Easy solution - trade your grocery card to someone else with one, and trade to someone else next month.
This isn't a solution to the real problem, any more than filling in the application with bogus data is a solution. There's no chance of anyone reading this message, much less modding it up, so I'll just note that full details of why the card in itself is the problem are available at the CASPIAN site: 10 Reasons Not to Use a Fake Card
I've been reasonably happy with Verizon -- I started out with PrimeCo (Dallas), and was expecting the worst when the former GTE took over (having had bad technical experiences with GTE as a local telco).
I was pretty peeved last year, though. I wanted to upgrade my wife's phone to a BREW-enabled handset (for Christmas), but my contract wasn't close enough to expiration. I spent quite a while talking to customer service reps and told them that as soon as Number Portability came in November 2003, I was outta there.
The rep's response was, "What's 'Number Portability'?"
I suspect that this issue is way below Jo(e) Consumer's radar screen... especially if the carriers' own reps don't yet have a scripted answer to the concept. But that won't last long! By making a U-Turn on the portability issue, Verizon is now poised to spend the next five months "educating" the consumer about their upcoming portability rights... regardless of whether their competitors are on board.
Imagine the buzz to be generated by a full-page ad from Verizon: Cingular, Sprint, and AT&T want to lock you in. Verizon is fighting to set you free. For once, good business sense happens to be on the right side of the debate.
By the way, I'm over my tiff with Verizon. I ended up upgrading (with a a cheapie phone) when the contract expired, so I'm with 'em another couple of years, come hell or high water.
Change the Internet... to what?
on
Internet Emulator
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I agree with other posters that the article seems high in fluff and low in content (understandable, since anything else would be a technical paper, not an article). But the things that stood out for me when I read the article were the part mentioned in the parent ("go to the core of the Internet and make radical changes"), and this:
"This is about pooling resources and to build out the infrastructure, but in the end this about lowering the barrier to entry to developing on the Internet," Peterson said.
"Lowering the barrier?" My goodness, my 12-year-old daughter could be designing Flash-enabled websites if she weren't so busy on AIM. What "barrier" are they talking about? I'd almost suggest we need higher "barriers" to keep out the "wELCOM tO MY wEBSIGHTE" kiddies.
Now read that last sentence again.
Maybe I'm letting paranoia run loose, but there are more than a few folks in industry that would also like to keep those kiddies off the 'net, raise the bar, have an Internet that is "more useful everyday," as Bill would say. The net effect, though, is to remove the internetgadflies that make the 'net such a democratizing medium.
The web's success isn't due to the Microsofts and the AOLs -- it's the little guys like me and you who rub the fat cats the wrong way.
With "high-tech companies... key to the project's success" (and Intel and HP specifically mentioned), I'm afraid their goal is to make the 'net better for those high-tech companies... and to leave the rest of the masses out of the "New Internet".
Excellent research! I need to go through and patch the holes that my pre-teen kids, spouse, in-laws, and mom have probably left with their game downloads.
Meanwhile, I just ran over to the SpybotSD site to check them out, and got a reminder of how easy it is to get focused on one technical aspect, only to get wallopped by another. In this case, it's the domain name game.
According to this news item, the Spybot folks failed to check to see if spybot.com was available. It wasn't -- looks like it's been registered since '98. I haven't gone to the spybot.com site (don't want to give them the hits), but a company called InBox Inc. is going to try to trademark "Spybot" -- or at least, get "our" Spybot company to cough up some dough.
Similar problem with another project -- they didn't grab safer-networking.com or safernetworking.com, either. This time, it's a matter of not checking your back: both domains were just registered on April 1 (appropriately enough).
That's the problem with being a one-man show (as this appears to be)... there's only so much one person can do, especially when you're already juggling 10 balls while pedaling your unicycle across the tightrope.
Of course, I've added all three domains to my whois.sc watch list! Don't worry... I'm a white hat domain squatter.
Assuming that Ms. Albrecht's server can stand the strain, we really *need* to click that link and visit the page. A massive hit count (especially one that lasts beyond the original slashdotting) will be just one more weapon she can add to her arsenal when she presents her message to decision makers in government and in business.
I have a huge amount of respect for the CASPIAN folks -- I wish I could throw away my Kroger card, but I'm in an area where the only alternative would be to pick up an Albertson's card. Let's give 'em all the hits they can get.
I'm not familiar with what is necessary for safe use of heroine. Most likely, a trained anaesthesiologist.
I've found that TV is an excellent delivery method for heroine, though heroine addiction has been occasionaly reported. Treatment is often unsuccessful, and there are those who prey on the unfortunate addict.
I know that standard batteries generally have a small amount of outgassing, but what sort of combustion byproducts are we talking about with this lighter-fluid-based "battery"?
The article is very light on the technical details of how lighter fluid will generate the energy, other than that the device be "a few millimetres wide". But the MSDS for Ronsonol Lighter Fluid goes into quite a bit of detail:
* 95% Light Aliphatic Naptha
* 5% Medium Aliphatic Naptha
* <30ppm Benzene
* Hazardous Decomp Products: Carbon Monixides & unidentified organic compounds may be formed during combustion.
And here's the biggie:
* EXTINGUISH PILOT LIGHT/CIGARETTES & TURN OFF OTHER SOURCES OF IGNITION PRIOR TO USE
Does that mean no more drivers lighting up while talking on their cell phone while driving 45mph in the fast lane? Or can I just look forward to their eventual combustion?
File it under P for "Paranoia", but a worst-case scenario is that you stumbled onto the FBI's own hack job.
There could be a whole bundle of subpoenas giving them permission to monitor all communication on Charter's server... or Charter could have simply pointed an FBI agent toward the server room door and given him/her the key. Either way, you have no way of knowing that Big Brother is watching you.
Hopefully, if it's the feds doing the hacking, they're looking for something or someone in particular. Where a hacker might dig through all the transmissions that include 16-digit numbers, the feds may be looking for all requests that include a particular email address. Let's just hope that it's not *your* email address.
Or maybe they've got the digital signature of a prosecutable image -- if it comes across, they check out who it went to and who it came from. You'd better hope you hit the "back" button in time! Of course, you have the 4th amendment to prevent anything they discover from being used against you in court... but that doesn't keep them from using what they find out "off the record" to get "on the record" evidence they can use.
