still remains that it's we, the drivers, who are responsible for both the volume and the density of traffic. Our being on the roads in the first place generates the volume, and our need to get "there" first generates the density.
Someone posted a link to this site about how one driver can singlehandedly eliminate traffic waves simply by not driving like a nut. I've tried it, and it's not difficult, but I can't imagine convincing my wife to let a gap open up in front of her... there's something in human nature that rebels at the thought of someone else getting ahead of you in line.
My prediction: If these devices and systems lead to more efficient roads, then there will simply be more people on the roads. The end result will be *worse* congestion than before. That's why building new expressways is so futile -- you just can't build your way out of gridlock. [Insert mass transit rant here]