I'm not terribly concerned about the feds (or other gov't agencies) using such a hack to compile a dossier on every Netizen, simply because 1) the signal/noise ratio is too low and 2) the government's built-in inefficiency is the best guarantor of our continued freedom.
It's taking all my self-control not to set up this account to receive every bit of spam the NYT can generate. But who should be the recipient?... hmm, what's Hillary Rosen's email address?
(Obviously, I'm not going to use my Karma bonus on this one...)
Here's an interesting tidbit from the article (emphasis mine):
The hydrodemolition robot is still considered relatively new technology, having first been used in 1984.
That's like saying that my TRS-80 Model 100 (with home-built speech synthesizer connected to the parallel port) is cutting edge.
I guess if the construction industry advanced at the rate Slashdot readers are accustomed, demolition would look like the final scene in One Froggy Evening, where the construction worker of the future is clearing debris with a ray gun (and finds the singing frog cached away by his 1950s counterpart).
The US government already has 24 hours to review every image taken by US-owned spacecraft and decide whether or not to make them available based on national security concerns; there's no need to completely shut the thing down.
Not to become a conspiracy nut myself, but there are a couple of big problems with this defense:
One: There are a bazillion (I counted) satellites returning imagery, and probably not a bazillion folks to look over all the images before they're released -- especially not in a 24-hour timeframe.
Two: The withholding of any particular image or set of images is an immediate sign that the image contained useful information.
Assuming this satellite's data was discovered to contain militarily (or commercially!) useful information, the only way to keep both the imagery and its location secret would be to make all imagery unavailable for some reason.
This is the perfect conspiracy theory: it's almost entirely plausible, almost impossible to refute, and we want to believe it!
On the other hand, I can get a pretty good aerial view of Downtown Baghdad any time I want it.
I'm a second-generation programmer. I'm in my mid-30s, and I've done little more than play Startrek on a mainframe terminal... I started out with TRS-80's and followed that track.
The first generation of programmers would be represented by my mother. She started working with computers before there was even such a thing as a "Computer Science" degree -- she has a Master's in mathematics. She was big iron, all the way... when I was a kid, she showed me the washing-machine hard drives and taught me to play the aforementioned Startrek.
She retired just a year or two ago, and she was nervously counting the days. Despite being in the airline reservations industry -- home of some of the biggest iron of all -- her skills and experience were held in less and less esteem as client-server and GUI became the buzzwords. Her biggest fear was that some beancounter would declare her mainframe expertise redundant before the magic date arrived.
On the other hand, at about the time the previous generation was sweating it out, my PC-based experience and VB credentials were all the rage, a ticket to ride the Rapid Application Development gravy train.
So here we are... GUI programmers (thankfully, not myself) frantically searching the want ads, and mainframers in demand. Go figure.
Or to put it another way, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! (Yes, I'm a French-speaking Dixie Chicks fan. Call John Ashcroft!)
So no, I don't expect that people will understand stateful packet inspection, ingres/egres filtering, bogon filters, application versus network versus physical layer differentiation, or any of the other industry specific jargon I could name...
I think that with some thought, even a VB coder like myself can figure out most of those terms. But I knew I'd spent too much time online when the first one that my mind clearly identified was the Bogon Filter!
Yikes... have I spent so much time following random links in the Jargon File, that I've lost touch with the actual jargon of my chosen profession?
Moderators: I know, I'm straying off topic... I'm not using the +1, so please don't hurt me!:)
I've been a fan of Conker's BFD since I bought it for less than ten bucks at a K-Mart that was going out of business. But I think the pile of BFD's on the ruins of the department store's electronics counter shows the problem: people (that is, the mindless herd, not we the enlightened) can't handle cognitive dissonance.
Conker, the main character, is terribly cute. He curses and fights with a singing monster named the Great Mighty Poo. Begin mental meltdown...
The game is cute and gameplay is intuitive and fun. One scene involves enticing a big breasted sunflower into intimate relations with a drunken king bee. TILT!
Faced with this situation, Nintendo took what I suppose was the only logical path: they sold one of their hottest developer groups to rival Microsoft.
It was interesting to me that BFD was one of the last N-64 games... one review I read described it as "the last must-have N-64 game." I saw a kid-friendly Game Boy game featuring Conker the Squirrel at Blockbuster, but didn't rent it... what would be the point? That character is indelibly linked, in my mind, to the Song of the Great Mighty Poo.
So it wasn't too huge a surprise to me when I read the news that Microsoft had bought Rare from Nintendo. I don't know how Rare managed to get Conker out Nintendo's door, but I'm guessing that someone wasn't too happy about it.
I sure wouldn't want to buy anything from the Redmond Empire... but if BFD-2 comes out for X-Box, I may have to put my moral compass back in the box. That said, I like the idea that I can turn to Nintendo for kid-friendly games that -- hopefully -- won't put the adults to sleep.
Sweet: If Windows source is made available in India and becomes available worldwide.
Sour: If Windows source is already available to selected developers right here at home, why hasn't someone leaked it?
My understanding of "Shared Source" was that Microsoft shows you theirs if you promise not to tell what it looks like. I naturally assumed that with the code being such a closely held secret, that it would be on the newsgroups before you could say groups-dot-google-dot-com.
But then, it may just be my ignorance showing... I'm just a VB coder staying away from the bleeding edge -- in order to provide my clients with code that works the same way each time.
What a hoot! I wonder if the moderator who gave AC a +1, Informative was the same one who gave me a -1, Overrated?:)
Actually, I've learned to cherish flames... I still have the first flame email I ever received (about 7 years ago!). As I recall, it said "You tried to set a cookie on my browser, you jackass!" (or words to that effect).
And to be completely honest with myself, I did enjoy the mod-ups! Of course, I'm not using my +1 bonus on this post, since it's way off-topic to the article (though it is on-topic to the current meta-discussion).
"In Soviet Russia, Slashdotted sites mirror Karma Whores!"
But I will smolder in Hell before I ever buy [one of those obnoxiouly advertised cameras] because of their obnoxious advertising. So who -is- buying them?
I always wondered that, myself. Like you, I see the geek appeal, but their advertising turns me completely off (though I have considered buying one to disassemble and refit for wardriving!).
Then, I went to pick up my daughter at a friend's house. Several of her friends are at the "AOL" level of computer proficiency -- that is, they use it like a microwave, turn it on and push the pretty buttons.
So I go up and knock on the door. What did I see looking down at me from the corner of the porch? An X-10 wireless camera.
Went to pick up my other daughter at another friend's house. There it was... tucked behind a hole in the house's vinyl siding was the telltale lens of the X-10.
I didn't make the connection until your post, but now I know who is buying the X-10s... the same people that think that AOL is "the internet", and are probably responsible for all those Snowhite and Klez emails.
Just in case, here is the text of the SRC III Construction section of the site. Not Karma Whoring, just trying to be helpful.
Sunset Rocketry Club SRC III Construction By: Nick Anderson
Part I: Altimeter and Fins (11/12/02)
Nick and Jeff worked on testing out the altimeter (here) and then moved onto making the fins. We laminated 1/16" balsa wood with West Systems Epoxy and 3oz fiber glass on both sides. The wood was then covered in wax paper and pressed with heavy steel plates. We were left with extremely strong, light weight and thin material that we cut into fins. The pressing helped reduced the ammount of excess epoxy in the fins, and also compacted the fiberglass to the balsa well.
Finished piece of fin material Piece is very thin and strong
This technique will also be used for construction of centering rings.
Part II: Carbon Tube Construction (11/14/02)
Peter, Jeff, and Nick went over to Alex M's and constructed an additional carbon fiber tube. We now have 3 lengths of 2.1 (54mm) x 16 in composite tubing. We choose to use this tubing because it offered us very lightweight tubing, with minimal weight.
Examples: 16' piece of phenolic tubing: 124g 16' piece of Carbon Fiber tubing: 60g
(These carbon tubes here were our first try, the next tubes will hopefully be lighter.)
These extreme weight savings will allow us to fly on smaller motors. The small motor we use, the cheaper it is, and generally the more available they will be. We are hoping that we may be able to use Estes's Ds and Es for propulsion, as they are cheap. Aerotech motors are also starting to get pretty hard to find around here...
Jeff and Peter used their math skills to figure out how much carbon cloth we would need, while Alex and Nick prepared the carbon cloth for cutting. We were using a Aerotech K700 casing wrapped in wax paper for a mandrel. After cutting the cloth, Alex applied West Systems epoxy to the mandrel, while Jeff and Peter wrapped and wetted the cloth on the mandrel. Significant problems were encountered at the end, when a large air bubble was found and Nick foolishly unwrapped the tube. Eventually it got all fixed up.
The mandrel was then wrapped in heat shrink tape, and Alex used the heat gun to shrink the tape. In our first attempts we used a plastic plotter paper tube which melted if heated up to much. This meant we were not able to fully contract the tape which left excess epoxy on the tube. With a metal mandrel, we could heat the tube to the theoretical limit of the epoxy and hopefully remove most if not all of the excess epoxy.
A top view of the 2 carbon tubes completed. Side view A peek down the inside.
Part III: Carbon Fiber removal, fin cutting and igniters (11/27/02)
Peter, Paul and Nick were present at the second work party on SRC III. First off Peter brought 3 lb of dry ice, in an attempt to remove a carbon fiber tube that had stuck to the mandrel. We hoped that by cooling down aluminum motor casing, it would allow us to slip the carbon fiber tube off. It didn't work.
The tube is stuck on the mandrel for 2 reasons. The first being that the wax paper being used as a release mechanism melted and marred when we heated the tube. It allowed the epoxy to adhere to it rather than being a barrier. Secondly, the heat shrink tape we used compacted the tube very tightly to the tube. Not good for removal purposes. We may yet use liquid nitrogen, and try and cool the tube down even father.
We filled the tube up with dry ice, and immediately water started to condense and freeze on the outside. We think that aluminum and Carbon Fiber have similar thermal expansion coefficients, so both tubes shrunk at the same rate. We were hoping that one would shrink more than the other. After some futile pounding and pushing and pulling we decided that it was not going to come off. The remaining ice was then disposed of, properly of course.:-)
A top view of the stuck tube on the mandrel
A lengthwise view of affixed tube.
A blurry up close shot.
A little background on how the tube was made:
The mandrel was a Aerotech RMS K700 casing. There were 2 wraps of 5.9 oz bi-directional carbon fiber. Approx 3 oz of West Systems epoxy was used. Wax paper was wrapped around the mandrel to serve as a release layer. Heat shrink tape was used to compact the CF and epoxy.
More on our other Carbon Fiber tubes can be see here.
Fin Cutting
Booster fins.
Sustainer Fins
The booster fins were cut and sanded by Peter O. They are a standard trapezoidal shape. These were chosen mainly for looks rather than anything else.
The sustainer fins were cut by Paul C. The are a "upside down Nevada" shape. Again, personal preference only.
Nick made up a few homemade igniters. He used the igniter man igniter kit. The pyrogen had dried out, and no acetone was avilable to reconstitute it, so no pyrogen was added at this time. Only conductive primer and the sealer were used. The wires used were from a old davey fire electric match lead.
We performed a ground test of just the conductive primer and concluded that pyrogen will be needed to light any composite motor. The directions recommended using the conductive primer to light BP motors and small composite motors.
A small homemade igniter sized to fit a 24mm reload. Conductive primer only.
Part IV: Nose Cone Construction (11/29/02)
Nick worked on creating a lightweight nose cone for SRC III. The nose cone was made with blue insulation foam. This is a fairly dense foam that can be cut and sanded easily. 3 pieces were cut and epoxied together so that the formed a large, rectangular block. Then a small 3/8 dowel was inserted into the center piece. A larger 1/2 piece was glued onto the very end of the 3/8 dowel, so that it would fit better on the lathe. The the whole assembly was mounted on a lathe. We turned it down to the correct diameter, and tried to create a "ogive" shape. The nose cone is 9.5 inches long and 2.1 inches in diameter. The shoulder is only 1 inch long because the nose cone is "non-moving". That is, it won't ever be leaving its place during the flight, so a small shoulder can be used.
The nose cone turned out great, and is very light. All that is left is to put a thin layer of epoxy and microballons on the surface to protect the nose cone from dropping and dings. Also, the tip may either be filled down, or we may cut it off and put a balsa tip on.
A picture of the nose cone.
Notice glue lines from foam.
Lightweight Nose Cone
Part V: Systems Integration Test (12/02/02)
All the parts of SRC III were fitted toghter by Nick and Jeff, to check for any problems that need to be worked out. The procudeure went smoothly, and assembly of SRC III should start on 12/03/02.
SRC III assembled.
A composite photo of SRC III.
Part VI: Egg Protection Trials (12/02/02)
Jeff worked on creating a protection system for the eggs. High density foam was used to tightly wrap the eggs, and acted as a shock absorber between the eggs and the wall of the rocket tube. Along with this, some cushier foam was placed between the eggs in case they came out of their packaging.
A diagram of the egg protection scheme. To simulate the worse possible situation that SRC III could encounter in a launch, the tube (representing SRC III's payload bay) was thrown off Nick's 24 foot roof. The egg survived multiple droppings onto the lawn with no parachute to slow the descent. The egg survived several trials in which the tube was thrown onto the lawn. The eggs eventually broke when Nick tossed it upward and the tube crashed onto the concrete. As Jeff put it, "it looks like the eggs are broken." Nick promptly sounded the all clear whistle so that the neighbors could resume normal activity. The test was considered successful because, although the eggs broke when they fell onto concrete, SRC III will be landing on grass with a parachute deployed. The system was accepted by the committee, and will be used in SRC III.
Nick climbs on the roof for the eggdrop.
Nick signals to warn the neighbors of falling rockets.
Jeff on the ground stuffing the egg protection vessel.
The egg containment vessel.
Nick practicing his follow-through.
Nick winding up.
Rocket leaves Nick's hand.
A strange cloud of smoke leaves the rocket because it is smokingly good.
The cloud disappears as quickly as it came.
Landing! No egg damage yet.
What happened when rocket landed on concrete.
Ewww...
Any questions and comments can be addressed to Nick Anderson.
So what if it is a "personal site"? Would you prefer a fully-automated newsbot like Google News, perhaps?
One of the reasons I've become hooked on Slashdot is the unpredictably "personal" nature of its editors. It's never knowing what's going to be on the homepage next that keeps me coming back.
I am proud to be a "subscriber"... $5 didn't hurt that much. I may send in another five-spot to help pay for the bandwidth overload this story appears to be generating!
Congratulations to the newlyweds, and keep the pictures coming! (sorry, but someone had to include that link...)
The idea of self-regenerating oil fields has a much more easy-to-comprehend parallel: the aquifers in West Texas. Nobody doubts that the Edwards Aquifer is self-regenerating. Unfortunately, its source of recharge is the parched Texas Panhandle, and the rate of recharge is far below the rate of usage.
T. Boone Pickens (yes, the famous oilman, corporate raider, and greenmailer from the '80s) is taking a cue from his fossil fuel days, and is now entering the fossil water business. His plan is to tap the water under the Panhandle for use by big, thirsty Texas cities like Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Nobody's buying his water yet... but that's what they probably said 150 years ago when some guys in Pennsylvania figured out how to get that black, gooey stuff out of the ground.
(obligatory on-topic note: there probably used to be some really interesting microbes in the Edwards Aquifer before we started pushing rusty pipes into it...)
Didn't they make a movie (or ten, plus a few X-Files episodes) about this:
The food supply is so sparse that the bugs reproduce maybe only once in a thousand, or perhaps even a million years. That means organisms the scientists are seeing today have had little opportunity to change since the earliest history of life on earth.
Allow me to be the first to put a paranoid spin on the whole issue... where a microbe has lain nearly dormant for 65 million years, living on the odd hydrogen atom, patiently waiting for its chance to do for humankind what it did for the dinosaurs. Nobody is safe this time!
Ok, now that I've exercised my paranoia... I'll calm myself with the knowledge that any bug that has evolved to metabolize the odd hydrogen atom would probably burn up (metabolically speaking) in a highly corrosive atmosphere, such as one containing a whopping 20% oxygen.
The article notes the volume of landfill space being taken up by plastics, and implies that this new plastics technology will solve the problem.
But that ignores an important fact: nothing degrades in the landfill! To prevent groundwater contamination, landfills are lined and capped with impermeable materials that keep water out, and no water = no bacterial action.
A poster in a previous discussion on landfills and biodegradability pointed out that you can open up a landfill and find 30-year-old newspapers, preserved just like new. Compare that with laying a newspaper out in your front yard. Degradable in the open, yes, Degradable in a sealed environment, no.
Degradable plastics (however they decompose) are just another red herring to distract us from the real issues of truly sustainable development.
Wish I had mod points... "Diode Gradation" was exactly what I thought.
A quick Google search did reveal a paper on "Diodegradation of Cationic Surfactants", which looked promising because of the "cation" (cathode/ion) reference. Alas, no other references to diodes were included.
Searching on the words separately yielded a Panasonic CD Receiver, but no sites showed up with the term enclosed in quotes.
Whatever. Now, I should probably go read the article before I go any farther off-topic. No +1 bonus for this reply!
And for us on Earth? Paloski's work may help here, too. Ultimately his research is about making it easier to learn--and that's something we do every day of our lives.
As usual, NASA is compelled to point out some way that space research will generate a tangible benefit on Earth. It's like a mantra: "Yes, we've spent billions, but look at all the space program spinoffs we use every day on Earth!"
I wish that there were a way to harness the pure excitement of exploration, without having to make excuses. Of course, as seen elsewhere on Slashdot, you can only spend so many billions of dollars before folks start expecting results.
Meanwhile, I'm rooting for Armadillo Aerospace and the other backyard hobbyists with deep pockets.
The AC poster made a statement that shows a potential problem:
The Opera Browser is very good for acessabillity [...] Not forgetting the useful mouse gestures.
I would suggest that the "mouse gestures" are the antithesis of "accessible". They require a level of fine motor control that might not be possible for someone with decreased motor skills. Imagine someone using a pointing device keyed to eye movement -- if Opera's gestures were turned on, a quick look to the side could generate an unwanted "Back" action.
Mouse Gestures, then, are an "enhancement" that may actually decrease usability for the disabled. What other "enhancements" that are in the works or becoming part of the standard actually derail disabled access to web browsing and other applications?
Slashdot Mirror
Easy solution - trade your grocery card to someone else with one, and trade to someone else next month.
This isn't a solution to the real problem, any more than filling in the application with bogus data is a solution. There's no chance of anyone reading this message, much less modding it up, so I'll just note that full details of why the card in itself is the problem are available at the CASPIAN site: 10 Reasons Not to Use a Fake Card
I've been reasonably happy with Verizon -- I started out with PrimeCo (Dallas), and was expecting the worst when the former GTE took over (having had bad technical experiences with GTE as a local telco).
I was pretty peeved last year, though. I wanted to upgrade my wife's phone to a BREW-enabled handset (for Christmas), but my contract wasn't close enough to expiration. I spent quite a while talking to customer service reps and told them that as soon as Number Portability came in November 2003, I was outta there.
The rep's response was, "What's 'Number Portability'?"
I suspect that this issue is way below Jo(e) Consumer's radar screen... especially if the carriers' own reps don't yet have a scripted answer to the concept. But that won't last long! By making a U-Turn on the portability issue, Verizon is now poised to spend the next five months "educating" the consumer about their upcoming portability rights... regardless of whether their competitors are on board.
Imagine the buzz to be generated by a full-page ad from Verizon: Cingular, Sprint, and AT&T want to lock you in. Verizon is fighting to set you free. For once, good business sense happens to be on the right side of the debate.
By the way, I'm over my tiff with Verizon. I ended up upgrading (with a a cheapie phone) when the contract expired, so I'm with 'em another couple of years, come hell or high water.
I agree with other posters that the article seems high in fluff and low in content (understandable, since anything else would be a technical paper, not an article). But the things that stood out for me when I read the article were the part mentioned in the parent ("go to the core of the Internet and make radical changes"), and this:
"This is about pooling resources and to build out the infrastructure, but in the end this about lowering the barrier to entry to developing on the Internet," Peterson said.
"Lowering the barrier?" My goodness, my 12-year-old daughter could be designing Flash-enabled websites if she weren't so busy on AIM. What "barrier" are they talking about? I'd almost suggest we need higher "barriers" to keep out the "wELCOM tO MY wEBSIGHTE" kiddies.
Now read that last sentence again.
Maybe I'm letting paranoia run loose, but there are more than a few folks in industry that would also like to keep those kiddies off the 'net, raise the bar, have an Internet that is "more useful everyday," as Bill would say. The net effect, though, is to remove the internet gadflies that make the 'net such a democratizing medium.
The web's success isn't due to the Microsofts and the AOLs -- it's the little guys like me and you who rub the fat cats the wrong way.
With "high-tech companies... key to the project's success" (and Intel and HP specifically mentioned), I'm afraid their goal is to make the 'net better for those high-tech companies... and to leave the rest of the masses out of the "New Internet".
But maybe I'm just being paranoid.
Excellent research! I need to go through and patch the holes that my pre-teen kids, spouse, in-laws, and mom have probably left with their game downloads.
Meanwhile, I just ran over to the SpybotSD site to check them out, and got a reminder of how easy it is to get focused on one technical aspect, only to get wallopped by another. In this case, it's the domain name game.
According to this news item, the Spybot folks failed to check to see if spybot.com was available. It wasn't -- looks like it's been registered since '98. I haven't gone to the spybot.com site (don't want to give them the hits), but a company called InBox Inc. is going to try to trademark "Spybot" -- or at least, get "our" Spybot company to cough up some dough.
Similar problem with another project -- they didn't grab safer-networking.com or safernetworking.com, either. This time, it's a matter of not checking your back: both domains were just registered on April 1 (appropriately enough).
That's the problem with being a one-man show (as this appears to be)... there's only so much one person can do, especially when you're already juggling 10 balls while pedaling your unicycle across the tightrope.
Of course, I've added all three domains to my whois.sc watch list! Don't worry... I'm a white hat domain squatter.
Assuming that Ms. Albrecht's server can stand the strain, we really *need* to click that link and visit the page. A massive hit count (especially one that lasts beyond the original slashdotting) will be just one more weapon she can add to her arsenal when she presents her message to decision makers in government and in business.
I have a huge amount of respect for the CASPIAN folks -- I wish I could throw away my Kroger card, but I'm in an area where the only alternative would be to pick up an Albertson's card. Let's give 'em all the hits they can get.
I'm not familiar with what is necessary for safe use of heroine. Most likely, a trained anaesthesiologist.
I've found that TV is an excellent delivery method for heroine, though heroine addiction has been occasionaly reported. Treatment is often unsuccessful, and there are those who prey on the unfortunate addict.
I know that standard batteries generally have a small amount of outgassing, but what sort of combustion byproducts are we talking about with this lighter-fluid-based "battery"?
The article is very light on the technical details of how lighter fluid will generate the energy, other than that the device be "a few millimetres wide". But the MSDS for Ronsonol Lighter Fluid goes into quite a bit of detail:
* 95% Light Aliphatic Naptha
* 5% Medium Aliphatic Naptha
* <30ppm Benzene
* Hazardous Decomp Products: Carbon Monixides & unidentified organic compounds may be formed during combustion.
And here's the biggie:
* EXTINGUISH PILOT LIGHT/CIGARETTES & TURN OFF OTHER SOURCES OF IGNITION PRIOR TO USE
Does that mean no more drivers lighting up while talking on their cell phone while driving 45mph in the fast lane? Or can I just look forward to their eventual combustion?
File it under P for "Paranoia", but a worst-case scenario is that you stumbled onto the FBI's own hack job.
There could be a whole bundle of subpoenas giving them permission to monitor all communication on Charter's server... or Charter could have simply pointed an FBI agent toward the server room door and given him/her the key. Either way, you have no way of knowing that Big Brother is watching you.
Hopefully, if it's the feds doing the hacking, they're looking for something or someone in particular. Where a hacker might dig through all the transmissions that include 16-digit numbers, the feds may be looking for all requests that include a particular email address. Let's just hope that it's not *your* email address.
Or maybe they've got the digital signature of a prosecutable image -- if it comes across, they check out who it went to and who it came from. You'd better hope you hit the "back" button in time! Of course, you have the 4th amendment to prevent anything they discover from being used against you in court... but that doesn't keep them from using what they find out "off the record" to get "on the record" evidence they can use.
I'm not terribly concerned about the feds (or other gov't agencies) using such a hack to compile a dossier on every Netizen, simply because 1) the signal/noise ratio is too low and 2) the government's built-in inefficiency is the best guarantor of our continued freedom.
Ooh, passwords! Yumm!
... hmm, what's Hillary Rosen's email address?
It's taking all my self-control not to set up this account to receive every bit of spam the NYT can generate. But who should be the recipient?
(Obviously, I'm not going to use my Karma bonus on this one...)
Here's an interesting tidbit from the article (emphasis mine):
The hydrodemolition robot is still considered relatively new technology, having first been used in 1984.
That's like saying that my TRS-80 Model 100 (with home-built speech synthesizer connected to the parallel port) is cutting edge.
I guess if the construction industry advanced at the rate Slashdot readers are accustomed, demolition would look like the final scene in One Froggy Evening, where the construction worker of the future is clearing debris with a ray gun (and finds the singing frog cached away by his 1950s counterpart).
The US government already has 24 hours to review every image taken by US-owned spacecraft and decide whether or not to make them available based on national security concerns; there's no need to completely shut the thing down.
Not to become a conspiracy nut myself, but there are a couple of big problems with this defense:
One: There are a bazillion (I counted) satellites returning imagery, and probably not a bazillion folks to look over all the images before they're released -- especially not in a 24-hour timeframe.
Two: The withholding of any particular image or set of images is an immediate sign that the image contained useful information.
Assuming this satellite's data was discovered to contain militarily (or commercially!) useful information, the only way to keep both the imagery and its location secret would be to make all imagery unavailable for some reason.
This is the perfect conspiracy theory: it's almost entirely plausible, almost impossible to refute, and we want to believe it!
On the other hand, I can get a pretty good aerial view of Downtown Baghdad any time I want it.
I'm a second-generation programmer. I'm in my mid-30s, and I've done little more than play Startrek on a mainframe terminal... I started out with TRS-80's and followed that track.
The first generation of programmers would be represented by my mother. She started working with computers before there was even such a thing as a "Computer Science" degree -- she has a Master's in mathematics. She was big iron, all the way... when I was a kid, she showed me the washing-machine hard drives and taught me to play the aforementioned Startrek.
She retired just a year or two ago, and she was nervously counting the days. Despite being in the airline reservations industry -- home of some of the biggest iron of all -- her skills and experience were held in less and less esteem as client-server and GUI became the buzzwords. Her biggest fear was that some beancounter would declare her mainframe expertise redundant before the magic date arrived.
On the other hand, at about the time the previous generation was sweating it out, my PC-based experience and VB credentials were all the rage, a ticket to ride the Rapid Application Development gravy train.
So here we are... GUI programmers (thankfully, not myself) frantically searching the want ads, and mainframers in demand. Go figure.
Or to put it another way, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! (Yes, I'm a French-speaking Dixie Chicks fan. Call John Ashcroft!)
So no, I don't expect that people will understand stateful packet inspection, ingres/egres filtering, bogon filters, application versus network versus physical layer differentiation, or any of the other industry specific jargon I could name...
:)
I think that with some thought, even a VB coder like myself can figure out most of those terms. But I knew I'd spent too much time online when the first one that my mind clearly identified was the Bogon Filter!
Yikes... have I spent so much time following random links in the Jargon File, that I've lost touch with the actual jargon of my chosen profession?
Moderators: I know, I'm straying off topic... I'm not using the +1, so please don't hurt me!
I've been a fan of Conker's BFD since I bought it for less than ten bucks at a K-Mart that was going out of business. But I think the pile of BFD's on the ruins of the department store's electronics counter shows the problem: people (that is, the mindless herd, not we the enlightened) can't handle cognitive dissonance.
Conker, the main character, is terribly cute. He curses and fights with a singing monster named the Great Mighty Poo.
Begin mental meltdown...
The game is cute and gameplay is intuitive and fun. One scene involves enticing a big breasted sunflower into intimate relations with a drunken king bee.
TILT!
Faced with this situation, Nintendo took what I suppose was the only logical path: they sold one of their hottest developer groups to rival Microsoft.
It was interesting to me that BFD was one of the last N-64 games... one review I read described it as "the last must-have N-64 game." I saw a kid-friendly Game Boy game featuring Conker the Squirrel at Blockbuster, but didn't rent it... what would be the point? That character is indelibly linked, in my mind, to the Song of the Great Mighty Poo.
So it wasn't too huge a surprise to me when I read the news that Microsoft had bought Rare from Nintendo. I don't know how Rare managed to get Conker out Nintendo's door, but I'm guessing that someone wasn't too happy about it.
I sure wouldn't want to buy anything from the Redmond Empire... but if BFD-2 comes out for X-Box, I may have to put my moral compass back in the box. That said, I like the idea that I can turn to Nintendo for kid-friendly games that -- hopefully -- won't put the adults to sleep.
Sweet: If Windows source is made available in India and becomes available worldwide.
Sour: If Windows source is already available to selected developers right here at home, why hasn't someone leaked it?
My understanding of "Shared Source" was that Microsoft shows you theirs if you promise not to tell what it looks like. I naturally assumed that with the code being such a closely held secret, that it would be on the newsgroups before you could say groups-dot-google-dot-com.
But then, it may just be my ignorance showing... I'm just a VB coder staying away from the bleeding edge -- in order to provide my clients with code that works the same way each time.
What a hoot! I wonder if the moderator who gave AC a +1, Informative was the same one who gave me a -1, Overrated? :)
Actually, I've learned to cherish flames... I still have the first flame email I ever received (about 7 years ago!). As I recall, it said "You tried to set a cookie on my browser, you jackass!" (or words to that effect).
And to be completely honest with myself, I did enjoy the mod-ups! Of course, I'm not using my +1 bonus on this post, since it's way off-topic to the article (though it is on-topic to the current meta-discussion).
"In Soviet Russia, Slashdotted sites mirror Karma Whores!"
But I will smolder in Hell before I ever buy [one of those obnoxiouly advertised cameras] because of their obnoxious advertising. So who -is- buying them?
I always wondered that, myself. Like you, I see the geek appeal, but their advertising turns me completely off (though I have considered buying one to disassemble and refit for wardriving!).
Then, I went to pick up my daughter at a friend's house. Several of her friends are at the "AOL" level of computer proficiency -- that is, they use it like a microwave, turn it on and push the pretty buttons.
So I go up and knock on the door. What did I see looking down at me from the corner of the porch? An X-10 wireless camera.
Went to pick up my other daughter at another friend's house. There it was... tucked behind a hole in the house's vinyl siding was the telltale lens of the X-10.
I didn't make the connection until your post, but now I know who is buying the X-10s... the same people that think that AOL is "the internet", and are probably responsible for all those Snowhite and Klez emails.
What would a wardriver find in my neighborhood?
Just in case, here is the text of the SRC III Construction section of the site. Not Karma Whoring, just trying to be helpful.
:-)
Sunset Rocketry Club
SRC III Construction
By: Nick Anderson
Part I: Altimeter and Fins (11/12/02)
Nick and Jeff worked on testing out the altimeter (here) and then moved onto making the fins. We laminated 1/16" balsa wood with West Systems Epoxy and 3oz fiber glass on both sides. The wood was then covered in wax paper and pressed with heavy steel plates. We were left with extremely strong, light weight and thin material that we cut into fins. The pressing helped reduced the ammount of excess epoxy in the fins, and also compacted the fiberglass to the balsa well.
Finished piece of fin material
Piece is very thin and strong
This technique will also be used for construction of centering rings.
Part II: Carbon Tube Construction (11/14/02)
Peter, Jeff, and Nick went over to Alex M's and constructed an additional carbon fiber tube. We now have 3 lengths of 2.1 (54mm) x 16 in composite tubing. We choose to use this tubing because it offered us very lightweight tubing, with minimal weight.
Examples:
16' piece of phenolic tubing: 124g
16' piece of Carbon Fiber tubing: 60g
(These carbon tubes here were our first try, the next tubes will hopefully be lighter.)
These extreme weight savings will allow us to fly on smaller motors. The small motor we use, the cheaper it is, and generally the more available they will be. We are hoping that we may be able to use Estes's Ds and Es for propulsion, as they are cheap. Aerotech motors are also starting to get pretty hard to find around here...
Jeff and Peter used their math skills to figure out how much carbon cloth we would need, while Alex and Nick prepared the carbon cloth for cutting. We were using a Aerotech K700 casing wrapped in wax paper for a mandrel. After cutting the cloth, Alex applied West Systems epoxy to the mandrel, while Jeff and Peter wrapped and wetted the cloth on the mandrel. Significant problems were encountered at the end, when a large air bubble was found and Nick foolishly unwrapped the tube. Eventually it got all fixed up.
The mandrel was then wrapped in heat shrink tape, and Alex used the heat gun to shrink the tape. In our first attempts we used a plastic plotter paper tube which melted if heated up to much. This meant we were not able to fully contract the tape which left excess epoxy on the tube. With a metal mandrel, we could heat the tube to the theoretical limit of the epoxy and hopefully remove most if not all of the excess epoxy.
A top view of the 2 carbon tubes completed.
Side view
A peek down the inside.
Part III: Carbon Fiber removal, fin cutting and igniters (11/27/02)
Peter, Paul and Nick were present at the second work party on SRC III. First off Peter brought 3 lb of dry ice, in an attempt to remove a carbon fiber tube that had stuck to the mandrel. We hoped that by cooling down aluminum motor casing, it would allow us to slip the carbon fiber tube off. It didn't work.
The tube is stuck on the mandrel for 2 reasons. The first being that the wax paper being used as a release mechanism melted and marred when we heated the tube. It allowed the epoxy to adhere to it rather than being a barrier. Secondly, the heat shrink tape we used compacted the tube very tightly to the tube. Not good for removal purposes. We may yet use liquid nitrogen, and try and cool the tube down even father.
We filled the tube up with dry ice, and immediately water started to condense and freeze on the outside. We think that aluminum and Carbon Fiber have similar thermal expansion coefficients, so both tubes shrunk at the same rate. We were hoping that one would shrink more than the other. After some futile pounding and pushing and pulling we decided that it was not going to come off. The remaining ice was then disposed of, properly of course.
A top view of the stuck tube on the mandrel
A lengthwise view of affixed tube.
A blurry up close shot.
A little background on how the tube was made:
The mandrel was a Aerotech RMS K700 casing. There were 2 wraps of 5.9 oz bi-directional carbon fiber. Approx 3 oz of West Systems epoxy was used. Wax paper was wrapped around the mandrel to serve as a release layer. Heat shrink tape was used to compact the CF and epoxy.
More on our other Carbon Fiber tubes can be see here.
Fin Cutting
Booster fins.
Sustainer Fins
The booster fins were cut and sanded by Peter O. They are a standard trapezoidal shape. These were chosen mainly for looks rather than anything else.
The sustainer fins were cut by Paul C. The are a "upside down Nevada" shape. Again, personal preference only.
More on making the fins material can be see here.
Igniters
Nick made up a few homemade igniters. He used the igniter man igniter kit. The pyrogen had dried out, and no acetone was avilable to reconstitute it, so no pyrogen was added at this time. Only conductive primer and the sealer were used. The wires used were from a old davey fire electric match lead.
We performed a ground test of just the conductive primer and concluded that pyrogen will be needed to light any composite motor. The directions recommended using the conductive primer to light BP motors and small composite motors.
A small homemade igniter sized to fit a 24mm reload. Conductive primer only.
Part IV: Nose Cone Construction (11/29/02)
Nick worked on creating a lightweight nose cone for SRC III. The nose cone was made with blue insulation foam. This is a fairly dense foam that can be cut and sanded easily. 3 pieces were cut and epoxied together so that the formed a large, rectangular block. Then a small 3/8 dowel was inserted into the center piece. A larger 1/2 piece was glued onto the very end of the 3/8 dowel, so that it would fit better on the lathe. The the whole assembly was mounted on a lathe. We turned it down to the correct diameter, and tried to create a "ogive" shape. The nose cone is 9.5 inches long and 2.1 inches in diameter. The shoulder is only 1 inch long because the nose cone is "non-moving". That is, it won't ever be leaving its place during the flight, so a small shoulder can be used.
The nose cone turned out great, and is very light. All that is left is to put a thin layer of epoxy and microballons on the surface to protect the nose cone from dropping and dings. Also, the tip may either be filled down, or we may cut it off and put a balsa tip on.
A picture of the nose cone.
Notice glue lines from foam.
Lightweight Nose Cone
Part V: Systems Integration Test (12/02/02)
All the parts of SRC III were fitted toghter by Nick and Jeff, to check for any problems that need to be worked out. The procudeure went smoothly, and assembly of SRC III should start on 12/03/02.
SRC III assembled.
A composite photo of SRC III.
Part VI: Egg Protection Trials (12/02/02)
Jeff worked on creating a protection system for the eggs. High density foam was used to tightly wrap the eggs, and acted as a shock absorber between the eggs and the wall of the rocket tube. Along with this, some cushier foam was placed between the eggs in case they came out of their packaging.
A diagram of the egg protection scheme. To simulate the worse possible situation that SRC III could encounter in a launch, the tube (representing SRC III's payload bay) was thrown off Nick's 24 foot roof. The egg survived multiple droppings onto the lawn with no parachute to slow the descent. The egg survived several trials in which the tube was thrown onto the lawn. The eggs eventually broke when Nick tossed it upward and the tube crashed onto the concrete. As Jeff put it, "it looks like the eggs are broken." Nick promptly sounded the all clear whistle so that the neighbors could resume normal activity.
The test was considered successful because, although the eggs broke when they fell onto concrete, SRC III will be landing on grass with a parachute deployed. The system was accepted by the committee, and will be used in SRC III.
Nick climbs on the roof for the eggdrop.
Nick signals to warn the neighbors of falling rockets.
Jeff on the ground stuffing the egg protection vessel.
The egg containment vessel.
Nick practicing his follow-through.
Nick winding up.
Rocket leaves Nick's hand.
A strange cloud of smoke leaves the rocket because it is smokingly good.
The cloud disappears as quickly as it came.
Landing! No egg damage yet.
What happened when rocket landed on concrete.
Ewww...
Any questions and comments can be addressed to Nick Anderson.
So what if it is a "personal site"? Would you prefer a fully-automated newsbot like Google News, perhaps?
One of the reasons I've become hooked on Slashdot is the unpredictably "personal" nature of its editors. It's never knowing what's going to be on the homepage next that keeps me coming back.
I am proud to be a "subscriber"... $5 didn't hurt that much. I may send in another five-spot to help pay for the bandwidth overload this story appears to be generating!
Congratulations to the newlyweds, and keep the pictures coming! (sorry, but someone had to include that link...)
The idea of self-regenerating oil fields has a much more easy-to-comprehend parallel: the aquifers in West Texas. Nobody doubts that the Edwards Aquifer is self-regenerating. Unfortunately, its source of recharge is the parched Texas Panhandle, and the rate of recharge is far below the rate of usage.
T. Boone Pickens (yes, the famous oilman, corporate raider, and greenmailer from the '80s) is taking a cue from his fossil fuel days, and is now entering the fossil water business. His plan is to tap the water under the Panhandle for use by big, thirsty Texas cities like Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Nobody's buying his water yet... but that's what they probably said 150 years ago when some guys in Pennsylvania figured out how to get that black, gooey stuff out of the ground.
(obligatory on-topic note: there probably used to be some really interesting microbes in the Edwards Aquifer before we started pushing rusty pipes into it...)
Didn't they make a movie (or ten, plus a few X-Files episodes) about this:
The food supply is so sparse that the bugs reproduce maybe only once in a thousand, or perhaps even a million years. That means organisms the scientists are seeing today have had little opportunity to change since the earliest history of life on earth.
Allow me to be the first to put a paranoid spin on the whole issue... where a microbe has lain nearly dormant for 65 million years, living on the odd hydrogen atom, patiently waiting for its chance to do for humankind what it did for the dinosaurs. Nobody is safe this time!
Ok, now that I've exercised my paranoia... I'll calm myself with the knowledge that any bug that has evolved to metabolize the odd hydrogen atom would probably burn up (metabolically speaking) in a highly corrosive atmosphere, such as one containing a whopping 20% oxygen.
The article notes the volume of landfill space being taken up by plastics, and implies that this new plastics technology will solve the problem.
But that ignores an important fact: nothing degrades in the landfill! To prevent groundwater contamination, landfills are lined and capped with impermeable materials that keep water out, and no water = no bacterial action.
A poster in a previous discussion on landfills and biodegradability pointed out that you can open up a landfill and find 30-year-old newspapers, preserved just like new. Compare that with laying a newspaper out in your front yard. Degradable in the open, yes, Degradable in a sealed environment, no.
Degradable plastics (however they decompose) are just another red herring to distract us from the real issues of truly sustainable development.
Wish I had mod points... "Diode Gradation" was exactly what I thought.
A quick Google search did reveal a paper on "Diodegradation of Cationic Surfactants", which looked promising because of the "cation" (cathode/ion) reference. Alas, no other references to diodes were included.
Searching on the words separately yielded a Panasonic CD Receiver, but no sites showed up with the term enclosed in quotes.
Whatever. Now, I should probably go read the article before I go any farther off-topic. No +1 bonus for this reply!
From the article:
And for us on Earth? Paloski's work may help here, too. Ultimately his research is about making it easier to learn--and that's something we do every day of our lives.
As usual, NASA is compelled to point out some way that space research will generate a tangible benefit on Earth. It's like a mantra: "Yes, we've spent billions, but look at all the space program spinoffs we use every day on Earth!"
I wish that there were a way to harness the pure excitement of exploration, without having to make excuses. Of course, as seen elsewhere on Slashdot, you can only spend so many billions of dollars before folks start expecting results.
Meanwhile, I'm rooting for Armadillo Aerospace and the other backyard hobbyists with deep pockets.
The AC poster made a statement that shows a potential problem:
The Opera Browser is very good for acessabillity [...] Not forgetting the useful mouse gestures.
I would suggest that the "mouse gestures" are the antithesis of "accessible". They require a level of fine motor control that might not be possible for someone with decreased motor skills. Imagine someone using a pointing device keyed to eye movement -- if Opera's gestures were turned on, a quick look to the side could generate an unwanted "Back" action.
Mouse Gestures, then, are an "enhancement" that may actually decrease usability for the disabled. What other "enhancements" that are in the works or becoming part of the standard actually derail disabled access to web browsing and other applications?